But why should the average user have to worry about tickless after all other OSs figure out your hardware and install the right options. A distribution could worry about the user experience and take care of this automatically or, at worst, ask you if you are installing on a battery powered system.
There is utility in having one entity responsible for the ease of installation and not punting it to the varying knowledge/skill levels of the user.
One: they appear to have evaluated/proven their own work, always a dangerous thing.
Two: they claim to exceed Common Criteria requirements but don't claim Common Criteria evaluation successfully completed which would require a third party evaluation of their methodologies, designs and code against a Protection Profile. This a is a wonderfully complex process usually involving the developer organization, the evaluators and a national standards body empowered to oversee the effort, make their own tests and ultimately grant formal Common Criteria evaluation. In an effort I participated in, it took at least a dozen documents, millions of dollars and dozens of months to get a robust OS through an evaluation. This was done by a very talented group that had more than a dozen years experience providing evaluated products and getting them approved. And such evaluations are country specific as the spook agencies in each country want to have their own look and say.
Three: what is left out of this OS is what makes an OS usable in the real world to do real things that people want to do...like work over a network or work with files.
The ODB2 standard defined certain codes that had to be standard and certain codes that must be revealed and any $49 code reader can read them and potentially shut them off.
But manufacturers also implement extensions to those codes that are for diagnostic purposes or option enabling purposes that they do not allow access to except through proprietary computers which they sell at extremely high cost (high 4 figures) mostly to dealers or to mechanics who specialize in one make of car.
The problem is a "we work on all cars repair shop" can't have the diagnostic computers for all the makes let alone all the manuals that tell them how to troubleshoot the problem (multi-page flow charts), the parts on hand to make the repair a prompt one, the specialized repair tools necessary to do the job or the expertise to do the job right.
I have all the repair codes for one of my cars and all the repair manuals and a code reader. Doesn't mean I can or should do most of the work, (but it does help me keep the repair shop honest).
Doesn't mean a do everything shop is gonna be the right place to take my car for all the possibilities of failure either. I want a shop working on my car that is doing the same car day in and day out and thus has the computer, manuals, parts and expertise to do the job right and promptly.
All makes shops can do some jobs, but there are lots they shouldn't attempt any more than I should.
Nadar's request won't change this because the do every make shop will still not have the parts or manuals or expertise to do many jobs.
It is up to us as consumers to know what each shop can do and pick the right one.
Lets see...you are going to not be physically present to work either hardware or software problems and your people are. And you say you need to give them trivial capabilities that any OS can support and no special aps.
That tells me you ask them what they are used to and find the hardware with the best worldwide support and go with that. The browser will give you access to the apps they will be using. Who cares what browser. Or what OS.
Of course this presupposes that your guess that they will only be using the computers for email and docs and web access is right.
What if they decide 6 months in to edit on site? Or to need some not yet known app. What will set them up best to be able to do that? What choice of HW/OS will best set you up to adapt to unknown needs half way in to the project? And if you are going to consider that then you are back to guessing what they might want and need and you can't just provide the simple solution you thought you could.
First a Mitsubishi from their one brand store as it was really the only game in town. Next from Sears as they had a decent price and I was there after visiting Best Buy and not deciding. 2 days ago after visiting WalMart where they were out of every one of a size and brand I'd consider, was it Costco and drove home with it. Their selection was medium, price good, condition of box (and product on installation) perfect, sales pressure/help not needed.
Interesting article in Business Week on liquidators and how they operate. Don't expect bargains until the last days when there is darn near nothing anyone wants left. It wasn't Circuit City people selling in those last days, it was the liquidator setting the prices and hiring the existing staff.
And I'm talking evidence from peer reviewed studies of success rates and complications rates over thousands of patients. Early detection can result is very high cure rates, and late detection very low.
Biopsy is certainly something that you want someone well practiced in the art performing. But once you have had a repeatedly elevated PSA or a rapidly changing for the worse PSA, to not get a Biopsy invites what can be a painful demise.
Prostate cancer isn't just one kind of cancer, doesn't just affect the prostate and doesn't grow slowly in all men. There are types that originate in the prostate but then can spread outside the prostate capsule through the body and, when finally detected in late stages due to some complaint other than a urinary one, can have affected the bones or other organs. At this stage, surgery or radiation can do little for the man. Yes, there are people who are old enough or ill enough that something else will get them before the prostate cancer. But dying of an aggressive prostate cancer that has gone undetected and spread is a painful way to go.
I was treated with a lot of people of varying ages, some with young kids, some in their 80s. Truck drivers and physicians, IT workers and farmers. From all over the world. 16% of men will get it.
My prostate rectal exam always came back: smooth and normal. Only the Biopsy detected it and, by the time I had the Biopsy, my cancer was in several sites within the prostate. The Biopsey results in a Gleeson score which is a measure of the aggressiveness of the cancer.
The rule of thumb is: If you are African-American or you have a family history of some prostate cancer, you should get the PSA test starting at age 40. Else start testing at 50.
Said as one who just had treatment for prostate cancer. The treatment (www.rcog.com) was chosen from about 8 possibilities because the treatment was evidence based/proven and the Dr could tell me based on my PSA (blood test) and Gleeson (results of Biopsy) scores the statistical probability of my total cure measured 10 years from now with a.2 PSA as the measure of the cure rate. I wanted a cure, not someone who would treat me, did few treatments and didn't adjust his treatments based on the statistics of his success/failures with patients. I will be followed up every 6 months until I die as my results go into the 12k person data base the practice keeps.
Using the same treatment, early detection can change the cure rate from as high as over 97% to below 40%.
GET TESTED
(They do not know why AA men get cancer earlier and get a more aggressive form, just that they do and it needs to be caught earlier to have the same chance of successful treatment.)
between opposing opinions of the desirability or design of a feature. And there is risk of introducing new bugs by adding features or getting insufficient testing by introducing new features or code changes late in the product time line.
Any product manager has had to wrestle with the desire to satisfy with features, the desire for stability and the production target date. It isn't easy...partially because users have little appreciation of the chaos their requests introduce into the production process...nor should they care...it is the PM's job to filter the inputs and come up with workable a plan within resources and time lines...and the users job to judge the finished product.
And why there are cut off dates for feature changes that are different and earlier than for bug fixes. Feature changes generate too much risk if introduced late in the cycle.
As one who had the fate of his company's yearly reporting resting on a delivery date being met, I can tell you it isn't an easy call you make when you say "ship it" and you don't always get it right. Get it wrong and you are looking for a new job in another industry.
for when they have to reply to an anti-trust complaint.
Why does IE have the highest usage ranking?
Because it comes with Windows and has been tested in advance to work with Windows. So people have no reason to try the many options that are different. People don't want different, they want familiar. Another reason is because IE terminates normally and doesn't leave processes hanging like Firefox has done for the last 2 years. I love Firefox's interface and use its latest (on both XP and Vista) but am not blind to its faults and can't set my wife up to use it. I'd have to be her full time process killer.
And Google's quality in most of their applications lacks IMHO compared to Microsoft's (compare Gmail to Outlook).
produced 4 large yard trash bags full of acorns just from the 400 sq foot parking pad which is located under its branches and perhaps covers 20% of the total area under its branches. While last year it produced about 5 to 10% of that.
I figure that this single tree produced between 400 and 800 pounds of acorns this year! Based on having to pick up the bags I shoveled them into from the parking pad.
The difference was a months long drought the year before and then this year we were consistently above seasonal average rainfalls through the entire year.
My other oak trees were also putting out acorns in heavy volumes this year in contrast to last.
When trees are feeling unstressed, they put energy into reproduction. When they are stressed, they focus on self-preservation.
the entire HOA escrow account, over $300k, that was being accrued to cover road paving when it was needed. No bonding because he was a neighbor. We have had a legal fight to remove the president of the HOA that has cost 6 months and probably $50k in legal fees.
And I want another HOA like entity? Not on your live.
Here are the job requirements (in writing given at the interview table to each candidates)
Do you have any questions about them?
Now tell me how your experience and aptitudes and training enables you to meet this requirement.
and this one...
Take notes about what they say and your impressions and score each applicant.
By tying the question you ask to job requirements and the selection process to their answers, you stay legal in your selections...fair too. And by not asking a bunch of "I wonder" questions, you stay efficient.
The very fact that you have to reduce the job requirements to less than a dozen sentences makes you focus on what you really want/need from the position.
Digital TV is affected by sightlines far more than analog, is more directional, is affected by rain/snow, and can even be affected by wind blowing trees.
Where I used to live, I could get channels 3 ways, analog, digital over the air and satellite. Analog flawlessly over the outside antenna and even pick up signals from cities 50 miles away that were watchable. I lived perhaps 12 miles from the towers and had a new, installed by a professional, designed for DTV best possible antenna AND ROTOR mounted on a chimney. I lived surrounded by 60 foot oaks and in a dip but by no means was my house the lowest in the neighborhood.
Yet the signals I got via DTV were horrible most of the time. In the fall, after the leaves were gone, if the air was still, I could get the DTV signals most of the time. But come spring and the leaves start growing or if there was anything in the air like falling leaves, rain or snow...forget it. Even swaying trees.
I do recall tracking a tornado via TV about a mile from our home and still being able to get analog but neither DTV or satellite. The first disaster with loss of life which happens after the DTV switch, this is going to be a big issue.
This is all about lobbying by the cable TV industry, the satellite industry, and congress who can't stick to a budget and thus needs the billions from the spectrum they are going to sell.
On the plus side, it is forcing the local TV stations to upgrade their equipment and upgrades the picture receivable from cable and satellite. And some people who have clear sightlines and no proximate may benefit most of the time.
Not EAL-4 is not "TOP". Shame on the press release writers for spreading untruths.
Nor is EAL-4 the highest rating an OS product has achieved.
EAL-5 has been achieved by only one complex product in the world last I looked (BAE's STOP OS, a Linux look-alike in API/ABI running on an Intel CPUed platform) and it doesn't lose its security rating when connected to a network.
The value of the rating system is that it lets everyone see the criteria under which you were judged and the degree of excellence against those criteria determined by independent judges. But the person selecting the product has to know a lot about security to be able to understand the value provided. For example, it is easy to configure most EAL-4 rated OSs in such a way that they void their rating.
Having been the Product Manager during the STOP evaluation, let me congratulate Red Hat as achieving EAL 4 is a great achievement for their team (and was required of us before we could even submit for an EAL-5). May they now go on and undergo additional time, expense and pain in striving for a higher rating.
I just bought a Sony TV that has embedded Linux and whose documentation contains the appropriate credits and disclaimers. You can assume they did the appropriate legal investigation before they based their rendering engine (the software that converts one form of display coming in over cable to the native resolution of the TV screen) on Linux and OSS libraries. My cable box does too.
So be reassured, if the big boys do it with much to lose (the rendering engine is one of the few product differentiators the flat screen TV makers have and the cheap panel makers would love to have Sony's), so can you.
Having said that, every time you use a library, you need to read and understand the licensing terms of that library.
and Gmail (to me) lacks the ease of use and the documentation that Exchange offers.
I used Exchange and Outlook in a more complex environment for many years and was the first in my company to use them and to test new features as they came out. I shared calenders with 1000 people and had both corporate and private address books, the private consisting of perhaps 100 people in other corporations and 100 personals. Their reliability was outstanding. Some praise goes to the IT department and finance types as we were never wanting for the right hardware or software or monitoring.
I've use Gmail since it was publicly available in a home environment with perhaps 200 contacts.
A simple Gmail thing like wanting to forward a message to 2 recipients becomes a cut and paste exercise. Gcal is rudimentary. And there has been precious little new feature adds to get it to a more usable state. It is reliable and it works, it is just so much more work to maintain your contacts and to interplay between contacts, email and calender, things I took for granted in Exchange/Outlook.
Its functionality like this from its apps that Linux needs to support corporate use. Linux is wonderful for software development and for many server side tasks, but if it wants to penetrate corporations for all tasks, somehow it has to offer equivalent functionality. And Gmail, in its present state, just isn't it.
Now tell me why Gmail was brought out and then abandoned? Can I trust Google... because I don't see signs of long term commitment to the betterment and support of the Gmail product... something I look for in a supplier. I see Google not learning from what Microsoft showed us works, bring it out, learn from feedback and keep working at it until by rev 3 or 4 it really works right.
I played typical user and went to Mazda USA's site and the first thing I tried rendered differently and dysfunctionally with IE7, and worked perfectly on Firefox 1.5x. When you can't even select the car you want to look at from a pull down menu, you know that at least that site has troubles, done no testing, and will have to make changes for IE7 where Firefox needs none.
No idea if this is typical or not and hesitate to extrapolate from a limited sample. But failing 1 for 1 caused me to quickly revert back to Firefox.
Not to mention that configuring IE7 the safe way through their automated suggestion box somehow did what IE7 promised it wouldn't do, made IE7 my default browser without my knowing or being asked. A manual reversion through Firefox cured that ill.
I was a long time computer type, having used Multics' forum before the personal computer craze began. I got into PCs through the Atari 400/800 side and produced the Washington DC area bulletin board list for that community for a few years, then gravitated to the IBM side due to work related use.
The unique aspect of my list was that it contained only phone numbers and data that were verified every month. Now remember many of these boards had one phone line so you had to wait in line to verify that the board was still operating. I could get 90% the first week of the month, 97% by the end of the second week, and then it was a struggle to get the last 3%. Sysops liked the list because it contained a short summary of what the focus of the board was so they weren't spending time verifying one time callers.
Just to focus on the DC area IBM boards, at the beginning there were perhaps 50 which over time grew to 750 that I could dial locally (and boy did I hear from the SysOp who was just outside my range, how I was discriminating by not listing him. Some even got one local-to-me number so they could be listed.). There was about a 5% drop out rate per month, even at the height. Mostly kiddie boards when mom and pop found out they couldn't use their phones. As the Internet became the new thing, boards started dying so that the drop over a year must have been 70%. It was quite sudden, you could hear the whoosh. At the end, there were perhaps 70 boards still up but no one was using them. I could verify them all in about 2 hours.
My kids got status in school for a while because their dad was the BBS list guy. All I got is a lot of lost sleep. Though oddly enough, perhaps 10 years after the boards died, I ended up hiring one of the SysOps. I still bump into someone occasionally who remembers my name from those days. I have no idea how many are still operating in the DC area.
Every once in a while I get a querry from one of the BBS historians asking if I have data on how many lasted through the entire period etc. Strangely enough, I still have a few of those old ZIP files lying around. None of the files I produced for the Atari community though.
I can tell you that it is not a rubber stamp process as ours took well over 16 months and several submissions, back and forth questions and answers, clarifications and justifications. Probably several hundred pages in total and I shudder to think what it cost in lawyer fees. The USPO examiner did his job and really made us work for it, narrowing the claims and causing us to better differentiate from prior patented software.
It is reviewed by an independent qualified reviewer who has access to the build and source materials versus not-reviewed.
I worked for a very proprietary OS development group that submitted its source to two independent review and verification organizations. We received a very detailed summary of their findings. We fixed all the issues and resubmitted and they accepted the results. It is how the resultant OS got the highest Common Criteria Security Rating ever given to an OS. And it was done with a proprietary development model. And later versions will get the review again.
I bring this up only to point out that Proprietary and Independent Review aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, all you have to do is find a way to get that quality independent review.
Sometimes the reviewer wants publicity. Sometimes $$$.
No matter, it is the review and the quality of the reviewers that matters.
Clear notice that this was an optional install. I could have elected not to install it and had my machine function as before. I had to read a statement and check a box saying I understood and agreed.
We can argue the merits of the actual software that is installed.
I live in a development that is fed by overhead wires but the development itself has its wires underground. The development is 30 years old. Over the last 3 years, 6 of 12 houses have had sections of their underground lines replaced. When that happens, everyone is without power for a day or two. During the same time, numerous thunderstorms. Trees on power lines. Generally fixed in 6 hours.
With overhead wires, it is easier to spot problems, easier and cheaper to get at the problem, easier to fix it, and easier and cheaper to move the line if construction causes the need.
The most secure OS ever was SCOMP, validated A1 by NSA under the TCSEC criteria. Next was STOP repeatedly validated B3 and EAL5 Augmented under TCSEC and Common Criteria. No form of Windows even came close.
So will Microsoft submit Vista to an independent security analysis by industry standards? They will have get a Common Criteria "rating" to sell it to the US Government and other governments. At what level will they submit (you declare how high you are attempting to achieve when you begin the process)?
The proof of their confidence in "most secure" will be to see what level they try to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
But why should the average user have to worry about tickless
after all other OSs figure out your hardware and install the right options. A distribution could worry about the user experience and take care of this automatically or, at worst, ask you if you are installing on a battery powered system.
There is utility in having one entity responsible for the ease of installation and not punting it to the varying knowledge/skill levels of the user.
If Microsoft and Apple can do it....
One: they appear to have evaluated/proven their own work, always a dangerous thing.
Two: they claim to exceed Common Criteria requirements but don't claim Common Criteria evaluation successfully completed which would require a third party evaluation of their methodologies, designs and code against a Protection Profile. This a is a wonderfully complex process usually involving the developer organization, the evaluators and a national standards body empowered to oversee the effort, make their own tests and ultimately grant formal Common Criteria evaluation. In an effort I participated in, it took at least a dozen documents, millions of dollars and dozens of months to get a robust OS through an evaluation. This was done by a very talented group that had more than a dozen years experience providing evaluated products and getting them approved. And such evaluations are country specific as the spook agencies in each country want to have their own look and say.
Three: what is left out of this OS is what makes an OS usable in the real world to do real things that people want to do...like work over a network or work with files.
The ODB2 standard defined certain codes that had to be standard and certain codes that must be revealed and any $49 code reader can read them and potentially shut them off.
But manufacturers also implement extensions to those codes that are for diagnostic purposes or option enabling purposes that they do not allow access to except through proprietary computers which they sell at extremely high cost (high 4 figures) mostly to dealers or to mechanics who specialize in one make of car.
The problem is a "we work on all cars repair shop" can't have the diagnostic computers for all the makes let alone all the manuals that tell them how to troubleshoot the problem (multi-page flow charts), the parts on hand to make the repair a prompt one, the specialized repair tools necessary to do the job or the expertise to do the job right.
I have all the repair codes for one of my cars and all the repair manuals and a code reader. Doesn't mean I can or should do most of the work, (but it does help me keep the repair shop honest).
Doesn't mean a do everything shop is gonna be the right place to take my car for all the possibilities of failure either. I want a shop working on my car that is doing the same car day in and day out and thus has the computer, manuals, parts and expertise to do the job right and promptly.
All makes shops can do some jobs, but there are lots they shouldn't attempt any more than I should.
Nadar's request won't change this because the do every make shop will still not have the parts or manuals or expertise to do many jobs.
It is up to us as consumers to know what each shop can do and pick the right one.
Lets see...you are going to not be physically present to work either hardware or software problems and your people are. And you say you need to give them trivial capabilities that any OS can support and no special aps.
That tells me you ask them what they are used to and find the hardware with the best worldwide support and go with that. The browser will give you access to the apps they will be using. Who cares what browser. Or what OS.
Of course this presupposes that your guess that they will only be using the computers for email and docs and web access is right.
What if they decide 6 months in to edit on site? Or to need some not yet known app. What will set them up best to be able to do that? What choice of HW/OS will best set you up to adapt to unknown needs half way in to the project? And if you are going to consider that then you are back to guessing what they might want and need and you can't just provide the simple solution you thought you could.
Good luck.
First a Mitsubishi from their one brand store as it was really the only game in town. Next from Sears as they had a decent price and I was there after visiting Best Buy and not deciding. 2 days ago after visiting WalMart where they were out of every one of a size and brand I'd consider, was it Costco and drove home with it. Their selection was medium, price good, condition of box (and product on installation) perfect, sales pressure/help not needed.
Interesting article in Business Week on liquidators and how they operate. Don't expect bargains until the last days when there is darn near nothing anyone wants left. It wasn't Circuit City people selling in those last days, it was the liquidator setting the prices and hiring the existing staff.
And I'm talking evidence from peer reviewed studies of success rates and complications rates over thousands of patients. Early detection can result is very high cure rates, and late detection very low.
Biopsy is certainly something that you want someone well practiced in the art performing. But once you have had a repeatedly elevated PSA or a rapidly changing for the worse PSA, to not get a Biopsy invites what can be a painful demise.
Prostate cancer isn't just one kind of cancer, doesn't just affect the prostate and doesn't grow slowly in all men. There are types that originate in the prostate but then can spread outside the prostate capsule through the body and, when finally detected in late stages due to some complaint other than a urinary one, can have affected the bones or other organs. At this stage, surgery or radiation can do little for the man. Yes, there are people who are old enough or ill enough that something else will get them before the prostate cancer. But dying of an aggressive prostate cancer that has gone undetected and spread is a painful way to go.
I was treated with a lot of people of varying ages, some with young kids, some in their 80s. Truck drivers and physicians, IT workers and farmers. From all over the world. 16% of men will get it.
My prostate rectal exam always came back: smooth and normal. Only the Biopsy detected it and, by the time I had the Biopsy, my cancer was in several sites within the prostate. The Biopsey results in a Gleeson score which is a measure of the aggressiveness of the cancer.
(www.rcog.com is a good reference site)
The rule of thumb is: If you are African-American or you have a family history of some prostate cancer, you should get the PSA test starting at age 40. Else start testing at 50.
Said as one who just had treatment for prostate cancer. The treatment (www.rcog.com) was chosen from about 8 possibilities because the treatment was evidence based/proven and the Dr could tell me based on my PSA (blood test) and Gleeson (results of Biopsy) scores the statistical probability of my total cure measured 10 years from now with a .2 PSA as the measure of the cure rate. I wanted a cure, not someone who would treat me, did few treatments and didn't adjust his treatments based on the statistics of his success/failures with patients. I will be followed up every 6 months until I die as my results go into the 12k person data base the practice keeps.
Using the same treatment, early detection can change the cure rate from as high as over 97% to below 40%.
GET TESTED
(They do not know why AA men get cancer earlier and get a more aggressive form, just that they do and it needs to be caught earlier to have the same chance of successful treatment.)
it is losing market share month by month. And browsers which didn't exist 2 years ago are gaining.
So the barrier to entry in the browser market must not be so compelling as to prevent another entrant. Nor is the barrier to success.
And customers/consumers have (and had) multiple choices and are taking advantage of them.
So why the case?
between opposing opinions of the desirability or design of a feature. And there is risk of introducing new bugs by adding features or getting insufficient testing by introducing new features or code changes late in the product time line.
Any product manager has had to wrestle with the desire to satisfy with features, the desire for stability and the production target date. It isn't easy...partially because users have little appreciation of the chaos their requests introduce into the production process...nor should they care...it is the PM's job to filter the inputs and come up with workable a plan within resources and time lines...and the users job to judge the finished product.
And why there are cut off dates for feature changes that are different and earlier than for bug fixes. Feature changes generate too much risk if introduced late in the cycle.
As one who had the fate of his company's yearly reporting resting on a delivery date being met, I can tell you it isn't an easy call you make when you say "ship it" and you don't always get it right. Get it wrong and you are looking for a new job in another industry.
for when they have to reply to an anti-trust complaint.
Why does IE have the highest usage ranking?
Because it comes with Windows and has been tested in advance to work with Windows. So people have no reason to try the many options that are different. People don't want different, they want familiar. Another reason is because IE terminates normally and doesn't leave processes hanging like Firefox has done for the last 2 years. I love Firefox's interface and use its latest (on both XP and Vista) but am not blind to its faults and can't set my wife up to use it. I'd have to be her full time process killer.
And Google's quality in most of their applications lacks IMHO compared to Microsoft's (compare Gmail to Outlook).
produced 4 large yard trash bags full of acorns just from the 400 sq foot parking pad which is located under its branches and perhaps covers 20% of the total area under its branches. While last year it produced about 5 to 10% of that.
I figure that this single tree produced between 400 and 800 pounds of acorns this year! Based on having to pick up the bags I shoveled them into from the parking pad.
The difference was a months long drought the year before and then this year we were consistently above seasonal average rainfalls through the entire year.
My other oak trees were also putting out acorns in heavy volumes this year in contrast to last.
When trees are feeling unstressed, they put energy into reproduction. When they are stressed, they focus on self-preservation.
the entire HOA escrow account, over $300k, that was being accrued to cover road paving when it was needed. No bonding because he was a neighbor. We have had a legal fight to remove the president of the HOA that has cost 6 months and probably $50k in legal fees.
And I want another HOA like entity? Not on your live.
Here are the job requirements (in writing given at the interview table to each candidates)
Do you have any questions about them?
Now tell me how your experience and aptitudes and training enables you to meet this requirement.
and this one...
Take notes about what they say and your impressions and score each applicant.
By tying the question you ask to job requirements and the selection process to their answers, you stay legal in your selections...fair too. And by not asking a bunch of "I wonder" questions, you stay efficient.
The very fact that you have to reduce the job requirements to less than a dozen sentences makes you focus on what you really want/need from the position.
It is far worse than even you make it out to be.
Digital TV is affected by sightlines far more than analog, is more directional, is affected by rain/snow, and can even be affected by wind blowing trees.
Where I used to live, I could get channels 3 ways, analog, digital over the air and satellite. Analog flawlessly over the outside antenna and even pick up signals from cities 50 miles away that were watchable. I lived perhaps 12 miles from the towers and had a new, installed by a professional, designed for DTV best possible antenna AND ROTOR mounted on a chimney. I lived surrounded by 60 foot oaks and in a dip but by no means was my house the lowest in the neighborhood.
Yet the signals I got via DTV were horrible most of the time. In the fall, after the leaves were gone, if the air was still, I could get the DTV signals most of the time. But come spring and the leaves start growing or if there was anything in the air like falling leaves, rain or snow...forget it. Even swaying trees.
I do recall tracking a tornado via TV about a mile from our home and still being able to get analog but neither DTV or satellite. The first disaster with loss of life which happens after the DTV switch, this is going to be a big issue.
This is all about lobbying by the cable TV industry, the satellite industry, and congress who can't stick to a budget and thus needs the billions from the spectrum they are going to sell.
On the plus side, it is forcing the local TV stations to upgrade their equipment and upgrades the picture receivable from cable and satellite. And some people who have clear sightlines and no proximate may benefit most of the time.
Not EAL-4 is not "TOP". Shame on the press release writers for spreading untruths.
Nor is EAL-4 the highest rating an OS product has achieved.
EAL-5 has been achieved by only one complex product in the world last I looked (BAE's STOP OS, a Linux look-alike in API/ABI running on an Intel CPUed platform) and it doesn't lose its security rating when connected to a network.
The value of the rating system is that it lets everyone see the criteria under which you were judged and the degree of excellence against those criteria determined by independent judges. But the person selecting the product has to know a lot about security to be able to understand the value provided. For example, it is easy to configure most EAL-4 rated OSs in such a way that they void their rating.
Having been the Product Manager during the STOP evaluation, let me congratulate Red Hat as achieving EAL 4 is a great achievement for their team (and was required of us before we could even submit for an EAL-5). May they now go on and undergo additional time, expense and pain in striving for a higher rating.
I just bought a Sony TV that has embedded Linux and whose documentation contains the appropriate credits and disclaimers. You can assume they did the appropriate legal investigation before they based their rendering engine (the software that converts one form of display coming in over cable to the native resolution of the TV screen) on Linux and OSS libraries. My cable box does too.
So be reassured, if the big boys do it with much to lose (the rendering engine is one of the few product differentiators the flat screen TV makers have and the cheap panel makers would love to have Sony's), so can you.
Having said that, every time you use a library, you need to read and understand the licensing terms of that library.
and Gmail (to me) lacks the ease of use and the documentation that Exchange offers.
... because I don't see signs of long term commitment to the betterment and support of the Gmail product ... something I look for in a supplier. I see Google not learning from what Microsoft showed us works, bring it out, learn from feedback and keep working at it until by rev 3 or 4 it really works right.
... where is rev 3?
I used Exchange and Outlook in a more complex environment for many years and was the first in my company to use them and to test new features as they came out. I shared calenders with 1000 people and had both corporate and private address books, the private consisting of perhaps 100 people in other corporations and 100 personals. Their reliability was outstanding. Some praise goes to the IT department and finance types as we were never wanting for the right hardware or software or monitoring.
I've use Gmail since it was publicly available in a home environment with perhaps 200 contacts.
A simple Gmail thing like wanting to forward a message to 2 recipients becomes a cut and paste exercise. Gcal is rudimentary. And there has been precious little new feature adds to get it to a more usable state. It is reliable and it works, it is just so much more work to maintain your contacts and to interplay between contacts, email and calender, things I took for granted in Exchange/Outlook.
Its functionality like this from its apps that Linux needs to support corporate use. Linux is wonderful for software development and for many server side tasks, but if it wants to penetrate corporations for all tasks, somehow it has to offer equivalent functionality. And Gmail, in its present state, just isn't it.
Now tell me why Gmail was brought out and then abandoned? Can I trust Google
Goggle
IMHO, YMMV
I played typical user and went to Mazda USA's site and the first thing I tried rendered differently and dysfunctionally with IE7, and worked perfectly on Firefox 1.5x. When you can't even select the car you want to look at from a pull down menu, you know that at least that site has troubles, done no testing, and will have to make changes for IE7 where Firefox needs none.
No idea if this is typical or not and hesitate to extrapolate from a limited sample. But failing 1 for 1 caused me to quickly revert back to Firefox.
Not to mention that configuring IE7 the safe way through their automated suggestion box somehow did what IE7 promised it wouldn't do, made IE7 my default browser without my knowing or being asked. A manual reversion through Firefox cured that ill.
FUBAR
I was a long time computer type, having used Multics' forum before the personal computer craze began. I got into PCs through the Atari 400/800 side and produced the Washington DC area bulletin board list for that community for a few years, then gravitated to the IBM side due to work related use.
The unique aspect of my list was that it contained only phone numbers and data that were verified every month. Now remember many of these boards had one phone line so you had to wait in line to verify that the board was still operating. I could get 90% the first week of the month, 97% by the end of the second week, and then it was a struggle to get the last 3%. Sysops liked the list because it contained a short summary of what the focus of the board was so they weren't spending time verifying one time callers.
Just to focus on the DC area IBM boards, at the beginning there were perhaps 50 which over time grew to 750 that I could dial locally (and boy did I hear from the SysOp who was just outside my range, how I was discriminating by not listing him. Some even got one local-to-me number so they could be listed.). There was about a 5% drop out rate per month, even at the height. Mostly kiddie boards when mom and pop found out they couldn't use their phones. As the Internet became the new thing, boards started dying so that the drop over a year must have been 70%. It was quite sudden, you could hear the whoosh. At the end, there were perhaps 70 boards still up but no one was using them. I could verify them all in about 2 hours.
My kids got status in school for a while because their dad was the BBS list guy. All I got is a lot of lost sleep. Though oddly enough, perhaps 10 years after the boards died, I ended up hiring one of the SysOps. I still bump into someone occasionally who remembers my name from those days. I have no idea how many are still operating in the DC area.
Every once in a while I get a querry from one of the BBS historians asking if I have data on how many lasted through the entire period etc. Strangely enough, I still have a few of those old ZIP files lying around. None of the files I produced for the Atari community though.
I can tell you that it is not a rubber stamp process as ours took well over 16 months and several submissions, back and forth questions and answers, clarifications and justifications. Probably several hundred pages in total and I shudder to think what it cost in lawyer fees. The USPO examiner did his job and really made us work for it, narrowing the claims and causing us to better differentiate from prior patented software.
It is reviewed by an independent qualified reviewer who has access to the build and source materials versus not-reviewed.
I worked for a very proprietary OS development group that submitted its source to two independent review and verification organizations. We received a very detailed summary of their findings. We fixed all the issues and resubmitted and they accepted the results. It is how the resultant OS got the highest Common Criteria Security Rating ever given to an OS. And it was done with a proprietary development model. And later versions will get the review again.
I bring this up only to point out that Proprietary and Independent Review aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, all you have to do is find a way to get that quality independent review.
Sometimes the reviewer wants publicity. Sometimes $$$.
No matter, it is the review and the quality of the reviewers that matters.
BAE's STOP is the OS, BTW.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/rfid_pr.h tml
Clear notice that this was an optional install. I could have elected not to install it and had my machine function as before. I had to read a statement and check a box saying I understood and agreed.
We can argue the merits of the actual software that is installed.
I live in a development that is fed by overhead wires but the development itself has its wires underground. The development is 30 years old. Over the last 3 years, 6 of 12 houses have had sections of their underground lines replaced. When that happens, everyone is without power for a day or two. During the same time, numerous thunderstorms. Trees on power lines. Generally fixed in 6 hours.
With overhead wires, it is easier to spot problems, easier and cheaper to get at the problem, easier to fix it, and easier and cheaper to move the line if construction causes the need.
The most secure OS ever was SCOMP, validated A1 by NSA under the TCSEC criteria.
Next was STOP repeatedly validated B3 and EAL5 Augmented under TCSEC and Common Criteria.
No form of Windows even came close.
So will Microsoft submit Vista to an independent security analysis by industry standards? They will have get a Common Criteria "rating" to sell it to the US Government and other governments. At what level will they submit (you declare how high you are attempting to achieve when you begin the process)?
The proof of their confidence in "most secure" will be to see what level they try to achieve.
Bet they don't go above EAL4, probably lower.