For higher end phones people might keep them for a few years, but in the UK a normal mobile phone contract (with a free phone) is 12 or 18 months. At the end of that I would expect (if they are anything like their US counterparts) they offer you another free phone if you'll sign for another 12 or 18 month contract.
Seeing as a lot of people find their battery doesn't hold a charge after 12-18 months of constant use and they'll be charged about £20-30 for a new one, that's not really terribly surprising.
Even then they are in second place to Nintendo. Frankly the 360 beats the Wii in power, and online. The Wii is doing so well because of the controls and the great first party software from Nintendo.
That's because Nintendo studied history.
Those consoles and accessories which have historically been the most successful have ALWAYS been those with the best games. Very few people buy a console because it can render more polygons per second than its competitor.
"Best" in this context means "Most playable". Not "prettiest graphics" - though that might help if two consoles are otherwise more or less tied in terms of the games available.
Also, if it was free instead of being a subscription based service,
Here Britannica hits a major problem with their business model.
It used to essentially boil down to "disseminate information in exchange for a fee". Which worked very well 20 years ago when the sheer quantity disseminated by Britannica was so huge that the only way anyone could realistically ship it around was as a set of big, expensive books. The barrier to entry was huge, both in terms of preparing the product in the first place and in terms of selling it.
They've tried to move that model onto the Internet with their paid subscription-based site. Which I suppose is eminently reasonable these days and, to be fair, they may well get a fair number of subscriptions from schools, libraries and the like. But the Web drives the cost of publishing the work down to almost zero, and Wiki software drives the cost of preparing the information in the first place down to almost zero. Britannica are now competing on a rather different playing field.
End users who like to think they're developers, have an idea which could be thrown together in Access inside a couple of hours (provided you don't bother with such pesky things as design or testing) and they don't want to "mess around" with asking the IT department to resolve use Access.
About a year or two later you discover that their database has grown to manage the entire department and is therefore now business critical, it's got all the problems you'd associate with something thrown together in Access like this and the person who developed it left three weeks ago.
Just like seeing all the resources devoted to mimicking AD via Samba v4..... what is the point of attacking MS head on, on their home turf, backed up by legions of paper MCSEs and.Net programmers from Bangalore?
I don't think it's a head on attack as much as an alternative to achieve the same task in Linux. Like it or not, opening SMB fileshares in Windows is far cleaner and easier for the enduser than, say, opening NFS shares.
At least the Samba team is acknowledging that AD offers a bunch of features that they can't currently come near and is attempting to do something about it. Read the OpenLDAP mailing list archives if you want to see a group of people who really are out of touch with the real world.
The fact is not EVERYONE needs Office, but some people do. Which baffles me why a corporation wouldn't consider deploying OOo to everyone, and give MS Office to the people who depend on weird MS Office features. This way you save the most money while not slowing your business process!
Two reasons:
1. Price of MS Office with bulk licensing is about a third of the retail price. It goes down from there. 2. As soon as you do that you need a process which keeps track of who needs Office, who has it installed and which PCs need it uninstalled before they get redeployed. This kind of thing is a royal PITA and there isn't a half-decent way of using some sort of auditing software to automate it which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. You might just as well license Office for everything and save the auditing hassle.
A corollary group of slashbots, zealots, extend this to mean that "If my chosen software package doesn't do it, it doesn't ever need to be done. If you think you need it, think again, because you're wrong and stupid."
I assure you this attitude is not limited to slashbots and zealots.
I've seen it in plenty of mailing lists from high-ranking developers of fairly well known F/OSS projects.
Nothing handles MSOffice files well, not even other Microsoft applications. Their format is a mystery wrapped in an enigma enveloped by a binary blob.
This notwithstanding, if Office 2007 fails to open an old document it will probably be considered "one of those things, document must be corrupted, never mind, these things happen". This may not be the reaction if something similar happens with OO.o
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The problem is, ass-kissers aren't seen as risks, they're seen as profit centers.
If said ass-kisser is genuinely an inept fool and management is unable to recognise this even when presented with copious hard evidence, what makes you think the company will still be there in 12 months given the current economy anyway?
I've already replied to this so I can't moderate, but the parent is mistaken.
There's no such thing as an AD PDC. There's a PDC in NT4 domain parlance, which Samba can act as. Samba 4 can act as a true AD DC but that's still in alpha.
Or do you value integrity so highly that you'll accept the consequences?
Of course, there is the flip side to the coin - one could argue that advising management that the ass-kisser is actually doing a terrible job (complete with documentary evidence) is the more honourable position. You've advising the company of a risk they may not have been aware of.
Last time I checked, tripwire generally ran as a cron job. If tripwire itself were to be compromised before it's next triggered (which is quite possible if someone's got root on the machine), it won't alert.
Using a Gutmann 35-pass wipe is like cleaning your sink with bleach, shampoo, baby wipes, ammonia, laundry detergent, insecticide, paint remover, furniture polish, glass cleaner, body wash, whiteboard cleaner, and gasoline.
and why would it have those problems? Samba has been very stale for quite a while, v3 took a long time to get here, and they seem to be spending quite a lot of time this time around for version 4 to assure it works right.
Yes, and the differences between NT4 and Active Directory are so huge that large chunks of Samba have had to be rewritten.
It's fantastic to see the project hasn't died but it's taken oh-so-long to get from 3.x to 4 alpha that I'm not holding my breath for 4 stable.
#1. Understand the difference between a "virus", a "worm" and a "trojan".
I understand the difference perfectly well already, thanks.
Most Windows "viruses" in recent years have been worms or trojans. Linux is susceptible to them just as Windows is - the only substantial difference right now is that there is no mail client or web browser in common use on Linux that will chmod u+x attachments that appear like they should be executable.
#2. Take a hint from Ubuntu and have NO open ports on the DEFAULT installation. That will pretty much wipe out worm attacks. Do NOT depend upon a firewall to do that. The firewall is a SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE that is often disabled because it interferes with legitimate apps that the user wants to run. I can put a default installation of Ubuntu directly on the 'Web and it will NOT be cracked.
What a good idea. Windows Server 2003 already does this.
Windows XP is between a rock and a hard place because a lot of network related things would break if they did that.
#3. Provide a "known good" list of files (names, date/time, multiple checksums) for ALL of the OS files. This way, at least infections can be removed easier. It's easier to find a file that is NOT on the known good and remove it than it is to find a file that MAY be a newly obfuscated version of an old virus.
You can't trust anything on the computer once it's been compromised - it's basic computer science theory. You can hope for the best, but that's about it.
Though why nobody has a bootable CD which checks system file checksums against known good values I don't know - probably because anyone paranoid enough to do that would probably wipe the lot anyway.
#4. Keep the OS directories CLEAN. That means that installing MS Office MUST NOT install ANY updated files in the OS directories.
Ah, this is like how all the Linux distributions store all their binaries for practically everything they install in/usr/bin, making a clean uninstall without the original package manifest practically impossible?
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For higher end phones people might keep them for a few years, but in the UK a normal mobile phone contract (with a free phone) is 12 or 18 months. At the end of that I would expect (if they are anything like their US counterparts) they offer you another free phone if you'll sign for another 12 or 18 month contract.
Seeing as a lot of people find their battery doesn't hold a charge after 12-18 months of constant use and they'll be charged about £20-30 for a new one, that's not really terribly surprising.
And then a family member calls me wondering why her computer runs so damned slow and why she can't have 1000+ songs in iTunes.
You might want to suggest she gets her computer fixed. My G4 Mac Mini handles 3,400 songs in iTunes quite happily, thanks.
Even then they are in second place to Nintendo. Frankly the 360 beats the Wii in power, and online. The Wii is doing so well because of the controls and the great first party software from Nintendo.
That's because Nintendo studied history.
Those consoles and accessories which have historically been the most successful have ALWAYS been those with the best games. Very few people buy a console because it can render more polygons per second than its competitor.
"Best" in this context means "Most playable". Not "prettiest graphics" - though that might help if two consoles are otherwise more or less tied in terms of the games available.
Also, if it was free instead of being a subscription based service,
Here Britannica hits a major problem with their business model.
It used to essentially boil down to "disseminate information in exchange for a fee". Which worked very well 20 years ago when the sheer quantity disseminated by Britannica was so huge that the only way anyone could realistically ship it around was as a set of big, expensive books. The barrier to entry was huge, both in terms of preparing the product in the first place and in terms of selling it.
They've tried to move that model onto the Internet with their paid subscription-based site. Which I suppose is eminently reasonable these days and, to be fair, they may well get a fair number of subscriptions from schools, libraries and the like. But the Web drives the cost of publishing the work down to almost zero, and Wiki software drives the cost of preparing the information in the first place down to almost zero. Britannica are now competing on a rather different playing field.
Which is great if you want that boss-friendly logo on your machines, but not so much if you care about cost-effectiveness.
Serious question here... unless you're in a very tech-oriented industry to begin with, how boss-friendly is the Sun logo these days?
Obviously you missed CNNs inauguration coverage yesterday.
Every UK news channel was equally sycophantic, and he's not even our president except by proxy.
Isn't that an oxymoron ?
End users use Access
Developers use anything but
End users who like to think they're developers, have an idea which could be thrown together in Access inside a couple of hours (provided you don't bother with such pesky things as design or testing) and they don't want to "mess around" with asking the IT department to resolve use Access.
About a year or two later you discover that their database has grown to manage the entire department and is therefore now business critical, it's got all the problems you'd associate with something thrown together in Access like this and the person who developed it left three weeks ago.
Macros.... hmmm, bringing viruses in documents to 2009!
I hate to put it like this, but you've made an assumption which is remarkably common in the F/OSS world.
You assume that the OP provides the data himself and can easily change it. If it comes from some other system, that may not be the case.
Just like seeing all the resources devoted to mimicking AD via Samba v4..... what is the point of attacking MS head on, on their home turf, backed up by legions of paper MCSEs and .Net programmers from Bangalore?
I don't think it's a head on attack as much as an alternative to achieve the same task in Linux. Like it or not, opening SMB fileshares in Windows is far cleaner and easier for the enduser than, say, opening NFS shares.
At least the Samba team is acknowledging that AD offers a bunch of features that they can't currently come near and is attempting to do something about it. Read the OpenLDAP mailing list archives if you want to see a group of people who really are out of touch with the real world.
The fact is not EVERYONE needs Office, but some people do. Which baffles me why a corporation wouldn't consider deploying OOo to everyone, and give MS Office to the people who depend on weird MS Office features. This way you save the most money while not slowing your business process!
Two reasons:
1. Price of MS Office with bulk licensing is about a third of the retail price. It goes down from there.
2. As soon as you do that you need a process which keeps track of who needs Office, who has it installed and which PCs need it uninstalled before they get redeployed. This kind of thing is a royal PITA and there isn't a half-decent way of using some sort of auditing software to automate it which doesn't cost an arm and a leg. You might just as well license Office for everything and save the auditing hassle.
A corollary group of slashbots, zealots, extend this to mean that "If my chosen software package doesn't do it, it doesn't ever need to be done. If you think you need it, think again, because you're wrong and stupid."
I assure you this attitude is not limited to slashbots and zealots.
I've seen it in plenty of mailing lists from high-ranking developers of fairly well known F/OSS projects.
Nothing handles MSOffice files well, not even other Microsoft applications. Their format is a mystery wrapped in an enigma enveloped by a binary blob.
This notwithstanding, if Office 2007 fails to open an old document it will probably be considered "one of those things, document must be corrupted, never mind, these things happen". This may not be the reaction if something similar happens with OO.o
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FTFY.
The problem is, ass-kissers aren't seen as risks, they're seen as profit centers.
If said ass-kisser is genuinely an inept fool and management is unable to recognise this even when presented with copious hard evidence, what makes you think the company will still be there in 12 months given the current economy anyway?
I've already replied to this so I can't moderate, but the parent is mistaken.
There's no such thing as an AD PDC. There's a PDC in NT4 domain parlance, which Samba can act as. Samba 4 can act as a true AD DC but that's still in alpha.
What's yours?
Or do you value integrity so highly that you'll accept the consequences?
Of course, there is the flip side to the coin - one could argue that advising management that the ass-kisser is actually doing a terrible job (complete with documentary evidence) is the more honourable position. You've advising the company of a risk they may not have been aware of.
Last time I checked, tripwire generally ran as a cron job. If tripwire itself were to be compromised before it's next triggered (which is quite possible if someone's got root on the machine), it won't alert.
Using a Gutmann 35-pass wipe is like cleaning your sink with bleach, shampoo, baby wipes, ammonia, laundry detergent, insecticide, paint remover, furniture polish, glass cleaner, body wash, whiteboard cleaner, and gasoline.
Oh, so you've seen my sink?
I hate to break it to you, but one day, you're gonna die. Whether or not you have this genetic mutation.
All joking aside, you ever looked at software auditing packages?
With few exceptions, most of them have substantially more obnoxious licenses than the software you'd be wanting to audit in the first place.
On its own? The same login details work for each PC, if your PC is replaced you don't need to mess around with setting up local user accounts.
You can also do quite a lot of management centrally.
To be fair, you could do most of this with Samba 3.x as an NT-4 type domain but it's not as refined.
AD is also a prerequisite for Exchange.
and why would it have those problems? Samba has been very stale for quite a while, v3 took a long time to get here, and they seem to be spending quite a lot of time this time around for version 4 to assure it works right.
Yes, and the differences between NT4 and Active Directory are so huge that large chunks of Samba have had to be rewritten.
It's fantastic to see the project hasn't died but it's taken oh-so-long to get from 3.x to 4 alpha that I'm not holding my breath for 4 stable.
#1. Understand the difference between a "virus", a "worm" and a "trojan".
I understand the difference perfectly well already, thanks.
Most Windows "viruses" in recent years have been worms or trojans. Linux is susceptible to them just as Windows is - the only substantial difference right now is that there is no mail client or web browser in common use on Linux that will chmod u+x attachments that appear like they should be executable.
#2. Take a hint from Ubuntu and have NO open ports on the DEFAULT installation. That will pretty much wipe out worm attacks. Do NOT depend upon a firewall to do that. The firewall is a SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE that is often disabled because it interferes with legitimate apps that the user wants to run. I can put a default installation of Ubuntu directly on the 'Web and it will NOT be cracked.
What a good idea. Windows Server 2003 already does this.
Windows XP is between a rock and a hard place because a lot of network related things would break if they did that.
#3. Provide a "known good" list of files (names, date/time, multiple checksums) for ALL of the OS files. This way, at least infections can be removed easier. It's easier to find a file that is NOT on the known good and remove it than it is to find a file that MAY be a newly obfuscated version of an old virus.
You can't trust anything on the computer once it's been compromised - it's basic computer science theory. You can hope for the best, but that's about it.
Though why nobody has a bootable CD which checks system file checksums against known good values I don't know - probably because anyone paranoid enough to do that would probably wipe the lot anyway.
#4. Keep the OS directories CLEAN. That means that installing MS Office MUST NOT install ANY updated files in the OS directories.
Ah, this is like how all the Linux distributions store all their binaries for practically everything they install in /usr/bin, making a clean uninstall without the original package manifest practically impossible?
Samba 3 is mature, and that gives you an NT4-style domain. Win2000, XP or 2003 will not behave much as they do in AD.
Samba 4, to which you refer, is still in the alpha stage and has been for some times.