I doubt it was the dips that killed your equipment. More likely, it was the spikes on the line that shortened their life. (same crummy electric grid that caused your brown outs) Of course, each dip can be accompanied by a spike as the power recovers. As the other poster here mentioned, its not a matter of keeping power to your devices, it's a matter of conditioning the power that's coming in.
I hear you. I too have often wished for something like this. (something that would test individual pathways and as much of the instruction set as feasible, preferably all of it.) Stress testing is still a good idea, but it should be done in tandem with real testing.
You still don't seem to get it. Friends and family only rarely ask you to fix a machine that's still under warranty. More often you wind up diagnosing / replacing the broken part yourself, and sending them on their way.
(often the 1year warrantied hard drive that gives out at 13 months; people aren't going to replace their computer every year because of that.)
Integrated devices can typically be replaced with PCI/PCIe devices. If an integrated network or sound card gives out, it can often be easier and less expensive to shove a new device into the case and disable the old one in the Device Manager. Still, integrated devices don't go out that often. It's more common for the MB itself to go (my experience, anecdotal).
Oh, and don't forget to check the PSU. When it acts up, it will often appear to be a hardware fault somewhere else in the machine. (often RAM, but can be MB, CPU, GPU...)
This certainly doesn't answer the posters question, but it is related and important.
While the technique of blasting a processing unit to see how it behaves at maximum temperature will sometimes find a faulty unit, many faults are not temperature related, and will not show up on this test. It's fine that you brought it up here, but something that both heats the CPU/GPU and tries to test as many pathways / as much of the instruction set as possible would be far more useful. (cf memtest86+ for RAM)
As I distinctly remember him eating a typewriter once, I doubt much will make him queasy. One the other hand, he's much more likely to befriend than to feast. (This is a kids show, after all.)
No need. At a quick glance, Scan Tailor is programmed in QT3 (a superset of C++, used by KDE). This is a multi-platform environment, making it very easy to fix something on all supported platforms at once. If unskew doesn't work well, then that should be addressed in both versions. Fixing the Linux version will fix the Windows version too (unless he's relying on platform specific libraries in addition to QT).
... even contracts are scanned and the original destroyed as legal has deemed that a PDF scan of a signed document is as legally binding and secure as the actual paper.
Wow, you have a dumb legal department.
It is "as legally binding" only if it can be used to coerce the other party into admitting that they signed the document. A wise but immoral signer could take the opportunity to say they signed something else and that you must have manipulated the file. There's nothing you can do to prove that you didn't. At best you can only show that it is unlikely that you did. I hope they keep the physical paper for any truly important contracts they have.
Shredded lettuce? Clearly an inferior McDonald's. Inferior among the decrepit. Green tomato? Incompetent among the incapable.
McD isn't great by a long shot, but most are better than this. Your local franchise has every excuse to go out of business.
And to supplement clone53421: you only get chopped onion on quarter pound and larger. Lesser burgers get reconstituted union bits. Most fast food can't get the pickles right consistently. (though they get it right more often than McD)
... If they are being "lied about," that's different from what you are saying. There's not a lot he can do about that part of it if there are no threats involved...
If a lie is provably false, damaging, and written then it's libel. In other words, illegal. (If it's spoken then it's slander, and still illegal.) No threats are required to start civil proceedings.
On that basis, I would be fascinated to hear your description of the BBC, considering how outrageously right-wing Fox really, and consistently is.
I will occasionally visit bbc.com for news. Being in the States (and without cable or satellite) I only rarely get the opportunity to view their news broadcasts. (Video at bbc.com is off limits to Americans.)
I have little specific opinion of the BBC, but acknowledge that they do have a good reputation. They do have some British bias, but they can hardly be faulted for that! I simply haven't seen enough to label them (or to see if they are above labels).
...(even though no one is trying to bring it back)...
Not at the moment maybe, but they did recently. It's still fresh in some people's minds.
... was never about silencing opposition. It was about providing a balance of viewpoints...
I call FUD. Anything which relies on perpetuating the false dichotomy of conservative v. liberal to determine what may or must be said is a form of censorship (call it a DoS censorship, if you like).
Fox may be the poster child of not-fair-or-balanced (and deserve it), but other news agencies tend far worse. At least Fox leans to the center periodically. Most news stations are so liberal that they think the Democrat party is the center on the political spectrum. ("political spectrum" is also an inaccurate model, but better than the either/or model.)
"don't understand the need to do so" - this lawsuit clearly shows that at least now MS understands that their lack of security hurts them.
Close. This lawsuit shows that they understand that the existence of malware hurts them. It does not show that they see themselves as culpable in any way.
While I don't think this is the explanation you seek, I think you dismiss it to quickly. Surely there are many people at Microsoft who don't understand the need. It's a question of: "how many, and who?"
...This is assuming the operating systems or apps have some sort of password strength meter built in, because if they don't, "hunter2" will be replaced by "hunter3".
Not necessarily. What you really need is some way to tell said employee that weak passwords will expire quickly (and run the cracker as a cron job/scheduled task). Maybe as part of the system welcome message? If he doesn't "get it", the first coworker he complains to is bound to correct him.
Your cron can do something akin to this in a for loop (there's bound to be a more elegant way, using run time instead of wall time).
(I'm sorry if you already understand BCC. Either you don't, or you didn't understand my post.)
I didn't mention or discuss CC (the gpp did, barely). BCC is "blind carbon copy". In other words, pass this email on to these people, but don't distribute these email addresses along with the email.
For example: if you're sending out a newsletter to 2 dozen people, it's terribly impolite to place these in the TO or CC field, as everyone will now have a list of everyone else's email address (and any spam bots on any of those 2 dozen computers will harvest all of them, how rude). If you place all those addresses in the BCC field, then they will only see the senders email address. This is much more polite in most circumstances.
And for the record, CC can be very useful outside the company (as a preemptive CYOA technique). I have CC'd my boss on emails to clients, and I have CC'd clients on emails regarding 3rd party problems. I use it when I suspect I'm going to be accused of being lazy or incompetent when it's someone else's fault. (usually a customer on both counts; the CC to my boss saves him time and effort in diffusing certain people, since he doesn't need to check with me first.)
Many free websites, including social networking websites, use Ruby On Rails as a backend, which has been shown to facilitate the spread of viruses.
Link please. (not that I use Ruby)
If true, people deserve to know. If you're just spouting off libel (as AC), stop now. There is no true anonymity online. You'll run out of it sooner or later.
In other words: put up, or shut up.
According to Symantec, there has been skyrocketing rates of virus infections ever since websites like MySpace became popular.
This I'll believe (due to cross site scripting, etc). Many sites are guilty of such, but was this meant as a non-sequitur attack on Rails? (It sounds like it... despicable.)
Learn what BCC is in e-mail. Never use multiple TO or CC to anyone outside the company, as it can expose a great deal of internal e-mail addresses.
I can't count the number of people in or out of work that I've told to use BCC. They just don't get the concept. even after explaining it. If you have more than, let's say, about 5 address on an email, they really should all go in the BCC field. (Many emails with more than 2 should BCC as well. Depends on context.) If you put more than one address in the "To" field, you should stop and consider for a brief moment.
Maybe ask permission [(presumably from management)]... hide the results, just show the usernames,
He might get sued for that.
Sued for what? I see no grounds here. The company can't sue if permission is given. The individual can't sue if the password isn't made known (and slander/libel only sticks if what's said/written is not true). The employee ought not be able to sue even if the password was made known, but that might start getting a little fuzzy (depending on the judge and local law).
I'd recommend writing a script that displays the actual name behind the account, and flags the account for a password change (or "usermod -L", etc).
Here's a summary of the state of the drivers/staging/ tree, basically what will be coming in the 2.6.32 merge, and what the status of the different drivers are so far.
First off, drivers/staging/ is NOT a dumping ground for dead code. If no one steps up to maintain and work to get the code merged into the main portion of the kernel, the drivers will be removed.
Further examples:
asus_oled This only needs minor cleanups to get merged properly into the main tree. If someone wants an easy project, this would be it.
phison What? I thought I asked for this to be merged a while ago, sorry about that, no reason it should still be in staging anymore, it's just so small it slipped through the cracks...
You think this constitutes "publicly flame"ing Microsoft? He's just asking them to step it up and contribute. He's much harder on others in that list. It also doesn't seem like he went out of his way to be interviewed. It sounds like he just responded to a few questions that a reporter put to him. "Unfortunately" and "so sad" do not, of themselves, constitute a flame.
Here are a few other choice passages: (these may be interpreted as weak flames)
heci A wonderful example of a company throwing code over the wall, watching it get rejected, and then running away as fast as possible, all the while yelling over their shoulder, "it's required on all new systems, you will love it!" We don't, it sucks, either fix it up, or I am removing it.
me4000 and meilhaus They work on the same hardware, and they duplicate the existing COMEDI drivers. Someone thinks that custom userspace interfaces are fun and required. Turns out that being special and unique is not what to do here, use the COMEDI drivers instead. These will be removed. Heck, I'll go remove them for.32, there is no reason these should still be around, except to watch the RT guys squirm as they try to figure out the byzantine locking and build logic here (which certainly does count for something, cheap entertainment is always good.)
rspiusb A weird, very expensive camera, from a company that does not want to release the specs, and wants custom userspace interfaces. The code hasn't built since the 2.6.20 days. I'll go delete it now from.32, it doesn't deserve to live as no one cares about it, least of all, the original authors of the code:(
In other words: "Though it seems that he has the generosity to not publicly flame them unlike Microsoft." is pure hogwash... on both counts.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it was the dips that killed your equipment. More likely, it was the spikes on the line that shortened their life. (same crummy electric grid that caused your brown outs) Of course, each dip can be accompanied by a spike as the power recovers. As the other poster here mentioned, its not a matter of keeping power to your devices, it's a matter of conditioning the power that's coming in.
I hear you. I too have often wished for something like this. (something that would test individual pathways and as much of the instruction set as feasible, preferably all of it.) Stress testing is still a good idea, but it should be done in tandem with real testing.
You still don't seem to get it. Friends and family only rarely ask you to fix a machine that's still under warranty. More often you wind up diagnosing / replacing the broken part yourself, and sending them on their way.
(often the 1year warrantied hard drive that gives out at 13 months; people aren't going to replace their computer every year because of that.)
Integrated devices can typically be replaced with PCI/PCIe devices. If an integrated network or sound card gives out, it can often be easier and less expensive to shove a new device into the case and disable the old one in the Device Manager. Still, integrated devices don't go out that often. It's more common for the MB itself to go (my experience, anecdotal).
Oh, and don't forget to check the PSU. When it acts up, it will often appear to be a hardware fault somewhere else in the machine. (often RAM, but can be MB, CPU, GPU...)
This certainly doesn't answer the posters question, but it is related and important.
That's a marginal idea at best, but a common one.
While the technique of blasting a processing unit to see how it behaves at maximum temperature will sometimes find a faulty unit, many faults are not temperature related, and will not show up on this test. It's fine that you brought it up here, but something that both heats the CPU/GPU and tries to test as many pathways / as much of the instruction set as possible would be far more useful. (cf memtest86+ for RAM)
As I distinctly remember him eating a typewriter once, I doubt much will make him queasy. One the other hand, he's much more likely to befriend than to feast. (This is a kids show, after all.)
No need. At a quick glance, Scan Tailor is programmed in QT3 (a superset of C++, used by KDE). This is a multi-platform environment, making it very easy to fix something on all supported platforms at once. If unskew doesn't work well, then that should be addressed in both versions. Fixing the Linux version will fix the Windows version too (unless he's relying on platform specific libraries in addition to QT).
... even contracts are scanned and the original destroyed as legal has deemed that a PDF scan of a signed document is as legally binding and secure as the actual paper.
Wow, you have a dumb legal department.
It is "as legally binding" only if it can be used to coerce the other party into admitting that they signed the document. A wise but immoral signer could take the opportunity to say they signed something else and that you must have manipulated the file. There's nothing you can do to prove that you didn't. At best you can only show that it is unlikely that you did. I hope they keep the physical paper for any truly important contracts they have.
Oops. Well played. ;)
Shredded lettuce? Clearly an inferior McDonald's. Inferior among the decrepit. Green tomato? Incompetent among the incapable.
McD isn't great by a long shot, but most are better than this. Your local franchise has every excuse to go out of business.
And to supplement clone53421: you only get chopped onion on quarter pound and larger. Lesser burgers get reconstituted union bits. Most fast food can't get the pickles right consistently. (though they get it right more often than McD)
... If they are being "lied about," that's different from what you are saying. There's not a lot he can do about that part of it if there are no threats involved...
If a lie is provably false, damaging, and written then it's libel. In other words, illegal. (If it's spoken then it's slander, and still illegal.) No threats are required to start civil proceedings.
Or parents triple parking while they wait for school to let out...
(Sadly, I'm being literal.)
On that basis, I would be fascinated to hear your description of the BBC, considering how outrageously right-wing Fox really, and consistently is.
I will occasionally visit bbc.com for news. Being in the States (and without cable or satellite) I only rarely get the opportunity to view their news broadcasts. (Video at bbc.com is off limits to Americans.)
I have little specific opinion of the BBC, but acknowledge that they do have a good reputation. They do have some British bias, but they can hardly be faulted for that! I simply haven't seen enough to label them (or to see if they are above labels).
...(even though no one is trying to bring it back) ...
Not at the moment maybe, but they did recently. It's still fresh in some people's minds.
... was never about silencing opposition. It was about providing a balance of viewpoints ...
I call FUD. Anything which relies on perpetuating the false dichotomy of conservative v. liberal to determine what may or must be said is a form of censorship (call it a DoS censorship, if you like).
Fox may be the poster child of not-fair-or-balanced (and deserve it), but other news agencies tend far worse. At least Fox leans to the center periodically. Most news stations are so liberal that they think the Democrat party is the center on the political spectrum. ("political spectrum" is also an inaccurate model, but better than the either/or model.)
Don't feed the troll. He's intentionally, mostly right.
"don't understand the need to do so" - this lawsuit clearly shows that at least now MS understands that their lack of security hurts them.
Close. This lawsuit shows that they understand that the existence of malware hurts them. It does not show that they see themselves as culpable in any way.
While I don't think this is the explanation you seek, I think you dismiss it to quickly. Surely there are many people at Microsoft who don't understand the need. It's a question of: "how many, and who?"
...This is assuming the operating systems or apps have some sort of password strength meter built in, because if they don't, "hunter2" will be replaced by "hunter3".
Not necessarily. What you really need is some way to tell said employee that weak passwords will expire quickly (and run the cracker as a cron job/scheduled task). Maybe as part of the system welcome message? If he doesn't "get it", the first coworker he complains to is bound to correct him.
Your cron can do something akin to this in a for loop (there's bound to be a more elegant way, using run time instead of wall time).
#!/bin/sh
nice -n 19 xeyes &
sleep 60
kill -9 %1
(I'm sorry if you already understand BCC. Either you don't, or you didn't understand my post.)
I didn't mention or discuss CC (the gpp did, barely). BCC is "blind carbon copy". In other words, pass this email on to these people, but don't distribute these email addresses along with the email.
For example: if you're sending out a newsletter to 2 dozen people, it's terribly impolite to place these in the TO or CC field, as everyone will now have a list of everyone else's email address (and any spam bots on any of those 2 dozen computers will harvest all of them, how rude). If you place all those addresses in the BCC field, then they will only see the senders email address. This is much more polite in most circumstances.
And for the record, CC can be very useful outside the company (as a preemptive CYOA technique). I have CC'd my boss on emails to clients, and I have CC'd clients on emails regarding 3rd party problems. I use it when I suspect I'm going to be accused of being lazy or incompetent when it's someone else's fault. (usually a customer on both counts; the CC to my boss saves him time and effort in diffusing certain people, since he doesn't need to check with me first.)
Many free websites, including social networking websites, use Ruby On Rails as a backend, which has been shown to facilitate the spread of viruses.
Link please. (not that I use Ruby)
If true, people deserve to know. If you're just spouting off libel (as AC), stop now. There is no true anonymity online. You'll run out of it sooner or later.
In other words: put up, or shut up.
According to Symantec, there has been skyrocketing rates of virus infections ever since websites like MySpace became popular.
This I'll believe (due to cross site scripting, etc). Many sites are guilty of such, but was this meant as a non-sequitur attack on Rails? (It sounds like it... despicable.)
Learn what BCC is in e-mail. Never use multiple TO or CC to anyone outside the company, as it can expose a great deal of internal e-mail addresses.
I can't count the number of people in or out of work that I've told to use BCC. They just don't get the concept. even after explaining it. If you have more than, let's say, about 5 address on an email, they really should all go in the BCC field. (Many emails with more than 2 should BCC as well. Depends on context.) If you put more than one address in the "To" field, you should stop and consider for a brief moment.
Sorry. End rant. (preaching... choir... yup...)
Maybe ask permission [(presumably from management)]... hide the results, just show the usernames,
He might get sued for that.
Sued for what? I see no grounds here. The company can't sue if permission is given. The individual can't sue if the password isn't made known (and slander/libel only sticks if what's said/written is not true). The employee ought not be able to sue even if the password was made known, but that might start getting a little fuzzy (depending on the judge and local law).
I'd recommend writing a script that displays the actual name behind the account, and flags the account for a password change (or "usermod -L", etc).
Yes, but is bash nearly so friendly without the @#$% "home" and "end" keys! (Thank you Apple for hampering an otherwise useful tool.)
It's still in "staging". from the article:
Here's a summary of the state of the drivers/staging/ tree, basically what will be coming in the 2.6.32 merge, and what the status of the different drivers are so far.
First off, drivers/staging/ is NOT a dumping ground for dead code. If no one steps up to maintain and work to get the code merged into the main portion of the kernel, the drivers will be removed.
Further examples:
asus_oled This only needs minor cleanups to get merged properly into the main tree. If someone wants an easy project, this would be it.
phison What? I thought I asked for this to be merged a while ago, sorry about that, no reason it should still be in staging anymore, it's just so small it slipped through the cracks...
You think this constitutes "publicly flame"ing Microsoft? He's just asking them to step it up and contribute. He's much harder on others in that list. It also doesn't seem like he went out of his way to be interviewed. It sounds like he just responded to a few questions that a reporter put to him. "Unfortunately" and "so sad" do not, of themselves, constitute a flame.
Here are a few other choice passages: (these may be interpreted as weak flames)
heci A wonderful example of a company throwing code over the wall, watching it get rejected, and then running away as fast as possible, all the while yelling over their shoulder, "it's required on all new systems, you will love it!" We don't, it sucks, either fix it up, or I am removing it.
me4000 and meilhaus They work on the same hardware, and they duplicate the existing COMEDI drivers. Someone thinks that custom userspace interfaces are fun and required. Turns out that being special and unique is not what to do here, use the COMEDI drivers instead. These will be removed. Heck, I'll go remove them for .32, there is no reason these should still be around, except to watch the RT guys squirm as they try to figure out the byzantine locking and build logic here (which certainly does count for something, cheap entertainment is always good.)
rspiusb A weird, very expensive camera, from a company that does not want to release the specs, and wants custom userspace interfaces. The code hasn't built since the 2.6.20 days. I'll go delete it now from .32, it doesn't deserve to live as no one cares about it, least of all, the original authors of the code :(
In other words: "Though it seems that he has the generosity to not publicly flame them unlike Microsoft." is pure hogwash... on both counts.