And I see they're still jumping on this Unity-ish sidebar UI bandwagon... ugh, I guess I'll be using xfce for a while longer so I can actually have a normal top and bottom panels. Running apps and workspace picker along the bottom, Application (etc) menus along the top with various system controls... its worked well for over a decade, yes some people might like the newer Vista/OSXy way to set things up, and fine that can be the (annoying) default, but at least give us the *option* to set up our workspace as we like. Saying "we don't support user customization anymore" is simply arrogant and not an option for open source software which was supposed to be all about the user having control.
It looks nice, and I commend them for all the hard work, I'm sure a lot of hours went in to it, but I won't be in any rush to upgrade if I still can't even do something simple like move my panels around.
We went a similar but different direction in Canada, rather than killing the phone there's a list of IMEIs for stolen phones, and all carriers will honour not allowing phones in the database on to their networks. Which this solution sounds little less onerous than re-engineering every handset OS to have this kill ability.
Also the phone doesn't actually have to be turned on to be blacklisted, how often will you send the "kill" pings out when stolen? Would a thief simply have to wait a few weeks until the heat dies down?
We have devices that register with networks when activated, isn't it far easier to wait for that event than to try and push a command to a phone that may never be turned on again?
Also how is this different from Xerox Parc, Bell Labs and IBM Research (or even Microsoft Research) where staff are given the freedom to innovate and experiment with technologies with no immediate marketability. Without such basic research, which corporate America has been languishing in their support of over the past decade or two, we wouldn't have the transistor, laser or so many other key pieces of our modern world.
Google should be commended for being a good corporate citizen and giving back to science and society. Or as another commenter said, where should the money go, executive raises and dividends for shareholders?
There are also mines starting up for rare earths in the Canadian arctic. Actually, quite large deposits up there from what I've read.
Re:I don't do any of those jobs...
on
The Real Job Threat
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What are you talking about, we enabled them to program themselves years ago! http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2362
But in all seriousness, I think computers and robots taking on more jobs is a GOOD thing, something we should encourage more. The debate at that point needs to shift, less jobs, more people unemployed, why would we have fewer and fewer people toiling away (harder and harder the way companies are pushing employees) with so many free bodies available? A more fundamental economic and societal shift will be needed, even the French 30 hour work week looks a little long at that point.
I would hope by spreading the work out (which yes will mean the current economic model will require a LOT of re-tuning, Occupy Wall Street, anyone?) it will give everyone more leisure time, more time to enjoy life. Our finite existence on this planet should not be tied to a lifetime of labour, our job should not definite us. Let's make a better society for ALL through this automation, like the old 50s and 60s cartoons envisions. George Jetson button pusher, anyone?
Umm, which track gauge will they use? North American or Russian? If the Russians agreed to use North American gauge and run the line all the way to China (which uses the same gauge as North America and Europe), well, that'd be convenient for us...
I second Fail2Ban, I've set my tripwire VERY tight for services. I also agree with the following post, SFTP, I'm phasing out FTP myself. About bloody time.
Well that could be fun considering a lot of the HAM radio spectrum blocks are internationally recognized and used. Go ahead, sell it off, give it to someone else to use, I'm just north of your border, and my government hasn't proposed selling off that spectrum (yet). So I'm sure the private purchases of that spectrum will just LOVE when we all continue to key up on those bands (or the satellites already in orbit continue to transmit in to your borders on those frequencies).
Someone needs to inform this congressman of the realities of how spectrum allocation works.
Governments should mandate efficiency standards, not technology. I'm a bit on the free-market side myself, let the best bulb win, but not with absolutely no ground rules for that fight. If government were to truly stand back and let the market decide everything, cost would almost always win out and we'd have a proliferation of coal power plants and inefficient gas cars lacking almost every kind of pollution control system.
Government's role is to set the standard, in this case, so many lumen per watt, or however they want to word it, and then let the industry innovate the best technology to meet that goal.
The problem isn't the Volt costs too much, it's the fact the cheap cost of a gas vehicle and oil to put in it doesn't take in to account the true cost of the vehicle.
If the full cost weren't externalized to the same degree, for example the cost of healthcare for those made ill by exhaust, the cost of dealing with the impacts of climate change, even just the health and economic costs of people injured in road accidents, the price of a gas guzzling car would be a few times higher.
Instead the system externalizes these and others in society, not the actual drivers of these vehicles, are made to pay the costs. In some cases such as the impacts of climate change, those paying the true cost for gas powered vehicles could be on the other side of the planet.
It shows how our entire economic model must be reworked so the true cost of a product, cradle to grave, on all of society is taken in to account. A holistic approach to economics.
It's the same externalizing that Walmart uses, prices are kept down because things such as benefits and healthcare are pushed on to state governments through minimum wage paid employees.
It's time all members of society becomes accountable for their actions.
Have the auction here, in the city that proudly loves and supports the series (and so many other series beloved by slashdot readers...).
Think of the environmental footprint and cost of shipping everything to California first. Just to have to ship that Viper back when I put in the winning bid.:)
This was exactly my thought, we GPL all the software out of our lab. We also have a prominent notice on our download page giving the proper journal citation for this particular piece of software, so users know what to put.
However to not cite software used, particularly when the exact citation line is given to you so easily, in academic would be considered academic dishonesty. Sloppy as you said. And would reflect very poorly on the author of the paper if it were ever to come to light.
Since you can't really enforce it without a costly lawsuit, you simply have to have faith other academics will follow the same attribution code to cite sources, including software.
What might be more useful is writing this to a prominent journal in your field as a letter to bring attention to this issue, to help teach those older academics who never thought about the issues of citing software.
"Gotta keep those nasty foreigners from trying anything" are the battle cries from the Right over this.
If my brethren up here in Canada were smarter, we'd start promoting Canada more as an alternative destination for international conferences. No DHS or Patriot Act up here (yet...).
Want an international conference held in North America? Come to Vancouver or Toronto!
Need to make an international business deal? Come here as well, we have great business centres to do your wheeling and dealing in. Sign those contracts without them being inspected while crossing the border to the USA.
This could be our ticket to business traveler riches, as more countries become wary of entering the USA (and rightly so).
But of course our political types won't. They wouldn't dare embarrass their political masters in Washington, or deny these masters access to all these wonderful proprietary documents passing across their borders. That might stop their advantages through state sponsored corporate espionage.
In your case, it's probably appropriate to ask your uses to add CACert or a self-signed certificate to their browsers.
This isn't rocket science.
But it does create a problem with non-tech savvy users try to visit your site and get scared off by the scary warning message.
The specific situations I'm thinking of when I posed the Ask Slashdot, and am currently trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe.
There has to be a way to get an easy "this cert belongs to this domain" validation without costing huge amounts of money or giving scary, incomprehensible to non-tech user messages.
But what about applications that don't need this level of identity verification. Organizations that aren't commercial and simply want encryption for users around the world.
The specific situations I'm thinking of when I posed the Ask Slashdot, and am currently trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe
All of these examples are for examples of commercial entities and involve money.
The specific situations I'm thinking of, and trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe
All of these examples are for examples of commercial entities and involve money.
The specific situations I'm thinking of, and trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe.
Do what you love. In the end it is all that matters. True enough, I agree (and have been feeling IT career malaise lately as well).
But my advise is to wait until the current economic slump is over. If you have a good job, keep it! Stick it out until the economy is hot and you can take your pick of jobs. Then switch quick so you can work your way up far enough before the next economic cycle.
I'm firmly on the "send the update" side. Hopefully besides an update (or if you wanted to be more timid) this update could put a message on the screen of the machine saying "YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN PWNED! Clean it up!" Let these users know their computer is infected.
But these botnets create an enormous threat to security and the world economy. There is no doubt they need to be shut down before more credit cards are stolen, spam is sent, or a DoS attack takes out something vital.
I'm also against capital punishment, but these botnet creators and spammers give me pause in those beliefs....
Of course they certainly wouldn't be the only country doing this, it's a long standing tradition for any unpopular regime. If you can draw this line between you and another group, and get your people to rally around you on some point, you can easily manipulate and pacify a population.
If you're referring to Nancy Pelosi, remember a key difference here is that although the Chinese government needs the popular vote, it also tries hard to be responsible and wants to keep a good relation with the west, while all Pelosi cares about is her popularity. No, I'm referring to BUSH! He has used nationalist rhetoric time and again to manipulate public opinion, and control through division and fear.
This made me do a double take. The first thing I thought was "NO f-ing way! The Dalai Lama?" but then I tried to see it from the perspective of a Chinese national. That led me to wonder, does she know that most of the world finds the Chinese government's explanations... untrustworthy?
And what is her reaction to that? She thinks it's sad we can't trust our government like she trusts hers. Since her government, after all, represents the people.
It's fascinating seeing these different perspectives.
Slashdot Mirror
And I see they're still jumping on this Unity-ish sidebar UI bandwagon... ugh, I guess I'll be using xfce for a while longer so I can actually have a normal top and bottom panels. Running apps and workspace picker along the bottom, Application (etc) menus along the top with various system controls... its worked well for over a decade, yes some people might like the newer Vista/OSXy way to set things up, and fine that can be the (annoying) default, but at least give us the *option* to set up our workspace as we like. Saying "we don't support user customization anymore" is simply arrogant and not an option for open source software which was supposed to be all about the user having control.
It looks nice, and I commend them for all the hard work, I'm sure a lot of hours went in to it, but I won't be in any rush to upgrade if I still can't even do something simple like move my panels around.
We went a similar but different direction in Canada, rather than killing the phone there's a list of IMEIs for stolen phones, and all carriers will honour not allowing phones in the database on to their networks. Which this solution sounds little less onerous than re-engineering every handset OS to have this kill ability.
Also the phone doesn't actually have to be turned on to be blacklisted, how often will you send the "kill" pings out when stolen? Would a thief simply have to wait a few weeks until the heat dies down?
We have devices that register with networks when activated, isn't it far easier to wait for that event than to try and push a command to a phone that may never be turned on again?
Reference:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stolen-phones-blacklist-launches-in-canada-1.1873674
Slight correction, Xinjiang is a province not a city. And a very lovely part of the country to visit.
Also how is this different from Xerox Parc, Bell Labs and IBM Research (or even Microsoft Research) where staff are given the freedom to innovate and experiment with technologies with no immediate marketability. Without such basic research, which corporate America has been languishing in their support of over the past decade or two, we wouldn't have the transistor, laser or so many other key pieces of our modern world.
Google should be commended for being a good corporate citizen and giving back to science and society. Or as another commenter said, where should the money go, executive raises and dividends for shareholders?
There are also mines starting up for rare earths in the Canadian arctic. Actually, quite large deposits up there from what I've read.
What are you talking about, we enabled them to program themselves years ago! http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2362
But in all seriousness, I think computers and robots taking on more jobs is a GOOD thing, something we should encourage more. The debate at that point needs to shift, less jobs, more people unemployed, why would we have fewer and fewer people toiling away (harder and harder the way companies are pushing employees) with so many free bodies available? A more fundamental economic and societal shift will be needed, even the French 30 hour work week looks a little long at that point.
I would hope by spreading the work out (which yes will mean the current economic model will require a LOT of re-tuning, Occupy Wall Street, anyone?) it will give everyone more leisure time, more time to enjoy life. Our finite existence on this planet should not be tied to a lifetime of labour, our job should not definite us. Let's make a better society for ALL through this automation, like the old 50s and 60s cartoons envisions. George Jetson button pusher, anyone?
Umm, which track gauge will they use? North American or Russian? If the Russians agreed to use North American gauge and run the line all the way to China (which uses the same gauge as North America and Europe), well, that'd be convenient for us...
I second Fail2Ban, I've set my tripwire VERY tight for services. I also agree with the following post, SFTP, I'm phasing out FTP myself. About bloody time.
Well that could be fun considering a lot of the HAM radio spectrum blocks are internationally recognized and used. Go ahead, sell it off, give it to someone else to use, I'm just north of your border, and my government hasn't proposed selling off that spectrum (yet). So I'm sure the private purchases of that spectrum will just LOVE when we all continue to key up on those bands (or the satellites already in orbit continue to transmit in to your borders on those frequencies).
Someone needs to inform this congressman of the realities of how spectrum allocation works.
And as this 2007 Slashdot story points out:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/02/26/1916211/GE-Announces-Advancement-in-Incandescent-Technology
Governments should mandate efficiency standards, not technology. I'm a bit on the free-market side myself, let the best bulb win, but not with absolutely no ground rules for that fight. If government were to truly stand back and let the market decide everything, cost would almost always win out and we'd have a proliferation of coal power plants and inefficient gas cars lacking almost every kind of pollution control system.
Government's role is to set the standard, in this case, so many lumen per watt, or however they want to word it, and then let the industry innovate the best technology to meet that goal.
And if my boss (as an IT staff member myself) was looking over my shoulder all the time, I'd quit.
Does the original question asked check their employee's bags every night for confidential documents? Mandate no USB drives?
Your employees are who you should be more worried about, jumping to a competitor and taking your client list with them.
But it all comes down to trusting your staff. I certainly hope you're not one of these paranoid bosses that only gives keys to the top managers.
The problem isn't the Volt costs too much, it's the fact the cheap cost of a gas vehicle and oil to put in it doesn't take in to account the true cost of the vehicle.
If the full cost weren't externalized to the same degree, for example the cost of healthcare for those made ill by exhaust, the cost of dealing with the impacts of climate change, even just the health and economic costs of people injured in road accidents, the price of a gas guzzling car would be a few times higher.
Instead the system externalizes these and others in society, not the actual drivers of these vehicles, are made to pay the costs. In some cases such as the impacts of climate change, those paying the true cost for gas powered vehicles could be on the other side of the planet.
It shows how our entire economic model must be reworked so the true cost of a product, cradle to grave, on all of society is taken in to account. A holistic approach to economics.
It's the same externalizing that Walmart uses, prices are kept down because things such as benefits and healthcare are pushed on to state governments through minimum wage paid employees.
It's time all members of society becomes accountable for their actions.
Yes, because a picture of a Christmas tree is such a commonly used category photo on slashdot....
BSG is filmed here in Vancouver, why Pasadena???
Have the auction here, in the city that proudly loves and supports the series (and so many other series beloved by slashdot readers...).
Think of the environmental footprint and cost of shipping everything to California first. Just to have to ship that Viper back when I put in the winning bid. :)
This was exactly my thought, we GPL all the software out of our lab. We also have a prominent notice on our download page giving the proper journal citation for this particular piece of software, so users know what to put.
However to not cite software used, particularly when the exact citation line is given to you so easily, in academic would be considered academic dishonesty. Sloppy as you said. And would reflect very poorly on the author of the paper if it were ever to come to light.
Since you can't really enforce it without a costly lawsuit, you simply have to have faith other academics will follow the same attribution code to cite sources, including software.
What might be more useful is writing this to a prominent journal in your field as a letter to bring attention to this issue, to help teach those older academics who never thought about the issues of citing software.
"Gotta keep those nasty foreigners from trying anything" are the battle cries from the Right over this.
If my brethren up here in Canada were smarter, we'd start promoting Canada more as an alternative destination for international conferences. No DHS or Patriot Act up here (yet...).
Want an international conference held in North America? Come to Vancouver or Toronto!
Need to make an international business deal? Come here as well, we have great business centres to do your wheeling and dealing in. Sign those contracts without them being inspected while crossing the border to the USA.
This could be our ticket to business traveler riches, as more countries become wary of entering the USA (and rightly so).
But of course our political types won't. They wouldn't dare embarrass their political masters in Washington, or deny these masters access to all these wonderful proprietary documents passing across their borders. That might stop their advantages through state sponsored corporate espionage.
McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.
So by 'not regulating' he means that ISP's should be free to throttle whatever they please? Interesting stance.
Exactly my thought.
I actually 100% agree with him. 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.'
Yes ENGINEERS, and not corporate bureaucrats either!
Things would work fine if government and corporations stayed out of the way and let us run this system.
In your case, it's probably appropriate to ask your uses to add CACert or a self-signed certificate to their browsers.
This isn't rocket science.
But it does create a problem with non-tech savvy users try to visit your site and get scared off by the scary warning message.
The specific situations I'm thinking of when I posed the Ask Slashdot, and am currently trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe.
There has to be a way to get an easy "this cert belongs to this domain" validation without costing huge amounts of money or giving scary, incomprehensible to non-tech user messages.
But what about applications that don't need this level of identity verification. Organizations that aren't commercial and simply want encryption for users around the world.
The specific situations I'm thinking of when I posed the Ask Slashdot, and am currently trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe
All of these examples are for examples of commercial entities and involve money.
The specific situations I'm thinking of, and trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe
All of these examples are for examples of commercial entities and involve money.
The specific situations I'm thinking of, and trying to deal with, are academic and non-profit sites that need encryption. All I want is a cert that will allow visitors to our research project from around the world and differing levels of computer savvy, to visit our web app without getting scary browser messages.
Unfortunately the system is 100% geared towards commercial entities that needs to verify identity. There's nothing for the non-commercial sector, and that's what I'm looking for something to fill.
I had a user yesterday who thought our app was down because he installed FF3 and got this scary error message. Fortunately he was only on the other side of campus and I could walk over and show him how to setup an exception. I can't do that for a researcher in India, China, or Europe.
But my advise is to wait until the current economic slump is over. If you have a good job, keep it! Stick it out until the economy is hot and you can take your pick of jobs. Then switch quick so you can work your way up far enough before the next economic cycle.
My thought exactly.
I'm firmly on the "send the update" side. Hopefully besides an update (or if you wanted to be more timid) this update could put a message on the screen of the machine saying "YOUR COMPUTER HAS BEEN PWNED! Clean it up!" Let these users know their computer is infected.
But these botnets create an enormous threat to security and the world economy. There is no doubt they need to be shut down before more credit cards are stolen, spam is sent, or a DoS attack takes out something vital.
I'm also against capital punishment, but these botnet creators and spammers give me pause in those beliefs....
If you're referring to Nancy Pelosi, remember a key difference here is that although the Chinese government needs the popular vote, it also tries hard to be responsible and wants to keep a good relation with the west, while all Pelosi cares about is her popularity. No, I'm referring to BUSH! He has used nationalist rhetoric time and again to manipulate public opinion, and control through division and fear.
And what is her reaction to that? She thinks it's sad we can't trust our government like she trusts hers. Since her government, after all, represents the people.
It's fascinating seeing these different perspectives.