Having worked in federal government IT, I can tell you this is entirely believable. When I started working here, support would still walk to hundreds of desktops to manually install a new network printer. They also send out instructions to end users expecting them to search for dll files and check versions to see if a software upgrade was successful. Incompetence is alive and well in government IT.
I've had some managers with liberal arts degrees that certainly did NOT know how to think. Perhaps they do well managing teams of people with the same mindset, but in my experience they utterly fail at managing technical people.
"Fuck you, you fucking fascist" doesn't bolster your argument. It removes credibility from your valid point by making it look like you're trying to shut someone up because they have a different opinion.
If every article about scientific development gets tagged with "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" then anyone can quickly find those articles by searching for that tag. Isn't that the point of the tags? I think this particular tag does a pretty good job of classifying the category of stories that sound like the beginning of a sci-fi thriller.
When Lincoln was elected, a candidate didn't need tens of millions of dollars to stand a chance. Anyone with a soapbox used to be able to tell people about their ideas. Now there is no contest between the candidate spending millions on television and the guy doing nothing but a bus tour.
I work for a federal agency and I see a lot of "stepping over dollars to pick up dimes" when it comes to security. We have CAC authentication and there is now talk of all hard drives being encrypted, while everyone carries around a flash drive full of contractor information and a pst file. It feels like we are going through the motions just so a director can have a nice bulleted list of how secure we are. There is plenty of talk about security with government agencies, but very few properly implement even basic security practices.
The best use of technology I've been a part of was a college algebra teacher using the camera and projector to display problems as she worked them on her notepad. She used different colored markers and everything was faster because she wasn't spending time writing three-inch numbers on a whiteboard or constantly erasing.
Now look at my calculus instructor that tries to use a combination of whiteboard, computer's TI-83 emulator and online resources. It all feels disjointed and awkward, especially when he's constantly walking back and forth to turn the room light on and off.
One uses the technology that assists in teaching, the other seems like he's using technology for technology's sake.
In IT there is the correct way to do something, the cheap way and the easy way.
Very often things like this happen because something is being done the cheap or easy way. There was a way to setup data transfer so that it would be secure, but I guarantee that someone either didn't want to pay for it to be setup or IT didn't want to go through the trouble of setting it up.
He was heavily influenced by Beowulf because it was one of the major Anglo-Saxon works that survived the Norman conquest of England.
I guess "lack of an English mythology" was a poor choice of words on my part. I was thinking that Tolkien believed The Lord of the Rings was the sort of Anglo-Saxon story that would have naturally developed had England not fallen under Norman rule.
It was late 70s/early 80s. The artwork was from the Rankin/Bass animated movie.
Now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure it came from Hardees. I may have confused it with the Gremlins book-and-record series. It was a while ago.
"The danger is this: every person or child who is introduced to probably the greatest story ever conceived and delivered will come into it... in a game.... "
At least they are being exposed to it in the first place.
I never would have read the books had I not received a version of The Hobbit on one of those little records from Hardees. Remember those? Where the chime told you when to turn the page?
That short little story on a record caused me to ask my parents for the real books. Had I not been exposed to that cheesy fast food promotion, I may not have read Tolkien until much later in my life.
I am no Tolkien scholar, but I thought a big motivation for him to write was the lack of an English mythology. I thought he saw stories from Greek and Norse mythology inspiring others to create their own interpretations and wished that his own country had more of that sort of history to build on.
I would think Tolkien would have been very happy having others take his work, build on it and express it in their own ways and in different mediums.
I've worked for private companies, local government and federal government. IT in some federal agencies is very scary.
CAC cards are used, but terminal servers and websites for teleworking still allow username/password.
Blackberries get CAC card readers for encrypted email, while flash drives and external hard drives are thrown into purses and bags.
Remote computers co-located at contractor facilities STILL store LM hashes and don't have the physical security of a DoD office.
EVERYONE writes down passwords because they have a dozen passwords to keep track of and each one is kept very similar to the next.
Most users would not think twice about freely giving their password in a social engineering attack because IT here has gotten everyone in the habit of handing out their password to IT to "make things easier."
Everyone is a local administrator, so google toolbars and instant messaging programs pop up here and there. The creative users block group policy.
Don't even get me started on how the systems are managed. No folder redirection, no user storage on servers. Everyone stores their data on the local hard drive, and because they are local admins they put it anywhere. I've seen a guy storing his documents in c:\windows\system32.
For years, a huge problem with Windows has been the lack of a decent command line. If the CLI is a dinosaur and no longer needed, Microsoft wouldn't have bothered with powershell.
When I worked for Capital One, all email was automatically deleted after 30 days and pst files were not allowed. When someone asked us how they were supposed to keep information they would continue to need, we had to tell them to print it out.
I disagree. What is a great interface for one person may be an eyesore for another. I like being able to customize the inteface to look and work the way that is best for me.
If you have a really great interface design, then yeah it's easy for everyone to adapt to it. However, I would prefer to adapt the inteface to me instead of the other way around.
One of the best features of WoW is the way you can customize your entire interface and create custom modifications. Will players have the same ability to tweak the interface of Warhammer Online?
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Having worked in federal government IT, I can tell you this is entirely believable. When I started working here, support would still walk to hundreds of desktops to manually install a new network printer. They also send out instructions to end users expecting them to search for dll files and check versions to see if a software upgrade was successful. Incompetence is alive and well in government IT.
I've had some managers with liberal arts degrees that certainly did NOT know how to think. Perhaps they do well managing teams of people with the same mindset, but in my experience they utterly fail at managing technical people.
"Fuck you, you fucking fascist" doesn't bolster your argument. It removes credibility from your valid point by making it look like you're trying to shut someone up because they have a different opinion.
If every article about scientific development gets tagged with "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" then anyone can quickly find those articles by searching for that tag. Isn't that the point of the tags? I think this particular tag does a pretty good job of classifying the category of stories that sound like the beginning of a sci-fi thriller.
The summary sounds more like an April Fool's article than News for Nerds.
When Lincoln was elected, a candidate didn't need tens of millions of dollars to stand a chance. Anyone with a soapbox used to be able to tell people about their ideas. Now there is no contest between the candidate spending millions on television and the guy doing nothing but a bus tour.
I work for a federal agency and I see a lot of "stepping over dollars to pick up dimes" when it comes to security. We have CAC authentication and there is now talk of all hard drives being encrypted, while everyone carries around a flash drive full of contractor information and a pst file. It feels like we are going through the motions just so a director can have a nice bulleted list of how secure we are. There is plenty of talk about security with government agencies, but very few properly implement even basic security practices.
You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
The best use of technology I've been a part of was a college algebra teacher using the camera and projector to display problems as she worked them on her notepad. She used different colored markers and everything was faster because she wasn't spending time writing three-inch numbers on a whiteboard or constantly erasing.
Now look at my calculus instructor that tries to use a combination of whiteboard, computer's TI-83 emulator and online resources. It all feels disjointed and awkward, especially when he's constantly walking back and forth to turn the room light on and off.
One uses the technology that assists in teaching, the other seems like he's using technology for technology's sake.
How long have rainbow tables been around? And hasn't just about everyone stopped storing LM hashes?
In IT there is the correct way to do something, the cheap way and the easy way.
Very often things like this happen because something is being done the cheap or easy way. There was a way to setup data transfer so that it would be secure, but I guarantee that someone either didn't want to pay for it to be setup or IT didn't want to go through the trouble of setting it up.
He was heavily influenced by Beowulf because it was one of the major Anglo-Saxon works that survived the Norman conquest of England.
I guess "lack of an English mythology" was a poor choice of words on my part. I was thinking that Tolkien believed The Lord of the Rings was the sort of Anglo-Saxon story that would have naturally developed had England not fallen under Norman rule.
It was late 70s/early 80s. The artwork was from the Rankin/Bass animated movie.
- and-book-1977-TOLKIEN_W0QQitemZ270125419460QQihZ01 7QQcategoryZ29799QQcmdZViewItem
Now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure it came from Hardees. I may have confused it with the Gremlins book-and-record series. It was a while ago.
http://cgi.ebay.com/THE-HOBBIT-Rankin-Bass-record
"The danger is this: every person or child who is introduced to probably the greatest story ever conceived and delivered will come into it ... in a game.... "
At least they are being exposed to it in the first place.
I never would have read the books had I not received a version of The Hobbit on one of those little records from Hardees. Remember those? Where the chime told you when to turn the page?
That short little story on a record caused me to ask my parents for the real books. Had I not been exposed to that cheesy fast food promotion, I may not have read Tolkien until much later in my life.
I am no Tolkien scholar, but I thought a big motivation for him to write was the lack of an English mythology. I thought he saw stories from Greek and Norse mythology inspiring others to create their own interpretations and wished that his own country had more of that sort of history to build on.
I would think Tolkien would have been very happy having others take his work, build on it and express it in their own ways and in different mediums.
I really hope the majority of agencies function more like the IRS than mine.
I've worked for private companies, local government and federal government. IT in some federal agencies is very scary.
CAC cards are used, but terminal servers and websites for teleworking still allow username/password.
Blackberries get CAC card readers for encrypted email, while flash drives and external hard drives are thrown into purses and bags.
Remote computers co-located at contractor facilities STILL store LM hashes and don't have the physical security of a DoD office.
EVERYONE writes down passwords because they have a dozen passwords to keep track of and each one is kept very similar to the next.
Most users would not think twice about freely giving their password in a social engineering attack because IT here has gotten everyone in the habit of handing out their password to IT to "make things easier."
Everyone is a local administrator, so google toolbars and instant messaging programs pop up here and there. The creative users block group policy.
Don't even get me started on how the systems are managed. No folder redirection, no user storage on servers. Everyone stores their data on the local hard drive, and because they are local admins they put it anywhere. I've seen a guy storing his documents in c:\windows\system32.
For years, a huge problem with Windows has been the lack of a decent command line. If the CLI is a dinosaur and no longer needed, Microsoft wouldn't have bothered with powershell.
The babe with the power.
Noooooooo!
When I worked for Capital One, all email was automatically deleted after 30 days and pst files were not allowed. When someone asked us how they were supposed to keep information they would continue to need, we had to tell them to print it out.
Yeah, I'm pretty confident that MOST people don't have 16 boxes at home.
QQ more nub.
I disagree. What is a great interface for one person may be an eyesore for another. I like being able to customize the inteface to look and work the way that is best for me. If you have a really great interface design, then yeah it's easy for everyone to adapt to it. However, I would prefer to adapt the inteface to me instead of the other way around.
One of the best features of WoW is the way you can customize your entire interface and create custom modifications. Will players have the same ability to tweak the interface of Warhammer Online?