Improving the user interface, fulfilling promisses to the userbase, and making the process of web-email more straightforward should be their focus. Not supersizing their accounts.
Taking a look at the hotmail site, I am reminded of college bulletin boards where advertisements and flyers are stapled to the wall haphazardly, each trying to grab your attention when all you really wanted to find was that note your friend left you on the board.
Google's Gmail is the information frontdesk at a five star hotel where you walk by, ask if you have any messages, and get on with your life.
If MS/Hotmail is just throwing space/money at the problem, then they are missing the point entirely and will just be wasting money. Not that that's stopped them before or that that seems to matter to them much.
Really, the change in price after the IPO should net Google more in the long run since the number of shares was cut from the originally quoted amount. They always have the option to sell off the shares they originally intended to sell as the stock increased in value.
Google is merely trading time for good will in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the stock market. A stock that takes a plunge on IPO tends to create a good deal of negative perceptions regarding the company. Everyone and everyone was looking at Google to see how this played out.
Had the stock gone red, you can be that headlines would be heralding the demise of Google. Instead, they are up what? 17%-18% Sure the company could have made money on the IPO, but that would have cost them in image. They can still sell their shares at a later time, possible at a higher price.
It is just a matter of now or later and how they want to be perceived.
I also disagree that they lowered the price because of lowered demand. I think they lowered the price and cut back the supply because they saw what people were willing to pay and thought: We can offer it at that price that people are willing to pay, get our money now... or offer the stock at a lower price, cut supply and create an upsurge in price.
The "performance" of the stock on the IPO day is something that you can't buy with money. The mindset that comes with that kind of IPO jump is worth more to google in the long run than the hundreds of millions they didn't make by selling off shares.
That's my take, at any rate. Whether what they did is a good or bad thing depends on how you view the stock market's workings.
Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but almost as long as there were games, there was the copying of games. Games are software/data. By virtue, it is capable of being copied.
Copy protection works against that trend by basically adding in a password block, crippling the disk format, crippling the game, and now crippling the OS on which it runs.
Personally, I think the reason why games have been pirated is because of the cost of games.
A game is worked on for how long? 6 months? 1 year? Let's say a game is worked on for 2 years by a team of people... say.. 12. What would their salaries or hourly wages be? Let's say they are salaried at $65,000/year. (Some get more, some get less). A quick round of punching into the calculator reveals the salary for 2 years of continual work by 12 people on this project at an average salary of $65,000 is $1.56 million. Which when dispersed into varying numbers of games produced follows the following:
Distribution of labor costs across number of copies:
100k copies : $15.60 each
200k copies : $7.80 each
300k copies : $5.20 each
and so on...
But how many copies are often made and sold in a given period of time? Hmm... why not check out Magic Box? They list the number of games sold PER YEAR, PER nation, PER console/system. This number for good games is typically in the 1.x million titles per year range while the poor performing games are in the 100 thousand per year range.
So let's take a middle road. Let's say a company produces 500,000 copies of a game per year since it is mildly successful and sells all of them. Their labor spread per copy is $3.12 per game copy. To produce the physical box and materials for the game at the production house is probably about the same(to err on the side of caution for the producers). So +$3.12 per game(includes shipping/tax/etc).
We now have a game that took 12 people 2 years to make and has been pressed and shipped in crates to the tune of a subtotal cost of $6.24. Let's round up to $7 per copy.
Now, let's compare this rather "high" production price of this hit game to how much it would sell on the racks: $39 - $59 per copy.
That's $32 - $52 margin per game.
Bear in mind. The store will tack on anywhere from 10% to 100% of the price at which they acquired the game from the publishing house.
So let's say the stores tack on 100% or 50% or the game wholesale cost. That would mean that the distribution house is selling the games wholesale at (100%): $20 - $30 per game or (100%): $10 - $15 per game to the stores.
Granted, this is alot of guestimation based on numbers from the publishing business. However, one has to wonder how much is being tacked on for anti-piracy and such when you consider that in order to sell 500k games per year, you need to produce more than that. More like to the tune of 2-3 million copies of the game. At 2 million copies, your labor cost per game is $0.78 per copy. Your printing and pressing costs likewise drop to around $1 per copy or less. So at 2 million copies, you are looking at about $2 to produce one game, but the price consumers buy it at is around 20 times that.
Anti-piracy and licensing costs for games only amounts to a few cents per copy. Otherwise, no one would license the game title or the anti-pricy software. So where does all of the padding come from?
Fear of piracy and sheer greed and desire for profit.
If the games didn't cost so d*mn much, there would be a respect dropoff in pirates as well as a higher level of purchases of the game.
The only reason why it goes is because people are willing to pay for the game and then end up copying it for friends until the level of "cost" is reduced to the right level. So a few friends, say.. 5 friends get together and chip in some money to buy a $50 game. They copy it amongst themselves and get to LAN party together. What is the cost of the game per person? $10.
A "starter" edition that only lets you run 3 apps while crippling the network features? Are they , MS, trying to encourage people to rip off their software or run off to the competition in droves!?
Why even bother producing something as crappy as this and then market it to a region of the world where there is already full access to the full version!?
At this point, I wouldn't even look at the price of the software. Why _pay_ for a crippled operating system that all of your software depends on when you can _pay_ for a fully functional operating system or just get one free ala Linux/BSD/etc?
What's next? A lower priced version of windows that has more bugs and security holes in it? What will that be called? Windows: Security Lite. Less security and more bugs to not confuse the virii and worms out there. Should probably even have a startup logo to the effect of "You're Screwed".
I'm just flabbergasted that the carp keeps coming out of that company...
*shakes head* I pray that they don't EVER get into the weapons business.... ~ you didn't pay your licensing fees, so your missle defense system will be down for the next 12 hours while we sort this out... btw, we'll be notifying our foreign shareholders of this...unless you would be willing to pay a maintenance fee while you wait for your license payment to clear....~
At first, reading the headlines and the article, I thought this was a hoax. Then I thought about the "technology" used and realised it is kinda old hat.
Think back a decade or two when the Magnetic Optical drive was release. Basically, it was a high powered laser used to weaken the ferromagnetic domains so that the region could be written to, but once the temp went down, the region could not be so easily affected by stray magnetic fields due to the "burned in" domain alignment.
The only difference from then till now is the use of a UV laser to create the same change. So by narrowing the min theoretical beam diameter, you have likewise reduced your surface area required for storing a bit of data, allowing for large quantities of raw data to be stored.
Since the state of the medium requires both a UV activation source as well as a writing/reading field, you now have a very stable bit of data. Kind of like inserting a metal ball in clear melted wax, cooling the wax to lock in the position, then optically reading the position of the ball. When you wanted to rewrite it again, you melt the wax, shift the position of the ball, then reharden the wax again.
So the media should be very resilient just as MO disks are resilient. Though I wonder at the cost of the drive and the disks as well as the data read/write rates. It will be interesting to see whether this drive requires fiber-channel to use or not.
The only thing new is the beam and the materials the medium/disk is made of. Would be interesting to see actual working devices and samples.:)
Well, either the original article was changed or the article poster didn't really read the article to being with.:( In either case, that's kinda sad.
Trojan, not virus.
No destruction ensues.
Not premium numbers.
Trojan was not added by crackers or even a malicious writer, but was an anti-piracy feature.
Though I'd thought that the crackers would have spotted their cracked software doing something unintended...
Interesteding historical tidbit... the Pakistani Brain virus was written with a similar anti-piracy intent in mind. Though that was a virus and spread destructively. This is just a trojan which is annoying.
If a writer really wanted to be destructive, they would have overwritten the Symbian OS boot code and firmware loading codes and executed a phone reboot. (nevermind the sim card and access to other data cards inserted into the phone)
Kinda makes me reconsider getting a more powerful phone...:(
Looks like it's time for homes to have small computers which runs a small voip routing server to handle calls of various natures:
A list of known numbers we trust.
Unlisted numbers to be dumped into a seperate bin
Voice to text scanning to determine content
Voice print scanning for known callers
Sounds like an open source project to me.
Also a great way to gather the numbers of known spammers and distribute a list of said numbers/ip addresses for blocking.
The phone companies, as noted in the artcle, thinking that it isn't a big deal is basically shrugging responsibility for something which they should take more seriously. Given the nature of phone spam, email spam, and phone sms/messaging spam, to think that voip spam is a low priority target is pretty slipshod.
*shrugs* Looks like voip filtering will just be an extension to the massive spam filtering already being done. Wish I could send a bill to the spammers for the extra work they are basically forcing me to do.:(
I find it interesting that open source software is considered a risk because individuals from other nations are allowed to participate in the development of the code...
How does this differ from corporations which provide software to the military who outsource their development to individuals from other nations?
The only difference is that the OSS model involves corporations giving up some of their control over the rights of the product and corporations don't like that.
Otherwise, the article makes assumptions of differences between OSS remote participation and outsourcing which has no material relevance.
The idea of outsourcing being more secure because security checks are done can be argued, but even security checks fail and someone who is cleared can decide to sabotage. The problem is that once someone is vetted, they are trusted. This is actually worse than the OSS model where no matter who you are, the code is reviewed with the same level of scrutiny as anyone else's code.
I can think of so many instances of calling support, having to provide my personal identifying information to an individual who was either not in my state or not even in the US.
Sounds more like a double standard of judgement from the corporate viewpoint that is prejudiced against OSS projects.
Having done the same thing before, I can say that without a doubt, it will increase your spam.
The thing is that alot of spammers seem to literally shotgun a domain with information harvested, then use those plausible usernames as email addresses. The end result is that your primary email account will get flooded with email not originally destined for it.
If you do intend to do this, I would suggest the following:
Turn off java/javascript/vb/vbscript
Turn off auto-download of remote links
Turn off image preview
Turn off return-receipt
Having these on when you check and go through your mail will cause an increase of spam above what you are getting.
Best bet, have the domain name. Use one address, then close it and switch to another, within the domain. Have the original address just junk any future mails it gets once you are sure people have moved to your new address.
Okay, having just gone to the search engine site and entering in simple words, I get one of three results:
Error page
No results
Some results, but differs each time
They claim to have indexed billions of pages... billions of pages of what exactly?!?
To participate in a war, you need reliable weapons to stand a chance. Teoma, Yahoo, Google, etc... they all have viable search technologies. MSN's search engine at their beta site is comparable to a blunderbuss. Highly inaccurate, prone to misfirings, and just as predictable in results.
Some people say "linux" gets results and some people don't. When I ran a search just now, it didn't get any results. Then I got an error page.
I tried searching for my website with "polygon comics" which is indexed in every search engine. None on their beta engine.
I tried "palo alto car show", which is likewise indexed by every search engine out there. Also no results from the MSN beta search engine.
From the impressions posted by other people who have been trying the system, it sounds like when the MSN beta search system is working, it ranks based on domains, favouring cyber-squatters and basically giving you info which may not even be relevant to your search.
RELEVANCE is what is important in a search system. That is more than just matching keywords. If MSN hopes to launch their own search which doesn't depend on other peoples' more reliable search technologies, they will need to work a hell of alot harder than what they've put up on their beta site.
As a long time user of search engines, I think MSN beta is a piece of ****(replace with a four letter explative of your choosing).
If there is a centralized update... then there is a centralized point of failure.
From the sound of it, the college described, before the "let the school remotely update your system" method... a malicious user would need to use normal worms and such to spread to various machines.
With a centralized system, that same user would only need to plant trojans on the centralized server's update set to have that trojan updated to every users' desktop, notebook, home system.
This can be used to DDOS, wipe systems right before the midtems/finals projects, or steal personal information from students.
Such a system has its place, but not in a school environment where the users who are pushing the boundaries of security are not the ones at the helm of security for the school.
The school would be better served to have each network section isolated from each other, allowing only secured ports. This would prevent most of the normal worms and virii from spreading.
One such setup has the switch/router detect when a particular network port/segment is carrying traffic which is considered malicious. Once detected, the port is blocked or the particular MAC address and IP address are blocked. This effectively cuts off computers which are infected and trying to spread.
If the user is innocent and goes to the desk for help about why their network connection went away, THEN they can attempt to scan the system for virii and clean the system.
You limit the spread of the virii/worm/etc.
You limit the amount of software installation/checking only to systems flagged as potentially bad.
This would work to support any platform, just have the right port numbers and protocols entered into your switch/router/firewall as a recipe/rule.
Then, it wouldn't matter if the machine was windows, mac, Linux, etc. You would be able to support the blocking of attacks across the entire campus. THrough this means, you would also be able to block P2P softwares as well as identify who is using P2P.
The downside is the cost of the switches and routers. However, the cost savings in labour and support for custom update software and the potential cost of the central update server being compromised more than pays for the more expensive switch hardware.
Asking whether or not people use the feature is a good idea. The answer from me and most people I know is: HELL YES.
The PS1 had awesome games for its time and when PS2 came out, the big questions was whether it was backwards compatible. Would all those hundreds of dollars(thousands, in some cases) of games be playable?
Backwards compatibility ensures that you get to keep your customer base and grow it.
If you made each new platform a well... new platform, you are basically rebuilding your base over and over again.
That is stupid from a business perspective and a social one. You increase your marketting overhead and get less and less gain from each iteration of your platform because forcing people to buy new games with each new platform increases the cost of owning that platform.
A $150 PS2 can play just about all PS1(hundreds ) games and all PS2 games.
The xbox2 is going to be able to play _just_ xbox2 games, huh?
That, my friend, is lame. Literally, figuratively, and conceptually.
This is the reason why I will remain a loyal Sony game console supporter. Because they actually make decisions with long term goals in mind.
I'm sorry, but the maker of the #1 targetted platform which is almost synonymous with virii, system crashes, and security issues... is the LAST organization to be making anti-virus software.
It's a bit late for April fools... seriously, *wipes tears* they aren't REALLY thinking of producing anti-virus software, are they?
Prediction: The antivirus software produced by MS will, itself, be a security hole through which all virii, spammers, and abusers of the net come through into your computer.
We all saw how wonderful it was when Back Office was brought onto the scene... do we really want an anti-virus product as well?
*LOL* I'm SO glad I use a non-Windows platform laptop, desktop, and server system.
I feel sorry for the Windows folk who will ultimately be the bearers of whatever ill this bears fruit to.:(
So the basis of the electrical defense system is based on the idea that the material used by the RPG is relatively easy to vaporize...
Possible solution to electrical shield(#1):
Seems like the solution would be to have a binary metal to be used in the RPG.
Ie, have the copper slug/metal component be made with a interspersed and alloyable material component which when melted by the shaped charge explosion, cause the copper and the alloying material to form a new alloy which has the following properties:
- higher melting/vaporizing point
- either higher conductivity to reduce effectiveness of the electrical discharge or greater resistance to make the discharge moot.
Introduction of silicon, carbon, tin, iridium, or other alloyables with copper can be used to increase the vaporization temp and augment the conductivity of the molten metal.
Since the protective mechanism of the electrical defense is based on the aggresive metal being vaporized, if the aggresive metal is either less responsive or not responsive to the electrical discharge, then the shielding system can be disabled or pierced.
Example Solution:
Personally, since the molten metal will be dispersed onto the inner surface of the hull armour, a good candidate would be a thermite mixture(aluminum and iron oxide).
This material will melt(the aluminum) and will result in an exothermic mixture. The discharge will cause it to back splatter against the inner hull/armour, but the exothermic reaction will continue and result in a molten mass that repeatedly cuts through the insulation later between the charged plates.
If this molten mass is constantly causing a discharge, it is possible that a second RPG fired will be able to pierce the shield as the shield is now being repeatedly shorted by the actively melting thermite mixture.
Will something like this work? Dunno. Aluminum is much less dense than copper and also has a lower vaporization point. It is also less conductive than copper and will easily vaporize. Whether it works will depend on whether the iron alloys with the aluminum quickly enough to raise the vaporization temperature of the mixture and whether the exothermic reaction begins early enough to have a negative effect on the insulation layer between the armor plates.
Possible solution #2:
Another perspective would be to pierce the armour layers with a high melting point, strong, and conductive spike to short out the system.
Some materials which come to mind: platinum, paladium, iridium reinforced materials, silicon reinforced steel(reduced conductivity), and reinforced carbon which can conduct and resist vaporization to high temporatures.
This can be used to reduce the effectiveness of the rest of the system's shielding, unless the shielding circuitry is redundant and isolatable.
Once the spike is in place, the armour would be susceptible to an RPG type attack at the same location or a different location, depending on how much the electrical shielding has degraded.
Solution #3:
The power plant which powers the system would be the engine of the vehicle. Take out the tires/wheels, take out the engine or fuel tank and the shields will no longer be powered by the engine and only by batteries or the vehicle would no longer be mobile and can be overtaken in another way. Since most vehicles need to "breath", the best way would be polymer or clay type projectiles to gunk up the air intake or the exhaust of the vehicle. This would also result in a stoppage of the engine and a bringing down of the electrical shield system.
Notes:
It actually doesn't take much energy to vaporize a sizable amount of copper metal. Most people can take a look at various books on how to build high energy pulsers measured in thousands of joules(6000+). A 24V deep drain car/marine battery can easily power such a system and have it fully ready to discharge within seconds after the last discharge. A more effi
Knoppix and other CD boot distro's basically take a long time to boot. If for some reason the CD fouls due to condensation or something else, the system just won't boot.
The people will also not be able to download PDF files/etc if they are bigger than the temp space available from memory.
With a boot CD, you are basically going to want/need more ram and a fast CD drive to make it bearable.
The same issues of boot times and downloadables applies to Ghost/disk state keepers. If people are going to be there for a few days, it is unreasonable to wipe the system if it needs to boot or to boot it in the middle of the night since the guests might still be using it.
Before you look at the software, you have to look at the needs of the guests.
We're talking about vacationing guests, right? So what do people who are visiting do with a computer?
Check Email (web based or SSH/TELNET)
Surf the web for fun/shopping (web based)
Getting directions (web based)
Maybe look at their pictures on their camera or wanting to upload to their webpage, etc.
So you basically need to provide a locked down system with a good web browser, a SSH client, and maybe some tools like openoffice/etc.
Okay, how would I do it?
1) Use Linux. You have more options as to how to setup and restrict the system. Since you are connected to the internet, even if you lock down your box, you could be hit by a virus. Since you aren't there during the summer, this is a big issue. Use Linux. (A mac would be cost prohibitive, in my mind.)
2) Have Linux boot and make just about everything read-only. The only thing which should be possible to write to would by the guest home account and/tmp.
3) Have the machine be hard to mess with:
Lock out the BIOS
Setup boot from HD only. Don't allow boots from CD. (unless you have the computer in another room)
Keep the computer in a locked case, preforably in another room with a cable for the monitor, keyboard, and mouse in the guest room.
4) Have a recovery CD handy which can rebuild the entire system just by booting from the CD.
5) Put the machine behind a firewall. Yes, it's Linux, but put it behind a firewall. Even a cheap $50 firewall/switch/hub will work. That way, the Linux box won't have a real IP address, but will be NAT'ing to the outside world.
6) Have a laminated howto cheat sheet near the computer terminal for people to use.
7) Wipe the system only AFTER guests have checked out, if at all. This should only involve wiping and rebuilding the guest account to prevent web caches, keys, and passwords from being seen by the next guest.
Why Linux? Because you can get a cheapo X86 box with good performance and put Linux on it by downloading it off of the web. You can customize and lock it down to a good level and script almost all of the "clean system", "rebuild system", etc functions you need. You will have little to worry about in the case of virii and you will have a relatively low-zero maintenance system once it has been simplified.
I'd steer clear of booting the OS from a CD because it is slow and the system is less responsive. Use the CD option for "fixing" the linux box when it goes down with a "boot to rebuild" CD. Hard disks are cheap, fast, and offer more storage than a CD can. That means more software options and even internal backup images of the working system.
All compilers have a "pattern" in the way they generate the machine code from your originating source code. This has been known for quite some time. I'd say since the early 8088 days, if not earlier. I would think in terms of the quality of the bits in the program like oil paint vs water paint. There is a percievable difference in quality/texture.
About a decade ago, someone created a polymorphic module to be compiled into virii and worms to mask the original code so that a simple string search could not be used to detect it. But the means by which the module worked allowed a new kind of virii detection tool: heuristics to detect the resulting blob of code.
If you compile on a MS system, GNU system, etc... your code will have system calls to partiular libraries and code offsets. This kind of patterning will be able to allow people to determine the following:
What compiler you used.
What OS was most likely used to develope and compile the final code.
What libraries were used.
What custom libraries were used.
Level of optimization.
Efficiency of your code.
Try it. Compile a program and run a debugger agsint it. A good library debugger will be able to tell you what the code is accessing.
Note: If you have the same software setup on two different machines, then your code should be almost the same. What might differ would be various CPU bit size signatures. Say you developed with two systems exactly the same software-wise, but completely different hardware-wise, ie, you cross-compiled from say... a Linux system running VMware and WinXX to create windows code... then the code will be exactly the same.
It would be fair to say that if you wanted to make code which was not possible to track, you would want to do so in a virtual environment where you can make the virtual system seem like any machine except your's, then write the code with the most standard libraries out there. Once written and tested, the development environment, since it is an "instance", can be encrypted and hidden as a large DV encoded stream(dvbackup) or any nnumber of mechanisms.
It would be like having a complete dev environment on your system which can potentially pass technical inspections.
As for being a bounty-hunter, I think your best bet would be having a high degree of luck and a low level of ethics or morals so you can turn in friends you know. In many cases, virii writers who have been caught were caught because they couldn't help bragging or talking about it. Or they do something stupid.
But I suppose if you ask along those lines, your level of ethics and morals is already low.
Thanks to MS, we can all rush towards a world where we snitch on each other for a few bucks and fawn over the KGB..er.. I mean, software police. Is this the new flavour of "democracy"?
The answer is simple: A virii or worm which destroys what it infects or otherwise makes itself known will have a very short life as it will easily be detected.
Destroying system post-infection would be as easy as running a format on the system. But it isn't done because that would greatly reduce the value of an infected system.
What is better? 1 million infected systems which keep trying to infect poeple or 1 million systems which have simple stopped working?
You can't abuse or use someone else's computer if it isn't working.
Why do you think they call comprimised systems ghost/zombies/etc?
People keep thinking their computer is so precious because it is their's while at the same time thinking that no one would bother for the same reason. The reason is that your computer is on the net and can be used. Period. Destruction of your system would preclude the ability to use your system.
It works the same way in the biological world of virii. If the infection kills the host, that limits the lifespan of the virii and the ability to spread. It is only if the host survives that the virii likewise survives.
Since most of the scientist trying to replicated the results notes that it either can't be replicated like the original experiment or that they are seeing extremely low efficiencies, it probably isn't a problem in terms of increasing world violence/death/etc...
However, assuming that the original research hinted at what that partiular Hafnium isotope/polymer could do, it would be like an energy sponge: soaking up energy so that it could be squeezed out at a later time.
Since the energy released is gamma only, you could potentially arrange a bank of these and stimulate the material in much the same way as a nitrogen laser and get a gamma beam where the energy being outputted by each stage is cascaded into the next stage to create a denser coherent beam.
Would be interesting to see if this Hafnium stuff pans out. If it does, it would make for an interesting beam cannon as opposed to a bomb. You can't be very selective with a bomb, but you can with a beam.
I'm personally thinking it would be cool to have this technology in a microwave oven.:) Food cooked in under a minute every time. >:)
People gave up perfectly good static licenses for MS products and switched to a annual subscription fee to keep their licenses renewed regardless of whether a new update arrives or not, just so that they can save some cash per license?
*ponder*
Why a reasonably intelligent person running a profitable business would choose to give up control of when they upgrade and how much they pay for it is just beyond me.
Judging from the page's estimates for 2003 and 2004, there appear to be ALOT of people and businesses who seem to think it is a good idea.
Look, for the past DECADE, MS has routinely slipped on delivering their software. Remember Windows 95? Came out quite a bit later than expected. Same for 98.
Look, if you HAVE to use MS products, at least use them wisely. Your department has the money to outright buy a license for use. That means you get to keep using what you bought... as opposed to this ridiculous "subscription" service which exchanges your working license into a crippled license that expires. For what? So you can give MS your money with absolutely no expectations from them, right?
I hope people recorded and/or documented their conversations with the MS reps.
Seriously, what does using a MS product give you? Why do people persist in using the MS OS when it is constantly being targetted by worms and virii? When the OS itself goes through so many internal changes that no one knows for sure if it is safe to use?
Understandably, it looked good on the balance sheets. But I think it is high time that the people looking at the balance sheets beef up on technology. Have the CFO spend some time with the CTO and maybe some other Tech people who KNOW the software and the history. THEN make your informed decision.
Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster.
Business really need to start thinking in terms of what the problem REALLY is as opposed to what their vendor tells them the problem is. Especialyl if that vendor has a nice pricey solution for you.
A business investment should not be a shell game where the vendor goes: oh, sorry! you didn't get anything this year, why not pay your fees and try again next year?
That's shows a simple lack of understanding of one's own company's relationship with the vendor. They are a freaking VENDOR. But companies treat MS like it was the parent company or something.
*sigh*
Okay, enough ranting from me. I mean, it's not my money that got sucked up for no good reason.
Btw, visited the forbes ROI calculator for the Software Assurance thing. $18,000 for three computers? These are supposed to be workstations, btw. If that is the case, whatever company paying that much for workstations alone is already getting shafted before MS ever got to them.
Anyways, hadn't posted in a while, so getting this out of my system.
As for the companies... they really need to look at what it is that they REALLY REALLY need. Make a firm decision and go with it. If they hang onto the SA with MS because they are afraid, then they might as well just hand over the money now and forever. If they decide this was a bad idea and a mistake, then they should have the guts to admit they screwed up and figure out which technology path is right.
It isn't rocket science. It's business.
I find it both annoying and terrifying that people who have been to business school fall so easily for what is essentially a pie in the sky subscription system. It's like someone telling you they might not mess with you tomorrow if you pay them now. But they're there tomorrow anyways...
It's odd. People will see things as either one way or another.
Look, th iPod is useful. Certainly more so than a dislocated hard drive with a USB/FW port.
At the same time, the crew of the rings movies has been on Apple's advertisements alot.
The iPod is cool & this is a marketting campaign. The two do not cancel each other out. Period.
You pay $$$ for a portable storage device you can fit comfortable and easily in your pocket. It can play music and some other neat feats. It is also a good portable hard drive.
The fact that there is a strong marketing campaign around it does not and should not belittle the innate usefullness of the device.
I don't personally own an iPod, but having been using an iBook alongside my Windows and Linux boxen, I would have to say that what Apple's got is a heck of alot easier and nicer to use than most other things out there.
The right tool for the job. It was the right too for their team. End of story.
When you look at it, the price difference between CF and SD chips can be the difference in shipping charges.
CF is good general purpose memory and is used by a good number of folk from the snapshot photographer to the pros. CF is good because it is tried and true. It has storage from 16MB all the way up to 4GB.
The "benefit" of SD memory is that it has extra circuitry for "securing" digital data, hence the name: Secure Digital card.
You pay extra for the protection just as one does when they go the memory stick route with "magic-gate", which is just another word for "encrypted" data.
Personally, I go CF because the chip size is just right. It is rugged and stiff. It is big enough to hold and not easily drop while and small enough that it won't take up much space.
The transfer speeds are pretty good as well. I use Kingston memory and I get 1-2 MB/second transfer with a PCMCIA adapter.
The thing is, each type has its purpose. You could use an SD/XD/MMC card inside of a CF camera just by using an SD->CF adapter. Boom, you now have an SD chip inside of your CF camera.
Doesn't work the other way around and it is a pain to "swap" cards with adapters. But hey, if you want cross compatibility when you have one camera that takes CF and another one which takes SD/XD, you had at least be aware of your options.
Given your price range and the CF cards you have, I would direct you to either the Canon A80 or the S400. Both are 4MP cameras and are under 2 seconds between shots. Very good auto-modes and has some pretty good manual modes. 2 of my co-workers have the S400. I got the A80 for my GF. And I use a Minolta A1(Would have been Canon, but not in the budget for the pricey glass).
NIMH charge loss is rated to be in the ballpark of 1-5% a day. Ie, your NIMH batteries would be completely self-discharged in about 1-3 months.
I've had NIMHs in a baggie for about a couple of weeks on my desk and used them in my camera or just kept the batts in the camera for a week or two and they are fine.
Before heading out for a serious shoot though, I will charge them up.
Recently, however, I have switched on of my cameras to a proprietary format(NP400 ala Minolta A1). It costs alot more, but I have to agree that the battery just keeps on chugging. I have 2 and swapping them is so much easier than swapping out 4 AA batteries.
Still, to each their own. I agree that CF is really the cost effective way to go. The SD/XD/MMC chips are WAY too small to safely carry without losing them easily. I was using SM chips, but they have a bad tendancy to fail when you least expect them to.
But the discharge rate is 1-5%/day for NIMH. It is about 1-2%/dayfor LiON.
For a setup where you have several cameras, a common storage medium and battery format makes ALOT of sense.
Okay, this I don't get. James Cameron is a film director. This is basically the same thing as asking an artist to concieve a ship design. This, to me, is looking at the wrong solution to the problem.
The problem is not one of aesthetics or "believability" or even film-making. It is one of keeping people alive and for providing a living environment. What stresses a particular structure will need to tolerate, what safety limits, what shape this kind of structure will take on... those are engineering issues, not film-making issues.
Film making and directing is about control of the vision of the film. Part of this ability is to pick the right cast member for the right role. Choosing a film director for the role of ship designer is, in my opinion, a poor choice. It will lead to the preference of form over function and result in horrendous "mishaps" and basically a waste of human life when the idea fails because the necessary precautions were not taken.
Originally, I had thought, "Why not Steve Jobs?" He has designed well interfacing hardware that works and looks good. But with the iPod and some of the design choices made, I fear the same problem exists: preference of form over function.
I'm as eager to get out into space and colonize and build the first fast food joint in orbit as the next space cadet. But like any other rational human being, I want to do it safely and not risk my life doing so.
I don't care if the ship looks like crap. I want a ship that will WORK. Ie, safely carry people+cargo to and from a destination in space.
What I would want is an engineer with artistic vision to concieve ship designs based on practical and workable systems as opposed to building a ship with a certain "look" based on assumptions of how the system should work.
We lost Columbia, Challenger, and pre apollo crews to poor decisions which over-rided sane safety concerns. Who bolts the escape hatch from the outside so you can't get out from the inside!? Who in their right mind would push for a flight window when there are concerns about the ships systems with abnormal icing present? We're talking about human lives here! We aren't living in the stone age. A piece of protective shielding(on an ablative shielding system, ALL pieces of the shielding are critical), was knocked off. Deemed "safe".
We have super computers to run simulations on "what-ifs". Why bother having them if we use them to only simulate and predict weather and bomb effects and not on whether a ship can survive re-entry with x-piece of it's system damaged?
I fear the recent "successes" at NASA/JPL is once again starting to inflate the egos which will lead to loss of lives.
The situation of where timelines, politics, cost-effectiveness, and bottom-lines will take priority over human lives.
If such is the case, then why bother sending humans out there at all if we are not intending to safeguard them from start to finish!?
Slashdot Mirror
Wonder what kind of key'age you can get on one of these "top of the line" calculators...
I think adding more space is missing the point.
Improving the user interface, fulfilling promisses to the userbase, and making the process of web-email more straightforward should be their focus. Not supersizing their accounts.
Taking a look at the hotmail site, I am reminded of college bulletin boards where advertisements and flyers are stapled to the wall haphazardly, each trying to grab your attention when all you really wanted to find was that note your friend left you on the board.
Google's Gmail is the information frontdesk at a five star hotel where you walk by, ask if you have any messages, and get on with your life.
If MS/Hotmail is just throwing space/money at the problem, then they are missing the point entirely and will just be wasting money. Not that that's stopped them before or that that seems to matter to them much.
Really, the change in price after the IPO should net Google more in the long run since the number of shares was cut from the originally quoted amount. They always have the option to sell off the shares they originally intended to sell as the stock increased in value.
Google is merely trading time for good will in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the stock market. A stock that takes a plunge on IPO tends to create a good deal of negative perceptions regarding the company. Everyone and everyone was looking at Google to see how this played out.
Had the stock gone red, you can be that headlines would be heralding the demise of Google. Instead, they are up what? 17%-18% Sure the company could have made money on the IPO, but that would have cost them in image. They can still sell their shares at a later time, possible at a higher price.
It is just a matter of now or later and how they want to be perceived.
I also disagree that they lowered the price because of lowered demand. I think they lowered the price and cut back the supply because they saw what people were willing to pay and thought: We can offer it at that price that people are willing to pay, get our money now... or offer the stock at a lower price, cut supply and create an upsurge in price.
The "performance" of the stock on the IPO day is something that you can't buy with money. The mindset that comes with that kind of IPO jump is worth more to google in the long run than the hundreds of millions they didn't make by selling off shares.
That's my take, at any rate. Whether what they did is a good or bad thing depends on how you view the stock market's workings.
Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but almost as long as there were games, there was the copying of games. Games are software/data. By virtue, it is capable of being copied.
Copy protection works against that trend by basically adding in a password block, crippling the disk format, crippling the game, and now crippling the OS on which it runs.
Personally, I think the reason why games have been pirated is because of the cost of games.
A game is worked on for how long? 6 months? 1 year? Let's say a game is worked on for 2 years by a team of people... say.. 12. What would their salaries or hourly wages be? Let's say they are salaried at $65,000/year. (Some get more, some get less). A quick round of punching into the calculator reveals the salary for 2 years of continual work by 12 people on this project at an average salary of $65,000 is $1.56 million. Which when dispersed into varying numbers of games produced follows the following:
But how many copies are often made and sold in a given period of time? Hmm... why not check out Magic Box? They list the number of games sold PER YEAR, PER nation, PER console/system. This number for good games is typically in the 1.x million titles per year range while the poor performing games are in the 100 thousand per year range.
So let's take a middle road. Let's say a company produces 500,000 copies of a game per year since it is mildly successful and sells all of them. Their labor spread per copy is $3.12 per game copy. To produce the physical box and materials for the game at the production house is probably about the same(to err on the side of caution for the producers). So +$3.12 per game(includes shipping/tax/etc).
We now have a game that took 12 people 2 years to make and has been pressed and shipped in crates to the tune of a subtotal cost of $6.24. Let's round up to $7 per copy.
Now, let's compare this rather "high" production price of this hit game to how much it would sell on the racks: $39 - $59 per copy.
That's $32 - $52 margin per game.
Bear in mind. The store will tack on anywhere from 10% to 100% of the price at which they acquired the game from the publishing house.
So let's say the stores tack on 100% or 50% or the game wholesale cost. That would mean that the distribution house is selling the games wholesale at (100%): $20 - $30 per game or (100%): $10 - $15 per game to the stores.
Granted, this is alot of guestimation based on numbers from the publishing business. However, one has to wonder how much is being tacked on for anti-piracy and such when you consider that in order to sell 500k games per year, you need to produce more than that. More like to the tune of 2-3 million copies of the game. At 2 million copies, your labor cost per game is $0.78 per copy. Your printing and pressing costs likewise drop to around $1 per copy or less. So at 2 million copies, you are looking at about $2 to produce one game, but the price consumers buy it at is around 20 times that.
Anti-piracy and licensing costs for games only amounts to a few cents per copy. Otherwise, no one would license the game title or the anti-pricy software. So where does all of the padding come from?
Fear of piracy and sheer greed and desire for profit.
If the games didn't cost so d*mn much, there would be a respect dropoff in pirates as well as a higher level of purchases of the game.
The only reason why it goes is because people are willing to pay for the game and then end up copying it for friends until the level of "cost" is reduced to the right level. So a few friends, say.. 5 friends get together and chip in some money to buy a $50 game. They copy it amongst themselves and get to LAN party together. What is the cost of the game per person? $10.
A "starter" edition that only lets you run 3 apps while crippling the network features? Are they , MS, trying to encourage people to rip off their software or run off to the competition in droves!?
Why even bother producing something as crappy as this and then market it to a region of the world where there is already full access to the full version!?
At this point, I wouldn't even look at the price of the software. Why _pay_ for a crippled operating system that all of your software depends on when you can _pay_ for a fully functional operating system or just get one free ala Linux/BSD/etc?
What's next? A lower priced version of windows that has more bugs and security holes in it? What will that be called? Windows: Security Lite. Less security and more bugs to not confuse the virii and worms out there. Should probably even have a startup logo to the effect of "You're Screwed".
I'm just flabbergasted that the carp keeps coming out of that company...
*shakes head* I pray that they don't EVER get into the weapons business.... ~ you didn't pay your licensing fees, so your missle defense system will be down for the next 12 hours while we sort this out... btw, we'll be notifying our foreign shareholders of this...unless you would be willing to pay a maintenance fee while you wait for your license payment to clear....~
At first, reading the headlines and the article, I thought this was a hoax. Then I thought about the "technology" used and realised it is kinda old hat.
Think back a decade or two when the Magnetic Optical drive was release. Basically, it was a high powered laser used to weaken the ferromagnetic domains so that the region could be written to, but once the temp went down, the region could not be so easily affected by stray magnetic fields due to the "burned in" domain alignment.
The only difference from then till now is the use of a UV laser to create the same change. So by narrowing the min theoretical beam diameter, you have likewise reduced your surface area required for storing a bit of data, allowing for large quantities of raw data to be stored.
Since the state of the medium requires both a UV activation source as well as a writing/reading field, you now have a very stable bit of data. Kind of like inserting a metal ball in clear melted wax, cooling the wax to lock in the position, then optically reading the position of the ball. When you wanted to rewrite it again, you melt the wax, shift the position of the ball, then reharden the wax again.
So the media should be very resilient just as MO disks are resilient. Though I wonder at the cost of the drive and the disks as well as the data read/write rates. It will be interesting to see whether this drive requires fiber-channel to use or not.
The only thing new is the beam and the materials the medium/disk is made of. Would be interesting to see actual working devices and samples. :)
Well, either the original article was changed or the article poster didn't really read the article to being with. :( In either case, that's kinda sad.
Though I'd thought that the crackers would have spotted their cracked software doing something unintended...
Interesteding historical tidbit... the Pakistani Brain virus was written with a similar anti-piracy intent in mind. Though that was a virus and spread destructively. This is just a trojan which is annoying.
If a writer really wanted to be destructive, they would have overwritten the Symbian OS boot code and firmware loading codes and executed a phone reboot. (nevermind the sim card and access to other data cards inserted into the phone)
Kinda makes me reconsider getting a more powerful phone... :(
Well this is interesting.
Looks like it's time for homes to have small computers which runs a small voip routing server to handle calls of various natures:
Sounds like an open source project to me.
Also a great way to gather the numbers of known spammers and distribute a list of said numbers/ip addresses for blocking.
The phone companies, as noted in the artcle, thinking that it isn't a big deal is basically shrugging responsibility for something which they should take more seriously. Given the nature of phone spam, email spam, and phone sms/messaging spam, to think that voip spam is a low priority target is pretty slipshod.
*shrugs* Looks like voip filtering will just be an extension to the massive spam filtering already being done. Wish I could send a bill to the spammers for the extra work they are basically forcing me to do. :(
I find it interesting that open source software is considered a risk because individuals from other nations are allowed to participate in the development of the code...
How does this differ from corporations which provide software to the military who outsource their development to individuals from other nations?
The only difference is that the OSS model involves corporations giving up some of their control over the rights of the product and corporations don't like that.
Otherwise, the article makes assumptions of differences between OSS remote participation and outsourcing which has no material relevance.
The idea of outsourcing being more secure because security checks are done can be argued, but even security checks fail and someone who is cleared can decide to sabotage. The problem is that once someone is vetted, they are trusted. This is actually worse than the OSS model where no matter who you are, the code is reviewed with the same level of scrutiny as anyone else's code.
I can think of so many instances of calling support, having to provide my personal identifying information to an individual who was either not in my state or not even in the US.
Sounds more like a double standard of judgement from the corporate viewpoint that is prejudiced against OSS projects.
Having done the same thing before, I can say that without a doubt, it will increase your spam.
The thing is that alot of spammers seem to literally shotgun a domain with information harvested, then use those plausible usernames as email addresses. The end result is that your primary email account will get flooded with email not originally destined for it.
If you do intend to do this, I would suggest the following:
Having these on when you check and go through your mail will cause an increase of spam above what you are getting.
Best bet, have the domain name. Use one address, then close it and switch to another, within the domain. Have the original address just junk any future mails it gets once you are sure people have moved to your new address.
Seriously, it's just not a good idea.
Okay, having just gone to the search engine site and entering in simple words, I get one of three results:
They claim to have indexed billions of pages... billions of pages of what exactly?!?
To participate in a war, you need reliable weapons to stand a chance. Teoma, Yahoo, Google, etc... they all have viable search technologies. MSN's search engine at their beta site is comparable to a blunderbuss. Highly inaccurate, prone to misfirings, and just as predictable in results.
Some people say "linux" gets results and some people don't. When I ran a search just now, it didn't get any results. Then I got an error page.
I tried searching for my website with "polygon comics" which is indexed in every search engine. None on their beta engine.
I tried "palo alto car show", which is likewise indexed by every search engine out there. Also no results from the MSN beta search engine.
From the impressions posted by other people who have been trying the system, it sounds like when the MSN beta search system is working, it ranks based on domains, favouring cyber-squatters and basically giving you info which may not even be relevant to your search.
RELEVANCE is what is important in a search system. That is more than just matching keywords. If MSN hopes to launch their own search which doesn't depend on other peoples' more reliable search technologies, they will need to work a hell of alot harder than what they've put up on their beta site.
As a long time user of search engines, I think MSN beta is a piece of ****(replace with a four letter explative of your choosing).
If there is a centralized update... then there is a centralized point of failure.
From the sound of it, the college described, before the "let the school remotely update your system" method... a malicious user would need to use normal worms and such to spread to various machines.
With a centralized system, that same user would only need to plant trojans on the centralized server's update set to have that trojan updated to every users' desktop, notebook, home system.
This can be used to DDOS, wipe systems right before the midtems/finals projects, or steal personal information from students.
Such a system has its place, but not in a school environment where the users who are pushing the boundaries of security are not the ones at the helm of security for the school.
The school would be better served to have each network section isolated from each other, allowing only secured ports. This would prevent most of the normal worms and virii from spreading.
One such setup has the switch/router detect when a particular network port/segment is carrying traffic which is considered malicious. Once detected, the port is blocked or the particular MAC address and IP address are blocked. This effectively cuts off computers which are infected and trying to spread.
If the user is innocent and goes to the desk for help about why their network connection went away, THEN they can attempt to scan the system for virii and clean the system.
You limit the spread of the virii/worm/etc.
You limit the amount of software installation/checking only to systems flagged as potentially bad.
This would work to support any platform, just have the right port numbers and protocols entered into your switch/router/firewall as a recipe/rule.
Then, it wouldn't matter if the machine was windows, mac, Linux, etc. You would be able to support the blocking of attacks across the entire campus. THrough this means, you would also be able to block P2P softwares as well as identify who is using P2P.
The downside is the cost of the switches and routers. However, the cost savings in labour and support for custom update software and the potential cost of the central update server being compromised more than pays for the more expensive switch hardware.
Asking whether or not people use the feature is a good idea. The answer from me and most people I know is: HELL YES.
The PS1 had awesome games for its time and when PS2 came out, the big questions was whether it was backwards compatible. Would all those hundreds of dollars(thousands, in some cases) of games be playable?
Backwards compatibility ensures that you get to keep your customer base and grow it.
If you made each new platform a well... new platform, you are basically rebuilding your base over and over again.
That is stupid from a business perspective and a social one. You increase your marketting overhead and get less and less gain from each iteration of your platform because forcing people to buy new games with each new platform increases the cost of owning that platform.
A $150 PS2 can play just about all PS1(hundreds ) games and all PS2 games.
The xbox2 is going to be able to play _just_ xbox2 games, huh?
That, my friend, is lame. Literally, figuratively, and conceptually.
This is the reason why I will remain a loyal Sony game console supporter. Because they actually make decisions with long term goals in mind.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA!!!!!
I'm sorry, but the maker of the #1 targetted platform which is almost synonymous with virii, system crashes, and security issues... is the LAST organization to be making anti-virus software.
It's a bit late for April fools... seriously, *wipes tears* they aren't REALLY thinking of producing anti-virus software, are they?
Prediction: The antivirus software produced by MS will, itself, be a security hole through which all virii, spammers, and abusers of the net come through into your computer.
We all saw how wonderful it was when Back Office was brought onto the scene... do we really want an anti-virus product as well?
*LOL* I'm SO glad I use a non-Windows platform laptop, desktop, and server system.
I feel sorry for the Windows folk who will ultimately be the bearers of whatever ill this bears fruit to. :(
So the basis of the electrical defense system is based on the idea that the material used by the RPG is relatively easy to vaporize...
Possible solution to electrical shield(#1):
Seems like the solution would be to have a binary metal to be used in the RPG.
Ie, have the copper slug/metal component be made with a interspersed and alloyable material component which when melted by the shaped charge explosion, cause the copper and the alloying material to form a new alloy which has the following properties:
- higher melting/vaporizing point
- either higher conductivity to reduce effectiveness of the electrical discharge or greater resistance to make the discharge moot.
Introduction of silicon, carbon, tin, iridium, or other alloyables with copper can be used to increase the vaporization temp and augment the conductivity of the molten metal.
Since the protective mechanism of the electrical defense is based on the aggresive metal being vaporized, if the aggresive metal is either less responsive or not responsive to the electrical discharge, then the shielding system can be disabled or pierced.
Example Solution:
Personally, since the molten metal will be dispersed onto the inner surface of the hull armour, a good candidate would be a thermite mixture(aluminum and iron oxide).
This material will melt(the aluminum) and will result in an exothermic mixture. The discharge will cause it to back splatter against the inner hull/armour, but the exothermic reaction will continue and result in a molten mass that repeatedly cuts through the insulation later between the charged plates.
If this molten mass is constantly causing a discharge, it is possible that a second RPG fired will be able to pierce the shield as the shield is now being repeatedly shorted by the actively melting thermite mixture.
Will something like this work? Dunno. Aluminum is much less dense than copper and also has a lower vaporization point. It is also less conductive than copper and will easily vaporize. Whether it works will depend on whether the iron alloys with the aluminum quickly enough to raise the vaporization temperature of the mixture and whether the exothermic reaction begins early enough to have a negative effect on the insulation layer between the armor plates.
Possible solution #2:
Another perspective would be to pierce the armour layers with a high melting point, strong, and conductive spike to short out the system.
Some materials which come to mind: platinum, paladium, iridium reinforced materials, silicon reinforced steel(reduced conductivity), and reinforced carbon which can conduct and resist vaporization to high temporatures.
This can be used to reduce the effectiveness of the rest of the system's shielding, unless the shielding circuitry is redundant and isolatable.
Once the spike is in place, the armour would be susceptible to an RPG type attack at the same location or a different location, depending on how much the electrical shielding has degraded.
Solution #3:
The power plant which powers the system would be the engine of the vehicle. Take out the tires/wheels, take out the engine or fuel tank and the shields will no longer be powered by the engine and only by batteries or the vehicle would no longer be mobile and can be overtaken in another way. Since most vehicles need to "breath", the best way would be polymer or clay type projectiles to gunk up the air intake or the exhaust of the vehicle. This would also result in a stoppage of the engine and a bringing down of the electrical shield system.
Notes:
It actually doesn't take much energy to vaporize a sizable amount of copper metal. Most people can take a look at various books on how to build high energy pulsers measured in thousands of joules(6000+). A 24V deep drain car/marine battery can easily power such a system and have it fully ready to discharge within seconds after the last discharge. A more effi
Well, here's the thing:
Knoppix and other CD boot distro's basically take a long time to boot. If for some reason the CD fouls due to condensation or something else, the system just won't boot.
The people will also not be able to download PDF files/etc if they are bigger than the temp space available from memory.
With a boot CD, you are basically going to want/need more ram and a fast CD drive to make it bearable.
The same issues of boot times and downloadables applies to Ghost/disk state keepers. If people are going to be there for a few days, it is unreasonable to wipe the system if it needs to boot or to boot it in the middle of the night since the guests might still be using it.
Before you look at the software, you have to look at the needs of the guests.
We're talking about vacationing guests, right? So what do people who are visiting do with a computer?
So you basically need to provide a locked down system with a good web browser, a SSH client, and maybe some tools like openoffice/etc.
Okay, how would I do it?
1) Use Linux. You have more options as to how to setup and restrict the system. Since you are connected to the internet, even if you lock down your box, you could be hit by a virus. Since you aren't there during the summer, this is a big issue. Use Linux. (A mac would be cost prohibitive, in my mind.)
2) Have Linux boot and make just about everything read-only. The only thing which should be possible to write to would by the guest home account and /tmp.
3) Have the machine be hard to mess with:
4) Have a recovery CD handy which can rebuild the entire system just by booting from the CD.
5) Put the machine behind a firewall. Yes, it's Linux, but put it behind a firewall. Even a cheap $50 firewall/switch/hub will work. That way, the Linux box won't have a real IP address, but will be NAT'ing to the outside world.
6) Have a laminated howto cheat sheet near the computer terminal for people to use.
7) Wipe the system only AFTER guests have checked out, if at all. This should only involve wiping and rebuilding the guest account to prevent web caches, keys, and passwords from being seen by the next guest.
Why Linux? Because you can get a cheapo X86 box with good performance and put Linux on it by downloading it off of the web. You can customize and lock it down to a good level and script almost all of the "clean system", "rebuild system", etc functions you need. You will have little to worry about in the case of virii and you will have a relatively low-zero maintenance system once it has been simplified.
I'd steer clear of booting the OS from a CD because it is slow and the system is less responsive. Use the CD option for "fixing" the linux box when it goes down with a "boot to rebuild" CD. Hard disks are cheap, fast, and offer more storage than a CD can. That means more software options and even internal backup images of the working system.
In either case, good luck! ^_^
All compilers have a "pattern" in the way they generate the machine code from your originating source code. This has been known for quite some time. I'd say since the early 8088 days, if not earlier. I would think in terms of the quality of the bits in the program like oil paint vs water paint. There is a percievable difference in quality/texture.
About a decade ago, someone created a polymorphic module to be compiled into virii and worms to mask the original code so that a simple string search could not be used to detect it. But the means by which the module worked allowed a new kind of virii detection tool: heuristics to detect the resulting blob of code.
If you compile on a MS system, GNU system, etc... your code will have system calls to partiular libraries and code offsets. This kind of patterning will be able to allow people to determine the following:
Try it. Compile a program and run a debugger agsint it. A good library debugger will be able to tell you what the code is accessing.
Note: If you have the same software setup on two different machines, then your code should be almost the same. What might differ would be various CPU bit size signatures. Say you developed with two systems exactly the same software-wise, but completely different hardware-wise, ie, you cross-compiled from say... a Linux system running VMware and WinXX to create windows code... then the code will be exactly the same.
It would be fair to say that if you wanted to make code which was not possible to track, you would want to do so in a virtual environment where you can make the virtual system seem like any machine except your's, then write the code with the most standard libraries out there. Once written and tested, the development environment, since it is an "instance", can be encrypted and hidden as a large DV encoded stream(dvbackup) or any nnumber of mechanisms.
It would be like having a complete dev environment on your system which can potentially pass technical inspections.
As for being a bounty-hunter, I think your best bet would be having a high degree of luck and a low level of ethics or morals so you can turn in friends you know. In many cases, virii writers who have been caught were caught because they couldn't help bragging or talking about it. Or they do something stupid.
But I suppose if you ask along those lines, your level of ethics and morals is already low.
Thanks to MS, we can all rush towards a world where we snitch on each other for a few bucks and fawn over the KGB..er.. I mean, software police. Is this the new flavour of "democracy"?
The answer is simple: A virii or worm which destroys what it infects or otherwise makes itself known will have a very short life as it will easily be detected.
Destroying system post-infection would be as easy as running a format on the system. But it isn't done because that would greatly reduce the value of an infected system.
What is better? 1 million infected systems which keep trying to infect poeple or 1 million systems which have simple stopped working?
You can't abuse or use someone else's computer if it isn't working.
Why do you think they call comprimised systems ghost/zombies/etc?
People keep thinking their computer is so precious because it is their's while at the same time thinking that no one would bother for the same reason. The reason is that your computer is on the net and can be used. Period. Destruction of your system would preclude the ability to use your system.
It works the same way in the biological world of virii. If the infection kills the host, that limits the lifespan of the virii and the ability to spread. It is only if the host survives that the virii likewise survives.
Since most of the scientist trying to replicated the results notes that it either can't be replicated like the original experiment or that they are seeing extremely low efficiencies, it probably isn't a problem in terms of increasing world violence/death/etc...
However, assuming that the original research hinted at what that partiular Hafnium isotope/polymer could do, it would be like an energy sponge: soaking up energy so that it could be squeezed out at a later time.
Since the energy released is gamma only, you could potentially arrange a bank of these and stimulate the material in much the same way as a nitrogen laser and get a gamma beam where the energy being outputted by each stage is cascaded into the next stage to create a denser coherent beam.
Would be interesting to see if this Hafnium stuff pans out. If it does, it would make for an interesting beam cannon as opposed to a bomb. You can't be very selective with a bomb, but you can with a beam.
I'm personally thinking it would be cool to have this technology in a microwave oven. :) Food cooked in under a minute every time. >:)
Let me get this straight:
People gave up perfectly good static licenses for MS products and switched to a annual subscription fee to keep their licenses renewed regardless of whether a new update arrives or not, just so that they can save some cash per license?
*ponder*
Why a reasonably intelligent person running a profitable business would choose to give up control of when they upgrade and how much they pay for it is just beyond me.
Judging from the page's estimates for 2003 and 2004, there appear to be ALOT of people and businesses who seem to think it is a good idea.
Look, for the past DECADE, MS has routinely slipped on delivering their software. Remember Windows 95? Came out quite a bit later than expected. Same for 98.
Look, if you HAVE to use MS products, at least use them wisely. Your department has the money to outright buy a license for use. That means you get to keep using what you bought... as opposed to this ridiculous "subscription" service which exchanges your working license into a crippled license that expires. For what? So you can give MS your money with absolutely no expectations from them, right?
I hope people recorded and/or documented their conversations with the MS reps.
Seriously, what does using a MS product give you? Why do people persist in using the MS OS when it is constantly being targetted by worms and virii? When the OS itself goes through so many internal changes that no one knows for sure if it is safe to use?
Understandably, it looked good on the balance sheets. But I think it is high time that the people looking at the balance sheets beef up on technology. Have the CFO spend some time with the CTO and maybe some other Tech people who KNOW the software and the history. THEN make your informed decision.
Think about it: The time it takes people who use an MS infra-structure to port what they have over to the new MS infra-structure... couldn't that have been used to port it to say... a Unix based one? Really, it can be done. Better uptimes, few if any worms or virii... and depending on what version of the OS you choose, free upgrades and quality support from the online community.
Hell, if you MUST run some critical app on windows, why not run it inside of a virtual machine? Time to upgrade hardware? Just install the Unix os and then copy over the virtual machine image. Bam... hardware upgraded with only a few minutes of downtime. License keys are happy, software runs in the "same" environment, just faster.
Business really need to start thinking in terms of what the problem REALLY is as opposed to what their vendor tells them the problem is. Especialyl if that vendor has a nice pricey solution for you.
A business investment should not be a shell game where the vendor goes: oh, sorry! you didn't get anything this year, why not pay your fees and try again next year?
That's shows a simple lack of understanding of one's own company's relationship with the vendor. They are a freaking VENDOR. But companies treat MS like it was the parent company or something.
*sigh*
Okay, enough ranting from me. I mean, it's not my money that got sucked up for no good reason.
Btw, visited the forbes ROI calculator for the Software Assurance thing. $18,000 for three computers? These are supposed to be workstations, btw. If that is the case, whatever company paying that much for workstations alone is already getting shafted before MS ever got to them.
Anyways, hadn't posted in a while, so getting this out of my system.
As for the companies... they really need to look at what it is that they REALLY REALLY need. Make a firm decision and go with it. If they hang onto the SA with MS because they are afraid, then they might as well just hand over the money now and forever. If they decide this was a bad idea and a mistake, then they should have the guts to admit they screwed up and figure out which technology path is right.
It isn't rocket science. It's business.
I find it both annoying and terrifying that people who have been to business school fall so easily for what is essentially a pie in the sky subscription system. It's like someone telling you they might not mess with you tomorrow if you pay them now. But they're there tomorrow anyways...
It's odd. People will see things as either one way or another.
Look, th iPod is useful. Certainly more so than a dislocated hard drive with a USB/FW port.
At the same time, the crew of the rings movies has been on Apple's advertisements alot.
The iPod is cool & this is a marketting campaign. The two do not cancel each other out. Period.
You pay $$$ for a portable storage device you can fit comfortable and easily in your pocket. It can play music and some other neat feats. It is also a good portable hard drive.
The fact that there is a strong marketing campaign around it does not and should not belittle the innate usefullness of the device.
I don't personally own an iPod, but having been using an iBook alongside my Windows and Linux boxen, I would have to say that what Apple's got is a heck of alot easier and nicer to use than most other things out there.
The right tool for the job. It was the right too for their team. End of story.
When you look at it, the price difference between CF and SD chips can be the difference in shipping charges.
CF is good general purpose memory and is used by a good number of folk from the snapshot photographer to the pros. CF is good because it is tried and true. It has storage from 16MB all the way up to 4GB.
The "benefit" of SD memory is that it has extra circuitry for "securing" digital data, hence the name: Secure Digital card.
You pay extra for the protection just as one does when they go the memory stick route with "magic-gate", which is just another word for "encrypted" data.
Personally, I go CF because the chip size is just right. It is rugged and stiff. It is big enough to hold and not easily drop while and small enough that it won't take up much space.
The transfer speeds are pretty good as well. I use Kingston memory and I get 1-2 MB/second transfer with a PCMCIA adapter.
The thing is, each type has its purpose. You could use an SD/XD/MMC card inside of a CF camera just by using an SD->CF adapter. Boom, you now have an SD chip inside of your CF camera.
Doesn't work the other way around and it is a pain to "swap" cards with adapters. But hey, if you want cross compatibility when you have one camera that takes CF and another one which takes SD/XD, you had at least be aware of your options.
Given your price range and the CF cards you have, I would direct you to either the Canon A80 or the S400. Both are 4MP cameras and are under 2 seconds between shots. Very good auto-modes and has some pretty good manual modes. 2 of my co-workers have the S400. I got the A80 for my GF. And I use a Minolta A1(Would have been Canon, but not in the budget for the pricey glass).
Good luck.
Some places to check out camera reviews:
DPREVIEW.com
steves-digicams.com
luminous-landscape.com
Good luck!
NIMH charge loss is rated to be in the ballpark of 1-5% a day. Ie, your NIMH batteries would be completely self-discharged in about 1-3 months.
I've had NIMHs in a baggie for about a couple of weeks on my desk and used them in my camera or just kept the batts in the camera for a week or two and they are fine.
Before heading out for a serious shoot though, I will charge them up.
Recently, however, I have switched on of my cameras to a proprietary format(NP400 ala Minolta A1). It costs alot more, but I have to agree that the battery just keeps on chugging. I have 2 and swapping them is so much easier than swapping out 4 AA batteries.
Still, to each their own. I agree that CF is really the cost effective way to go. The SD/XD/MMC chips are WAY too small to safely carry without losing them easily. I was using SM chips, but they have a bad tendancy to fail when you least expect them to.
But the discharge rate is 1-5%/day for NIMH. It is about 1-2%/dayfor LiON.
For a setup where you have several cameras, a common storage medium and battery format makes ALOT of sense.
Okay, this I don't get. James Cameron is a film director. This is basically the same thing as asking an artist to concieve a ship design. This, to me, is looking at the wrong solution to the problem.
The problem is not one of aesthetics or "believability" or even film-making. It is one of keeping people alive and for providing a living environment. What stresses a particular structure will need to tolerate, what safety limits, what shape this kind of structure will take on... those are engineering issues, not film-making issues.
Film making and directing is about control of the vision of the film. Part of this ability is to pick the right cast member for the right role. Choosing a film director for the role of ship designer is, in my opinion, a poor choice. It will lead to the preference of form over function and result in horrendous "mishaps" and basically a waste of human life when the idea fails because the necessary precautions were not taken.
Originally, I had thought, "Why not Steve Jobs?" He has designed well interfacing hardware that works and looks good. But with the iPod and some of the design choices made, I fear the same problem exists: preference of form over function.
I'm as eager to get out into space and colonize and build the first fast food joint in orbit as the next space cadet. But like any other rational human being, I want to do it safely and not risk my life doing so.
I don't care if the ship looks like crap. I want a ship that will WORK. Ie, safely carry people+cargo to and from a destination in space.
What I would want is an engineer with artistic vision to concieve ship designs based on practical and workable systems as opposed to building a ship with a certain "look" based on assumptions of how the system should work.
We lost Columbia, Challenger, and pre apollo crews to poor decisions which over-rided sane safety concerns. Who bolts the escape hatch from the outside so you can't get out from the inside!? Who in their right mind would push for a flight window when there are concerns about the ships systems with abnormal icing present? We're talking about human lives here! We aren't living in the stone age. A piece of protective shielding(on an ablative shielding system, ALL pieces of the shielding are critical), was knocked off. Deemed "safe".
We have super computers to run simulations on "what-ifs". Why bother having them if we use them to only simulate and predict weather and bomb effects and not on whether a ship can survive re-entry with x-piece of it's system damaged?
I fear the recent "successes" at NASA/JPL is once again starting to inflate the egos which will lead to loss of lives.
The situation of where timelines, politics, cost-effectiveness, and bottom-lines will take priority over human lives.
If such is the case, then why bother sending humans out there at all if we are not intending to safeguard them from start to finish!?