...how long will it last? Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?
Insightful. Microsoft will dip into it's billion dollar war chest and with the MS-FUD team put pressure to reverse this.
My guess is there not that serious, why wait until 2007? Why not Jan 1st 2006? Why not every new PC purchased from this day forward?
The politicians know Microsoft will give them a 70% discount to stay borg and then they can spend that money to buy votes. Taiwan got even a better deal than anyone else in the US does. In fact, next time your overseas in the orient look at Genuine Microsoft prices. We get ripped off.
at worst, Microsoft can be required to pay the guy his salary for taking a year off, then he'll probably join Google anyway.
Actually, this is a good idea. But say multiply if by 2. If an employer wants to prevent you from working in your profession for someone else they should have to pay 2 times your salary for the duration. This will allow the employee to retrain or develop to keep sharp. Has a nice balance to it.
Now if the employee used documents or code that is not in the public domain that was from their former employer then there would be a case. But what is in our head is ours. But I don't see that here and hope Microsoft gets slapped big for being a nuisance.
What will kill Microsoft is it's insatiable need for lawyers.
I do too. But admittedly I didn't even know they were on strike until it was slashdot'ed. And I live in Canada!
Maybe if CBC closes down we will see some real investigative journalism and less liberal feel good. Bet the liberals increase CBC's budget before the next election.
Maybe I should see what is on the new CBC tonight.
...most popular and widespread bootloader... That would be...Windows Boot Manager.
But it also has the dubious honor of almost always being used only in booting one version of a specific vendors OS. GRUB and LILO routinely boot multiple OSes from multiple sources and does so without a fuss.
I am not afraid to compete against foreign workers.
Your not on a level playing field. An H1B worker has to deal with INS. You do not. Makes a difference when your H1 is about to expire and grossly incompetant lawyers botched your GC application.
The problem is American business does not develop it's human capital, and when they want something they want it now and fast. This to me is the number one reason to become a consultant. You move around and drop new ideas and collect them as well. Making you a more valuable resource. As a consultant, you are always working on this.
Your observations about H1Bs being good and bad is true. There are, like local talent, good and bad. And like Americans, they too can buy their degrees. But the best tend to have experience.
View the need for H1Bs as companies botched things. They didn't develop their own people so they have to go out and get it no mater where they are. And more and more of us are choosing where we want to live which can mean outside of the US.
Our Great American Patent System
Is on the Verge of Being Destroyed!
I didn't read further than this, as I think the only solution for the patent system is to fail. It hinders development, allows for big corp to sue little guy out of existance, without regard to innvovation or what is best for the consumer. For example, say I develop something, unaware that patent 1234567890-12345678 describes what I am doing, even though I never read about it? Should I be sued?
So is it productive for me to file a few hundred, or even thousands of patents and lie in waiting for someone to make one actually work and people buy it -- then whammo -- haul them to court! Sounds paracitical, it is.
Might I suggest this is why more and more tech development is offshore, as the legal mess created in North America inhibits development. First is was crypto export, now it is innovation hampered by trivial patents. Only the rich M$ can play this game in North America.
To me this change to who files first is Microsoft using it's Washington connection to change the law so Microsoft can go after Apple for the iPod, which Apple did before Microsoft files a patent.
Seems to me the inventor, not neccessarly the first filer aught to have some rights. Or this whole system goes to the lawyers who file trivial and fradulent patents while others try to make our life better.
Slashdot, be sure to patent your "blogging" or Microsoft will come for you...
Has a ring to it, "Whatcha going to do when Microsoft comes for you..."
Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.
These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.
The political reasons were the emperor wasn't talking peace. This drove the Jananese military to fight even though winning was hopeless. This would cause more deaths. Dropping the bomb sent the message straight to the (political) emperor that the US was resolved at winning the war and thus he had to come to grips with reality. This message was strong enough the emperor could not self deny it.
It might be best phrased, it saved American lives. Iwo Jima was bloody, as were other fronts at the time. The world was tired of war (WWW II) and anything to end it would be popular. And a land invasion of Japan would be a blood bath for both sides.
Things might be different for you if you had relatives in China, Pearl Harbour, a Nazi camp or in the eastern front that could pass down their stories of Germany and Japan.
Fighting a half assed war gets you Vietnam.
Now time for the moderators to mod this down for being critial of a popular but historically incomplete post.
Certainly this isn't it about terrorism... Canada does not appear to be an important target
First, Canada is a target as the terrorist attacks. As NY and London were with the intent of terrorizing the affluent democratic western cultures, it is about accessibility and finding some crazy mindless fools to commit suicide for Jahad. Canada certainly is accessible.
So the questions we Canadians should ask is the target to be a Vancouver bridge, the Calgary PetroCanada towers or perhaps Toronto City Hall or subway. Maybe even the Parliament in Ottawa. Ottawa should cooperate with the US in making North America safe place and pool information about terrorists and not about honest citizens in general. All terrorists in recent attacks had profiles that could have forewarned of the events should have someone been watching.
But what is sad is US and Canadian governments are using this to control us. Can the Canadian government show any proof what so ever plain text mail monitoring of citizens at large would have prevented 911 or the London bombings? In the US, a national ID system is being proposed, but all those involved in 911 had legitimately obtained papers. So what is to stop the terrorists from encrypting mail and getting a legitimate nation ID? Those in London were legal residents of the UK. If you think about this, the Canadian government uncontrolled monitoring if public citizens email is about fear and control and does little to protect us.
And if such proof existed, then why didn't they get a warrent under existing law?
For those Canadians that think profiling is bad, take a look at our legal system with the words "native indian", "french" and other minorities. Unlike the US with "We the people... " Canada has different laws for different people. Our racial equality is second place to Ottawa buying votes.
The religious fanatics in the middle east are not after all any different than the Ottawa politicians who do not support this right to free and private speech buy it's citizens. Again, it is all about control.
I do remember some wise American, and I can't remember who, but democracy's greatest enemy is from within.
You hit the nail on the head with that statement. It should be city management that should be fired for neglect of supporting policy. City politicians could have subscribed to a block list and lay down the infrastructure to enforce this policy, like most do. Instead they make her out as the cause when in fact it is disfunctional inept city politics that is the cause.
I hope the lawyers tear the city apart for wrongful dismissal. The city's only chance in surviving would be if they demonstraited support for the library personnel to boot patrons out for viewing porn, which is not likely. And last I checked, sex offenders don't walk around with tattos on their forehead to say so.
If not they are going to have a lot of corrupt systems to fix every day. yikes!
As if the other OS would not? I think they are on the right track, make the PCs cheap and get an easy to load OS for when it happens recovery is cheap, simple and fast. If it is stolen, cheaper to replace.
BTW, booting Linux over the net is simple, start with a customized install CD, store a reference image on a server using cpio or tool of choice via NFS. Then with a Linux boot/install CD that simply partitions, downloads and cpio's the data bask to disk. Finally writing the MBR. With a moderate amout of shell scripting install for a school situation could be 100% automated except for putting the CD in the coffee cup holder.
For mail, pop3/imap/sendmail/spamasassin. OpenLDAP for entity management. NFS for file sharing.
If the above does not make sense, change incompetant or underskilled administrator. If an NT admin, send them back to McDonnalds. It is actually faster, easier and cheaper than Windows alternatives as the registry issues don't exist and the tools and protocols are tested.
Sure, you can opt-out of these, but you will never be accepted at a job that requires them.
We can add that a credit card is necessary to travel. Sooner or later this chip, or one like it will be required. Saying it is optional is kind of a misnomer if you want a life.
I recently attended a "National Identity Card" presentation and the subject of implants was raised. I initially walked into the conference thinking it was a good idea. But after listening to the speakers it became quite clear this is about population control by government. Business will love it as they can profile you for insurance (all kinds), purchasing habits, travel patterns and target marketing.
I walked out realizing liberty and freedom are in fact at risk from with-in.
Lets realize the fact that 95% of the terrorists of 9/11 and more recent bombings in London had valid papers. They could also have had valid implants too. It is a myth these new technologies of tracking people are any more effective than a tried and relatively cheap passport. Techo hype companies don't like this fact and the population is getting marketing, and not reality message. Good security is about people keeping their eyes open.
When the government is behind censorship that is different - if something is publicly funded then it should publicly available (generally speaking and within reason of course).
FYI - Telus used to be called "Alberta Government Telephones" and in fact are predominantly a government backed monopoly. In such cases it has the fudiciary responsibility to be impartial to the services it provides and cannot be allowed to decide who and what web site are allowed on it's own biases. This is Natzi like behavior.
We Albertains should not let this go, as the next thing we are going to say is that native indians can fish the rivers but white boys can't.... ooops - we already do that. Maybe this is a government issue.
ISP "Telus" has admitted that they are blocking all attempts to access a website set
Now I am not one to be pro-union, actually I am not. But I firmly believe in the freedom of speach and users on Telus aught to just go to Shaw in protest. An ISP that filters legitimate and legally permissable political content from it's users aught to be taken to court to get a huge punitive kick.
Telus sucks anyway and this is a Telus free household and will remain that way. Maybe once this land line monopoly goes out of business we can get a more service orientated company to replace it.
Even if the door is wide open, you do no walk into a military base. Same goes for their network.
Very true, but does not that thought scare the hell out of you?
What was that ficticious movie called where missle silos were being activated and the hacker thought it was a similator? Wasn't it War Games (1983).
He should have had more humor though, he could have issued a gate pass to Andrews for Colonel Bin Laden and have it sent to ABC or CBS (NBC would down play it as it involved Winodws).
Yesterday's fiction is destined to be tomorrows fact. The lesson politicians are going to have to learn as computer security starts with a rational thought and not political mahem process.
Whereas if Google went bankrupt tomorrow, I would honestly be devastated.
No you wouldn't be devastated, you would switch to one of the other search engines so fast a few hours later you would forget about it. I have been in this business long enough that everything goes in cycles. Google is at the top of it's game.
Except millions of computers users DON'T want Linux!
But millions if not billions do want Linux. So why should they have to pay for Microsoft if the computer is going to run Linux, BSD or Solaris? BTW, most Chinese servers are Linux and in fact it is hard to find web servers resident in China that use Microsoft.
Essentially Microsoft has garnered a position where as they get a tax on each computer sold by manufactures like Dell. Businesses often even pay twice, once with the bundled version with the hardware and again with the corporate wide contract. A stupid waste of money.
And like a car, I might make it go with Conneco, Shell, Esso/Imperial, etc. I would never buy a car where I had to go to one vendor to get fuel to make it go.
That's why I don't buy PCs with bound licensing as like times before, the wind changes and Windblows. I have enough open and unused Microsoft licenses on the shelf.
The plan has been criticised by other anti-spam workers who say it amounts to vigilantism."
Being passive about spam simply does not work. It allows the sending host to continue operation and upstream providers to simply ignore the abuse.
Now if each person who got a spam were to send 30 times as much bytes every minute for 1/2 hour back to the source connection in which the spam arrived it would not take spammers very long before their connection was congested and the upstream provider would close them down.
Having the upstream providers shut down bad systems for a week is not a new concept, just one that needs to be brought back. Call this a collective protest, a collective DoS of a spamer to get their attention.
Your IT staff loves security holes. It gives them an important task, they get paid and with every patch they install they know the software keeps them busy and employed for a long time.
I wonder if Microsoft includes patching and rebuilding as part of their TCO? Most I/T professionals hate patch runs as when the patches break things they get the blame. If they don't patch, they get hacked/wormed and they get the blame. The real solution is get a more secure OS and remove excess user control on the desktop.
When it comes to user control of the desktop, it does not mater which OS a corporation chooses, allowing users admin privileges to change and install software on the computer is turning out to be the most expensive mistake I/T was forced to make by business management. Yes, accepting a toy rich OS that tosses security out with the bath water was the business decision. Most I/T departments would still run 3270 terminals if they had a choice. Never hear of one of those getting a keyboard logger.
Linux would be ideal, make the user unprivileged login and mount the users home directories as noexec/nosuid as with the/tmp file system and then they could not load/run/alter software. And quite frankly, I see absolutely no reason Linux couldn't do what maters to business right now.
But here is where it falls apart. If the CFO would rather watch their personal stocks in other companies with that spyware, but he should get "access denied". Maybe the CEO aught to remind the CFO to worry more about the company stock they work for and thus the spyware is not needed. Ditto for IM. But the business management needs to support this as corporate policy, rigidly enforced top down. And this will reduce costs considerably.
Business has a long way to go to mature how they run the desktops and manage user issues. I/T will as is with 98% of organiations, just going to do what management tells them to do.
...has an article about a new response to spyware - throw out the computer and buy a new one.
The best solution I have ever seen is a tech walks into your office with a CD, Ctrl-Alt-Delete - boot to CD-ROM, enters your user ID and walks away saying keep the CD for next time you infect your machine. It boots from the CD re-installing the entire system.
Users hate it as they store stuff on the local drive but soon learn corporate no-tolerance policy for keeping critical data on the local drive and loading unapproved often unlicensed software. The raw fact still remains, 90% of the corporate spyware issues can be tracked back to the users (mis)behavior.
Tossing out the computer prematurely has several disadvantages, the logistics of disposal, acquisition and software licensing. It is unlikely replacing the system with the same Windows operating system is going to change much. Mind you if the replacement was a locked down system where the user could not load software.... That would have some obvious benefits.
So, the new price? Just tack a 4 infront of $4.25 and you have your answer.
And knowing Verisign, they will try just that. What I can't understand is.net/.com must be at least 30-50 million domain names. Multiply that by $4.25 and they can't operate a lousy couple of root servers? I would say there is lots of room for competition and too much dumb founded over paid management.
Too bad ICANN is so riddled with special interests. I am resisting the term ICANN't. The logical thing to do is to allow 3 TLD registrars run the root servers in unison, and force them to publish their rates one year in advance with an SLA. If one root server system falls below say 5% or misses the SLA, it is open for auction. This might be a good idea as competition is sorely needed.
If ICANN cannot do something intelligent, it isn't that hard to setup your own collective peer root servers. With a little adaptation of DNS/Bind, it could forward to the Verisign servers for those domains not resolvable in your root server group. In fact, those that are security concious might already be doing just that.
$5 domains anyone? $10 server certs anyone? How about $8 user certs! Intermediate signing certs for organizations say $50!
...the "ST118273LC" 18.6 GB drive is readily available on eBay for about $5.00...
But shipping and handling as well as heat would make this too much hastle. Why not just get a left over PC, put in a pair of 250GB drives? Cooler, faster and about the same price or less. And if you ever needed to double or triple it many PCs will hold up to 3 drives and a CD-RON for 4 devices. Or if you really need alot, put 3 x 400GB = 1.2 TB. Use Linux for mirroring and Samba for NT sharing. Maybe even put a wireless card in it so your portable can play DVD images to the TV.
Slashdot Mirror
Insightful. Microsoft will dip into it's billion dollar war chest and with the MS-FUD team put pressure to reverse this.
My guess is there not that serious, why wait until 2007? Why not Jan 1st 2006? Why not every new PC purchased from this day forward?
The politicians know Microsoft will give them a 70% discount to stay borg and then they can spend that money to buy votes. Taiwan got even a better deal than anyone else in the US does. In fact, next time your overseas in the orient look at Genuine Microsoft prices. We get ripped off.
at worst, Microsoft can be required to pay the guy his salary for taking a year off, then he'll probably join Google anyway.
Actually, this is a good idea. But say multiply if by 2. If an employer wants to prevent you from working in your profession for someone else they should have to pay 2 times your salary for the duration. This will allow the employee to retrain or develop to keep sharp. Has a nice balance to it.
Now if the employee used documents or code that is not in the public domain that was from their former employer then there would be a case. But what is in our head is ours. But I don't see that here and hope Microsoft gets slapped big for being a nuisance.
What will kill Microsoft is it's insatiable need for lawyers.
I love it!
I do too. But admittedly I didn't even know they were on strike until it was slashdot'ed. And I live in Canada!
Maybe if CBC closes down we will see some real investigative journalism and less liberal feel good. Bet the liberals increase CBC's budget before the next election.
Maybe I should see what is on the new CBC tonight.
But it also has the dubious honor of almost always being used only in booting one version of a specific vendors OS. GRUB and LILO routinely boot multiple OSes from multiple sources and does so without a fuss.
I am not afraid to compete against foreign workers.
Your not on a level playing field. An H1B worker has to deal with INS. You do not. Makes a difference when your H1 is about to expire and grossly incompetant lawyers botched your GC application.
The problem is American business does not develop it's human capital, and when they want something they want it now and fast. This to me is the number one reason to become a consultant. You move around and drop new ideas and collect them as well. Making you a more valuable resource. As a consultant, you are always working on this.
Your observations about H1Bs being good and bad is true. There are, like local talent, good and bad. And like Americans, they too can buy their degrees. But the best tend to have experience.
View the need for H1Bs as companies botched things. They didn't develop their own people so they have to go out and get it no mater where they are. And more and more of us are choosing where we want to live which can mean outside of the US.
Our Great American Patent System Is on the Verge of Being Destroyed!
I didn't read further than this, as I think the only solution for the patent system is to fail. It hinders development, allows for big corp to sue little guy out of existance, without regard to innvovation or what is best for the consumer. For example, say I develop something, unaware that patent 1234567890-12345678 describes what I am doing, even though I never read about it? Should I be sued?
So is it productive for me to file a few hundred, or even thousands of patents and lie in waiting for someone to make one actually work and people buy it -- then whammo -- haul them to court! Sounds paracitical, it is.
Might I suggest this is why more and more tech development is offshore, as the legal mess created in North America inhibits development. First is was crypto export, now it is innovation hampered by trivial patents. Only the rich M$ can play this game in North America.
Why even try to make a PDA secure?
If you make a defective donut, painting it might make it look good but it does nothing to fix the bad taste.
If a PDA is insecure, it will remain insecure and making it a different color isn't going to fix the fact that it is insecure.
To me this change to who files first is Microsoft using it's Washington connection to change the law so Microsoft can go after Apple for the iPod, which Apple did before Microsoft files a patent.
Seems to me the inventor, not neccessarly the first filer aught to have some rights. Or this whole system goes to the lawyers who file trivial and fradulent patents while others try to make our life better.
Slashdot, be sure to patent your "blogging" or Microsoft will come for you...
Has a ring to it, "Whatcha going to do when Microsoft comes for you..."
Ellis makes it clear beyond reasonable dispute that the a-bombs were dropped for POLITICAL reasons, not MILITARY reasons.
These repeated restrospective justifications that the a-bombs were dropped to "save lives" are lies. They are lies that you wish to believe because otherwise you might have to face up to the reality that sometimes the USA has done evil things. It's better to accept that the USA is fallible - just like every other democracy - and admit that the a-bombs were a MISTAKE.
The political reasons were the emperor wasn't talking peace. This drove the Jananese military to fight even though winning was hopeless. This would cause more deaths. Dropping the bomb sent the message straight to the (political) emperor that the US was resolved at winning the war and thus he had to come to grips with reality. This message was strong enough the emperor could not self deny it.
It might be best phrased, it saved American lives. Iwo Jima was bloody, as were other fronts at the time. The world was tired of war (WWW II) and anything to end it would be popular. And a land invasion of Japan would be a blood bath for both sides.
Things might be different for you if you had relatives in China, Pearl Harbour, a Nazi camp or in the eastern front that could pass down their stories of Germany and Japan.
Fighting a half assed war gets you Vietnam.
Now time for the moderators to mod this down for being critial of a popular but historically incomplete post.
Certainly this isn't it about terrorism... Canada does not appear to be an important target
First, Canada is a target as the terrorist attacks. As NY and London were with the intent of terrorizing the affluent democratic western cultures, it is about accessibility and finding some crazy mindless fools to commit suicide for Jahad. Canada certainly is accessible.
So the questions we Canadians should ask is the target to be a Vancouver bridge, the Calgary PetroCanada towers or perhaps Toronto City Hall or subway. Maybe even the Parliament in Ottawa. Ottawa should cooperate with the US in making North America safe place and pool information about terrorists and not about honest citizens in general. All terrorists in recent attacks had profiles that could have forewarned of the events should have someone been watching.
But what is sad is US and Canadian governments are using this to control us. Can the Canadian government show any proof what so ever plain text mail monitoring of citizens at large would have prevented 911 or the London bombings? In the US, a national ID system is being proposed, but all those involved in 911 had legitimately obtained papers. So what is to stop the terrorists from encrypting mail and getting a legitimate nation ID? Those in London were legal residents of the UK. If you think about this, the Canadian government uncontrolled monitoring if public citizens email is about fear and control and does little to protect us.
And if such proof existed, then why didn't they get a warrent under existing law?
For those Canadians that think profiling is bad, take a look at our legal system with the words "native indian", "french" and other minorities. Unlike the US with "We the people... " Canada has different laws for different people. Our racial equality is second place to Ottawa buying votes.
The religious fanatics in the middle east are not after all any different than the Ottawa politicians who do not support this right to free and private speech buy it's citizens. Again, it is all about control.
I do remember some wise American, and I can't remember who, but democracy's greatest enemy is from within.
How is it the librarian's fault?
You hit the nail on the head with that statement. It should be city management that should be fired for neglect of supporting policy. City politicians could have subscribed to a block list and lay down the infrastructure to enforce this policy, like most do. Instead they make her out as the cause when in fact it is disfunctional inept city politics that is the cause.
I hope the lawyers tear the city apart for wrongful dismissal. The city's only chance in surviving would be if they demonstraited support for the library personnel to boot patrons out for viewing porn, which is not likely. And last I checked, sex offenders don't walk around with tattos on their forehead to say so.
She is clearly a victim.
Will Linspire Netboot.
It is Linux, yes. See below.
If not they are going to have a lot of corrupt systems to fix every day. yikes!
As if the other OS would not? I think they are on the right track, make the PCs cheap and get an easy to load OS for when it happens recovery is cheap, simple and fast. If it is stolen, cheaper to replace.
BTW, booting Linux over the net is simple, start with a customized install CD, store a reference image on a server using cpio or tool of choice via NFS. Then with a Linux boot/install CD that simply partitions, downloads and cpio's the data bask to disk. Finally writing the MBR. With a moderate amout of shell scripting install for a school situation could be 100% automated except for putting the CD in the coffee cup holder.
For mail, pop3/imap/sendmail/spamasassin. OpenLDAP for entity management. NFS for file sharing.
If the above does not make sense, change incompetant or underskilled administrator. If an NT admin, send them back to McDonnalds. It is actually faster, easier and cheaper than Windows alternatives as the registry issues don't exist and the tools and protocols are tested.
As you point out:
Sure, you can opt-out of these, but you will never be accepted at a job that requires them.
We can add that a credit card is necessary to travel. Sooner or later this chip, or one like it will be required. Saying it is optional is kind of a misnomer if you want a life.
I recently attended a "National Identity Card" presentation and the subject of implants was raised. I initially walked into the conference thinking it was a good idea. But after listening to the speakers it became quite clear this is about population control by government. Business will love it as they can profile you for insurance (all kinds), purchasing habits, travel patterns and target marketing.
I walked out realizing liberty and freedom are in fact at risk from with-in.
Lets realize the fact that 95% of the terrorists of 9/11 and more recent bombings in London had valid papers. They could also have had valid implants too. It is a myth these new technologies of tracking people are any more effective than a tried and relatively cheap passport. Techo hype companies don't like this fact and the population is getting marketing, and not reality message. Good security is about people keeping their eyes open.
When the government is behind censorship that is different - if something is publicly funded then it should publicly available (generally speaking and within reason of course).
FYI - Telus used to be called "Alberta Government Telephones" and in fact are predominantly a government backed monopoly. In such cases it has the fudiciary responsibility to be impartial to the services it provides and cannot be allowed to decide who and what web site are allowed on it's own biases. This is Natzi like behavior.
We Albertains should not let this go, as the next thing we are going to say is that native indians can fish the rivers but white boys can't.... ooops - we already do that. Maybe this is a government issue.
ISP "Telus" has admitted that they are blocking all attempts to access a website set
Now I am not one to be pro-union, actually I am not. But I firmly believe in the freedom of speach and users on Telus aught to just go to Shaw in protest. An ISP that filters legitimate and legally permissable political content from it's users aught to be taken to court to get a huge punitive kick.
Telus sucks anyway and this is a Telus free household and will remain that way. Maybe once this land line monopoly goes out of business we can get a more service orientated company to replace it.
Even if the door is wide open, you do no walk into a military base. Same goes for their network.
Very true, but does not that thought scare the hell out of you?
What was that ficticious movie called where missle silos were being activated and the hacker thought it was a similator? Wasn't it War Games (1983).
He should have had more humor though, he could have issued a gate pass to Andrews for Colonel Bin Laden and have it sent to ABC or CBS (NBC would down play it as it involved Winodws).
Yesterday's fiction is destined to be tomorrows fact. The lesson politicians are going to have to learn as computer security starts with a rational thought and not political mahem process.
Whereas if Google went bankrupt tomorrow, I would honestly be devastated.
No you wouldn't be devastated, you would switch to one of the other search engines so fast a few hours later you would forget about it. I have been in this business long enough that everything goes in cycles. Google is at the top of it's game.
But Google does have a good game, for the moment.
Except millions of computers users DON'T want Linux!
But millions if not billions do want Linux. So why should they have to pay for Microsoft if the computer is going to run Linux, BSD or Solaris? BTW, most Chinese servers are Linux and in fact it is hard to find web servers resident in China that use Microsoft.
Essentially Microsoft has garnered a position where as they get a tax on each computer sold by manufactures like Dell. Businesses often even pay twice, once with the bundled version with the hardware and again with the corporate wide contract. A stupid waste of money.
And like a car, I might make it go with Conneco, Shell, Esso/Imperial, etc. I would never buy a car where I had to go to one vendor to get fuel to make it go.
That's why I don't buy PCs with bound licensing as like times before, the wind changes and Windblows. I have enough open and unused Microsoft licenses on the shelf.
The plan has been criticised by other anti-spam workers who say it amounts to vigilantism."
Being passive about spam simply does not work. It allows the sending host to continue operation and upstream providers to simply ignore the abuse.
Now if each person who got a spam were to send 30 times as much bytes every minute for 1/2 hour back to the source connection in which the spam arrived it would not take spammers very long before their connection was congested and the upstream provider would close them down.
Having the upstream providers shut down bad systems for a week is not a new concept, just one that needs to be brought back. Call this a collective protest, a collective DoS of a spamer to get their attention.
Your IT staff loves security holes. It gives them an important task, they get paid and with every patch they install they know the software keeps them busy and employed for a long time.
I wonder if Microsoft includes patching and rebuilding as part of their TCO? Most I/T professionals hate patch runs as when the patches break things they get the blame. If they don't patch, they get hacked/wormed and they get the blame. The real solution is get a more secure OS and remove excess user control on the desktop.
When it comes to user control of the desktop, it does not mater which OS a corporation chooses, allowing users admin privileges to change and install software on the computer is turning out to be the most expensive mistake I/T was forced to make by business management. Yes, accepting a toy rich OS that tosses security out with the bath water was the business decision. Most I/T departments would still run 3270 terminals if they had a choice. Never hear of one of those getting a keyboard logger.
Linux would be ideal, make the user unprivileged login and mount the users home directories as noexec/nosuid as with the /tmp file system and then they could not load/run/alter software. And quite frankly, I see absolutely no reason Linux couldn't do what maters to business right now.
But here is where it falls apart. If the CFO would rather watch their personal stocks in other companies with that spyware, but he should get "access denied". Maybe the CEO aught to remind the CFO to worry more about the company stock they work for and thus the spyware is not needed. Ditto for IM. But the business management needs to support this as corporate policy, rigidly enforced top down. And this will reduce costs considerably.
Business has a long way to go to mature how they run the desktops and manage user issues. I/T will as is with 98% of organiations, just going to do what management tells them to do.
The best solution I have ever seen is a tech walks into your office with a CD, Ctrl-Alt-Delete - boot to CD-ROM, enters your user ID and walks away saying keep the CD for next time you infect your machine. It boots from the CD re-installing the entire system.
Users hate it as they store stuff on the local drive but soon learn corporate no-tolerance policy for keeping critical data on the local drive and loading unapproved often unlicensed software. The raw fact still remains, 90% of the corporate spyware issues can be tracked back to the users (mis)behavior.
Tossing out the computer prematurely has several disadvantages, the logistics of disposal, acquisition and software licensing. It is unlikely replacing the system with the same Windows operating system is going to change much. Mind you if the replacement was a locked down system where the user could not load software.... That would have some obvious benefits.
It affects countless software applications, even on Microsoft Windows.
I thought Microsoft was proprietary and didn't use open source like zlib? Snicker. I guess Microsoft is being assimilated.
So, the new price? Just tack a 4 infront of $4.25 and you have your answer.
And knowing Verisign, they will try just that. What I can't understand is .net/.com must be at least 30-50 million domain names. Multiply that by $4.25 and they can't operate a lousy couple of root servers? I would say there is lots of room for competition and too much dumb founded over paid management.
Too bad ICANN is so riddled with special interests. I am resisting the term ICANN't. The logical thing to do is to allow 3 TLD registrars run the root servers in unison, and force them to publish their rates one year in advance with an SLA. If one root server system falls below say 5% or misses the SLA, it is open for auction. This might be a good idea as competition is sorely needed.
If ICANN cannot do something intelligent, it isn't that hard to setup your own collective peer root servers. With a little adaptation of DNS/Bind, it could forward to the Verisign servers for those domains not resolvable in your root server group. In fact, those that are security concious might already be doing just that.
$5 domains anyone? $10 server certs anyone? How about $8 user certs! Intermediate signing certs for organizations say $50!
But shipping and handling as well as heat would make this too much hastle. Why not just get a left over PC, put in a pair of 250GB drives? Cooler, faster and about the same price or less. And if you ever needed to double or triple it many PCs will hold up to 3 drives and a CD-RON for 4 devices. Or if you really need alot, put 3 x 400GB = 1.2 TB. Use Linux for mirroring and Samba for NT sharing. Maybe even put a wireless card in it so your portable can play DVD images to the TV.
No one cares and or has any mod points today :)
The computer won them all.