Something no one has brought up is the ability to upgrade technology. With above-ground poles, it's fairly simple to string along additional wires as needed. If you're undergound and you run out of phone lines, the telco may just say too bad, wait 6-18 months until there's enough demand to dig up the neighbourhood. If the city is rolling out fiber-to-the-home, the undergound neighbourhoods are likely to be the last to get it. Most likely they won't get it until the road needs to be dug up anyways to replace the surface, or sewer or water lines.. That can take 20-30 years, or even longer sometimes.
My parents live in an area with everything undergound. It definately looks nicer, but their cable reception is on some channels is terrible, and has been that way for years. They've had the line going up to the house replaced and all the inside wiring replaced, but it's still not as good as it would be. Replacing the main line in the road would mean digging up the bottom couple feet of 50-60 driveways (most paved, some interlocking brick.. you usually can't find the exact same replacement bricks either, so it would never look the same). It's just not practical to do to fix a few snowy channels for a handful of houses (I'm not sure exactly how many people have the problem, but their immediate neighbours do at least).
I did a v2 not too long ago by grounding one of the pins on the chip (found instructions on a site somewhere) and reloading the linksys firmware. Not overly difficult, and it revived a router one of my friends was about to throw out (as I understand it, he had been working on some wiring, and shorted his phone line across some ethernet cables plugged into the router). It's now happily running my network at home.
Well, effecively that reduces the keyspace to brute force. Since it's so complex, probably all passwords are just the minimum 8 characters. Computationally, it's probably not any simpler, since something still has to check each password guess for those requirements, but at least that can be done offline. In fact, with a small amount of coding and a bit of time, I could come up with a list of valid passwords.
Of course, if you have a lockout policy (After x tries, lock account for y time) then it can slow down brute force attempts, and if you have someone monitoring those logs, then you can even figure out that someone is trying to get in. Ironically, with a lockout policy, it doesn't really matter how complex the password is, since the changes of guesssing even a simple password in say, 3 tries, is pretty small.
Since trace is just a frontend to a subversion repository, and tortoisesvn is a frontend to subversion (client) itself, using all 3 is perfectly acceptable - i do it all the time (for my windows development, anyways).
But I do agree, Trac is a great tool. Combination of wiki + ticket tracker + roadmap + svn browser. It's great because it's all integrated: you can make wiki posts that say "this will be done in milestone:1.2", tickets that say "Fixed in [265]" (revision), or svn commit messages saying "Fixed ticket #23" and everything becomes a link (see: http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/WikiFormatt ing#TracLinks). The wiki is great for documentation, researching new ideas, etc and ties in very nicely.
The wiki may or may not be an answer to the submitter's question (for the analysts), depending on how closely related the documents are to the code, and if they can get the analysts to switch from word to wiki syntax.. but it's definately worth checking out. So far everyone I've introduced trac to loves it.
I'm 25 so I don't quite fit your demographic, but I SMS my friends all the time- sometimes it's very convienient to ask quick questions, or say something quick like "be there 15 mins". Especially if you know they're unavailable to answer (ie, at work, at a movie..). I also prefer to receive simple messages this way, it takes me 2 seconds to open my phone and read it, versus 30 or more to check voicemail.
I'm not sure if you've typed recently (probably not), but most phones now support "T9" (or some other name) kind of input, where you just press the numbers corresponding to the letters, and it figures out the word. My current phone even has an autocomplete feature, so when you press enough letters, it shows the words that might spell, and you can just pick one.
A camera was one of those things I resisted for a long time, then I finally got one in my new phone because it's basically impossible to get one without it. It's a 1.3 megapixel so the pictures are at least usable. It's actually alright, I've used it to take pictures while out with friends, or when the situation arises. For example, my girlfriend was looking for a car not too long ago, and I took pictures of a couple cars I happened to see for sale while driving by. I definately wouldn't carry a digital camera with me all the time, so it has its uses. It wouldn't make a buy or no-buy decision for me on getting a phone, but I don't mind having it. Now, I can also get the pictures (for free) to my computer with bluetooth - if I had to pay, I doubt I'd do it.
As for email, nah I don't bother. If it's important than you can call or SMS me.:) The only thing I've used internet for is to check the weather. I could care less about ringtones (my phone is on vibrate 95% of the time anyways, and I like it to sound like a phone anyways), wallpapers (if I open & look at my phone, it's for a purpose.. not to stare at the background) etc. Even if they didn't cost a fortune I wouldn't bother.
Oh yeah, and the other thing that half the people at my office use SMS for is receiving alarms from some of our monitoring systems. It sends a message with the details of the alarm and site where it happened. I don't even know what else to compare this to.. Carrying around an alphanumeric pager in addition to a cell phone? Our phone system also sends an SMS to the on-call technician when someone leaves a message in our (shared) emergency mailbox, saying "New 1:04 long message from 123-555-1234 in emergency mailbox".
The internet is international. Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue would be.xxx in Iran. Whose.xxx do you use?
Even if voluntary,.xxx is a bad idea. Wife demands ISP-level xxx filter. Husband complies, secretly goes to.com porn sites. Who would register as xxx voluntarily, it would be bad for business.
Both of these are good points. My argument against it has been that:
* There will likely be a land-rush to register.xxx domains. Are you going to register yourcompany.xxx? Will you like it if someone else does?
* If someone beats pornSite.com to pornSite.xxx, chances are pornSite.com will continue to use their.com domain, especially if they've put lots of effort into branding it.
* (like you said) the internet is international. How do you enforce legislation globally? Even if you can do it in a few countries, there will always be sites that are not.xxx. Now the sites in the US that are forced to use.xxx, but are being filtered, have no way of competing with the.com's hosted offshore that are unfiltered. How long will it be before they just move their own sites offshore? If they do that, for example, legislation that prevents them from showing underage models is going to be much harder to enforce..
* Who decides where the line is of what is porn and what is art? I didn't even consider the additional argument you brought up of how this will be different in different cultures..
For PHP, I have started using CodeIgniter which is a pretty light-weight MVC framework, and I highly recommend it. It's nice because it doesn't impose very many rules on you (unlike other frameworks) so you don't really have to modify your coding style much. Working with it feels like a framework should: just some stuff there to help you out, without getting in the way. Oh, and it has a great user manual (which is arguably the most important part when picking up a new framework).
It's certainly a lot easier than having to move all the files yourself according to a large set of instructions which could have just as easily been automated into a double-click-on-that-icon-and-press-next-next-next -finish-script anyway.
I don't know what experience you have with *nix, but most installs are not like this.
Now you do touch on it, there is no "linux" way, because Linux is a kernel. You need an OS distro to run applications. Each distro has its own way of installing.
If you use something like debian, or ubuntu, you run a program like Adept, and click 'install' on any programs you want to install. If it's not in the repository, right click on the.deb and click "install package". It automatically finds any dependencies and installs them as well. Provided you use software from the repository (which is huge, btw, 18,000 packages or something), then it's one-click to upgrade EVERYTHING. There is certainly no standard way of doing updates on windows, and definately not anything automated that pulls together a bunch of apps so you can update them from one place..
On other distros, the install methods are different, but not necessissiarily any harder. RedHat has a web site where you can install packages on a machine or a bunch of machines, even if you're not physically nearby.
The least-common-denominator way to install stuff on linux is with autoconf/automake. This is the most complex, involving a terminal window. Once you're used to it though, it's not very difficult.. usually:./configure; make; make install.
In reality, and certainly for desktop distributions, most people are using packages.
Yes, AJAX is great. Of course, the XML bit of it gets in the way, it's simpler to just grab the appropriate HTML or Javascript code directly from the server. Why write something that outputs in XML, then write client-side Javascript to re-interpret it and run javascript code or create HTML? XML is just a complication for most tasks.
s X10 a standard, or a brand name? Is this the same company that pioneered outrageously annoying popup ads?
Both. And yes, X10 the company is the one that does the annoying pop-up ads. I don't have any experience with X10's (the company) stuff but I have used X10Pro (which seems to be an offshoot of X10 (the company)). I bought what was supposed to be a something load dimmer, but it made the fans hum anyways. Most of my light switches are Smarthome's SwitchLinc X10-based switches (now replaced with this Insteon stuff). The smarthome switches are very nice and high quality.. the X10Pro switch is a cheap piece of crap. It looks like a dimmer, but actually only has one button.. You have to hold to alternately fade up/down. There are no indications of brightness on it like the SwitchLinc's have (which makes controlling a fan hard, because it takes time to react.. you can't even tell if you're fading up or down half the time). I would not recommend buying any of their products.
X10 (the protocol) is used by many manufacturers, including X10, X10Pro, Leviton, Smarthome, ACT,.. the list goes on. The biggest problem with X10 is it's quite slow (it can take several seconds to transmit multiple commands), and because it uses signalling on the power line as the 120/240V alternating current sine wave crosses 0, it basically looks like 'noise'.. due to the simplicity, actualy noise is often misinterpreted as X10 commands. This has become more of a problem in the past few years as modern electronics are plugged in, but there are filters to block it (at additional $$).
I considerd Smarthome and ACT products, and ultimately chose smarthome because of the extensive amount of stuff they had. I wish Insteon had been announced slightly earlier.. I bought all my stuff just over a year before the Insteon products were released. On the plus side, they seem to at least be somewhat compatible. The products for other protocols (zigbee, some of the other wired ones that use Cat5, etc) were just more expensive or time-consuming to install.
I'd have to disrecommend running a VPN between these sites simply for your convenience; it would mean that a security failure at any point on the network could jeopardize all of the machines in the network. I recommend you stick with ssh/scp for access to those machines.
Actually the way the OpenVPN server is configured by default, each machine is put onto its own network basically (ie, you get a 10.8.0.9, with netmask 255.255.255.252), and the server will not route between clients. If you're running the VPN network in a different subnet from your regular network, you can tightly control the routing between the two. A security failure at one endpoint will only comprimise that endpoint and provide access to what it can normally access on the server - not the whole network. You still need to provide other protection on the client (eg, tripwire) to protect it seperately.
Comprimising the server is still going to get you access to everything, and this is true with pretty much any setup.
Come up with a small project. If nothing else, a program that does something you want or need done, even if nobody else wants it.
This is very important. If you don't pick a project that serves a purpose for you in some way, you'll probably lose interest very quickly (especially if you're not getting paid). One of the important points with software development is to eat your own dogfood.
I just implemented our company's PKI* with TinyCA. It's a handy little front-end to OpenSSL that generates certificates and signs requests, etc. We are a small business, and I have been looking for a program like this for a long time (I was actually about to write my own). My root is not signed, as the certificates are just installed on sites for internal use, but theres no reason it wouldn't work with signed roots.
There is actually a knoppix-based live-cd distro called roCA that runs tinyCA that is designed to store the certificates on a USB thumb drive. The idea is that you lock up the CD and thumb drive. A bit easier than an entire laptop..
* I'm not really sure this is an all-out "PKI" system in the "enterprise" sense of the word. As I'm not a security expert -- just an IT guy that needed an easy way to manage certificates -- I don't really understand the buzzword-laden PKI industry, that seems to have lots of companies that sell PKI management software without really explaining what exactly they do.
Or they could have possibly anaylyzed the spyware program on a machine that already had it installed. If teh program was already installed when you got to it, you never clicked 'I agree' to the EULA did you?
Does an EULA apply to a user, or the whole company?
What's to stop the anti-spyware company from having someone who's job is to install spyware, and agree to the EULA's? They could then give the computer to the development team, and someone can write detection for it. No one on the development team agreed to or even saw the EULA..
One of the first things they could do to prevent migration to VoIP is to include all the extra features like caller ID and other value added features in with basic phone service. VoIP is the future of telecommunications. It runs on data networks, and we all know data networks aren't going away anytime soon.
That is definately a good idea. Another would be to reduce or remove long-distance charges. Although there are various companies that charge lower long distance (many I'm sure using Voip), this needs to be much more widespread. I don't know how long-distance charging works, but it needs to be much more like how tier-1 ISPs peer for free with each other. If it already is, then it's just pure profit for them.. so they'll have to be willing to take a cut in that profit to prevent losing it altogher.
What would be even better would be to blur the line between VoIP and POTS. Provide digital service (even voip) right from the CO, then throw it on the TDM network. Provide some of the benefits of VoIP (multiple concurrent calls, digital signalling (ie, instant caller id)) without the problems that VoIP has on the internet (latency, outages).
At my small business, we use VoIP internally for our phone system, but also as a backup line. We have 3 voice POTS lines, which all hunt from our main number. The last one hunts to a VoIP 'wholesale' (no voicemail, call waiting, etc services -- our phone system does that stuff) number, where we can accept as many calls as we have bandwidth (and we have a decent chunk of bandwidth). We also use the VoIP line for outgoing long-distance calls, or if the POTS lines are all used up. This effectively gives us "unlimited" call handling capability, for much much much less than it would cost to have 3 or 6 or 10 more phone lines. We just pay a littler over a cent a minute, plus a couple dollars a month for a DID (local phone number). The phone companies have a way to go before they're going to be able to match that and that's probably what has them scared.
Of course, blocking VoIP seems very dumb. If my ISP was my phone company, and they blocked my VoIP calls, my response would be to get a new ISP -- not say "oh well, I guess I'll just pay more for a less-capable analog phone line". Not only are they driving away voice customers, but they're driving away their internet customers as well.
He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.
I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.
There's a slashdot interview where he talks about that book and his "relationship" to Markoff. Also good reading is the lost chapter from The Art of Deception.
If bugzilla actually was a nice looking, easy to use application this probably wouldn't be necessary. Web-based is the way to go. Updating is as simple as updating once on the server -- you don't have to worry about a whole ton of client versions floating around.
Bugzilla is still one of those first-generation looking web apps that was designed (in the visual sense) by programmers, and you can tell. From my experience, most programmers are very bad at making user interfaces (myself included) and really it's a job that should be left to web designers (a subset of graphic designers). Compare bugzilla's interface to say, gmail, and you can see there is just no comparison.
Sure, the usability may be there, but if it's just awkward to use and hard on the eyes, people won't like it. Oh, and apparently they'll revert to developing old client/server style interfaces for it.
Mix that with a VR helmet so that the user can see a gun, textured walls and ennemies instead of rods, and you have yourself a real life Doom. Reflective patches on the rod coupled with IR on the helmet could even be used to track if the player crouch or jump (god forbid)
Or, just give them a laser or paintball gun, and throw some other real players in the map.
Ok, it's not quite the same since you could reconfigure the levels as they move around and make it seem a lot bigger than it really is (with a carefully designed map anyways). But you do away with clunky headgear, thousands of dollars of computers to track it, limitation of movements.. Oh, and if one of your pnuematic rods fails, you don't run full speed into a wall that's not supposed to be there.
You can pull all of the patent information from the last time we discussed this issue but the fact still remains that a patent application date does not establish when an idea was first formulated. The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative.
Even that shouldn't matter. Unless I'm missunderstanding what the USPTO says, a patent application isn't published until 18 months after it is filed. This means that Apple wouldn't have known about the Creative interface when they invented theirs. If they managed to come up with an identical or close-enough-to-infringe 'invention', then obviously the idea is not a novelty or non-obvious, so it shouldn't have been granted in the first place (I mean this in the ideal sense, not as in according to patent law -- though, that should be law).
I've recently been tasked by my supervisor to "Find and evaluate service dispatch software" for our small company of 40.
I recently went through this same search. We were looking for something that integrated a lot of our business processes. I came to one conclusion: If you want software that does exactly what you need, you have to write it yourself.
We've been using SimplyAccounting forever to do accounting, and not really tracking inventory (we have a very high number of different parts, but don't keep a huge stock on hand). Dispatching was done by filling out a form on the computer and printing it -- there was no real tracking system since the forms weren't all that searchable, and you couldn't find unfinished jobs etc.
About two years ago, we ended up purchasing a very expensive program (after looking at mid-high end accounting systems for a while) to do accounting. While trying to implement it, we found it was just too much - it forced us to alter some of our processes to work the way it wanted, and it was just overly complicated (hard to learn). On top of that, it didn't do everything we needed, and for example, I was starting plans to write the actual dispatch tracking part (with it doing invoicing and inventory). We basically abandoned that after a year, when we still hadn't made much progress in switching and they were starting to hit us up for a new support contract.
After fixing some staff problems, we started the process again in February. We ended up switching our accounting to QuickBooks, and using a product that can connect to QuickBooks called ESC by Coastal Computer. ESC can create invoices from dispatches, and post those invoices back to QuickBooks. It also has much more comprehensive inventory management and customer equipment tracking.
It still doesn't quite do everything we want (we have filters we need to service every 2 or so years, for example, and it doesn't really have good a way to 'remind' us to call the customer about that, and no way to automatically reset that date after invoicing a filter service). On the plus side it has a backend I can access (MS SQL), and in the past couple days I've written a program that looks for the service codes on an invoice and resets the service date on equipment. It doesn't require any additional interface, which is good.
We've been in this process for about 6 months though. I originally estimated a year (after my experience the first time when I figured a month or two), so we're well on track. We now do all dispatching, invoicing, and accounting stuff from QB/ESC. Most of our inventory is entered though we need to do a physical count again, and a fair amount of pricing information is missing (though getting closer every day).
So here's my advice: don't implement a solution that causes more work (ie, double-entry of data into dispatch, and then accounting) or has a steep learning curve, as people will not like to use it. Also realize that probably no software will ever meet your exact needs, just get close. Pick something that is flexible, or at least open enough so you can modify or add-on to. An open-source project would be ideal here, but AFAIK none exists.
I did consider starting an O/S project, but figured it would take at least 4 months to get something usable, and several more to work the bugs out and get a full feature set. This is not to mention the time to actually implement. It was simply cheaper to buy something than for me to spend the time on it.
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Something no one has brought up is the ability to upgrade technology. With above-ground poles, it's fairly simple to string along additional wires as needed. If you're undergound and you run out of phone lines, the telco may just say too bad, wait 6-18 months until there's enough demand to dig up the neighbourhood. If the city is rolling out fiber-to-the-home, the undergound neighbourhoods are likely to be the last to get it. Most likely they won't get it until the road needs to be dug up anyways to replace the surface, or sewer or water lines.. That can take 20-30 years, or even longer sometimes.
My parents live in an area with everything undergound. It definately looks nicer, but their cable reception is on some channels is terrible, and has been that way for years. They've had the line going up to the house replaced and all the inside wiring replaced, but it's still not as good as it would be. Replacing the main line in the road would mean digging up the bottom couple feet of 50-60 driveways (most paved, some interlocking brick.. you usually can't find the exact same replacement bricks either, so it would never look the same). It's just not practical to do to fix a few snowy channels for a handful of houses (I'm not sure exactly how many people have the problem, but their immediate neighbours do at least).
I did a v2 not too long ago by grounding one of the pins on the chip (found instructions on a site somewhere) and reloading the linksys firmware. Not overly difficult, and it revived a router one of my friends was about to throw out (as I understand it, he had been working on some wiring, and shorted his phone line across some ethernet cables plugged into the router). It's now happily running my network at home.
Well, effecively that reduces the keyspace to brute force. Since it's so complex, probably all passwords are just the minimum 8 characters. Computationally, it's probably not any simpler, since something still has to check each password guess for those requirements, but at least that can be done offline. In fact, with a small amount of coding and a bit of time, I could come up with a list of valid passwords.
Of course, if you have a lockout policy (After x tries, lock account for y time) then it can slow down brute force attempts, and if you have someone monitoring those logs, then you can even figure out that someone is trying to get in. Ironically, with a lockout policy, it doesn't really matter how complex the password is, since the changes of guesssing even a simple password in say, 3 tries, is pretty small.
I dunno, I quite like my linux-based Myth box for watching tv and movies.. ;)
Since trace is just a frontend to a subversion repository, and tortoisesvn is a frontend to subversion (client) itself, using all 3 is perfectly acceptable - i do it all the time (for my windows development, anyways).
t ing#TracLinks). The wiki is great for documentation, researching new ideas, etc and ties in very nicely.
But I do agree, Trac is a great tool. Combination of wiki + ticket tracker + roadmap + svn browser. It's great because it's all integrated: you can make wiki posts that say "this will be done in milestone:1.2", tickets that say "Fixed in [265]" (revision), or svn commit messages saying "Fixed ticket #23" and everything becomes a link (see: http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/wiki/WikiFormat
The wiki may or may not be an answer to the submitter's question (for the analysts), depending on how closely related the documents are to the code, and if they can get the analysts to switch from word to wiki syntax.. but it's definately worth checking out. So far everyone I've introduced trac to loves it.
SCADA
I'm 25 so I don't quite fit your demographic, but I SMS my friends all the time- sometimes it's very convienient to ask quick questions, or say something quick like "be there 15 mins". Especially if you know they're unavailable to answer (ie, at work, at a movie..). I also prefer to receive simple messages this way, it takes me 2 seconds to open my phone and read it, versus 30 or more to check voicemail.
:) The only thing I've used internet for is to check the weather. I could care less about ringtones (my phone is on vibrate 95% of the time anyways, and I like it to sound like a phone anyways), wallpapers (if I open & look at my phone, it's for a purpose.. not to stare at the background) etc. Even if they didn't cost a fortune I wouldn't bother.
I'm not sure if you've typed recently (probably not), but most phones now support "T9" (or some other name) kind of input, where you just press the numbers corresponding to the letters, and it figures out the word. My current phone even has an autocomplete feature, so when you press enough letters, it shows the words that might spell, and you can just pick one.
A camera was one of those things I resisted for a long time, then I finally got one in my new phone because it's basically impossible to get one without it. It's a 1.3 megapixel so the pictures are at least usable. It's actually alright, I've used it to take pictures while out with friends, or when the situation arises. For example, my girlfriend was looking for a car not too long ago, and I took pictures of a couple cars I happened to see for sale while driving by. I definately wouldn't carry a digital camera with me all the time, so it has its uses. It wouldn't make a buy or no-buy decision for me on getting a phone, but I don't mind having it. Now, I can also get the pictures (for free) to my computer with bluetooth - if I had to pay, I doubt I'd do it.
As for email, nah I don't bother. If it's important than you can call or SMS me.
Oh yeah, and the other thing that half the people at my office use SMS for is receiving alarms from some of our monitoring systems. It sends a message with the details of the alarm and site where it happened. I don't even know what else to compare this to.. Carrying around an alphanumeric pager in addition to a cell phone? Our phone system also sends an SMS to the on-call technician when someone leaves a message in our (shared) emergency mailbox, saying "New 1:04 long message from 123-555-1234 in emergency mailbox".
The internet is international. Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue would be .xxx in Iran. Whose .xxx do you use?
.xxx is a bad idea. Wife demands ISP-level xxx filter. Husband complies, secretly goes to .com porn sites. Who would register as xxx voluntarily, it would be bad for business.
.xxx domains. Are you going to register yourcompany.xxx? Will you like it if someone else does?
.com domain, especially if they've put lots of effort into branding it.
.xxx. Now the sites in the US that are forced to use .xxx, but are being filtered, have no way of competing with the .com's hosted offshore that are unfiltered. How long will it be before they just move their own sites offshore? If they do that, for example, legislation that prevents them from showing underage models is going to be much harder to enforce..
Even if voluntary,
Both of these are good points. My argument against it has been that:
* There will likely be a land-rush to register
* If someone beats pornSite.com to pornSite.xxx, chances are pornSite.com will continue to use their
* (like you said) the internet is international. How do you enforce legislation globally? Even if you can do it in a few countries, there will always be sites that are not
* Who decides where the line is of what is porn and what is art? I didn't even consider the additional argument you brought up of how this will be different in different cultures..
Bottom line: dumb idea, too many issues.
For PHP, I have started using CodeIgniter which is a pretty light-weight MVC framework, and I highly recommend it. It's nice because it doesn't impose very many rules on you (unlike other frameworks) so you don't really have to modify your coding style much. Working with it feels like a framework should: just some stuff there to help you out, without getting in the way. Oh, and it has a great user manual (which is arguably the most important part when picking up a new framework).
Someday, someone will use smarty to write a template engine.
Yep, I think most people here wouldn't be suprised if the RIAA were to sue the air.
It's certainly a lot easier than having to move all the files yourself according to a large set of instructions which could have just as easily been automated into a double-click-on-that-icon-and-press-next-next-next -finish-script anyway.
.deb and click "install package". It automatically finds any dependencies and installs them as well. Provided you use software from the repository (which is huge, btw, 18,000 packages or something), then it's one-click to upgrade EVERYTHING. There is certainly no standard way of doing updates on windows, and definately not anything automated that pulls together a bunch of apps so you can update them from one place..
./configure; make; make install.
I don't know what experience you have with *nix, but most installs are not like this.
Now you do touch on it, there is no "linux" way, because Linux is a kernel. You need an OS distro to run applications. Each distro has its own way of installing.
If you use something like debian, or ubuntu, you run a program like Adept, and click 'install' on any programs you want to install. If it's not in the repository, right click on the
On other distros, the install methods are different, but not necessissiarily any harder. RedHat has a web site where you can install packages on a machine or a bunch of machines, even if you're not physically nearby.
The least-common-denominator way to install stuff on linux is with autoconf/automake. This is the most complex, involving a terminal window. Once you're used to it though, it's not very difficult.. usually:
In reality, and certainly for desktop distributions, most people are using packages.
Yes, AJAX is great. Of course, the XML bit of it gets in the way, it's simpler to just grab the appropriate HTML or Javascript code directly from the server. Why write something that outputs in XML, then write client-side Javascript to re-interpret it and run javascript code or create HTML? XML is just a complication for most tasks.
s X10 a standard, or a brand name? Is this the same company that pioneered outrageously annoying popup ads?
.. the X10Pro switch is a cheap piece of crap. It looks like a dimmer, but actually only has one button.. You have to hold to alternately fade up/down. There are no indications of brightness on it like the SwitchLinc's have (which makes controlling a fan hard, because it takes time to react.. you can't even tell if you're fading up or down half the time). I would not recommend buying any of their products.
Both. And yes, X10 the company is the one that does the annoying pop-up ads. I don't have any experience with X10's (the company) stuff but I have used X10Pro (which seems to be an offshoot of X10 (the company)). I bought what was supposed to be a something load dimmer, but it made the fans hum anyways. Most of my light switches are Smarthome's SwitchLinc X10-based switches (now replaced with this Insteon stuff). The smarthome switches are very nice and high quality
X10 (the protocol) is used by many manufacturers, including X10, X10Pro, Leviton, Smarthome, ACT,.. the list goes on. The biggest problem with X10 is it's quite slow (it can take several seconds to transmit multiple commands), and because it uses signalling on the power line as the 120/240V alternating current sine wave crosses 0, it basically looks like 'noise'.. due to the simplicity, actualy noise is often misinterpreted as X10 commands. This has become more of a problem in the past few years as modern electronics are plugged in, but there are filters to block it (at additional $$).
I considerd Smarthome and ACT products, and ultimately chose smarthome because of the extensive amount of stuff they had. I wish Insteon had been announced slightly earlier.. I bought all my stuff just over a year before the Insteon products were released. On the plus side, they seem to at least be somewhat compatible. The products for other protocols (zigbee, some of the other wired ones that use Cat5, etc) were just more expensive or time-consuming to install.
I'd have to disrecommend running a VPN between these sites simply for your convenience; it would mean that a security failure at any point on the network could jeopardize all of the machines in the network. I recommend you stick with ssh/scp for access to those machines.
Actually the way the OpenVPN server is configured by default, each machine is put onto its own network basically (ie, you get a 10.8.0.9, with netmask 255.255.255.252), and the server will not route between clients. If you're running the VPN network in a different subnet from your regular network, you can tightly control the routing between the two. A security failure at one endpoint will only comprimise that endpoint and provide access to what it can normally access on the server - not the whole network. You still need to provide other protection on the client (eg, tripwire) to protect it seperately.
Comprimising the server is still going to get you access to everything, and this is true with pretty much any setup.
Come up with a small project. If nothing else, a program that does something you want or need done, even if nobody else wants it.
This is very important. If you don't pick a project that serves a purpose for you in some way, you'll probably lose interest very quickly (especially if you're not getting paid). One of the important points with software development is to eat your own dogfood.
I just implemented our company's PKI* with TinyCA. It's a handy little front-end to OpenSSL that generates certificates and signs requests, etc. We are a small business, and I have been looking for a program like this for a long time (I was actually about to write my own). My root is not signed, as the certificates are just installed on sites for internal use, but theres no reason it wouldn't work with signed roots.
There is actually a knoppix-based live-cd distro called roCA that runs tinyCA that is designed to store the certificates on a USB thumb drive. The idea is that you lock up the CD and thumb drive. A bit easier than an entire laptop..
* I'm not really sure this is an all-out "PKI" system in the "enterprise" sense of the word. As I'm not a security expert -- just an IT guy that needed an easy way to manage certificates -- I don't really understand the buzzword-laden PKI industry, that seems to have lots of companies that sell PKI management software without really explaining what exactly they do.
Or they could have possibly anaylyzed the spyware program on a machine that already had it installed. If teh program was already installed when you got to it, you never clicked 'I agree' to the EULA did you?
Does an EULA apply to a user, or the whole company?
What's to stop the anti-spyware company from having someone who's job is to install spyware, and agree to the EULA's? They could then give the computer to the development team, and someone can write detection for it. No one on the development team agreed to or even saw the EULA..
One of the first things they could do to prevent migration to VoIP is to include all the extra features like caller ID and other value added features in with basic phone service. VoIP is the future of telecommunications. It runs on data networks, and we all know data networks aren't going away anytime soon.
That is definately a good idea. Another would be to reduce or remove long-distance charges. Although there are various companies that charge lower long distance (many I'm sure using Voip), this needs to be much more widespread. I don't know how long-distance charging works, but it needs to be much more like how tier-1 ISPs peer for free with each other. If it already is, then it's just pure profit for them.. so they'll have to be willing to take a cut in that profit to prevent losing it altogher.
What would be even better would be to blur the line between VoIP and POTS. Provide digital service (even voip) right from the CO, then throw it on the TDM network. Provide some of the benefits of VoIP (multiple concurrent calls, digital signalling (ie, instant caller id)) without the problems that VoIP has on the internet (latency, outages).
At my small business, we use VoIP internally for our phone system, but also as a backup line. We have 3 voice POTS lines, which all hunt from our main number. The last one hunts to a VoIP 'wholesale' (no voicemail, call waiting, etc services -- our phone system does that stuff) number, where we can accept as many calls as we have bandwidth (and we have a decent chunk of bandwidth). We also use the VoIP line for outgoing long-distance calls, or if the POTS lines are all used up. This effectively gives us "unlimited" call handling capability, for much much much less than it would cost to have 3 or 6 or 10 more phone lines. We just pay a littler over a cent a minute, plus a couple dollars a month for a DID (local phone number). The phone companies have a way to go before they're going to be able to match that and that's probably what has them scared.
Of course, blocking VoIP seems very dumb. If my ISP was my phone company, and they blocked my VoIP calls, my response would be to get a new ISP -- not say "oh well, I guess I'll just pay more for a less-capable analog phone line". Not only are they driving away voice customers, but they're driving away their internet customers as well.
He is a reasonable sounding guy, and I think in the interview with "The Broken" sort of dispells some of the myths that were started about him in the book "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner and John Markoff.
I read that book when I was in 6th grade and I was totally blow away. I got a modem and started war dialing and memorizing "at" commands just so I could try and be a badass like Kevin Mitnick.
There's a slashdot interview where he talks about that book and his "relationship" to Markoff. Also good reading is the lost chapter from The Art of Deception.
If bugzilla actually was a nice looking, easy to use application this probably wouldn't be necessary. Web-based is the way to go. Updating is as simple as updating once on the server -- you don't have to worry about a whole ton of client versions floating around.
Bugzilla is still one of those first-generation looking web apps that was designed (in the visual sense) by programmers, and you can tell. From my experience, most programmers are very bad at making user interfaces (myself included) and really it's a job that should be left to web designers (a subset of graphic designers). Compare bugzilla's interface to say, gmail, and you can see there is just no comparison.
Sure, the usability may be there, but if it's just awkward to use and hard on the eyes, people won't like it. Oh, and apparently they'll revert to developing old client/server style interfaces for it.
Mix that with a VR helmet so that the user can see a gun, textured walls and ennemies instead of rods, and you have yourself a real life Doom. Reflective patches on the rod coupled with IR on the helmet could even be used to track if the player crouch or jump (god forbid)
Or, just give them a laser or paintball gun, and throw some other real players in the map.
Ok, it's not quite the same since you could reconfigure the levels as they move around and make it seem a lot bigger than it really is (with a carefully designed map anyways). But you do away with clunky headgear, thousands of dollars of computers to track it, limitation of movements.. Oh, and if one of your pnuematic rods fails, you don't run full speed into a wall that's not supposed to be there.
You can pull all of the patent information from the last time we discussed this issue but the fact still remains that a patent application date does not establish when an idea was first formulated. The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative.
Even that shouldn't matter. Unless I'm missunderstanding what the USPTO says, a patent application isn't published until 18 months after it is filed. This means that Apple wouldn't have known about the Creative interface when they invented theirs. If they managed to come up with an identical or close-enough-to-infringe 'invention', then obviously the idea is not a novelty or non-obvious, so it shouldn't have been granted in the first place (I mean this in the ideal sense, not as in according to patent law -- though, that should be law).
I've recently been tasked by my supervisor to "Find and evaluate service dispatch software" for our small company of 40.
I recently went through this same search. We were looking for something that integrated a lot of our business processes. I came to one conclusion: If you want software that does exactly what you need, you have to write it yourself.
We've been using SimplyAccounting forever to do accounting, and not really tracking inventory (we have a very high number of different parts, but don't keep a huge stock on hand). Dispatching was done by filling out a form on the computer and printing it -- there was no real tracking system since the forms weren't all that searchable, and you couldn't find unfinished jobs etc.
About two years ago, we ended up purchasing a very expensive program (after looking at mid-high end accounting systems for a while) to do accounting. While trying to implement it, we found it was just too much - it forced us to alter some of our processes to work the way it wanted, and it was just overly complicated (hard to learn). On top of that, it didn't do everything we needed, and for example, I was starting plans to write the actual dispatch tracking part (with it doing invoicing and inventory). We basically abandoned that after a year, when we still hadn't made much progress in switching and they were starting to hit us up for a new support contract.
After fixing some staff problems, we started the process again in February. We ended up switching our accounting to QuickBooks, and using a product that can connect to QuickBooks called ESC by Coastal Computer. ESC can create invoices from dispatches, and post those invoices back to QuickBooks. It also has much more comprehensive inventory management and customer equipment tracking.
It still doesn't quite do everything we want (we have filters we need to service every 2 or so years, for example, and it doesn't really have good a way to 'remind' us to call the customer about that, and no way to automatically reset that date after invoicing a filter service). On the plus side it has a backend I can access (MS SQL), and in the past couple days I've written a program that looks for the service codes on an invoice and resets the service date on equipment. It doesn't require any additional interface, which is good.
We've been in this process for about 6 months though. I originally estimated a year (after my experience the first time when I figured a month or two), so we're well on track. We now do all dispatching, invoicing, and accounting stuff from QB/ESC. Most of our inventory is entered though we need to do a physical count again, and a fair amount of pricing information is missing (though getting closer every day).
So here's my advice: don't implement a solution that causes more work (ie, double-entry of data into dispatch, and then accounting) or has a steep learning curve, as people will not like to use it. Also realize that probably no software will ever meet your exact needs, just get close. Pick something that is flexible, or at least open enough so you can modify or add-on to. An open-source project would be ideal here, but AFAIK none exists.
I did consider starting an O/S project, but figured it would take at least 4 months to get something usable, and several more to work the bugs out and get a full feature set. This is not to mention the time to actually implement. It was simply cheaper to buy something than for me to spend the time on it.
Lastly, it's not like you can't buy bottles of anti-fog from any half-decent dive shop that'll do at least as good a job.
:)
I've been less than impressed with the anti-fog. I've tried a couple types, and I just find my spit works better. It's also a lot more convienient.