So I can laugh as you suffer through endless sleepless, sexless nights, cleaning up the next generation of super worm, using idiot cellphones to spread by showing them a caller ID or email from "Sexyfun.net" or "Sexy Snow White"... yep, good luck chief, better you than me:) I'll stick to my Zaurus and Linux.
The business are only concerned about money (it's called Capitalism, it's fairly common in the western world, you might have heard of it - it pays your salary). They don't care about "better", they care about "cost-effective". Show them that, make sure that you can deal with the details (because that's your job, and it's not their job (you know they'd fsck it up!)), and propose the best solution, in simple terms which the CEO will understand. That will improve your credibility, which is a virtuous circle. If you fsck it up, your credibility goes downhill, so be clear up-front about any assumptions, risks, worst-case-scenarios (as well as best-case-scenarios) for all options (your preferred option, as well as the one you are "resisting")
Okay, then do this.
Ask said CEO to FIRE EVERYONE... then, offshore to China, India, Ukraine and Romania all IT and production facilities. Retain sales in US. Support in Afghanistan as they now have newly trained, cheaper than indian, equally shitty english speaking "award winning support" teams.
By your standard, you've solved ALL your problems, AND you've served the true, amoral, uncaring, cold blooded nature of capitalism... and proven why it only works for those at the top who produce nothing but leech everything. Those who make the money and decisions are NOT those who improve the world... they just leech from those that do.
Einstein didnt' create massive corporate capital, but he did (through his contribution to physics and mathematics) improve the world. Point in case, the corporate bastards have retarded social and scientific advancement so they could shackle them to the profit making machine. Is it a great failure of humanity? Yes. Is it any different than the dark ages (from which we were pushed by our contact with the Arabs during the crusades, as they had preserved the stores of greek and roman knowledge destroyed in the dark ages).
That said, I agree with you, here in the west we always have entirely inappropriate reward systems. Man creates cure to AIDS. Man receives a 5 minute prop in his company, company takes all credit, makes all profit... man's job is cancelled to make room for the 5000 chinese workers who will manufacture drug. Long live capitalism (or better known as profitarianism at any cost). (Hint, corporatism and profitarianism taste differently when YOU are eating the shitty portion of the pill.)
Actually PlayOnline was meant to be an interface for SEVERAL games. It ended up being used only for FFXI, but the reason you had several keys, was to try to combat piracy... again a case of DRM IN ALL ITS FORMS STILL SUCKS!! Complain about DRM.
I wager the reason Microsoft didn't force it down your throat, is because XBOX Live games are not PC capable, playonline was console AND PC.. allowing me to play FFXI with a few friends who REFUSED to ever again install windows on their home PC's (and a few who had macs). I had ONE sole dual boot machine (from which I type now) on which I do my gaming (I've reinstalled since then, same hdd, different mobo with dual core beast, but that's extraneous).
Still, I doubt I'll be able to get the same experience from the XBOX 360 as I would from a system I've patched, debugged and worked my ass off to get stable and enhanced performance. (Several weeks of device driver hunting, etc).
It is ridiculous how they latch onto things such as this for lack of a better publicity apparatus.
And what annoys me is that the ORIGINAL use WAS the plus on a white armband, the abovementioned "medical jeep in movies".
It has been in use for medical symbols BEFORE the damn organization came to be. When I was a child, I had not heard of "blue cross blue shield" and when it was presented as "its a medical thing honey, I'll tell you later, but for now I have to talk to the insurance man honey" while I thought to myself "since when did the red cross become a blue one for doctors???" I had grown up with a red cross for medical support in my own country as a child... strange eh? Now its a "trademark" ?? WTF?!
If you play it you play it using an interface called PlayOnline, and as I recall it was a SONY product, and it was a joint project between Square/Enix and Sony, so yes... they are both the same boat when regards to FF Online.
OLD NEWS Enough time has passed, I can now freely say this out loud about my previous employer:)
Seems now, the fellow wanted me back, but was offering shitty pay, a few months ago that is.
Overall, man said he was switching to linux, and they got contracts, where I'd have to even have TS clearance. I'd love to help move an entire half of a state's government machines to Linux but sadly, I'm NEVER working for that outfit again. I fear being entangled by contracts far too much. I also have bills to pay, taking a pay cut to go back to all the stress is simply not worth it. He wanted me bad enough to offer a raise, but he still couldnt match or promise me guaranteed employment.
In regards to the topic at hand.
Let them know about security, let them also know that what you hear from M$ salesmen is not necessarily true. Also, remind them TWO KEY TOPICS.
TOPIC ONE Closed Source vendors only reveal the holes they are FORCED to reveal because they've received publicity, via exploits or proof of concept exploits. Open Source projects see note1, on the other hand, publicize any holes and POSSIBLE holes and they usually have a MUCH faster turnaround for a patch and one that works, as we can all remember how well some of the M$ patches work.
note1 notice I said projects vs vendors, OSS ppl don't sell you anything, you CHOOSE to use it, and nobody takes your lunchmoney because of it.
TOPIC TWO Remember that the biggest issue with windows is that it was a one user system, non network aware, and designed for absolute integration. You cannot remove a component easilly without breaking several (if not the entire system). Remind them also that the biggest issue with integration is that an attack only needs to target the lowest trusted component. This is why "userland" apps in linux behave differently than desktop apps in windows. Linux is, at heart, a Unix and so is BSD, and thus the apple os X, but that is another subject. Which means Linux is inherently a capable server, designed as such, and also designed to be modular, which means you can kill the front end, all of its subprocesses, and restart it, without rebooting the machine and killing any work any non front end users might have been doing via SSH or some other custom app you might have.
Since most users have to work as local machine administrator, as opposed to domain administrator, Windows automatically allows the user to install software and modify any non domain specific settings. As should be obvious to anyone, the moment a user runs a virus or trojan, or spyware and what have you, the local machine admin has been compromised. Windows XP, even after many "fixes" to the well known "Shatter Attack" see note2 STILL suffers from this vulnerability.
note2 a windowed program with even a guest account with NO privileges can hijack any root process running inside another window. To this day winlogon is a system/root process that still suffers from this problem, and you cannot disable it and STILL use windows, there are slipstreamed cds with NO graphics console, but they are pure servers, and have to be command or remote administered, no pretty front end for users.
In the end while Linux and BSD may have their flaws, at the very least they are more quickly fixed, the fixes are more than just a port block, like the Microsoft solution to Winnuke (which was a popular script kiddie port 139 icmp attack) or just plain lies (as is the case, apparently with the Shatter Attack. Granted for Shatter attacks to work, the user running the trojan must have guest access or better to the machine, or trick a legitimate user into running a compromised app but, heh, use your imagination. How often do foolhardy users run things they are not supposed to such look at porn, download "bonzi buddy" or "weatherbug" or any such crap? Spyware and trojans get around via users themselves since real hackers have better things to do, like write code for linux;-)
Sheesh, you must be living at Intel. Ever notice that frequency isn't everything? Hence why in x86 mode, a 2 ghz AMD 64 chip can SLAUGHTER a P4 at 4 ghz... strange eh?? I guess 5 ghz intels will be SOOOO fast, right?
I can believe AMD's but intels are power and heat hogs, apple is hoping its ipod business will make its desktop units more desirable, but now that they're intel based, there is NO reason for me to switch anyone I know to one...
Strangely you answered perfectly... its exactly what the central banks do... the "money printers"... I'll have to think that one over. In board games, if we ran out of cash, we would write it on little papers. The irony is that indeed that is the ONLY thing that they do as well, they print more paper. The only downside is that the paper has no backing, and the stockmarket isn't really a true health meter for the economy. Obviously saying "incomes rose 20% this year" isn't going to cut it if one CEO (for example) got a $500,000.00 / year raise, and a bonus, for firing 10 30k/year employees, and hiring 10 indians for a fraction of one of their salaries. (Nothing against indians, they're just trying to make a living, and our government and corporate systems are not held accountable to the regions that grandfathered them... namely US.)
1987 built home is relatively NEW. Parents house was about 60 or 70 years old. Lots of wiring and AC problems, plumbing issues, took a LOT of cash to fix them. Appreciation was wonderful but sadly it didn't really make up for all the repairs to sell it.:( In my opinion at least. Whole family is handy, but that didn't mean we enjoyed putting a LOT of time into fixing everything.
American dream, officially at least, was keeping up with the Jones'es, or at least, having a good home, sending kids to college, having a good job AND having leisure time and leisure spending money AND having retirement assured after loyal service to a company that would be loyal to you. Seems that we've been reduced from "glorious victory/lifestyle" to "at least we're surviving/hey we're making do... uhh.. barely" status... and we think its "a GOOD thing".
Not to sound that I want the earth and the moon, but its odd when we're reduced to mere wage serfdom, and we think it is a good thing. How is our modern lifestyle any different than being slightly elevated serfs. What would happen if you lost your jobs tomorrow (hopefully not, but think of it as an "if"). Would you have the funds to make do for any period of time? Could you even keep the roof over your heads or the cars in the garage? Gas? Heating? Food? Healthcare? This is what upsets me. Watching this world degrading into the status it had during the feudal ages, only now there is no place left to run. And "the man" grows ever more powerful, until, after reaching a certain tipping point, the only way to clean up the mess IS to eradicate mankind. While I am sure plenty of Apocalypse fanatics wish to bring it about (Dubbyah being among them I wager), I prefer for my future kids to have a nice clean place to live, without having tripple carbon filters just to keep the sludge from seeping into their drinking water, or the bio warfare germs from our weapons tests from killing them because they took a shower and their young skin sucked the stuff right up. It sounds like doomsaying, but hey, everyone thought I was nuts the morning of 9/11 when watching the "attack" replay on TV, I mentioned "I bet they'll use this as a pretext for perpetual warfare against the middle east." Talk about unknowingly predicting the future eh? Not that it was hard to see coming. I've lived under a dictator, even as a child, and I still remember it. Nobody in those days was as gullible as the locals here in the USA are. Sadly, no matter how hard the whistle blowers try, this matter will only be resolved when a revolution starts, and one has to hope it will, because otherwise, the neocons WILL abolish the constitution, slowly, and without directly burning it, they will simply override enough rights and privileges until they manage to make our constitution resemble that of the chinese (remember the one with the oneliner at the end that states "Chinese Citizens are free to practice all of these freedoms unless they infringe upon the interests of the state." BAM there go all your rights!)
If you are christian, you've forgotten the fact that Usury (known as interest rates nowadays) are damned by 2 of the "single god" (monotheistic) religions, Christianity and Islam? (I am uncertain about Judaism since I am unfamiliar with the Talmuddic Torah.)
Beyond that, the logic dictates that if there is $500.00 dollars put into play in a game of monopoly, you cannot collect 500.00 plus 10% interest if there isn't more put into play.
However the resource game is a game of ZERO SUM... There is no more created than is available. Money has been made elastic, but all it does is make YOU have less buying power. Same with ME and everyone else whose name isn't Rothschild (pronounced Roth Shield, not roth's child). Everytime more money is put into play, OUR money loses value. The rich (this means the money printers) lose nothing. They already know that since they control the supply, everyone else plays by their rules. Every country with a central bank, even Switzerland plays by this rule. (Only difference is the Suisse have 40% of their cash backed in gold, everyone else has, well... umm... lets see, we have Electrum and Copper, and they are both going bye bye quite quick).
Anyways, if I give you 500 bucks, and there are only 500 bucks in play, how will you ever pay me back 550?? Please enlighten me. Interest only works if someone's livelihood is annihilated to pay for those that pay interest. I can assure you it will not be the richer group, it will be you or me or someone.
~D
PS - your master's degrees do not make you invincible, and yes, my parents house was 120 when they bought it, it had appreciated to a lot more than that when they considered selling it. I find that paying any interest is a lossy proposition period.
PPS - I do not feel antagonized:) But I am interested how you found such an awesome rate, and how you afford to keep your house maintained (unless it was brand new, most houses have a LOT of secondary costs tacked on, I used to do HVAC work at one time so I've seen repair bills for gas, electrical, etc... and they're NOT pretty).
I swear, if someone acts outraged, they get modded down.
If someone blows up 100 thousand innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a mismanaged campaign to spread religious "democracy" to countries antithetically opposed to "real" freedom, then they almost make it to Time's man of the century.
I am noticing a bit of "lets be pussies and maybe the christian fanatics in Washington DC will notice us" (before their jackbooted ubersoldat's cave our faces in)
BACK TO TOPIC... READ THE POST ABOVE, READ THE ARTICLE AND MOD THE PARENT APPROPRIATELY!!! It is neither OT, but a bit FB maybe. Overall, if nobody gets angry, nothing ever gets done. You all would know that if you lived up to the Founding Fathers' rebellious attitudes. We need some muck rakers since the news organizations SUCK!
I've been using CASH... you need to verify nothing. You and your draconian pigs are demanding too much of me. I will give you cash, and you will give me what I'm PURCHASING from you. I don't need to finance a fucking eggroll! You don't need to know why I'm buying 10 fucking pizzas!! If I'm diabetic and buying sugar, that is MY problem. Maybe I want to die. Who are you to push your draconian and religious bullshit on me?? As long as I don't dump oil into the oceans like your fine christian values oil tycoons (whitehouse.gov) then perhaps you can fuck off and let me live a free life!
Debit cards only for minor things like food and other less "traceable" things I always make sure to buy PORK on a CC so that they know I'm not a muslim... and therefore I cannot be falsely accused of terrorism... we all know how easy it would be to remove a dissenting voice on grounds of "conspiring with enemy because they disagree with fanatical christian pigs" type thing)...
All in all, I buy mostly in cash, especially books. No membership clubs or any such shit. (And the times I've used one, I use a fake phone number... go figure eh?)
I Hate traceability because it does EXACTLY what government control mongers want. Reduce responsability by users, it reduces accountability, and overall increases nothing but convenience for the money printing gods of our world.
I would prefer to never see another consumerist pig tell me how they want to identify me... fuck you... and I'll bring my own cup, just gimme my fucking coffee thank you. (Actually speaking of which, I'd like to see more shops offering larger discounts for being responsible and bringing your own damn cup...)
Also, I'm credit card free since about 5 years ago myself:)
Just finished paying off my school loans recently. Trucking's been nice to me, I just cut the checks to each of them and let them fuck themselves for all I care:)
My grandfather was a boot maker (craftsman for those of you in america who've never met one) in eastern europe.
I still have a few pairs of boots he made before I moved to the USA.
He commanded a premium, made everything out of leather.
I've outgrown those boots, but to this day I cannot find footwear as comfortable or as high quality. (5 years of wearing and they didn't stink or break or need to be resoled, except one pair that needed to be resoled, my 8 yrs age pair, I turned 11 and outgrew that one too:(
My father was a contractor, and he offered 7 and 5 year warantees on his workmanship. You know the amazing thing?? He only ever had to fullfill ONE warranty repair!!!
This is because he commanded a good price (air conditioning, plumbing and gas fitting and electrical) for his area, he was VERY customer service oriented, and he delivered better quality than most (and often he would give a quote, someone would hire someone "they knew to be better" and then would call the old man a week later to fix what those "certified" guys fucked up. I'm not lying. He bought us a house with that business, cars for each family member, computer gear (I worked with him for a LONG time). He never EVER advertised on TV and only ever had ONE newspaper add (and never cold called or gave out flyers). His only advertisement was Word OF MOUTH. All because of QUALITY OF WORK.
Same thing goes for old computer gear, and some cars, I've had a 3 gig IBM from the "olden days" that FINALLY died nearly 11 years later. 1995 to 2006... show me ONE GODDAMN MAXTOR or HITACHI (ibm sold their drive setup to them) that last nearly as long.
Of course that little drive is a collector's item. MADE IN THE USA.
Then they were made in eastern europe, quality still good. Then made in chinese satellite nations,Taiwan and Singapore made good units... Then made in China, and the quality got flushed to the shitter.
Perhaps americans should STOP shopping by price. Perhaps that was the great fallacy at first. Everyone here worries about bottom line and buys the cheapest shit they can. Then they wonder why it breaks.
Corporations caught on to it, and kept making cheaper shit. Seeing that americans didn't care about quality (the majority don't) they sold shittier products at ALL ends of the spectrum.
So we ended up with service and quality going to shit. After all, one way or another you won't stay without high tech goodies and other brand name shit, because you want to be "normal".
And unless you buy stuff made in Canada, and a few in europe... almost all other "high tech goodies" are made in China. You wanted cheaper, YOU GOT IT!! NOW LIVE WITH IT OR FIX IT!
Ah its okay, With conservatives controlling all 3 branches of our government, electronic media is GOOD... they won't have to burn as many books when the Ministry of Truth is established.
Electronic media is SO much easier to keep out of people's hands. You only have to distribute ONE bad copy to get the originals corrupted over time. (And with each original you destroy, yours remains closer to becoming the only one being circulated.)
Because they get FAR more expensive as you go up. Okay, so here's the next setups.
10k rpm (not 15000 mind you) Seagate and Maxtor. Cheapest entries on pricewatch both 495 plus 5 or so shipping UPS ground.
SCSI U320 (nice) and of course they're 300 gigs. GREAT!
Okay now here's the kicker. ALL the other suppliers provide them at 640.00 USD or more. You save some, but the downside I wager is that they won't carry enough to build a large RAID 5 setup. Also, the smaller drives are faster in a large array because you spread the seek requests accross many smaller drives. Same goes with the independent write requests. I don't recall being able to find a SATA raid solution with THAT many sockets that isn't a standalone device / tower.
Again, depending how you do it, you'll end up paying a lot for power and cooling (air conditioning so another power cost).
Bah, I can solve that issue with an Amanda Daemon and won't have to worry about "free" veritas licenses. Especially since they (Veritas) were bought out by Symantec last year, and we've all seen what they did to l0pht heavy industries. (Remember, they became @Stake and were bought by symantec, and now SELL lophtcrack under the monicker LC5 (lophtcrack version 5) but as I understand it, the earlier versions did more back when they were free. I haven't had the guts to shell out 600 bucks or whatnot its gotten to now (I stopped following them) when there are still some pretty good PW crackers out there.)
Slashdot Mirror
So I can laugh as you suffer through endless sleepless, sexless nights, cleaning up the next generation of super worm, using idiot cellphones to spread by showing them a caller ID or email from "Sexyfun.net" or "Sexy Snow White"... yep, good luck chief, better you than me :) I'll stick to my Zaurus and Linux.
~D
EXACTLY what I was saying. :)
~D
Tell that to all the XBOX and 360 bugs :)
~D
The business are only concerned about money (it's called Capitalism, it's fairly common in the western world, you might have heard of it - it pays your salary). They don't care about "better", they care about "cost-effective". Show them that, make sure that you can deal with the details (because that's your job, and it's not their job (you know they'd fsck it up!)), and propose the best solution, in simple terms which the CEO will understand. That will improve your credibility, which is a virtuous circle. If you fsck it up, your credibility goes downhill, so be clear up-front about any assumptions, risks, worst-case-scenarios (as well as best-case-scenarios) for all options (your preferred option, as well as the one you are "resisting")
Okay, then do this.
Ask said CEO to FIRE EVERYONE... then, offshore to China, India, Ukraine and Romania all IT and production facilities. Retain sales in US. Support in Afghanistan as they now have newly trained, cheaper than indian, equally shitty english speaking "award winning support" teams.
By your standard, you've solved ALL your problems, AND you've served the true, amoral, uncaring, cold blooded nature of capitalism... and proven why it only works for those at the top who produce nothing but leech everything. Those who make the money and decisions are NOT those who improve the world... they just leech from those that do.
Einstein didnt' create massive corporate capital, but he did (through his contribution to physics and mathematics) improve the world. Point in case, the corporate bastards have retarded social and scientific advancement so they could shackle them to the profit making machine. Is it a great failure of humanity? Yes. Is it any different than the dark ages (from which we were pushed by our contact with the Arabs during the crusades, as they had preserved the stores of greek and roman knowledge destroyed in the dark ages).
That said, I agree with you, here in the west we always have entirely inappropriate reward systems. Man creates cure to AIDS. Man receives a 5 minute prop in his company, company takes all credit, makes all profit... man's job is cancelled to make room for the 5000 chinese workers who will manufacture drug. Long live capitalism (or better known as profitarianism at any cost). (Hint, corporatism and profitarianism taste differently when YOU are eating the shitty portion of the pill.)
~D
Actually PlayOnline was meant to be an interface for SEVERAL games. It ended up being used only for FFXI, but the reason you had several keys, was to try to combat piracy... again a case of DRM IN ALL ITS FORMS STILL SUCKS!! Complain about DRM.
I wager the reason Microsoft didn't force it down your throat, is because XBOX Live games are not PC capable, playonline was console AND PC.. allowing me to play FFXI with a few friends who REFUSED to ever again install windows on their home PC's (and a few who had macs). I had ONE sole dual boot machine (from which I type now) on which I do my gaming (I've reinstalled since then, same hdd, different mobo with dual core beast, but that's extraneous).
Still, I doubt I'll be able to get the same experience from the XBOX 360 as I would from a system I've patched, debugged and worked my ass off to get stable and enhanced performance. (Several weeks of device driver hunting, etc).
~D
It is ridiculous how they latch onto things such as this for lack of a better publicity apparatus.
And what annoys me is that the ORIGINAL use WAS the plus on a white armband, the abovementioned "medical jeep in movies".
It has been in use for medical symbols BEFORE the damn organization came to be. When I was a child, I had not heard of "blue cross blue shield" and when it was presented as "its a medical thing honey, I'll tell you later, but for now I have to talk to the insurance man honey" while I thought to myself "since when did the red cross become a blue one for doctors???" I had grown up with a red cross for medical support in my own country as a child... strange eh? Now its a "trademark" ?? WTF?!
~D
Trust me it was a sony thing, sony hosted playonline... :)
~D
Sony IS running FF11 (FFO).
If you play it you play it using an interface called PlayOnline, and as I recall it was a SONY product, and it was a joint project between Square/Enix and Sony, so yes... they are both the same boat when regards to FF Online.
~D
OLD NEWS :)
;-)
Enough time has passed, I can now freely say this out loud about my previous employer
Seems now, the fellow wanted me back, but was offering shitty pay, a few months ago that is.
Overall, man said he was switching to linux, and they got contracts, where I'd have to even have TS clearance. I'd love to help move an entire half of a state's government machines to Linux but sadly, I'm NEVER working for that outfit again. I fear being entangled by contracts far too much. I also have bills to pay, taking a pay cut to go back to all the stress is simply not worth it. He wanted me bad enough to offer a raise, but he still couldnt match or promise me guaranteed employment.
In regards to the topic at hand.
Let them know about security, let them also know that what you hear from M$ salesmen is not necessarily true. Also, remind them TWO KEY TOPICS.
TOPIC ONE
Closed Source vendors only reveal the holes they are FORCED to reveal because they've received publicity, via exploits or proof of concept exploits. Open Source projects see note1, on the other hand, publicize any holes and POSSIBLE holes and they usually have a MUCH faster turnaround for a patch and one that works, as we can all remember how well some of the M$ patches work.
note1 notice I said projects vs vendors, OSS ppl don't sell you anything, you CHOOSE to use it, and nobody takes your lunchmoney because of it.
TOPIC TWO
Remember that the biggest issue with windows is that it was a one user system, non network aware, and designed for absolute integration. You cannot remove a component easilly without breaking several (if not the entire system). Remind them also that the biggest issue with integration is that an attack only needs to target the lowest trusted component. This is why "userland" apps in linux behave differently than desktop apps in windows. Linux is, at heart, a Unix and so is BSD, and thus the apple os X, but that is another subject. Which means Linux is inherently a capable server, designed as such, and also designed to be modular, which means you can kill the front end, all of its subprocesses, and restart it, without rebooting the machine and killing any work any non front end users might have been doing via SSH or some other custom app you might have.
Since most users have to work as local machine administrator, as opposed to domain administrator, Windows automatically allows the user to install software and modify any non domain specific settings. As should be obvious to anyone, the moment a user runs a virus or trojan, or spyware and what have you, the local machine admin has been compromised. Windows XP, even after many "fixes" to the well known "Shatter Attack" see note2 STILL suffers from this vulnerability.
note2 a windowed program with even a guest account with NO privileges can hijack any root process running inside another window. To this day winlogon is a system/root process that still suffers from this problem, and you cannot disable it and STILL use windows, there are slipstreamed cds with NO graphics console, but they are pure servers, and have to be command or remote administered, no pretty front end for users.
In the end while Linux and BSD may have their flaws, at the very least they are more quickly fixed, the fixes are more than just a port block, like the Microsoft solution to Winnuke (which was a popular script kiddie port 139 icmp attack) or just plain lies (as is the case, apparently with the Shatter Attack. Granted for Shatter attacks to work, the user running the trojan must have guest access or better to the machine, or trick a legitimate user into running a compromised app but, heh, use your imagination. How often do foolhardy users run things they are not supposed to such look at porn, download "bonzi buddy" or "weatherbug" or any such crap? Spyware and trojans get around via users themselves since real hackers have better things to do, like write code for linux
~D
Most certainly, I have to take off for work, but I'll certainly reply more in depth later on. :)
~D
Sheesh, you must be living at Intel. Ever notice that frequency isn't everything? Hence why in x86 mode, a 2 ghz AMD 64 chip can SLAUGHTER a P4 at 4 ghz... strange eh?? I guess 5 ghz intels will be SOOOO fast, right?
I can believe AMD's but intels are power and heat hogs, apple is hoping its ipod business will make its desktop units more desirable, but now that they're intel based, there is NO reason for me to switch anyone I know to one...
~D
Call it what it is bro, survival, for it certainly is not "affluence".
:)
I'm not bashing you or putting you down, just asking that you call things what they are.
~D
Strangely you answered perfectly... its exactly what the central banks do... the "money printers"...
:( In my opinion at least. Whole family is handy, but that didn't mean we enjoyed putting a LOT of time into fixing everything.
:)
I'll have to think that one over. In board games, if we ran out of cash, we would write it on little papers. The irony is that indeed that is the ONLY thing that they do as well, they print more paper. The only downside is that the paper has no backing, and the stockmarket isn't really a true health meter for the economy. Obviously saying "incomes rose 20% this year" isn't going to cut it if one CEO (for example) got a $500,000.00 / year raise, and a bonus, for firing 10 30k/year employees, and hiring 10 indians for a fraction of one of their salaries. (Nothing against indians, they're just trying to make a living, and our government and corporate systems are not held accountable to the regions that grandfathered them... namely US.)
1987 built home is relatively NEW. Parents house was about 60 or 70 years old. Lots of wiring and AC problems, plumbing issues, took a LOT of cash to fix them. Appreciation was wonderful but sadly it didn't really make up for all the repairs to sell it.
American dream, officially at least, was keeping up with the Jones'es, or at least, having a good home, sending kids to college, having a good job AND having leisure time and leisure spending money AND having retirement assured after loyal service to a company that would be loyal to you. Seems that we've been reduced from "glorious victory/lifestyle" to "at least we're surviving/hey we're making do... uhh.. barely" status... and we think its "a GOOD thing".
Not to sound that I want the earth and the moon, but its odd when we're reduced to mere wage serfdom, and we think it is a good thing. How is our modern lifestyle any different than being slightly elevated serfs. What would happen if you lost your jobs tomorrow (hopefully not, but think of it as an "if"). Would you have the funds to make do for any period of time? Could you even keep the roof over your heads or the cars in the garage? Gas? Heating? Food? Healthcare? This is what upsets me. Watching this world degrading into the status it had during the feudal ages, only now there is no place left to run. And "the man" grows ever more powerful, until, after reaching a certain tipping point, the only way to clean up the mess IS to eradicate mankind. While I am sure plenty of Apocalypse fanatics wish to bring it about (Dubbyah being among them I wager), I prefer for my future kids to have a nice clean place to live, without having tripple carbon filters just to keep the sludge from seeping into their drinking water, or the bio warfare germs from our weapons tests from killing them because they took a shower and their young skin sucked the stuff right up. It sounds like doomsaying, but hey, everyone thought I was nuts the morning of 9/11 when watching the "attack" replay on TV, I mentioned "I bet they'll use this as a pretext for perpetual warfare against the middle east." Talk about unknowingly predicting the future eh? Not that it was hard to see coming. I've lived under a dictator, even as a child, and I still remember it. Nobody in those days was as gullible as the locals here in the USA are. Sadly, no matter how hard the whistle blowers try, this matter will only be resolved when a revolution starts, and one has to hope it will, because otherwise, the neocons WILL abolish the constitution, slowly, and without directly burning it, they will simply override enough rights and privileges until they manage to make our constitution resemble that of the chinese (remember the one with the oneliner at the end that states "Chinese Citizens are free to practice all of these freedoms unless they infringe upon the interests of the state." BAM there go all your rights!)
Think on that one
~D
I must ask.
:) But I am interested how you found such an awesome rate, and how you afford to keep your house maintained (unless it was brand new, most houses have a LOT of secondary costs tacked on, I used to do HVAC work at one time so I've seen repair bills for gas, electrical, etc... and they're NOT pretty).
If you are christian, you've forgotten the fact that Usury (known as interest rates nowadays) are damned by 2 of the "single god" (monotheistic) religions, Christianity and Islam? (I am uncertain about Judaism since I am unfamiliar with the Talmuddic Torah.)
Beyond that, the logic dictates that if there is $500.00 dollars put into play in a game of monopoly, you cannot collect 500.00 plus 10% interest if there isn't more put into play.
However the resource game is a game of ZERO SUM... There is no more created than is available. Money has been made elastic, but all it does is make YOU have less buying power. Same with ME and everyone else whose name isn't Rothschild (pronounced Roth Shield, not roth's child). Everytime more money is put into play, OUR money loses value. The rich (this means the money printers) lose nothing. They already know that since they control the supply, everyone else plays by their rules. Every country with a central bank, even Switzerland plays by this rule. (Only difference is the Suisse have 40% of their cash backed in gold, everyone else has, well... umm... lets see, we have Electrum and Copper, and they are both going bye bye quite quick).
Anyways, if I give you 500 bucks, and there are only 500 bucks in play, how will you ever pay me back 550?? Please enlighten me. Interest only works if someone's livelihood is annihilated to pay for those that pay interest. I can assure you it will not be the richer group, it will be you or me or someone.
~D
PS - your master's degrees do not make you invincible, and yes, my parents house was 120 when they bought it, it had appreciated to a lot more than that when they considered selling it. I find that paying any interest is a lossy proposition period.
PPS - I do not feel antagonized
Dark Matter == God.
Yep... dark matter and he who cannot be seen are one and the same... see?
Now, onward to forming a new religion.
Dark Matterism.
I wonder what country we'll butcher to spread THAT religion??
Anyone??
~D
I swear, if someone acts outraged, they get modded down.
If someone blows up 100 thousand innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a mismanaged campaign to spread religious "democracy" to countries antithetically opposed to "real" freedom, then they almost make it to Time's man of the century.
I am noticing a bit of "lets be pussies and maybe the christian fanatics in Washington DC will notice us" (before their jackbooted ubersoldat's cave our faces in)
BACK TO TOPIC... READ THE POST ABOVE, READ THE ARTICLE AND MOD THE PARENT APPROPRIATELY!!! It is neither OT, but a bit FB maybe. Overall, if nobody gets angry, nothing ever gets done. You all would know that if you lived up to the Founding Fathers' rebellious attitudes. We need some muck rakers since the news organizations SUCK!
~D
That sucks... why say that and not post any supporting evidence or arguments?
At least add some opinion, so I know what your comment was based on.
~D
I've been using CASH... you need to verify nothing. You and your draconian pigs are demanding too much of me. I will give you cash, and you will give me what I'm PURCHASING from you. I don't need to finance a fucking eggroll! You don't need to know why I'm buying 10 fucking pizzas!! If I'm diabetic and buying sugar, that is MY problem. Maybe I want to die. Who are you to push your draconian and religious bullshit on me?? As long as I don't dump oil into the oceans like your fine christian values oil tycoons (whitehouse.gov) then perhaps you can fuck off and let me live a free life!
Debit cards only for minor things like food and other less "traceable" things I always make sure to buy PORK on a CC so that they know I'm not a muslim... and therefore I cannot be falsely accused of terrorism... we all know how easy it would be to remove a dissenting voice on grounds of "conspiring with enemy because they disagree with fanatical christian pigs" type thing)...
All in all, I buy mostly in cash, especially books. No membership clubs or any such shit. (And the times I've used one, I use a fake phone number... go figure eh?)
I Hate traceability because it does EXACTLY what government control mongers want. Reduce responsability by users, it reduces accountability, and overall increases nothing but convenience for the money printing gods of our world.
I would prefer to never see another consumerist pig tell me how they want to identify me... fuck you... and I'll bring my own cup, just gimme my fucking coffee thank you. (Actually speaking of which, I'd like to see more shops offering larger discounts for being responsible and bringing your own damn cup...)
~D
Only used 3ware and Adaptec cards :) can't comment on the others, but Advansys used to, not sure if they're even around anymore :(
~D
Also, I'm credit card free since about 5 years ago myself :)
:)
Just finished paying off my school loans recently. Trucking's been nice to me, I just cut the checks to each of them and let them fuck themselves for all I care
~D
My grandfather was a boot maker (craftsman for those of you in america who've never met one) in eastern europe.
:(
I still have a few pairs of boots he made before I moved to the USA.
He commanded a premium, made everything out of leather.
I've outgrown those boots, but to this day I cannot find footwear as comfortable or as high quality. (5 years of wearing and they didn't stink or break or need to be resoled, except one pair that needed to be resoled, my 8 yrs age pair, I turned 11 and outgrew that one too
My father was a contractor, and he offered 7 and 5 year warantees on his workmanship. You know the amazing thing?? He only ever had to fullfill ONE warranty repair!!!
This is because he commanded a good price (air conditioning, plumbing and gas fitting and electrical) for his area, he was VERY customer service oriented, and he delivered better quality than most (and often he would give a quote, someone would hire someone "they knew to be better" and then would call the old man a week later to fix what those "certified" guys fucked up. I'm not lying. He bought us a house with that business, cars for each family member, computer gear (I worked with him for a LONG time). He never EVER advertised on TV and only ever had ONE newspaper add (and never cold called or gave out flyers). His only advertisement was Word OF MOUTH. All because of QUALITY OF WORK.
Same thing goes for old computer gear, and some cars, I've had a 3 gig IBM from the "olden days" that FINALLY died nearly 11 years later. 1995 to 2006... show me ONE GODDAMN MAXTOR or HITACHI (ibm sold their drive setup to them) that last nearly as long.
Of course that little drive is a collector's item. MADE IN THE USA.
Then they were made in eastern europe, quality still good. Then made in chinese satellite nations,Taiwan and Singapore made good units... Then made in China, and the quality got flushed to the shitter.
Cheaper build, shorter warranties... shittier products.
Perhaps americans should STOP shopping by price. Perhaps that was the great fallacy at first. Everyone here worries about bottom line and buys the cheapest shit they can. Then they wonder why it breaks.
Corporations caught on to it, and kept making cheaper shit. Seeing that americans didn't care about quality (the majority don't) they sold shittier products at ALL ends of the spectrum.
So we ended up with service and quality going to shit. After all, one way or another you won't stay without high tech goodies and other brand name shit, because you want to be "normal".
And unless you buy stuff made in Canada, and a few in europe... almost all other "high tech goodies" are made in China. You wanted cheaper, YOU GOT IT!! NOW LIVE WITH IT OR FIX IT!
~D
Ah its okay, With conservatives controlling all 3 branches of our government, electronic media is GOOD... they won't have to burn as many books when the Ministry of Truth is established.
Electronic media is SO much easier to keep out of people's hands. You only have to distribute ONE bad copy to get the originals corrupted over time. (And with each original you destroy, yours remains closer to becoming the only one being circulated.)
Bush is onto something.
~D
Meaning they bought the whole company not just a license to the backup system.
Symantec is a financially powerful corp. They DID buy Veritas... unless this is a different Veritas corp.
~D
Because they get FAR more expensive as you go up. Okay, so here's the next setups.
10k rpm (not 15000 mind you) Seagate and Maxtor. Cheapest entries on pricewatch both 495 plus 5 or so shipping UPS ground.
SCSI U320 (nice) and of course they're 300 gigs. GREAT!
Okay now here's the kicker. ALL the other suppliers provide them at 640.00 USD or more. You save some, but the downside I wager is that they won't carry enough to build a large RAID 5 setup. Also, the smaller drives are faster in a large array because you spread the seek requests accross many smaller drives. Same goes with the independent write requests. I don't recall being able to find a SATA raid solution with THAT many sockets that isn't a standalone device / tower.
Again, depending how you do it, you'll end up paying a lot for power and cooling (air conditioning so another power cost).
~D
Bah, I can solve that issue with an Amanda Daemon and won't have to worry about "free" veritas licenses. Especially since they (Veritas) were bought out by Symantec last year, and we've all seen what they did to l0pht heavy industries. (Remember, they became @Stake and were bought by symantec, and now SELL lophtcrack under the monicker LC5 (lophtcrack version 5) but as I understand it, the earlier versions did more back when they were free. I haven't had the guts to shell out 600 bucks or whatnot its gotten to now (I stopped following them) when there are still some pretty good PW crackers out there.)
~D