No gaurantee. (Yeah, I know it's probably just a joke.) Good friends of mine were the victim of identity theft. Some guy got a phone line from GTE (now Verizon) using their personal info. (I think he just needed first name, last name and SSN.) He ran up a huge bill. Eventually the phone company disconnected him. Months later, a creditor contacted my friends asking for payment of $1200 for bills run up at an address 100 miles away from where they lived.
All this happened at a time when they could barely afford to keep their own phone from being disconnected. They were hardly well-to-do. It took them over 18 months to get the charges dropped and even then it was only because they were able to provide proof that they were both at an event 100 miles away during some of the calls.
They also had to provide copies of utility bills, etc. to show that they actually had a home somewhere else the entire time. As far as I know nobody ever got in trouble for it. I also don't think their credit has been fixed.
I guess this isn't full fledged identity theft as people usually think of it, but the guy did steal their identity long enough to get a phone line.
How in the world is your DOB hard to get? I can run a $39.95 report on you on the internet and get that plus your last 3 addresses, phone numbers and employers.
Too rich for me man. For free, go to this site and enter a combination of first, last and zip (or portions of these) and get first name, middle init, last name, DOB and zipcode. If that's not enough, pay $29 PER YEAR!! and get all that plus address for as many searches as you want. It's too rediculously easy to get this info!
BTW, if you go to the FAQ, then privacy statement from there, then click the opt out link, you can fill out a form... afterwards, they will promptly NOT remove you. At least they haven't removed me yet after submitting the form 3 times over as many months. I even followed the "If you still have problems..." info they give and e-mailed their opt-out address asking to be removed. (I did use a temp mail account in case they are culling addresses for spammers.)
Labels (which are all filenames are) given to my files have no more or less meaning than I ascribe to them
Thank you! I was trying to think of a clean way to say just that... now I don't have to.
While a friend and I were working on programming for a MUD, we used to save our update files with bizzar names. The main reason was to help remember which patch was which without actually disclosing what was in the patch. (Names like 0001, 0002, 0003 do not really lend themselves to easy differentiation.) Anyhow, they quickly degenerated into a listing of rock group and porn star names.
I'm going to have to find those suckers and put them in a "Old patches to circle-mud" web page. Wonder how many RIAA and movie industry types would send me warnings.
I've just never seen such an animal in my area ( midwest US )
I live in the midwest US and have actually seen one of these. I also had the inside scoop about their installation.
A local (same county) bank was looking at installing ATMs at 7 branch offices... some as much as 35 miles away. When the salesman came in for the Windows based model, he basically wowed the PHB type and they were ordered despite some reservations amoung the IT staff.
They lasted about 60 days. The costs involved with downtime and trips by tech support to fix/reboot soon ate up all the savings. Customer complaints also started rolling in.
At my local branch, I was only able to use the ATM one time out of 7 attempts over the course of a month. The other 6 times it either was in BSOD mode or simply frozen with no response to pressing buttons or inserting your card.
They were eventually replaced by something that was "not Windows." I haven't thought to ask what it was, but I know it wasn't Linux/BSD based. I've been able to use my local branch's ATM ever since.
BTW, the IT staff at this bank aren't idiots. I know a few of them personally and they are quite capable and certified admins/engineers. And the most amazing part? The PHB hopes the first company can fix the bugs so they can switch back to something that is "easier to maintain." I guess 100% uptime is hard to support. ?
When Windows has holes, it's in apps like Outlook, Office, and so forth, but they're counted as Windows holes by Slashbots.
Why is it different for Linux...?
You're right. The comparisons usually aren't fair. Normally when comparing holes in Windows and Linux the "our-OS-is-better-than-yours" crowd likes to include every single package included in a distribution. So some program like "Bob's widget maker" gets counted (and probably is v0.94 beta.)
I guess we should be more fair and only count software made by one company or group. So.. I guess we could look at the linux kernel by itself... or maybe GNU utils. Or perhaps the extras that Red Hat puts on. Or maybe Apache foundation software only. Then compare that only to software that MS produces. Now, that would be much more fair, right?
In my experience, when counting everything installed our servers I find myself patching Linux-based servers more often than Windows. BUT, over the course of the past year I have spent MUCH more time (in total) on those Windows patches. Linux looks even better when you consider that we have roughtly twice as many Linux servers now than we do Windows.
Hrm... not bad considering that one OS is made by a company with Billions of $ and one is made by mostly volunteers.
Government funded projects should use BSD style licenses. All of them. Everything the government creates should be available to everyone, regardless of what they want to do with it.
I have to disagree. First, licenses like GPL do not prevent ANYBODY from using the software. They might not be able to take publicly funded GPL software and build it into a product with 900% profit margin, but why exactly do we have to gaurantee them that right. They can choose not to use it because it might require them to GPL their software, but that is their right and thier choice.
Also, the government builds roads, but that doesn't mean you are allowed to use them to deliver a bomb. Or to drive 95 in a 65 speed zone. Many public goods produced/maintained by the government have restrictions.
The point of the restrictions is to make sure the use of these things is in the best interest of a majority of the public. Aiding the production of software that is sold to the public at 900% markup doesn't really seem to be in the interest of anyone but the single company selling it.
I'm certainly not saying all software should be free or that nobody should be able to profit from government funded software. At the same time I fail to see how it is appropriate for software all taxpayers shared the cost of to be sold back to them as part of another product.
Clearly government meddling and red tape and additional taxes to support it all isn't needed... I know many people would simply stop contributing...
I don't think we're talking about government's taking over OSS projects, but instead paying some developer to work on it. Personally I'm all for government entities paying OSS developers instead closed-source developers.
I've often wondered if it would make sense for schools to get together and pool money to hire a few programmers to be primary developers and organize OSS projects that benefit education. The advantage could be each school paying $100 towards some programer(s) salary instead of paying $5000 each for copies/licenses for a non-free software.
In event of actual insightfulness, please pull the moderator release cord.
Actually, you can run just about anything you want with a dynamically assigned IP address.
On many ISPs, yes, but a lot of people only have the option of getting broadband from one with an extremely restrictive AUP. The alternative with Charter is to purchase a business account! Unfortunately, Verizon's AUP is no better. Specifically, this section: "E. You may not use the DSL Service to host any type of server personal or commercial in nature."
This is rediculous IMHO. I'm getting forced into changing to Charter from my current ISP. I'm not looking forward to it.
With the exception of me occasionaly checking my e-mail via web interface, my website gets a massive 1 hit every 3 days. (At least that's what it was so far this month... and over half of those were just SE robots.) I also average 2-4 e-mails a day. When I checked with Charter via the phone, however, I was told that I absolutely could not run my mail and web server on their service without upgrading to a business account.
most ISPs don't have AUPs banning servers. Unfortunately, most cable modem companies do, and some big DSL providers also do
Yep, you're right. Unfortunatelyst (for me) the only broadband ISPs in this area both ban servers. IMHO, Charter communications is the worst.
I actually called them to get some clarification on what they consider a server. It's basically any standard (read as FTP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, etc) service.
I asked if I could do a mail server that was strictly for personal use and recieves 2-4 e-mails a day and they said that NO, that is not allowed. I gaurantee that given the option I would switch to another ISP immediately. The only other option in town is a local ISP, but their DSL prices are almost double.
Yes, I ran my own web server, FTP server, and mail server behind a NATted firewall/router for over a year
You are still tying up a public IP for your web/ftp/mail server. It just happens to be assigned to your cable router/fw box instead of the server. Your NAT configuration is just forwarding traffic to for IP to your internal web server. That doesn't free up any IPv4 addresses.
If your ISP used NAT, they could potentially serve a few thousand customers with a single public IP. But, if that were to happen, you would NOT be able to run your own web, FTP or mail server.
It's not like port forwarding is a big deal, or expensive, or really screws up the network.
You can only forward a one port to one IP address, so don't count on an ISP setting up forwarding for web or FTP to your server and not any other user. (Not to mention the management issues.)
The funny thing is that most ISPs have a user agreement that specifically says you can't run a server anyhow. If they used correctly configured NAT, there are very few things that typical web users couldn't do. I'm not advocating this for ISPs... I would never use an ISP that gave me a non-public address, however, I'm probably not a typical web user.
I think that NAT is a good thing. I also think it's a good and responsible practice for companies or individuals to use NAT when appropriate instead of getting additional IP addys. It's just not a cure-all and probably not a good long-term fix for IPv4 address shortage as more and more individuals go online.
PS.. for all of those posting who think that NAT = Firewall... BZZZ, wrong! While it is common for firewalling and NAT to be done by the same box/software, they are two seperate things. One does not require the other.
I keep hearing that if SCO prevails, the offending code can be replaced quickly. Why not replace it NOW?
Because SCO will only show someone the "offending code" if they sign an NDA. The NDA would then prevent them from removing the code if it exists.
This shouldn't be a surprise. SCO doesn't want any alleged code to be removed. As soon as it is removed they no longer have anything to threaten customers with and force a license purchase.
After all, a threat of "upgrade your kernel or pay us $1000" won't make nearly as much money as a threat of "pay us $1000 or risk a lawsuit."
The worst thing that could happen to SCO right now would be if the case was mainlined and taken to court quickly. I think this would also be the best thing for Linux too.
Note to SCO lawyers... this posting is mearly my opinion and IANAL.
It's like the difference between suing a neighbor who shoots your dog, and suing a neighbor who owns a gun which might result in him someday shooting your dog.
Perhaps a more accurate analogy would be suing everyone in your neighborhood who owns a gun because they may have shot your dog.
Which is why it seems like the system is working here. Those who did use the devise illegally can't hide, those who were wrongly caught on the list simply need to bring some proof of their legit use to court to win.
So, you feel the system is working if any company can bring suit against everyone who could have gotten free service?
Yes, I guess that makes sense. Think of the wonderful future in store for us. One where eveyone has a few days a year scheduled in court to prove they aren't breaking the law. And if you can't prove it, I guess it's just your bad luck.
My favorite story is of a friend who had two 3-inch tall stacks of cards (about 800 cards I think) sitting on his desk in his dorm room. They were carefully rubber banded because they were not numbered or marked.
His room mate (a jock type) walked in, saw the cards, unbanded them, shuffled them, banded them back up, then left. My friend sat there for about 5 minutes with his mouth open then crashed his head to the table. I almost thought he was going to cry. I didn't stick around to see what happened next. It was just too painful to watch. lol
The argument (from a math teacher no less) is that being able to manually add, subtract, multiply, etc. isn't of much value these days.
I don't buy it. The odds are really good that you won't have a calculator or computer handy at all times.
I bought something at Home Depot last week. The total was $2.70. I handed a $5 to the check-out girl and she punched it into the computer/cash-register. I had a couple of dimes I wanted to get rid of and didn't want more, so I told her to wait a second and gave her the extra $0.20.
To my horor, she could neither subtract $2.70 from $5.20 nor (worse) add 20 cents to the $2.30 change due that was shown on the screen. She stared at the dimes for a second so I told her the change was $2.50. She got a calculator out of her drawer and sure enough, I was right.
I'm just glad that she had a working calculator handy or I suspect she would have had to void the sale and start over.
On a related note, where I used to work, one salesperson was the favorite of most of our customers. Even though he generally had slightly higher mark-ups on his sales than average, he was still who most customers asked for when they called. When I asked a friend who was also a customer why he liked this guy, his answer was that he always could get a price estimate right away on the phone without waiting.
It turned out that the salesman could do most of the math in his head. He didn't try to be spot-on with the prices and let the customer know that it was just an estimate. They liked the fact that they immediately at least knew the ballpark the final quote would be in.
Fiber to the classroom gets expensive fast. Not only do you have the fiber NIC prices, but there is also the fiber switch costs... a lot of fiber ports on a switch isn't cheap.
Fiber for limited use like gigabit backbones between closets is extremely reasonable. It's not hard (or very expensive) to get switches with one or two gig fiber connectors on them. The fiber itself isn't very expensive.
I have a fairly extensive technology background, but basically zero teaching background. This means I can do a great job of proving servers and infrastructure, but not in evaluating how tech should fit into the classroom. As a result I can't really train our teachers on that aspect either.
That is something that needs to be done by someone who knows how to teach. This also means that simply installing new tech and showing the teachers how it works is not enough. Money has to be budgeted to provide real curriculum integration. Money to is needed to provide training, and to get the teachers to attend the training.
Unfortunately from what I've seen during this era of budget cuts, these integration inservices seem to be getting slashed early on. Worse yet, when they are offered, they are after hours and teachers aren't willing to attend... even for a stipend.
We have a very good tech infrastructure in our schools and a lot of tools that our teachers could use. Unfortunately only a handful know what's available, know how to use it, and know how to fit it into their curriculum correctly. The worst ones try to make the computer be a teacher instead of using it as just another tool.
I'd be interested in hearing what other schools have done about these training issues.
In any case, a trip to the post office isn't really a big obstacle since EVERYBODY has one.
I'm sure that a company's foreign (non U.S.) customers will disagree. From what I understand U.S. Post Offices are only in... the U.S.
Also, do you really think Ma & Pa Average will a) Understand the need. b) Make the trip to the post office. c) Install and d) Use the cert? I just don't see it. At least not until they HAVE to because they can no longer send e-mail. Many non-techies are completely lost when the icon for their mail program moves to a different place on the desktop. The whole "cert thing" isn't going to be a comfortable concept for them.
I'm not saying that a lot of people won't get certs. I'm sure tons of people who consider themselves "techies" will and a bunch who are extremely concerned with security will too. I just don't believe that a critical mass of the general population will get one. By "critical mass" I mean a large enough percentage that the average business will decide to start blocking non-certed mail. Too many average e-mail users are simply too apathetic to the whole issue to go get a cert without being forced.
If you get a message from your "financial institution" you want a way of verifying that it's really the person at the bank who sent the message.
Unless it was encrypted I'd be mighty ticked off at my bank for sending confidential financial info via e-mail. I didn't see anything in the PDF that seemed to indicate that public-key encryption would be enabled by this.
They will when all their correspondents start bouncing their non-certed mail.
There is a catch-22 here though. Most businesses won't turn away potential customers just because they don't have a cert. They'll want to wait until nearly everyone has gotten their certs before blocking. And without widespread adoption of blocking of non-certed mail, the insentive to get a cert isn't very strong.
So most businesses will wait until nearly everyone has a cert and most individuals will wait until a majority of businesses block their e-mail before getting one... especially if they have to physically go down to the post office and pay for one.
If only emails with digital signatures are allowed then anonymous email won't get through.
A bunch of non-anonymous (there HAS to be a better real word for that) e-mail wouldn't get through either. I suspect that filtering out messages without certs will fail. This is primarily because, like me, most people won't bother to go and get a cert. There are too many people (again like me) who will have an "if they won't except unsigned e-mail, I will deal with another company" attitude.
Also, unless it's brain-dead simple, most of today's Internet users won't have a clue how to install or use their new certificate with their mail prog of choice anyhow.
Maybe this isn't being done for the obvious reasons. Seems to me that this might be the first step towards Internet voting for government elections. Or maybe I'm wrong and the USPS just sees it as another revenue stream.
Quit whining about paying for wireless spectrum. After all, someone has to produce that spectrum. You can't just expect the government or private industry to make spectrum all day long and then give it away.
Spectrum is hard to make. I mean, look how long it took to perfect 2.4Ghz spectrum and produce enough to support WiFi. All those R&D costs have to be paid by someone! I'm not even counting the investment needed to build a spectrum manufacturing plant.
The US government is able to give it away for free only because of payments from WiFi manufacturers. The WiFi group shrewdly knew that the market would open wide if there was free 2.4Ghz radio spectrum.;-)
Yep, that's what I want, run Windows on a bunch of Pentium-II or older systems. Of course the MS-Office license isn't free and I still have the expense of counting the "free" licensed systems every year and reporting to MS.
I think it is really nice of Microsoft to let me have a license for a system which ALREADY HAD A LEGAL COPY OF WINDOWS on it. Hey, at least I didn't have to buy Windows a 2nd time after the original owner paid for it.
If you read the offer, you'll see that the school has to be reasonably sure that the system had a copy of Windows on it originally. The only thing they are doing by giving the "free license" is giving schools the ability to survive an MS audit. After all, you have to PROVE that you have licenses, not the other way around.
This really isn't a "gift". Instead, it is MS "allowing" schools to use windows on systems which had copies of Windows purchased for them once already.
If you can't guess from my nick, I'm much more likely to try to run Linux on these types of systems as thin clients than to slow them down even more with a copy of Windows.
Our student intern last year stopped in last week while he was home from college. He's using an iBook with Gentoo Linux on it. Says he gets another 1/2 hour or more battery life than OS/X plus it's 100% Linux.
His recommendation is to bring a small low-end desktop with a big HD as a server and an iBook laptop to lug around. (Back up to the server as needed.)
From the article: The precise steps of a good scrub depend on your operating system. I'll walk through what I do with Windows XP -- which will be pretty similar to what Windows ME and 98 and even Red Hat Linux folks do, too.
Um... no.
I know several Linux/UNIX sys admin types (self included) who use Linux on their home PC and work PC as the primary OS. To the best of my knowledge, none of us would do this. Kruft (left over programs and parts of programs) really isn't a big issue on Linux.
Before I replaced it with a new one, my home PC had Red Hat v6.1 then v6.2, v7.1, v7.2 and finally v7.3 installed as upgrades. All of these versions were installed with the upgrade option NOT as clean installs. At all times, everything kept working and nearly all settings migrated to the new version without extra work on my part. Through all of this there was never a need for "spring cleaning" to fix things or speed them up.
Request to author: Please at least check with some experienced Linux users before claiming to know how Linux should be maintained.
I thought a court case had already been won which said basically "If you put it on the net, it isn't private/secret information anymore." Wasn't it about a company's report that was "leaked" when they put it on their web server but didn't intend people to read it yet?
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No gaurantee. (Yeah, I know it's probably just a joke.) Good friends of mine were the victim of identity theft. Some guy got a phone line from GTE (now Verizon) using their personal info. (I think he just needed first name, last name and SSN.) He ran up a huge bill. Eventually the phone company disconnected him. Months later, a creditor contacted my friends asking for payment of $1200 for bills run up at an address 100 miles away from where they lived.
All this happened at a time when they could barely afford to keep their own phone from being disconnected. They were hardly well-to-do. It took them over 18 months to get the charges dropped and even then it was only because they were able to provide proof that they were both at an event 100 miles away during some of the calls.
They also had to provide copies of utility bills, etc. to show that they actually had a home somewhere else the entire time. As far as I know nobody ever got in trouble for it. I also don't think their credit has been fixed.
I guess this isn't full fledged identity theft as people usually think of it, but the guy did steal their identity long enough to get a phone line.
Too rich for me man. For free, go to this site and enter a combination of first, last and zip (or portions of these) and get first name, middle init, last name, DOB and zipcode. If that's not enough, pay $29 PER YEAR!! and get all that plus address for as many searches as you want. It's too rediculously easy to get this info!
BTW, if you go to the FAQ, then privacy statement from there, then click the opt out link, you can fill out a form... afterwards, they will promptly NOT remove you. At least they haven't removed me yet after submitting the form 3 times over as many months. I even followed the "If you still have problems..." info they give and e-mailed their opt-out address asking to be removed. (I did use a temp mail account in case they are culling addresses for spammers.)
Thank you! I was trying to think of a clean way to say just that... now I don't have to.
While a friend and I were working on programming for a MUD, we used to save our update files with bizzar names. The main reason was to help remember which patch was which without actually disclosing what was in the patch. (Names like 0001, 0002, 0003 do not really lend themselves to easy differentiation.) Anyhow, they quickly degenerated into a listing of rock group and porn star names.
I'm going to have to find those suckers and put them in a "Old patches to circle-mud" web page. Wonder how many RIAA and movie industry types would send me warnings.
I live in the midwest US and have actually seen one of these. I also had the inside scoop about their installation.
A local (same county) bank was looking at installing ATMs at 7 branch offices... some as much as 35 miles away. When the salesman came in for the Windows based model, he basically wowed the PHB type and they were ordered despite some reservations amoung the IT staff.
They lasted about 60 days. The costs involved with downtime and trips by tech support to fix/reboot soon ate up all the savings. Customer complaints also started rolling in.
At my local branch, I was only able to use the ATM one time out of 7 attempts over the course of a month. The other 6 times it either was in BSOD mode or simply frozen with no response to pressing buttons or inserting your card.
They were eventually replaced by something that was "not Windows." I haven't thought to ask what it was, but I know it wasn't Linux/BSD based. I've been able to use my local branch's ATM ever since.
BTW, the IT staff at this bank aren't idiots. I know a few of them personally and they are quite capable and certified admins/engineers. And the most amazing part? The PHB hopes the first company can fix the bugs so they can switch back to something that is "easier to maintain." I guess 100% uptime is hard to support. ?
You're right. The comparisons usually aren't fair. Normally when comparing holes in Windows and Linux the "our-OS-is-better-than-yours" crowd likes to include every single package included in a distribution. So some program like "Bob's widget maker" gets counted (and probably is v0.94 beta.)
I guess we should be more fair and only count software made by one company or group. So.. I guess we could look at the linux kernel by itself... or maybe GNU utils. Or perhaps the extras that Red Hat puts on. Or maybe Apache foundation software only. Then compare that only to software that MS produces. Now, that would be much more fair, right?
In my experience, when counting everything installed our servers I find myself patching Linux-based servers more often than Windows. BUT, over the course of the past year I have spent MUCH more time (in total) on those Windows patches. Linux looks even better when you consider that we have roughtly twice as many Linux servers now than we do Windows.
Hrm... not bad considering that one OS is made by a company with Billions of $ and one is made by mostly volunteers.
I have to disagree. First, licenses like GPL do not prevent ANYBODY from using the software. They might not be able to take publicly funded GPL software and build it into a product with 900% profit margin, but why exactly do we have to gaurantee them that right. They can choose not to use it because it might require them to GPL their software, but that is their right and thier choice.
Also, the government builds roads, but that doesn't mean you are allowed to use them to deliver a bomb. Or to drive 95 in a 65 speed zone. Many public goods produced/maintained by the government have restrictions.
The point of the restrictions is to make sure the use of these things is in the best interest of a majority of the public. Aiding the production of software that is sold to the public at 900% markup doesn't really seem to be in the interest of anyone but the single company selling it.
I'm certainly not saying all software should be free or that nobody should be able to profit from government funded software. At the same time I fail to see how it is appropriate for software all taxpayers shared the cost of to be sold back to them as part of another product.
I don't think we're talking about government's taking over OSS projects, but instead paying some developer to work on it. Personally I'm all for government entities paying OSS developers instead closed-source developers.
I've often wondered if it would make sense for schools to get together and pool money to hire a few programmers to be primary developers and organize OSS projects that benefit education. The advantage could be each school paying $100 towards some programer(s) salary instead of paying $5000 each for copies/licenses for a non-free software.
In event of actual insightfulness, please pull the moderator release cord.
On many ISPs, yes, but a lot of people only have the option of getting broadband from one with an extremely restrictive AUP. The alternative with Charter is to purchase a business account! Unfortunately, Verizon's AUP is no better. Specifically, this section: "E. You may not use the DSL Service to host any type of server personal or commercial in nature."
This is rediculous IMHO. I'm getting forced into changing to Charter from my current ISP. I'm not looking forward to it.
With the exception of me occasionaly checking my e-mail via web interface, my website gets a massive 1 hit every 3 days. (At least that's what it was so far this month... and over half of those were just SE robots.) I also average 2-4 e-mails a day. When I checked with Charter via the phone, however, I was told that I absolutely could not run my mail and web server on their service without upgrading to a business account.
Yep, you're right. Unfortunatelyst (for me) the only broadband ISPs in this area both ban servers. IMHO, Charter communications is the worst.
I actually called them to get some clarification on what they consider a server. It's basically any standard (read as FTP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, etc) service.
I asked if I could do a mail server that was strictly for personal use and recieves 2-4 e-mails a day and they said that NO, that is not allowed. I gaurantee that given the option I would switch to another ISP immediately. The only other option in town is a local ISP, but their DSL prices are almost double.
You are still tying up a public IP for your web/ftp/mail server. It just happens to be assigned to your cable router/fw box instead of the server. Your NAT configuration is just forwarding traffic to for IP to your internal web server. That doesn't free up any IPv4 addresses.
If your ISP used NAT, they could potentially serve a few thousand customers with a single public IP. But, if that were to happen, you would NOT be able to run your own web, FTP or mail server.
You can only forward a one port to one IP address, so don't count on an ISP setting up forwarding for web or FTP to your server and not any other user. (Not to mention the management issues.)
The funny thing is that most ISPs have a user agreement that specifically says you can't run a server anyhow. If they used correctly configured NAT, there are very few things that typical web users couldn't do. I'm not advocating this for ISPs... I would never use an ISP that gave me a non-public address, however, I'm probably not a typical web user.
I think that NAT is a good thing. I also think it's a good and responsible practice for companies or individuals to use NAT when appropriate instead of getting additional IP addys. It's just not a cure-all and probably not a good long-term fix for IPv4 address shortage as more and more individuals go online.
PS.. for all of those posting who think that NAT = Firewall... BZZZ, wrong! While it is common for firewalling and NAT to be done by the same box/software, they are two seperate things. One does not require the other.
Because SCO will only show someone the "offending code" if they sign an NDA. The NDA would then prevent them from removing the code if it exists.
This shouldn't be a surprise. SCO doesn't want any alleged code to be removed. As soon as it is removed they no longer have anything to threaten customers with and force a license purchase. After all, a threat of "upgrade your kernel or pay us $1000" won't make nearly as much money as a threat of "pay us $1000 or risk a lawsuit."
The worst thing that could happen to SCO right now would be if the case was mainlined and taken to court quickly. I think this would also be the best thing for Linux too.
Note to SCO lawyers... this posting is mearly my opinion and IANAL.
Perhaps a more accurate analogy would be suing everyone in your neighborhood who owns a gun because they may have shot your dog.
So, you feel the system is working if any company can bring suit against everyone who could have gotten free service?
Yes, I guess that makes sense. Think of the wonderful future in store for us. One where eveyone has a few days a year scheduled in court to prove they aren't breaking the law. And if you can't prove it, I guess it's just your bad luck.
His room mate (a jock type) walked in, saw the cards, unbanded them, shuffled them, banded them back up, then left. My friend sat there for about 5 minutes with his mouth open then crashed his head to the table. I almost thought he was going to cry. I didn't stick around to see what happened next. It was just too painful to watch. lol
I don't buy it. The odds are really good that you won't have a calculator or computer handy at all times.
I bought something at Home Depot last week. The total was $2.70. I handed a $5 to the check-out girl and she punched it into the computer/cash-register. I had a couple of dimes I wanted to get rid of and didn't want more, so I told her to wait a second and gave her the extra $0.20.
To my horor, she could neither subtract $2.70 from $5.20 nor (worse) add 20 cents to the $2.30 change due that was shown on the screen. She stared at the dimes for a second so I told her the change was $2.50. She got a calculator out of her drawer and sure enough, I was right.
I'm just glad that she had a working calculator handy or I suspect she would have had to void the sale and start over.
On a related note, where I used to work, one salesperson was the favorite of most of our customers. Even though he generally had slightly higher mark-ups on his sales than average, he was still who most customers asked for when they called. When I asked a friend who was also a customer why he liked this guy, his answer was that he always could get a price estimate right away on the phone without waiting.
It turned out that the salesman could do most of the math in his head. He didn't try to be spot-on with the prices and let the customer know that it was just an estimate. They liked the fact that they immediately at least knew the ballpark the final quote would be in.
Fiber for limited use like gigabit backbones between closets is extremely reasonable. It's not hard (or very expensive) to get switches with one or two gig fiber connectors on them. The fiber itself isn't very expensive.
That is something that needs to be done by someone who knows how to teach. This also means that simply installing new tech and showing the teachers how it works is not enough. Money has to be budgeted to provide real curriculum integration. Money to is needed to provide training, and to get the teachers to attend the training.
Unfortunately from what I've seen during this era of budget cuts, these integration inservices seem to be getting slashed early on. Worse yet, when they are offered, they are after hours and teachers aren't willing to attend... even for a stipend.
We have a very good tech infrastructure in our schools and a lot of tools that our teachers could use. Unfortunately only a handful know what's available, know how to use it, and know how to fit it into their curriculum correctly. The worst ones try to make the computer be a teacher instead of using it as just another tool.
I'd be interested in hearing what other schools have done about these training issues.
I'm in shape... "pear" is a shape, right?
I'm sure that a company's foreign (non U.S.) customers will disagree. From what I understand U.S. Post Offices are only in... the U.S.
Also, do you really think Ma & Pa Average will a) Understand the need. b) Make the trip to the post office. c) Install and d) Use the cert? I just don't see it. At least not until they HAVE to because they can no longer send e-mail. Many non-techies are completely lost when the icon for their mail program moves to a different place on the desktop. The whole "cert thing" isn't going to be a comfortable concept for them.
I'm not saying that a lot of people won't get certs. I'm sure tons of people who consider themselves "techies" will and a bunch who are extremely concerned with security will too. I just don't believe that a critical mass of the general population will get one. By "critical mass" I mean a large enough percentage that the average business will decide to start blocking non-certed mail. Too many average e-mail users are simply too apathetic to the whole issue to go get a cert without being forced.
Unless it was encrypted I'd be mighty ticked off at my bank for sending confidential financial info via e-mail. I didn't see anything in the PDF that seemed to indicate that public-key encryption would be enabled by this.
There is a catch-22 here though. Most businesses won't turn away potential customers just because they don't have a cert. They'll want to wait until nearly everyone has gotten their certs before blocking. And without widespread adoption of blocking of non-certed mail, the insentive to get a cert isn't very strong.
So most businesses will wait until nearly everyone has a cert and most individuals will wait until a majority of businesses block their e-mail before getting one... especially if they have to physically go down to the post office and pay for one.
A bunch of non-anonymous (there HAS to be a better real word for that) e-mail wouldn't get through either. I suspect that filtering out messages without certs will fail. This is primarily because, like me, most people won't bother to go and get a cert. There are too many people (again like me) who will have an "if they won't except unsigned e-mail, I will deal with another company" attitude.
Also, unless it's brain-dead simple, most of today's Internet users won't have a clue how to install or use their new certificate with their mail prog of choice anyhow.
Maybe this isn't being done for the obvious reasons. Seems to me that this might be the first step towards Internet voting for government elections. Or maybe I'm wrong and the USPS just sees it as another revenue stream.
Quit whining about paying for wireless spectrum. After all, someone has to produce that spectrum. You can't just expect the government or private industry to make spectrum all day long and then give it away.
;-)
Spectrum is hard to make. I mean, look how long it took to perfect 2.4Ghz spectrum and produce enough to support WiFi. All those R&D costs have to be paid by someone! I'm not even counting the investment needed to build a spectrum manufacturing plant.
The US government is able to give it away for free only because of payments from WiFi manufacturers. The WiFi group shrewdly knew that the market would open wide if there was free 2.4Ghz radio spectrum.
Yep, that's what I want, run Windows on a bunch of Pentium-II or older systems. Of course the MS-Office license isn't free and I still have the expense of counting the "free" licensed systems every year and reporting to MS.
I think it is really nice of Microsoft to let me have a license for a system which ALREADY HAD A LEGAL COPY OF WINDOWS on it. Hey, at least I didn't have to buy Windows a 2nd time after the original owner paid for it.
If you read the offer, you'll see that the school has to be reasonably sure that the system had a copy of Windows on it originally. The only thing they are doing by giving the "free license" is giving schools the ability to survive an MS audit. After all, you have to PROVE that you have licenses, not the other way around.
This really isn't a "gift". Instead, it is MS "allowing" schools to use windows on systems which had copies of Windows purchased for them once already.
If you can't guess from my nick, I'm much more likely to try to run Linux on these types of systems as thin clients than to slow them down even more with a copy of Windows.
His recommendation is to bring a small low-end desktop with a big HD as a server and an iBook laptop to lug around. (Back up to the server as needed.)
Um... no.
I know several Linux/UNIX sys admin types (self included) who use Linux on their home PC and work PC as the primary OS. To the best of my knowledge, none of us would do this. Kruft (left over programs and parts of programs) really isn't a big issue on Linux.
Before I replaced it with a new one, my home PC had Red Hat v6.1 then v6.2, v7.1, v7.2 and finally v7.3 installed as upgrades. All of these versions were installed with the upgrade option NOT as clean installs. At all times, everything kept working and nearly all settings migrated to the new version without extra work on my part. Through all of this there was never a need for "spring cleaning" to fix things or speed them up.
Request to author: Please at least check with some experienced Linux users before claiming to know how Linux should be maintained.
I thought a court case had already been won which said basically "If you put it on the net, it isn't private/secret information anymore." Wasn't it about a company's report that was "leaked" when they put it on their web server but didn't intend people to read it yet?