I'm not so sure about that; At the risk of sounding like I'm picking on semantics, I think it may be more accurate to say that most don't believe that global warming is caused primarily by mankind. That is a little different. Granted, I'm not a scientist, but I do know of research that has linkedthe sun'sactivity to global warming in significant ways. Just a thought.
That isn't to say, of course, that so-called 'greenhouse gasses' (like - wait for it - water!) shouldn't be reduced along with other pollution. Humans are nasty dirty critters that seem to enjoy contaminating the environment, and that's not good for anyone.
Are you sure that you really want to end famine and disease? Though it may sound cruel, these kinds of things are necessary. The population is growing quickly already and without those things it would grow faster still. Besides - famine is Nature's way of saying, "Wow, there's too many of you." I'm all for the Bird Flu. Bring it on! I'll even help spread it for the good of the world.
Wrong question or not, your answer was awesome. It confirmed a lot of what I already believed to be true and gave me some new tidbits of information as well. Many thanks. (o:
What about always using 100% of your CPU? I run the BOINC client for the Rosetta@HOME project and tell it to crunch as much data as it can with idle CPU time. It is ALWAYS up and running. So, if I have this running on a machine that also uses Tor then the "create extra CPU load" method would fail.
I fail to see what is wrong with that. If I enter in a zip code I am probably looking for a map of the area. That doesn't scream 'evil' to me - it says, "Hey, I'm trying to be useful." And if that usefulness happens to be their products then so be it.
What next - are people going to be pissed off at Google because it will perform mathematical calculations? It's not fair to poor calculator.exe, after all. Where will it stop?
It's THEIR search engine, they can do what they want with it. If you won't like it then don't use it. Don't give me the BS that 'Google is the only search engine out there!' because Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and DMOZ all work too.
In my experience, I have found that it is best to have four environments: Production, Pre-Production, Testing, and Development. Every environment is isolated and has the same hardware and software.
Developers do their development in one environment (if possible, each developer should be isolated), and when their code is written it goes to a testing server where it can be hammered by your QA/Testing team.
When it passes QA, it goes into Pre-Production, which is what your Production environment should look like when you push your changes live. Any kind of external integration can test against this environment, since it is as close to your production environment as possible.
Then, you have your production environment where everything is live.
It is VITAL that each environment is set up the exact same way, or as close as possible, to every other environment. Each one should have its own separate hardware running identical software versions - unless you are testing software upgrades, in which case you FREEZE THE CODE, update Development, then QA, the Pre-Production, then Production (testing everything, everywhere), and THEN resume writing your code again. It is incredibly frustrating for a developer when code works on servers A, B, and D, but breaks on C and E due to non-matching hardware and software.
It is also important that your developers and qa team have access to fresh, live data if at all possible. It is easier to develop when you have real data to develop with; Plan on updating your QA and development data once a week.
If you have a set up like this, then development, testing, and deployment will be very smooth. It can be a bit of a pain to set up at first, especially if you are not used to the idea, but once you have something like this I promise that you will never go back.
Other people may recommend different set ups, but the basic idea is the same. Keep the developers separate from the testers, keep everyone separate from production. The pre-production just makes deployment easier - push code that passes QA to pre-production, then when the time comes, just rsync the files over.
I *always* use this when making online purchases. I never use my 'real' credit card number. Yes, it is a little inconvenient to log into another web site, navigate to a few pages, generate a number, and type it into the fields (it is not selectable for copy/paste, being a flash app), but I go through it because, to me, the extra steps are worth the trouble. It doesn't cost me any extra money and it helps reduce fraud, which is good for everyone involved.
Too bad CitiBank was bought out by Bank of America. When that happened, for a while the website didn't work at all - which meant I wasn't able to pay my bills online (and customer service wouldn't do squat to help me out, since my information somehow disappeared during the migration); now they have resorted to some lame iframing around the original site so they can brand it with BoA's logo.
At least it works again. I'm considering leaving BoA after this mess, but as an IT guy myself, I know that feces happens so I'm rather forgiving. For now. We'll see what happens later down the road.
I don't read Wired every day. I only go there if a/. article links to an interesting (to me) story or they happen to show up in a Google search result. So there.
I have a 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. When I bought the car a year and a half ago, I was curious about the fuel economy. Most of my drive to work is on the highway, and over a period of a week I tracked miles driven and fuel consumed. My decade old car gets 32 miles per gallon. I find it stupid that many cars today brag about that kind of fuel economy on the highway. You would think that in a ten year stretch engines and cars would have become significantly more efficient - even the non-hybrid models.
On a totally unrelated note: SouthPark teaches us that hybrid cars may not contribute to smog, but they do produce a hell of a lot of smug.
the truth is that most anti-censorship programs, including mine, only work because the censors are not trying very hard.
Well, in that case, I recommend that you 'censor' yourself. Seriously. Apply some techniques that would make your software fail, then see what you can do to work around them. Then, if (when) China and other censorship countries decide to step up and do something you're already a few steps ahead of them.
I have a friend who works for a medical software company. Their system handles all kinds of personal information; SSNs, medical records, body scans, etc. The authentication is cookie-based; All the information about a user's access is a serialized, base64 encoded data structure.
Yup, you heard it right. base64 decode your cookie, change a few values, stick it back in... Ta-da, you're an admin.
Improper cookie use can be a nasty, nasty thing. The worst part is that this problem was brought up to the lead developer, who had originally wrote this auth system, but... "Well, it is base64 encoded, noone will ever figure that out." Yeah, right.
I run Windows AND Linux; Strangely enough, I've never had a problem with either in well over six years. Windows has more holes than a goth girl's ear but if you do what I do you'll have the same success:
Keep up with the updates, use FireFox for web, use a webmail client or Thunderbird, don't download anything from an untrustworthy site, don't run executables from Usenet or P2P networks, stick yourself on a private network, isolated from the 'net. In short, be smart about where you go, how you get there, what you download, and what you run. It isn't that complicated. Whenever I see a friend's computer crawling with the nasties I have to wonder what on earth they were doing to get it...
By stopping outgoing traffic you can protect your privacy and, in the event you become infected with a worm of some kind, it can help prevent you from infecting others and clogging up the network.
I live in the Buffalo area, and even in areas with strong reception the voice quality is terrible. However, it might just be my phone. Even so, I've been wanting to move to another carrier; Too bad that I have a Sprint family plan with two phones, and the early termination fee is $400 PER PHONE. I'm just going to suffer through the rest of the contract, I can't afford a lump sum that large.
My father plays percussion in one of the worlds leading orchestras. Growing up I was exposed to and learned to enjoy orchestral music; I still do to this day. There is a lot of it out there, but most of the time the major orchestras play a small repertoire; Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, etc. The big names, the things that have been played over and over again. I remember asking him one day, "Why does the orchestra play all this stuff over and over again? Sure, this is good music, but don't people get bored with the same thing over and over again?"
I was told, "There is a saying in the music industry: The audience eats shit."
And it does - to someone who appreciates the 'finer, more nuanced, less well known' areas of an art form. Music, like any art form, has a certain section that appeals the masses; A very small section at that. The casual audience doesn't have the patience or interest to delve deeper most of the time. They have something that makes them happy and they are content with that.
Let's take everyone's "Lave Her" or "Hate Her" 'musician': Britney Spears. Have you ever heard her sing? I watched an interview of her a few years back and she was asked to sing solo. No backup, no music, no effects to cover her voice. It was absolutely atrocious. That doesn't matter though; She performs well enough on stage, and combined with the marketing and enough makeup on her voice to make it acceptable, people are happy with 'her' product. "Enough ketchup and even my mother's cooking is edible."
Personally, I wouldn't even take an album of hers for free. I don't consider it art; I consider it boring, unimaginative, repetitive, and headache-inducing. Ultimately, though, I don't think that it is within the power of a few individuals to determine what 'art' is, except for themselves. It is society's job to determine what is art to society.
Unfortunately (in my opinion), Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, etc. are all considered artists in society right now. That doesn't matter though; Nobody is holding me captive and forcing me to listen to their product.
Yeah, pretty lame for that comment to be moderated up, but hey - that's what meta-moderation is all about. Maybe the meta-mods will smack the original mods down a bit and they won't be able to mod up posts like that as often.
Google was unwilling to cooperate with prosecutors. Why the odd behavior?
This is pure speculation, but perhaps the courts wanted Google to reveal some, or all, of the methods it used to detect click fraud; they would not want that information revealed. A trade secret like that would be far more valuable than a guy in prison.
* Cure Cancer * Solve World Hunger * End All War * Show Us the One True God * Eliminate Spam * Turn Janet Reno Into a Beautiful Woman * Help Pandas Mate * Prevent Dupe Articles on/.
As you can see, Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword - it is a miracle!
I would give your clients a list of other companies that rely on open source software. There is a good (but outdated) list of companies who use Linux, for example. That's just the OS. What about, for example, companies that use open source scripting languages (Like PHP, Perl, Python, etc.), open source databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, etc.), and open source web servers (Apache, LightHTTPd, etc.)?
Many companies rely on open source; Cisco, Google, Yahoo, even the US Military. Yeah, the "if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me" argument isn't necessarily a strong one, but it does make a point. These companies are putting a lot of money - and in the case of the military, lives - at risk, so you know they are going to want to use the BEST product available.
Slashdot Mirror
Like anyone with Kool-Aid, if I'm dead then who is going to share it? (o:
That isn't to say, of course, that so-called 'greenhouse gasses' (like - wait for it - water!) shouldn't be reduced along with other pollution. Humans are nasty dirty critters that seem to enjoy contaminating the environment, and that's not good for anyone.
Are you sure that you really want to end famine and disease? Though it may sound cruel, these kinds of things are necessary. The population is growing quickly already and without those things it would grow faster still. Besides - famine is Nature's way of saying, "Wow, there's too many of you." I'm all for the Bird Flu. Bring it on! I'll even help spread it for the good of the world.
Who wants a kiss?
Wrong question or not, your answer was awesome. It confirmed a lot of what I already believed to be true and gave me some new tidbits of information as well. Many thanks. (o:
What about always using 100% of your CPU? I run the BOINC client for the Rosetta@HOME project and tell it to crunch as much data as it can with idle CPU time. It is ALWAYS up and running. So, if I have this running on a machine that also uses Tor then the "create extra CPU load" method would fail.
I fail to see what is wrong with that. If I enter in a zip code I am probably looking for a map of the area. That doesn't scream 'evil' to me - it says, "Hey, I'm trying to be useful." And if that usefulness happens to be their products then so be it.
What next - are people going to be pissed off at Google because it will perform mathematical calculations? It's not fair to poor calculator.exe, after all. Where will it stop?
It's THEIR search engine, they can do what they want with it. If you won't like it then don't use it. Don't give me the BS that 'Google is the only search engine out there!' because Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and DMOZ all work too.
When I saw the name the first thing that came to mind was that awful movie featuring a killer doll. Ugh.
In my experience, I have found that it is best to have four environments: Production, Pre-Production, Testing, and Development. Every environment is isolated and has the same hardware and software.
Developers do their development in one environment (if possible, each developer should be isolated), and when their code is written it goes to a testing server where it can be hammered by your QA/Testing team.
When it passes QA, it goes into Pre-Production, which is what your Production environment should look like when you push your changes live. Any kind of external integration can test against this environment, since it is as close to your production environment as possible.
Then, you have your production environment where everything is live.
It is VITAL that each environment is set up the exact same way, or as close as possible, to every other environment. Each one should have its own separate hardware running identical software versions - unless you are testing software upgrades, in which case you FREEZE THE CODE, update Development, then QA, the Pre-Production, then Production (testing everything, everywhere), and THEN resume writing your code again. It is incredibly frustrating for a developer when code works on servers A, B, and D, but breaks on C and E due to non-matching hardware and software.
It is also important that your developers and qa team have access to fresh, live data if at all possible. It is easier to develop when you have real data to develop with; Plan on updating your QA and development data once a week.
If you have a set up like this, then development, testing, and deployment will be very smooth. It can be a bit of a pain to set up at first, especially if you are not used to the idea, but once you have something like this I promise that you will never go back.
Other people may recommend different set ups, but the basic idea is the same. Keep the developers separate from the testers, keep everyone separate from production. The pre-production just makes deployment easier - push code that passes QA to pre-production, then when the time comes, just rsync the files over.
You're 100% correct, it was MBNA. My bad. My brain has been off on vacation today. )o:
I *always* use this when making online purchases. I never use my 'real' credit card number. Yes, it is a little inconvenient to log into another web site, navigate to a few pages, generate a number, and type it into the fields (it is not selectable for copy/paste, being a flash app), but I go through it because, to me, the extra steps are worth the trouble. It doesn't cost me any extra money and it helps reduce fraud, which is good for everyone involved.
Too bad CitiBank was bought out by Bank of America. When that happened, for a while the website didn't work at all - which meant I wasn't able to pay my bills online (and customer service wouldn't do squat to help me out, since my information somehow disappeared during the migration); now they have resorted to some lame iframing around the original site so they can brand it with BoA's logo.
At least it works again. I'm considering leaving BoA after this mess, but as an IT guy myself, I know that feces happens so I'm rather forgiving. For now. We'll see what happens later down the road.
I don't read Wired every day. I only go there if a /. article links to an interesting (to me) story or they happen to show up in a Google search result. So there.
I have a 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. When I bought the car a year and a half ago, I was curious about the fuel economy. Most of my drive to work is on the highway, and over a period of a week I tracked miles driven and fuel consumed. My decade old car gets 32 miles per gallon. I find it stupid that many cars today brag about that kind of fuel economy on the highway. You would think that in a ten year stretch engines and cars would have become significantly more efficient - even the non-hybrid models.
On a totally unrelated note: SouthPark teaches us that hybrid cars may not contribute to smog, but they do produce a hell of a lot of smug.
You mistyped that a bit. Let me help you:
"porn -midget +horse -gay"
I have a friend who works for a medical software company. Their system handles all kinds of personal information; SSNs, medical records, body scans, etc. The authentication is cookie-based; All the information about a user's access is a serialized, base64 encoded data structure.
Yup, you heard it right. base64 decode your cookie, change a few values, stick it back in... Ta-da, you're an admin.
Improper cookie use can be a nasty, nasty thing. The worst part is that this problem was brought up to the lead developer, who had originally wrote this auth system, but... "Well, it is base64 encoded, noone will ever figure that out." Yeah, right.
Read my sig. Am I going to hell?
I run Windows AND Linux; Strangely enough, I've never had a problem with either in well over six years. Windows has more holes than a goth girl's ear but if you do what I do you'll have the same success:
Keep up with the updates, use FireFox for web, use a webmail client or Thunderbird, don't download anything from an untrustworthy site, don't run executables from Usenet or P2P networks, stick yourself on a private network, isolated from the 'net. In short, be smart about where you go, how you get there, what you download, and what you run. It isn't that complicated. Whenever I see a friend's computer crawling with the nasties I have to wonder what on earth they were doing to get it...
By stopping outgoing traffic you can protect your privacy and, in the event you become infected with a worm of some kind, it can help prevent you from infecting others and clogging up the network.
I live in the Buffalo area, and even in areas with strong reception the voice quality is terrible. However, it might just be my phone. Even so, I've been wanting to move to another carrier; Too bad that I have a Sprint family plan with two phones, and the early termination fee is $400 PER PHONE. I'm just going to suffer through the rest of the contract, I can't afford a lump sum that large.
Some days I feel like the goatse man.
My father plays percussion in one of the worlds leading orchestras. Growing up I was exposed to and learned to enjoy orchestral music; I still do to this day. There is a lot of it out there, but most of the time the major orchestras play a small repertoire; Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, etc. The big names, the things that have been played over and over again. I remember asking him one day, "Why does the orchestra play all this stuff over and over again? Sure, this is good music, but don't people get bored with the same thing over and over again?"
I was told, "There is a saying in the music industry: The audience eats shit."
And it does - to someone who appreciates the 'finer, more nuanced, less well known' areas of an art form. Music, like any art form, has a certain section that appeals the masses; A very small section at that. The casual audience doesn't have the patience or interest to delve deeper most of the time. They have something that makes them happy and they are content with that.
Let's take everyone's "Lave Her" or "Hate Her" 'musician': Britney Spears. Have you ever heard her sing? I watched an interview of her a few years back and she was asked to sing solo. No backup, no music, no effects to cover her voice. It was absolutely atrocious. That doesn't matter though; She performs well enough on stage, and combined with the marketing and enough makeup on her voice to make it acceptable, people are happy with 'her' product. "Enough ketchup and even my mother's cooking is edible."
Personally, I wouldn't even take an album of hers for free. I don't consider it art; I consider it boring, unimaginative, repetitive, and headache-inducing. Ultimately, though, I don't think that it is within the power of a few individuals to determine what 'art' is, except for themselves. It is society's job to determine what is art to society.
Unfortunately (in my opinion), Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, etc. are all considered artists in society right now. That doesn't matter though; Nobody is holding me captive and forcing me to listen to their product.
Yeah, pretty lame for that comment to be moderated up, but hey - that's what meta-moderation is all about. Maybe the meta-mods will smack the original mods down a bit and they won't be able to mod up posts like that as often.
Maybe.
Completely incorrect! Web 2.0 will:
/.
* Cure Cancer
* Solve World Hunger
* End All War
* Show Us the One True God
* Eliminate Spam
* Turn Janet Reno Into a Beautiful Woman
* Help Pandas Mate
* Prevent Dupe Articles on
As you can see, Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword - it is a miracle!
Your cube has a window? Lucky. I'm stuck in the corner of an internal room. But I'm still a "valuable asset to the company!"
I would give your clients a list of other companies that rely on open source software. There is a good (but outdated) list of companies who use Linux, for example. That's just the OS. What about, for example, companies that use open source scripting languages (Like PHP, Perl, Python, etc.), open source databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, etc.), and open source web servers (Apache, LightHTTPd, etc.)?
Many companies rely on open source; Cisco, Google, Yahoo, even the US Military. Yeah, the "if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me" argument isn't necessarily a strong one, but it does make a point. These companies are putting a lot of money - and in the case of the military, lives - at risk, so you know they are going to want to use the BEST product available.