I agree with you completely. What I'd like to add to your post is that Adobe should be making its Photoshop and Illustrator formats encrypted/proprietary (just like Microsoft is trying to do with its Office-related file formats) and not allow anyone else access to the format without explicit permission; that might give Microsoft a taste of its own medicine.
That's easy.....I have an idea...I only hire you to implement the idea. I keep everything. Happens all the time.
That assumes that all good ideas spring from spontaneous invention and not through synthesis. The reason most (not all) people have ideas about improvements and the future is because they work with existing processes and get domain knowledge. Tell me, what's your revolutionary idea for the next breakthrough in nano-tech? If you're like me (and I know I am), then you'd have no idea because... why? We don't work in nano-tech.
If what you're saying is "I have a dream... I want to transport people electrically! Now, I'll just hire the staff from off-shore and they'll make it happen!" then you're squarely in the realm of fantasy; that stuff just doesn't happen on an everyday basis.
The situation you're talking about still exists because we haven't shipped all our knowedge to outsourced places yet. In my original post, I was talking about the long-term effects of such a move.
Basically, if you look at the way they're running things, and the way they're headed, all the grunt work will be done offshore, including programming, but the IP will be owned here in the US.
Agree with you in the short term.
How can one develop IP if one doesn't have educated people around to develop it? What I really enjoy are companies that try to "keep the software architecture and design in the US and farm out the grunt work to India." Ummm... how do people become architects and designers without ever having done the grunt work themselves? Works for now... but weep for the future.
The "some mechanism" for guaranteeing only opt-ins is the tricky part; it's prone to people scamming it for the cash.
Exactly correct. Even forgetting about the asshat spammers out there, you have Joe Average marking anything they didn't remember wanting as SPAM. I've seen people sign-up for non-marketing messages, just to have them "get sick of them" and start binning them as SPAM because they're too lazy to unsubscribe. I agree that this won't work strictly because it requires people to be honest, non-greedy, and take action/care when people (in general) can't handle or don't understand those actions.
What is one person's spam is another person's desired mail. I'm not talking about advertising, either. For example, I know for a fact that there are a lot of people out there that "knee-jerk" react to service messages from their bank, credit card, whatever... stuff they even signed up for that they mark as spam. Since I want to get my "your payment has posted" email, do I want to rely on the network of people around me that signed up for the same thing with the same company and report it as spam because they're too lazy to just unsubscribe?
I find myself, when on public machines, typing extra characters in my passwords and then using the mouse to highlight them and type over them. This makes my passwords (which are already random letters/numbers) seem longer than they really are with gibberish if they are logged as keystrokes. Unfortunately, some software keyloggers can detect exactly what the input into forms are -- this does not help with that. It is also quite a hassle, but what can I say? I'm a bit paranoid (but, I believe, right so).
Not to add to your paranoia, but adding a few extra characters still doesn't help too much; if the perp logged your keystrokes and was determined to break into your account, he could always generate all the combinations of your password (from min # characters needed up to the total character count you typed in). By logging your keystrokes the perp has effectively limited the scope of a brute-force attack against your account.
If it was really a blood bath, it would be rated R. There's probably not gonna be anything more violent here than what we saw in Spider-Man 2.
Agreed. Probably what the Brits are reacting to is implied violence... sorta like that bathroom scene with the chainsaw in Scarface; you won't see it explicitly, but you'll be able to construct in your mind's eye what is happening/has happened.
But there are literally millions of people doing jobs they don't particularly enjoy with a high degree of skill becuase they can make a living at those jobs and fund their real passion.
Then, not to be too pessimistic, the poster should be looking to get into a different area than CS/CompE because the huge growth/big bucks in IT is now a thing of the past (ie, not really any different from any other Engineering discipline).
Maybe try patent/IP law if you want "big bucks" to fund your real passion; that is, unless you're a sadomasochist... then they're one and the same.;)
4 years in prison? I can understand thieves and murderers doing prsion time, but some dude uploading a movie on the internet? Kinda a waste of jail space, I think.
Completely agree with you that it is a waste of jail space.
However, I don't think any government persuing this course of action is looking to put all users in jail. They are simply looking for a way to make an example out of someone to scare the beejeezus out of the rest of the populace. I say, if one is going to try to use this tactic and be effective, then one should go the full way: execute the person committing the "crime." That'd scare the hell out of the rest of the sheeple.
Or maybe, just maybe... governments should leave Machiavellian tactics to Machiavelli and try to find a constructive way to deal with what is entirely a commercial/civil problem.
As an AMD fanboy I can say that AMD supply issues is not the main factor driving a Dell decision not to supply an AMD solution.
The main reason why Dell would avoid AMD is because it unnecessarily complicates their support model. As it stands, they already have a major support effort on their hands ensuring that all the different Intel processors, motherboards, and add-on cards play nicely together. They also need to keep a supply (or have ready access to a supplier) of replacement components for on-lease equipment.
Really, Dell won't add AMD (or any other solution: Via, for example) until there's enough profit in adding all the management headaches or there's enough demand that they'll lose too much market share to remain viable. I don't see either of those situations occuring anytime soon, so there's really no reason for Dell to complicate its already delicate balance just to add some "slight performance for the customer." I think they can still bear to lose customers to an alternatice supplier (of AMD boxes) and would take action to stop such a loss if it became significant to their bottom line.
You were kinda making sense, up until you mentioned the socket/slot thing. Intel's probably changed its socket system about five times more often than AMD over the last 5 years; I still have a socket A Duron 600 that'll plug into a modern socket A motherboard just fine
To clarify... I wasn't referring to how often Intel/AMD change their socket/slot (ok, been a while since "slot") configurations... it was with respect to the fact that AMD and Intel use different configurations from each other. The ideal situation for a company like Dell is that AMD and Intel could use the same motherboards, memory, everything for all of their respective processors. Then, it would just be burn-in testing with a single motherboard.
As it stands, since their are multiple packages, that means multiple motherboards with different chipsets, memory requirements, etc. Testing all of those combinations is a daunting business task; especially when Dell has leasing contracts and a needs to support those configurations for years. They need to keep an appropriate amount of inventory to replace X% of all those old configurations that may fail during that time... it soon gets to be less cost effective.
This isn't an Intel vs. AMD thing... they'd be just as hard pressed to support VIA. So until it either becomes cheap enough to do so or there is a business demand for it such that they wouldn't survive without it, I wouldn't expect to see Dell add AMD anytime soon. Instead, I would bank on it being the same negotiation tactic they've used repeatedly with Intel over the years (and if Intel is willing to keep changing pricing over that kind of threat, why should Dell stop doing it?)
Dells fear with AMD has nothing to do with pricing, and everything to do with execution.
You're on the right track but...
The Athlon launch party was PLAGUED by delay and pipeline stalls in getting parts from AMD. Dell sells SO many computers that they don't want to be forced to turn customers away to competitors if AMD started rationing processors.
Oooo... thought you were going to go down the right track, but you faltered. Dell's decision had less to do with the execution of AMD for delivery or production; it had more to do with extra support costs.
From Dell's POV, they wouldn't want a second processor with a second socket/slot configuration, with non-interoperable motherboards because it would be a nightmare to maintain. Just the burn-in testing of all the different configurations they have in an Intel only world is an oppressive task. Basically take that effort and multiply it by a factor when you add in another "architecture." This is why Dell has been so resistant to adding AMD to their line. Of course, they get great business incentives by threatening Intel with adding AMD (and Intel gets to threaten "no more price break" if Dell adds AMD), but unless they're in danger of losing customers or they can figure out a way to do it much more cheaply (read: have off-shore tech people test configurations for $1/hour) they wouldn't make the move to AMD. The latter has more potential, methinks.
Most likely, this is just a move to get better pricing out of Intel (for now).
We were in the process of getting a dictionary on a couple of domains, and spamassasin couldn't scan them as fast as they were coming in. I think last night it was about 400,000 messages.
What about tarpitting the IP? Basically, put a process in place to watch the maillog for "threshhold number" of undeliverables originating from some IP/subnet/whatever and put that IP/subnet/whatever in a block-list for some specified amount of time. This way, you can block the connection before it ever gets to your SMTP server. It might help without the need for boundary mail servers to do the same thing./etc/hosts.deny can be your friend.
"Children are playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them," she said in a statement on the issue. "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitisation that teaches kids it's OK to diss people because they are a woman..."
Throw in a couple of male gay prostitutes and problem solved!
Sorry, it's their network, and you signed up to use it.
While I completely agree with this, it does wind up being quite the slippery slope. First, as a student, there is more risk and damage in losing your network connection than is going to be gained by fighting the school. You're there for, how long? Do your file trading from a home connection.
But, that's where the "slippery slope" comes in. Today, it is a university telling you that you have to play by their rules. What happens when the telco/cable companies divy-up their holdings into a duopoly? What if there no longer is a choice in where you get your broadband (save for getting it straight from some backbone provider and paying crazy money for it)?
And what if those same corporations decide that "such-n-such" is bad... and it doesn't even have to be P2P. "Use SBC chat, only!" "Only the IE-based browser we send you on the install disc is allowed!" or other choices get taken away.
I'm not trying to get all Orwellian here, but there has to be a push to separate the message from the medium, otherwise we're headed into censorship city!
I believe one has to have access to the admin account before this can be exploited.
Second, safe mode won't let you download even if you're logged in as admin.
You're point is well taken, however... it isn't bullet-proof right out of the box. But one would hope anyone setting up an e-Commerce site would do that due dilligence. Of course, that isn't always the case. 8)
I created a separate partition for my xp install at home. But (and this depends on how much physical memory you have), I did it to reduce fragmentation and so I could format the partition as FAT32.
FAT32 is not as space efficient as NTFS for larger partitions (and you're way limited, but it allows drive sizes large enough for most user's memory space), but it works faster as there's not the same overhead as NTFS. Having it on a separate drive will also improve performance (much like having SWAP on a separate drive under linux), but I wouldn't say is a requisite for most "advanced computer people."
The great thing about putty is that it doesn't require an install. The bad thing (still) is that it uses the Windows registry to hold configuration info.
Sure, you get the app anyplace you want by carrying it on a thumb drive. But, you're also leaving any "saved" information on that particular machine and won't have it available on the next. 8P
Scenario 2 is to have a SPIT box making one call at a time over a cable modem from 8am to 10pm everyday. Now THIS is profitable! This scares the hell out of me. I get bombarded at work with "Hi this is Sally and I'm selling crap! Press 1 now to speak with an operator about buying some of it"
Why would it even need to be limited to one call at a time over a cable modem? It could still be powered by a system similar to ones that generate and send spam messages. Each considering the hit-rate would be relatively low, you wouldn't need to staff that many in the call center to handle the live calls. Or worse, pressing "1" just enters your number into a database that drives the "real calls" when someone calls you back.
One possible solution to that is a challenge-response mechanism for callers. If one could present them with a simple code that needs to be "keyed" in before the call is really connected, that would stem the flow of zombie calls. Something like, "In order to connect your call, please press 4 5 twice" and have it randomly pick the two numbers. Dunno... just a thought.
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I agree with you completely. What I'd like to add to your post is that Adobe should be making its Photoshop and Illustrator formats encrypted/proprietary (just like Microsoft is trying to do with its Office-related file formats) and not allow anyone else access to the format without explicit permission; that might give Microsoft a taste of its own medicine.
That's easy.....I have an idea...I only hire you to implement the idea. I keep everything. Happens all the time.
That assumes that all good ideas spring from spontaneous invention and not through synthesis. The reason most (not all) people have ideas about improvements and the future is because they work with existing processes and get domain knowledge. Tell me, what's your revolutionary idea for the next breakthrough in nano-tech? If you're like me (and I know I am), then you'd have no idea because... why? We don't work in nano-tech.
If what you're saying is "I have a dream... I want to transport people electrically! Now, I'll just hire the staff from off-shore and they'll make it happen!" then you're squarely in the realm of fantasy; that stuff just doesn't happen on an everyday basis.
The situation you're talking about still exists because we haven't shipped all our knowedge to outsourced places yet. In my original post, I was talking about the long-term effects of such a move.
Basically, if you look at the way they're running things, and the way they're headed, all the grunt work will be done offshore, including programming, but the IP will be owned here in the US.
Agree with you in the short term.
How can one develop IP if one doesn't have educated people around to develop it? What I really enjoy are companies that try to "keep the software architecture and design in the US and farm out the grunt work to India." Ummm... how do people become architects and designers without ever having done the grunt work themselves? Works for now... but weep for the future.
The "some mechanism" for guaranteeing only opt-ins is the tricky part; it's prone to people scamming it for the cash.
Exactly correct. Even forgetting about the asshat spammers out there, you have Joe Average marking anything they didn't remember wanting as SPAM. I've seen people sign-up for non-marketing messages, just to have them "get sick of them" and start binning them as SPAM because they're too lazy to unsubscribe. I agree that this won't work strictly because it requires people to be honest, non-greedy, and take action/care when people (in general) can't handle or don't understand those actions.
getting wet for electronic devices is a dangerous thing.
It certainly can be... especially if you're a girl surrounded by techno-geeks.
What is one person's spam is another person's desired mail. I'm not talking about advertising, either. For example, I know for a fact that there are a lot of people out there that "knee-jerk" react to service messages from their bank, credit card, whatever... stuff they even signed up for that they mark as spam. Since I want to get my "your payment has posted" email, do I want to rely on the network of people around me that signed up for the same thing with the same company and report it as spam because they're too lazy to just unsubscribe?
I find myself, when on public machines, typing extra characters in my passwords and then using the mouse to highlight them and type over them. This makes my passwords (which are already random letters/numbers) seem longer than they really are with gibberish if they are logged as keystrokes. Unfortunately, some software keyloggers can detect exactly what the input into forms are -- this does not help with that. It is also quite a hassle, but what can I say? I'm a bit paranoid (but, I believe, right so).
Not to add to your paranoia, but adding a few extra characters still doesn't help too much; if the perp logged your keystrokes and was determined to break into your account, he could always generate all the combinations of your password (from min # characters needed up to the total character count you typed in). By logging your keystrokes the perp has effectively limited the scope of a brute-force attack against your account.
If it was really a blood bath, it would be rated R. There's probably not gonna be anything more violent here than what we saw in Spider-Man 2.
Agreed. Probably what the Brits are reacting to is implied violence... sorta like that bathroom scene with the chainsaw in Scarface; you won't see it explicitly, but you'll be able to construct in your mind's eye what is happening/has happened.
But there are literally millions of people doing jobs they don't particularly enjoy with a high degree of skill becuase they can make a living at those jobs and fund their real passion.
;)
Then, not to be too pessimistic, the poster should be looking to get into a different area than CS/CompE because the huge growth/big bucks in IT is now a thing of the past (ie, not really any different from any other Engineering discipline).
Maybe try patent/IP law if you want "big bucks" to fund your real passion; that is, unless you're a sadomasochist... then they're one and the same.
4 years in prison? I can understand thieves and murderers doing prsion time, but some dude uploading a movie on the internet? Kinda a waste of jail space, I think.
Completely agree with you that it is a waste of jail space.
However, I don't think any government persuing this course of action is looking to put all users in jail. They are simply looking for a way to make an example out of someone to scare the beejeezus out of the rest of the populace. I say, if one is going to try to use this tactic and be effective, then one should go the full way: execute the person committing the "crime." That'd scare the hell out of the rest of the sheeple.
Or maybe, just maybe... governments should leave Machiavellian tactics to Machiavelli and try to find a constructive way to deal with what is entirely a commercial/civil problem.
"it will be answered in teh series"
;)
And hopefully they won't be "teh suck!!1!1111!"
As an AMD fanboy I can say that AMD supply issues is not the main factor driving a Dell decision not to supply an AMD solution.
The main reason why Dell would avoid AMD is because it unnecessarily complicates their support model. As it stands, they already have a major support effort on their hands ensuring that all the different Intel processors, motherboards, and add-on cards play nicely together. They also need to keep a supply (or have ready access to a supplier) of replacement components for on-lease equipment.
Really, Dell won't add AMD (or any other solution: Via, for example) until there's enough profit in adding all the management headaches or there's enough demand that they'll lose too much market share to remain viable. I don't see either of those situations occuring anytime soon, so there's really no reason for Dell to complicate its already delicate balance just to add some "slight performance for the customer." I think they can still bear to lose customers to an alternatice supplier (of AMD boxes) and would take action to stop such a loss if it became significant to their bottom line.
You were kinda making sense, up until you mentioned the socket/slot thing. Intel's probably changed its socket system about five times more often than AMD over the last 5 years; I still have a socket A Duron 600 that'll plug into a modern socket A motherboard just fine
To clarify... I wasn't referring to how often Intel/AMD change their socket/slot (ok, been a while since "slot") configurations... it was with respect to the fact that AMD and Intel use different configurations from each other. The ideal situation for a company like Dell is that AMD and Intel could use the same motherboards, memory, everything for all of their respective processors. Then, it would just be burn-in testing with a single motherboard.
As it stands, since their are multiple packages, that means multiple motherboards with different chipsets, memory requirements, etc. Testing all of those combinations is a daunting business task; especially when Dell has leasing contracts and a needs to support those configurations for years. They need to keep an appropriate amount of inventory to replace X% of all those old configurations that may fail during that time... it soon gets to be less cost effective.
This isn't an Intel vs. AMD thing... they'd be just as hard pressed to support VIA. So until it either becomes cheap enough to do so or there is a business demand for it such that they wouldn't survive without it, I wouldn't expect to see Dell add AMD anytime soon. Instead, I would bank on it being the same negotiation tactic they've used repeatedly with Intel over the years (and if Intel is willing to keep changing pricing over that kind of threat, why should Dell stop doing it?)
Dells fear with AMD has nothing to do with pricing, and everything to do with execution.
You're on the right track but...
The Athlon launch party was PLAGUED by delay and pipeline stalls in getting parts from AMD. Dell sells SO many computers that they don't want to be forced to turn customers away to competitors if AMD started rationing processors.
Oooo... thought you were going to go down the right track, but you faltered. Dell's decision had less to do with the execution of AMD for delivery or production; it had more to do with extra support costs.
From Dell's POV, they wouldn't want a second processor with a second socket/slot configuration, with non-interoperable motherboards because it would be a nightmare to maintain. Just the burn-in testing of all the different configurations they have in an Intel only world is an oppressive task. Basically take that effort and multiply it by a factor when you add in another "architecture." This is why Dell has been so resistant to adding AMD to their line. Of course, they get great business incentives by threatening Intel with adding AMD (and Intel gets to threaten "no more price break" if Dell adds AMD), but unless they're in danger of losing customers or they can figure out a way to do it much more cheaply (read: have off-shore tech people test configurations for $1/hour) they wouldn't make the move to AMD. The latter has more potential, methinks.
Most likely, this is just a move to get better pricing out of Intel (for now).
At least with sound they don't have to stick a heavily wired icepick into my brain.
Nor get any permission 'cause it could be done at a distance! Now I won't even need to turn my TV on to see commercials! Woo! 8)
I know a lot of people who'd fire a woman offering a blowjob for a favour, if they were her employer/boss.
Resumes, man! I need resumes!
We were in the process of getting a dictionary on a couple of domains, and spamassasin couldn't scan them as fast as they were coming in. I think last night it was about 400,000 messages.
/etc/hosts.deny can be your friend.
What about tarpitting the IP? Basically, put a process in place to watch the maillog for "threshhold number" of undeliverables originating from some IP/subnet/whatever and put that IP/subnet/whatever in a block-list for some specified amount of time. This way, you can block the connection before it ever gets to your SMTP server. It might help without the need for boundary mail servers to do the same thing.
"Children are playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them," she said in a statement on the issue. "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitisation that teaches kids it's OK to diss people because they are a woman..."
Throw in a couple of male gay prostitutes and problem solved!
Sorry, it's their network, and you signed up to use it.
While I completely agree with this, it does wind up being quite the slippery slope. First, as a student, there is more risk and damage in losing your network connection than is going to be gained by fighting the school. You're there for, how long? Do your file trading from a home connection.
But, that's where the "slippery slope" comes in. Today, it is a university telling you that you have to play by their rules. What happens when the telco/cable companies divy-up their holdings into a duopoly? What if there no longer is a choice in where you get your broadband (save for getting it straight from some backbone provider and paying crazy money for it)?
And what if those same corporations decide that "such-n-such" is bad... and it doesn't even have to be P2P. "Use SBC chat, only!" "Only the IE-based browser we send you on the install disc is allowed!" or other choices get taken away.
I'm not trying to get all Orwellian here, but there has to be a push to separate the message from the medium, otherwise we're headed into censorship city!
I believe one has to have access to the admin account before this can be exploited.
Second, safe mode won't let you download even if you're logged in as admin.
You're point is well taken, however... it isn't bullet-proof right out of the box. But one would hope anyone setting up an e-Commerce site would do that due dilligence. Of course, that isn't always the case. 8)
My favorite is: Open Source E-Commerce.
buy GOOG on the dip as many non-techie investors panic sell. 8)
I created a separate partition for my xp install at home. But (and this depends on how much physical memory you have), I did it to reduce fragmentation and so I could format the partition as FAT32.
FAT32 is not as space efficient as NTFS for larger partitions (and you're way limited, but it allows drive sizes large enough for most user's memory space), but it works faster as there's not the same overhead as NTFS. Having it on a separate drive will also improve performance (much like having SWAP on a separate drive under linux), but I wouldn't say is a requisite for most "advanced computer people."
How about Putty.
The great thing about putty is that it doesn't require an install. The bad thing (still) is that it uses the Windows registry to hold configuration info.
Sure, you get the app anyplace you want by carrying it on a thumb drive. But, you're also leaving any "saved" information on that particular machine and won't have it available on the next. 8P
Scenario 2 is to have a SPIT box making one call at a time over a cable modem from 8am to 10pm everyday. Now THIS is profitable! This scares the hell out of me. I get bombarded at work with "Hi this is Sally and I'm selling crap! Press 1 now to speak with an operator about buying some of it"
Why would it even need to be limited to one call at a time over a cable modem? It could still be powered by a system similar to ones that generate and send spam messages. Each considering the hit-rate would be relatively low, you wouldn't need to staff that many in the call center to handle the live calls. Or worse, pressing "1" just enters your number into a database that drives the "real calls" when someone calls you back.
One possible solution to that is a challenge-response mechanism for callers. If one could present them with a simple code that needs to be "keyed" in before the call is really connected, that would stem the flow of zombie calls. Something like, "In order to connect your call, please press 4 5 twice" and have it randomly pick the two numbers. Dunno... just a thought.