WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - In another news story, scientists are researching where the editors of the popular news-zine Slashdot are capable of learning how to use spellcheckers.
Citing their most recent evidence is this gem plucked from today's headlines:
If their customers take their business elsewhere, they'll soon drop the biometrics in favour of something a little more privacy-friendly. Who wants all those sweaty thumbprints all over the readers anyway? Gheesh!!!
"Secure Erase Trash immediately overwrites the file with erronious data, so that the file disappears and cannot be reconstructed."
Not only can their marketing drones not spell 'erroneous' correctly, but if the data is erroneous isn't that a bug? I'd hope that they're actually writing 'correct' data, which for this purpose should better read 'pseudo-random', or 'nonsensical'.
How the hell did the Dept. of Homeland Security get involved with this? Are we really under attack by that many perverts? Isn't this really a job for our local police? And if crimes cross state lines (as in internet pornography), then bring in the FBI? (Canadian analogy with RCMP similar).
It would be interesting to see how many (if any) of these turnkey systems even think of implementing encryption in their db backends. How all those poor unprotected credit card numbers...
It's the same account numbers that allow for both the in-in' and the out-in'!:-) The trick is to use 1 bank account just to 'float' enough funds for what you need and transfer money into it as needed. Only give *that* checking account # info to your online partners; not your account chock-full-o'-money!
It's nice to make things "easy" for non-techies, but there comes a point at which if you make things too easy (i.e., just point & click this button) then they will have a false sense of security with no real understanding of the issues, dangers, etc. involved. You'll end up in the same situation as people 'leaking' information from M$ Word like Tony Blair's guys did, because they didn't understand the technology behind it.
Better to have a little pain and try to fathom PGP then *assume* that everything will be alright with this little magical software panacea.
We've all done the Linux and Win NTFS stuff by now, but what about PowerPC (Mac OS X)? Any 'live' distros that don't have to be installed to disk first?
Now you know what to do with all those metal cans and lucite plastic mailers that the AOL CDs come in! Load 'em up with Knoppix and stick in your travel bag, suitcase etc., so you always have one with 'ya!
Yes - they don't *want* English signs! The Japanese are (how shall I say this delicately), rather xenophobic. A 6ft Westerner arriving on a plane full of Koreans sticks out like Attila the Hun arriving with the mongol hordes to ravage the women.
When you call up their (outsourced) tech support for DSL issues in Bangalore, the dialog goes something like this:
ME: I'm calling to see if there's a DSL outage in my area.... AT&T: What version of Windows are you using? ME: I'm not using Windows, I'm using Linux, but that's not my question - AT&T INTERRUPTS: Okay, go into Control Panel ME: I'm using Linux, not Windows! AT&T: What ees thees LEENUX? ME: [Looks for competitor's DSL plans in my area]
Check out Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com)
There you can register a throwaway email address to be used from 1 to 20 times in the form:
keyword.count.name@spamgourmet.com
So to track if NYTIMES is using your email, you could 'on-the-fly' construct an email for your registration like:
nytimes.20.yourname@spamgourmet.com
02138 - Cambridge, MA, a college-town of some note (Harvard right down the street from me, MIT just a few miles away) is not serviced by this.....oh well.
I just bought an HP Pavilion a450y a few weeks ago and tried to get Mandrake (or any Linux) pre-installed. Called the 800-HP-LINUX number and the guy had no clue as to whether it was supported or not (said the box just came out in January and he had no specs). Talked to 3 different sales people in HP and no one could really hazard a guess.
The kicker is that no WinXP CD's come bundled! Instead, you get a 'recovery partition', which you can run a onetime program against to burn 2 'rescue' DVDs, but you have to pay for WinXP anyway. I asked if they could leave it off and they said, "no, that would void the warranty". I explained that I was going to wipe the drive anyway the moment I got it and they just went on with the "warranty invalidation" stuff.
It looks like to me they're heading in the right direction but the order-takers don't have the right scripts in front of them to field linux-related presales queries.
Slashdot Mirror
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - In another news story, scientists are researching where the editors of the popular news-zine Slashdot are capable of learning how to use spellcheckers.
Citing their most recent evidence is this gem plucked from today's headlines:
"Apparantly the US Astronomers..."
Slashdot editors were unavailble for comment.
Not to be confused with the editors of Slashdot who just can't spell either:
"seperate [sic] its Internet from the rest of the World"
If their customers take their business elsewhere, they'll soon drop the biometrics in favour of something a little more privacy-friendly. Who wants all those sweaty thumbprints all over the readers anyway? Gheesh!!!
Too late! The boxes are on the truck!
Perhaps you could elucidate me further then - my dictionary shows no entry for 'erronious'. I'm happy to stand corrected though! :-)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/security/ has this gem:
"Secure Erase Trash immediately overwrites the file with erronious data, so that the file disappears and cannot be reconstructed."
Not only can their marketing drones not spell 'erroneous' correctly, but if the data is erroneous isn't that a bug? I'd hope that they're actually writing 'correct' data, which for this purpose should better read 'pseudo-random', or 'nonsensical'.
http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:OSX
Tech books for free: ahref=http://www.techbooksforfree.com/http://www.t echbooksforfree.com/>
t ml/http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html/ >
Linux Device Drivers: ahref=http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.h
Also some for Samba, Subversion, CVS, etc.
How the hell did the Dept. of Homeland Security get involved with this? Are we really under attack by that many perverts? Isn't this really a job for our local police? And if crimes cross state lines (as in internet pornography), then bring in the FBI? (Canadian analogy with RCMP similar).
Homeland Security? SHEESH!
Exactly! The media is missing the point here too that not only that data was taken, but why was all this stuff on a laptop in the firstplace?
You might be interested in http://www.bitpass.com/ for micropayments. Sounds good in principle but I've not yet implemented any of it on my site...
It would be interesting to see how many (if any) of these turnkey systems even think of implementing encryption in their db backends. How all those poor unprotected credit card numbers...
It's the same account numbers that allow for both the in-in' and the out-in'! :-) The trick is to use 1 bank account just to 'float' enough funds for what you need and transfer money into it as needed. Only give *that* checking account # info to your online partners; not your account chock-full-o'-money!
It's nice to make things "easy" for non-techies, but there comes a point at which if you make things too easy (i.e., just point & click this button) then they will have a false sense of security with no real understanding of the issues, dangers, etc. involved. You'll end up in the same situation as people 'leaking' information from M$ Word like Tony Blair's guys did, because they didn't understand the technology behind it.
Better to have a little pain and try to fathom PGP then *assume* that everything will be alright with this little magical software panacea.
It sounds like our esteemed Senator just "flip-flopped"...
We've all done the Linux and Win NTFS stuff by now, but what about PowerPC (Mac OS X)? Any 'live' distros that don't have to be installed to disk first?
Now you know what to do with all those metal cans and lucite plastic mailers that the AOL CDs come in!
Load 'em up with Knoppix and stick in your travel bag, suitcase etc., so you always have one with 'ya!
Yes - they don't *want* English signs! The Japanese are (how shall I say this delicately), rather xenophobic. A 6ft Westerner arriving on a plane full of Koreans sticks out like Attila the Hun arriving with the mongol hordes to ravage the women.
Check out Ping Identity http://www.pingidentity.com/index.php as an alternative.
To which H.L. Mencken paraphrased as "Most married men lead lives of quiet desperation."
When you call up their (outsourced) tech support for DSL issues in Bangalore, the dialog goes something like this:
ME: I'm calling to see if there's a DSL outage in my area....
AT&T: What version of Windows are you using?
ME: I'm not using Windows, I'm using Linux, but that's not my question -
AT&T INTERRUPTS: Okay, go into Control Panel
ME: I'm using Linux, not Windows!
AT&T: What ees thees LEENUX?
ME: [Looks for competitor's DSL plans in my area]
Check out Spamgourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com) There you can register a throwaway email address to be used from 1 to 20 times in the form: keyword.count.name@spamgourmet.com So to track if NYTIMES is using your email, you could 'on-the-fly' construct an email for your registration like: nytimes.20.yourname@spamgourmet.com
> ISP's support staff not be morons.
Isn't that an oxymoron?
W.
02138 - Cambridge, MA, a college-town of some note (Harvard right down the street from me, MIT just a few miles away) is not serviced by this.....oh well.
I just bought an HP Pavilion a450y a few weeks ago and tried to get Mandrake (or any Linux) pre-installed. Called the 800-HP-LINUX number and the guy had no clue as to whether it was supported or not (said the box just came out in January and he had no specs). Talked to 3 different sales people in HP and no one could really hazard a guess.
The kicker is that no WinXP CD's come bundled! Instead, you get a 'recovery partition', which you can run a onetime program against to burn 2 'rescue' DVDs, but you have to pay for WinXP anyway. I asked if they could leave it off and they said, "no, that would void the warranty". I explained that I was going to wipe the drive anyway the moment I got it and they just went on with the "warranty invalidation" stuff.
It looks like to me they're heading in the right direction but the order-takers don't have the right scripts in front of them to field linux-related presales queries.