So how is this an advantage over del.icio.us, exactly?
Here's a better question. Remember way back in the day, when search engines were kinda finiky? When we found a cool site, we didn't just bookmark it, we added it to our personal homepage. Along with something to tell people what that site was, and hopefully we made sensible links. How is this better than that?
Google capitalized on that linking, figuring the more people linked to a page/site, the better it must be. Too bad everyone stopped keeping homepages or publishing their bookmarks. Too bad SEO's, spammers, and bloggers figured out there wasn't much linking going on, so the system would be easily tipped. Too bad Google is repeatedly and regularly fooled. For a bunch of guys that are so goddamn smart, they seem to regularly get taken to task...and what are they doing during this? Goofing off with mapping and social communities and webmail and and and and..basically falling into the same trap Apple did many years ago, the same trap HP fell into a few years ago... Overdiversification.
Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar. Oh, and back in the day, if you had the time, you could update your homepage a lot. That was kinda like what you kids keep telling me is so "revolutionary"- this whole 'web log' thing.
So pardon while I yawn at this service which..um..does what? Let me post my bookmarks? Which I can do already?
Seriously- the web is supposed to be decentralized. Why do I keep seeing all these people expecting me to put my eggs in their basket? The search engine article earlier today was great- part of the reason Google sucks these days is precisely because we put all our eggs in the Google basket, when there were at least a few other good engines, like Teoma, for example. Google lost the motivation to innovate, because they didn't have to. Frankly, searching these days with Google is like walking down a supermarket baking supplies isle and having people scream at you...and what are those boxes of cereal doing here in the baking supplies?
DayStar Technologies (NASDAQ:DSTI) today received confirmation that the State of New York has awarded the University at Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the Albany NanoTech research complex a $750,000 Technology Transfer Incentive Program Grant to work with DayStar in the development of optimized substrate templates for CIGS solar cell applications.
[...]
Over a two year period, both DayStar and Albany NanoTech will each contribute $375,000 and NYSTAR will contribute $750,000.
Nice. So, basically, The state of NY puts in three quarters of a million dollars because DayStar promises not to go elsewhere and to graciously donate $350,000 to research that...will directly benefit them and pretty much nobody else.
I'm sorry, but I'm getting really sore for public funds being used to bankroll essentially private R&D done by public, for profit companies. Of course, it's not nearly as bad as the biotech industry, which whores itself out like nobody's business. Did you know we give the biotech industry about $30 billion (yes, billion) a year? Just GIVE it away? No strings attached? That exceeds -estimated- TOTAL tax (local, state, and federal) collected by around $6BN. Virtually 100% of all biotech related R&D is paid for by you and me, while the industry rakes in well over $200BN a year.
And to think they have the gall to whine about how expensive drug research is, or how risky it is! They're NOT PAYING FOR IT!
Some of the things discussed are the reasons for corporate America's resistance to buying from Apple
It's surprisingly simple. You know the Burger King motto "your way"? Apple's motto has always been "our way", and this simplicity, while it makes things easier for Apple, is a royal bitch for business customers. Further, Apple has always focused on "how can we control this to minimize our work" instead of "how can we help the customer?"
It used to be that if your Mac broke down and you were a business, an independent (but Apple certified) technician, maybe even one on your premises and employed by you, could ring up Apple, get the replacement part (it could even be done electronically, way back in the mid 90's, gasp!) and you'd be in business the next day. Many Apple resellers stocked common repair parts. As long as you had a serial number that wasn't out of warranty, nobody asked any questions. I got a free bezel to my 8500 when it broke, simply because the model wasn't old enough yet to be out of warranty. Two days later my new bezel was at the local Apple reseller. When I lost the end-cap on the hinge of my old powerbook, the university Apple technician took my serial number, and the next day tossed me a bag of 6.
Nowadays, Apple Stores are pretty much the only game in town thanks to preferential prioritization on severely limited inventory and (borderline illegal) price fixing.
They don't, for the most part, stock replacement parts. They don't do anything but the most basic repairs. Independent technicians can get certified by Apple (for thousands of dollars, which gets you self-study materials and 6 months access to Apple's internal support DB) but unless you meet a whole bunch of criteria (like moving around a half million dollars of product a quarter, carrying boatloads of insurance, etc) you don't qualify to be a reseller, and ONLY RESELLERS can order parts OR have access to Apple's internal technical support database OR perform "warranty" repairs. When I had one of the tiny little plastic feet replaced on my PB 17" a few months ago, I had to wait for half an hour while the Genius (broken sticky feet = Genius level) clicked through endless menus on the apple website, printed out about 10 pages, half of which I had to initial or sign to "authorize" the warranty repair, and the other half I got to keep (oh boy.) Replacing the foot took...2 minutes.
So, the short of it is that unless you bought Applecare AND you have a desktop (on-site service for laptops is not done under any circumstances; you've got to wait several days just to get it to them, because they have to ship you a box first), you're dumb shit out of luck for fixing your Mac quickly.
Want another example? If I'm a small business, I can get an account rep assigned from Dell, Gateway, etc. Even if I only buy a machine once a month- and it's been my general experience that they do a decent job at remembering who you are. Apple? You can buy 100 Macs a year and still not get anybody at Apple to say "boo" to you, because there's no such thing as direct sales. The best they can manage are "regional" business liasons, and they don't remember you from a goddamn hole in the wall.
Still not enough? If your Dell, Gateway, or HP breaks, out of warranty, you can call up that company's parts department and get a replacement. Apple? Nope. Sorry. You have to send your machine to the one Apple service center in the country (Texas) which will cost you a minimum non-refundable $250+ just to "look at it". They're infamous for wrecking unrelated parts and damaging stuff, and you can pretty much foget any data on the system...and how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB? Not me.
As mentioned before- independent techs can't get parts. Customers certainly can't. Even Apple employees can't get parts- an employee said if he wants a personal system fixed, he has to take it to a repair center on the Apple "campus". So there's a huge "black market" in parts, often times from used machines that were bought on ebay and ripped apart for their guts because they're worth their weight in gold as parts.
Pardon a little rant, but gentoo is about to get wiped off all my remaining linux boxen. I've already taken the hard drive out of the gateway and popped in m0n0wall, a CD-based firewall that is the bee's knees and works much more smoothly. Thank god I don't have to deal with the monstrosity that is the webmin "user interface"(aka 5 billion gif images for no particular reason). Oh if only it supported config-on-usb-key!
Last night I updated apache and a bunch of other things (I use the unstable branch because "stable" lags, big time, on many packages I need; yes, I can manually unmask those certain packages, but that wouldn't have solved the particular problem I'm about to describe).
I run etc-update, which absolutely blows chunks and has for years; for example, ALL of/etc is protected. So maybe webmin comes along and touches 70 config files. You're then treated to trying to approve those 70 files along with other files that were also changed by other emerge updates. Attempts to provide better alternatives have been staunchly blocked; cfg-update has been trying to get into portage, but the gentoo team have been sitting on their asses for over two years. Piss-poor configuration management is one sure fire way to get me off your distro, because it's the biggest potential problem maker. PS- not everyone installs X on their servers, guys.
All is well, or so I think. Overnight, the power fails. I go to show someone photos on the server, connection refused. Huh?
Apache's not running. Hmm. 'apache2 start'.
That spits out a big tirade about how my commonapache2.conf file "is present in the old location" and I need to update the current configuration files and remove the commmonapache2.conf file. Then tells me to see this page which tells me about all the internal details, none of which I give a fuck about; I want a simple 1-2-3 migration, and they're yacking about recompiling everything, but they don't actually tell you what versions of everything you need to have at a minimum for that package to "understand" their changes. The page claims mod_php isn't ready for these changes yet (which is not true anymore, I later discover), so I panic and try going back to older versions of everything. More carnage and wasted time compiling.
It then takes me 2 hours to sort out the mess because they've got HARD LINKS to some directories, soft links to others, there's a full configuration file tree in/usr/lib/apache2, there's no clear delineation between the "common" and (???) apache conf files, their migration page claims the server root changed to/usr/lib/apache2 but it really didn't, it's all still in/etc/apache2/...Oh, mod_user_dir for no particular good reason now has to be TURNED ON with a -D option. I spend another 30 minutes fixing all the crap that was in my old apache configuration files, because apache2's error messages consist of "an access directive prohibited you from loading that". WHAT access directive? Or, my personal favorite, an "internal server error". Whee.
It's a unholy mess (at least part of it is apache's fault, for having one of the worst configuration schemes and error handling I've ever dealt with) and I was completely caught off guard- why? Because as portage merges things, if there are extremely important notes printed to the console, but so is EVERY detail about a compile along with all the files that are being merged/unmerged/whatevered...so chances are, it scrolls right out of the terminal buffer. At the end of a multiple-package emerge, there's no one block of text that says "IMPORTANT STUFF CHANGED".
I used to think the compile-from-source stuff was a godsend, but lately, it's nothing but a curse. I run a sync and then emerge -up world, and I get a list 3 pages long of mostly minor little version bumps. Fantasti
a very interesting look at the history of a Wiki page. Worth checking out.
A guy loads the Heavy Metal Umlat page v1.0 and steps through the hundreds of versions while talking in a nerdy voice and laughing about attempts at using unicode and LaTeX for rendering the band name Spinal Tap. He provides a near monotone commentary to what is very obviously changing in the page. "Oh, look at that, someone added something. Fascinating."
That was neither interesting, nor worth checking out, and I hold you personally responsible for the 5 minutes of my life I wasted on it.
and the Slashdot refrain is what? 'More power to you.' That's just beautiful.
Notice it's in italics. Given the editors can't be bothered to vett articles (remember the "battery booster sticker" article a few weeks ago?), it's not really the editor's opinion.
Given all the disgust lately (comments grumbling about stories is nothing new, but it seems unscientifically at an all-time high) I would say the majority of in-story commentary doesn't speak for Slashdot readers at all. In fact, a lot of commentary offered up by story submitters is poorly worded, shoot-from-the-hip crap that would get modded "troll" if it were a comment.
Some of these apps fit on a small USB (e.g. 64MB.) But if you want to start doing more than one or two of them, or want bigger apps like some of the Linux flavors, it's really helpful to know how big they are.
With USB thumb drives costing about or less than $50 for 512MB, I'd have to say that space isn't much of an issue at all. I've seen 1GB flash drives for under $70 (though $90-100 is somewhat more common).
What is more of an issue to me is that the application not go bonkers with write cycles being somewhat precious with flash memory. It would be nice if the various linux filesystem drivers could have a mount option that spread out writes (since fragmentation isn't much of an issue on a media with essentially no seek time).
you don't buy HW RAID because it is faster, you buy it for battery backup and offloading of low level operations to conserve CPU time and bus/memory bandwidth for user applications and so that if your OS or CPU/memory/whatever blows up, or you lose power, it won't corrupt the data on your disk array.
Hey, next time, read my full post:
"Regardless, why would you spend $100-200 more on a hardware-raid card complete with cache memory, and then just use the 2.6 SATA driver which only drives the SATA interfaces?"
5, Insightful my ass- you couldn't even be bothered to fully read/understand my post.
Reminds me of Promise's definition of "Linux support" for a card I bought.
In the case of the SX-150 SATA raid card (which has a hardware XOR engine and whatnot), that meant "we have binary drivers for distributions which are several years old".
There is some source. Well, it's a 'wrapped' binary driver, and it's only available from "some guy" in Germany who begged Promise support long enough they gave it to him. You a)cannot compile it into the kernel b)cannot compile it for 2.6 because it simply isn't compatible. I sent numerous emails to Promise asking when a 2.6 driver would be available or if there was any updated source code. None were ever answered.
Same story with the tools- unless you're running Redhat 9.0 or some ancient version of Suse, forget ANY on-line monitoring.
Not that the customers are much better- one page I found about the card suggested that "software raid is faster anyway", which is an absurd proposition by itself. Regardless, why would you spend $100-200 more on a hardware-raid card complete with cache memory, and then just use the 2.6 SATA driver which only drives the SATA interfaces?
From what I understand, 3ware has better support for Linux, but that means I have to migrate a large amount of data off the old array..
That's not fair. A new innovation comes and is sucessful, and people have to squash it wrather than create compition
Um- did we put capitalism on hold here? If an ISP starts quashing VoIP traffic (or not handling it properly), consumers will, if it matters to them, move to someone who does things right. If it really matters to consumers, someone will charge a little bit more if they develop a reputation and guarantee(s), otherwise it'll be used as a tool of differentiation.
Want an example of this? Speakeasy. They don't care what you run on your line. They don't care if you share it. As a result, they can charge a little more than others.
If consumers don't care, well...guess what, it doesn't really matter, does it? No sense crying over it; it's still pretty useable technology for businesses and saavy techies at home...and if it gets a serious foothold there, that creates a bigger market for reliable long distance VoIP, and all it will take is one ISP doing VoIP for others to follow or struggle to compete retaining customers not interested in VoIP.
We've not been happy with the time that it takes to release for AGES now. Potato took too long, woody took longer, and sarge is taking it's own time. The symptoms are known, and much lamented.
Okay. So, again, why did it take three releases to realize something was wrong? If the symptoms were known, why didn't people just start fixing them? Politics? Funny thing about politics. Even if the politics aren't in your favor, if your intentions are honest, you're stepping up to the plate when no one else is- guess what, it's really hard for others to argue against you without looking petty or controlling.
However, the fix for the underlying problems is far less trivial, and so far no one who is actually capable of doing the work has come forward and done whatever needs doing to fix the actual problem (whatever the hell the actual problem actually is.)
So, basically- you and other Debian people have thrown up your hands and said, "augh, look at this mess, it's huge, complex! We can't possibly fix this mess! Let's wait for someone else to come along and fix our problem."
There's a website for people trying to get their lives back together and pick up the piles of junk lying around the rooms of their house. The common theme is- DON'T try to take it all on at ONCE. Don't sit there and assume you will eventually come up with the most elegant solution to your problems or some genius will drop out of the sky. That's like shooting only for a royal flush in poker.
Divers have a similar mantra, especially ones who do technical diving; nitrogen narcosis exaggerates emotions and a minor problem turns divers into a panic. The mantra- "as long as you're breathing, you're OK". Stop. Relax. Solve one problem at a time (incidentally, the other mantra is not to let problems pile up, because they compound each other; fix things as soon as you notice them...but it's a little late now). Tomorrow, if you see or remember a problem, just solve it. If anything, others might be inspired or encouraged by the activity.
You obviously have a lot of talented people. Get everyone to sit down, make a list of problems. Categorize them. Divide them up and hand them out or post them up on a page. Don't make committees- committees are great at wasting time. When you're behind the eight ball, you don't need a group of people to decide which way is the best direction to move- you've just gotta MOVE. If someone doesn't like what you've done- well, they had three years to do it their way, so tough!
Or maybe it's just that you don't really understand the amount of work that it takes to actually release a stable distribution without RC bugs on all of the architectures that Debian supports?
Why is it that people in a hole always tell others how they couldn't "understand how much work" is it? If it's so hard to make a useful distribution, why did we see a veritable explosion of distributions (some of them based off Debian) in the time Debian hasn't released a single stable version? If they're people who jumped ship, why did they jump ship?
If "too many platforms" is the problem, do what GCC did- stop overcommitting. The GCC team stopped wasting time on a couple architectures nobody was using or helping them maintain but for which they'd have to fret over whether changes would break this or that. Funny thing- nobody's really complained that loudly. If they care enough about that architecture, they either step up to the plate, help recruit people to help.
That advice goes equally for platforms as it does for packages. I remember debian used to be over a half dozen CDs with something like 3600 packages. Focus on core packages; if need be, get people to vote for stuff they want. If something's not ready and nobody could help, fine- it doesn't go in, it doesn't hold up the stable release. If people needed that package, or whoever makes that software gets miffed it was left out, they know they have to help or it won't make the NEXT release either. If nobody notices or cares that package didn't make it- fantastic!
This just in: the Catholic Church says the Earth is round.
In other news, George Broussard admits Duke Nukem Forever "is a little late".
Question- why did it take, oh, 3 years for them to finally come to terms with the fact that their iguana was turning into a dinosaur? It's like they've all been collectively in denial. I took one look at the list of versions in the stable branch when someone suggested I check out Debian. I laughed, and closed the window. Every time I've come across a Debian box, it was "put in by some weird guy who doesn't work here anymore". Debian users preach to me about stability, when I haven't had a linux box do something unexpected in quite some time. Debian's still stuck in the age of obsession with uptimes.
I understand the need for stability, but that means you put more effort into QA, not that you sit on your ass because what you've got works. I mean hell, some distros still ship 2.4; it's an embarrassment that companies like Redhat port BACK improvements made in 2.6 to their own versions of the 2.4 kernel, instead of finding and fixing problems in 2.6.
Motorola should realize that their hardware stands to make them a lot of money given the market/mindshare of iTMS
Umm...beyond selling the phone, Motorola doesn't make a dime off iTMS sales. Apple does. Furthermore, very few devices (read: none except the iPod) support iTMS. If Apple doesn't hurry up, the market will turn, because there will be differentiation; every other music service will hawk "oh, you can't download that music to your phone or PDA! You can with ours though!" Come to think of it, that's what they have been doing for quite some time. What has been Apple's response? To just keep cranking out iPods.
Sorry, but I see Motorola's point. Apple promotes all sorts of devices to show people what they can do with Apple products, and it wouldn't kill them to put a Motorola phone on the front page rotation for www.apple.com, or the iTMS main page, etc...do demos in-store and have Verizon salespeople come in, etc.
The very fact that Motorola delayed the phones shows they feel they're getting the short end of the stick. If they stood to make a lot of money off the deal with Apple, they would be much more careful so as to not kill the deal and loose revenue.
The engine is completely silent, which might not go well with many motorcycle lovers.
Pardon my French, but fuck 'em (read till the end for why, I have a little explaining to do first).
In my state (Massachusetts) a bunch of do-gooders are working on legislation to ban "aftermarket" exhaust systems on cars (and cars only) which are "louder" than the OEM systems. This was originally intended to stop all the idiots with Hondas from putting practically-open mufflers on their 4-bangers. Which IS really annoying.
However, for people like me who own an older German car for which the exhaust system OEM costs about a bazillion dollars, pretty soon I won't be able to install a significantly cheaper exhaust system, simply because it is slightly louder than the original, and the original was dead quiet...or because I'd have to have it "tested" or the manufacturer would have to have it "certified".
Meanwhile, some guy who thinks he's really Bad Ass (TM) gets to run COMPLETE STRAIGHT PIPES off his damn Harley that are so loud they make your chest pound. Or some college student on a crotch rocket puts mufflers on his bike that are so loud he sounds like an screaming F1 car. Nevermind none of these idiots have catalytic converters, and the damn things are little better than lawnmowers; most of them are still using carbs (yes, I know some "sport bikes" are now EFI, whatever, that's not the point). They're emissions -nightmares-, and while I have to have my car strapped to a dyno every 2 years, he barely has to have his blinkers checked.
So, until that law applies to them (it does NOT) AND cops start holding motorcycles to EXISTING noise limits, don't you dare go telling me what I can/can't do with my car's exhaust...and certainly don't whine to me about how a fuel-cell bike makes no noise.
Clearly you haven't seen a good HDTV rip; it'll blow up 2x and still look very nice. Go grab one of the torrents of anHDTV rip of something like Enterprise.
Color/brightness/contrast was pretty poor, nevermind that the editing was atrocious; the title sequence wasn't sorted. If that was the finished product, no thank you. This looked like a copy ripped off the editor's desk, not something ready for airing. Close, but no cigar.
All the credits were there and all the introduction with no slight cut-off near the end.
Credits don't mean imply anything; if I was leaking an episode unofficially, I'd include the credits for people to know if rumors about who was in/working on the show were true. Nevermind that some serious fans (for example, anime fansubbers) will leave all the credits in to give credit where it is due, and it's almost sacrilege to remove them.
It was leaked.
No shit "it was leaked", the question is whether it "leaked" intentionally by BBC management. Pay attention.
I love how a wild-ass opinion and an obvious/oblivious statement netted you "4, Insightful". "Insightful" should mean you actually -thought- about what you said, and 4-5 means it should be something not OTTMCO (Obvious To The Most Casual Observer). Then again, many mods have trouble distinguishing between insightful, informative, etc, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.
Today, however, The New York Times (free registration required; how ironic!) is running an article that questions the long term viability of that business model.
Pretty funny, considering the Boston Globe (which is owned by the group that owns the Times) just bought The Metro, a free newspaper distributed on the MBTA (aka the T) public transit system.
Martin: "You know, I could have joined the NSA, but they found out my parents were married"
Dick: "Heh...." (holds back Wallace) "Hey, we're all FRIENDS here..."
Oh, and:
Carl: "The young lady with the Uzi. Is she single?" Martin: "Carl. This is the brass ring." Carl: "I just want her phone number" Martin: "How about a lunch date? You can chaparone. The FBI will give 'em twins." Abbott: "NO!" Mary: "You could have anything in the world and you want my phone number?" Carl: "....yes." Mary: "342-4525. Area code 701" (sorry, I don't remember her number:-) Carl: "I'm Carl." Mary(giggles): "I'm Mary." Abbott: "I'm going to be sick."
Anime films without Pokémon in their titles haven't fared well at the US Box office (see Appleseed, Tokyo Godfathers, Ghost in the Shell 2, et al.).
With good reason. Before you knee-jerk mod me 'troll' for saying what is bound to be unpopular, take a look at my history and read through this first. I've watched 2 out of the 3 films cited, and they were pretty bad.
Appleseed's "cutting edge CG" turned out to be extremely poorly textured 3D characters with unreaslistic motion. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within was so much better in terms of visuals than Appleseed, it's pathetic (I won't get into story with FF:SW). Seriously- games these days have better graphics.
Ghost in the Shell 2 was another disappointment. I can't put my finger on it...it just never lived up to the hype, and the music was even worse than GITS:1...more of the screechy children. The Major was also a big part of why people watched GITS, and she had little role. Then again, the last few eps of GITS:SAC TV have been pretty bad too.
If the Japanese expect Anime movies to be successful, they need to ship over the very best- and with the exception of Spirited Away, they've shipped over nothing but garbage...and that's more a symptom, IMHO, of an industry focusing on mass-produced crap like One Piece, DBZ, Gundam, Inuyasha, and all the other 100+ episode shows.
For those of you that make it to the 4th page of the UW Columns article, Lai has left the research field (moved to Colorado) and doesn't use a cell phone, plus requires his family members to use headsets - maybe he's on to something?
Questions:
Why aren't cancer rates much higher in nations with significantly more cell phones/coverage- say, Japan for example?
Why hasn't brain cancer increased in the last 20 years as cell phone usage has gone from near zero to a major percentage of the population? I also don't hear much about "cancer of the hip"...
Why haven't cancer rates jumped for people living near cell phone towers?
Why is it that the same people who sue cell phone companies over a tower near their house go home each night and pop dinner in a 1200W microwave emitter?
Why is it that hundreds of millions microwaves are in use today? Why is it that dozens of words tossed around in tin foil articles articles are made-up, like "d-Nitrosodienthanolamines"? Google that, and notice that the only place google can find it is in the same sentence: "d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well known carcinogen". If it's so well known, how come you can only find references to it in Tin Foil Hat articles?
Answer: because cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer at any rate appreciable from statistical noise, IF AT ALL.
Do you realize the gasolene vapor and diesel fumes are far more likely to give you cancer, that they're both known, proven, undisputed carcinogens?
"I hear funny voices on the other end of the line!
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It you just opened your own cottage industry style consulting business out of your home, something like this could make you look like a bigger business. I could see the advantage to that.
Only if you're really good at making your voice sound funny, otherwise, callers won't have to be terribly bright to figure out that Jim the receptionist, Bob in Sales and Frank in accounting are all the same guy.
Or, I guess, start recruiting your kids. Maybe there's a market for an Asterix module that implements Virtual People...calls to different extensions go to the same place but it changes your voice differently!:-)
Not quite. Crime shows. Just about every evening show is a crime drama or crime fiction.
Law & Order CI, Law&Order SVU, Law&Order Trial By Jury, NCIS, 24, Numbers(oops, I mean, "Numb3rs"), Blind Justice, Cold Case, NYPD Blue, Boston Legal, The Firm, Crossing Jordan, Medical Investigation, Third Watch, Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, JAG, Six Feet Under, Monk...the list goes on and on, and those are just the ones I could think of quickly or look up off the three major networks' websites. They have three angles- "beat" shows like NYPD Blue or Third Watch which focus on cops/detectives...legal shows like The Firm, Boston Legal...and scif-fi-forensics.
Many of which condition the public into accepting trampling of their rights by real law enforcement...show DNA tests in seconds and cases solved in hours...all which make the public think that law enforcement is on a roll throwing an endless stream of serial killers and terrorists into jail, or outrage the public when their "rights" let the bad guy get off or a judge won't sign that search warrant our dashing detective needs to find who's been kidnapping little girls with lolipops.
We can't expect our employees to be human lie detectors,' Mitnick said. 'One of the most difficult challenges in corporate cultures is getting people to modify their politeness norms.
Mmm...no.
This is the problem with Mitnick- he's never been inside of the fence. Ever. He's always been peering in from the outside, either as an attacker or a consultant. Unless you work in IT as regular staff, you don't realize the root causes.
The problem isn't with training people to say no, or to stick to policies. Especially in a medium to large organization, there's little problem getting people to stick to policies if they make sense or aren't an unreasonable impediment to workflow. The word is "bureaucracy", and so often, it's used by lazy people to avoid work.
Security problems come from three areas:
Security policies written by the incompetent
Security policies influenced by corporate politics, such as "oh, the controller will complain if his accountants keep having to change their passwords, we share a boss, and he's got a lot of favor with the boss, so I don't want to piss him off" (see above)
Security policies so complex or cumbersome, they're ignored or not followed as strictly as necessary (see above)
Notice a pattern? Security policies written by the incompetent.
A company I worked at had to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. This was interpreted to mean that every 90 days, all the employee domain passwords would expire. Because a large portion of the company used Macs (to make a long story short, you can't easily set up a Mac to let users change Active Directory passwords, much less notify the user their PW has expired and "please change it:"), email and file server access would just stop with no warning, and they'd flood help-desk with calls.
Typical conversation went something like:
"...and what would you us to change your new password to?"
"Harry123"
"Is that family member's name?"
"Yes, my husband's."
"Please pick something else."
This would go on and on. Some of the passwords people wanted consisted of their username plus "123", their first name plus two numbers, etc. Even worse, their initial password was based off their hire date, and most people never bothered to change theirs- so access to any other employee's email for at least the first 90 days was Dumb Shit Easy.
It's so incredibly stupid- force password changes every 90 days, but no standards for setting passwords...predictable passwords for new employees...no password auditing(ie runs with John the Ripper or similar)...nothing. Just "make all the passwords expire every 90 days." Brilliant. Why couldn't stricter password rules be enforced? Top management decided it would "aggrivate" employees too much, and I was actually told not to stop employees from picking bad passwords.
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Here's a better question. Remember way back in the day, when search engines were kinda finiky? When we found a cool site, we didn't just bookmark it, we added it to our personal homepage. Along with something to tell people what that site was, and hopefully we made sensible links. How is this better than that?
Google capitalized on that linking, figuring the more people linked to a page/site, the better it must be. Too bad everyone stopped keeping homepages or publishing their bookmarks. Too bad SEO's, spammers, and bloggers figured out there wasn't much linking going on, so the system would be easily tipped. Too bad Google is repeatedly and regularly fooled. For a bunch of guys that are so goddamn smart, they seem to regularly get taken to task...and what are they doing during this? Goofing off with mapping and social communities and webmail and and and and..basically falling into the same trap Apple did many years ago, the same trap HP fell into a few years ago... Overdiversification.
Maybe I'm old, but Netscape stored its bookmarks in an HTML file you could regularly FTP up to your homepage, or something similar. Oh, and back in the day, if you had the time, you could update your homepage a lot. That was kinda like what you kids keep telling me is so "revolutionary"- this whole 'web log' thing.
So pardon while I yawn at this service which..um..does what? Let me post my bookmarks? Which I can do already?
Seriously- the web is supposed to be decentralized. Why do I keep seeing all these people expecting me to put my eggs in their basket? The search engine article earlier today was great- part of the reason Google sucks these days is precisely because we put all our eggs in the Google basket, when there were at least a few other good engines, like Teoma, for example. Google lost the motivation to innovate, because they didn't have to. Frankly, searching these days with Google is like walking down a supermarket baking supplies isle and having people scream at you...and what are those boxes of cereal doing here in the baking supplies?
[...]
Over a two year period, both DayStar and Albany NanoTech will each contribute $375,000 and NYSTAR will contribute $750,000.
Nice. So, basically, The state of NY puts in three quarters of a million dollars because DayStar promises not to go elsewhere and to graciously donate $350,000 to research that...will directly benefit them and pretty much nobody else.
I'm sorry, but I'm getting really sore for public funds being used to bankroll essentially private R&D done by public, for profit companies. Of course, it's not nearly as bad as the biotech industry, which whores itself out like nobody's business. Did you know we give the biotech industry about $30 billion (yes, billion) a year? Just GIVE it away? No strings attached? That exceeds -estimated- TOTAL tax (local, state, and federal) collected by around $6BN. Virtually 100% of all biotech related R&D is paid for by you and me, while the industry rakes in well over $200BN a year.
And to think they have the gall to whine about how expensive drug research is, or how risky it is! They're NOT PAYING FOR IT!
It's surprisingly simple. You know the Burger King motto "your way"? Apple's motto has always been "our way", and this simplicity, while it makes things easier for Apple, is a royal bitch for business customers. Further, Apple has always focused on "how can we control this to minimize our work" instead of "how can we help the customer?"
It used to be that if your Mac broke down and you were a business, an independent (but Apple certified) technician, maybe even one on your premises and employed by you, could ring up Apple, get the replacement part (it could even be done electronically, way back in the mid 90's, gasp!) and you'd be in business the next day. Many Apple resellers stocked common repair parts. As long as you had a serial number that wasn't out of warranty, nobody asked any questions. I got a free bezel to my 8500 when it broke, simply because the model wasn't old enough yet to be out of warranty. Two days later my new bezel was at the local Apple reseller. When I lost the end-cap on the hinge of my old powerbook, the university Apple technician took my serial number, and the next day tossed me a bag of 6.
Nowadays, Apple Stores are pretty much the only game in town thanks to preferential prioritization on severely limited inventory and (borderline illegal) price fixing.
They don't, for the most part, stock replacement parts. They don't do anything but the most basic repairs. Independent technicians can get certified by Apple (for thousands of dollars, which gets you self-study materials and 6 months access to Apple's internal support DB) but unless you meet a whole bunch of criteria (like moving around a half million dollars of product a quarter, carrying boatloads of insurance, etc) you don't qualify to be a reseller, and ONLY RESELLERS can order parts OR have access to Apple's internal technical support database OR perform "warranty" repairs. When I had one of the tiny little plastic feet replaced on my PB 17" a few months ago, I had to wait for half an hour while the Genius (broken sticky feet = Genius level) clicked through endless menus on the apple website, printed out about 10 pages, half of which I had to initial or sign to "authorize" the warranty repair, and the other half I got to keep (oh boy.) Replacing the foot took...2 minutes.
So, the short of it is that unless you bought Applecare AND you have a desktop (on-site service for laptops is not done under any circumstances; you've got to wait several days just to get it to them, because they have to ship you a box first), you're dumb shit out of luck for fixing your Mac quickly.
Want another example? If I'm a small business, I can get an account rep assigned from Dell, Gateway, etc. Even if I only buy a machine once a month- and it's been my general experience that they do a decent job at remembering who you are. Apple? You can buy 100 Macs a year and still not get anybody at Apple to say "boo" to you, because there's no such thing as direct sales. The best they can manage are "regional" business liasons, and they don't remember you from a goddamn hole in the wall.
Still not enough? If your Dell, Gateway, or HP breaks, out of warranty, you can call up that company's parts department and get a replacement. Apple? Nope. Sorry. You have to send your machine to the one Apple service center in the country (Texas) which will cost you a minimum non-refundable $250+ just to "look at it". They're infamous for wrecking unrelated parts and damaging stuff, and you can pretty much foget any data on the system...and how many of us have the facilities to back up 60GB? Not me.
As mentioned before- independent techs can't get parts. Customers certainly can't. Even Apple employees can't get parts- an employee said if he wants a personal system fixed, he has to take it to a repair center on the Apple "campus". So there's a huge "black market" in parts, often times from used machines that were bought on ebay and ripped apart for their guts because they're worth their weight in gold as parts.
Pardon a little rant, but gentoo is about to get wiped off all my remaining linux boxen. I've already taken the hard drive out of the gateway and popped in m0n0wall, a CD-based firewall that is the bee's knees and works much more smoothly. Thank god I don't have to deal with the monstrosity that is the webmin "user interface"(aka 5 billion gif images for no particular reason). Oh if only it supported config-on-usb-key!
Last night I updated apache and a bunch of other things (I use the unstable branch because "stable" lags, big time, on many packages I need; yes, I can manually unmask those certain packages, but that wouldn't have solved the particular problem I'm about to describe).
I run etc-update, which absolutely blows chunks and has for years; for example, ALL of /etc is protected. So maybe webmin comes along and touches 70 config files. You're then treated to trying to approve those 70 files along with other files that were also changed by other emerge updates. Attempts to provide better alternatives have been staunchly blocked; cfg-update has been trying to get into portage, but the gentoo team have been sitting on their asses for over two years. Piss-poor configuration management is one sure fire way to get me off your distro, because it's the biggest potential problem maker. PS- not everyone installs X on their servers, guys.
All is well, or so I think. Overnight, the power fails. I go to show someone photos on the server, connection refused. Huh?
Apache's not running. Hmm. 'apache2 start'.
That spits out a big tirade about how my commonapache2.conf file "is present in the old location" and I need to update the current configuration files and remove the commmonapache2.conf file. Then tells me to see this page which tells me about all the internal details, none of which I give a fuck about; I want a simple 1-2-3 migration, and they're yacking about recompiling everything, but they don't actually tell you what versions of everything you need to have at a minimum for that package to "understand" their changes. The page claims mod_php isn't ready for these changes yet (which is not true anymore, I later discover), so I panic and try going back to older versions of everything. More carnage and wasted time compiling.
It then takes me 2 hours to sort out the mess because they've got HARD LINKS to some directories, soft links to others, there's a full configuration file tree in /usr/lib/apache2, there's no clear delineation between the "common" and (???) apache conf files, their migration page claims the server root changed to /usr/lib/apache2 but it really didn't, it's all still in /etc/apache2/...Oh, mod_user_dir for no particular good reason now has to be TURNED ON with a -D option. I spend another 30 minutes fixing all the crap that was in my old apache configuration files, because apache2's error messages consist of "an access directive prohibited you from loading that". WHAT access directive? Or, my personal favorite, an "internal server error". Whee.
It's a unholy mess (at least part of it is apache's fault, for having one of the worst configuration schemes and error handling I've ever dealt with) and I was completely caught off guard- why? Because as portage merges things, if there are extremely important notes printed to the console, but so is EVERY detail about a compile along with all the files that are being merged/unmerged/whatevered...so chances are, it scrolls right out of the terminal buffer. At the end of a multiple-package emerge, there's no one block of text that says "IMPORTANT STUFF CHANGED".
I used to think the compile-from-source stuff was a godsend, but lately, it's nothing but a curse. I run a sync and then emerge -up world, and I get a list 3 pages long of mostly minor little version bumps. Fantasti
A guy loads the Heavy Metal Umlat page v1.0 and steps through the hundreds of versions while talking in a nerdy voice and laughing about attempts at using unicode and LaTeX for rendering the band name Spinal Tap. He provides a near monotone commentary to what is very obviously changing in the page. "Oh, look at that, someone added something. Fascinating."
That was neither interesting, nor worth checking out, and I hold you personally responsible for the 5 minutes of my life I wasted on it.
Notice it's in italics. Given the editors can't be bothered to vett articles (remember the "battery booster sticker" article a few weeks ago?), it's not really the editor's opinion.
Given all the disgust lately (comments grumbling about stories is nothing new, but it seems unscientifically at an all-time high) I would say the majority of in-story commentary doesn't speak for Slashdot readers at all. In fact, a lot of commentary offered up by story submitters is poorly worded, shoot-from-the-hip crap that would get modded "troll" if it were a comment.
With USB thumb drives costing about or less than $50 for 512MB, I'd have to say that space isn't much of an issue at all. I've seen 1GB flash drives for under $70 (though $90-100 is somewhat more common).
What is more of an issue to me is that the application not go bonkers with write cycles being somewhat precious with flash memory. It would be nice if the various linux filesystem drivers could have a mount option that spread out writes (since fragmentation isn't much of an issue on a media with essentially no seek time).
Apparently "spell checker" is not on the list...
Hey, next time, read my full post:
"Regardless, why would you spend $100-200 more on a hardware-raid card complete with cache memory, and then just use the 2.6 SATA driver which only drives the SATA interfaces?"
5, Insightful my ass- you couldn't even be bothered to fully read/understand my post.
Reminds me of Promise's definition of "Linux support" for a card I bought.
In the case of the SX-150 SATA raid card (which has a hardware XOR engine and whatnot), that meant "we have binary drivers for distributions which are several years old".
There is some source. Well, it's a 'wrapped' binary driver, and it's only available from "some guy" in Germany who begged Promise support long enough they gave it to him. You a)cannot compile it into the kernel b)cannot compile it for 2.6 because it simply isn't compatible. I sent numerous emails to Promise asking when a 2.6 driver would be available or if there was any updated source code. None were ever answered.
Same story with the tools- unless you're running Redhat 9.0 or some ancient version of Suse, forget ANY on-line monitoring.
Not that the customers are much better- one page I found about the card suggested that "software raid is faster anyway", which is an absurd proposition by itself. Regardless, why would you spend $100-200 more on a hardware-raid card complete with cache memory, and then just use the 2.6 SATA driver which only drives the SATA interfaces?
From what I understand, 3ware has better support for Linux, but that means I have to migrate a large amount of data off the old array..
Um- did we put capitalism on hold here? If an ISP starts quashing VoIP traffic (or not handling it properly), consumers will, if it matters to them, move to someone who does things right. If it really matters to consumers, someone will charge a little bit more if they develop a reputation and guarantee(s), otherwise it'll be used as a tool of differentiation.
Want an example of this? Speakeasy. They don't care what you run on your line. They don't care if you share it. As a result, they can charge a little more than others.
If consumers don't care, well...guess what, it doesn't really matter, does it? No sense crying over it; it's still pretty useable technology for businesses and saavy techies at home...and if it gets a serious foothold there, that creates a bigger market for reliable long distance VoIP, and all it will take is one ISP doing VoIP for others to follow or struggle to compete retaining customers not interested in VoIP.
Okay. So, again, why did it take three releases to realize something was wrong? If the symptoms were known, why didn't people just start fixing them? Politics? Funny thing about politics. Even if the politics aren't in your favor, if your intentions are honest, you're stepping up to the plate when no one else is- guess what, it's really hard for others to argue against you without looking petty or controlling.
However, the fix for the underlying problems is far less trivial, and so far no one who is actually capable of doing the work has come forward and done whatever needs doing to fix the actual problem (whatever the hell the actual problem actually is.)
So, basically- you and other Debian people have thrown up your hands and said, "augh, look at this mess, it's huge, complex! We can't possibly fix this mess! Let's wait for someone else to come along and fix our problem."
There's a website for people trying to get their lives back together and pick up the piles of junk lying around the rooms of their house. The common theme is- DON'T try to take it all on at ONCE. Don't sit there and assume you will eventually come up with the most elegant solution to your problems or some genius will drop out of the sky. That's like shooting only for a royal flush in poker.
Divers have a similar mantra, especially ones who do technical diving; nitrogen narcosis exaggerates emotions and a minor problem turns divers into a panic. The mantra- "as long as you're breathing, you're OK". Stop. Relax. Solve one problem at a time (incidentally, the other mantra is not to let problems pile up, because they compound each other; fix things as soon as you notice them...but it's a little late now). Tomorrow, if you see or remember a problem, just solve it. If anything, others might be inspired or encouraged by the activity.
You obviously have a lot of talented people. Get everyone to sit down, make a list of problems. Categorize them. Divide them up and hand them out or post them up on a page. Don't make committees- committees are great at wasting time. When you're behind the eight ball, you don't need a group of people to decide which way is the best direction to move- you've just gotta MOVE. If someone doesn't like what you've done- well, they had three years to do it their way, so tough!
Or maybe it's just that you don't really understand the amount of work that it takes to actually release a stable distribution without RC bugs on all of the architectures that Debian supports?
Why is it that people in a hole always tell others how they couldn't "understand how much work" is it? If it's so hard to make a useful distribution, why did we see a veritable explosion of distributions (some of them based off Debian) in the time Debian hasn't released a single stable version? If they're people who jumped ship, why did they jump ship?
If "too many platforms" is the problem, do what GCC did- stop overcommitting. The GCC team stopped wasting time on a couple architectures nobody was using or helping them maintain but for which they'd have to fret over whether changes would break this or that. Funny thing- nobody's really complained that loudly. If they care enough about that architecture, they either step up to the plate, help recruit people to help.
That advice goes equally for platforms as it does for packages. I remember debian used to be over a half dozen CDs with something like 3600 packages. Focus on core packages; if need be, get people to vote for stuff they want. If something's not ready and nobody could help, fine- it doesn't go in, it doesn't hold up the stable release. If people needed that package, or whoever makes that software gets miffed it was left out, they know they have to help or it won't make the NEXT release either. If nobody notices or cares that package didn't make it- fantastic!
Debian Leaders: We Need to Release More Often
This just in: the Catholic Church says the Earth is round.
In other news, George Broussard admits Duke Nukem Forever "is a little late".
Question- why did it take, oh, 3 years for them to finally come to terms with the fact that their iguana was turning into a dinosaur? It's like they've all been collectively in denial. I took one look at the list of versions in the stable branch when someone suggested I check out Debian. I laughed, and closed the window. Every time I've come across a Debian box, it was "put in by some weird guy who doesn't work here anymore". Debian users preach to me about stability, when I haven't had a linux box do something unexpected in quite some time. Debian's still stuck in the age of obsession with uptimes.
I understand the need for stability, but that means you put more effort into QA, not that you sit on your ass because what you've got works. I mean hell, some distros still ship 2.4; it's an embarrassment that companies like Redhat port BACK improvements made in 2.6 to their own versions of the 2.4 kernel, instead of finding and fixing problems in 2.6.
Umm...beyond selling the phone, Motorola doesn't make a dime off iTMS sales. Apple does. Furthermore, very few devices (read: none except the iPod) support iTMS. If Apple doesn't hurry up, the market will turn, because there will be differentiation; every other music service will hawk "oh, you can't download that music to your phone or PDA! You can with ours though!" Come to think of it, that's what they have been doing for quite some time. What has been Apple's response? To just keep cranking out iPods.
Sorry, but I see Motorola's point. Apple promotes all sorts of devices to show people what they can do with Apple products, and it wouldn't kill them to put a Motorola phone on the front page rotation for www.apple.com, or the iTMS main page, etc...do demos in-store and have Verizon salespeople come in, etc.
The very fact that Motorola delayed the phones shows they feel they're getting the short end of the stick. If they stood to make a lot of money off the deal with Apple, they would be much more careful so as to not kill the deal and loose revenue.
Pardon my French, but fuck 'em (read till the end for why, I have a little explaining to do first).
In my state (Massachusetts) a bunch of do-gooders are working on legislation to ban "aftermarket" exhaust systems on cars (and cars only) which are "louder" than the OEM systems. This was originally intended to stop all the idiots with Hondas from putting practically-open mufflers on their 4-bangers. Which IS really annoying.
However, for people like me who own an older German car for which the exhaust system OEM costs about a bazillion dollars, pretty soon I won't be able to install a significantly cheaper exhaust system, simply because it is slightly louder than the original, and the original was dead quiet...or because I'd have to have it "tested" or the manufacturer would have to have it "certified".
Meanwhile, some guy who thinks he's really Bad Ass (TM) gets to run COMPLETE STRAIGHT PIPES off his damn Harley that are so loud they make your chest pound. Or some college student on a crotch rocket puts mufflers on his bike that are so loud he sounds like an screaming F1 car. Nevermind none of these idiots have catalytic converters, and the damn things are little better than lawnmowers; most of them are still using carbs (yes, I know some "sport bikes" are now EFI, whatever, that's not the point). They're emissions -nightmares-, and while I have to have my car strapped to a dyno every 2 years, he barely has to have his blinkers checked.
So, until that law applies to them (it does NOT) AND cops start holding motorcycles to EXISTING noise limits, don't you dare go telling me what I can/can't do with my car's exhaust...and certainly don't whine to me about how a fuel-cell bike makes no noise.
Thank you. Yes, I am done.
Clearly you haven't seen a good HDTV rip; it'll blow up 2x and still look very nice. Go grab one of the torrents of anHDTV rip of something like Enterprise.
Color/brightness/contrast was pretty poor, nevermind that the editing was atrocious; the title sequence wasn't sorted. If that was the finished product, no thank you. This looked like a copy ripped off the editor's desk, not something ready for airing. Close, but no cigar.
All the credits were there and all the introduction with no slight cut-off near the end.
Credits don't mean imply anything; if I was leaking an episode unofficially, I'd include the credits for people to know if rumors about who was in/working on the show were true. Nevermind that some serious fans (for example, anime fansubbers) will leave all the credits in to give credit where it is due, and it's almost sacrilege to remove them.
It was leaked.
No shit "it was leaked", the question is whether it "leaked" intentionally by BBC management. Pay attention.
I love how a wild-ass opinion and an obvious/oblivious statement netted you "4, Insightful". "Insightful" should mean you actually -thought- about what you said, and 4-5 means it should be something not OTTMCO (Obvious To The Most Casual Observer). Then again, many mods have trouble distinguishing between insightful, informative, etc, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.
Pretty funny, considering the Boston Globe (which is owned by the group that owns the Times) just bought The Metro, a free newspaper distributed on the MBTA (aka the T) public transit system.
Holy Cease and Desist, Batman(TM)! is more like it. Seriously- I wonder how long it takes until these guys get the pants sued off them...
Martin: "You know, I could have joined the NSA, but they found out my parents were married"
:-)
Dick: "Heh...." (holds back Wallace) "Hey, we're all FRIENDS here..."
Oh, and:
Carl: "The young lady with the Uzi. Is she single?"
Martin: "Carl. This is the brass ring."
Carl: "I just want her phone number"
Martin: "How about a lunch date? You can chaparone. The FBI will give 'em twins."
Abbott: "NO!"
Mary: "You could have anything in the world and you want my phone number?"
Carl: "....yes."
Mary: "342-4525. Area code 701" (sorry, I don't remember her number
Carl: "I'm Carl."
Mary(giggles): "I'm Mary."
Abbott: "I'm going to be sick."
The cREators would like to announce that the previous creato
NO CARRIER
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NO CARRIER
With good reason. Before you knee-jerk mod me 'troll' for saying what is bound to be unpopular, take a look at my history and read through this first. I've watched 2 out of the 3 films cited, and they were pretty bad.
Appleseed's "cutting edge CG" turned out to be extremely poorly textured 3D characters with unreaslistic motion. Final Fantasy: Spirits Within was so much better in terms of visuals than Appleseed, it's pathetic (I won't get into story with FF:SW). Seriously- games these days have better graphics.
Ghost in the Shell 2 was another disappointment. I can't put my finger on it...it just never lived up to the hype, and the music was even worse than GITS:1...more of the screechy children. The Major was also a big part of why people watched GITS, and she had little role. Then again, the last few eps of GITS:SAC TV have been pretty bad too.
If the Japanese expect Anime movies to be successful, they need to ship over the very best- and with the exception of Spirited Away, they've shipped over nothing but garbage...and that's more a symptom, IMHO, of an industry focusing on mass-produced crap like One Piece, DBZ, Gundam, Inuyasha, and all the other 100+ episode shows.
Questions:
Answer: because cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer at any rate appreciable from statistical noise, IF AT ALL.
Do you realize the gasolene vapor and diesel fumes are far more likely to give you cancer, that they're both known, proven, undisputed carcinogens?
Only if you're really good at making your voice sound funny, otherwise, callers won't have to be terribly bright to figure out that Jim the receptionist, Bob in Sales and Frank in accounting are all the same guy.
Or, I guess, start recruiting your kids. Maybe there's a market for an Asterix module that implements Virtual People...calls to different extensions go to the same place but it changes your voice differently! :-)
Not quite. Crime shows. Just about every evening show is a crime drama or crime fiction.
Law & Order CI, Law&Order SVU, Law&Order Trial By Jury, NCIS, 24, Numbers(oops, I mean, "Numb3rs"), Blind Justice, Cold Case, NYPD Blue, Boston Legal, The Firm, Crossing Jordan, Medical Investigation, Third Watch, Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, JAG, Six Feet Under, Monk...the list goes on and on, and those are just the ones I could think of quickly or look up off the three major networks' websites. They have three angles- "beat" shows like NYPD Blue or Third Watch which focus on cops/detectives...legal shows like The Firm, Boston Legal...and scif-fi-forensics.
Many of which condition the public into accepting trampling of their rights by real law enforcement...show DNA tests in seconds and cases solved in hours...all which make the public think that law enforcement is on a roll throwing an endless stream of serial killers and terrorists into jail, or outrage the public when their "rights" let the bad guy get off or a judge won't sign that search warrant our dashing detective needs to find who's been kidnapping little girls with lolipops.
Mmm...no.
This is the problem with Mitnick- he's never been inside of the fence. Ever. He's always been peering in from the outside, either as an attacker or a consultant. Unless you work in IT as regular staff, you don't realize the root causes.
The problem isn't with training people to say no, or to stick to policies. Especially in a medium to large organization, there's little problem getting people to stick to policies if they make sense or aren't an unreasonable impediment to workflow. The word is "bureaucracy", and so often, it's used by lazy people to avoid work.
Security problems come from three areas:
Notice a pattern? Security policies written by the incompetent.
A company I worked at had to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. This was interpreted to mean that every 90 days, all the employee domain passwords would expire. Because a large portion of the company used Macs (to make a long story short, you can't easily set up a Mac to let users change Active Directory passwords, much less notify the user their PW has expired and "please change it:"), email and file server access would just stop with no warning, and they'd flood help-desk with calls.
Typical conversation went something like:
"...and what would you us to change your new password to?"
"Harry123"
"Is that family member's name?"
"Yes, my husband's."
"Please pick something else."
This would go on and on. Some of the passwords people wanted consisted of their username plus "123", their first name plus two numbers, etc. Even worse, their initial password was based off their hire date, and most people never bothered to change theirs- so access to any other employee's email for at least the first 90 days was Dumb Shit Easy.
It's so incredibly stupid- force password changes every 90 days, but no standards for setting passwords...predictable passwords for new employees...no password auditing(ie runs with John the Ripper or similar)...nothing. Just "make all the passwords expire every 90 days." Brilliant. Why couldn't stricter password rules be enforced? Top management decided it would "aggrivate" employees too much, and I was actually told not to stop employees from picking bad passwords.