They were not listening because the feedback did not feed into their internal narrative. That narrative was that, to establish a position in tablets and phones, the UI had to be common across all types of devices. If your feedback went against this directive, it could not be accepted.
I wonder how many people tried to point out how completely stupid this directive was. Can you imagine what would happen if the auto industry tried to make their user interface common across all types of vehicles? They could have tried building cars with handlebars that have the brakes and acceleration controlled by hands, or motorcycles with steering wheels and a brake pedal.
It amazes me that the "unified UI" concept got as far as it did. I suppose those that did point out how stupid it was were let go for "creative differences."
Although I do not have proof of this, I believe that the the password change policy came from the way early UNIX systems handled the password files.
Early UNIX systems did not separate the username file from the password file. Both were kept in/etc/password. This file had to be world readable in order for anyone to log in. So if you had any access at all, including guest access, it was easy to copy the password file. Although the passwords in the the file were hashed, it they could be cracked or a rainbow table created if you had access to a powerful enough computer. At the time, only mainframes or mini computers had the power needed, and cracking a password took between three to five months.
The thought process was that if someone did steal the password file, and you changed your password every three months, It was very likely that the password was changed by the time the passwords were cracked. These days, more powerful computers can crack the passwords much, much faster, and the UNIX/Linux systems have broken out the passwords from the password file and placed them in a shadow file that is not world readable.
The danger of the password file being stolen is no longer the same issue as it once was, but the "standard" password policy has never changed. Today, the reason most often given for a change policy is: "This is best practices, so we are going to do it." Few security consultants can give you the real reason for the policy, although many will refer to recent examples of passwords being stolen and tell you that you need to change a password often just in case someone does steal the password. The danger today is not that the person stealing your password will use it, but that they will sell it to someone else. On the one hand, that does give you a little time to change your password, but on the other hand, some people may feel that since their account was not cracked right away that their accounts are still safe.
What's a PAC? It sounds like it's a way of buying politicians, but surely that can't be it.
Yes, it really can be a way to buy politicians, and stop calling me Shirley.
OpenSecrets.org defines a PAC like this:
Political Action Committee (PAC) — A popular term for a political committee organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests.
The goal in AZ is to match your speed with the number of the freeway. On the I-10 and the I-17 it slows things down to a crawl. The 51 and the 60 are a bit more challenging, especially in rush-hour. But with the 101, the 202 and the 303, you better have those "honoring fallen officers" plates attached.
There is a reason for all the different colors of license plates. You used to be able to say that you could tell the changing seasons by the changing colors... of the license plates. There are so many out-of-state visitors during the winter that it used to be easy to tell the snowbirds from the residents. Probably someone decided that the snowbirds were either getting picked on or getting preferential treatment, so lots of colors of AZ plates were made. As a bonus, more money comes in!!
Did you know that AZ has very short winters? Last year it was on a Tuesday.
Exactly!! The TFA (I know, I know. Why read the TFA.) calls it the wells-to-wheels carbon profile. And Mazda is comparing only to the "dirtiest" areas.
And those levels would likely be better than the wells-to-wheels carbon profile of an electric car running in a coal-heavy country--Poland, for example.
Not only that, but the engines themselves are not yet designed. They are "projected" be available by 2020.
I realize the air is a bit dirty, but still -- That is a long time to hold your breath.
Definition of anti-virus. Noun: A piece of malware sometimes purchased, designed to a) use up resources and slow down a machine, b)report activity to a central repository, and c) insure that it is the only malware on a given machine. Because of (c), it is one of the few pieces of malware that is REQUIRED to be installed in order to pass several security certifications. In a rare form of honesty, some anti-virus programs have correctly identified themselves as malware and disabled themselves. Others have identified essential Windows libraries as a virus and have managed to shut down the OS.
Subset of Lie # 12: "It must be run as root/Administrator." Also known as: "I need the user program to access system calls and the *BEST* way to accomplish that is to run the program with admin privilages since admin can do that without annoying pop-ups.
It amazes me how many Win7 programs I run into that were originally programmed with XP or Win2000 in mind. The official Tech Support answer is: Oh, you have to be logged in as an administrator. If that doesn't work, right click on it and run it as an administrator."
Several years ago, I used to work for a now defunct online web site company that provided websites to customers. Customers were required to activate their site and sign in to a site management web page. Although the password policy was not as sophisticated as it should have been, we did require password to be between 6 and 16 characters.
We received an email from one customer who was helping a new customer activate and sign up for the web management page. The new customer liked to pick passwords based on a mild shock value and wanted to use "Penis" as his password. The customer wanted us to know that they almost died laughing when the web page responded back with the message: "Password rejected. Not long enough. Please try another."
Remember, password length is important. Choose your length wisely.
Probably because the wood has to remain damp in order to be effective. Once the wood dries, it loses the ability to filter well. Water runs through crack and the pores don't filter properly.
This is not something you could set up, let sit in storage for a few weeks, pull it out and expect it to be effective.
It looks like it would be most effective on a small but not personal level. With a small group you could filter enough water to keep the wood damp for a long time, replacing the "filter" as needed. Sounds great for villages in developing countries, but it doesn't look like it would scale very well.
Have to agree. I have a few dogs, and i have never noticed that any of them line up in one direction or another. All of them have faced different directions when pooping. I must have a bunch of broken dogs.
A more simple explanation, of course, is that there is an underground facility nearby that is wrecking havoc on the magnetic fields near my house.
Only way to be sure is to ask my dogs to carry a compass and keep a poop journal. "Iggy, if you can't write in the journal which direction you were facing when you pooped, can you at least scratch an arrow in the grass? "
Thank you for the link. It is good to know that there is some work being done with it. We have applied that patch but did not know that it fixed the issue. Now if they would only allow that patch to work with Win2008R2...
Thanx for the info, but doesn't help. The info there only reduces files that are no longer needed because of SP1. If you installed with SP1, you still get lots of updates and the winsxs folder continues to grow, but the DISM command cannot find any files to delete.
Other options listed, such as deleting from the Software Distribution/Downloads folder or the disk cleanup tool, reclaim between 8K and 50M from a 12G winsxs folder.
Thank you for the link, but it doesn't fix the problem. At best it only delays it. And if they never release a SP2, that folder can only grow.
Upgrading to Windows 7 or Windows 8 certainly fixes one issue, but it creates a whole new set of problems.
1.) There is guarantee that this won't be a problem in Win7 or Win8. This only showed up when there were *Lots* of updates to IE. In three or four years, Win7 could have a similar problem, or at least a problem with similar symptoms.
2.) Win7 did redesign the update process. (Actually Vista first showed up with it, but many people are skipping Vista altogether.) But in their great (for very, very small values of great) wisdom, they removed the ability to delete old, unneeded patches. In XP and 2003, you simply went to the Windows folder and deleted any of the old patches. You could no longer un-install the patch, but who needs to un-install a 7year-old patch? With Win 7, you cannot delete old patches. The winsxs folder grows exponentially, and since everything depends on everything else, deleting from that folder causes all kinds of problems. This leaves you with a winsxs folder that can be 20G or 30G with no way to trim it down. This is fine for a single system with a 500G hard drive, but is a BIG pain when dealing with VM's.
I tried having multiple accounts, but the arguments between accounts quickly got out of hand.
At first, it was just the other account made way too many stupid arguments, but it soon escalated to threats of physical violence. I had to keep a close watch on myself to keep me from slashing my own tires. (I tried hiding, but I quickly learned that I knew where I lived and where I liked to hide.)
After two or three "unfortunate incidents" I decided to close all but one of the accounts. Things settled down for a while, but I still have to keep a close eye on me in case I go back and login to one of the "closed" accounts.
---
Only two of my personalities have delusions, but one of them is paranoid and the other is out to get him.
First, there is a KB missing from the article. He states that there are six patches botched, but only lists five of them.
I can confirm that the sixth botched patch, KB2810048, affects Excel 2003. Like the Office 2007 patches, it keeps trying to install again and again and again.
The issue that these patches are trying to fix is a privilege escalation exploit. By loading a crafted Office file, it can give user privileges to an external user. If running as a normal user, this is not that big of a deal. But there are still programs running out there in the corp world that require admin privileges to work properly. If the user is running as an admin user, you have just given admin rights to an external user.
I admit it is not an OS issue, and there may not be many people affected. Still, I wish MS would test their patches a little better before sending them out.
(Disclaimer: I am a Linux user in the office, running Fedora, but I am responsible for maintaining patches for all of of Windows desktops and servers. And because of regulations [HIPPA, SOX, PCI], we have to keep things updated, sometimes when it doesn't make sense to update. )
Depending on your equipment and the time you want to spend, oVirt might be an answer.
Although it is still fairly new and is in development, it runs on CentOS6, is free, can handle multiple guest OSes, can create VM's from a template, and has a power users portal page where trusted students/employees can create their own VM from supplied templates. This way, no student would have access to the host OS, but could create a VM as needed. The downside is that it can get quite complicated to set up the system, and could take a bit of time to learn and set it up properly. Since it is free, you are also dependent upon community support.
The second is wrong. "Begging the question" as a logical fallacy is a mistranslation of a Latin term. (Your signature would leave one to believe that you would be less favorably inclined towards the group basing their phrases on mistranslations of Latin.) The term is better translated as "Demanding the first principle" and is better understood today as "Circular Reasoning."
Just because people have been doing it wrong for hundreds of years does not mean that we have to purpetuate that wrong. Language evolves. Language is designed to help convey understanding between individuals. I would argue that the first is better understood by more people and the second more confusing. Therefore the first is better at accomplishing the design of language. It is time to rename the second to a more descriptive term that is better understood by more people and stop berating people for using the term "incorrectly."
And like many people that have commented it seems, I found that the Tom Bombadil thing was horrendous in the book, and cheered a little inside when it was skipped in the movie.
I honestly can't even slightly understand why some people have such a hardon for that part of the book. It was terrible. TERRIBLE!
One of the reasons people like the Tom Bombadil section is because of the character development.
Remember, the book was about little, ordinary people that can do great things, even while big, great people are doing great things all around them. The book was not about little people outshining big people, nor was it about great people overshadowing the efforts of little people. On complaint about the movie was that it was more about Aaragon and Legolas with Gimli being the comic relief than it was about the Hobbits.
As for the character development, the Tom Bombadil was one of the first things that said, "This is not a simple trip across the forest. This is a dangerous journey and you better be ready." In the book the RingWraith drove them into the dark forest, and they almost got killed because they did not take the journey serious enough. When they got to Bree, they tried to fall back into the easy ways of the shire, only to be almost killed again by RingWraiths because they weren't paying attention. Only this time, they "found" a guide to help them in their character development. By the time they dealt with WeatherTop and finally made it to Rivendell, they were ready to start the journey to Mordor.
The Scouring of the Shire, another section left out by the movie, was the final step that the Hobbits had to take to realize that they were no longer children or ordinary people, but had become great people with large responsibilities. They no longer needed to rely on their guides or other races to take care of their own troubles. Their accomplishments did not belittle the other races, but finally became equals with them. And as equals, they were expected to take care of their own troubles. With great power comes great responibility. (The words are from Spider Man, but the theme is ancient.)
Windows in buildings actually follow the same principle. (Computer Windows is a completely different topic not addressed in these posts.) Windows are built to allow access as well. The primary access for windows is light. Either sunlight to warm or provide illumination, or for vision of what is on the other side.
To secure windows, you either need to limit how much light is allowed, such as making the window only 6 inches square, or placing barriers on either side of the window to make it more difficult for things other than light to enter. Such barriers coud include signs to discourage, hedges, bars, dogs (on either side), traps, moats, and/or landmines. (Some of those options may have questionable legal issues depending on where your building is.)
As with doors, the questions remain, is the stuff inside worth someone's time or effort to get in, and how much am I willing to spend to prevent access. The books dealt specifically with raising awareness about locks, so I concentrated on that aspect. But, if the stuff inside is sufficiently valuable, whole perimeter security needs to be addressed. Is tunnelling a viable option? What about vents? Even if the vent or window is too small for a person to enter, can something be put inside that will compromise the security from the inside?
Slashdot Mirror
They were not listening because the feedback did not feed into their internal narrative. That narrative was that, to establish a position in tablets and phones, the UI had to be common across all types of devices. If your feedback went against this directive, it could not be accepted.
I wonder how many people tried to point out how completely stupid this directive was. Can you imagine what would happen if the auto industry tried to make their user interface common across all types of vehicles? They could have tried building cars with handlebars that have the brakes and acceleration controlled by hands, or motorcycles with steering wheels and a brake pedal.
It amazes me that the "unified UI" concept got as far as it did. I suppose those that did point out how stupid it was were let go for "creative differences."
Although I do not have proof of this, I believe that the the password change policy came from the way early UNIX systems handled the password files.
Early UNIX systems did not separate the username file from the password file. Both were kept in /etc/password. This file had to be world readable in order for anyone to log in. So if you had any access at all, including guest access, it was easy to copy the password file. Although the passwords in the the file were hashed, it they could be cracked or a rainbow table created if you had access to a powerful enough computer. At the time, only mainframes or mini computers had the power needed, and cracking a password took between three to five months.
The thought process was that if someone did steal the password file, and you changed your password every three months, It was very likely that the password was changed by the time the passwords were cracked. These days, more powerful computers can crack the passwords much, much faster, and the UNIX/Linux systems have broken out the passwords from the password file and placed them in a shadow file that is not world readable.
The danger of the password file being stolen is no longer the same issue as it once was, but the "standard" password policy has never changed. Today, the reason most often given for a change policy is: "This is best practices, so we are going to do it." Few security consultants can give you the real reason for the policy, although many will refer to recent examples of passwords being stolen and tell you that you need to change a password often just in case someone does steal the password. The danger today is not that the person stealing your password will use it, but that they will sell it to someone else. On the one hand, that does give you a little time to change your password, but on the other hand, some people may feel that since their account was not cracked right away that their accounts are still safe.
What's a PAC? It sounds like it's a way of buying politicians, but surely that can't be it.
Yes, it really can be a way to buy politicians, and stop calling me Shirley.
OpenSecrets.org defines a PAC like this:
Political Action Committee (PAC) — A popular term for a political committee organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests.
The goal in AZ is to match your speed with the number of the freeway. On the I-10 and the I-17 it slows things down to a crawl. The 51 and the 60 are a bit more challenging, especially in rush-hour. But with the 101, the 202 and the 303, you better have those "honoring fallen officers" plates attached.
There is a reason for all the different colors of license plates. You used to be able to say that you could tell the changing seasons by the changing colors ... of the license plates. There are so many out-of-state visitors during the winter that it used to be easy to tell the snowbirds from the residents.
Probably someone decided that the snowbirds were either getting picked on or getting preferential treatment, so lots of colors of AZ plates were made. As a bonus, more money comes in!!
Did you know that AZ has very short winters? Last year it was on a Tuesday.
And those levels would likely be better than the wells-to-wheels carbon profile of an electric car running in a coal-heavy country--Poland, for example.
Not only that, but the engines themselves are not yet designed. They are "projected" be available by 2020.
I realize the air is a bit dirty, but still -- That is a long time to hold your breath.
Definition of anti-virus. Noun: A piece of malware sometimes purchased, designed to a) use up resources and slow down a machine, b)report activity to a central repository, and c) insure that it is the only malware on a given machine. Because of (c), it is one of the few pieces of malware that is REQUIRED to be installed in order to pass several security certifications. In a rare form of honesty, some anti-virus programs have correctly identified themselves as malware and disabled themselves. Others have identified essential Windows libraries as a virus and have managed to shut down the OS.
Subset of Lie # 12: "It must be run as root/Administrator." Also known as: "I need the user program to access system calls and the *BEST* way to accomplish that is to run the program with admin privilages since admin can do that without annoying pop-ups.
It amazes me how many Win7 programs I run into that were originally programmed with XP or Win2000 in mind. The official Tech Support answer is: Oh, you have to be logged in as an administrator. If that doesn't work, right click on it and run it as an administrator."
Several years ago, I used to work for a now defunct online web site company that provided websites to customers. Customers were required to activate their site and sign in to a site management web page. Although the password policy was not as sophisticated as it should have been, we did require password to be between 6 and 16 characters.
We received an email from one customer who was helping a new customer activate and sign up for the web management page. The new customer liked to pick passwords based on a mild shock value and wanted to use "Penis" as his password. The customer wanted us to know that they almost died laughing when the web page responded back with the message:
"Password rejected. Not long enough. Please try another."
Remember, password length is important. Choose your length wisely.
Probably because the wood has to remain damp in order to be effective. Once the wood dries, it loses the ability to filter well. Water runs through crack and the pores don't filter properly.
This is not something you could set up, let sit in storage for a few weeks, pull it out and expect it to be effective.
It looks like it would be most effective on a small but not personal level. With a small group you could filter enough water to keep the wood damp for a long time, replacing the "filter" as needed. Sounds great for villages in developing countries, but it doesn't look like it would scale very well.
Congress has prior art.
Oh, they hear alright, they just don't listen.
To quote Homer Simpson: "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I'm not listening."
I was going to buy it, but then I saw the shipping and handling charges!!! And why do I have to pay those in advance??
Have to agree. I have a few dogs, and i have never noticed that any of them line up in one direction or another. All of them have faced different directions when pooping. I must have a bunch of broken dogs.
A more simple explanation, of course, is that there is an underground facility nearby that is wrecking havoc on the magnetic fields near my house.
Only way to be sure is to ask my dogs to carry a compass and keep a poop journal. "Iggy, if you can't write in the journal which direction you were facing when you pooped, can you at least scratch an arrow in the grass? "
Thank you for the link. It is good to know that there is some work being done with it. We have applied that patch but did not know that it fixed the issue. Now if they would only allow that patch to work with Win2008R2 ...
Other options listed, such as deleting from the Software Distribution/Downloads folder or the disk cleanup tool, reclaim between 8K and 50M from a 12G winsxs folder.
Thank you for the link, but it doesn't fix the problem. At best it only delays it. And if they never release a SP2, that folder can only grow.
Upgrading to Windows 7 or Windows 8 certainly fixes one issue, but it creates a whole new set of problems.
1.) There is guarantee that this won't be a problem in Win7 or Win8. This only showed up when there were *Lots* of updates to IE. In three or four years, Win7 could have a similar problem, or at least a problem with similar symptoms.
2.) Win7 did redesign the update process. (Actually Vista first showed up with it, but many people are skipping Vista altogether.) But in their great (for very, very small values of great) wisdom, they removed the ability to delete old, unneeded patches. In XP and 2003, you simply went to the Windows folder and deleted any of the old patches. You could no longer un-install the patch, but who needs to un-install a 7year-old patch? With Win 7, you cannot delete old patches. The winsxs folder grows exponentially, and since everything depends on everything else, deleting from that folder causes all kinds of problems. This leaves you with a winsxs folder that can be 20G or 30G with no way to trim it down. This is fine for a single system with a 500G hard drive, but is a BIG pain when dealing with VM's.
I tried having multiple accounts, but the arguments between accounts quickly got out of hand.
At first, it was just the other account made way too many stupid arguments, but it soon escalated to threats of physical violence. I had to keep a close watch on myself to keep me from slashing my own tires. (I tried hiding, but I quickly learned that I knew where I lived and where I liked to hide.)
After two or three "unfortunate incidents" I decided to close all but one of the accounts. Things settled down for a while, but I still have to keep a close eye on me in case I go back and login to one of the "closed" accounts.
---
Only two of my personalities have delusions, but one of them is paranoid and the other is out to get him.
First, there is a KB missing from the article. He states that there are six patches botched, but only lists five of them.
I can confirm that the sixth botched patch, KB2810048, affects Excel 2003. Like the Office 2007 patches, it keeps trying to install again and again and again.
The issue that these patches are trying to fix is a privilege escalation exploit. By loading a crafted Office file, it can give user privileges to an external user. If running as a normal user, this is not that big of a deal. But there are still programs running out there in the corp world that require admin privileges to work properly. If the user is running as an admin user, you have just given admin rights to an external user.
I admit it is not an OS issue, and there may not be many people affected. Still, I wish MS would test their patches a little better before sending them out.
(Disclaimer: I am a Linux user in the office, running Fedora, but I am responsible for maintaining patches for all of of Windows desktops and servers. And because of regulations [HIPPA, SOX, PCI], we have to keep things updated, sometimes when it doesn't make sense to update. )
Depending on your equipment and the time you want to spend, oVirt might be an answer.
Although it is still fairly new and is in development, it runs on CentOS6, is free, can handle multiple guest OSes, can create VM's from a template, and has a power users portal page where trusted students/employees can create their own VM from supplied templates. This way, no student would have access to the host OS, but could create a VM as needed. The downside is that it can get quite complicated to set up the system, and could take a bit of time to learn and set it up properly. Since it is free, you are also dependent upon community support.
You can access more info here.
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes...
True. I for one would be worried about getting hit by one of those flying pigs.
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
oink, flap ... oink, flap ... oink, flap
Orcle does come with a kitchen sink. However, it costs extra if more than one person is in the kitchen at the same time.
The second is wrong. "Begging the question" as a logical fallacy is a mistranslation of a Latin term. (Your signature would leave one to believe that you would be less favorably inclined towards the group basing their phrases on mistranslations of Latin.) The term is better translated as "Demanding the first principle" and is better understood today as "Circular Reasoning."
Just because people have been doing it wrong for hundreds of years does not mean that we have to purpetuate that wrong. Language evolves. Language is designed to help convey understanding between individuals. I would argue that the first is better understood by more people and the second more confusing. Therefore the first is better at accomplishing the design of language. It is time to rename the second to a more descriptive term that is better understood by more people and stop berating people for using the term "incorrectly."
And like many people that have commented it seems, I found that the Tom Bombadil thing was horrendous in the book, and cheered a little inside when it was skipped in the movie.
I honestly can't even slightly understand why some people have such a hardon for that part of the book. It was terrible. TERRIBLE!
One of the reasons people like the Tom Bombadil section is because of the character development.
Remember, the book was about little, ordinary people that can do great things, even while big, great people are doing great things all around them. The book was not about little people outshining big people, nor was it about great people overshadowing the efforts of little people. On complaint about the movie was that it was more about Aaragon and Legolas with Gimli being the comic relief than it was about the Hobbits.
As for the character development, the Tom Bombadil was one of the first things that said, "This is not a simple trip across the forest. This is a dangerous journey and you better be ready." In the book the RingWraith drove them into the dark forest, and they almost got killed because they did not take the journey serious enough. When they got to Bree, they tried to fall back into the easy ways of the shire, only to be almost killed again by RingWraiths because they weren't paying attention. Only this time, they "found" a guide to help them in their character development. By the time they dealt with WeatherTop and finally made it to Rivendell, they were ready to start the journey to Mordor.
The Scouring of the Shire, another section left out by the movie, was the final step that the Hobbits had to take to realize that they were no longer children or ordinary people, but had become great people with large responsibilities. They no longer needed to rely on their guides or other races to take care of their own troubles. Their accomplishments did not belittle the other races, but finally became equals with them. And as equals, they were expected to take care of their own troubles. With great power comes great responibility. (The words are from Spider Man, but the theme is ancient.)
First let's do a sanity check.
Sorry, my sanity check bounced. Insufficient sanity, or something like that.
I would try a reality check, but that account has been missing for some time.
Windows in buildings actually follow the same principle. (Computer Windows is a completely different topic not addressed in these posts.) Windows are built to allow access as well. The primary access for windows is light. Either sunlight to warm or provide illumination, or for vision of what is on the other side.
To secure windows, you either need to limit how much light is allowed, such as making the window only 6 inches square, or placing barriers on either side of the window to make it more difficult for things other than light to enter. Such barriers coud include signs to discourage, hedges, bars, dogs (on either side), traps, moats, and/or landmines. (Some of those options may have questionable legal issues depending on where your building is.)
As with doors, the questions remain, is the stuff inside worth someone's time or effort to get in, and how much am I willing to spend to prevent access. The books dealt specifically with raising awareness about locks, so I concentrated on that aspect. But, if the stuff inside is sufficiently valuable, whole perimeter security needs to be addressed. Is tunnelling a viable option? What about vents? Even if the vent or window is too small for a person to enter, can something be put inside that will compromise the security from the inside?