Here's a good example of a WDYFD-type "security" mailing I got in email:
NETWORK WORLD FUSION FOCUS: M. E. KABAY on SECURITY Today's Focus: Personnel and security: Firings and resignations 06/22/00 ------------------------------------------------ -- By M. E. Kabay
In this series, we are reviewing some of the implications of personnel management for information security. I started the series with hiring; the other end of the employer-employee relationship also deserves attention from a security-conscious manager.
Taking our security mandate in the widest sense, we have to protect our employer and ourselves against potential damage from unethical, disgruntled or incompetent employees and against the legal consequences of improper firing procedures. Common sense and common decency argue for humane and sensitive treatment of people being fired and those who are resigning.
Resignations
The potentially most dangerous form of employment termination is the resignation. Employees rarely resign without planning. An employee may have an indefinite period during which he or she knows that resignation is imminent, whereas the employer may remain unaware of the situation. If the employee has bad feelings toward or evil designs on the current employer, there is a period of vulnerability unknown to management. Dishonest or unbalanced employees could steal information or equipment, they could cause immediate or delayed damage using programming techniques (for example, by setting a "logic bomb" - a computer program that destroys data or performs other harmful acts), or they could introduce faulty data into the system ("data diddling").
The policies discussed in previous issues of this newsletter for ongoing management should reduce the risks associated with resignations. Your goal as a manager should be to make resignations rare and reasonable. By staying in touch with your employees' feelings, moods and morale, you can identify sources of strain and perhaps resolve problems before they lead to resignations and their associated security risks.
Firings
Firings give the advantage to employers. The time of notification can be controlled to minimize its effects on the organization and its business. For example, employers might find it best to fire an employee before that employee begins an important new project or after a particular project is finished.
Some people argue that to reduce the psychological impact on other employees, you should fire people at the end of the day, perhaps even before a long weekend. The theory is that the practice gives everyone a cooling-off period outside working hours, making it so the buzz of conversation and speculation that often follows a firing doesn't intrude on the workday. This policy fails to take into consideration the psychological stress to employees who have a ruined weekend and no way of responding constructively to their potentially catastrophic loss of regular income.
A better approach to this stressful task is to fire people early on Monday morning, to provide an unrushed exit interview and job counseling to help the employee prepare for job hunting. In this scenario, the regrettable necessity (from the manager's point of view) of terminating employment is buffered by professionals in the human resources department who can give departing employees a sense of hope and some practical as well as emotional support in their difficult time. This humane attitude is particularly important when there are many people being fired - one of the worst experiences possible for both employees and managers and an event that has serious security implications.
Doing it wrong
A participant in one of my courses told the following horrifying tale of a firing gone wrong. In a large company, the HR department asked information security staff to suspend the access codes for more than 100 people who were to be fired at 6 p.m. Tuesday. On Wednesday at 8 a.m., the security staff began receiving phone calls asking why the callers' logons no longer worked. It turned out that the HR staff had failed to inform the "victims" on time. The psychological trauma to both the employees who were fired and to the security staff was severe. Several security staff members were sent home in tears to recuperate. The harm done to the fired employees was even more serious, and the effect on the morale of the remaining employees was a disaster. It's a wonder that there was no violence in that situation.
Cross-training again
One of the key organizational issues in planning or responding to termination of employment is training replacements for the departing employee. Such needs are voiced to justify policies allowing a more graceful, civilized and friendly approach to firings and resignations. It seems reasonable to encourage departing employees to train the colleagues or new employees who will assume their responsibilities. However, cross-training should be part of the normal operations of all organizations.
The bottom line
Firing people is stressful for everyone concerned and leads to increased security risks. Managers should do everything in their power to ensure a courteous, respectful and supportive experience when terminating employment.
I am getting really sick of these lame security alarmists lately. They have apparently ran out of intelligent things to say and now have taken to restating the obvious as if it is a profound new discovery.
"TELNET IS INSECURE!!!" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
"WATCH YOUR EMPLOYEES FOR PERSONALITY CHANGES. THAT COULD MEAN THEY ARE TAKING DRUGS OR EMBEZZLING MONEY!!" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
"HACKERS COME FROM THE INTERNET" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
I would like to propose a new Internet Acronym (IA) of WDYFD (I think you can figure out what it stands for) to be used in reply to pompous, overzealous announcements to impress those who haven't quite figured out what that shiny square thing is sitting in front of them...
"The sky is blue!" "WDYFD...":)
Douglas Adams first documented this phenomenon in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "It sure is a nice day, isn't it?" - However, it seems like the security dorks are really trying to cash in on this to keep their paychecks coming in. But, I hope they all remember the story about the little boy who cried Woof! (er, um, Wolf!) The more they keep desensitizing us to their "profound" announcements, the less we are going to pay attention when they actually have something important to say.
Is it just me, or do other notice the same thing amongst the security mailing lists (M Kabay comes to mind) and security trade rags?
I'm not saying that security is a bad thing. But I just want them to tell me something that I don't know. Not a bunch of obvious crap. Ways to work with technology, not a Luddite view of "oh, no, lets not use it at all!"
Are you talking about giving free access to your T1, or charging money for it?
If free, then, sure, you do have the right and I back you 100%.
However, if you are charging me for access, then it is me who determines what kind of traffic I want to transmit/receive. Of course, if I start using far more than my share of the bandwidth, then there is a problem that needs to be worked out.
A fortune 500 company I work for is in the process of converting all their images to.PNG to avoid licencing fees. They clued in and realized that there's no point in paying royalties when a better, free alternative exists.
I've built my medieval web game, Raid on the Forest of Horrors, using nothing but PNG images. Click below to try it out. Too bad I can't draw better!:)
Um, UPnP is over a century old. The largest, most complex railway switchyard in the world, located in North Platte, Nebraska, was built by Union Pacific in the late 1800s. Thus, UPNP switchyard.
"//Windows 2000 is even trying to be Unix-ish. in some ways they're trying, yes. but this is mainly through a POSIX layer. or are you really only refering to the fact that they both have command lines which you can do things from? oh, no... you're not one of those horridly uninformed people who think DOS was "like Unix, only smaller", are you?"
No, definitely not! What I am referring to is all the new (Keyword NEW, not the old DOS 'similarities')Unix "compatibility"/"similarity" that was added into Win2K. They've added a Telnet server, and all kinds of things like that. Microsoft has recently bought an XWindows server company (I forget the name) and will be releasing an XWindows client (That'll be weird) but I don't know if it will offer the ability to connect to a Win2K session via XWindows; that would throw a brick at their Terminal Server sales. (Unless they have a bigger plan)
As far as MacOS X being Unix-based: Yes, still it is Unix based/unix-clonish. The VW vs Corvette argument fails: They are both automobiles. I'm thinking along the lines of something completely different, like comparing a Lamborghini to an FTL UFO or something - something COMPLETELY different, can it be done??
Re:100% of the time? C'mon - that's crap.
on
Is Pinball Dying?
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· Score: 1
Asteroids rules. I still love it. However, the display technology in Asteroids is called Vector Graphics, not Raster. Raster is what everything currently uses (scanning from side to side, rather than drawing individual lines from X1,Y1 to X2,Y2 like in Asteroids and Omega Race)
What I'd like to see is a 3-D First Person Donkey Kong where the barrels roll right at you. That would totally kick ass!:)
100% of the time? C'mon - that's crap.
on
Is Pinball Dying?
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· Score: 2
"Your goal is to maximize your earnings. To do this your machines must be up 100% of the time."
Bullshit. Sure, it _maximizes_ your earnings, but certainly does not negate your earnings if your machine drops down to 90%. Plus, mechanical electronic systems are about a million times easier to fix than complex video game circuitry. Oh wait, I forgot we live in a throw-away society - just toss the old circuitboard filled with hazardous materials into the closest lake and install another one. Yah, that's the ticket.
Understand some basic economics before you spout off such crap. I suppose you would say that a taxi must be in operation and billing 100% of the time. Or a Greyhound bus must be in operation and full of passengers all of the time to break even.
There's a big difference between maximizing earnings and breaking even. And Tekken 3? That sucky ass, crudely done Neo-Geo excuse-for-a-game? I played that twice and realized I'd much rather play the venerable classic fighting game Renegade, than this cheap JapTrash game. Certainly I'd rather play a good pinball machine than that.
Who the hell moderated this spewing of crap up to 5??
NT is dying in the big corps anyway
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
Fuck 'em. The whole NT/Win2K thing is dying everywhere I look. I just left a very large bank, they are moving all their web stuff from NT/IIS to Solaris/iPlanet (Still not Linux/Apache, but a step in the right direction). I am now a web architect for a mega-large railroad company. I am heading up the team in charge of replacing their NT web servers with Solaris/Apache (We made a swing for Linux, even had the security folks OK with it, but could not sell it to upper management).
Management is finally waking up from the narcotic effect of the marketing wool that MS has been pulling over their eyes. A new world is forming. It's cool to be part of it. These restrictive licensing antics are simple the desperate floppings of a dying, obsolete, lazy company.
Lot of people I know are converting to nothing but Linux at home, being sick of the BS and refusing to pay for something for which there is a superior and free alternative.
Yet another OS? Seems theres getting to be a lot of them, but all still vaguely Unix-ish. Is there anything along the lines of "And now for something completely different"??
Linux is a Unix clone
Mac OS X is a Unix clone
Windows 2000 is even trying to be Unix-ish. (But a pathetic imitation)
So, you need the power of a midrange system to run their shitty Domino 'web' server. What a crappy piece of shit. Anybody who would install that overhyped Lotus Notes server with a port 80 kludge slapped on is a fuckin moron. Lotus Notes in itself is a disgusting pile of shit. Who wrote that, a bunch of drunk monkeys?
Funny choice of a name, Domino. Isn't that something that people have fun with by lining them up and knocking them down? Doesn't do much for a feeling of stability! If one goes down, they all go down!
Here's the email that has been going back and forth between me and the program director of the local rock station here in Omaha.
-------------
Actually, what we are seeing here is the big record companies getting left behind in the Internet explosion. They are not adapting to the new way of low-cost distribution and replication. Say Joe Blow goes and buys Metallica: Re-Re-Re-ReLoad for $16.99 at the local music store. After the store takes it's cut, the distributor takes his cut, the record company takes their outrageous amount, and the Metallica boys end up with about 20 cents each for the sale. I wouldn't be very happy about that if I was them.
The important thing happening here is not the Napster illegal copying thing, but the fact that manufacturing media, whether tape, CD or Vinyl, has been irrelevant. Now days, the consumer is willing to pick up the tab on the actual creation of the recording (The Internet connection, the computer storage space, etc), the cost of the server and the bandwidth can be fully recouped through onsite advertising and cross-marketing of band-related merchandise. Wow! What a business to be in: The cost of producing the physical media (not the music itself) drops to zero. Nearly infinite return on investment.
Another way of looking at it is: The record companies (Not the bands themselves) now are archaic. They really do not add any value to the equation. Instead, there exists technology to allow bands to sell their music DIRECTLY to the listeners! The middleman is now only a sick sucking noise with no point. Of course, there exists the concept of "OK, if this digital data is so easily duplicated, how do we make a profit off this? How do we keep the fans from freely copying everything we release?" Well, that's the problem to be solved. Perhaps by the bands, perhaps by the recording companies, perhaps by the geeks who have been creating the whole Internet from scratch for the last 30 years. Remember when the movie companies freaked when VCRs came out? They were trying to get VCRs deemed illegal, less everyone copy tapes and put the movie industry out of business. But, looking back, it wasn't that they were going out of business (Not even close, movie companies now make more money off tape rentals than they do off the actual theater showings.), it was that they needed to radically change their business model to keep up with the new reality.
We are now living in a "replicator" (ala Star Trek) economy when it comes to music. No longer is the economic bottleneck the manufacturing of physical music media. Now the economic bottleneck is the pure creation of data - aka good music. Also, the bottleneck is marketing the music, reaching the public. Look at mp3.com: There is a lot of very excellent music out there, released in MP3 format by unsigned/unknown bands. It is simply incredible. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of crap there as well. It's the weeding through the bad stuff until you find a gem that gets you. While the current audience doesn't to be spoon-fed crap from the marketing machine, they also have a lazy streak: It is easier to turn on Z-92 and get an OK-level of music quality. You can also go to MP3.com and listen to the top 40 charts for a particular musical genre. Either way, you will hear a lot of good music, but also will encounter the occasional turd music. How to get the word of truely good music out to the people who want to hear it, and how to avoid hearing "turds". Eventually it will probably turn into an artificially intelligent filtering/rating system that will learn your musical interest over time, and will play music, just for you, that it thinks you will like. Even then, artificial intelligence is far from perfect - you will still get turded from time to time. Music companies that can build a reputation of suggesting the good stuff, and keeping the soundscape relatively turd free will be the ones who will have a value to their service, much like a good Internet search engine can pinpoint the relevant information you are searching for.
We can kill the messenger (Napster), but we sure wont kill the message itself (MP3s, or other open, non-encrypted methods of quickly tranmitting music over the Interner). Napster will probably be destroyed in court, but it will not affect the unauthorized copying of music on the Internet. Already there are alternatives, such as Gnutella (Which is somewhat like Napster, but is designed without a central server, no central choke-point like the Napster servers), like the FreeNet protocol, like good old IRC (Not the best way to do it, but it can and has been done that way for years now). As soon as one avenue is blocked, the next way arises. The genie is out of the bottle and she is not going back in. The only way would be to shut off the Internet, and that just ain't gonna happen.
The golden ring in the new world is to find a business model (like the movie companies had to) to profit off this new technology. It is going to be more similar to direct marketing. A lot of it seems to be related to supply and demand. With "replicator" technology, supply is infinite, demand is finite, therefore, the value of the product will have a trend approaching zero. Value must be created, just like any other business, no longer can the music companies with their monopolistic tendancies continue to exist in the parasitical model, instead, then must adapt to a symbiotic model, or die. Instead of feeding on the host (both the music makers, and music buyers), they instead have to find a way to "give back" in a mutually profitable manner. I expect to see the ability to listen to what you want, when you want, in return for a persons business. Instead of buying a whole album for $17.00 with a bunch of songs you don't want, you will simply buy the songs you do want, individually, for something like $1 per song. If the band does this directly, they get pretty much all of the $1 per song (minus administrative fees). If they sold a million songs, they make a million dollars, instead of the $800,000 they would make off selling a million albums after the lions share going to the big music company. Say you have a good album, with 5 hit songs, each selling 2 million copies, the band ends up with $5 x 2,000,000 (10 million dollars) rather than the sucky $0.80 x 2,000,000 ($1,600,000) that they would get for selling two million copies of the whole album.
It's now up to the record companies to start working, start trying, start actually creating value, rather than sitting around bemoaning the way it used to be. Basically everybody now has a record press in their house. Back in the 1950's, nobody had a record press in their house. It's now like selling air. You can sell lemon-scented air, or you can try to sell farts. Which will you spend your money on?
My thoughts, hope you enjoy them. Take them to heart: for better or for worse, the music world is changing! I certainly don't have all the answers, but I definitely see that things will never be the same again. Being creative and intelligent is now the name of the game: You can embrace the new rules, or you can be enslaved and destroyed by them.
-----Original Message----- From: Program Director guySent: Monday, May 08, 2000 9:40 AM To: Me Subject: Re:
So, you're saying if you recorded a number one song, and you made a dollar off every one you sold, and someone came, copied it, and was giving it away, and instead of making a million dollars, you made 250 thousand, you'd be OK with that?
Thanks for writing.
Program Director, KEZO/Z-92 Journal Broadcast Group, Omaha Operations Your Radio Store
>>> 05/05/00 10:36PM >>> Stop the playing sucky sold-out Muttalikuh already. Have you not been tuned into the Napster ordeal? The have alienated millions of their fans which does not bode well for your audience or advertisers. Metallica is playing now on Z-92, I am turning the dial to www.knac.com soon as I hit Send on this message.
I'm doing it! The big question is: Is it more effective to burn my CDs or take them to a used CD store? If everyone sold their Metallica CDs/tapes to a used store, there would be a horrible glut in the market and existing Metallica music would be near worthless. Any new music seems to be worthless these days anyhow.
Sell your Metallica stuff! Cheap! Use the market against them!
OK, what is the deal here. If it took 60,000 sheets of paper (Assuming US standard 8.5/11 inch sheets), then they only got 5.58 names on each page. Even with a 72 point font, that allows more than that per page.
I suppose there was probably more than just the name, possibly a listing of songs downloaded or other info (IP Address, etc), but it still seems pretty wasteful use of paper.
Isn't there some kind of law against wanton waste of natural resources? (Nah, guess not or all the junksnalmailers and those postcards that fall out of magazines would be illegal too...) Maybe there should be!:)
That is a good thing to see. Actually taking shots at existing theories to see if they will hold water. I do hope they are able to prove that there is enough matter to eventually pull the universe back into the Gnab Gib. It seems lonely and pointless considering the other theory, that the universe will just consider to expand and cool, eventually fading away. Just remember, they expect large scale proton decay in about 30 billion years. That's pretty much the time limit we have. If the universe doesn't start to pull itself together by then, it's just going to fade to black.
Re:Makes me proud to be an Iowan!
on
Fighting UCITA
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· Score: 1
I don't live in Iowa, but I can see it from here! (I live in extreme eastern Omaha, Nebraska, on the last hill before you get to the river between Iowa and Nebraska.)
I did not know that ISU had CAVE technology! I got snuck into the Cave at University of Illinois @ Urbana/Champagne. It was a fucking trip! The "Cathedral" was awesome. Nothing stranger than virtual suicide - climbing up 20 flights of stairs, then jumping off to fall to the ground at 9.98 meters/sec/sec acceleration, in 5-sided VR that adjusts itself as you move your physical point of view! I never thought I'd have that long to think about it if I jumped off a building!! he "Crayola World" was a trip too: Birds, Bees and trees, all in single-face 3D arrangement, everything scanned-in drawn-by-hand crayon. Too crazy! If ya ever get a chance, check these things out. Ignore the nausea!
I'd almost consider moving there if they would get rid of (1) the damn slow 65 MPH Interstate speed limit (Nebraska is 75) and (2) the state income tax. (Or the state sales tax, one way or another, but both ways ain't fair)
NT SP1 will freak out a little during the install. The way I did it was to create a 4gig partition (On a 30.6 gig drive) and leave the rest unpartitioned. Install NT, it will work with the 4096 partition just fine. The other 26 gigs it will see as only 4 gig until you install a higher service pack. I am not sure of the first service pack to support larger driver, I just went with the latest, Service Pack 6a, and everything worked fine. After the SP6a install, go to the disk admin and it then recognizes and lets you partition and format the remaining 26 gigs.
I am a bit confused as to what you people are talking about with this 1024 cylinder limit. I just installed Mandrake Linux on an 8.6 gig drive with zero problems, and the drive states that it has something in the neighborhood of 15000 cylinders. Maybe I just got lucky and avoided it by making a 26 meg/boot partition.
If these people actually think they should make money from their weak work, whatever. A bunch of skinny loud dorks make a bunch of sounds with their gee-tarz and think they have contributed?
What the fuck ever, how does that contribute to ending disease, ending tyranny, ending hunger?
They don't contribute. They are parasites on the hard workers - the construction workers, the sewer system fixers, the welders and carpenters. Feed all the hard working ones the message that essentially their lives are lame and insignificant compared to the esteemed glory of those who make noise with a gee-tar.
Mattel-ica, Mutt-licka, Modalkuh: Fuck 'em all (all four of them) and fuck'n no regrets.
Anybody want to buy some metallica CDs, cheap? I don't want them anymore. They were so cool with all their intensity, hunger, and look on life, back in the day. Now they are a bunch of whining shit-boys. I don't want anything to do with such hypocritical weenies. Dick-sucking butt-bandits, all of them!
"politicians that YOU vote in" - that's just it - until they give us the "none of the above" (aka Reject) vote, I don't feel that I am really voting ANYBODY in, I am just picking from the lesser of two evils in the current voting system.
"Hmmm... Let's see, whom do I think sucks LESS??", I guess this guy here gets my X. I have no recourse if I think they all suck. And, if I skip anyone, at least in my voting area here in Nebraska, they throw my whole ballot out as 'INVALID'. Which is complete shit. I shouldn't be forced to vote for anyone I don't approve of.
Instead of "Which sucks less" I should be able to vote "all these people suck, get someone else...". If a person doesn't gets above a certain level of "no way" votes, they have to re-do that elected position.
Maybe not for simple, normal, church-like activities, but definitely for the ones that abuse that status, like all these giant church-owned hospitals/medical groups. They do billions/trillions per year, and overcharge us so bad that even insurance companies have a hard time paying the bill, and it's all tax-free at the top, absolutely disgusting.
Wow, you are just , like, sooo, intligint! D00d! So, like, shut up already, yer gonna let the evil powerz dat B know all about how to do it wrong and harshly too us!
Slashdot Mirror
I guess part of the mismanagement was bad advertising.
Darn it.
Here's a good example of a WDYFD-type "security" mailing I got in email:
- --
NETWORK WORLD FUSION FOCUS: M. E. KABAY on SECURITY
Today's Focus: Personnel and security: Firings and resignations
06/22/00
-----------------------------------------------
By M. E. Kabay
In this series, we are reviewing some of the implications of personnel
management for information security. I started the series with hiring;
the other end of the employer-employee relationship also deserves
attention from a security-conscious manager.
Taking our security mandate in the widest sense, we have to protect our
employer and ourselves against potential damage from unethical,
disgruntled or incompetent employees and against the legal consequences
of improper firing procedures. Common sense and common decency argue
for humane and sensitive treatment of people being fired and those who
are resigning.
Resignations
The potentially most dangerous form of employment termination is the
resignation. Employees rarely resign without planning. An employee may
have an indefinite period during which he or she knows that resignation
is imminent, whereas the employer may remain unaware of the situation.
If the employee has bad feelings toward or evil designs on the current
employer, there is a period of vulnerability unknown to management.
Dishonest or unbalanced employees could steal information or equipment,
they could cause immediate or delayed damage using programming
techniques (for example, by setting a "logic bomb" - a computer program
that destroys data or performs other harmful acts), or they could
introduce faulty data into the system ("data diddling").
The policies discussed in previous issues of this newsletter for
ongoing management should reduce the risks associated with
resignations. Your goal as a manager should be to make resignations
rare and reasonable. By staying in touch with your employees' feelings,
moods and morale, you can identify sources of strain and perhaps
resolve problems before they lead to resignations and their associated
security risks.
Firings
Firings give the advantage to employers. The time of notification can
be controlled to minimize its effects on the organization and its
business. For example, employers might find it best to fire an employee
before that employee begins an important new project or after a
particular project is finished.
Some people argue that to reduce the psychological impact on other
employees, you should fire people at the end of the day, perhaps even
before a long weekend. The theory is that the practice gives everyone a
cooling-off period outside working hours, making it so the buzz of
conversation and speculation that often follows a firing doesn't
intrude on the workday. This policy fails to take into consideration
the psychological stress to employees who have a ruined weekend and no
way of responding constructively to their potentially catastrophic loss
of regular income.
A better approach to this stressful task is to fire people early on
Monday morning, to provide an unrushed exit interview and job
counseling to help the employee prepare for job hunting. In this
scenario, the regrettable necessity (from the manager's point of view)
of terminating employment is buffered by professionals in the human
resources department who can give departing employees a sense of hope
and some practical as well as emotional support in their difficult
time. This humane attitude is particularly important when there are
many people being fired - one of the worst experiences possible for
both employees and managers and an event that has serious security
implications.
Doing it wrong
A participant in one of my courses told the following horrifying tale
of a firing gone wrong. In a large company, the HR department asked
information security staff to suspend the access codes for more than
100 people who were to be fired at 6 p.m. Tuesday. On Wednesday at
8 a.m., the security staff began receiving phone calls asking why the
callers' logons no longer worked. It turned out that the HR staff had
failed to inform the "victims" on time. The psychological trauma to
both the employees who were fired and to the security staff was severe.
Several security staff members were sent home in tears to recuperate.
The harm done to the fired employees was even more serious, and the
effect on the morale of the remaining employees was a disaster. It's a
wonder that there was no violence in that situation.
Cross-training again
One of the key organizational issues in planning or responding to
termination of employment is training replacements for the departing
employee. Such needs are voiced to justify policies allowing a more
graceful, civilized and friendly approach to firings and resignations.
It seems reasonable to encourage departing employees to train the
colleagues or new employees who will assume their responsibilities.
However, cross-training should be part of the normal operations of all
organizations.
The bottom line
Firing people is stressful for everyone concerned and leads to
increased security risks. Managers should do everything in their power
to ensure a courteous, respectful and supportive experience when
terminating employment.
"TELNET IS INSECURE!!!" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
"WATCH YOUR EMPLOYEES FOR PERSONALITY CHANGES. THAT COULD MEAN THEY ARE TAKING DRUGS OR EMBEZZLING MONEY!!" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
"HACKERS COME FROM THE INTERNET" - Well, duh, you fucking dumbass.
I would like to propose a new Internet Acronym (IA) of WDYFD (I think you can figure out what it stands for) to be used in reply to pompous, overzealous announcements to impress those who haven't quite figured out what that shiny square thing is sitting in front of them...
"The sky is blue!" :)
"WDYFD..."
Douglas Adams first documented this phenomenon in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "It sure is a nice day, isn't it?" - However, it seems like the security dorks are really trying to cash in on this to keep their paychecks coming in. But, I hope they all remember the story about the little boy who cried Woof! (er, um, Wolf!) The more they keep desensitizing us to their "profound" announcements, the less we are going to pay attention when they actually have something important to say.
Is it just me, or do other notice the same thing amongst the security mailing lists (M Kabay comes to mind) and security trade rags?
I'm not saying that security is a bad thing. But I just want them to tell me something that I don't know. Not a bunch of obvious crap. Ways to work with technology, not a Luddite view of "oh, no, lets not use it at all!"
If free, then, sure, you do have the right and I back you 100%.
However, if you are charging me for access, then it is me who determines what kind of traffic I want to transmit/receive. Of course, if I start using far more than my share of the bandwidth, then there is a problem that needs to be worked out.
I've built my medieval web game, Raid on the Forest of Horrors, using nothing but PNG images. Click below to try it out. Too bad I can't draw better! :)
Um, UPnP is over a century old. The largest, most complex railway switchyard in the world, located in North Platte, Nebraska, was built by Union Pacific in the late 1800s. Thus, UPNP switchyard.
in some ways they're trying, yes. but this is mainly through a POSIX layer. or are you really only refering to the fact that they both have command lines which you can do things from? oh, no... you're not one of those horridly uninformed people who think DOS was "like Unix, only smaller", are you?"
No, definitely not! What I am referring to is all the new (Keyword NEW, not the old DOS 'similarities')Unix "compatibility"/"similarity" that was added into Win2K. They've added a Telnet server, and all kinds of things like that. Microsoft has recently bought an XWindows server company (I forget the name) and will be releasing an XWindows client (That'll be weird) but I don't know if it will offer the ability to connect to a Win2K session via XWindows; that would throw a brick at their Terminal Server sales. (Unless they have a bigger plan)
As far as MacOS X being Unix-based: Yes, still it is Unix based/unix-clonish. The VW vs Corvette argument fails: They are both automobiles. I'm thinking along the lines of something completely different, like comparing a Lamborghini to an FTL UFO or something - something COMPLETELY different, can it be done??
What I'd like to see is a 3-D First Person Donkey Kong where the barrels roll right at you. That would totally kick ass! :)
Bullshit. Sure, it _maximizes_ your earnings, but certainly does not negate your earnings if your machine drops down to 90%. Plus, mechanical electronic systems are about a million times easier to fix than complex video game circuitry. Oh wait, I forgot we live in a throw-away society - just toss the old circuitboard filled with hazardous materials into the closest lake and install another one. Yah, that's the ticket.
Understand some basic economics before you spout off such crap. I suppose you would say that a taxi must be in operation and billing 100% of the time. Or a Greyhound bus must be in operation and full of passengers all of the time to break even.
There's a big difference between maximizing earnings and breaking even. And Tekken 3? That sucky ass, crudely done Neo-Geo excuse-for-a-game? I played that twice and realized I'd much rather play the venerable classic fighting game Renegade, than this cheap JapTrash game. Certainly I'd rather play a good pinball machine than that.
Who the hell moderated this spewing of crap up to 5??
Management is finally waking up from the narcotic effect of the marketing wool that MS has been pulling over their eyes. A new world is forming. It's cool to be part of it. These restrictive licensing antics are simple the desperate floppings of a dying, obsolete, lazy company.
Lot of people I know are converting to nothing but Linux at home, being sick of the BS and refusing to pay for something for which there is a superior and free alternative.
Linux is a Unix clone
Mac OS X is a Unix clone
Windows 2000 is even trying to be Unix-ish. (But a pathetic imitation)
Amiga is now a Unix clone
Is BeOS a Unix clone? (I haven't played with it)
I'm getting bored. Gimme something else...
Funny choice of a name, Domino. Isn't that something that people have fun with by lining them up and knocking them down? Doesn't do much for a feeling of stability! If one goes down, they all go down!
Ask Jesus about inside the BOA
Haha! No doubt! Good point! Should we restate "Sad But True"? :)
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Actually, what we are seeing here is the big record companies getting left behind in the Internet explosion. They are not adapting to the new way of low-cost distribution and replication. Say Joe Blow goes and buys Metallica: Re-Re-Re-ReLoad for $16.99 at the local music store. After the store takes it's cut, the distributor takes his cut, the record company takes their outrageous amount, and the Metallica boys end up with about 20 cents each for the sale. I wouldn't be very happy about that if I was them.
The important thing happening here is not the Napster illegal copying thing, but the fact that manufacturing media, whether tape, CD or Vinyl, has been irrelevant. Now days, the consumer is willing to pick up the tab on the actual creation of the recording (The Internet connection, the computer storage space, etc), the cost of the server and the bandwidth can be fully recouped through onsite advertising and cross-marketing of band-related merchandise. Wow! What a business to be in: The cost of producing the physical media (not the music itself) drops to zero. Nearly infinite return on investment.
Another way of looking at it is: The record companies (Not the bands themselves) now are archaic. They really do not add any value to the equation. Instead, there exists technology to allow bands to sell their music DIRECTLY to the listeners! The middleman is now only a sick sucking noise with no point. Of course, there exists the concept of "OK, if this digital data is so easily duplicated, how do we make a profit off this? How do we keep the fans from freely copying everything we release?" Well, that's the problem to be solved. Perhaps by the bands, perhaps by the recording companies, perhaps by the geeks who have been creating the whole Internet from scratch for the last 30 years. Remember when the movie companies freaked when VCRs came out? They were trying to get VCRs deemed illegal, less everyone copy tapes and put the movie industry out of business. But, looking back, it wasn't that they were going out of business (Not even close, movie companies now make more money off tape rentals than they do off the actual theater showings.), it was that they needed to radically change their business model to keep up with the new reality.
We are now living in a "replicator" (ala Star Trek) economy when it comes to music. No longer is the economic bottleneck the manufacturing of physical music media. Now the economic bottleneck is the pure creation of data - aka good music. Also, the bottleneck is marketing the music, reaching the public. Look at mp3.com: There is a lot of very excellent music out there, released in MP3 format by unsigned/unknown bands. It is simply incredible. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of crap there as well. It's the weeding through the bad stuff until you find a gem that gets you. While the current audience doesn't to be spoon-fed crap from the marketing machine, they also have a lazy streak: It is easier to turn on Z-92 and get an OK-level of music quality. You can also go to MP3.com and listen to the top 40 charts for a particular musical genre. Either way, you will hear a lot of good music, but also will encounter the occasional turd music. How to get the word of truely good music out to the people who want to hear it, and how to avoid hearing "turds". Eventually it will probably turn into an artificially intelligent filtering/rating system that will learn your musical interest over time, and will play music, just for you, that it thinks you will like. Even then, artificial intelligence is far from perfect - you will still get turded from time to time. Music companies that can build a reputation of suggesting the good stuff, and keeping the soundscape relatively turd free will be the ones who will have a value to their service, much like a good Internet search engine can pinpoint the relevant information you are searching for.
We can kill the messenger (Napster), but we sure wont kill the message itself (MP3s, or other open, non-encrypted methods of quickly tranmitting music over the Interner). Napster will probably be destroyed in court, but it will not affect the unauthorized copying of music on the Internet. Already there are alternatives, such as Gnutella (Which is somewhat like Napster, but is designed without a central server, no central choke-point like the Napster servers), like the FreeNet protocol, like good old IRC (Not the best way to do it, but it can and has been done that way for years now). As soon as one avenue is blocked, the next way arises. The genie is out of the bottle and she is not going back in. The only way would be to shut off the Internet, and that just ain't gonna happen.
The golden ring in the new world is to find a business model (like the movie companies had to) to profit off this new technology. It is going to be more similar to direct marketing. A lot of it seems to be related to supply and demand. With "replicator" technology, supply is infinite, demand is finite, therefore, the value of the product will have a trend approaching zero. Value must be created, just like any other business, no longer can the music companies with their monopolistic tendancies continue to exist in the parasitical model, instead, then must adapt to a symbiotic model, or die. Instead of feeding on the host (both the music makers, and music buyers), they instead have to find a way to "give back" in a mutually profitable manner. I expect to see the ability to listen to what you want, when you want, in return for a persons business. Instead of buying a whole album for $17.00 with a bunch of songs you don't want, you will simply buy the songs you do want, individually, for something like $1 per song. If the band does this directly, they get pretty much all of the $1 per song (minus administrative fees). If they sold a million songs, they make a million dollars, instead of the $800,000 they would make off selling a million albums after the lions share going to the big music company. Say you have a good album, with 5 hit songs, each selling 2 million copies, the band ends up with $5 x 2,000,000 (10 million dollars) rather than the sucky $0.80 x 2,000,000 ($1,600,000) that they would get for selling two million copies of the whole album.
It's now up to the record companies to start working, start trying, start actually creating value, rather than sitting around bemoaning the way it used to be. Basically everybody now has a record press in their house. Back in the 1950's, nobody had a record press in their house. It's now like selling air. You can sell lemon-scented air, or you can try to sell farts. Which will you spend your money on?
My thoughts, hope you enjoy them. Take them to heart: for better or for worse, the music world is changing! I certainly don't have all the answers, but I definitely see that things will never be the same again. Being creative and intelligent is now the name of the game: You can embrace the new rules, or you can be enslaved and destroyed by them.
-----Original Message----- From: Program Director guySent: Monday, May 08, 2000 9:40 AM
To: Me
Subject: Re:
So, you're saying if you recorded a number one song, and you made a dollar off every one you sold, and someone came, copied it, and was giving it away, and instead of making a million dollars, you made 250 thousand, you'd be OK with that?
Thanks for writing.
Program Director, KEZO/Z-92 Journal Broadcast Group, Omaha Operations Your Radio Store
>>> 05/05/00 10:36PM
>>>
Stop the playing sucky sold-out Muttalikuh already. Have you not been tuned into the Napster ordeal? The have alienated millions of their fans which does not bode well for your audience or advertisers. Metallica is playing now on Z-92, I am turning the dial to www.knac.com soon as I hit Send on this message.
Sell your Metallica stuff! Cheap! Use the market against them!
I suppose there was probably more than just the name, possibly a listing of songs downloaded or other info (IP Address, etc), but it still seems pretty wasteful use of paper.
Isn't there some kind of law against wanton waste of natural resources? (Nah, guess not or all the junksnalmailers and those postcards that fall out of magazines would be illegal too...) Maybe there should be! :)
That is a good thing to see. Actually taking shots at existing theories to see if they will hold water. I do hope they are able to prove that there is enough matter to eventually pull the universe back into the Gnab Gib. It seems lonely and pointless considering the other theory, that the universe will just consider to expand and cool, eventually fading away. Just remember, they expect large scale proton decay in about 30 billion years. That's pretty much the time limit we have. If the universe doesn't start to pull itself together by then, it's just going to fade to black.
I did not know that ISU had CAVE technology! I got snuck into the Cave at University of Illinois @ Urbana/Champagne. It was a fucking trip! The "Cathedral" was awesome. Nothing stranger than virtual suicide - climbing up 20 flights of stairs, then jumping off to fall to the ground at 9.98 meters/sec/sec acceleration, in 5-sided VR that adjusts itself as you move your physical point of view! I never thought I'd have that long to think about it if I jumped off a building!! he "Crayola World" was a trip too: Birds, Bees and trees, all in single-face 3D arrangement, everything scanned-in drawn-by-hand crayon. Too crazy! If ya ever get a chance, check these things out. Ignore the nausea!
I'd almost consider moving there if they would get rid of (1) the damn slow 65 MPH Interstate speed limit (Nebraska is 75) and (2) the state income tax. (Or the state sales tax, one way or another, but both ways ain't fair)
I am a bit confused as to what you people are talking about with this 1024 cylinder limit. I just installed Mandrake Linux on an 8.6 gig drive with zero problems, and the drive states that it has something in the neighborhood of 15000 cylinders. Maybe I just got lucky and avoided it by making a 26 meg /boot partition.
What the fuck ever, how does that contribute to ending disease, ending tyranny, ending hunger?
They don't contribute. They are parasites on the hard workers - the construction workers, the sewer system fixers, the welders and carpenters. Feed all the hard working ones the message that essentially their lives are lame and insignificant compared to the esteemed glory of those who make noise with a gee-tar.
Mattel-ica, Mutt-licka, Modalkuh:
Fuck 'em all (all four of them) and fuck'n no regrets.
Anybody want to buy some metallica CDs, cheap? I don't want them anymore. They were so cool with all their intensity, hunger, and look on life, back in the day. Now they are a bunch of whining shit-boys. I don't want anything to do with such hypocritical weenies. Dick-sucking butt-bandits, all of them!
"Hmmm... Let's see, whom do I think sucks LESS??", I guess this guy here gets my X. I have no recourse if I think they all suck. And, if I skip anyone, at least in my voting area here in Nebraska, they throw my whole ballot out as 'INVALID'. Which is complete shit. I shouldn't be forced to vote for anyone I don't approve of.
Instead of "Which sucks less" I should be able to vote "all these people suck, get someone else...". If a person doesn't gets above a certain level of "no way" votes, they have to re-do that elected position.
Do ya think that's doable?
Maybe not for simple, normal, church-like activities, but definitely for the ones that abuse that status, like all these giant church-owned hospitals/medical groups. They do billions/trillions per year, and overcharge us so bad that even insurance companies have a hard time paying the bill, and it's all tax-free at the top, absolutely disgusting.
Wow, you are just , like, sooo, intligint! D00d!
So, like, shut up already, yer gonna let the evil powerz dat B know all about how to do it wrong and harshly too us!
Amen!