Check out MS Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Frequently Asked Question for details on licensing. In particular, expand the section on How much does the license cost?. Another FAQ ask If Microsoft obtains a patent for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, does that in any way affect the royalty-free license? and the response is No, the license is unaffected. Under the patent license for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, Microsoft offers royalty-free rights both to its issued patents and patents that may be issued in the future.. IANAL but this seems to allow for open source projects to use the schemas.
Is "Waterview Appartments" a dorm for the school or is the property under private ownership (not being familiar with the school, I don't know the status of this property)? If the latter, can the school really dictate what is done in private residences? As for the "private contract" between the students and the school, can the contract take precedence over the FCC?
For general office use, an old PC/MAC is adequate. Given school budgets, system life is definitely longer than what you find at work or even home. Oddly enough, until about 2 years ago, I had a Pentium 166 that didn't have the USB connection. In my case, money was a bit tight so I was willing to stick with the system I had.
The real issue when considering upgrades is that you don't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, you do it when you can justify it.
As for schools giving away laptops, at what school level are you seeing this? The public schools (elementary, middle, and high schools) in some Maryland counties seem to be on tight budgets and I haven't heard of any of them giving away laptops.
Why bother with an unreliable media like the floppy when anything small enough to fit on a floppy can be emailed or transferred across the network (via your favorite secure transfer protocol) from one machine to the other.
Unfortunately, at the elementary school level, you don't always have the option to access the Internet or your home PC. Some of the PC's in the classroom appear to be stand-alone or even getting access to web based email may be impossible (restricted due to proxy filters). The floppy disk is still a viable method to transfer data in these situations, even though they are not preferred.
All the machines I've owned in the past 7+ years (PCs and Macs) have booted just fine from CDs for recovery purposes. And the CDs hold not only a bootable OS, but all the utilities you could need...and more.
This is definitely a good option for maintaining a PC, but the issue I brought up is data transfer. The use of a floppy disk is still a reasonable method in some situations. The floppy is not dead yet, hence the long slow death.
The sooner slow, unreliable, huge 3.5 inch floppies are completely scrapped the better.
The floppy is still a very common method of transfering documentation between the home PC and a school PC. While the USB drive does hold more information, one can't assume that people or institutions will update their hardware to include USB ports. This will become a bigger problem though with PC's shipping without the floppy drive as a default configuration. I just sent my son to 6th grade and he requires two floppy disk. I've seen the hardware the school is working with and USB is not as common as the floppy drive. The floppy drive may be dying, but it will be a long slow death due to situations such as this.
Alternatively, we could raise the minimum wage to somewhere above the poverty level
Doesn't raising minimum wage only temporarily benefit those making minimum wage? Ultimately the cost for goods and services go up due to increased labor cost for the provider and who pays for that, you got it, the consumer. For those making above the minimum wage, do you think they'll be happy to find that they are closer to the new minimum wage?
Employee X is making $8/hour
Minimum wage goes from $5.25/hour (sorry, not sure if that's really the minimum wage) to $7.50/hour
Employee X who was doing "OK" is now making less money due to prices increasing to cover the cost of the minimum wage adjustment
In my opinion, changing minimum wage doesn't appear to help in the long run. Providing educational programs and temporary assistance (housing, food, daycare, etc...) allows people to obtain the "better" jobs and a higher standard of living.
I agree that poor people need jobs, but I make the distinction that they need jobs that pay them enough to make ends meet.
I agree too that people need jobs, but by artificially increasing the wages at the available jobs for untrained employees will only cause everything to shift up. Jobs that require little skill are going to pay less than those requiring higher skill levels. The only way to make money is to be skilled to a level that you can earn a decent living.
For complete details, please review this article (
MS KB870669).
Pulled from that article...
Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
Microsoft has provided three ways to disable the ADODB.Stream object from Internet Explorer. You can use Microsoft Windows Update to update your computer, you can download an update file from the Microsoft Download Center, or you can disable the ADODB.Stream object manually.
These methods work by creating the following registry key:
This registry key has a GUID for the ADODB.Stream object. When Internet Explorer recognizes this registry key, Internet Explorer does not permit the component to be started in the browser.
Important notes
* If you are running the ADODB.Stream object from a server (middle tier), disabling the ADODB.Stream object on the server does not affect ADODB.Stream object functionality with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).
* If you are running the ADODB.Stream object from a client by using Internet Explorer, disabling the ADODB.Stream object stops the ADODB.Stream object from being created in Internet Explorer.
Now I can't say that this necessarily fixes the problem, but this is what I found on it. Unfortunately, I don't believe the problem is limited to Internet Explorer as many MS products also rely on Internet Explorer and the various COM objects (like ADODB).
Unfortunately you'll find that organizations do rely on Internet Explorer as it comes with MS operating systems by default. Personally I avoid using MS IE unless absolutely necessary (a couple of my company's internal websites, namely benefits, time sheet, etc..., check for the browser and don't permit anything but IE) as I like features of the Mozilla based browsers (tabbed browsing being the first that comes to mind). As for calling it a mistake to choose IE only functionality, this all depends on the application. If developing for an internal website, then as a corporation, they do have the ability to require use of a particular application (even if the IT folks dislike it). This wouldn't be the logical choice, but the money controlling the project is theirs and they can decide what to do with it.
As for you statement about the browser wars, hopefully your right. Ideally all browsers will approach the standards correctly and then end users will be able to choose the browser they like without worrying that some web pages will not display correctly.
If I'm not mistaken, XP SP2 includes the work around which changes a registry entry related to the exploit. XP SP2 doesn't really fix this particular problem but disables the functionality that is being exploited. In a way, users aren't at risk, but if you rely on that functionality, well your out of luck for now or you must run with the risk.
I doubt the list contained information specifically about (D) Ted Kennedy being forced through extra screening. Likely the name "Ted Kennedy" is a known alias for another individual who probably should be put through the extra screening process. Imagine the troubles for people if "Mr Smith" ends up on the list.
Personally though, I agree with other post I've seen around at various branches. The current system, with all it's flaws, will likely lead to a system that requires individuals to give up more and more personal freedom and privacy, just to travel. A "national identity" system would be one solution to airport security. The problem is that most of us aren't willing to go to that sort of society.
Don't recall the radio program but late in the day the word was that he wasn't on a No-Fly list but rather a Screen list. What the exact difference is between the list was not discussed, but I'd have to imagine that the first prohibits flight while the second is more of a harassment.
NOTE: Not sure if your saying the "logical choice" related to the attention grab or the choice of Kerry over Bush. My point relates to the latter...
There's a lot more hatred towards Bush than there is Kerry right now (that I'm aware of atleast) so it's really a logical choice.
I usually try to stay away from presenting political views, but using "hatred" to justify a choice over the candidates issues is not exactly logical. Both candidates generally have made their political views available to the public and what is predominantly displayed in the media is that liberal groups are supporting Kerry for the simple fact that they hate Bush. Choosing a candidate just for the sake of beating someone you don't like is really an immature approach to electing the next president of the United States. Please review the political views and make an informed decision (and yes, this can include past performance - and yes, this is for both Bush and Kerry).
The parent to your post obviously has worked with the older MS versions (9x, NT, ME) and has been trained that reinstalling the OS is part of the standard operating procedure.
On a more serious note though, the firewall option isn't available on all MS operating systems by default and isn't configured "on" by default. While locking down the system prior to connecting to the Internet should be the standard practice, most PC owners really don't have the technical skills to do this, even with the MS GUI's.
Good point, but I was primarily trying to indicate to the parent poster that criticizing a decision in hindsight is not really fair. What we can review is the process that leads to information not being available as well as refining interpetation (maybe someone drew the wrong conclusion with the given data). At this point, the intelligence agencies and political leaders really need to go through a "lessons learned" review to make sure the same mistakes don't happen.
Please define exactly what your definition of "open source" is. As the blog indicated, open source potentially has a different meaning for people. If by open source you mean that you want access to Solaris, check out Solaris Source (although this really just states: "Source code for the Solaris Operating System is available for qualified educational institutions and partners; please contact your Sun sales team for details"). I don't know what disclosure agreements are necessary for the access, but a determined individual should be able to get access.
In this case, doing nothing would of been far worse then what we did do.
Flatly untrue. Doing nothing would have been vastly preferable to what our leaders did.
Looking back with what we know now this statement can be made pretty easily. When the decision to go to war was made, the intelligence available indicated that Iraq was a threat. Judging the decision for war with information available months after the start of the war is unfair. The war was justifiable with the information available at the time. NOTE: I'm not saying that the war wasn't opposed and at the start of the war I wasn't completely convinced that it was necessary. My thoughts were that if the US was willing to go to war, they (meaning the leaders who have access to classified intelligence) must have had information that the general public would not have access to and that information justified the war. I'm sure that choosing "Doing nothing" seemed a bad idea at the time.
The policy we follow here is for system administrators to keep a sealed envelope with the root/administrator passwords. Each password is in it's own envelope with the systems it belongs too written on the outside of the envelope. These envelopes are then stored in a secure environment (a safe for example) to ensure that access can be restored if absolutely necessary. A small group of people (not necessarily system administrators) have access to these envelopes and they must follow a strict policy (including setting a new password) on handling these documents. Implimenting this sort of policy prevents the problem you indicated where you have a system without the root/administrator password.
I'd wait to see if LMCO is actually installing this before speculating too much on it. LMCO will follow it's customers lead in which platform it uses internally. Choosing a different platform than the customer is generally a bad idea. Now if LMCO is replacing the standard office PC (email, office apps, research), that might be acceptable. Somehow I doubt that they will replace on a grand scale. Sun (as well as other OS vendors) often partner with the big companies out there and offer them discounts that keep the TCO pretty low, so what's the incentive to change if your customers haven't?
While I imagine that to some extent your trying to be funny, outsourcing a significant portion of the operating system could impact the use of the operating system in defense agencies. Software and operating systems used in defense agencies generally must be produced by a company located inside the country (which still requires a careful review). Exceptions are made on a case by case basis (Does the company have a significant presense in the country? Is the source code reviewed by the agency (NOTE: and use would only occur from a reviewed trusted source)?).
In the case of Microsoft products, I would imagine agencies doing careful reviews of the source code as well as the end product. I don't expect agencies to migrate as quickly as corporate users will.
Security organizations do not generally use the latest available releases of open or closed source software and it's generally due to the fact that the software must be reviewed. Commercial entities are more likely to keep up with frequent software updates and not perform the software audits that you find in secure organizations.
Software is reviewed carefully before being allowed onto secured networks. Just ask anyone who works on projects where a deadline is missed due to security reviews.
Haven't seen too many problems with SP4 on MS Win2000. The only one that I've personally seen is a problem with an Alteon Gigabit network card (can't recall the model, but it's an older card) on a system Dell sold that originally had WinNT4. Outside of that, SP4 has worked on a variety of systems where I work.
I worked at a county government site (onsite as a subcontractor) and had interactions with some of the education board members. They do (at least by my experience) realize that IT is a recurring expense (upgrades, maintenance, administration). Unfortunately they also seem to see IT as one of the areas where funding can be reallocated when other areas fall short.
As for the average lifespan of a computer, it depends on the system to some extent. Where I'm at now, PC's at the desktop are ideally replaced every 3 years. I've also worked at places where the lifespan of a system was..., well lets say I don't think they considered that it had a lifespan. My guess is that the lifespan of desktop PC's depends on the size of the company and the line of business (IT companies likely upgrade more frequently than a company where PC's are not integral to their end product/service). Servers on the other hand probably have a much longer lifespan in most companies. They probably get upgraded less frequently due to existing applications that would be difficult to reinstall/configure if a new system were available. If a file server, these generally get replaced/upgraded when free disk space becomes an issue. In the education setting, I'm not sure though (the school where my kids go already had a volunteer handling the computer systems).
Slashdot Mirror
From the same document:
Are the licenses that Microsoft offers under the Open and Royalty-Free Office 2003 XML Reference Schema program perpetual in nature?
Yes. The licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas are perpetual. There is no term limit on the licenses.
Somewhat surprisingly, this sounds like MS may actually be pretty open for a change.
Check out MS Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Frequently Asked Question for details on licensing. In particular, expand the section on How much does the license cost?. Another FAQ ask If Microsoft obtains a patent for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, does that in any way affect the royalty-free license? and the response is No, the license is unaffected. Under the patent license for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, Microsoft offers royalty-free rights both to its issued patents and patents that may be issued in the future.. IANAL but this seems to allow for open source projects to use the schemas.
Is "Waterview Appartments" a dorm for the school or is the property under private ownership (not being familiar with the school, I don't know the status of this property)? If the latter, can the school really dictate what is done in private residences? As for the "private contract" between the students and the school, can the contract take precedence over the FCC?
For general office use, an old PC/MAC is adequate. Given school budgets, system life is definitely longer than what you find at work or even home. Oddly enough, until about 2 years ago, I had a Pentium 166 that didn't have the USB connection. In my case, money was a bit tight so I was willing to stick with the system I had.
The real issue when considering upgrades is that you don't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading, you do it when you can justify it.
As for schools giving away laptops, at what school level are you seeing this? The public schools (elementary, middle, and high schools) in some Maryland counties seem to be on tight budgets and I haven't heard of any of them giving away laptops.
Why bother with an unreliable media like the floppy when anything small enough to fit on a floppy can be emailed or transferred across the network (via your favorite secure transfer protocol) from one machine to the other.
Unfortunately, at the elementary school level, you don't always have the option to access the Internet or your home PC. Some of the PC's in the classroom appear to be stand-alone or even getting access to web based email may be impossible (restricted due to proxy filters). The floppy disk is still a viable method to transfer data in these situations, even though they are not preferred.
All the machines I've owned in the past 7+ years (PCs and Macs) have booted just fine from CDs for recovery purposes. And the CDs hold not only a bootable OS, but all the utilities you could need...and more.
This is definitely a good option for maintaining a PC, but the issue I brought up is data transfer. The use of a floppy disk is still a reasonable method in some situations. The floppy is not dead yet, hence the long slow death.
The sooner slow, unreliable, huge 3.5 inch floppies are completely scrapped the better.
The floppy is still a very common method of transfering documentation between the home PC and a school PC. While the USB drive does hold more information, one can't assume that people or institutions will update their hardware to include USB ports. This will become a bigger problem though with PC's shipping without the floppy drive as a default configuration. I just sent my son to 6th grade and he requires two floppy disk. I've seen the hardware the school is working with and USB is not as common as the floppy drive. The floppy drive may be dying, but it will be a long slow death due to situations such as this.
Doesn't raising minimum wage only temporarily benefit those making minimum wage? Ultimately the cost for goods and services go up due to increased labor cost for the provider and who pays for that, you got it, the consumer. For those making above the minimum wage, do you think they'll be happy to find that they are closer to the new minimum wage?
In my opinion, changing minimum wage doesn't appear to help in the long run. Providing educational programs and temporary assistance (housing, food, daycare, etc...) allows people to obtain the "better" jobs and a higher standard of living.
I agree that poor people need jobs, but I make the distinction that they need jobs that pay them enough to make ends meet.
I agree too that people need jobs, but by artificially increasing the wages at the available jobs for untrained employees will only cause everything to shift up. Jobs that require little skill are going to pay less than those requiring higher skill levels. The only way to make money is to be skilled to a level that you can earn a decent living.
For complete details, please review this article ( MS KB870669).
A 4}
Pulled from that article...
Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
Microsoft has provided three ways to disable the ADODB.Stream object from Internet Explorer. You can use Microsoft Windows Update to update your computer, you can download an update file from the Microsoft Download Center, or you can disable the ADODB.Stream object manually.
These methods work by creating the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{00000566-0000-0010-8000-00AA006D2E
This registry key has a GUID for the ADODB.Stream object. When Internet Explorer recognizes this registry key, Internet Explorer does not permit the component to be started in the browser. Important notes
* If you are running the ADODB.Stream object from a server (middle tier), disabling the ADODB.Stream object on the server does not affect ADODB.Stream object functionality with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).
* If you are running the ADODB.Stream object from a client by using Internet Explorer, disabling the ADODB.Stream object stops the ADODB.Stream object from being created in Internet Explorer.
Now I can't say that this necessarily fixes the problem, but this is what I found on it. Unfortunately, I don't believe the problem is limited to Internet Explorer as many MS products also rely on Internet Explorer and the various COM objects (like ADODB).
Jim
Unfortunately you'll find that organizations do rely on Internet Explorer as it comes with MS operating systems by default. Personally I avoid using MS IE unless absolutely necessary (a couple of my company's internal websites, namely benefits, time sheet, etc..., check for the browser and don't permit anything but IE) as I like features of the Mozilla based browsers (tabbed browsing being the first that comes to mind). As for calling it a mistake to choose IE only functionality, this all depends on the application. If developing for an internal website, then as a corporation, they do have the ability to require use of a particular application (even if the IT folks dislike it). This wouldn't be the logical choice, but the money controlling the project is theirs and they can decide what to do with it.
As for you statement about the browser wars, hopefully your right. Ideally all browsers will approach the standards correctly and then end users will be able to choose the browser they like without worrying that some web pages will not display correctly.
If I'm not mistaken, XP SP2 includes the work around which changes a registry entry related to the exploit. XP SP2 doesn't really fix this particular problem but disables the functionality that is being exploited. In a way, users aren't at risk, but if you rely on that functionality, well your out of luck for now or you must run with the risk.
Patriotic songs shouldn't be copyrighten, thats all there is to it.
While some songs may seem more obvious than others, who gets to determine if a song is patriotic?
I doubt the list contained information specifically about (D) Ted Kennedy being forced through extra screening. Likely the name "Ted Kennedy" is a known alias for another individual who probably should be put through the extra screening process. Imagine the troubles for people if "Mr Smith" ends up on the list.
Personally though, I agree with other post I've seen around at various branches. The current system, with all it's flaws, will likely lead to a system that requires individuals to give up more and more personal freedom and privacy, just to travel. A "national identity" system would be one solution to airport security. The problem is that most of us aren't willing to go to that sort of society.
Don't recall the radio program but late in the day the word was that he wasn't on a No-Fly list but rather a Screen list. What the exact difference is between the list was not discussed, but I'd have to imagine that the first prohibits flight while the second is more of a harassment.
Agreed. Using NS 7.2 this doesn't display correctly (links are shifted to the right and overlap the story).
NOTE: Not sure if your saying the "logical choice" related to the attention grab or the choice of Kerry over Bush. My point relates to the latter...
There's a lot more hatred towards Bush than there is Kerry right now (that I'm aware of atleast) so it's really a logical choice.
I usually try to stay away from presenting political views, but using "hatred" to justify a choice over the candidates issues is not exactly logical. Both candidates generally have made their political views available to the public and what is predominantly displayed in the media is that liberal groups are supporting Kerry for the simple fact that they hate Bush. Choosing a candidate just for the sake of beating someone you don't like is really an immature approach to electing the next president of the United States. Please review the political views and make an informed decision (and yes, this can include past performance - and yes, this is for both Bush and Kerry).
The parent to your post obviously has worked with the older MS versions (9x, NT, ME) and has been trained that reinstalling the OS is part of the standard operating procedure.
On a more serious note though, the firewall option isn't available on all MS operating systems by default and isn't configured "on" by default. While locking down the system prior to connecting to the Internet should be the standard practice, most PC owners really don't have the technical skills to do this, even with the MS GUI's.
Good point, but I was primarily trying to indicate to the parent poster that criticizing a decision in hindsight is not really fair. What we can review is the process that leads to information not being available as well as refining interpetation (maybe someone drew the wrong conclusion with the given data). At this point, the intelligence agencies and political leaders really need to go through a "lessons learned" review to make sure the same mistakes don't happen.
Please define exactly what your definition of "open source" is. As the blog indicated, open source potentially has a different meaning for people. If by open source you mean that you want access to Solaris, check out Solaris Source (although this really just states: "Source code for the Solaris Operating System is available for qualified educational institutions and partners; please contact your Sun sales team for details"). I don't know what disclosure agreements are necessary for the access, but a determined individual should be able to get access.
In this case, doing nothing would of been far worse then what we did do.
Flatly untrue. Doing nothing would have been vastly preferable to what our leaders did.
Looking back with what we know now this statement can be made pretty easily. When the decision to go to war was made, the intelligence available indicated that Iraq was a threat. Judging the decision for war with information available months after the start of the war is unfair. The war was justifiable with the information available at the time. NOTE: I'm not saying that the war wasn't opposed and at the start of the war I wasn't completely convinced that it was necessary. My thoughts were that if the US was willing to go to war, they (meaning the leaders who have access to classified intelligence) must have had information that the general public would not have access to and that information justified the war. I'm sure that choosing "Doing nothing" seemed a bad idea at the time.
The policy we follow here is for system administrators to keep a sealed envelope with the root/administrator passwords. Each password is in it's own envelope with the systems it belongs too written on the outside of the envelope. These envelopes are then stored in a secure environment (a safe for example) to ensure that access can be restored if absolutely necessary. A small group of people (not necessarily system administrators) have access to these envelopes and they must follow a strict policy (including setting a new password) on handling these documents. Implimenting this sort of policy prevents the problem you indicated where you have a system without the root/administrator password.
I'd wait to see if LMCO is actually installing this before speculating too much on it. LMCO will follow it's customers lead in which platform it uses internally. Choosing a different platform than the customer is generally a bad idea. Now if LMCO is replacing the standard office PC (email, office apps, research), that might be acceptable. Somehow I doubt that they will replace on a grand scale. Sun (as well as other OS vendors) often partner with the big companies out there and offer them discounts that keep the TCO pretty low, so what's the incentive to change if your customers haven't?
While I imagine that to some extent your trying to be funny, outsourcing a significant portion of the operating system could impact the use of the operating system in defense agencies. Software and operating systems used in defense agencies generally must be produced by a company located inside the country (which still requires a careful review). Exceptions are made on a case by case basis (Does the company have a significant presense in the country? Is the source code reviewed by the agency (NOTE: and use would only occur from a reviewed trusted source)?).
In the case of Microsoft products, I would imagine agencies doing careful reviews of the source code as well as the end product. I don't expect agencies to migrate as quickly as corporate users will.
Security organizations do not generally use the latest available releases of open or closed source software and it's generally due to the fact that the software must be reviewed. Commercial entities are more likely to keep up with frequent software updates and not perform the software audits that you find in secure organizations.
Software is reviewed carefully before being allowed onto secured networks. Just ask anyone who works on projects where a deadline is missed due to security reviews.
Haven't seen too many problems with SP4 on MS Win2000. The only one that I've personally seen is a problem with an Alteon Gigabit network card (can't recall the model, but it's an older card) on a system Dell sold that originally had WinNT4. Outside of that, SP4 has worked on a variety of systems where I work.
I worked at a county government site (onsite as a subcontractor) and had interactions with some of the education board members. They do (at least by my experience) realize that IT is a recurring expense (upgrades, maintenance, administration). Unfortunately they also seem to see IT as one of the areas where funding can be reallocated when other areas fall short.
As for the average lifespan of a computer, it depends on the system to some extent. Where I'm at now, PC's at the desktop are ideally replaced every 3 years. I've also worked at places where the lifespan of a system was..., well lets say I don't think they considered that it had a lifespan. My guess is that the lifespan of desktop PC's depends on the size of the company and the line of business (IT companies likely upgrade more frequently than a company where PC's are not integral to their end product/service). Servers on the other hand probably have a much longer lifespan in most companies. They probably get upgraded less frequently due to existing applications that would be difficult to reinstall/configure if a new system were available. If a file server, these generally get replaced/upgraded when free disk space becomes an issue. In the education setting, I'm not sure though (the school where my kids go already had a volunteer handling the computer systems).