I think you are over simplifying the system a bit. I can't speak of that particular systems design, but I have dealt with others government (federal, state, and local) systems and they are rarely setup for bulk exports without impacting operations (internal and external agency usage).
well if the system is so on the edge of breaking why doesnt someone just break it then use a 40$ disc recovery program to recall all the data in its previous form or even from days prior.
Have you dealt with systems in a professional environment? Have you ever dealt with the procurement process for a government entity? You can't just break the system and expect that it will be replaced in a few days. Likely the data is highly normalized and spread across multiple repositories on multiple systems. Migrating to a new system requires extensive research into existing requirements plus understanding future plans for the system.
obviously this db worked at some point so just get the data from there and re-add the stuff that you lost
Likely the data is entered from automated systems rather than a manual entry process. These external systems must be accounted for before taking the system offline for maintenance/upgrade/replacement.
cause it makes bush look like an sell out to forgein biz and leaders
Show me a president who hasn't had questionable relationships with foreign connections. Officials (both foreign and national) can be quite corrupt and dealing with them sometimes requires playing by their rules. The US government has policies on dealing with these situations (see the Locheed Martin and Titan Corporation merger cancellation for an example. Can't find a good document on proper procedures when approached by a foreign official for a bribe to continue business, but it does exist and you need to follow the proper process or you get in trouble, like Titan).
I never write comments about documents on the back.
I don't do this often either, at least not recently. Most of what I handle is digital so comments are posted digitally as well. If your dealing with paper documents though, it may not be practical to write on the front side of it (especially if intending to Fax it out again).
you'd need at least a factor of 5 better resolution
Take a look at this monitor for a higher resolution device: IBM T221 Flat Panel. This device has a maximum resolution of 3840x2400. The device is rather expensive and you'll need high-end graphics cards, but they produce nice results. A company produced a solution that used 4 Dell PCs, 3 of these panels (driven by 3 of the Dells), and one plasma screen (driven by 1 Dell and it combined the results of the 3 panels to show an overview) to create a cockpit for fly through scenes. Quite an impressive demo, but very expensive.
I agree though that Looking Glass likely won't be a pratical application in it's current design. I just think that it shows some creativity. Might not be useful, but it shows concepts that may generate others to think differently too.
I don't believe that Sun is pushing this as the next standard desktop. What it does though is show that they are thinking about new ways to approach using a system. Looking Glass probably won't be the next desktop but other projects benefit from some of the concepts either by using parts or analyzing and creating new ideas.
how is spinning a window around to look at properties better than opening up a separate properties dialog???
This seems like they are trying to model the desktop after real world objects. If you have a document sitting on your desk and need to make a comment about it, you likely add a PostIt note with your comments, write in the margins, or write on the back of it. As for comparing it to the "properties' dialog, I'm sure this will be a matter of preference to users (how many users actually populate any of the optional metadata fields?).
reading vertical text on side of windows is uncomfortable.
I agree completely with you on this. Anyone taking a basic Perception and Sensation psychology class would probably have a better approach to presenting the information.
java?
And what language would you expect Sun to develop in?
i would be suprised if human factors has been involved in project to this point.
This seems more like a concept project more than a working environment. Think back to the virtual reality days when all interfaces would be VR. This makes a cool demo, but may not be useful in a real world environment. Example: The CD Jukebox is a cool presentation, but with hundreds of CD's, this is not a practical interface into the repository.
I am a Republican in most cases (I don't vote the party line by default, but often come close based on the candidates views). Just had to get that out of the way so you can either bash me or at least read my post.
I'm not sure what to believe in some of the so called lies of Bush. Take the claims of WMDs. On one hand I'd like to think that if we had intelligence reports that indicates WMDs we would have found them by now. One could also say that Bush manipulated the data to justify a war. And another possibility is that the intelligence community interpreted it's data incorrectly. Now on the first option, Iraq is a large enough country and hiding materials is not altogether impossible. A thorough search would be very time consuming (they could be burried, stored in trailers, in a basement/attic/appartment/etc...). The second point is hard to believe (at least to me). While I see stories about how the war is benefiting large companies, I really have to wonder if someone could be that ethically challenged to create a war just for profit. These companies have been around for a long time and exist through many presidencies and for them to push to get a war seems unlikely. The claims I've heard seem more "movie like". My thought is that if the first option isn't true, then the third one is the likely candidate. I'm sure that intelligence data is like a puzzle that builds something and you don't know what it is supposed to look like. If you don't interpret it fast enough and something bad happens, you'll get blamed for not seeing the signs. If you interpret too quickly, you risk making the wrong conclusion.
As for Moore's idea of truth, I have to think that he's going to twist things to meet his views. He obviously likes to cover controversial issues so covering a president is certainly in his interest. I'm sure there will be some truths in his movie, but for the most part, he has access to the same information that the rest of the public has and he will be making "truths" out of his own conclusions, not necessarily facts. He may be right, wrong or somewhere in between.
I'm writing this, and I'm fairly sleepy. Combining sleepiness and politics is probably not a good idea.
Most people are either going to love, hate, or be indifferent to this movie depending on their political views. Democrats will see this as a way to promote their hatred for Bush. Republicans will see this as lies.
I'm sure the movie contains at least bits of truth, but given the bias of the producer, I believe he "twisted" situations to meet his views. The major problem I see with the movie is the labelling of it as a documentary. Maybe one could stretch it to be a documentary of Moore's views, but this won't be a standard documentary. I'm sure that another movie could be made to show all the positives of Bush and call it a documentary too and neither would be correctly.
I'm concerned that movie viewers are going to watch it and take it as truth without really thinking about it before coming to that conclusion.
I work for one of the larger organization (I think the numbers around 130,000 employees world wide) and I've had my share of small companies (the smallest around 250 employees). I can't ever recall PC's being down for hardware issues for more than a couple hours for a single incident and the number of incidents per PC over a year still wouldn't account for an average of 9 days. I can see including software related issues (virus, driver conflicts, user screw up, etc...) but not SPAM into the "9 days". SPAM is an issue regardless of the OS/platform and should not be included. If they include SPAM handling, why not include time a person does non-work related activies (browsing the Internet, posting to Slashdot, playing mine sweeper) into the "sick time".
If only counting hardware and operating system issues, the count should be a lot less than 9 days average. With proper support, PC's are probably closer to 2 or 3 days downtime (and I'm trying to be conservative, more likely it's less than a day).
Your right that not all parents spend the proper amount of time raising their kids. The problem isn't the tools available, but how parents use them (or if they don't use them, they still need to make the proper parenting decisions without them). The best tools won't work if they are not used.
I actually like my father's theory on responsibility . He maintains that even though his four kids are grown up (age range 28 - 34), he is responsible for the fact that we are here and ultimately responsible for our actions. While we've moved away from home and started families of our own, he still feels a responsibility to make sure we don't screw things up.
The world is going to have a combination of good and bad parents. Not much we can do about it without over stepping boundaries. All we can do is provide tools that hopefully parents will use to assist in making informed decisions. It's not perfect, but it will have to do.
Even without the tools, parents are responsible for their kids so the excuse about not having the tools is invalid.
for me I listen to a CD, movie, book, video game or whatever BEFORE I give it to my child.
I tend to do that too with media that I am unsure about. The ratings guide is not always accurate for all the media out there, but it is generally pretty good. My kids are 7 and 10 so a PG rating usually has appropriate content. Sometimes my kids get up to an R rated movie. Usually my wife and I will allow sci-fi like violence as long as it is easily discernable from realistic acts. Now I'm not saying that the content is appropriate for every kid (in some cases, my son, the 10 year old, will see some content I hold back from my daughter for now), but if they have a firm grip on reality and can easily identify what looks "cool" on the screen but should never be tried, then they likely can handle the content. My main point though is that a rating label is a good tool for parents to help judge if the content is suitable for the viewer.
OK, so calling Mom a "bitch" is only one example and yes they'll hear about it from a variety of sources. I am not blaming the vendors for the content, rather I use the labelling as a tool in understanding what my kids listen to.
Who do you blame now, or do you start to actually get to know your kid so that he doesn't think moms a bitch anymore?
Again, your assuming that I'm blaming the CD vendors and I'm not. Please see my responses to above posters who made the same wrong assumption.
BTW, I feel I have a great relationship with my kids, they do know many of the "words" (exposure from school/friends), and they understand what they mean (for the most part) and that I do not want them using them. The use of a rating system is basically a tool for parents to do their job.
Out of curiousity, do you have kids? If so, would you let them listen to all music without limitation? How about the same for movies? I'm thinking that you wouldn't let your kids watch everything that has been produced. If you do allow free access, are you really a responsible parent?
I fully realize that children will be exposed to many situations a parent probably would prefer they didn't experience. Your point is valid that they will be exposed at some age, but a parent can use rating systems to help in presenting the information. If my 7 year old daughter wants the latest pop diva CD because some of her friends (presumably they have older siblings) talk about it, I'd like to know if it talks explicitly about sexual themes that she may not be ready to handle.
All I'm saying is that labelling the media with a rating system is a useful tool for parents. Sheltering too much can be a bad method, but opening the "flood gates" of information seems worse to me (picture letting a young child watch the movie Hannibal and try explaining canibalism for the next couple months while they can't fall asleep due to fear about being eaten). You have to balance the information and a rating system is a good tool for that.
First off, where did you pick up that I was blaming someone? I'm just trying to be an educated consumer in what I buy. Do you look at the specifications of a computer before you buy it? Basically the same thing when buying music CD's. I want to know what is on it before I let my kids blindly listen to it. If you want to leave it to chance, that's your method. For me, I feel it is my responsibility to know what my kids are listening to.
Stop being a bitch and do some parenting. Stop trying to pass it off as if it's someone else's responsibility.
So are you saying that by reviewing what my children listen to, I am blaming someone else? You are way off on your reply. If you read my entire post you would understand that I want to know the contents so I can "parent".
I'm a US citizen (with two kids) and often I find restrictions to be annoying. What I don't have a problem with and encourage is proper labeling of media.. Adequate labeling is important to me as a consumer. If I want to shelter my kids from hearing songs about subject, I'd like to have access to that information before purchase/use of the media.
Example: If my kid wants a CD for their birthday and it's an artist I am not familiar with, I'd be pretty upset to find lyrics about rape, killing, drugs, etc....
A simple label indicating explicit lyrics (and ideally they type of lyrics) helps me as a consumer in making an informed decision. Consider a rating system to be similar to that of Nutrition Facts on food products, you just want to know what your getting.
what do you think happens to kids who listen to "explict lyrics"?
This all depends on the kid listening to the music. For most children, they can handle it very well. For other children, the lyrics can have negative impacts on them. In the latter case, the music is probably not the only issue in the kids life, but you have to start somewhere. Unfortunately in a society where everyone is looking to blame someone else for a problem, product vendors are taking precautions against legal action.
As for an example, consider a kid who starts calling his Mom a "bitch" because he hears it on an album. I don't know about you, but if one of my kids started calling their Mother, my Wife, that, I'd be a little upset.
Basically consider what influences children and think about what you want them to take from the influence. Most people would probably prefer their kids to hang around the typical role model rather than a drug dealer (unless your trying to get them into a family business, j/k). The affects of music are one part of what influences children.
The additional time shouldn't be too big a problem. I realize a lot of mail goes out in a short period of time, but if this is implimented we should see less and less as zombie systems are secured. Throttling the SMTP traffic would probably be a better solution to allow the user time to patch/secure their system. Doing the immediate disconnect doesn't work well if the user's system is infected and the user is out of town for a short period of time. Of course leaving the system as a zombie for too long (this is probably the hard part to define) does allow the SPAM to flow freely unecessarily too long.
I don't know about charging the reconnect fee to the customer in all cases. If a security flaw in your system allows your system to be compromised, is it really the end users fault? If the user chooses not to impliment patches, then maybe your proposal would work, but maybe a user doesn't impliment a patches because an application they use hasn't been certified to work with a particular patch.
While $35-$50 isn't much of a reconnect fee, disconnecting probably shouldn't be the first step. Ideally the process would go something like this:
ISP notices a lot of email generated from your node.
Emails registered address inquiring if the volume of email (send statistics) is known to the user.
User responds to confirm they are legitimately sending the volume of email or they respond that they are unaware of the volume.
NOTE: If user does not respond, follow with registered letter or a phone call to the registered user.
If user resolves the problem (patch/removal) system remains intact. If user is unable to resolve the problem, provide options for resolving it. This may include free support, charged support, or recommendation to other support services (The DC metro area has a company called "Geeks on Call").
If user doesn't resolve the problem within an alloted time period, disconnect them.
I'm currently in an old IBM campus building. I think we have just under 1000 employees in our two buildings on the campus. I'm not sure what the newer IBM buildings look like but these are layed out very compartmentalized. Due to company growth though, the company is doing some serious renovation to remove offices in favor of putting up massive cubicle farms to gain space (guess the cubicle wall is thinner than an office wall and more adjustable). After having an office between two employees, going to a cubicle farm is not going to be enjoyable. I can appreciate some open areas (labs, small project teams, etc...), but everyone likes a little privacy at times.
In some instances a combination office/cubicle is necessary. If you have a tight team of integrators, they may sit in a lab and have cubicles that they can go to for privacy. Managers and sales pretty much require individual offices to maintain the privacy of phone conversations and to minimize distraction to those in near them.
You do want to keep in mind physical security of your office as well. Design it such that visitor parking has an obvious entrance to a lobby area with adequate seating to wait in. Also consider requiring all employees to use a single entrance while having the option of exiting from multiple points (or you could force exit from the main entrance if your trying to track employee arrival departure in some way). By controlling the entrance and exits, you can more easily track persons entering and possibly equipment exiting. In these days of heightened security you'll definitely want to consider this in the design.
If your going to have racks of servers (lab or just your office systems), consider having these located in a secured area and one that can easily have it's temperature controlled.
If your team has many meetings, make sure to have different purpose meeting rooms. If you'll be entertaining clients at the office, you probably want to limit the use of the room and have a more common conference room for internal meetings.
As for lighting, decorations, plants, don't have a strong opinion on these. Guess it depends on how comfortable you want to make the office and how much money you have.
I have at ATI Radeon 9000 Pro on a Soyo KT400 Dragon and haven't had any problems when working with MS Win32 operating systems. I have run into some problems when working with Solaris x86 but eventually worked them out. Can't speak for running Linux, but it's on my ToDo list for an extra hard disk I picked up.
True that at some point you have to obsolete it, but it should go through a phase out process. The security process would hopefully fix the underlying code of existing API's as well as documentation encouraging users to abandon the older versions over time. I haven't done enough research to say that MS has/hasn't done this so I appologize if I have MS wrong on this.
XP SP2 can be a great leap forward if enough of the vendors have verified their products against it. My only fear is that I'll be getting a lot of calls from family members asking why things don't work after applying XP SP2. The new defaults will secure the system, but if non-tech users find that installed applications start failing, they won't be happy. If enough users report not being happy with the upgrade, the lock down could scare users from installing it which could be worse for future critical patches.
My project was considering the use of the Google Search Appliance to keep in line with one of our main customers who already uses one. In our situation though, we wanted to extend the capabilities of "Google" to include geospatial searching. This was late in 2003 so maybe things are changing a bit, but back then, Google wouldn't allow you to do anything to their appliance (basically a black box with a minimal customization interface). They weren't even considering non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with us (one of the larger companies in the world). I'm sure a couple people I work with will be following the possible opening of Google.
Consolidate patches: That's what service packs are.
Service packs are an example of consolidating that patches but what is annoying is the fact that I can still install patches that must in turn be patched themselves. I guess I'm amazed that MS would let me install something that is known to have a security problem (OK, well not really amazed).
Example: SA installs patch "A". Patch "A" is known to have a flaw and has already been fixed by patch "B". SA shouldn't, by default, have access to patch "A" as it is known to contain a security problem.
Better example: I have a fresh MS Windows 2000 Professional system. I'd like to install Internet Explorer 6. To do this, I must first install IE 6 with all the security flaws/exploits found from the date of creation to today. Where can I download IE 6 with all the security updates rolled into the installation? I have to install the insecure IE 6 and apply patches and patches to those patches and potentially patches to those patches (and so on....).
I think the reason they don't do this is they don't want to appear unstable
The perception is already in people's mind. Those who are biased toward UNIX based systems will always find flaws in MS Win32 systems. Maybe from a home consumer market this might have some effect but if MS really wants to simplify the update process, they should look to consolidate patches better. Other vendors do this and don't seem to have a tarnished reputation due to the number of consolidate patches available. Maybe MS needs to reconsider the idea of Service Packs for naming convention.
Patch-level CD's - Already doable. You can take the i386 directory from the main install CD, and extract the SP / Patches into that same directory
I wasn't aware of this process. I'll have to see about doing that for some of my labs. Can this be done for all the patches to a certain date or just with the service packs? If I can do the service packs and the individual patches, I'd guess I'd need to worry about release dates. Will the latest patches work with this as they sometimes require earlier patches before being detected as needed (according to MS Windows Update)?
So why does MS need to do this, if you can do it?
I am suggesting this because the other operating systems I support do this already. They remove the steps of combining the latest updates with the OS CD for an installation.
Apparently it isn't the blocking of regular email but rather the invitation that the author is pointing to. Not having experienced the GMail invite myself (not that I'm expecting one) I do have a minor privacy concern that MS would be filtering information that a person may actually wish to receive. On the other hand though, I do appreciate the SPAM filters (doesn't stop all junk mail from my Hotmail account, but it has become more reasonable).
I guess the main problem is that if MS is truly blocking GMail invites, this just provides more evidence for Microsofts monopolistic tactics, particularly to those already looking at MS as a monopoly. My opinion (and this is if MS really is blocking) on this is that if MS is willing to allow other non-solicited email in, they shouldn't block at their discretion unless they've added particular content blocking to their policies (which I haven't read since I joined a long time ago).
The one thing I'd love for MS to do is to actually improve it's update process so that installing a patch doesn't require additional patches after the fact. Example: Installing a fresh MS Win2000 system and going to the MS Windows update site initially requires 17 patches. After installing these patches, you recheck the site and you must now get an additional 35 patches. Why can't they consolidate patches? I can understand leaving patches as being available (incase a user has requirement for a particular level), but make some of the older ones obsolete. Doing so should reduce the size of the patch downloads significantly.
MS also needs to deliver product CD's at a particular patch level so that newly built systems by default have many of the patches. PC vendors handle this somewhat by generally providing a "system restore" disk that is at a certain patch level, but MS really should consider quarterly releases of their supported operating systems. By this I don't mean a patch CD, but an actual OS CD with all the patches built in (sort of like "WinXP (Q3 - 2004)" or something like that).
As for patch sizes, I agree that you have to look at patches beyond the kernel when considering the size. While these may be more critical, you certainly want to update everything typically on the system. While you may patch the core patches first, your likely to secure the entire system.
Out of curiosity I checked the Solaris 8 & 9 recommended patch sets and they were at 138MB and 122MB respectively. I'm sure MS could get to this size if they started to obsolete patches more regularly instead of holding back to the all encompassing service pack.
Can't argue with you on the advantages of learning open source, but agencies/companies do need to exercise some caution in switching completely to open source software. In general, use of open source software can have many benefits but groups must be careful about too much internal software development. This may sound like an odd approach, but developing internal applications can be very expensive, particularly when you look at maintenance and upgrade cost. Using Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) applications provides some benefits including product maturity, lower cost (spread over high volume of units), a predictable support cost, and regular software upgrades.
I'm not saying not to use open source software, but rather that proper evaluation must be done. Organizations choosing to use open source must understand that they could be taking additional risk (as I mentioned above) in exchange for the flexibility. Certainly some open source products are more mature and these are better candidates for adoption but I'd encourage careful evaluation of the less mature projects out there.
As you said, organizations shouldn't be afraid of open source. They must evaluate it similar to the commercial products to see if it meets their needs.
I am not a professional photographer (I know few though) but rather take photos as a hobby (and as the unofficial photographer for family events). I haven't moved to the digital side yet, but I am looking (I'm looking at a Minolta that is still in the $1000 range). For all the research that I have done, the megapixels is not the most important point, but rather the features of the camera, namely the ability to use the various lenses I already have for my SLR.
Depending on what a person is planning to do with the picture, the higher MP may create an extra step. If you take a full resolution picture, your not going to be sending a bunch of these around as email attachments. If you are posting to the web though, you could look at creating thumbnails or working with various image compression and/or "pyramid" files (check out Lizard Tech's MrSID image format, although this is more for often seen in GIS or document management environments or consider JPEG 2000).
Whle most of the market will be happy with the 2 - 3 MP camera, as long as prices continue to drop you'll find more buying the higher end cameras (which is a good situation to drive prices down even more).
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are over simplifying the system a bit. I can't speak of that particular systems design, but I have dealt with others government (federal, state, and local) systems and they are rarely setup for bulk exports without impacting operations (internal and external agency usage).
well if the system is so on the edge of breaking why doesnt someone just break it then use a 40$ disc recovery program to recall all the data in its previous form or even from days prior.
Have you dealt with systems in a professional environment? Have you ever dealt with the procurement process for a government entity? You can't just break the system and expect that it will be replaced in a few days. Likely the data is highly normalized and spread across multiple repositories on multiple systems. Migrating to a new system requires extensive research into existing requirements plus understanding future plans for the system.
obviously this db worked at some point so just get the data from there and re-add the stuff that you lost
Likely the data is entered from automated systems rather than a manual entry process. These external systems must be accounted for before taking the system offline for maintenance/upgrade/replacement.
cause it makes bush look like an sell out to forgein biz and leaders
Show me a president who hasn't had questionable relationships with foreign connections. Officials (both foreign and national) can be quite corrupt and dealing with them sometimes requires playing by their rules. The US government has policies on dealing with these situations (see the Locheed Martin and Titan Corporation merger cancellation for an example. Can't find a good document on proper procedures when approached by a foreign official for a bribe to continue business, but it does exist and you need to follow the proper process or you get in trouble, like Titan).
I never write comments about documents on the back.
I don't do this often either, at least not recently. Most of what I handle is digital so comments are posted digitally as well. If your dealing with paper documents though, it may not be practical to write on the front side of it (especially if intending to Fax it out again).
you'd need at least a factor of 5 better resolution
Take a look at this monitor for a higher resolution device: IBM T221 Flat Panel. This device has a maximum resolution of 3840x2400. The device is rather expensive and you'll need high-end graphics cards, but they produce nice results. A company produced a solution that used 4 Dell PCs, 3 of these panels (driven by 3 of the Dells), and one plasma screen (driven by 1 Dell and it combined the results of the 3 panels to show an overview) to create a cockpit for fly through scenes. Quite an impressive demo, but very expensive.
I agree though that Looking Glass likely won't be a pratical application in it's current design. I just think that it shows some creativity. Might not be useful, but it shows concepts that may generate others to think differently too.
I don't believe that Sun is pushing this as the next standard desktop. What it does though is show that they are thinking about new ways to approach using a system. Looking Glass probably won't be the next desktop but other projects benefit from some of the concepts either by using parts or analyzing and creating new ideas.
how is spinning a window around to look at properties better than opening up a separate properties dialog???
This seems like they are trying to model the desktop after real world objects. If you have a document sitting on your desk and need to make a comment about it, you likely add a PostIt note with your comments, write in the margins, or write on the back of it. As for comparing it to the "properties' dialog, I'm sure this will be a matter of preference to users (how many users actually populate any of the optional metadata fields?).
reading vertical text on side of windows is uncomfortable.
I agree completely with you on this. Anyone taking a basic Perception and Sensation psychology class would probably have a better approach to presenting the information.
java?
And what language would you expect Sun to develop in?
i would be suprised if human factors has been involved in project to this point.
This seems more like a concept project more than a working environment. Think back to the virtual reality days when all interfaces would be VR. This makes a cool demo, but may not be useful in a real world environment. Example: The CD Jukebox is a cool presentation, but with hundreds of CD's, this is not a practical interface into the repository.
I am a Republican in most cases (I don't vote the party line by default, but often come close based on the candidates views). Just had to get that out of the way so you can either bash me or at least read my post.
I'm not sure what to believe in some of the so called lies of Bush. Take the claims of WMDs. On one hand I'd like to think that if we had intelligence reports that indicates WMDs we would have found them by now. One could also say that Bush manipulated the data to justify a war. And another possibility is that the intelligence community interpreted it's data incorrectly. Now on the first option, Iraq is a large enough country and hiding materials is not altogether impossible. A thorough search would be very time consuming (they could be burried, stored in trailers, in a basement/attic/appartment/etc...). The second point is hard to believe (at least to me). While I see stories about how the war is benefiting large companies, I really have to wonder if someone could be that ethically challenged to create a war just for profit. These companies have been around for a long time and exist through many presidencies and for them to push to get a war seems unlikely. The claims I've heard seem more "movie like". My thought is that if the first option isn't true, then the third one is the likely candidate. I'm sure that intelligence data is like a puzzle that builds something and you don't know what it is supposed to look like. If you don't interpret it fast enough and something bad happens, you'll get blamed for not seeing the signs. If you interpret too quickly, you risk making the wrong conclusion.
As for Moore's idea of truth, I have to think that he's going to twist things to meet his views. He obviously likes to cover controversial issues so covering a president is certainly in his interest. I'm sure there will be some truths in his movie, but for the most part, he has access to the same information that the rest of the public has and he will be making "truths" out of his own conclusions, not necessarily facts. He may be right, wrong or somewhere in between.
I'm writing this, and I'm fairly sleepy. Combining sleepiness and politics is probably not a good idea.
Most people are either going to love, hate, or be indifferent to this movie depending on their political views. Democrats will see this as a way to promote their hatred for Bush. Republicans will see this as lies.
I'm sure the movie contains at least bits of truth, but given the bias of the producer, I believe he "twisted" situations to meet his views. The major problem I see with the movie is the labelling of it as a documentary. Maybe one could stretch it to be a documentary of Moore's views, but this won't be a standard documentary. I'm sure that another movie could be made to show all the positives of Bush and call it a documentary too and neither would be correctly.
I'm concerned that movie viewers are going to watch it and take it as truth without really thinking about it before coming to that conclusion.
I work for one of the larger organization (I think the numbers around 130,000 employees world wide) and I've had my share of small companies (the smallest around 250 employees). I can't ever recall PC's being down for hardware issues for more than a couple hours for a single incident and the number of incidents per PC over a year still wouldn't account for an average of 9 days. I can see including software related issues (virus, driver conflicts, user screw up, etc...) but not SPAM into the "9 days". SPAM is an issue regardless of the OS/platform and should not be included. If they include SPAM handling, why not include time a person does non-work related activies (browsing the Internet, posting to Slashdot, playing mine sweeper) into the "sick time".
If only counting hardware and operating system issues, the count should be a lot less than 9 days average. With proper support, PC's are probably closer to 2 or 3 days downtime (and I'm trying to be conservative, more likely it's less than a day).
Blocking port 25 by default seems fine to me. I'm sure the number of people who legitimately need it is fairly small compared to the number who don't.
Your right that not all parents spend the proper amount of time raising their kids. The problem isn't the tools available, but how parents use them (or if they don't use them, they still need to make the proper parenting decisions without them). The best tools won't work if they are not used.
I actually like my father's theory on responsibility . He maintains that even though his four kids are grown up (age range 28 - 34), he is responsible for the fact that we are here and ultimately responsible for our actions. While we've moved away from home and started families of our own, he still feels a responsibility to make sure we don't screw things up.
The world is going to have a combination of good and bad parents. Not much we can do about it without over stepping boundaries. All we can do is provide tools that hopefully parents will use to assist in making informed decisions. It's not perfect, but it will have to do.
Even without the tools, parents are responsible for their kids so the excuse about not having the tools is invalid.
for me I listen to a CD, movie, book, video game or whatever BEFORE I give it to my child.
I tend to do that too with media that I am unsure about. The ratings guide is not always accurate for all the media out there, but it is generally pretty good. My kids are 7 and 10 so a PG rating usually has appropriate content. Sometimes my kids get up to an R rated movie. Usually my wife and I will allow sci-fi like violence as long as it is easily discernable from realistic acts. Now I'm not saying that the content is appropriate for every kid (in some cases, my son, the 10 year old, will see some content I hold back from my daughter for now), but if they have a firm grip on reality and can easily identify what looks "cool" on the screen but should never be tried, then they likely can handle the content. My main point though is that a rating label is a good tool for parents to help judge if the content is suitable for the viewer.
OK, so calling Mom a "bitch" is only one example and yes they'll hear about it from a variety of sources. I am not blaming the vendors for the content, rather I use the labelling as a tool in understanding what my kids listen to.
Who do you blame now, or do you start to actually get to know your kid so that he doesn't think moms a bitch anymore?
Again, your assuming that I'm blaming the CD vendors and I'm not. Please see my responses to above posters who made the same wrong assumption.
BTW, I feel I have a great relationship with my kids, they do know many of the "words" (exposure from school/friends), and they understand what they mean (for the most part) and that I do not want them using them. The use of a rating system is basically a tool for parents to do their job.
Out of curiousity, do you have kids? If so, would you let them listen to all music without limitation? How about the same for movies? I'm thinking that you wouldn't let your kids watch everything that has been produced. If you do allow free access, are you really a responsible parent?
I fully realize that children will be exposed to many situations a parent probably would prefer they didn't experience. Your point is valid that they will be exposed at some age, but a parent can use rating systems to help in presenting the information. If my 7 year old daughter wants the latest pop diva CD because some of her friends (presumably they have older siblings) talk about it, I'd like to know if it talks explicitly about sexual themes that she may not be ready to handle.
All I'm saying is that labelling the media with a rating system is a useful tool for parents. Sheltering too much can be a bad method, but opening the "flood gates" of information seems worse to me (picture letting a young child watch the movie Hannibal and try explaining canibalism for the next couple months while they can't fall asleep due to fear about being eaten). You have to balance the information and a rating system is a good tool for that.
First off, where did you pick up that I was blaming someone? I'm just trying to be an educated consumer in what I buy. Do you look at the specifications of a computer before you buy it? Basically the same thing when buying music CD's. I want to know what is on it before I let my kids blindly listen to it. If you want to leave it to chance, that's your method. For me, I feel it is my responsibility to know what my kids are listening to.
Stop being a bitch and do some parenting. Stop trying to pass it off as if it's someone else's responsibility.
So are you saying that by reviewing what my children listen to, I am blaming someone else? You are way off on your reply. If you read my entire post you would understand that I want to know the contents so I can "parent".
A simple label indicating explicit lyrics (and ideally they type of lyrics) helps me as a consumer in making an informed decision. Consider a rating system to be similar to that of Nutrition Facts on food products, you just want to know what your getting.
what do you think happens to kids who listen to "explict lyrics"?
This all depends on the kid listening to the music. For most children, they can handle it very well. For other children, the lyrics can have negative impacts on them. In the latter case, the music is probably not the only issue in the kids life, but you have to start somewhere. Unfortunately in a society where everyone is looking to blame someone else for a problem, product vendors are taking precautions against legal action.
- As for an example, consider a kid who starts calling his Mom a "bitch" because he hears it on an album. I don't know about you, but if one of my kids started calling their Mother, my Wife, that, I'd be a little upset.
Basically consider what influences children and think about what you want them to take from the influence. Most people would probably prefer their kids to hang around the typical role model rather than a drug dealer (unless your trying to get them into a family business, j/k). The affects of music are one part of what influences children.The additional time shouldn't be too big a problem. I realize a lot of mail goes out in a short period of time, but if this is implimented we should see less and less as zombie systems are secured. Throttling the SMTP traffic would probably be a better solution to allow the user time to patch/secure their system. Doing the immediate disconnect doesn't work well if the user's system is infected and the user is out of town for a short period of time. Of course leaving the system as a zombie for too long (this is probably the hard part to define) does allow the SPAM to flow freely unecessarily too long.
While $35-$50 isn't much of a reconnect fee, disconnecting probably shouldn't be the first step. Ideally the process would go something like this:
ISP notices a lot of email generated from your node.
Emails registered address inquiring if the volume of email (send statistics) is known to the user.
User responds to confirm they are legitimately sending the volume of email or they respond that they are unaware of the volume.
NOTE: If user does not respond, follow with registered letter or a phone call to the registered user.
If user resolves the problem (patch/removal) system remains intact. If user is unable to resolve the problem, provide options for resolving it. This may include free support, charged support, or recommendation to other support services (The DC metro area has a company called "Geeks on Call").
If user doesn't resolve the problem within an alloted time period, disconnect them.
Charge a reconnect fee.
I'm currently in an old IBM campus building. I think we have just under 1000 employees in our two buildings on the campus. I'm not sure what the newer IBM buildings look like but these are layed out very compartmentalized. Due to company growth though, the company is doing some serious renovation to remove offices in favor of putting up massive cubicle farms to gain space (guess the cubicle wall is thinner than an office wall and more adjustable). After having an office between two employees, going to a cubicle farm is not going to be enjoyable. I can appreciate some open areas (labs, small project teams, etc...), but everyone likes a little privacy at times.
In some instances a combination office/cubicle is necessary. If you have a tight team of integrators, they may sit in a lab and have cubicles that they can go to for privacy. Managers and sales pretty much require individual offices to maintain the privacy of phone conversations and to minimize distraction to those in near them.
You do want to keep in mind physical security of your office as well. Design it such that visitor parking has an obvious entrance to a lobby area with adequate seating to wait in. Also consider requiring all employees to use a single entrance while having the option of exiting from multiple points (or you could force exit from the main entrance if your trying to track employee arrival departure in some way). By controlling the entrance and exits, you can more easily track persons entering and possibly equipment exiting. In these days of heightened security you'll definitely want to consider this in the design.
If your going to have racks of servers (lab or just your office systems), consider having these located in a secured area and one that can easily have it's temperature controlled.
If your team has many meetings, make sure to have different purpose meeting rooms. If you'll be entertaining clients at the office, you probably want to limit the use of the room and have a more common conference room for internal meetings.
As for lighting, decorations, plants, don't have a strong opinion on these. Guess it depends on how comfortable you want to make the office and how much money you have.
I have at ATI Radeon 9000 Pro on a Soyo KT400 Dragon and haven't had any problems when working with MS Win32 operating systems. I have run into some problems when working with Solaris x86 but eventually worked them out. Can't speak for running Linux, but it's on my ToDo list for an extra hard disk I picked up.
You can't keep an API exactly the same forever.
True that at some point you have to obsolete it, but it should go through a phase out process. The security process would hopefully fix the underlying code of existing API's as well as documentation encouraging users to abandon the older versions over time. I haven't done enough research to say that MS has/hasn't done this so I appologize if I have MS wrong on this.
XP SP2 can be a great leap forward if enough of the vendors have verified their products against it. My only fear is that I'll be getting a lot of calls from family members asking why things don't work after applying XP SP2. The new defaults will secure the system, but if non-tech users find that installed applications start failing, they won't be happy. If enough users report not being happy with the upgrade, the lock down could scare users from installing it which could be worse for future critical patches.
My project was considering the use of the Google Search Appliance to keep in line with one of our main customers who already uses one. In our situation though, we wanted to extend the capabilities of "Google" to include geospatial searching. This was late in 2003 so maybe things are changing a bit, but back then, Google wouldn't allow you to do anything to their appliance (basically a black box with a minimal customization interface). They weren't even considering non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with us (one of the larger companies in the world). I'm sure a couple people I work with will be following the possible opening of Google.
Consolidate patches: That's what service packs are.
Service packs are an example of consolidating that patches but what is annoying is the fact that I can still install patches that must in turn be patched themselves. I guess I'm amazed that MS would let me install something that is known to have a security problem (OK, well not really amazed).
Example: SA installs patch "A". Patch "A" is known to have a flaw and has already been fixed by patch "B". SA shouldn't, by default, have access to patch "A" as it is known to contain a security problem.
Better example: I have a fresh MS Windows 2000 Professional system. I'd like to install Internet Explorer 6. To do this, I must first install IE 6 with all the security flaws/exploits found from the date of creation to today. Where can I download IE 6 with all the security updates rolled into the installation? I have to install the insecure IE 6 and apply patches and patches to those patches and potentially patches to those patches (and so on....).
I think the reason they don't do this is they don't want to appear unstable
The perception is already in people's mind. Those who are biased toward UNIX based systems will always find flaws in MS Win32 systems. Maybe from a home consumer market this might have some effect but if MS really wants to simplify the update process, they should look to consolidate patches better. Other vendors do this and don't seem to have a tarnished reputation due to the number of consolidate patches available. Maybe MS needs to reconsider the idea of Service Packs for naming convention.
Patch-level CD's - Already doable. You can take the i386 directory from the main install CD, and extract the SP / Patches into that same directory
I wasn't aware of this process. I'll have to see about doing that for some of my labs. Can this be done for all the patches to a certain date or just with the service packs? If I can do the service packs and the individual patches, I'd guess I'd need to worry about release dates. Will the latest patches work with this as they sometimes require earlier patches before being detected as needed (according to MS Windows Update)?
So why does MS need to do this, if you can do it?
I am suggesting this because the other operating systems I support do this already. They remove the steps of combining the latest updates with the OS CD for an installation.
Apparently it isn't the blocking of regular email but rather the invitation that the author is pointing to. Not having experienced the GMail invite myself (not that I'm expecting one) I do have a minor privacy concern that MS would be filtering information that a person may actually wish to receive. On the other hand though, I do appreciate the SPAM filters (doesn't stop all junk mail from my Hotmail account, but it has become more reasonable).
I guess the main problem is that if MS is truly blocking GMail invites, this just provides more evidence for Microsofts monopolistic tactics, particularly to those already looking at MS as a monopoly. My opinion (and this is if MS really is blocking) on this is that if MS is willing to allow other non-solicited email in, they shouldn't block at their discretion unless they've added particular content blocking to their policies (which I haven't read since I joined a long time ago).
The one thing I'd love for MS to do is to actually improve it's update process so that installing a patch doesn't require additional patches after the fact. Example: Installing a fresh MS Win2000 system and going to the MS Windows update site initially requires 17 patches. After installing these patches, you recheck the site and you must now get an additional 35 patches. Why can't they consolidate patches? I can understand leaving patches as being available (incase a user has requirement for a particular level), but make some of the older ones obsolete. Doing so should reduce the size of the patch downloads significantly.
MS also needs to deliver product CD's at a particular patch level so that newly built systems by default have many of the patches. PC vendors handle this somewhat by generally providing a "system restore" disk that is at a certain patch level, but MS really should consider quarterly releases of their supported operating systems. By this I don't mean a patch CD, but an actual OS CD with all the patches built in (sort of like "WinXP (Q3 - 2004)" or something like that).
As for patch sizes, I agree that you have to look at patches beyond the kernel when considering the size. While these may be more critical, you certainly want to update everything typically on the system. While you may patch the core patches first, your likely to secure the entire system.
Out of curiosity I checked the Solaris 8 & 9 recommended patch sets and they were at 138MB and 122MB respectively. I'm sure MS could get to this size if they started to obsolete patches more regularly instead of holding back to the all encompassing service pack.
Can't argue with you on the advantages of learning open source, but agencies/companies do need to exercise some caution in switching completely to open source software. In general, use of open source software can have many benefits but groups must be careful about too much internal software development. This may sound like an odd approach, but developing internal applications can be very expensive, particularly when you look at maintenance and upgrade cost. Using Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) applications provides some benefits including product maturity, lower cost (spread over high volume of units), a predictable support cost, and regular software upgrades.
I'm not saying not to use open source software, but rather that proper evaluation must be done. Organizations choosing to use open source must understand that they could be taking additional risk (as I mentioned above) in exchange for the flexibility. Certainly some open source products are more mature and these are better candidates for adoption but I'd encourage careful evaluation of the less mature projects out there.
As you said, organizations shouldn't be afraid of open source. They must evaluate it similar to the commercial products to see if it meets their needs.
I am not a professional photographer (I know few though) but rather take photos as a hobby (and as the unofficial photographer for family events). I haven't moved to the digital side yet, but I am looking (I'm looking at a Minolta that is still in the $1000 range). For all the research that I have done, the megapixels is not the most important point, but rather the features of the camera, namely the ability to use the various lenses I already have for my SLR.
Depending on what a person is planning to do with the picture, the higher MP may create an extra step. If you take a full resolution picture, your not going to be sending a bunch of these around as email attachments. If you are posting to the web though, you could look at creating thumbnails or working with various image compression and/or "pyramid" files (check out Lizard Tech's MrSID image format, although this is more for often seen in GIS or document management environments or consider JPEG 2000).
Whle most of the market will be happy with the 2 - 3 MP camera, as long as prices continue to drop you'll find more buying the higher end cameras (which is a good situation to drive prices down even more).