If these are the same dots I see, they are not anti-piracy... they're timing dots.
At the end of each reel two dots appear on screen, each only for a split second, exactly eight seconds apart. Their purpose is to aid the projectionist in switching reels. At the first dot you turn on the second projector (which you've already queued up to '8') and at the second dot you flip the switch that turns off the first projector and turns on the second, creating, if all goes well, a seamless transition.
It's true that most big theaters nowadays either use digital projectors or "Platter" systems (where all the reels are spliced together into one giant reel), rendering timing dots for the most part redundant, but they still seem to be added to the film masters to keep film "backwards compatible" with traditional two-projector theaters.
There's always a way to get a protective sheath overtop of a cable run.
You can slit a large rubber tube or PVC pipe section and slip it over the cabling in the exposed sections.
You can also take ducting metal and screw it over the exposed cables to connect it up to whatever wall or corner it's running along. It -will- cost money to do, but that cost is almost certainly less than the cost of replacing fiber, and so should be an easy sell.
I ran an OpenLDAP server as the one repository of directory and login information for a small company for over 5 years and it generally worked very well... with some caveats.
1) Integrating OSX systems into the mix is not trivial or particularly well documented. Our Macs' ability to recognize group permissions, specifically, would come and go with different MacOS updates. If "proper" Mac support is important to you, you should seriously consider using Apple Directory Server (which the Windows and Linux systems will be perfectly happy with).
2) On several instances we suffered corruption of the openLDAP database, so back up regularly and push changes to your slave. (In all of our cases the corruption that broke the server did not propagate to the slave.) The bad thing about this is that it fails in a reasonably silent manner where slapd just stops responding and them quietly refuses to start. The fix in these case was to wipe the ldap database, slapcat from the slave, then slapadd everything back on the master.
3) Failover can be tricky. Even with multiple servers configured in ldap.conf and similar locations, most clients seem "latch on" to a particular server and then not let go. At some point you'll want to set things up for a more automated failover and/or load balancing. For that purpose, we have been looking into switching to CentOS Directory Server (like Fedora or Redhat), which has a more robust master/master sync arrangement and thus better supports load balancing. Losing LDAP service will bring your entire network to an unpleasant halt... so engineering in some redundancy should be a priority and will make your life much easier in the long run.
I'd take a serious look at CentOS Directory Server (and CentOS itself) for this purpose before finalizing your decision.
"We as professional System Administrators do hereby commit ourselves to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct, and agree to be guided by this code of ethics, and encourage every System Administrator to do the same."
Your company should have a published policy regarding user privacy and IT, and all members of IT should abide by that policy at all times.
(In our case, for files or email, we require the approval of the user themselves or of a department manager and human resources before we go off reading your stuff. We do reserve the right to monitor network traffic at any time, for any reason, but we also make sure your email access runs encrypted over the network...)
In any case, please encourage your local IT Professionals to behave like Professionals. How should they behave, you ask?
Anyone who doesn't lock the accounts of ex-root-access employees and change the shared passwords that they had access to is lazy and negligent, bordering on criminally negligent. That's just inexcuseable...
A good sysadmin works to follow this code of ethics (or one like it). A bad one does not.
There are people who have been given the title or responsibilities of a system/network/IT admin/manager at some point, and there are Professional SysAdmins. The two are not always the same, although the former can grow to become the latter. Accept no substitutes.
-------------- We as professional System Administrators do hereby commit ourselves to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct, and agree to be guided by this code of ethics, and encourage every System Administrator to do the same.
Professionalism
* I will maintain professional conduct in the workplace and will not allow personal feelings or beliefs to cause me to treat people unfairly or unprofessionally.
Personal Integrity
* I will be honest in my professional dealings and forthcoming about my competence and the impact of my mistakes. I will seek assistance from others when required.
* I will avoid conflicts of interest and biases whenever possible. When my advice is sought, if I have a conflict of interest or bias, I will declare it if appropriate, and recuse myself if necessary.
Privacy
* I will access private information on computer systems only when it is necessary in the course of my technical duties. I will maintain and protect the confidentiality of any information to which I may have access, regardless of the method by which I came into knowledge of it.
Laws and Policies
* I will educate myself and others on relevant laws, regulations, and policies regarding the performance of my duties.
Communication
* I will communicate with management, users, and colleagues about computer matters of mutual interest. I will strive to listen to and understand the needs of all parties.
System Integrity
* I will strive to ensure the necessary integrity, reliability, and availability of the systems for which I am responsible.
* I will design and maintain each system in a manner to support the purpose of the system to the organization.
Education
* I will continue to update and enhance my technical knowledge and other work-related skills. I will share my knowledge and experience with others.
Responsibility to Computing Community
* I will cooperate with the larger computing community to maintain the integrity of network and computing resources.
Social Responsibility
* As an informed professional, I will encourage the writing and adoption of relevant policies and laws consistent with these ethical principles.
Ethical Responsibility
* I will strive to build and maintain a safe, healthy, and productive workplace.
* I will do my best to make decisions consistent with the safety, privacy, and well-being of my community and the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might pose unexamined risks or dangers.
* I will accept and offer honest criticism of technical work as appropriate and will credit properly the contributions of others.
* I will lead by example, maintaining a high ethical standard and degree of professionalism in the performance of all my duties. I will support colleagues and co-workers in following this code of ethics. ------- Draft of September 12, 2003, approved September 18, 2003, by the SAGE Executive Committee and September 30, 2003, by the Ethics Working Group.
No, not a haiku... It's an excellent (and appropriate) quote however. Well, it's a conglomeration of two quotes from the same source, but close enough.
Please read the children of the parent post, especially the polite ones. Also note that the EULA terms for Office change subtly and critically from version to version. Current Office versions demand an application license exist "per device".
Now I remember why we have a drawer full of old Office licenses that are no longer installed.
Recent versions of Office explicitly address the Terminal Services environment and say that you have to "have" a separate MS Office license for every possible desktop that's used to access Office even occassionally. If someone logged in from home one day and fired up office remotely, MS says you need to buy another Office license. There's no way to actually install these licenses anywhere, but you're expected to have them.
You also need a separate per-device TS-CAL and CAL for each connecting client.
Where things can get confusing (and what we originally had set up) is where you have only one UNIX server that accesses the Terminal Server, where everyone runs their citrix clients and uses VNC or X redirection to view those somewhere else. Depending on what version of Office you have installed you might in this situation only have one "device", and you are allowed to have multiple users per device. Read your license agreements carefully, and bring aspirin.
If you already have a Windows Server in place, consider installing Citrix as a simple applications server and letting most users access a single copy of MS Office installed on the apps server rather than giving each and every one of them their own installation. It's almost certainly a less-expensive (and still legal) solution than buying enough Office licenses for every desktop and, assuming reasonable usage patterns, should provide a good end-user experience.
It is not acceptable, as an alleged professional, to willingly or by policy violate the laws of where your business is located.
I know it sounds like a pain, but you should stand up for your professional ethics.
If they are crazy enough to fire you for refusing to break the law, you should deal with the wrongful termination appropriately.
As a refresher, our professional ethics are well summarized HERE.
If they asked you to go out in the parking lot and siphon gas from random cars rather than submit a travel reimbursement because the "budget is tight", would you? Would you shoplift copies of the software from BestBuy for them?
Write up a small presentation listing the various options and their costs and drawbacks:
Full licenses for all desktops
Full licenses for power users and a citrix server
Full licenses for power users and openoffice for others
Google Documents
Illegal options aren't really options and should be neither offered nor considered.
In those cases re-making a site/changing it for maximum browser capability doesn't make as much sense as some instructions for how FF users might get round the problem. It might be that they don't care, it might be its actually the most sensible action. In 90% of the "IE-only" sites I've encountered, the problem is not that they would need to re-make their site but that they stuck some "browser verification" script on the front page that doesn't know anything about the capability of non-IE browsers and thus excludes them. Changing the site in these cases is as easy as removing the "you must use IE to enter" code. I usually test these cases by asking my non-IE browser to lie about what it is, and things then usually work perfectly.
What really drives me mad are sites that say you need "IE X or more recent, or Netscape 6 or more recent" but don't let Firefox or Opera in because they didn't exist when they wrote the script and no one bothers to update it, even though these "more recent" browsers would do fine.
If you sent a message to davw@example.com on my server, you would immediately receive an error message saying "Sorry, there is no user named davw here." This is good.
This is DIFFERENT from sending a bounce message in reply to SPAM filters, which is bad.
So... here's what happens if you send email to my server: 1) Incorrect address or nonexistant user: You get an immediate error message explaining the problem. 2) Spam or Virus sent to a valid user: You get nothing.
Note that in #2, the message is only dropped if the message's calculated SPAM score is through the roof. Most "probable" spam is delivered to the recipient's "Junk" folder instead of being dropped.
I've been complaining about this with Dell for years now.
The answer I've been given is that they have a standard desktop Windows OS image that, by default, they put onto every hard drive. Changing the system to FreeDOS requires "customization" of your system, which translates into some poor tech's time, which translates to a higher cost.
It kind of makes sense, but not really.
If you're buying a server, the choice is more obvious: No OS: $0 Windows 2003 Server w/ 5 CALs: $799 WIndows 2003 Server Web Version: $349 RHES4 w/ 1y subscription: $349 SuSE ES10 w/ 1y subscription: $280
So the conspiracy questions now become: "Why does RHES happen to cost exactly the same as Windows Server (with no CALs)?" "Does SuSE have a deal to be the low cost option, or is RedHat price-matching Microsoft?"
The correct thing to do is to check the recipient address while you still have the sender "on the line", rather than trying to use the information he provided to get back in touch with him later.
Checking if a destination address is valid for your domain is usually fast enough that you can safely perform this check during the initial SMTP connection, providing the error message for an incorrect address directly to the system that's trying to send the email.
Running a heavy-weight SPAM scoring software, on the other hand, usually takes a bit longer, so servers will accept an email (and close the SMTP connection) before running these more comprehensive checks. If, after accepting the email, you perform additional processing and decide that it's SPAM, the polite thing to do is to assume that everything related to the email (including the return address) is a lie and not to send a bounce to that (probably forged) address.
Re:Fedora for Enterprise?
on
Fedora Linux
·
· Score: 1
It sounds like you might be interested in the re-spins generated by the Fedora Unity Project: http://fedoraunity.org/re-spins.
Any company should have reasonable policies in place (so that employees at least know when and why data may be accessed) and should employ Systems Administrators that take their Code of Ethics seriously.
Any employee who indicates by deed or word that they aren't willing to live up to that level of professionalism should not be allowed access to sensitive or private data.
Re:gigabyte and multi-gigabyte?
on
IPv6 Essentials
·
· Score: 1
The real problem isn't the factor of 8, it's that both "gigabyte" and "gigabit" are measures of instantaneous data size, where networking connections are more usefully measured in terms of data rate (bandwidth)... bits (or bytes) per second.
We don't really care how many gigabytes of data the backbone can store at once... but we do care how fast data can get in and out.
In some cases we also care about latency, how long it takes a specific piece of data to transit the network (which is a straight measurement of time), but that's neither here nor there.
Exciting Elvish backstories answering questions like "Why is Galadriel so bitter?" There were several ages during which it was definately not fun to be related to anyone who had ever seen a Silmaril... because they were DOOOOOMED.
"Of the three possibities I believe the third. He told me that his family bought some kind of ESP game when he was younger and that they played it a lot. He also said that he got better at guessing the correct answers."
If your memory of the runs is correct he also improved over the course of your experiment.
This, however, to me, even more strongly suggests that the student in question was aware of some form of 'read' or 'tell', or otherwise expert in some other, completely mundane, method of doing well at this experiment. If true, it's still interesting and scientifically would be worth studying further to try to determine the true source of his success. I'm surprised you never pursued it...
Yes, the article is (properly) critquing the applications that currently support ODF, but it is still (improperly) casting that as a shortcoming of ODF itself. It's like saying that "gif images" are somehow flawed because of limitations in Microsoft Photo Editor or Photoshop.
The whole point to having a well documented, open FORMAT, is that any APPLICATION (proprietary, open, free, expensive, shoddy, polished, whatever) can implement that format and interoperate with all other applications that do so, and be guaranteed to be able to continue to interoperate for as long as they want.
Yes, MS Office is still in many ways a superior product to "alternative" office software, but it's (currently) superior accessibility features have no (zero!) relation to the fitness of the ODF format, postscript, PDF, plain text, or any other format. What _does_ have an effect is that MS likes to make it's formats labyrinthine and preferably legally encumbered, which means that if you save all your data in an MS format, you tend to be limited to using MS applications (for as long as they let you) to access that data. With a well specified international STANDARD FORMAT like ODF now is, consumers (disabled or not) get to choose whatever applications they want.
The point to people pointing at the MS Office plugin is really that adding support for a new format is not difficult to do. If we want the features of MS Office it's an argument that MS needs to add native support for _all_ current international office document standards to Office, not that somehow those standards are defective because MS refuses to use them. Note that Office still doesn't have native PDF (another international standard in common use) support either.
Sudo is more useful when there are lots of admins
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 1
Very true, never opening root shells also helps minimize opportunities for you to break something horribly by typing a command in the wrong window. It's a good policy and the 'ease of use' loss is, to be honest, pretty minimal, especially compared to the security gain.
Where we do need to use actual root windows, I try to make sure they are visually distinct with color scemes that scream "DANGER, THINK!"
Slashdot Mirror
If these are the same dots I see, they are not anti-piracy... they're timing dots.
At the end of each reel two dots appear on screen, each only for a split second, exactly eight seconds apart. Their purpose is to aid the projectionist in switching reels. At the first dot you turn on the second projector (which you've already queued up to '8') and at the second dot you flip the switch that turns off the first projector and turns on the second, creating, if all goes well, a seamless transition.
It's true that most big theaters nowadays either use digital projectors or "Platter" systems (where all the reels are spliced together into one giant reel), rendering timing dots for the most part redundant, but they still seem to be added to the film masters to keep film "backwards compatible" with traditional two-projector theaters.
There's always a way to get a protective sheath overtop of a cable run.
You can slit a large rubber tube or PVC pipe section and slip it over the cabling in the exposed sections.
You can also take ducting metal and screw it over the exposed cables to connect it up to whatever wall or corner it's running along. It -will- cost money to do, but that cost is almost certainly less than the cost of replacing fiber, and so should be an easy sell.
I ran an OpenLDAP server as the one repository of directory and login information for a small company for over 5 years and it generally worked very well... with some caveats.
1) Integrating OSX systems into the mix is not trivial or particularly well documented. Our Macs' ability to recognize group permissions, specifically, would come and go with different MacOS updates. If "proper" Mac support is important to you, you should seriously consider using Apple Directory Server (which the Windows and Linux systems will be perfectly happy with).
2) On several instances we suffered corruption of the openLDAP database, so back up regularly and push changes to your slave. (In all of our cases the corruption that broke the server did not propagate to the slave.) The bad thing about this is that it fails in a reasonably silent manner where slapd just stops responding and them quietly refuses to start. The fix in these case was to wipe the ldap database, slapcat from the slave, then slapadd everything back on the master.
3) Failover can be tricky. Even with multiple servers configured in ldap.conf and similar locations, most clients seem "latch on" to a particular server and then not let go. At some point you'll want to set things up for a more automated failover and/or load balancing. For that purpose, we have been looking into switching to CentOS Directory Server (like Fedora or Redhat), which has a more robust master/master sync arrangement and thus better supports load balancing. Losing LDAP service will bring your entire network to an unpleasant halt... so engineering in some redundancy should be a priority and will make your life much easier in the long run.
I'd take a serious look at CentOS Directory Server (and CentOS itself) for this purpose before finalizing your decision.
SAGE, IMO is still worth it for the subscription to ;login:. I love my ;login:.
LoPSA is definitely more actively useful, however and I do subscribe to both. I don't know what I'd do if I had to choose just one.
Now, fortunately, I have staff that can get more out of LISA than I, so I need to send them.
"They can't sell a Chevy Nova in Spanish-speaking countries."
Snopes claims this is a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
LOPSA has had an extremely relevant code of ethics for some time, based on the excellent one developed by SAGE
http://lopsa.org/CodeOfEthics
"We as professional System Administrators do hereby commit ourselves to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct, and agree to be guided by this code of ethics, and encourage every System Administrator to do the same."
Your company should have a published policy regarding user privacy and IT, and all members of IT should abide by that policy at all times. (In our case, for files or email, we require the approval of the user themselves or of a department manager and human resources before we go off reading your stuff. We do reserve the right to monitor network traffic at any time, for any reason, but we also make sure your email access runs encrypted over the network...)
In any case, please encourage your local IT Professionals to behave like Professionals. How should they behave, you ask?
Like THIS.
Anyone who doesn't lock the accounts of ex-root-access employees and change the shared passwords that they had access to is lazy and negligent, bordering on criminally negligent. That's just inexcuseable...
A good sysadmin works to follow this code of ethics (or one like it). A bad one does not.
There are people who have been given the title or responsibilities of a system/network/IT admin/manager at some point, and there are Professional SysAdmins. The two are not always the same, although the former can grow to become the latter. Accept no substitutes.
--------------
We as professional System Administrators do hereby commit ourselves to the highest standards of ethical and professional conduct, and agree to be guided by this code of ethics, and encourage every System Administrator to do the same.
Professionalism
* I will maintain professional conduct in the workplace and will not allow personal feelings or beliefs to cause me to treat people unfairly or unprofessionally.
Personal Integrity
* I will be honest in my professional dealings and forthcoming about my competence and the impact of my mistakes. I will seek assistance from others when required.
* I will avoid conflicts of interest and biases whenever possible. When my advice is sought, if I have a conflict of interest or bias, I will declare it if appropriate, and recuse myself if necessary.
Privacy
* I will access private information on computer systems only when it is necessary in the course of my technical duties. I will maintain and protect the confidentiality of any information to which I may have access, regardless of the method by which I came into knowledge of it.
Laws and Policies
* I will educate myself and others on relevant laws, regulations, and policies regarding the performance of my duties.
Communication
* I will communicate with management, users, and colleagues about computer matters of mutual interest. I will strive to listen to and understand the needs of all parties.
System Integrity
* I will strive to ensure the necessary integrity, reliability, and availability of the systems for which I am responsible.
* I will design and maintain each system in a manner to support the purpose of the system to the organization.
Education
* I will continue to update and enhance my technical knowledge and other work-related skills. I will share my knowledge and experience with others.
Responsibility to Computing Community
* I will cooperate with the larger computing community to maintain the integrity of network and computing resources.
Social Responsibility
* As an informed professional, I will encourage the writing and adoption of relevant policies and laws consistent with these ethical principles.
Ethical Responsibility
* I will strive to build and maintain a safe, healthy, and productive workplace.
* I will do my best to make decisions consistent with the safety, privacy, and well-being of my community and the public, and to disclose promptly factors that might pose unexamined risks or dangers.
* I will accept and offer honest criticism of technical work as appropriate and will credit properly the contributions of others.
* I will lead by example, maintaining a high ethical standard and degree of professionalism in the performance of all my duties. I will support colleagues and co-workers in following this code of ethics.
-------
Draft of September 12, 2003, approved September 18, 2003, by the SAGE Executive Committee and September 30, 2003, by the Ethics Working Group.
Co-signed by LOPSA, USENIX, and SAGE 2006.
No, not a haiku...
It's an excellent (and appropriate) quote however.
Well, it's a conglomeration of two quotes from the same source, but close enough.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0061287/quotes
Please read the children of the parent post, especially the polite ones.
Also note that the EULA terms for Office change subtly and critically from version to version.
Current Office versions demand an application license exist "per device".
Now I remember why we have a drawer full of old Office licenses that are no longer installed.
No, no. He's close to correct.
Recent versions of Office explicitly address the Terminal Services environment and say that you have to "have" a separate MS Office license for every possible desktop that's used to access Office even occassionally. If someone logged in from home one day and fired up office remotely, MS says you need to buy another Office license. There's no way to actually install these licenses anywhere, but you're expected to have them.
You also need a separate per-device TS-CAL and CAL for each connecting client.
Where things can get confusing (and what we originally had set up) is where you have only one UNIX server that accesses the Terminal Server, where everyone runs their citrix clients and uses VNC or X redirection to view those somewhere else. Depending on what version of Office you have installed you might in this situation only have one "device", and you are allowed to have multiple users per device. Read your license agreements carefully, and bring aspirin.
IT professionals have a very reasonable code of ethics, thank you very much.
http://lopsa.org/CodeOfEthics
If you already have a Windows Server in place, consider installing Citrix as a simple applications server and letting most users access a single copy of MS Office installed on the apps server rather than giving each and every one of them their own installation. It's almost certainly a less-expensive (and still legal) solution than buying enough Office licenses for every desktop and, assuming reasonable usage patterns, should provide a good end-user experience.
It is not acceptable, as an alleged professional, to willingly or by policy violate the laws of where your business is located.
I know it sounds like a pain, but you should stand up for your professional ethics. If they are crazy enough to fire you for refusing to break the law, you should deal with the wrongful termination appropriately. As a refresher, our professional ethics are well summarized HERE.
If they asked you to go out in the parking lot and siphon gas from random cars rather than submit a travel reimbursement because the "budget is tight", would you? Would you shoplift copies of the software from BestBuy for them?
Write up a small presentation listing the various options and their costs and drawbacks:
Illegal options aren't really options and should be neither offered nor considered.
What really drives me mad are sites that say you need "IE X or more recent, or Netscape 6 or more recent" but don't let Firefox or Opera in because they didn't exist when they wrote the script and no one bothers to update it, even though these "more recent" browsers would do fine.
Even so, I don't believe Adobe has been convicted of (or charged with) illegally abusing their monopoly.
Microsoft has.
No, you don't.
If you sent a message to davw@example.com on my server, you would immediately receive an error message saying "Sorry, there is no user named davw here." This is good.
This is DIFFERENT from sending a bounce message in reply to SPAM filters, which is bad.
So... here's what happens if you send email to my server:
1) Incorrect address or nonexistant user: You get an immediate error message explaining the problem.
2) Spam or Virus sent to a valid user: You get nothing.
Note that in #2, the message is only dropped if the message's calculated SPAM score is through the roof. Most "probable" spam is delivered to the recipient's "Junk" folder instead of being dropped.
I've been complaining about this with Dell for years now.
The answer I've been given is that they have a standard desktop Windows OS image that, by default, they put onto every hard drive.
Changing the system to FreeDOS requires "customization" of your system, which translates into some poor tech's time, which translates to a higher cost.
It kind of makes sense, but not really.
If you're buying a server, the choice is more obvious:
No OS: $0
Windows 2003 Server w/ 5 CALs: $799
WIndows 2003 Server Web Version: $349
RHES4 w/ 1y subscription: $349
SuSE ES10 w/ 1y subscription: $280
So the conspiracy questions now become:
"Why does RHES happen to cost exactly the same as Windows Server (with no CALs)?"
"Does SuSE have a deal to be the low cost option, or is RedHat price-matching Microsoft?"
You don't need to discriminate.
The correct thing to do is to check the recipient address while you still have the sender "on the line", rather than trying to use the information he provided to get back in touch with him later.
Checking if a destination address is valid for your domain is usually fast enough that you can safely perform this check during the initial SMTP connection, providing the error message for an incorrect address directly to the system that's trying to send the email.
Running a heavy-weight SPAM scoring software, on the other hand, usually takes a bit longer, so servers will accept an email (and close the SMTP connection) before running these more comprehensive checks. If, after accepting the email, you perform additional processing and decide that it's SPAM, the polite thing to do is to assume that everything related to the email (including the return address) is a lie and not to send a bounce to that (probably forged) address.
It sounds like you might be interested in the re-spins generated by the Fedora Unity Project: http://fedoraunity.org/re-spins.
Very useful, and I wish them success.
Any company should have reasonable policies in place (so that employees at least know when and why data may be accessed) and should employ Systems Administrators that take their Code of Ethics seriously.
Any employee who indicates by deed or word that they aren't willing to live up to that level of professionalism should not be allowed access to sensitive or private data.
The real problem isn't the factor of 8, it's that both "gigabyte" and "gigabit" are measures of instantaneous data size, where networking connections are more usefully measured in terms of data rate (bandwidth)... bits (or bytes) per second.
We don't really care how many gigabytes of data the backbone can store at once... but we do care how fast data can get in and out.
In some cases we also care about latency, how long it takes a specific piece of data to transit the network (which is a straight measurement of time), but that's neither here nor there.
Exciting Elvish backstories answering questions like "Why is Galadriel so bitter?"
There were several ages during which it was definately not fun to be related to anyone who had ever seen a Silmaril... because they were DOOOOOMED.
"Of the three possibities I believe the third. He told me that his family bought some kind of ESP game when he was younger and that they played it a lot. He also said that he got better at guessing the correct answers."
If your memory of the runs is correct he also improved over the course of your experiment.
This, however, to me, even more strongly suggests that the student in question was aware of some form of 'read' or 'tell', or otherwise expert in some other, completely mundane, method of doing well at this experiment. If true, it's still interesting and scientifically would be worth studying further to try to determine the true source of his success. I'm surprised you never pursued it...
Yes, the article is (properly) critquing the applications that currently support ODF, but it is still (improperly) casting that as a shortcoming of ODF itself. It's like saying that "gif images" are somehow flawed because of limitations in Microsoft Photo Editor or Photoshop.
The whole point to having a well documented, open FORMAT, is that any APPLICATION (proprietary, open, free, expensive, shoddy, polished, whatever) can implement that format and interoperate with all other applications that do so, and be guaranteed to be able to continue to interoperate for as long as they want.
Yes, MS Office is still in many ways a superior product to "alternative" office software, but it's (currently) superior accessibility features have no (zero!) relation to the fitness of the ODF format, postscript, PDF, plain text, or any other format. What _does_ have an effect is that MS likes to make it's formats labyrinthine and preferably legally encumbered, which means that if you save all your data in an MS format, you tend to be limited to using MS applications (for as long as they let you) to access that data. With a well specified international STANDARD FORMAT like ODF now is, consumers (disabled or not) get to choose whatever applications they want.
The point to people pointing at the MS Office plugin is really that adding support for a new format is not difficult to do. If we want the features of MS Office it's an argument that MS needs to add native support for _all_ current international office document standards to Office, not that somehow those standards are defective because MS refuses to use them. Note that Office still doesn't have native PDF (another international standard in common use) support either.
Very true, never opening root shells also helps minimize opportunities for you to break something horribly by typing a command in the wrong window. It's a good policy and the 'ease of use' loss is, to be honest, pretty minimal, especially compared to the security gain.
Where we do need to use actual root windows, I try to make sure they are visually distinct with color scemes that scream "DANGER, THINK!"