I did comment a couple post up earlier that I hadn't actually seen the rating label for the game. The games reputation was already enough for me to not consider it for my kids. I was under the impression that the game was labelled incorrectly but I have been corrected that it is a stretch to say it wasn't labelled for sexual content.
But that's one of the reasons labelling should be accurate. Why is it so hard to expect the rating system to be accurate? I use the ratings now as the start point to decide if it's appropriate but I certainly don't stop there. Reading reviews is probably the more helpful info in most cases. Fortunately as my kids get older, I think they are getting ready for most of the content out there but I don't want them growing up too fast with things they shouldn't have to handle yet.
I've responded to comments on this topic in the past and it's almost like parents can't win. If they protect their kids from certain content, they're over protective in a lot of people's opinion. Some people dislike rating systems and think it's to big a burden on the vendors to comply. I wonder if these are the same people wondering why so many kids/young adults are messed (violence, drugs, etc...) up.
I agree that some parents buy the game because of their kids "whining" about buying the game. One of my son's friends (not the one I described moving in a later post) pretty much did that with his parents and they seemed content to give into his tears. Then again, this is the same family that let their oldest son drop out of school and pretty much drive the parents to splitting up trying to figure out what's wrong with him. It really comes down to not giving in to the whining of the kids. You have to be the parent first, not the "friend". It's great when the two coinicide but it won't always be that way.
As for the V Chip, to be honest, it's not something that I recall seeing on my TV set. I just haven't had to look for it. On the other hand, the only TVs we have are in the living room and the kitchen and both are visible by my wife or me. Same with the computer...it's in the living room and we can easily check to see what they are doing on it. They both know that they should only go to sites that we've talked about. If they want to search for another site, we'll sit with them while they do it. I'm not saying that my kids don't know about the "other" sites but they know we don't approve of them viewing them (same thing with swearing...they know the words, just don't use them). They are both old enough and mature enough to have had some of the conversations that parents eventually have with their kids. The ratings at the start of TV shows certainly helps parents determine if they want to let their kids view the content. I don't care myself what the content really is, I just want to know before I let my kids watch it. I guess the V Chip could help but it's probably not perfect technology either. A mislabeling of the content will still get around it, right?
I hadn't seen the labeling on the game myself. I guess I assumed by all the talk here that it only listed violence. Does the rating system go beyond the "M" (mature) rating or is it just the sub-labeling of why it received the "M" rating that would include "sexual content"?
I haven't let my kids play that sort of game, even though my son has heard about it from his friends and has wanted it. Heck, we bought the PS2 off of his friend who was moving out of the US and back to Denmark and they threw in the game. We politely declined on the GTA game and they sold it along with everything else they were getting rid of.
I personally don't see the content as being a "big deal" because as you have indicated, the game is already for a mature audience. The problem I do have is the mislabelling of it. Labels might be the only thing a parent checks before they decide on letting their children view it. I'm not saying that it's the right approach in my opinion, but not all parents will take time to research a product to see if it fits into their parenting approach.
Example: My daughter went to a birthday party with her friend (just turned 10) and she went to the POTC - Dead Man's Chest movie. A few girls that went to the party though weren't allowed to go to the movie because the parents thought it was too violent and they wanted to keep their kids "innocent" they said. That is their right as parents and they probably based it on feedback and the rating of the movie. Having seen the movie, I don't think there was anything "bad" in the movie but again, it's my opinion and I think my kids can handle it. The point is though that the rating is just one of the tools that parents will use to assist in raising their kids.
Any kid who's not able to handle the hot coffee is too young to handle the rest of the game.
So do we now look to you for all parenting guidance? Shouldn't we leave it up to the individual parents? Likely what you say is true but I know with my kids that I will use the parental rating information along with product reviews to determine what I think is appropriate for my own kids. As someone else has already pointed out, the problem isn't so much the content but that the content was inappropriately labeled.
You must consider that Google is offering multiple levels of products. First, they offer the Internet available Google website that includes the Google Calendar along with numerous other offerings. The part that a majority of Internet users don't see is the Google Appliance/Software offerings for purchase. You can purchase (might be lease...I wasn't part of the acquisition process) a Google mini to handle indexing of documents inside a corporate intranet, Google Earth Pro to handle using your data rather than going to the Google servers on the Internet, and I'd guess they have other products available or available soon. While security concerns with the Internet versions is valid, Google does have offerings that work for corporate environments too.
Only if you don't mind having no privacy and always need a working Internet connection to do any work.
Please remember that Google does sell appliances that allow for an intranet versions. The same comfort that home users have with Google search is available within corporations/agencies. Google projects like this could just as easily be available for intranet usage so privacy is maintained. The Internet version will be what people become familiar with and companies will consider purchasing Google appliances as their employees are already familiar with the brand.
I've only dealt with NetApp and Dell PowerVault so I can't say what happens with Promise or Adaptec. I do have a HighPoint RAID controller on my home PC but it only supports mirroring and striping if I remember correctly. In the case of NetApp at least, I have dual controllers so if one fails, the other takes over. We do keep backups but not so much for hardware failure but human error (also have "snapshots" to assist with this too). My understanding though with NetApp is that you can plug the disk into another NetApp system and enough information exist on the disk to bring everything back online.
Software RAID is documented. If it fails, you can plug the drives into another system that understands the RAID format and get at the data.
I haven't dealt with software RAID enough to know how accurate that statement is. The two times we lost data in our lab were related 1) to failure of the system hosting the RAID (no big loss as it was a development system will duplicate data) and 2) a system that was being upgraded (MS 2000 to 2003) and the software RAID didn't recognize the drives when setup again on the new OS. I wasn't part of the 2nd scenario until after the system admin realized the device was software RAID and said he lost a large chunk of data (again, we had other sources to get the data so not a critical loss).
I'm not sure that Dell still builds the PowerVaults with a proprietary *nix OS or software RAID. The Dell PowerVault 755N systems we used had MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed with the Microsoft Services For UNIX (SFU). Looking at the Dell site now under "Storage PowerVault NAS Server", they look to have moved to PowerEdge 8301 featuring Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 and I don't see any mention of MS SFU. If I recall though, Microsoft was offering this for free but it looks like Dell isn't supporting NAS for multiple protocols anymore.
The problem I see with the FreeNAS offering is that it is software based RAID. I've seen too many instances where the entire RAID was lost due to software failure.
In a corporate environment, I agree with you entirely. Personally, I like NetApp for the NAS, Veritas or NetBackup for software, and Exabyte for tapes (although it's been a while since I've had to deal with the tape hardware). For personal use, most people are of the mindset to get the most CPU/memory/hard disk/etc... they can afford. They aren't likely to be thinking to back it up unless they've had a failure of some sort in the past. Come to think of it, I haven't exactly seen much reference to redundancy on any of the hard disk I've bought recently nor did any of the sales associates mention redundancy or backups when I talked to them about hard disk. I'm guilty myself of not doing regular backups though as I just had a problem with my mother-in-law bumping the reset switch while running a disk defrag this weekend. My backups were about 1 year old for a fairly complete backup. For home use, generally I run a backup when I start noticing disk errors indicating failure is imminent. Yeah, not the best practice but I kept holding off buying a new hard disk to mirror as I was planning on building a new system in which case I figured to mirror the OS at a minimum. I didn't have a plan yet for a data share but was considering a simple 3 disk RAID 5 but I still hadn't thought out a backup to media.
So if I was analyzing this data, I want to know who "B" is, as well as anyone else who talks to B.
That is pretty much my point. If you didn't know anything about the numbers in the first place, you wouldn't have a starting point to branch out from. You also have to consider that terrorist organizations probably aren't planning things in a short time frame so seeing a bunch of calls to/from a suspicious number may occur over months/years. I'd also guess that the "bad guys" are probably going to use disposable cell phones or pay phones (although these are becoming a bit rare nowadays) so discovering "connections" would be difficult. Just looking at phone_to_phone call logs probably isn't very useful without additional information.
Having done some evaluation of products like Centrifuge for data analysis, showing patterns of calls alone is likely not enough. You really want to tie additional associations (person_to_organization, person_to_person, person_to_building, person_to_events, etc...) in order to derive intelligence. If they are looking for patterns without additional information, I'm not sure what NSA hopes to accomplish. I'm sure if they tracked calls from my cell phone, they'd find odd patterns when my kids get a hold of it (repeated calls to my wife's phone in order to annoy her).
In some cases, going cheap isn't always a good idea. A group that manages one of our labs decided to buy a device from Excel Meridian and in my opinion, it's a piece of junk. We found limitations that affect both a mixed OS environment as well as scalability (not in disk space but handling larger Active Directory structures). The Excel Meridian device we have has about 6 TB of storage so space isn't an issue but the ability to execute files on it from an NFS mount fails. We also find that it can't join a domain that has a large number of user entries (don't recall the exact number but want to say it's around 1000 users). For a small workgroup this might be fine but not for a larger corporation.
NetApp is by far my choice but if I need to get a cheaper device, Dell PowerVaults are generally adequate unless you are looking for highly transactional file activies (we've run into the file lock problem on the device occasionally if we process files, in our case image processing). To avoid the file lock though, we process locally on our UNIX boxes and transfer the results to the PowerVault. One limitation we find on the PowerVault (and likely it affects all MS Win32 based file systems) is case sensitivity. I believe you "can" change to allow differentiation of files based on case but Microsoft doesn't recommend it.
It's not as though IE7 is going to win people away from Firefox
So you are telling me that the first thing every computer owner does is downloads another web browser rather than taking the default one provided with the OS?
MSN isn't going to steal users from Google
Not all people are worried about where they get their search results. I'd even argue that some people don't realize they can change their home page on the browser. Expecting them to set the default search bar to a particular site other than factory default is a bit naive.
Google is worried about the general computer user defaulting to a competing search engine site and losing their ad revenue. How many technical folks have gone to their parents computer only to find that they are still using software we wouldn't even consider using? Now I'm not sure that MS should be forced to include every possible search bar entry, but I wouldn't object if they listed say the top 5 or 10 (don't know where to cut this off). They should also document how to easily change the configuration (seems like a fine place for a "wizard").
I have a couple of the books from the mid-90s when a group of college friends and I started playing it. The sessions didn't really last long though and most of us had switched back to D&D. I think the reason it never took off for us was that we didn't really have a good DM (forget what the Rifts version of this role is) to keep everyone interested.
I realize policies can be put in place, but this won't stop someone who really wants to gain a root shell. While companies try to protect from the outside, just as much care must be given to inside threats.
personnel problem, not a technical one
This doesn't change the fact that some people will do this, regardless of their intention. When I first joined one of my employers, using the:shell in vi was pretty much a standard practice for the development team. They weren't using it because of malicious intentions, they just had occasions where it was convenient to not bother the system administrator (and most of the developers were as competent as the SA's anyways).
Now I've gone from a vi as root to a shell as root.
Overall, the sudo method works well if you need to let someone have control to a one or more servers you manage without giving access to all the systems, especially if you keep the root password the same on all systems. Now with Solaris including RBAC, that may be an improved way to give certain access without opening the entire system. I haven't messed with it enough yet to know how easily someone can exploit it though.
I haven't used it recently too but at one point, I used it quite often. Back in the mid to late 90's when ESRI's ArcInfo software ran on UNIX systems, I was used to do a fair amount of GIS processing on datasets. Generally I was pulling together tiled data into a single dataset or doing some spatial data checks that took a while so I would either lower other users priorities or increase mine (I also was the SA for most of these jobs too). Most of the other users on the system were pretty much just data collectors (digitizing tables or on screen and assigning attributes) that weren't tasking the system much anyways.
Lately I've found that the systems I work with are pretty high end so I haven't found the need to alter priorities often. When systems at work range from 2CPUs and 4GB of RAM TO 4 CPUs with 32 GB of RAM, most things aren't tasking the system too heavily.
Also consider that agencies like NSA may have undisclosed contracts/relationships with companies like Google. Why hire employees directly when you can contract with their employers. Government agencies are also moving toward more commercial products rather than code from scratch so if something can be done commercially, I'm sure government agencies either have that product or something better.
Don't have to wear shoes - not afraid of what's on floor
Obviously you don't have my kids messing up the place.
Another thing to consider is if you really need the "big screen" experience to enjoy the movie. I have an old 27" TV that works just fine for movies to me. Would I like a newer, bigger, better system, sure. Can I live within my budget and still enjoy the movies, sure can.
Thanks for the info. I may need to set this up on my in-laws system as they tend to let their Internet service lapse and their Hotmail accounts go out of service. A decent client app would work well for them.
I too use Outlook Express to access Hotmail (actually that's all I use Outlook Express for). I don't know if you remember, but at one point, they stopped allowing that access via Outlook Express unless you paid for a Hotmail account. Free accounts, since that cut-off, were only permitted to access using a web browser.
I've stopped using this account for the most part. The only reason I periodically check it now is that I've had it long enough that some long lost contacts from high school or college may still have that as the only way to locate me for a class reunion or possibly some former co-workers who may be of use for career networking.
I wish it was that simple for my son. Dealing with patching for a pre-teen is not exactly easy on my wife and I as he does't want to wear a patch. My son's amblyopia is not muscular but rather that his brain just wired itself to use one eye over the other. In his case, surgery is not an option, I almost wish it was the case. We already enforce that he watch TV, play video games, and use the computer while patching. I'd love to convert the hundreds of hours patching into hours. I can't let my son exceed my game play time and be able to beat me at most games.
I believe the patching age has changed to a later age (sorry, don't recall the exact age but think it was closer to 18). My son went through a period of patching from approximately age 7 to age 9 and the doctor declared that his eyes were even. A later visit around age 11 showed that it had deteriorated between my son's yearly visits as well as screening at the school and the pediatricians office. Based on that, I'm pretty convinced that he can still have it corrected and we're back to patching again. I am curious about the drops and will check with my provider to see if that is an option for my son. By the way, my son is 12 now.
Slashdot Mirror
I did comment a couple post up earlier that I hadn't actually seen the rating label for the game. The games reputation was already enough for me to not consider it for my kids. I was under the impression that the game was labelled incorrectly but I have been corrected that it is a stretch to say it wasn't labelled for sexual content.
But that's one of the reasons labelling should be accurate. Why is it so hard to expect the rating system to be accurate? I use the ratings now as the start point to decide if it's appropriate but I certainly don't stop there. Reading reviews is probably the more helpful info in most cases. Fortunately as my kids get older, I think they are getting ready for most of the content out there but I don't want them growing up too fast with things they shouldn't have to handle yet.
I've responded to comments on this topic in the past and it's almost like parents can't win. If they protect their kids from certain content, they're over protective in a lot of people's opinion. Some people dislike rating systems and think it's to big a burden on the vendors to comply. I wonder if these are the same people wondering why so many kids/young adults are messed (violence, drugs, etc...) up.
I agree that some parents buy the game because of their kids "whining" about buying the game. One of my son's friends (not the one I described moving in a later post) pretty much did that with his parents and they seemed content to give into his tears. Then again, this is the same family that let their oldest son drop out of school and pretty much drive the parents to splitting up trying to figure out what's wrong with him. It really comes down to not giving in to the whining of the kids. You have to be the parent first, not the "friend". It's great when the two coinicide but it won't always be that way.
As for the V Chip, to be honest, it's not something that I recall seeing on my TV set. I just haven't had to look for it. On the other hand, the only TVs we have are in the living room and the kitchen and both are visible by my wife or me. Same with the computer...it's in the living room and we can easily check to see what they are doing on it. They both know that they should only go to sites that we've talked about. If they want to search for another site, we'll sit with them while they do it. I'm not saying that my kids don't know about the "other" sites but they know we don't approve of them viewing them (same thing with swearing...they know the words, just don't use them). They are both old enough and mature enough to have had some of the conversations that parents eventually have with their kids. The ratings at the start of TV shows certainly helps parents determine if they want to let their kids view the content. I don't care myself what the content really is, I just want to know before I let my kids watch it. I guess the V Chip could help but it's probably not perfect technology either. A mislabeling of the content will still get around it, right?
I hadn't seen the labeling on the game myself. I guess I assumed by all the talk here that it only listed violence. Does the rating system go beyond the "M" (mature) rating or is it just the sub-labeling of why it received the "M" rating that would include "sexual content"?
I haven't let my kids play that sort of game, even though my son has heard about it from his friends and has wanted it. Heck, we bought the PS2 off of his friend who was moving out of the US and back to Denmark and they threw in the game. We politely declined on the GTA game and they sold it along with everything else they were getting rid of.
I personally don't see the content as being a "big deal" because as you have indicated, the game is already for a mature audience. The problem I do have is the mislabelling of it. Labels might be the only thing a parent checks before they decide on letting their children view it. I'm not saying that it's the right approach in my opinion, but not all parents will take time to research a product to see if it fits into their parenting approach. Example: My daughter went to a birthday party with her friend (just turned 10) and she went to the POTC - Dead Man's Chest movie. A few girls that went to the party though weren't allowed to go to the movie because the parents thought it was too violent and they wanted to keep their kids "innocent" they said. That is their right as parents and they probably based it on feedback and the rating of the movie. Having seen the movie, I don't think there was anything "bad" in the movie but again, it's my opinion and I think my kids can handle it. The point is though that the rating is just one of the tools that parents will use to assist in raising their kids.
late night post...errors likely
Any kid who's not able to handle the hot coffee is too young to handle the rest of the game.
So do we now look to you for all parenting guidance? Shouldn't we leave it up to the individual parents? Likely what you say is true but I know with my kids that I will use the parental rating information along with product reviews to determine what I think is appropriate for my own kids. As someone else has already pointed out, the problem isn't so much the content but that the content was inappropriately labeled.
You must consider that Google is offering multiple levels of products. First, they offer the Internet available Google website that includes the Google Calendar along with numerous other offerings. The part that a majority of Internet users don't see is the Google Appliance/Software offerings for purchase. You can purchase (might be lease...I wasn't part of the acquisition process) a Google mini to handle indexing of documents inside a corporate intranet, Google Earth Pro to handle using your data rather than going to the Google servers on the Internet, and I'd guess they have other products available or available soon. While security concerns with the Internet versions is valid, Google does have offerings that work for corporate environments too.
Jim.
Only if you don't mind having no privacy and always need a working Internet connection to do any work.
Please remember that Google does sell appliances that allow for an intranet versions. The same comfort that home users have with Google search is available within corporations/agencies. Google projects like this could just as easily be available for intranet usage so privacy is maintained. The Internet version will be what people become familiar with and companies will consider purchasing Google appliances as their employees are already familiar with the brand.
I've only dealt with NetApp and Dell PowerVault so I can't say what happens with Promise or Adaptec. I do have a HighPoint RAID controller on my home PC but it only supports mirroring and striping if I remember correctly. In the case of NetApp at least, I have dual controllers so if one fails, the other takes over. We do keep backups but not so much for hardware failure but human error (also have "snapshots" to assist with this too). My understanding though with NetApp is that you can plug the disk into another NetApp system and enough information exist on the disk to bring everything back online.
Software RAID is documented. If it fails, you can plug the drives into another system that understands the RAID format and get at the data.
I haven't dealt with software RAID enough to know how accurate that statement is. The two times we lost data in our lab were related 1) to failure of the system hosting the RAID (no big loss as it was a development system will duplicate data) and 2) a system that was being upgraded (MS 2000 to 2003) and the software RAID didn't recognize the drives when setup again on the new OS. I wasn't part of the 2nd scenario until after the system admin realized the device was software RAID and said he lost a large chunk of data (again, we had other sources to get the data so not a critical loss).
I'm not sure that Dell still builds the PowerVaults with a proprietary *nix OS or software RAID. The Dell PowerVault 755N systems we used had MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed with the Microsoft Services For UNIX (SFU). Looking at the Dell site now under "Storage PowerVault NAS Server", they look to have moved to PowerEdge 8301 featuring Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 and I don't see any mention of MS SFU. If I recall though, Microsoft was offering this for free but it looks like Dell isn't supporting NAS for multiple protocols anymore.
The problem I see with the FreeNAS offering is that it is software based RAID. I've seen too many instances where the entire RAID was lost due to software failure.
In a corporate environment, I agree with you entirely. Personally, I like NetApp for the NAS, Veritas or NetBackup for software, and Exabyte for tapes (although it's been a while since I've had to deal with the tape hardware). For personal use, most people are of the mindset to get the most CPU/memory/hard disk/etc... they can afford. They aren't likely to be thinking to back it up unless they've had a failure of some sort in the past. Come to think of it, I haven't exactly seen much reference to redundancy on any of the hard disk I've bought recently nor did any of the sales associates mention redundancy or backups when I talked to them about hard disk. I'm guilty myself of not doing regular backups though as I just had a problem with my mother-in-law bumping the reset switch while running a disk defrag this weekend. My backups were about 1 year old for a fairly complete backup. For home use, generally I run a backup when I start noticing disk errors indicating failure is imminent. Yeah, not the best practice but I kept holding off buying a new hard disk to mirror as I was planning on building a new system in which case I figured to mirror the OS at a minimum. I didn't have a plan yet for a data share but was considering a simple 3 disk RAID 5 but I still hadn't thought out a backup to media.
So if I was analyzing this data, I want to know who "B" is, as well as anyone else who talks to B.
That is pretty much my point. If you didn't know anything about the numbers in the first place, you wouldn't have a starting point to branch out from. You also have to consider that terrorist organizations probably aren't planning things in a short time frame so seeing a bunch of calls to/from a suspicious number may occur over months/years. I'd also guess that the "bad guys" are probably going to use disposable cell phones or pay phones (although these are becoming a bit rare nowadays) so discovering "connections" would be difficult. Just looking at phone_to_phone call logs probably isn't very useful without additional information.
Having done some evaluation of products like Centrifuge for data analysis, showing patterns of calls alone is likely not enough. You really want to tie additional associations (person_to_organization, person_to_person, person_to_building, person_to_events, etc...) in order to derive intelligence. If they are looking for patterns without additional information, I'm not sure what NSA hopes to accomplish. I'm sure if they tracked calls from my cell phone, they'd find odd patterns when my kids get a hold of it (repeated calls to my wife's phone in order to annoy her).
In some cases, going cheap isn't always a good idea. A group that manages one of our labs decided to buy a device from Excel Meridian and in my opinion, it's a piece of junk. We found limitations that affect both a mixed OS environment as well as scalability (not in disk space but handling larger Active Directory structures). The Excel Meridian device we have has about 6 TB of storage so space isn't an issue but the ability to execute files on it from an NFS mount fails. We also find that it can't join a domain that has a large number of user entries (don't recall the exact number but want to say it's around 1000 users). For a small workgroup this might be fine but not for a larger corporation.
NetApp is by far my choice but if I need to get a cheaper device, Dell PowerVaults are generally adequate unless you are looking for highly transactional file activies (we've run into the file lock problem on the device occasionally if we process files, in our case image processing). To avoid the file lock though, we process locally on our UNIX boxes and transfer the results to the PowerVault. One limitation we find on the PowerVault (and likely it affects all MS Win32 based file systems) is case sensitivity. I believe you "can" change to allow differentiation of files based on case but Microsoft doesn't recommend it.
It's not as though IE7 is going to win people away from Firefox
So you are telling me that the first thing every computer owner does is downloads another web browser rather than taking the default one provided with the OS?
MSN isn't going to steal users from Google
Not all people are worried about where they get their search results. I'd even argue that some people don't realize they can change their home page on the browser. Expecting them to set the default search bar to a particular site other than factory default is a bit naive.
Google is worried about the general computer user defaulting to a competing search engine site and losing their ad revenue. How many technical folks have gone to their parents computer only to find that they are still using software we wouldn't even consider using? Now I'm not sure that MS should be forced to include every possible search bar entry, but I wouldn't object if they listed say the top 5 or 10 (don't know where to cut this off). They should also document how to easily change the configuration (seems like a fine place for a "wizard").
I have a couple of the books from the mid-90s when a group of college friends and I started playing it. The sessions didn't really last long though and most of us had switched back to D&D. I think the reason it never took off for us was that we didn't really have a good DM (forget what the Rifts version of this role is) to keep everyone interested.
I realize policies can be put in place, but this won't stop someone who really wants to gain a root shell. While companies try to protect from the outside, just as much care must be given to inside threats.
:shell in vi was pretty much a standard practice for the development team. They weren't using it because of malicious intentions, they just had occasions where it was convenient to not bother the system administrator (and most of the developers were as competent as the SA's anyways).
personnel problem, not a technical one
This doesn't change the fact that some people will do this, regardless of their intention. When I first joined one of my employers, using the
That might stop some people, but what about:
/foo/bar/myfile.txt
:shell
sudo vi
Now I've gone from a vi as root to a shell as root.
Overall, the sudo method works well if you need to let someone have control to a one or more servers you manage without giving access to all the systems, especially if you keep the root password the same on all systems. Now with Solaris including RBAC, that may be an improved way to give certain access without opening the entire system. I haven't messed with it enough yet to know how easily someone can exploit it though.
I haven't used it recently too but at one point, I used it quite often. Back in the mid to late 90's when ESRI's ArcInfo software ran on UNIX systems, I was used to do a fair amount of GIS processing on datasets. Generally I was pulling together tiled data into a single dataset or doing some spatial data checks that took a while so I would either lower other users priorities or increase mine (I also was the SA for most of these jobs too). Most of the other users on the system were pretty much just data collectors (digitizing tables or on screen and assigning attributes) that weren't tasking the system much anyways.
Lately I've found that the systems I work with are pretty high end so I haven't found the need to alter priorities often. When systems at work range from 2CPUs and 4GB of RAM TO 4 CPUs with 32 GB of RAM, most things aren't tasking the system too heavily.
Also consider that agencies like NSA may have undisclosed contracts/relationships with companies like Google. Why hire employees directly when you can contract with their employers. Government agencies are also moving toward more commercial products rather than code from scratch so if something can be done commercially, I'm sure government agencies either have that product or something better.
Jim
Don't have to wear shoes - not afraid of what's on floor
Obviously you don't have my kids messing up the place.
Another thing to consider is if you really need the "big screen" experience to enjoy the movie. I have an old 27" TV that works just fine for movies to me. Would I like a newer, bigger, better system, sure. Can I live within my budget and still enjoy the movies, sure can.
Thanks for the info. I may need to set this up on my in-laws system as they tend to let their Internet service lapse and their Hotmail accounts go out of service. A decent client app would work well for them.
I too use Outlook Express to access Hotmail (actually that's all I use Outlook Express for). I don't know if you remember, but at one point, they stopped allowing that access via Outlook Express unless you paid for a Hotmail account. Free accounts, since that cut-off, were only permitted to access using a web browser.
I've stopped using this account for the most part. The only reason I periodically check it now is that I've had it long enough that some long lost contacts from high school or college may still have that as the only way to locate me for a class reunion or possibly some former co-workers who may be of use for career networking.
I wish it was that simple for my son. Dealing with patching for a pre-teen is not exactly easy on my wife and I as he does't want to wear a patch. My son's amblyopia is not muscular but rather that his brain just wired itself to use one eye over the other. In his case, surgery is not an option, I almost wish it was the case. We already enforce that he watch TV, play video games, and use the computer while patching. I'd love to convert the hundreds of hours patching into hours. I can't let my son exceed my game play time and be able to beat me at most games.
I believe the patching age has changed to a later age (sorry, don't recall the exact age but think it was closer to 18). My son went through a period of patching from approximately age 7 to age 9 and the doctor declared that his eyes were even. A later visit around age 11 showed that it had deteriorated between my son's yearly visits as well as screening at the school and the pediatricians office. Based on that, I'm pretty convinced that he can still have it corrected and we're back to patching again. I am curious about the drops and will check with my provider to see if that is an option for my son. By the way, my son is 12 now.
Jim