The linux community has had more than its fair share of guffaws over "the unstoppable NT" or "unbreakable Oracle," and they should be taking their own lessons to heart. This is just an invitation to be mocked because it just insults the intelligence of everyone involved.
We as techs believe that a user must have rudeimentary knowledge on how to OPERATE the computer. Noone is asking them to be techs but they should know the minimum required to use the damn thing.
What does operate a computer mean when new uses are found for it every few years. Your analogy fails because a 1950s car is pretty much a 2002 car. A 1950s computer on the other hand...
When it comes to new-ish technology, especially with the potential for abuse like kazaa and other P2P networks offer there is nothing wrong with completely dumbing down the works with big red fonts and double and triple checking. Heck, even on a new car you can find, "Unleaded Fuel Only" or "Things in mirror are farther away than they appear.".
Actually, the point behind mass-changing passwords is more about damage control than securing the system itself. Over time the chances of having passwords sniffed or somehow come up in the wrong hands approaches YES very quickly, so you change everything to make your hax0rs list obselete. Sure, the dumbasses may leave their post-it notes on their keyboards, but intra-office security violations are probably more manageable than an outsider coming in.
Oh course it would be easy to make it office policy to punish those who keep leaving passwords out in the open, so that's a no-brainer. You don't always need a technological answer to a social problem.
Whether or not changing the p/w on a server is worth the effort is debatable. If you've only logged in locally, then I wouldn't worry about it and I can see where you're coming from, but anything going over any network in any form should be considered untrusted for security's sake.
Re:out of the technical journal DUH.
on
Kazaa Usability Study
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
When I find people with that option on downloading from me they get cancelled and quick (i wish there was a way to automate this), especially when they're sitting on a fat T1 or better (dialups are ignored). Sure, I can't stop a lot of people but the messages and the blocking does cause a chilling effect.
For those of you who just found this out, use at your own risk because a lot of the P2P community does care about keeping the network alive.
michael: "My Replay isn't working, smoke is coming out of it!"
Replay: "Really, what happened?"
michael: "I was trying to overclock it with a home brewed water cooled system like I saw on slashdot and spilled water everywhere!"
Replay: "Holy shit, sir. We'll send another $500 box to your house for free!"
muchael: "Cool. I'm gonna try to submerge the new one in a fishtank."
Replayl: "Awesome, do you believe the corporate pricks at Tivo won't even let you open the box without voiding the warranty? They got some fascist sticker and everything!"
michael: "How do they sleep at night?"
---
BTW, where's the obligatory link to SonicBlue's page and a link to the model discussed? Bad/. editor bad.
Almost every guitar amp you've ever heard is tube powered. All serious (or non-broke) guitarists use tube amps because of the warm natural distortion of tubes and the ability to punch up the gain to get a very distinct distorted crunch. Solid state sounds flat compared to the tube.
In audiophile circles its pretty much the same deal, you can get a nice warm but low-keyed 'distortion' out of an amp that many audiophiles prefer to solid state.
I think that this was cooked up in Symantec's labs in order to scare people & possibly serve as an ad for their software, especially if they have a "solution" that runs on Linux.
That's the most paranoid thing I've seen here. Do you really think Symantec is going to risk its entire profitable operation just to piss off some self-important Linux users? I seriously doubt an organization that large is capable of keeping such secrets especially when it would be such a great story to sell to the media.
If we're going to be calling out the chicken-littles well why was this posted when its threat level according to symantec is low? I think this has more of academic interest than anything else. If you're going to blame anyone, blame slashdot for posting a low-threat virus. Symantec is doing its job and I see no wrong doing on their part. I also don't think slashdot is doing any wrong, its really the invetible conspiracy theorists like yourself who are putting a negative spin here.
There's no reason for any anti-virus vendor to bother starting their own viruses. There are just too many kiddies willing to do it for free. Ironically, the DIY computing culture is also notorious for defending all sorts of exploratory cracking for the sake of the thrill or to see if it can be done. If you have conspirators I'm sure they're from Linux's own backyard and probably not from Symantec's labs.
That's PR and an advertising myth. Dean works for DEKA a corporation. He has also founded and sold his other corporations. He didn't piece the segway in his garage with his son on boring sunday afternoons or something. From their website:
Founded in 1982 by Dean Kamen, DEKA consisted of a relatively small group of individuals and lots of innovative ideas. Today, almost 200 engineers, technicians, and machinists work in our electronics and software engineering labs, machine shop, and on CAD stations. Our facilities have been designed to promote constant interaction between and within the engineering groups. Our on-site machine shop and molding facility are central to the success of our projects; ideas are prototyped and tested in record time.
Plus, if they wanted to be a total bastards, they could continue to jack up the rates until those 1% left.
If they kept raising their prices then the bottom 99% would be asking why they need this service if they're just going to do light browsing and go back to a dialip. The P2P people need this so they'll probably pay up.
If those top 1% left, they could have 30% more capacity at a cost of only 1% of their revenue.
There will always be a top 1% even if the average usage is 50 megs transfer per month. Unlesss you're going to start delivering some hard numbers then you aren't saying much. For instance, today its the guy using 50 gig per month. Next time profits are low it'll be the guy using 5 gigs per month until everyone has a always on 56k connection for $20 a month.Thanks but no thanks.
Finding a profitable business plan is going to take some time and I doubt transfer limits is the answer especially when web content like ordianry news and entertainment sites are using mega doses of flash and steaming video. Not to mention new-ish applications that are starting to take root like VPN from home to work, videoconferencing, next gen P2P, etc.
Transfer limits seems like the lazy way out. Intelligent throttling based on demand or lowered speeds (600k down instead of T1 down) will probably win out. Transfer limits ignore that the internet technologies are expanding and user greater bandwidth. No is going to switch to Lynx because their ISP can't handle the ever increasing flash ads, banner ads, video, etc.
Crappy analogy. First make sure you oversell your service, then make sure you advertise the crap out of the the beauty of always on, fast internet with applications in video and faster gameplay. Now keep overselling until the accountants send a very mean memo.
This is when you do a 180 and screw your customers because you never had a viable business plan to begin with. Sorry, but the warez kiddie bought your service because of how you offered it to him. May your customers leave for a company with a working business plan and you can have the T1 all to yourself.
Internet radio wouldn't be starving for content they would be starving for cash. Which most likely means they would have to adopt a top-40 format to meet those fees. Which of course would kill any variety in internet radio.
I don't think its mere coincidence that the RIAA gives its own people (broadcast radio) a price break when doing internet radio. This has all been a ploy to eliminate non-wealthy competitors and further the profitable (for the RIAA) top-40 format and its handful of artists.
Those are coded so well that they don't get noticed. Your PC is probably rendering 3D storyboards for Pixar and helping Japan simulate a-bomb explosions. Thankfully, everyone blames the lag on Microsoft products.
Occasionally the cabal writes 'press viruses' like these to keep Kaspersky busy.
I don't think it works that way. There aren't extra buttons for the letters, the letters simply ride on the existing number buttons and the phone scans for the 'mashing' of number buttons to guess which letter you were aiming for. Like a diagnol on a digital d-pad, its UP plus LEFT, no extra button required.
This is probably why the idea is going to fail, extra buttons can't cost *that* much more.
I think the best analysis for Spiderman and the upcoming superhero movies (not to mention recent Star Wars mania) has little to do with the oft-quoted power of myth and the fact that gen-x'ers are now the target demographic because of their disposable income.
Hollywood knows this and has been greenlighting many projects that appeal to people who grew up in the 80s. Marvel has been trying to get into movies for ages with many failures like the Punisher, Corman's Fantastic Four, those lame Spiderman movies, etc. They just couldn't get a multi-million production going because no one wanted to drop that kind of money on tight-wearing superheroes.
I think we can thank Tim Burton for making the first successful and serious superhero film, but what is really going on has more to do with 80's kids getting out of school and landing jobs and starting families than some pendantic revival of the power of myth theories.
I really liked this movie. This will contain some spoilers, but nothing serious. Lucas injected this with so much moral ambiguity its practically Barry Lyndon in space. The Jedi are revealed to be a lot more backward and 'secret police'-like than the knights of honor Obi-Wan described them as in the original.
Lucas continues to demystify the Jedi and shows them to be practially ineffectual compared to the dark-side. The jedi are shown to be a conservative group of assassins, thugs, and simply the fist of the republic. Their restrictions seem more trouble than they're worth, especially the celebicy rules for hormone-crazed Anakin. Lucas seems to be showing both the Jedi and the Republic to be structures that age very badly and are destined to collapse from dogma and corruption.
Lucas's political cynicism is all over the place. None of the other movies had this, at least in such an obvious way. The original three had a strong good vs. evil theme. TPM had some senatorial intrigue, but nothing on this level. We get to see how badly the republic is run and how vulnerable it is to dictatorship. The characters trust their government about as much as most people trust the US government.
A few people have compared it to ESB, but its a lot more brainy than that. The next film which shows the total decline and collapse of both the Jedi and the Republic may be the best one of all.
Actually I would say this is an unfair attack. There are hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of software that start with the word 'Win' that MS has no problems with because they run on their software. They've already diluted their trademark if you ask me.
It looks like an unfair challenge, but then I know what Linux is. Does the average consumer know? If Lindows wins (oh look a pun) it'll be because the lindows people will be able to demonstrate that 'lin' are the first few letters of linux and that the average consumer will not be fooled into buying the wrong software.
Considering that MS's marketing machine is so huge, who would really buy a copy of Lindows and expect it to be windows? Not to mention who buys non-OEM copies of MS's OS unless they're pretty informed on where that $200 bucks is going.
I'm expecting Lindows to win this one, possibly with stipulations that they can't use a lot of 'microsoft blue' or anything shaped like the windows logo on their packaging and ads.
All things considered though, MS made a big mistake by not creating a new non-sense word that's easy to defend in trademark cases like the tradename Kleenex. Not to mention they're named Micro-soft. Not exactly unique there either. There's a MS training center called Microhard in Chicago. I wonder if they would be the victims of this kind of lawsuit if they only trained people in Novell?
You can kiss those projects goodbye in your lifetime if NASA wants to make a propaganda win by landing some people on Mars. The probes are about as good for most purposes. You simply can't say the same thing about a permanent moon base.
There are some risky and practical applications for moon missions, yet regarding Mars we'll be lucky to make it back.
The domes were built pretty cheaply and with a few decades of neglect, they just won't last. The upside is the weight of the structure is very light and makes for a good cover in many environments and situations. Maybe its not the best design for a house, but then again it was never considered very seriously by real estate developers. Which usually means no pre-fab easy to install indoor components, lazy roofing (they can be sealed easily), prohibitive price because of small production, etc.
This is the ultimate in paid-for searching and I'm glad this psuedo-search is going off the air. While google remains free and doesn't change its search results for advertising money, this corporate handshaking is simply obselete and consumers are better off without it.
Nice of the editors to get in an MS jab for not supporting a bad business plan. Not to mention plain names like 'cookies' shouldnt resolve to web sites if theres a server or pc on your network called cookies.
The mainframe probably won't fit and will use a bazllion times more power than that 8086 chip. NASA uses outdated (at least in the desktop/server market) chips because they don't need the processing power and have energy requirements. The Mars rover had a 486 (?) for these reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
It really ends with a molecular model, things this small really cannot be seen as the nature of photons become a limiting facotr.
Holy crap, do you know the name of this program? I'd love to read more about it.
The linux community has had more than its fair share of guffaws over "the unstoppable NT" or "unbreakable Oracle," and they should be taking their own lessons to heart. This is just an invitation to be mocked because it just insults the intelligence of everyone involved.
We as techs believe that a user must have rudeimentary knowledge on how to OPERATE the computer. Noone is asking them to be techs but they should know the minimum required to use the damn thing.
What does operate a computer mean when new uses are found for it every few years. Your analogy fails because a 1950s car is pretty much a 2002 car. A 1950s computer on the other hand...
When it comes to new-ish technology, especially with the potential for abuse like kazaa and other P2P networks offer there is nothing wrong with completely dumbing down the works with big red fonts and double and triple checking. Heck, even on a new car you can find, "Unleaded Fuel Only" or "Things in mirror are farther away than they appear.".
Actually, the point behind mass-changing passwords is more about damage control than securing the system itself. Over time the chances of having passwords sniffed or somehow come up in the wrong hands approaches YES very quickly, so you change everything to make your hax0rs list obselete. Sure, the dumbasses may leave their post-it notes on their keyboards, but intra-office security violations are probably more manageable than an outsider coming in.
Oh course it would be easy to make it office policy to punish those who keep leaving passwords out in the open, so that's a no-brainer. You don't always need a technological answer to a social problem.
Whether or not changing the p/w on a server is worth the effort is debatable. If you've only logged in locally, then I wouldn't worry about it and I can see where you're coming from, but anything going over any network in any form should be considered untrusted for security's sake.
When I find people with that option on downloading from me they get cancelled and quick (i wish there was a way to automate this), especially when they're sitting on a fat T1 or better (dialups are ignored). Sure, I can't stop a lot of people but the messages and the blocking does cause a chilling effect.
For those of you who just found this out, use at your own risk because a lot of the P2P community does care about keeping the network alive.
Replay: "How may I assist you today?"
/. editor bad.
michael: "My Replay isn't working, smoke is coming out of it!"
Replay: "Really, what happened?"
michael: "I was trying to overclock it with a home brewed water cooled system like I saw on slashdot and spilled water everywhere!"
Replay: "Holy shit, sir. We'll send another $500 box to your house for free!"
muchael: "Cool. I'm gonna try to submerge the new one in a fishtank."
Replayl: "Awesome, do you believe the corporate pricks at Tivo won't even let you open the box without voiding the warranty? They got some fascist sticker and everything!"
michael: "How do they sleep at night?"
---
BTW, where's the obligatory link to SonicBlue's page and a link to the model discussed? Bad
Almost every guitar amp you've ever heard is tube powered. All serious (or non-broke) guitarists use tube amps because of the warm natural distortion of tubes and the ability to punch up the gain to get a very distinct distorted crunch. Solid state sounds flat compared to the tube.
In audiophile circles its pretty much the same deal, you can get a nice warm but low-keyed 'distortion' out of an amp that many audiophiles prefer to solid state.
Don't quote me out of context.
"If you have conspirators I'm sure they're from Linux's own backyard and probably not from Symantec's labs."
Notice the IF.
I think that this was cooked up in Symantec's labs in order to scare people & possibly serve as an ad for their software, especially if they have a "solution" that runs on Linux.
That's the most paranoid thing I've seen here. Do you really think Symantec is going to risk its entire profitable operation just to piss off some self-important Linux users? I seriously doubt an organization that large is capable of keeping such secrets especially when it would be such a great story to sell to the media.
If we're going to be calling out the chicken-littles well why was this posted when its threat level according to symantec is low? I think this has more of academic interest than anything else. If you're going to blame anyone, blame slashdot for posting a low-threat virus. Symantec is doing its job and I see no wrong doing on their part. I also don't think slashdot is doing any wrong, its really the invetible conspiracy theorists like yourself who are putting a negative spin here.
There's no reason for any anti-virus vendor to bother starting their own viruses. There are just too many kiddies willing to do it for free. Ironically, the DIY computing culture is also notorious for defending all sorts of exploratory cracking for the sake of the thrill or to see if it can be done. If you have conspirators I'm sure they're from Linux's own backyard and probably not from Symantec's labs.
Plus, if they wanted to be a total bastards, they could continue to jack up the rates until those 1% left.
If they kept raising their prices then the bottom 99% would be asking why they need this service if they're just going to do light browsing and go back to a dialip. The P2P people need this so they'll probably pay up.
If those top 1% left, they could have 30% more capacity at a cost of only 1% of their revenue.
There will always be a top 1% even if the average usage is 50 megs transfer per month. Unlesss you're going to start delivering some hard numbers then you aren't saying much. For instance, today its the guy using 50 gig per month. Next time profits are low it'll be the guy using 5 gigs per month until everyone has a always on 56k connection for $20 a month.Thanks but no thanks.
Finding a profitable business plan is going to take some time and I doubt transfer limits is the answer especially when web content like ordianry news and entertainment sites are using mega doses of flash and steaming video. Not to mention new-ish applications that are starting to take root like VPN from home to work, videoconferencing, next gen P2P, etc.
Transfer limits seems like the lazy way out. Intelligent throttling based on demand or lowered speeds (600k down instead of T1 down) will probably win out. Transfer limits ignore that the internet technologies are expanding and user greater bandwidth. No is going to switch to Lynx because their ISP can't handle the ever increasing flash ads, banner ads, video, etc.
Crappy analogy. First make sure you oversell your service, then make sure you advertise the crap out of the the beauty of always on, fast internet with applications in video and faster gameplay. Now keep overselling until the accountants send a very mean memo.
This is when you do a 180 and screw your customers because you never had a viable business plan to begin with. Sorry, but the warez kiddie bought your service because of how you offered it to him. May your customers leave for a company with a working business plan and you can have the T1 all to yourself.
Internet radio wouldn't be starving for content they would be starving for cash. Which most likely means they would have to adopt a top-40 format to meet those fees. Which of course would kill any variety in internet radio.
I don't think its mere coincidence that the RIAA gives its own people (broadcast radio) a price break when doing internet radio. This has all been a ploy to eliminate non-wealthy competitors and further the profitable (for the RIAA) top-40 format and its handful of artists.
Thanks but not thanks.
(to promote the absurd myth that the landings were somehow fake ... as if they had modern special effects back in 1969)
Why would the Chinese do this? 1969? You've never seen 2001 have you?
Those are coded so well that they don't get noticed. Your PC is probably rendering 3D storyboards for Pixar and helping Japan simulate a-bomb explosions. Thankfully, everyone blames the lag on Microsoft products.
Occasionally the cabal writes 'press viruses' like these to keep Kaspersky busy.
I don't think it works that way. There aren't extra buttons for the letters, the letters simply ride on the existing number buttons and the phone scans for the 'mashing' of number buttons to guess which letter you were aiming for. Like a diagnol on a digital d-pad, its UP plus LEFT, no extra button required.
This is probably why the idea is going to fail, extra buttons can't cost *that* much more.
I think the best analysis for Spiderman and the upcoming superhero movies (not to mention recent Star Wars mania) has little to do with the oft-quoted power of myth and the fact that gen-x'ers are now the target demographic because of their disposable income.
Hollywood knows this and has been greenlighting many projects that appeal to people who grew up in the 80s. Marvel has been trying to get into movies for ages with many failures like the Punisher, Corman's Fantastic Four, those lame Spiderman movies, etc. They just couldn't get a multi-million production going because no one wanted to drop that kind of money on tight-wearing superheroes.
I think we can thank Tim Burton for making the first successful and serious superhero film, but what is really going on has more to do with 80's kids getting out of school and landing jobs and starting families than some pendantic revival of the power of myth theories.
I really liked this movie. This will contain some spoilers, but nothing serious. Lucas injected this with so much moral ambiguity its practically Barry Lyndon in space. The Jedi are revealed to be a lot more backward and 'secret police'-like than the knights of honor Obi-Wan described them as in the original.
Lucas continues to demystify the Jedi and shows them to be practially ineffectual compared to the dark-side. The jedi are shown to be a conservative group of assassins, thugs, and simply the fist of the republic. Their restrictions seem more trouble than they're worth, especially the celebicy rules for hormone-crazed Anakin. Lucas seems to be showing both the Jedi and the Republic to be structures that age very badly and are destined to collapse from dogma and corruption.
Lucas's political cynicism is all over the place. None of the other movies had this, at least in such an obvious way. The original three had a strong good vs. evil theme. TPM had some senatorial intrigue, but nothing on this level. We get to see how badly the republic is run and how vulnerable it is to dictatorship. The characters trust their government about as much as most people trust the US government.
A few people have compared it to ESB, but its a lot more brainy than that. The next film which shows the total decline and collapse of both the Jedi and the Republic may be the best one of all.
Actually I would say this is an unfair attack. There are hundreds (thousands?) of pieces of software that start with the word 'Win' that MS has no problems with because they run on their software. They've already diluted their trademark if you ask me.
It looks like an unfair challenge, but then I know what Linux is. Does the average consumer know? If Lindows wins (oh look a pun) it'll be because the lindows people will be able to demonstrate that 'lin' are the first few letters of linux and that the average consumer will not be fooled into buying the wrong software.
Considering that MS's marketing machine is so huge, who would really buy a copy of Lindows and expect it to be windows? Not to mention who buys non-OEM copies of MS's OS unless they're pretty informed on where that $200 bucks is going.
I'm expecting Lindows to win this one, possibly with stipulations that they can't use a lot of 'microsoft blue' or anything shaped like the windows logo on their packaging and ads.
All things considered though, MS made a big mistake by not creating a new non-sense word that's easy to defend in trademark cases like the tradename Kleenex. Not to mention they're named Micro-soft. Not exactly unique there either. There's a MS training center called Microhard in Chicago. I wonder if they would be the victims of this kind of lawsuit if they only trained people in Novell?
You can kiss those projects goodbye in your lifetime if NASA wants to make a propaganda win by landing some people on Mars. The probes are about as good for most purposes. You simply can't say the same thing about a permanent moon base.
There are some risky and practical applications for moon missions, yet regarding Mars we'll be lucky to make it back.
Some of us aren't big star wars geeks that must know everything in advance. I hope that's just a joke.
The domes were built pretty cheaply and with a few decades of neglect, they just won't last. The upside is the weight of the structure is very light and makes for a good cover in many environments and situations. Maybe its not the best design for a house, but then again it was never considered very seriously by real estate developers. Which usually means no pre-fab easy to install indoor components, lazy roofing (they can be sealed easily), prohibitive price because of small production, etc.
This is the ultimate in paid-for searching and I'm glad this psuedo-search is going off the air. While google remains free and doesn't change its search results for advertising money, this corporate handshaking is simply obselete and consumers are better off without it.
Nice of the editors to get in an MS jab for not supporting a bad business plan. Not to mention plain names like 'cookies' shouldnt resolve to web sites if theres a server or pc on your network called cookies.
The mainframe probably won't fit and will use a bazllion times more power than that 8086 chip. NASA uses outdated (at least in the desktop/server market) chips because they don't need the processing power and have energy requirements. The Mars rover had a 486 (?) for these reasons.