Exactly. Im getting sick of all this politically correct hand-wringing. Most geeky jobs especially IT means:
1. Lots of time taken up by emergencies, on-call, etc. 2. Getting down and dirty: pulling wire, moving equipment, etc 3. Never having a typical office job. 4. Limited opportunities for growth.
What women would want this? Women in general are more social than men and more concerned about status and looks. IT is the worst place for them. I know women who are just chomping at the bit to leave the field because no one told them this. The PC types just wave their hands and say "EVERYONE IS 100% THE SAME!!" That advice has lead to so many people unhappy with their jobs. TBL tellng people the problem is sexism isnt helping either. Explaining the realities of the job should be the #1 priority for people on the fence about getting into geeky careers.
>Seriously folks, Dan Rather has about as much common sense as a Bugby.
Why Dan Rather specifically? This week I watched regular tv for the first time in years. I usually just tivo stuff. The "news" I saw at the hotel is the most ignorant, consumerist, and alarmist crap I have ever seen. Rather, from what I remember years ago, seems a step above the always OJ, always Arabs-Want-to-kill-us, etc crowd.
I think the problem is that "news" in the US is just crap. Americans now prefer crap over facts. Picking on one reporter or one network isnt helping. Theyre all like this.
>For me, using the internet obsessively isn't because I'm 'addicted' to the internet but because most of the time there's just nothing better to do. If I find something more interesting I tend to spend less time online.
This is how my usage works too. I'm sure my usage level is higher than average but my TV time usage is next to nil other watching shows I really like that my tivo has been saving up for me. We only have so much free time and we use it as we like. FOr some reason its seen as healthy and modern to spend 8 hours in front of the boob tube absorbing ads and marketing messages and exposing yourself to programs designed for people well below the LCD, but if you spend that much time online instead then you must be some kind of freak.
I see a couple of advatanges here. First off, you get a pretty solid device. Unlike other mp3 players Ive owned, this feels like a solid unit as opposed to a collection of cheap plastic buttons and the cheapest lcd display available. I disagree with your claim that the sound quality is not good. I was pretty amazed at the quality I got from my old ipod mini. My current photo ipod sounds pretty damn good even on the train with a pair of 30 dollar noise isolating philips earbuds. At the time is was one of the least bulky hard drive based players. I had an archos that was bigger than the original walkman. The real downside here is price. Theyre expensive, but you get better quality hardware. FWIW, the only format I care about is mp3.
Considering they never claimed to support linux, i think this complaint falls on deaf ears. If you want to support companies with support for your OS of choice then go with Archos or whoever nowadays still makes an effort to open their toys.
First off, it certainly does not crack 99% of passwords. A reasonable password policy means it wont crack anything. Its a 700 meg CD. Its very limited. I've seen it fail on some pretty basic stuff. Esentially toss in a !@#$%^&*()_-{};',.? and its screwed.
>And it is horrifying how few windows sysadmins who know about this...
Well, they should be asking "Why are my PCs set up to let the end user boot a CD?" Or "Why do malicious users have physical access to our machines." With physical access youre pretty much sunk. Someone could moutn ntfs, write to the registry where its stores your admin password, and set it to null. I dont care what OS you use, physical access usually means trouble. Heck, if my portable tools cant crack it, I'll just take the hard drive home and work on it at my leisure.
From the linked blog: "How fast? It can crack the password "Fgpyyih804423" in 160 seconds. Most people would consider that password fairly secure."
Sorry Jeff, but thats a shit password. If I remember correctly NT drop anything after the first 8 characters so the password is actually "Fgpyyih8" You have one uppercase letter in there and one number. That's terrible. Where are your characters like !@#$%^&*()-_+ or extended ascii stuff? Why are you starting with a capitalized letter?
I used the CD version of ophtcrack and played with the larger 2+ gig rainbow table assortment and found it pretty weak, if not useless, against a reasonable password policy.
>Then how is it legal to carry it on airplane or somewhere where it requires to operate in complete radio-off mode?
It has an airplaine wireless off mode. The problem is that the users who buy these things are too hip and smart and cool to spend 45 seconds with the manual. User error, nothing to see here.
>Whichever format will give me - a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies will get my money. If none do, I'm sticking with regular DVDs.
DVDs certainly do not give you any freedom, they locked down with css. Oh right, so becuse css is crackable makes DVDs the idealized format. You are ignoring that the DVD people think just as little of you as the HD format people. Hollywood will not give you what you want. If you want to be mr copyleft then address your hollywood addiction, give up on companies that force format makers to do this, and enjoy your reams of public access television HDDVDs. Sad that mr activist will never boycott hollywood or the music industry. Why should they change their ways if you keep handing them your paycheck? Thats like going into a mcdonalds, buying a value meal, and then complaining that there's too much fat in the McLean while biting down on a Big Mac.
There's nothing worse than a complainer who wont get off his ass. The collective lack of action has led to the acceptance of DRM in our lives: dvd, hddvd, apple music store, etc. Lets not pretend DVDs are some magical drm-free format. Thanks.
Whoa this is incredible. This is the realm of the crazy right-wing nutjobs. What is it doing on a technology site? Oh well anything to make ad impressions eh?
>Precisely, IT hates work, whereas the profit side of the business is used to it.
Right, and the "profit" side is busy hiring drones to churn out more TPS reports and all their plans end with "and the consulants will build x y and z." In IT WE build xyz. There's a difference "work" and "getting shit done." A good IT department does the latter.
No matter though, these articles are just springboards for people to complain about their companies IT department. Enjoy the bitchfest.
That is a conflict that only ends badly pretty much for everyone.
Exctly. I think when ordinary joes (especially internet nerds) hear about espionage, suddenly theyre all conspiracy theories and "omg go to war." Espionage and lots of unethical behaviors are part of the nation state game. Its not a justification for war. War or military action should always be a last resort.
Not to mention westerners never heard about what their own spies are doing. If you dont think its as nasty as what the Chinese have done then youre not really paying attention.
>Why is it too much to ask that if you like the CD, you pay the money?
Because humans dont think that casual stealing is very wrong. Thats why we put very weak locks on all our stuff. The locks in my car, home, etc will absolutely not stop a determined person, but it stops all the 'social stealing.' Thats human nature. Everything else is rationalizations for theft.
>>Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Hey Mcdonalds, I just want the bun from the middle of the big mac drenched in big mac sauce. Guess what my only alterntive is? That's right, a merciless beating of your employees and theft of your middle buns and secret sauce.
Whatever happened to the alternative of boycotting companies that treat you badly? Or is our tv/mcdonalds addiction too much for that?
Hello. Welcome to slashdot. Anything can be turned into a criticism of MS. Its childish and stupid but the kiddies looking for their daily outrage seem to like it.
On top of it Tibet is a 100% politicalized situation:
1. Western governments see it as a way to punish china by supporting it.
2. Westerners have bought the tibetan propaganda and see it on par with the Holocaust.
Tibet on the ground isnt very different from the rest of China, but toss in politics and religion and ignorant westerners and you've got this mess.
Historically, it makes perfect sense for China to asset its authority over it. Not to mention the people's revolution wasnt going to let a Feudal Monoarchy that bordered on a slave state continue its practices, especially within its borders.
Lastly, westerners, especially americans, who believe in Tibetan Authonomy are pretty big hypocrites. Its not like we're trying to give all this land back to the Native Americans who once held it. Heck, they have a better claim on America than the Tibetans have on TIbet!
The FSF just wants to strengthen copyrights so arbitrary changes to licenses are retro-active, which is of course a nightmare.If MS was doing this the slashdot servers would be melting from all the outrage, but because FSF is doign this, its great!
This is why copyright will never die nor will it ever be reformed. Big business and free software depend on it too much. No one really wants to do anything about it but use it as a power grab. Its pretty depressing.
If article contains word 'rootkit' then lots and lots of pageviews.
Example: See Bioshock.
I'm really getting sick of this. Its like the C-class bloggers and clueless tech writers have discovered a magic word that gets them all the ad impressions they want, and techies dont seem to care as the exposure just lets them bitch and moan. Facts be damned.
Maybe we should start using the slashtards tag. Did you even bother to click on the link? Hell, the article is written in the ADD-style of "dummy quotes." The author doesnt even present the full email! In short, what was left out is that MS has acknowledged the bug but the tech wrote that there is going to be some kind of performance hit. Its not like MS wrote "THIS IS NOT A BUG. GO AWAY." Contrast:
"Please note that some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not. In certain circumstances Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback. This is by design."
"In most cases the user does not notice the impact of this as the decrease in network performance is slight. Of course some users, especially ones on Gigabit based networks, are seeing a much greater decrease than is expected and that is clearly a problem that we need to address."
In other words they see a bug especially on gigabit connections.
Now back to yoru regularly scheduled bitching and "ZOMG my calculator gets better performance" fact-free discussion.
>I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the occasional taxi driver making a tourist's trip 10x longer than it's supposed to be...
I'm sure that's part of it, but in my experience I was shocked at how little the cabbies in nyc knew the town. The first time I went I knew the address of the hotel AND its intersection. In any other city this would be more than enough information. The cab driver had no idea where this place was. He wanted to also know what streets it was between. I had to call the hotel with my cell phone to get this information. Incredible. In any other city this would have never happened. I was also told by someone else that in nyc you have to know the address, intersection, and what streets are between one of the streets in the intersection to get anywhere.
I think a lot of tourists are sick of this thus the GPS requirement.
>Now *that* would be a strong and immediate demonstration of both how the whole "activation" thing and DRM are wrong
Err no its not. Thats like wiping out every social security number, watching the social safety net system collapse, and saying "SEE SOCIAL SAFETY DOESNT WORK AND IS WRONG." Or beating up your mailman, not getting mail, and saying "SEE, THE POSTAL SERVICE OUT HERE SUCKS."
>the Russians will sell them whatever is in their inventory. The Chinese, who probably make a lot of the circuit boards and sub systems for our military, would happily sell them their 100% original design
Exactly. That blog post is extremely xenophobic. Some geek sees an iranian kid making a little drone and suddenly thinks his little basic stamp code is military-grade Predator hellfire launching missile code. What sets off Sherlock Holmes here is that the teenager who doesnt even hide his origins paints the iranian national color onto his plane.
WTF.
This article is terrible. Someone owes that Iranian teenager a huge apology. The kid tries something new and different now his name is plastered all over the internet as "IRANIAN TEENAGER BUILDS WMD!!!!" I think the blogger needs to stop watching so much Fox News.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Im getting sick of all this politically correct hand-wringing. Most geeky jobs especially IT means:
1. Lots of time taken up by emergencies, on-call, etc.
2. Getting down and dirty: pulling wire, moving equipment, etc
3. Never having a typical office job.
4. Limited opportunities for growth.
What women would want this? Women in general are more social than men and more concerned about status and looks. IT is the worst place for them. I know women who are just chomping at the bit to leave the field because no one told them this. The PC types just wave their hands and say "EVERYONE IS 100% THE SAME!!" That advice has lead to so many people unhappy with their jobs. TBL tellng people the problem is sexism isnt helping either. Explaining the realities of the job should be the #1 priority for people on the fence about getting into geeky careers.
>Seriously folks, Dan Rather has about as much common sense as a Bugby.
Why Dan Rather specifically? This week I watched regular tv for the first time in years. I usually just tivo stuff. The "news" I saw at the hotel is the most ignorant, consumerist, and alarmist crap I have ever seen. Rather, from what I remember years ago, seems a step above the always OJ, always Arabs-Want-to-kill-us, etc crowd.
I think the problem is that "news" in the US is just crap. Americans now prefer crap over facts. Picking on one reporter or one network isnt helping. Theyre all like this.
>For me, using the internet obsessively isn't because I'm 'addicted' to the internet but because most of the time there's just nothing better to do. If I find something more interesting I tend to spend less time online.
This is how my usage works too. I'm sure my usage level is higher than average but my TV time usage is next to nil other watching shows I really like that my tivo has been saving up for me. We only have so much free time and we use it as we like. FOr some reason its seen as healthy and modern to spend 8 hours in front of the boob tube absorbing ads and marketing messages and exposing yourself to programs designed for people well below the LCD, but if you spend that much time online instead then you must be some kind of freak.
In the movies theres a magical invisible cross guard. Vader and ObiWan make use of it quite a bit in anh.
I see a couple of advatanges here. First off, you get a pretty solid device. Unlike other mp3 players Ive owned, this feels like a solid unit as opposed to a collection of cheap plastic buttons and the cheapest lcd display available. I disagree with your claim that the sound quality is not good. I was pretty amazed at the quality I got from my old ipod mini. My current photo ipod sounds pretty damn good even on the train with a pair of 30 dollar noise isolating philips earbuds. At the time is was one of the least bulky hard drive based players. I had an archos that was bigger than the original walkman. The real downside here is price. Theyre expensive, but you get better quality hardware. FWIW, the only format I care about is mp3.
Considering they never claimed to support linux, i think this complaint falls on deaf ears. If you want to support companies with support for your OS of choice then go with Archos or whoever nowadays still makes an effort to open their toys.
First off, it certainly does not crack 99% of passwords. A reasonable password policy means it wont crack anything. Its a 700 meg CD. Its very limited. I've seen it fail on some pretty basic stuff. Esentially toss in a !@#$%^&*()_-{};',.? and its screwed.
>And it is horrifying how few windows sysadmins who know about this...
Well, they should be asking "Why are my PCs set up to let the end user boot a CD?" Or "Why do malicious users have physical access to our machines." With physical access youre pretty much sunk. Someone could moutn ntfs, write to the registry where its stores your admin password, and set it to null. I dont care what OS you use, physical access usually means trouble. Heck, if my portable tools cant crack it, I'll just take the hard drive home and work on it at my leisure.
From the linked blog: "How fast? It can crack the password "Fgpyyih804423" in 160 seconds. Most people would consider that password fairly secure."
Sorry Jeff, but thats a shit password. If I remember correctly NT drop anything after the first 8 characters so the password is actually "Fgpyyih8" You have one uppercase letter in there and one number. That's terrible. Where are your characters like !@#$%^&*()-_+ or extended ascii stuff? Why are you starting with a capitalized letter?
I used the CD version of ophtcrack and played with the larger 2+ gig rainbow table assortment and found it pretty weak, if not useless, against a reasonable password policy.
>Then how is it legal to carry it on airplane or somewhere where it requires to operate in complete radio-off mode?
It has an airplaine wireless off mode. The problem is that the users who buy these things are too hip and smart and cool to spend 45 seconds with the manual. User error, nothing to see here.
>Whichever format will give me - a paying customer - the freedom to do what I want with my movies will get my money. If none do, I'm sticking with regular DVDs.
DVDs certainly do not give you any freedom, they locked down with css. Oh right, so becuse css is crackable makes DVDs the idealized format. You are ignoring that the DVD people think just as little of you as the HD format people. Hollywood will not give you what you want. If you want to be mr copyleft then address your hollywood addiction, give up on companies that force format makers to do this, and enjoy your reams of public access television HDDVDs. Sad that mr activist will never boycott hollywood or the music industry. Why should they change their ways if you keep handing them your paycheck? Thats like going into a mcdonalds, buying a value meal, and then complaining that there's too much fat in the McLean while biting down on a Big Mac.
There's nothing worse than a complainer who wont get off his ass. The collective lack of action has led to the acceptance of DRM in our lives: dvd, hddvd, apple music store, etc. Lets not pretend DVDs are some magical drm-free format. Thanks.
Whoa this is incredible. This is the realm of the crazy right-wing nutjobs. What is it doing on a technology site? Oh well anything to make ad impressions eh?
>Precisely, IT hates work, whereas the profit side of the business is used to it.
Right, and the "profit" side is busy hiring drones to churn out more TPS reports and all their plans end with "and the consulants will build x y and z." In IT WE build xyz. There's a difference "work" and "getting shit done." A good IT department does the latter.
No matter though, these articles are just springboards for people to complain about their companies IT department. Enjoy the bitchfest.
That is a conflict that only ends badly pretty much for everyone.
Exctly. I think when ordinary joes (especially internet nerds) hear about espionage, suddenly theyre all conspiracy theories and "omg go to war." Espionage and lots of unethical behaviors are part of the nation state game. Its not a justification for war. War or military action should always be a last resort.
Not to mention westerners never heard about what their own spies are doing. If you dont think its as nasty as what the Chinese have done then youre not really paying attention.
>Why is it too much to ask that if you like the CD, you pay the money?
Because humans dont think that casual stealing is very wrong. Thats why we put very weak locks on all our stuff. The locks in my car, home, etc will absolutely not stop a determined person, but it stops all the 'social stealing.' Thats human nature. Everything else is rationalizations for theft.
>>Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Hey Mcdonalds, I just want the bun from the middle of the big mac drenched in big mac sauce. Guess what my only alterntive is? That's right, a merciless beating of your employees and theft of your middle buns and secret sauce.
Whatever happened to the alternative of boycotting companies that treat you badly? Or is our tv/mcdonalds addiction too much for that?
>"windows specific" issue at all.
Hello. Welcome to slashdot. Anything can be turned into a criticism of MS. Its childish and stupid but the kiddies looking for their daily outrage seem to like it.
On top of it Tibet is a 100% politicalized situation:
1. Western governments see it as a way to punish china by supporting it.
2. Westerners have bought the tibetan propaganda and see it on par with the Holocaust.
Tibet on the ground isnt very different from the rest of China, but toss in politics and religion and ignorant westerners and you've got this mess.
Historically, it makes perfect sense for China to asset its authority over it. Not to mention the people's revolution wasnt going to let a Feudal Monoarchy that bordered on a slave state continue its practices, especially within its borders.
Lastly, westerners, especially americans, who believe in Tibetan Authonomy are pretty big hypocrites. Its not like we're trying to give all this land back to the Native Americans who once held it. Heck, they have a better claim on America than the Tibetans have on TIbet!
The FSF just wants to strengthen copyrights so arbitrary changes to licenses are retro-active, which is of course a nightmare.If MS was doing this the slashdot servers would be melting from all the outrage, but because FSF is doign this, its great!
This is why copyright will never die nor will it ever be reformed. Big business and free software depend on it too much. No one really wants to do anything about it but use it as a power grab. Its pretty depressing.
If article contains word 'rootkit' then lots and lots of pageviews.
Example: See Bioshock.
I'm really getting sick of this. Its like the C-class bloggers and clueless tech writers have discovered a magic word that gets them all the ad impressions they want, and techies dont seem to care as the exposure just lets them bitch and moan. Facts be damned.
In other words they see a bug especially on gigabit connections.
Now back to yoru regularly scheduled bitching and "ZOMG my calculator gets better performance" fact-free discussion.
My chimp and I are still happily married.
>I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the occasional taxi driver making a tourist's trip 10x longer than it's supposed to be...
I'm sure that's part of it, but in my experience I was shocked at how little the cabbies in nyc knew the town. The first time I went I knew the address of the hotel AND its intersection. In any other city this would be more than enough information. The cab driver had no idea where this place was. He wanted to also know what streets it was between. I had to call the hotel with my cell phone to get this information. Incredible. In any other city this would have never happened. I was also told by someone else that in nyc you have to know the address, intersection, and what streets are between one of the streets in the intersection to get anywhere.
I think a lot of tourists are sick of this thus the GPS requirement.
Yes, in other words: uptime.
>Now *that* would be a strong and immediate demonstration of both how the whole "activation" thing and DRM are wrong
Err no its not. Thats like wiping out every social security number, watching the social safety net system collapse, and saying "SEE SOCIAL SAFETY DOESNT WORK AND IS WRONG." Or beating up your mailman, not getting mail, and saying "SEE, THE POSTAL SERVICE OUT HERE SUCKS."
No, youre just a criminal.
>the Russians will sell them whatever is in their inventory. The Chinese, who probably make a lot of the circuit boards and sub systems for our military, would happily sell them their 100% original design
Exactly. That blog post is extremely xenophobic. Some geek sees an iranian kid making a little drone and suddenly thinks his little basic stamp code is military-grade Predator hellfire launching missile code. What sets off Sherlock Holmes here is that the teenager who doesnt even hide his origins paints the iranian national color onto his plane.
WTF.
This article is terrible. Someone owes that Iranian teenager a huge apology. The kid tries something new and different now his name is plastered all over the internet as "IRANIAN TEENAGER BUILDS WMD!!!!" I think the blogger needs to stop watching so much Fox News.
>still no cure for AIDS, but people won't die from it directly anymore. S
Except the poor and uninsured.