If you didn't hire them for $390/month, not only would you pay more (per month), but they'd earn less. That's a lose-lose situation.
US$390 buys a lot in India. Their currency is just undervalued mostly because of their imports vs exports, and the only way to fix that is to buy more from them. If we don't buy services and goods from them, then they can't afford to buy computers and other cool stuff from us. Their money is no good if they have nothing we want.
I'm unfamiliar with the DoD's standards, but I expect there are levels, like the NSA's Common Criteria EAL 1-7 security certifications. From here on I'll be rambling about things I have little or no experience with.
A password protected encrypted partition for sensitive info, like the user's home directory if you can get it working, no swap file/partition, no sort of CD or USB auto-run, password protected BIOS, and a password protected 1 minute screen saver seem like must-haves. SELinux can restrict permissions on a per-program basis if you're using Linux. Stickers like you mentioned that are damaged when removed are a good idea which I never would have thought of. A file integrity checker like samhain may also detect tampering, at a cost of performance if you have it check everything. Unless also encrypted, backups can pose a security risk, so you'll want a mirrored RAID. If you get two drives of the same model, from the same batch, you'll have a better than average chance of both failing the same day, the second while you're rebuilding the first.
Of course, if you've gotten this far, you should also worry about emissions. CRT emissions can be picked up and reconstructed from miles away with the right equipment. There's little use in all this other security when anyone with a disk, $100, and some spare time can just look at your screen. Then, someone could always sneak in and plug a key logger into the back of the system without you noticing, so you'll need to some sort of physical security as well to prevent moving the system or accessing the back of the case, and a lock on the door to the room the system is housed in.
A reasonable fine would at least seek to negate any undeserved income generated by their practices. Suppose they overbilled 20 million customers for one month each. That's easily a half billion dollars.
Simple desktop additions: * Wikipedia link. * Suggestion box email link. * Google Print link (Great full text book search).
Other stuff: * Open source CD's (Linux, BSD, TheOpenCD, etc.) available for checkout, or even ISO's available for burning. * CDR's, jumpdrives, minor network equipment, and other information media and technology for sale. Nothing expensive though, unless you have good security. The bookstore at my local university carries all this stuff.
Why don't they just say "first to publish"? It'd really suck if I invented something and published my idea, only to have to pay royalties to the first person to copy and submit my idea to the patent office.
I went through that cycle too. My main system always ran Windows. I'd set up an old system to run Linux, play with it for a few weeks, then eventually stop using it. I did this probably three times. First Red Hat, then Slackware every time thereafter. About two years ago I finally decided to just switch for good. My current PC at the time had some hardware problems that caused the display to appear scrambled in both DOS and Linux, so I spent about $500 on a new Dell no-OS PC to run Linux. They cost more than with Windows nowadays, but I'm pretty sure they cost the same back then.
After the system arrived, I installed my favorite distro slackware on it. When I tried using it as a desktop, many programs under KDE crashed very often and predictably. The crashes went away when I switched to another distro. I tried several. There was still one problem left. Anything that used OpenGL with hardware acceleration would crash the system within a minute, on every distro I tried. This problem went away with my switch to Ubuntu Hoary last year when it was still in development, and my system has been pretty stable ever since, due to bug fixes that came with their switch from XFree86 to X.org. I have yet to find a development environment for Linux that I really like, but it hasn't really stopped me.
I use both Windows and Linux at work, but at home my Windows PC has collecting dust, and its keyboard is usually buried under a thick pile of paper, wrappers, equipment, and soda cans. At work, we're pushing towards open source mostly due to increasingly unjustifyable licensing costs, and sometimes due to security issues or simply superior software quality. There's only one program left that we're unable to migrate. A third party ERP system can lock a company into Windows desktops for many years.
I've never managed to render a Linux system unbootable, short of hardware failure. Even then, at work we have a Linux server that's been running smoothly with BAD RAM while we wait for the replacement to arrive in the mail. Linux can be configured to work around the bad parts, which allowed me to bring the failed production server back up within the hour. Another non-production server lost both hard disks in the same week, which would have gone unnoticed if I haven't checked the logs because it just kept working, having enough cache to serve requests from ram. After that happened I've been checking logs and hard disk temperature twice a day now with a simple script that polls all our servers at once. I'm not an IT person, but somehow my programming job has gradually expanded to include absolutely everything that nobody else knows how to do, whether or not I knew how to do it either.
I saw someone get fired for recommending Microsoft software. All the desktops already run Windows, but they wanted to go all the way and migrate to a full modern Microsoft stack: XP Professional, Office 2003, Server 2003, and Exchange.
As for migration, you need to give some assurances, expected pros and cons, and some other very compelling reasons. And if they later decide that the migration has cost them more than the benefit, they won't like you very much.
Ask "Is keeping this closed going to make us money?"
If it won't, and it's something that others (not your competitors) may find useful, then you may as well GPL it, to let others discover the bugs before you do.
For me, the problem is mostly economic. If you only buy the server hardware you need, you'll end up spending 3-5x that in Microsoft licensing costs, for Windows, SQL Server, and Exchange CAL's. While that's still technically affordable, it's very hard to justify, especially if you only need a couple features. We want some sort of groupware, especially shared calendars, and the Exchange solution, aside from the expensive server licensing, will require Outlook to be purchased for each computer and set as the default email client. Shared calendars are fun, but maybe not worth a year's salary.
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If you didn't hire them for $390/month, not only would you pay more (per month), but they'd earn less. That's a lose-lose situation.
US$390 buys a lot in India. Their currency is just undervalued mostly because of their imports vs exports, and the only way to fix that is to buy more from them. If we don't buy services and goods from them, then they can't afford to buy computers and other cool stuff from us. Their money is no good if they have nothing we want.
I'm a SIGINT guy in the Army. I've spent a number of years now...
The myspace account you link to suggests that you may have just recently graduated from high school.
Didn't notice the removeable hard drive part, so forget the RAID.
If you're extremely paranoid, you'll want a lock to prevent unauthorized hard disk removal/replacement.
I'm unfamiliar with the DoD's standards, but I expect there are levels, like the NSA's Common Criteria EAL 1-7 security certifications. From here on I'll be rambling about things I have little or no experience with.
A password protected encrypted partition for sensitive info, like the user's home directory if you can get it working, no swap file/partition, no sort of CD or USB auto-run, password protected BIOS, and a password protected 1 minute screen saver seem like must-haves. SELinux can restrict permissions on a per-program basis if you're using Linux. Stickers like you mentioned that are damaged when removed are a good idea which I never would have thought of. A file integrity checker like samhain may also detect tampering, at a cost of performance if you have it check everything. Unless also encrypted, backups can pose a security risk, so you'll want a mirrored RAID. If you get two drives of the same model, from the same batch, you'll have a better than average chance of both failing the same day, the second while you're rebuilding the first.
Of course, if you've gotten this far, you should also worry about emissions. CRT emissions can be picked up and reconstructed from miles away with the right equipment. There's little use in all this other security when anyone with a disk, $100, and some spare time can just look at your screen. Then, someone could always sneak in and plug a key logger into the back of the system without you noticing, so you'll need to some sort of physical security as well to prevent moving the system or accessing the back of the case, and a lock on the door to the room the system is housed in.
A reasonable fine would at least seek to negate any undeserved income generated by their practices. Suppose they overbilled 20 million customers for one month each. That's easily a half billion dollars.
That's not gaming. That's business.
Simple desktop additions:
* Wikipedia link.
* Suggestion box email link.
* Google Print link (Great full text book search).
Other stuff:
* Open source CD's (Linux, BSD, TheOpenCD, etc.) available for checkout, or even ISO's available for burning.
* CDR's, jumpdrives, minor network equipment, and other information media and technology for sale. Nothing expensive though, unless you have good security. The bookstore at my local university carries all this stuff.
There's a goatse image on that page.
Don't forget browsing history, if you have the Google Toolbar set up to display pagerank.
The updated instructions seem to fix it.
I logged in earlier, but now I'm blocked.
Now I have yet another account with no buddies in Gaim.
Why don't they just say "first to publish"? It'd really suck if I invented something and published my idea, only to have to pay royalties to the first person to copy and submit my idea to the patent office.
On Ubuntu, I insert a DVD, it gets auto-mounted, an icon for it appears on my desktop, and Totem opens up and plays it, all automatically.
I went through that cycle too. My main system always ran Windows. I'd set up an old system to run Linux, play with it for a few weeks, then eventually stop using it. I did this probably three times. First Red Hat, then Slackware every time thereafter. About two years ago I finally decided to just switch for good. My current PC at the time had some hardware problems that caused the display to appear scrambled in both DOS and Linux, so I spent about $500 on a new Dell no-OS PC to run Linux. They cost more than with Windows nowadays, but I'm pretty sure they cost the same back then.
After the system arrived, I installed my favorite distro slackware on it. When I tried using it as a desktop, many programs under KDE crashed very often and predictably. The crashes went away when I switched to another distro. I tried several. There was still one problem left. Anything that used OpenGL with hardware acceleration would crash the system within a minute, on every distro I tried. This problem went away with my switch to Ubuntu Hoary last year when it was still in development, and my system has been pretty stable ever since, due to bug fixes that came with their switch from XFree86 to X.org. I have yet to find a development environment for Linux that I really like, but it hasn't really stopped me.
I use both Windows and Linux at work, but at home my Windows PC has collecting dust, and its keyboard is usually buried under a thick pile of paper, wrappers, equipment, and soda cans. At work, we're pushing towards open source mostly due to increasingly unjustifyable licensing costs, and sometimes due to security issues or simply superior software quality. There's only one program left that we're unable to migrate. A third party ERP system can lock a company into Windows desktops for many years.
I've never managed to render a Linux system unbootable, short of hardware failure. Even then, at work we have a Linux server that's been running smoothly with BAD RAM while we wait for the replacement to arrive in the mail. Linux can be configured to work around the bad parts, which allowed me to bring the failed production server back up within the hour. Another non-production server lost both hard disks in the same week, which would have gone unnoticed if I haven't checked the logs because it just kept working, having enough cache to serve requests from ram. After that happened I've been checking logs and hard disk temperature twice a day now with a simple script that polls all our servers at once. I'm not an IT person, but somehow my programming job has gradually expanded to include absolutely everything that nobody else knows how to do, whether or not I knew how to do it either.
It passes the spell check.
The GPL is a EULA.
Does this happen every time a new worm comes out?
Your business stops working when the computers go down?
I saw someone get fired for recommending Microsoft software. All the desktops already run Windows, but they wanted to go all the way and migrate to a full modern Microsoft stack: XP Professional, Office 2003, Server 2003, and Exchange.
As for migration, you need to give some assurances, expected pros and cons, and some other very compelling reasons. And if they later decide that the migration has cost them more than the benefit, they won't like you very much.
Shouldn't this be modded funny? Either it's a joke or (even funnier) it's the truth.
Ask "Is keeping this closed going to make us money?"
If it won't, and it's something that others (not your competitors) may find useful, then you may as well GPL it, to let others discover the bugs before you do.
Access corrupts if you breath on it.
Usually only if two breath on it at the same time.
For me, the problem is mostly economic. If you only buy the server hardware you need, you'll end up spending 3-5x that in Microsoft licensing costs, for Windows, SQL Server, and Exchange CAL's. While that's still technically affordable, it's very hard to justify, especially if you only need a couple features. We want some sort of groupware, especially shared calendars, and the Exchange solution, aside from the expensive server licensing, will require Outlook to be purchased for each computer and set as the default email client. Shared calendars are fun, but maybe not worth a year's salary.
Session cookies are pretty harmless and often important. I allow all session cookies, and have an exceptions list for allowing permanent cookies.