I think you are being intentionally thick when you suggest he is worried about the router as a single point of failure. He obviously is trying to failover the internet connections, not the router. This is a home network. He doesn't need five 9s, he needs 1 or 2, which a cheap dual wan router provides with great ease. A few minutes setup time and he is no longer down if one internet connection fails. Done. No need to make it more complicated than that.
you don't seem to understand the Apple way at all.
Every proper Apple fan magically purchased the new version the instant it was released, some lining up days in advance to be sure to consume the latest product as quickly as possible. They then proceeded to install new version, some recording the "experience" on video so it could be shared with less fortunate iDiots. Never did they consider the ramifications of doing so.. thinking independently is discouraged in the Apple community and questioning Apple is strictly forbidden.
You get more calls from Windows users simply because a vast majority of users *are* Windows users.
I could take your anecdotal and misinterpreted evidence as fact, or I could listen to about 30 security experts and researchers from all different sources, people who actually do this stuff for a living rather than living off the crumbs. The general consensus from real experts does not match your analysis at all.
I don't think charging the client for a part you did not install can ever be construed as "good service", regardless of whether you did some other service that you feel is more helpful. The article presents this as a common scam, not as repair shops deceiving their customers in some strange, secret effort to give them what's really needed without letting them know what they've done.
"The trick,” one repair shop owner told us, “is to give the computer a good tune-up to clear any adware or malware that might be slowing down the machine; clean out the cache; perform a spring clean – anything that makes the machine much faster.
“There’s no real need to actually install the strips of RAM that the client has paid for, because they probably won’t know where to look for it. No-one’s going to notice if there’s 3GB or 2GB of RAM in there if it works faster when it comes back from repair, and they’ll probably never look.”
Doesn't it usually take much, much longer to clean up a crapware infested machine than to slap a DIMM into a slot? And isn't ram pretty damn cheap to start with? Sounds like sort of a silly approach to take.. if the shop just charged for the labor they were actually doing instead of the cheap part they didn't install, they'd make more.
OK, most of the posts share a common theme, I guess I'll just reply to one, as it probably doesn't matter too much.
I can see the point that the "yes it matters" crowd have, but I think you all put much more faith in the public education system than I do. Maybe you had a better experience there yourselves than I did, don't know. I really don't see teaching evolution or creationism or idiot design or FSM or (insert your theory here) making *any* difference in any significant portion of the population. Kids as a whole just don't care and don't pick up beliefs from the schools. The kids that are interested are going to learn the science on their own and/or in their higher education, and the rest of them aren't going to be "swayed" or learn anything they remember for longer than it takes to pass the test anyway.
I see this "issue" as having a lot more perceived value to those on all sides than it deserves. You could teach every kid that we came from a magical wizard fairlyland and it just wouldn't matter: the smart kids would figure out the truth, and the dumb ones wouldn't remember the wizard theory a week later anyway.
I agree completely. As someone who has sat on many an interview panel, I always am interested to hear about a candidates programming projects. Commercial success of those projects is a non factor in most cases. A candidate who wrote a small utility to scratch some personal itch, even if it never left their own machine, is going to score points. A candidate with a demonstrable history of solving problems using software (whether for personal, public, or corporate purposes) wins over one with an impressive resume and nothing to show for it, every time.
I've been in the business for a long time. There are some who "just get it", and many who really don't. There isn't always a clear way to quickly separate the two that I know of, but in my experience someone who is able to rattle off a list of programs they wrote because they decided to write them, for whatever reason and with whatever ultimate results, is a strong indicator of someone who gets it. This type of guy might need some polishing, might need to learn the ropes, but that is really a minor issue and usually well worth the investment. On the other hand, someone with a degree and stack of certs but who can't tell me about the last program he wrote "just because" is probably going to be a mediocre programmer.
Would there be any real loss to our public educational system if we just declined to teach anything about how the universe came to exist? The kids are going to believe whatever their parents tell them to believe for the most part anyway, and any of them that pursue careers where an accurate understanding of this subject is required will undoubtedly find it's covered in their higher education.
I say we refuse to let the public school system be used as a platform for any group's agenda by removing the material entirely.
Had the summary comment been "No mention of a Linux installer", it would be more clear. Saying there is no "Linux version" implies that you would need a special version of the software for linux, which is not true. The fact that this malware does not require platform specific versions is what makes it interesting, so saying (even unintentionally) that there is no linux version seems silly.
If video calls become ubiquitous, then I essentially will not have a choice. My smartphone is a business tool, and to participate in the business world typically means using the same medium to contact someone else as they use to contact you, or to at least be available via their preferred method. Email and texts were a move away from the engaging, time demanding requirements of the traditional phone call. This is a step backwards, making communication even more tedious than standard voice is. As I stated quite simply, I have no interest and hope that this does not become popular enough to require its use.
personally, this is not the way I'd like to see things going. i use a smarthphone instead of a regular cell because it lets me communicate with *less* human interaction.
But would you, as a customer, want to purchase a product that obviously has a much higher markup? There is only one way to make more money while selling fewer units.
In a perfect world, your teacher would have just encouraged you to add the intermediate steps to your program rather than getting bent out of shape. instead (based on my experiences in education) i'm fairly sure it became some sort of power struggle that really had nothing to do with the issue, which no one in a position of power actually understood at all. IMHO, what you did was good, it just wasn't quite good enough. Easy enough to fix. The fact that you came up with a unique solution on your own should bring enough merit to allow a "do over" on the failed assignment once the requirements are clearly understood by all.
How many kids have been smacked down for "thinking outside the box" when all they needed was a little direction? Makes me sad.
like others here and yourself, i used many small programs on my calculator in math classes back in the good old days where that wasn't expected. "show your work" was a known part of the problem, so I simply extended the programs to give me the relevant intermediate steps. problem solved.
frankly, if you wrote a program that *does not* satisfy your teachers requirements (showing the same work every other student can show being a part of those requirements) then you failed. sorry, I don't see any way around that and I'd have failed you if I was the teacher, despite loving programming and respecting those who attempt to solve problems using their own techniques.
it is unfortunate that you came to the errant conclusion that the rules should be changed for you because you were clever enough to write a program but not clever enough to write a very good one. hopefully by now you've learned that fully understanding the requirements is an important part of any programming task.
Would it not make sense for Netflix and the like to simply start creating their own content? Cut out the middle man entirely.. either partner with a network that's read the writing on the wall and wants to move forward, or get some VC and hire some writers and actors.
I think it's great that almost everyone has learned how to write with a pen and paper. What I am suggesting is that it would similarly be great if people had the same level of competency with computers. When the written alphabet was "invented" (agreed upon, standardized.. whatever happened, I'm not a history guy) instead of everyone learning to read and write, literacy became a tool of the select few and was actually used by the ruling authorities to control the people. Later the printing press enabled independent works to be published, and though the establishment fought it, eventually this enabled an entirely new era in humanity. However, instead of a society of writers, we again became primarily just consumers of what a select few wrote. Now we have computers, and have actually become to some degree a society of writers.. blogs, tweets, facebook postings and the like. However, we're still a step behind. Still letting powerful entities control *how* we write, where we write, to some degree even what we write about. Today it's corporations rather than government or religious power, but still the same old story.. a few in power controlling what the masses can do. By being ignorant of technology and how it works, a person is reduced to a mere consumer of what the powerful tell them to consume. The modern example is the "app", where instead of the reasonably free internet, we see corporations moving content into individual little containers which they control. This is done in the name of convenience, ease of use, etc. Instead of putting effort into improving the open and free internet so that everything has this desired level of convenience, we see the corporations using it as an excuse to partition off and control information. This is the type of issue that the average person simply doesn't thing about, because they don't have the background and understanding of the technology they are using and becoming dependent upon./ramble off
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are being intentionally thick when you suggest he is worried about the router as a single point of failure. He obviously is trying to failover the internet connections, not the router. This is a home network. He doesn't need five 9s, he needs 1 or 2, which a cheap dual wan router provides with great ease. A few minutes setup time and he is no longer down if one internet connection fails. Done. No need to make it more complicated than that.
wish i had mod points, this is the correct answer to the question.
you don't seem to understand the Apple way at all.
Every proper Apple fan magically purchased the new version the instant it was released, some lining up days in advance to be sure to consume the latest product as quickly as possible. They then proceeded to install new version, some recording the "experience" on video so it could be shared with less fortunate iDiots. Never did they consider the ramifications of doing so.. thinking independently is discouraged in the Apple community and questioning Apple is strictly forbidden.
You get more calls from Windows users simply because a vast majority of users *are* Windows users.
I could take your anecdotal and misinterpreted evidence as fact, or I could listen to about 30 security experts and researchers from all different sources, people who actually do this stuff for a living rather than living off the crumbs. The general consensus from real experts does not match your analysis at all.
In their words: Experts weigh in on Mac vs. PC security
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10444561-245.html
I don't think charging the client for a part you did not install can ever be construed as "good service", regardless of whether you did some other service that you feel is more helpful. The article presents this as a common scam, not as repair shops deceiving their customers in some strange, secret effort to give them what's really needed without letting them know what they've done.
"The trick,” one repair shop owner told us, “is to give the computer a good tune-up to clear any adware or malware that might be slowing down the machine; clean out the cache; perform a spring clean – anything that makes the machine much faster.
“There’s no real need to actually install the strips of RAM that the client has paid for, because they probably won’t know where to look for it. No-one’s going to notice if there’s 3GB or 2GB of RAM in there if it works faster when it comes back from repair, and they’ll probably never look.”
Doesn't it usually take much, much longer to clean up a crapware infested machine than to slap a DIMM into a slot? And isn't ram pretty damn cheap to start with?
Sounds like sort of a silly approach to take.. if the shop just charged for the labor they were actually doing instead of the cheap part they didn't install, they'd make more.
OK, most of the posts share a common theme, I guess I'll just reply to one, as it probably doesn't matter too much.
I can see the point that the "yes it matters" crowd have, but I think you all put much more faith in the public education system than I do. Maybe you had a better experience there yourselves than I did, don't know. I really don't see teaching evolution or creationism or idiot design or FSM or (insert your theory here) making *any* difference in any significant portion of the population. Kids as a whole just don't care and don't pick up beliefs from the schools. The kids that are interested are going to learn the science on their own and/or in their higher education, and the rest of them aren't going to be "swayed" or learn anything they remember for longer than it takes to pass the test anyway.
I see this "issue" as having a lot more perceived value to those on all sides than it deserves. You could teach every kid that we came from a magical wizard fairlyland and it just wouldn't matter: the smart kids would figure out the truth, and the dumb ones wouldn't remember the wizard theory a week later anyway.
I agree completely. As someone who has sat on many an interview panel, I always am interested to hear about a candidates programming projects. Commercial success of those projects is a non factor in most cases. A candidate who wrote a small utility to scratch some personal itch, even if it never left their own machine, is going to score points. A candidate with a demonstrable history of solving problems using software (whether for personal, public, or corporate purposes) wins over one with an impressive resume and nothing to show for it, every time.
I've been in the business for a long time. There are some who "just get it", and many who really don't. There isn't always a clear way to quickly separate the two that I know of, but in my experience someone who is able to rattle off a list of programs they wrote because they decided to write them, for whatever reason and with whatever ultimate results, is a strong indicator of someone who gets it. This type of guy might need some polishing, might need to learn the ropes, but that is really a minor issue and usually well worth the investment. On the other hand, someone with a degree and stack of certs but who can't tell me about the last program he wrote "just because" is probably going to be a mediocre programmer.
Would there be any real loss to our public educational system if we just declined to teach anything about how the universe came to exist? The kids are going to believe whatever their parents tell them to believe for the most part anyway, and any of them that pursue careers where an accurate understanding of this subject is required will undoubtedly find it's covered in their higher education.
I say we refuse to let the public school system be used as a platform for any group's agenda by removing the material entirely.
Had the summary comment been "No mention of a Linux installer", it would be more clear. Saying there is no "Linux version" implies that you would need a special version of the software for linux, which is not true. The fact that this malware does not require platform specific versions is what makes it interesting, so saying (even unintentionally) that there is no linux version seems silly.
"but uses source code and libraries that can operate on other platforms,"
"So far, no mention of a Linux version, though."
so no linux "installer", but I'd assume you could still run the botnet software on linux if you desired to.
"So far, no mention of a Linux version, though."
Java is Java.. there generally would not be a "linux version", or any platform specific version.. sort of the whole point of this.
If video calls become ubiquitous, then I essentially will not have a choice. My smartphone is a business tool, and to participate in the business world typically means using the same medium to contact someone else as they use to contact you, or to at least be available via their preferred method. Email and texts were a move away from the engaging, time demanding requirements of the traditional phone call. This is a step backwards, making communication even more tedious than standard voice is. As I stated quite simply, I have no interest and hope that this does not become popular enough to require its use.
obviously. hence the explicit designation of my comments as my own my personal view.
personally, this is not the way I'd like to see things going. i use a smarthphone instead of a regular cell because it lets me communicate with *less* human interaction.
Ok.. who let Grandpa use their computer?
BTW.. posting this from my phone. You mad bro?
14. The iPhone joins the ranks of the Amiga and OS/2 as the best system ever in the minds of the devoted few, whilst the rest of the world moves on.
But would you, as a customer, want to purchase a product that obviously has a much higher markup? There is only one way to make more money while selling fewer units.
8. Android? Bah.. Profit!!!!
9. Hmmm.. Android... Profit!!!
10. Oh shit Android! Profit!!
11. Profit!
12. Profit.
13. Profit?
lol.. well done
In a perfect world, your teacher would have just encouraged you to add the intermediate steps to your program rather than getting bent out of shape.
instead (based on my experiences in education) i'm fairly sure it became some sort of power struggle that really had nothing to do with the issue, which no one in a position of power actually understood at all. IMHO, what you did was good, it just wasn't quite good enough. Easy enough to fix. The fact that you came up with a unique solution on your own should bring enough merit to allow a "do over" on the failed assignment once the requirements are clearly understood by all.
How many kids have been smacked down for "thinking outside the box" when all they needed was a little direction? Makes me sad.
like others here and yourself, i used many small programs on my calculator in math classes back in the good old days where that wasn't expected. "show your work" was a known part of the problem, so I simply extended the programs to give me the relevant intermediate steps. problem solved.
frankly, if you wrote a program that *does not* satisfy your teachers requirements (showing the same work every other student can show being a part of those requirements) then you failed. sorry, I don't see any way around that and I'd have failed you if I was the teacher, despite loving programming and respecting those who attempt to solve problems using their own techniques.
it is unfortunate that you came to the errant conclusion that the rules should be changed for you because you were clever enough to write a program but not clever enough to write a very good one. hopefully by now you've learned that fully understanding the requirements is an important part of any programming task.
Would it not make sense for Netflix and the like to simply start creating their own content? Cut out the middle man entirely.. either partner with a network that's read the writing on the wall and wants to move forward, or get some VC and hire some writers and actors.
I think it's great that almost everyone has learned how to write with a pen and paper. What I am suggesting is that it would similarly be great if people had the same level of competency with computers. When the written alphabet was "invented" (agreed upon, standardized.. whatever happened, I'm not a history guy) instead of everyone learning to read and write, literacy became a tool of the select few and was actually used by the ruling authorities to control the people. Later the printing press enabled independent works to be published, and though the establishment fought it, eventually this enabled an entirely new era in humanity. However, instead of a society of writers, we again became primarily just consumers of what a select few wrote. Now we have computers, and have actually become to some degree a society of writers.. blogs, tweets, facebook postings and the like. However, we're still a step behind. Still letting powerful entities control *how* we write, where we write, to some degree even what we write about. Today it's corporations rather than government or religious power, but still the same old story.. a few in power controlling what the masses can do. By being ignorant of technology and how it works, a person is reduced to a mere consumer of what the powerful tell them to consume. The modern example is the "app", where instead of the reasonably free internet, we see corporations moving content into individual little containers which they control. This is done in the name of convenience, ease of use, etc. Instead of putting effort into improving the open and free internet so that everything has this desired level of convenience, we see the corporations using it as an excuse to partition off and control information. This is the type of issue that the average person simply doesn't thing about, because they don't have the background and understanding of the technology they are using and becoming dependent upon. /ramble off