Being IT Manager for a financial company, I know what you are talking about. Users are always coming to me complaining about the complex passwords they have to remember, and the way they can only get to the systems when they are logged in locally, not from home or from a remote site. "Its not as if anyone has hacked in" they tell me.
And that is my vindication that the security measures are working. I would be worried if they had lost more time/money (data is debatable) to a breach than security measures. If someone loses 5 minutes of productivity because of a forgotten password then thats 5 more minutes than should, and has, ever been lost due to a breach.
I'm sure I'm supposed to be more public spirited than this, but I can't really bring myself to open up my WiFi to other people. I don't think its the money aspect really, 40 bucks a month isn't so much as it would break me. However, I need my Internet connection to be available when I need to use it. I work from home quite regularly and have to either SSH or RDP into work, or sometimes even the reverse, SSH back home from work. If some wonderful neighbor of mine has picked that exact moment to download the latest IT Crowd episode (great show by the way!), then my ability to do the job for which I am paid would suffer.
If I could be sure everyone would only use it for browsing, email, IM and the odd bit of downloading then I'd be for it, other than that, I would rather not risk it.
As for being able to prove it wasn't you, should someone hop on and do some dastardly deed, I'd be interested to know how. Has anyone tested that theory? I'd hate to be the first person to go to court, try and prove it wasn't me, and find out the court wasn't having any of it!
I went with him to a party once, and to be fair he was quite fun. That thing he did with the chicken and the toaster was a little near the knuckle for me though...
And I would argue it the other way. I made a presentation to some potential investors about 3 years ago, I was dynamic, energetic, motivated, had flashy things on screens and was all around a great Steve Jobs type speaker. The response was, "well you've got a great personality, but where is the real business plan?"
I think if you are trying to get people motivated towards a project then PowerPoints work, but if you want real money, then a business plan is the only way.
I definitely understand your point, it was (is) very annoying to see someone straight out of school, spend $30,000 or whatever to get an MCSE in 6 months and then drop straight into a $90,000 a year position when someone who has years of "real world" experience is still stuck in a $28,000 helpdesk position. Happily that doesn't seem to happen these days, and I've been able to find a great IT Manager position where they value my experiences and knowledge over bits of paper from some over blown school.
However, don't under-value Google, FAQs, WIKIs and the like. I don't see there is much difference between spending $60 on a book, reading a man page or reading a website as a means to learn something. If I don't know it, I'm going to learn it, and if the best way is via someone elses experiences presented on a website then I'll read it. The ability to perform a job is the key thing, at least in my opinion, and luckily that of my boss too.
How about CenterICQ? I know it sounds like is should be an ICQ client, but it can handle all major protocols, and a few minor ones. I've never tried the Windows port, but the Linux version is great. As usual YMMV, not affliated etc...
I'd definitely be interested in helping out with this. Whilst not in a scientific field as such, the financial/IT field I'm in has a lot of words not usually found in a concise dictionary. What kind of format and what kind of distribution method would be best?
Being the proud owner of a Blackdog, I can answer that question. The performance is great, on the right computer. Currently Windows support is WinXP SP2 only, no other versions work. A lot of home users have XP, and should be at the latest version, so thats great when you are at your Aunts house and want to do something geeky. However, the BD would be very useful in corporate/server environments where XP isn't so widespread, so its usefuless is diminished.
Linux support is better, although takes a bit of brains to make to work. I think most people who are buying the BD at the moment are (wanna-be) Linux Hackers, so no worries there.
To which my response would be, change ISP. I've not got too closely involved with the figures of capping because I've never had to, neither of my broadband ISPs have tried to stop me enjoying my available Bandwidth.
I used to hit my BellSouth DSL account as hard as I could, maxing out the 1.5/256 service for probably 20 hours a day. Recently I've been beating my Comcast 6/384 into submission and they have yet to bat an eyelid.
Maybe I'm lucky so far, but if they ever tell me to stop using the bandwidth they promised, I'll move my service somewhere else.
Re:gaim works for me, but loses ground from here
on
Linux Instant Messengers
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I would agree with you that most companies as standard will block any kind of IM access, at least for the "regular" staff. Those Cxx people might have access, I don't think they are the target market for MSNs latest flashy stuff.
Its been tried before where I've worked, both using internal only Jabber type service and AIM (ugh) service. In both cases they had to be shut down because of abuse. People messaging people inappropriately, people sending things they shouldn't send, and people messaging people that they shouldn't. The internal wasn't so bad because at least it was kept in house. The AIM however reflected VERY badly on the company, and we aren't willing to take that risk.
To be fair though, the few times I've had to use it in a corporate setting, the most a client general messaged me was;
Client: Hey, did you get that email I sent? See what you think and then email me back. Me: OK
Well thats where it gets a bit difficult. Everyone here seems to come from a mentality of, "there is nothing but computer data worth saving". I'm sure they had that covered, however what is a little bit harder is to "backup" a physical item, like the original Morph model, or the sets from "The Wrong Trousers".
Unless of course you have some kind of matter duplicator in your basement, in which case more fool Nick Park for not coming to see you first.
I think one of the main problems people have is trying to distinguish the differences between what constitutes Windows and what constitutes a Linux Distro. Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu 5.04 cannot be considered to be the same type of thing. Win XP is an operating system, Ubuntu is an operating system plus applications plus utilities plus programming tools plus a kitchen sink.
The closest you can get to compare Windows to Linux is to compare Kernel versions. You could look at it as Win XP Pro/Home==2.4.x/2.6.x tree. Even that is a stretch, but not too far so I'll run with it. The best thing to compare a Distro to is a preinstalled image from a manufacturer. Ubuntu is nice and friendly, comes with all suitable drivers/utilities for wireless networking, Internet surfing and so on, very much like the preinstalled image that Gateway puts on its home PCs. However, RedHat Enterprise Linux has more security features configured, comes with server software installed as standard, very much like the preinstalled image Compaq puts on its mid-range servers.
To that end then there are an unlimited number of preinstalled Windows images dependent on expected usage, the same should (and is, and will be) true for Linux.
I can't tell you how much I have to recommend PortableFirefox, not only for use on a USB key, but also for use on machines without admin privilages. Take for instance a work machine locked down so tightly and with IE only installed. As long as you have the abillity to run an exectuable you can run PortableFirefox.
If you are used to running IE6/Firefox on your latest uber Quad Processor 12GHz Pentium 7 machine, you don't really get the full difference between the two. However, run IE6 and Firefox on a slightly older machine (P3 128mb etc) and you'll soon realize what you thought was a slow network connection is in fact a slow rendering engine.
If you couldn't guess, this is exactly what happened to me!
What are the IRC Ops supposed to do in a case like this? I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm seriously asking. They can ban the users, they can close the room, and they can send the logs to whatever law enforcement agencies are responsible for their area. However, how much will that achieve?
A Romanian scammer, on a Brazilian server (just a random pick, not trying to suggest anything negative about Brazil), scamming an American user. The legal hoops are mind-boggling. That's if the IRC Ops can even get any useful information from their logs, which isn't 100% sure.
I'm with you 100% on that. Living in South Florida I get to see the crème de la crème of automobile operation every day. Right turns from the left hand lane, left turns from the right hand lane are a daily occurrence. If I'm extra lucky they _might_ use their turn signal first. People swerving from lane to lane as they talk on their cell phones, eating breakfast whilst doing their makeup.
A friend told me a story from when he was a truck driver. He was in the middle of three lanes waiting at a red light. The lights went green and he started moving. It was about 100 yards up the road before he realized there was a car stuck under his front fender.
Apparently when the lights went green the woman to the left of him decided it was a good time to turn right. Of course being higher up he didn't see her until the sparks started really flying at about 30mph! She wasn't hurt physically, but I'm sure she never did that again!
Many a time I've dreamed of having a loud speaker on my car so I can voice my concerns to other drivers. Anybody know the legality on that?
Erm, well the funding, design, maintenance and so on is handled by the Shuttleworth Foundation. This, if you were not aware is a group set up by everyone's favorite South African multi-millionaire and Astronaut, Mark Shuttleworth.
As for being a pipe dream, if you check a few posts above yours someone mentions they are already installed in and around Durban, working quite well apparently.
Which unfortunately doesn't have any multiplayer component at all. Although it definitely does rock as a single player game. I believe there might be a couple of multiplayer Rogue-likes in the works, but my company URL filtering software stops me from being able to search for them.
There are so many great Rogue-like games out there, its hard to pick a favourite. Check out the rec.roguelike.* newsgroups for more information.
You could even get a mouse to go with it, if my memory serves me correctly. I'm remembering the letters "AMX", although that could be something else entirely.
All I remember is my annoyingly rich friend Steve had one, and I was jealous. Then my Dad bought an Amstrad PC1512, which blew the Speccy away. I did a cool picture of Barney Rubble on that thing, I probably still have it somewhere, I'll have to check.
By "across the pond" I presume you mean the United Kingdom. The latest unemployment figures I could find (whilst working) for the UK is 5.2% in 2002. The US numbers for 2002 is 5.8%. Not only is the UK not in double digits, but it is less than the US.
As for 30 hour work weeks? I wish it had been like that when I was in the UK. The latest figures I can find are around 37.5 hours on average in the UK, which is admittedly less then the US. I think that might have more to do with the Government structure and restrictions than any work ethic or management differences.
Yes it might be useless to you (and most other people) now, but who knows in the future? Also the backend to it is the same as that from Google Maps, which is definitely a very useful (and very cool) web application. I'm sure it took them a grand total of about 15 minutes to import the satellite images, 15 minutes to plot all the moon landing points and about 15 minutes to draw the amusing cheese picture. All done in the space of a lunch break, AND yet still supplied a laugh to many people around the world.
You must be new here right? Things like this get done because somebody wondered whether it would be possible. They now know, yes it is possible. So a Chess playing Bayesian filter isn't necessarily 100% useful now, but what they learned from doing it might be able to be applied in some other situation. Maybe they can reapply whatever they learned back into spam filtering and improve all of our in-boxes.
And that is maybe the key problem with situations like this, its a numbers game. If a drug therapy for a disease increases the survival rating from 25% to 90% but introduces a 5% chance of death due to negative reactions to the drug is that a good thing? If you are in the 95% that survive, heck yes. If you are in the 5% that pass away, heck no!
Statistically you and I know that those 5% who pass away with the drugs had a 75% chance of passing away without the drugs then prescribing the drugs was the right thing to do. However when someone tells you your 10 year old son died of complications due to drugs someone told you would be good for them, you are understandable angry.
With life and death 100% is the only percentage that counts.
Slashdot Mirror
Being IT Manager for a financial company, I know what you are talking about. Users are always coming to me complaining about the complex passwords they have to remember, and the way they can only get to the systems when they are logged in locally, not from home or from a remote site. "Its not as if anyone has hacked in" they tell me.
And that is my vindication that the security measures are working. I would be worried if they had lost more time/money (data is debatable) to a breach than security measures. If someone loses 5 minutes of productivity because of a forgotten password then thats 5 more minutes than should, and has, ever been lost due to a breach.
I'm sure I'm supposed to be more public spirited than this, but I can't really bring myself to open up my WiFi to other people. I don't think its the money aspect really, 40 bucks a month isn't so much as it would break me. However, I need my Internet connection to be available when I need to use it. I work from home quite regularly and have to either SSH or RDP into work, or sometimes even the reverse, SSH back home from work. If some wonderful neighbor of mine has picked that exact moment to download the latest IT Crowd episode (great show by the way!), then my ability to do the job for which I am paid would suffer.
If I could be sure everyone would only use it for browsing, email, IM and the odd bit of downloading then I'd be for it, other than that, I would rather not risk it.
As for being able to prove it wasn't you, should someone hop on and do some dastardly deed, I'd be interested to know how. Has anyone tested that theory? I'd hate to be the first person to go to court, try and prove it wasn't me, and find out the court wasn't having any of it!
I went with him to a party once, and to be fair he was quite fun. That thing he did with the chicken and the toaster was a little near the knuckle for me though...
This question isn't meant in a negative way at all, so please don't take it that way...
What type of data requires a file 100Gb in size?
And I would argue it the other way. I made a presentation to some potential investors about 3 years ago, I was dynamic, energetic, motivated, had flashy things on screens and was all around a great Steve Jobs type speaker. The response was, "well you've got a great personality, but where is the real business plan?"
I think if you are trying to get people motivated towards a project then PowerPoints work, but if you want real money, then a business plan is the only way.
I definitely understand your point, it was (is) very annoying to see someone straight out of school, spend $30,000 or whatever to get an MCSE in 6 months and then drop straight into a $90,000 a year position when someone who has years of "real world" experience is still stuck in a $28,000 helpdesk position. Happily that doesn't seem to happen these days, and I've been able to find a great IT Manager position where they value my experiences and knowledge over bits of paper from some over blown school.
However, don't under-value Google, FAQs, WIKIs and the like. I don't see there is much difference between spending $60 on a book, reading a man page or reading a website as a means to learn something. If I don't know it, I'm going to learn it, and if the best way is via someone elses experiences presented on a website then I'll read it. The ability to perform a job is the key thing, at least in my opinion, and luckily that of my boss too.
How about CenterICQ? I know it sounds like is should be an ICQ client, but it can handle all major protocols, and a few minor ones. I've never tried the Windows port, but the Linux version is great. As usual YMMV, not affliated etc...
http://thekonst.net/centericq/
I'd definitely be interested in helping out with this. Whilst not in a scientific field as such, the financial/IT field I'm in has a lot of words not usually found in a concise dictionary. What kind of format and what kind of distribution method would be best?
Being the proud owner of a Blackdog, I can answer that question. The performance is great, on the right computer. Currently Windows support is WinXP SP2 only, no other versions work. A lot of home users have XP, and should be at the latest version, so thats great when you are at your Aunts house and want to do something geeky. However, the BD would be very useful in corporate/server environments where XP isn't so widespread, so its usefuless is diminished.
Linux support is better, although takes a bit of brains to make to work. I think most people who are buying the BD at the moment are (wanna-be) Linux Hackers, so no worries there.
Ultimately, I love my BD!
To which my response would be, change ISP. I've not got too closely involved with the figures of capping because I've never had to, neither of my broadband ISPs have tried to stop me enjoying my available Bandwidth.
I used to hit my BellSouth DSL account as hard as I could, maxing out the 1.5/256 service for probably 20 hours a day. Recently I've been beating my Comcast 6/384 into submission and they have yet to bat an eyelid.
Maybe I'm lucky so far, but if they ever tell me to stop using the bandwidth they promised, I'll move my service somewhere else.
I would agree with you that most companies as standard will block any kind of IM access, at least for the "regular" staff. Those Cxx people might have access, I don't think they are the target market for MSNs latest flashy stuff.
Its been tried before where I've worked, both using internal only Jabber type service and AIM (ugh) service. In both cases they had to be shut down because of abuse. People messaging people inappropriately, people sending things they shouldn't send, and people messaging people that they shouldn't. The internal wasn't so bad because at least it was kept in house. The AIM however reflected VERY badly on the company, and we aren't willing to take that risk.
To be fair though, the few times I've had to use it in a corporate setting, the most a client general messaged me was;
Client: Hey, did you get that email I sent? See what you think and then email me back.
Me: OK
So I don't think we are missing out!
Well thats where it gets a bit difficult. Everyone here seems to come from a mentality of, "there is nothing but computer data worth saving". I'm sure they had that covered, however what is a little bit harder is to "backup" a physical item, like the original Morph model, or the sets from "The Wrong Trousers".
Unless of course you have some kind of matter duplicator in your basement, in which case more fool Nick Park for not coming to see you first.
I think one of the main problems people have is trying to distinguish the differences between what constitutes Windows and what constitutes a Linux Distro. Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu 5.04 cannot be considered to be the same type of thing. Win XP is an operating system, Ubuntu is an operating system plus applications plus utilities plus programming tools plus a kitchen sink.
The closest you can get to compare Windows to Linux is to compare Kernel versions. You could look at it as Win XP Pro/Home==2.4.x/2.6.x tree. Even that is a stretch, but not too far so I'll run with it. The best thing to compare a Distro to is a preinstalled image from a manufacturer. Ubuntu is nice and friendly, comes with all suitable drivers/utilities for wireless networking, Internet surfing and so on, very much like the preinstalled image that Gateway puts on its home PCs. However, RedHat Enterprise Linux has more security features configured, comes with server software installed as standard, very much like the preinstalled image Compaq puts on its mid-range servers.
To that end then there are an unlimited number of preinstalled Windows images dependent on expected usage, the same should (and is, and will be) true for Linux.
I can't tell you how much I have to recommend PortableFirefox, not only for use on a USB key, but also for use on machines without admin privilages. Take for instance a work machine locked down so tightly and with IE only installed. As long as you have the abillity to run an exectuable you can run PortableFirefox.
If you are used to running IE6/Firefox on your latest uber Quad Processor 12GHz Pentium 7 machine, you don't really get the full difference between the two. However, run IE6 and Firefox on a slightly older machine (P3 128mb etc) and you'll soon realize what you thought was a slow network connection is in fact a slow rendering engine.
If you couldn't guess, this is exactly what happened to me!
What are the IRC Ops supposed to do in a case like this? I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm seriously asking. They can ban the users, they can close the room, and they can send the logs to whatever law enforcement agencies are responsible for their area. However, how much will that achieve?
A Romanian scammer, on a Brazilian server (just a random pick, not trying to suggest anything negative about Brazil), scamming an American user. The legal hoops are mind-boggling. That's if the IRC Ops can even get any useful information from their logs, which isn't 100% sure.
Good point! I'll make sure I invest in the armor-plating before I get the PA system!
I'm with you 100% on that. Living in South Florida I get to see the crème de la crème of automobile operation every day. Right turns from the left hand lane, left turns from the right hand lane are a daily occurrence. If I'm extra lucky they _might_ use their turn signal first. People swerving from lane to lane as they talk on their cell phones, eating breakfast whilst doing their makeup.
A friend told me a story from when he was a truck driver. He was in the middle of three lanes waiting at a red light. The lights went green and he started moving. It was about 100 yards up the road before he realized there was a car stuck under his front fender.
Apparently when the lights went green the woman to the left of him decided it was a good time to turn right. Of course being higher up he didn't see her until the sparks started really flying at about 30mph! She wasn't hurt physically, but I'm sure she never did that again!
Many a time I've dreamed of having a loud speaker on my car so I can voice my concerns to other drivers. Anybody know the legality on that?
Erm, well the funding, design, maintenance and so on is handled by the Shuttleworth Foundation. This, if you were not aware is a group set up by everyone's favorite South African multi-millionaire and Astronaut, Mark Shuttleworth.
As for being a pipe dream, if you check a few posts above yours someone mentions they are already installed in and around Durban, working quite well apparently.
There are never enough Red Dwarf quotes around here these days, keep up the good work old chap.
Which unfortunately doesn't have any multiplayer component at all. Although it definitely does rock as a single player game. I believe there might be a couple of multiplayer Rogue-likes in the works, but my company URL filtering software stops me from being able to search for them.
There are so many great Rogue-like games out there, its hard to pick a favourite. Check out the rec.roguelike.* newsgroups for more information.
You could even get a mouse to go with it, if my memory serves me correctly. I'm remembering the letters "AMX", although that could be something else entirely.
All I remember is my annoyingly rich friend Steve had one, and I was jealous. Then my Dad bought an Amstrad PC1512, which blew the Speccy away. I did a cool picture of Barney Rubble on that thing, I probably still have it somewhere, I'll have to check.
As for 30 hour work weeks? I wish it had been like that when I was in the UK. The latest figures I can find are around 37.5 hours on average in the UK, which is admittedly less then the US. I think that might have more to do with the Government structure and restrictions than any work ethic or management differences.
Sources:k workhrs.htm?IsSrchRes=1
http://www.bartleby.com/151/fields/72.html
http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/wrkgtime/general/u
Yes it might be useless to you (and most other people) now, but who knows in the future? Also the backend to it is the same as that from Google Maps, which is definitely a very useful (and very cool) web application. I'm sure it took them a grand total of about 15 minutes to import the satellite images, 15 minutes to plot all the moon landing points and about 15 minutes to draw the amusing cheese picture. All done in the space of a lunch break, AND yet still supplied a laugh to many people around the world.
You must be new here right? Things like this get done because somebody wondered whether it would be possible. They now know, yes it is possible. So a Chess playing Bayesian filter isn't necessarily 100% useful now, but what they learned from doing it might be able to be applied in some other situation. Maybe they can reapply whatever they learned back into spam filtering and improve all of our in-boxes.
And that is maybe the key problem with situations like this, its a numbers game. If a drug therapy for a disease increases the survival rating from 25% to 90% but introduces a 5% chance of death due to negative reactions to the drug is that a good thing? If you are in the 95% that survive, heck yes. If you are in the 5% that pass away, heck no!
Statistically you and I know that those 5% who pass away with the drugs had a 75% chance of passing away without the drugs then prescribing the drugs was the right thing to do. However when someone tells you your 10 year old son died of complications due to drugs someone told you would be good for them, you are understandable angry.
With life and death 100% is the only percentage that counts.