I work in a school so the security needs aren't as severe, but when a student's own laptop is completely bogged down in viruses and spyware, cleaning Windows XP actually goes a lot faster when you have the student's password. Spyware tends to cling to a profile and unless you're running that profile, it's difficult to see whether you've been successful.
I suppose we can re-image a machine that's been infected but students become severely traumatized when they lose work, programs, and the iTunes they've collected. On the other hand, I'm contributing to entire generations of people who would rather trade their passwords than lose their music collection. I don't know which makes me feel more guilty.
"It has nothing to do with what the people believe; it's what the government does."
That's not entirely true. During most elections, the various political parties create "wedge" issues, such as abortion or education or medicare - where people have very definite opinions. In the U.S., Bush made his stance and the majority of Americans lined up behind him. That means that the majority of Americans support at least one of the party's views on an issue strongly enough to vote the party into power.
If the government follows through on all of its promises, they will have fulfilled their mandate and everyone who voted for them will perceive an overall gain for society rather than a loss. That's all that you can ask for....And so we outside the US do believe that the beliefs of the US Gov't *IS* representative of a significant portion of its people. You would hope that is true of any country - or else they're not a real democracy.
I work in a laptop school. Every child from grades 9-12 have their own laptop. We have carts of laptops that can be wheeled into the classrooms for the younger grades. Your points are valid, except for one...
I would actually agree with everything you've posted. I've seen some really, really good stuff done with computers and I've seen classes where the machines are only used for Powerpoint and Word. I would also agree that laptops need to be replaced every three to five years - six years of use is very optimistic of you.
For learning, nothing is better than having a good teacher. There is, however, another major benefit to equipping every child with a laptop that most people neglect to consider. A lot of ideas - Aristotle's ideas, your ideas - come from discourse. Sharing ideas allow people to explore, dissect, and synthesize completely new ideas. In that respect, nothing's better than putting a communication technology into the hands of a student.
It ultimately comes down to what a society values. Taken to absolute extremes, if you value traditional learning, laptops are a tool - and possibly an unnecessary one. Kids graduating from this system are the ones I'd trust to build solid bridges and safe cars. If you value discourse and discovery, the sub-$100 laptops may just revolutionize a society's education system. You'd develop bosses who would know better than to arbitrarily mess around with someone's bridge or car designs.
(Notice that in the extreme examples I gave, "traditional" learning emphasized knowledge and application while the learning in a laptop school tended to emphasize communication and inquiry. The real-world distinction is a little fuzzier than that.)
Only having laptops for every five kids is waffling and not much different than the education system we have today. In an academic Utopia, all students should have access to laptops; they should all be made aware of the differences between knowledge, application, inquiry, and communication tasks - and then taught to use the appropriate tools for the task. Having five machines for thirty kids means that their use will have to be prescribed and destroys the "natural" flow of learning.
Society needs to say, "We value..." and act accordingly. Decide whether computers are "essential" or "no different than a calculator". Fence-sitting causes the education system to go around in circles.
[Obviously, computers don't do me any good since I'm babbling at this point.]
I was just on the phone with Rogers Cable as I started to type this response. I contacted a technical support droid who escalated this question up to a "senior support" person.
Their answer (after being put on hold for just three minutes) was "We're partnered with Yahoo Canada so we shouldn't fall under the reach of the US Patriot Act". Yahoo Canada's parent company, being situated in the US, makes me suspicious of this quick answer - but Rogers seems to think we're protected still and as long as they're willing to fight under this premise should they have to, I'm okay with it.
The techie then also pointed out that we can opt not to take their Rogers Yahoo bundle and keep our existing services, minus the web hosting and yahoo mail. We won't be forced to move to the Yahoo deal anytime soon.
Kids tend to be better than teachers - or adults in general - at certain skills because they have the time to tinker and explore.
As a teacher or other professional, you are employed to do a specific job for 8 hours a day. You then go home and have only about another 8 hours to shop, clean the house, cook, visit friends, etc... When you are on the computer, it's to complete a task such as responding to e-mail and then you're off to another task such as laundry. Kids get on the computer and they *play*. They'll meander about, doing various tasks on the machine while exploring and experimenting. That gives them several hours of hands-on time per day compared to the average adult, plus what they've learned are not limited to e-mail or word processing.
I ran Microsoft Antispyware Beta on a computer here at school. Then I purposely ran Internet Explorer through a few websites I knew were laden with spyware. IE returned several debug errors. I thought, same as everyone, "well, it's beta so what do we expect??"
Then I remembered that Microsoft bought GIANT. They had an award-winning product. Shouldn't the core of Microsoft Antispyware be GIANT-AS?? Just changing the GUI and slapping the Microsoft name on a proven program shouldn't automagically render it buggy...
Weird. I think MS is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes changes to GIANT-AS.
Oddly, Slashdot is a fairly reliable source for news despite many people contributing, flaming, and trolling.
What I'd like to see in the Wikipedia is an addition of a modding system, similar to Slashdot. Long-time users and contributers are given mod points to spend on articles. Articles that are viewed often but remain unrevised for a long time are given bonus mods for being reliable. Articles that have higher mod values are harder to revise or edit, articles that have low or negative mod values are flagged for revision asap. Over time, certain articles will be virtually locked but new articles and highly fluid topics will still remain open and current.
I actually just ran a head-to-head test of Ad-Aware and GIANT-AS for my school.
I had two laptops infected from the self-loading spyware websites and loaded a bunch of manually installed spyware (the ones usually packaged with P2P programs and such) and then ran the two anti-spyware programs.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware found 53 objects GIANT missed. GIANT found 171 objects Lavasoft missed.
Ad-Aware appears to just clean enough components out of spyware to disable them while GIANT seems a little more obsessive. On the other hand, each antispyware program seems to have areas of specialty that the other doesn't. From my test, it seems that Ad-Aware picked up files (and not just cookies) that GIANT doesn't and GIANT picks up registry snippets that Ad-Aware ignores. Both programs have a hard time with trojans that make a point of hiding or overwhelming the CPU during anti-spyware scans. Incidentally, Spybot is a decent concept with a lot of cool free features but it's not updated often enough to be considered a legitimate contender.
Regardless, one should use a combination of passive and active products. On Windows XP machines, I like a combination of SP2, Zone-Alarm, Proxomitron, Spyware Blaster, and Ad-Aware. I've gone for months without anything worse than a few cookies.
A contract requires an exchange of things (goods, money, whatever) and requires both parties to agree and sign. Saying "You agree by opening the box" isn't valid. Also contracts must be open to negoation.
This made me wonder, what happens if you send a registered letter to a software company with their EULA or "contract" partially stricken out or rewritten - and you write on the outside envelope (in small print), "by opening this envelope, you consent to the agreement enclosed within"... And an employee opens the envelope? How well would that hold up in court and would a software company even be brave enough to contest it?
Just a twisted little thought. It might not be an effective way to fight a company, but it would create an amusing story for a slow news day.
I don't mind the SP2 firewall. It's better than nothing and it is far less intrusive than something like ZoneAlarm for the less technical person. The SP2 firewall is also particularly seamless if the user is working exclusively on a Windows network.
I had a user that needed strong security but had zero knowledge about technology... What I did was install a third party firewall, set it to "learning mode" for a weekend plus a business day, came back on Tuesday and quickly reviewed the programs requiring network access. After I ensured the system was still clean, I then locked down the firewall. If she needed help installing a new program, she could give me a call and I can lead her through the process in under twenty seconds by phone.
But yeah, for someone who doesn't need the additional security, SP2's firewall's not bad. It's really just a backup for everything other fix/patch on the machine. Restricting the registry and blocking ActiveX should be enough for most remotely-knowledgeable users.
Your suggestions are good. I'd also add that if your clients insist on using Windows XP and IE, I highly recommend installing SP2. The SP2 version of IE is much more secure and allows you to control "add-ons" or plugins. This, in turn, helps control the explorer browser where a user will spend a bit of time each day (and thus triggering some of the more annoying spyware).
Now, as to Spyware Guard, that's a good program but I prefer to run as few background programs as possible on a machine. You might consider Spyware Blaster from the same company. It's not as secure but considerably less resource intensive.
On an infected Windows XP machine, my usual course of action is to run Ad-Aware SE to clean the computer, install SP2, turn off the firewall and the built-in pop-up blocker. I then install proxomitron and Spyware Blaster. Then I run regedit and manually check out what stuff is remaining in the Run keys. That pretty much cleans out a machine, protects it fairly well, and keeps CPU usage to a minimum. It's also a simple enough solution that I can explain to most users in layman's terms - which is a bonus.
I work in a "laptop school" and one of my responsibilities is to review and research new laptop bags on the market. (Yeah, I have a weird job description.)
You really aren't supposed to carry more than 15% of your body weight. Any more than that and your body's not going to be happy over a prolonged period of time. Two laptops, a mouse, power bricks, doodads, CDs, and a couple of hardcover manuals will load down a 160 pound man. Also, even with sleeves, laptops subjected to continually cramming into a backpack will start to show signs of wear on the LCD. The keys of your keyboard will press into the screen and leave indents.
The short of this is, a normal backpack may not be the answer for everyone. Some people may need a combination of a backpack and one of those wheelie, travel bags with the extended handles. Some may opt for a bag with rigid compartments. Some may opt for a camping backpack with the funky bracing.
The author says there are "no means to resolve" but I beg to differ. There is clearly a means to resolve these inconsistencies in that particular article! Edit it!!
That creates a problem in itself. Actually, it's a problem in all documentation of history. Consider wars. Most books or articles about historical wars tend to be from the viewpoint of the victors or at least the superpowers involved.
Compare the accounts of the war of 1812. In Canada, the War of 1812 was a defining war for us. I can't remember ever hearing an American discussing the War of 1812.
According to Wikipedia, the combatants were the United States of America and the United Kingdom, which is technically correct, but the losses and the effects of the war was probably greatest on Canada. Non-Canadian accounts of the war tend to reduce the effects the war had on us to a paragraph or two. The war helped unify Upper and Lower Canada and gave us a cultural identity. As a Canadian, the discussion is worth more than a paragraph or two. How do you reconcile inconsistencies due to social/cultural relevance? Do we keep editing until the document becomes unwieldly large, inclusive, and flavourless?
I hate car analogies. Here's a question relating to the situation you mention:
You have a key to to open the lock on your car door. You have to use the key to start the motor. You wanted me to imagine a car that doesn't require a key to open the door and doesn't require a key to start the engine... Can we add unbreakable windows and remove the need to require a key to start the car? We've replaced an active security feature (using the key to start the engine) with a passive, hardening of existing security (unbreakable windshields). We've simplified the process for operating the car while maintaining a high level of security.
Just because you have multiple levels of security doesn't necessarily mean your product is better. In the car key example, your security increases by a multiple of two, rather than a power of two. Increasing the windshields' strength, you've reduced one step (50% decrease in startup time) without significant loss of security.
Revisiting your argument, why can we not have an operating system that is as usable as Windows with the security of Linux? Somebody already suggested that usability should be a sub-requirement of security. I would argue similarly. There are ways to harden a system invisibly (at least to the user).
Gee, brilliant idea. Telling the employee to "find another job" is usually a cop-out. If an employer offers a horrendous work environment, the onus is on the employee to leave and find a better job. If this continues to happen, and the unemployment rate is not at 0% (which it will probably never be at), what incentive would an employer ever have to change or improve?
Compounding matters, to stay competitive, other businesses in the same industry would also have to start cutting corners and offering the same lousy environment to keep up with the driven pace of the initial company. If I can bring in the same revenue as you with half the employees, guess which company will look more impressive to potential stock holders?? Very soon "finding a different job" is no longer an option. The good companies will have become employee-unfriendly or simply gone out of business. On some occasions, there's something to be said about employees standing their ground or making noise.
...My first thought was that terrorists were contemplating using flash mobs to create an instant victim base...
Sure, you have security crawling all around a popular building - big deal. The terrorist, posing as a fan of say, Britney Spears, creates a flash mob two blocks away from the secured building claiming that she was spotted there - and shows up at that spot with a bomb. Voila, several hundred victims appearing of their own free will, close enough to the security site to create absolute chaos.
It didn't even occur to me that the Man considered flash mobs to be a threat in themselves... After all, there are certain Amendment rights to make this train of thought silly. I thought that the government was concerned about the public - not their right to assemble!
Final Fantasy X is actually in my PS2 right now. I like the story but the game play is a little annoying.
When I first started playing, I was ticked-off that there were so many cut-scenes breaking the pace of my game play. I'm 3/4 through FFX now and I find myself getting ticked-off that the game play is interrupting my animated movie...
I would have liked FFX's gameplay more tied-in with the story such as NeverWinter Nights or Splinter Cell, to cut down on the extreme use of cut-scenes - or less emphasis on the constant need to power-up so we could spend more time exploring, like Myst or Syberia, and enjoying the pretty scenery and cool music.
Oh, another cool trick to mess with Best Buy (Canada) stores is to get flyers from your local Chinatown computer stores and have Best Buy price match them.
If you have time to kill, it's fun watching them trying to verify a price when the person on the other end only speaks Cantonese. The other amusing thing is, the product could have "fallen off the back of a truck" or be a clever knock-off or a repackaged OEM item, but the Chinese computer store would never admit to it. I got an iRiver mp3 player for almost 50% off this way and an ATI video card for 50% off as well. Hours of amusement and hundreds of dollars in savings - the sneakiest Best Buy employee can't outsmart a sneaky customer.
Living in Canada and having a Best Buy and Future Shop next to each other, I have to say that there IS a difference in sales quite often - but you have to research carefully.
For example, yesterday, I went into a Future Shop looking for a Game Boy Advanced SP. They had it bundled with Splinter Cell for a total of $139 (Cdn.). I walk over to Best Buy and they have the GBA SP bundled with Splinter Cell as well, for the same $139 Cdn., but it also came with Prince of Persia. That's an extra game for the same price as found in Future Shop, for the exact same price.
Best Buy owns Future Shop and the prices are almost always similar but Best Buy tends to toss in extra freebies on selected products.
Oh, I took the Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia games to EB and traded them in. So the difference between Best Buy's deal and Future Shop's deal becomes even more pronounced even if you're not interested in the extra freebie. There are advantages to Best Buy if you're willing to do the leg-work.
Now if the Supreme Court did say, "sure, charge a tariff on the ISPs", would this have meant that we, as Canadians, would not only have the right to make copies of CDs or download them on to our iPaqs, but that we would also then gain the right to upload and download them from the Internet?? All music, all the time, no music industry to bother us!
That, too, would have been an interesting situation.
Either way, the Supreme Court of Canada rocks my world. They actually have clue.
It's good news on the eve of Canada Day.
Actually, "hacker" has always had an negative conotation. By always, I mean since the early 80s.
A "hacker" used to suggest someone who tried to achieve a goal but found an obstacle in his way. The industrious person found a way to hack through the obstacle to reach his goal.
It was a pretty generic term that could apply to hobbyists who innovate, people who broke into computers, people who took a chainsaw to break down a door to access a server room. The thing is, all these acts have an air of subversiveness - subverting the status quo - and that's the connotation that's stuck with "hacker" until about 1987, where it became that much more subversive and, now, evil (with a mystique).
Back then, there were only two legitimate ways to be labeled a "hacker" - an established hacker publicly referred to you as a hacker or someone clueful in law enforcement referred to you as a hacker. In the good old days, it was very much a meritocracy. Nowadays, "hackers" are a dime a dozen chosen by clueless media people.
If it has an EULA and people have to "accept" the program before it runs, should it be placed in the same category as other spyware? If you say "no - it's still spyware all the same - people just click through the EULA without reading it", then what would you say about Windows XP, where you have an EULA and data gets transferred to and from Microsoft regularly (especially if you use Windows Media Player 9)?? Is that the same thing?
Users need to take some responsibility for clicking through EULAs. There are many laws against reckless driving but I still have to CHOOSE to drive down a one-way street in the wrong direction. Who's at fault here? The law for not being strong enough or me for being an idiot? Users who choose to install software without thought are in the same boat. There are limits to the effectiveness of any law.
If spyware makers create a valid EULA and requires a valid install procedure (one which doesn't hide additional installs, for example), I would say, grudgingly, that there's a place for these programs in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I work in a school so the security needs aren't as severe, but when a student's own laptop is completely bogged down in viruses and spyware, cleaning Windows XP actually goes a lot faster when you have the student's password. Spyware tends to cling to a profile and unless you're running that profile, it's difficult to see whether you've been successful.
I suppose we can re-image a machine that's been infected but students become severely traumatized when they lose work, programs, and the iTunes they've collected. On the other hand, I'm contributing to entire generations of people who would rather trade their passwords than lose their music collection. I don't know which makes me feel more guilty.
"It has nothing to do with what the people believe; it's what the government does."
...And so we outside the US do believe that the beliefs of the US Gov't *IS* representative of a significant portion of its people. You would hope that is true of any country - or else they're not a real democracy.
That's not entirely true. During most elections, the various political parties create "wedge" issues, such as abortion or education or medicare - where people have very definite opinions. In the U.S., Bush made his stance and the majority of Americans lined up behind him. That means that the majority of Americans support at least one of the party's views on an issue strongly enough to vote the party into power.
If the government follows through on all of its promises, they will have fulfilled their mandate and everyone who voted for them will perceive an overall gain for society rather than a loss. That's all that you can ask for.
I work in a laptop school. Every child from grades 9-12 have their own laptop. We have carts of laptops that can be wheeled into the classrooms for the younger grades. Your points are valid, except for one...
I would actually agree with everything you've posted. I've seen some really, really good stuff done with computers and I've seen classes where the machines are only used for Powerpoint and Word. I would also agree that laptops need to be replaced every three to five years - six years of use is very optimistic of you.
For learning, nothing is better than having a good teacher. There is, however, another major benefit to equipping every child with a laptop that most people neglect to consider. A lot of ideas - Aristotle's ideas, your ideas - come from discourse. Sharing ideas allow people to explore, dissect, and synthesize completely new ideas. In that respect, nothing's better than putting a communication technology into the hands of a student.
It ultimately comes down to what a society values. Taken to absolute extremes, if you value traditional learning, laptops are a tool - and possibly an unnecessary one. Kids graduating from this system are the ones I'd trust to build solid bridges and safe cars. If you value discourse and discovery, the sub-$100 laptops may just revolutionize a society's education system. You'd develop bosses who would know better than to arbitrarily mess around with someone's bridge or car designs.
(Notice that in the extreme examples I gave, "traditional" learning emphasized knowledge and application while the learning in a laptop school tended to emphasize communication and inquiry. The real-world distinction is a little fuzzier than that.)
Only having laptops for every five kids is waffling and not much different than the education system we have today. In an academic Utopia, all students should have access to laptops; they should all be made aware of the differences between knowledge, application, inquiry, and communication tasks - and then taught to use the appropriate tools for the task. Having five machines for thirty kids means that their use will have to be prescribed and destroys the "natural" flow of learning.
Society needs to say, "We value..." and act accordingly. Decide whether computers are "essential" or "no different than a calculator". Fence-sitting causes the education system to go around in circles.
[Obviously, computers don't do me any good since I'm babbling at this point.]
I was just on the phone with Rogers Cable as I started to type this response. I contacted a technical support droid who escalated this question up to a "senior support" person.
Their answer (after being put on hold for just three minutes) was "We're partnered with Yahoo Canada so we shouldn't fall under the reach of the US Patriot Act". Yahoo Canada's parent company, being situated in the US, makes me suspicious of this quick answer - but Rogers seems to think we're protected still and as long as they're willing to fight under this premise should they have to, I'm okay with it.
The techie then also pointed out that we can opt not to take their Rogers Yahoo bundle and keep our existing services, minus the web hosting and yahoo mail. We won't be forced to move to the Yahoo deal anytime soon.
Hope this puts your mind at rest a bit.
Kids tend to be better than teachers - or adults in general - at certain skills because they have the time to tinker and explore.
As a teacher or other professional, you are employed to do a specific job for 8 hours a day. You then go home and have only about another 8 hours to shop, clean the house, cook, visit friends, etc... When you are on the computer, it's to complete a task such as responding to e-mail and then you're off to another task such as laundry. Kids get on the computer and they *play*. They'll meander about, doing various tasks on the machine while exploring and experimenting. That gives them several hours of hands-on time per day compared to the average adult, plus what they've learned are not limited to e-mail or word processing.
I ran Microsoft Antispyware Beta on a computer here at school. Then I purposely ran Internet Explorer through a few websites I knew were laden with spyware. IE returned several debug errors. I thought, same as everyone, "well, it's beta so what do we expect??"
Then I remembered that Microsoft bought GIANT. They had an award-winning product. Shouldn't the core of Microsoft Antispyware be GIANT-AS?? Just changing the GUI and slapping the Microsoft name on a proven program shouldn't automagically render it buggy...
Weird. I think MS is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes changes to GIANT-AS.
Oddly, Slashdot is a fairly reliable source for news despite many people contributing, flaming, and trolling.
What I'd like to see in the Wikipedia is an addition of a modding system, similar to Slashdot. Long-time users and contributers are given mod points to spend on articles. Articles that are viewed often but remain unrevised for a long time are given bonus mods for being reliable. Articles that have higher mod values are harder to revise or edit, articles that have low or negative mod values are flagged for revision asap. Over time, certain articles will be virtually locked but new articles and highly fluid topics will still remain open and current.
I actually just ran a head-to-head test of Ad-Aware and GIANT-AS for my school.
I had two laptops infected from the self-loading spyware websites and loaded a bunch of manually installed spyware (the ones usually packaged with P2P programs and such) and then ran the two anti-spyware programs.
GIANT-AS
Files: 51
Registry: 279
Cookies: 7
Total: 337 pieces of spyware
Lavasoft
Files: 87 (including cookies)
Registry: 79
Total: 166 pieces of spyware
Lavasoft Ad-Aware found 53 objects GIANT missed. GIANT found 171 objects Lavasoft missed.
Ad-Aware appears to just clean enough components out of spyware to disable them while GIANT seems a little more obsessive. On the other hand, each antispyware program seems to have areas of specialty that the other doesn't. From my test, it seems that Ad-Aware picked up files (and not just cookies) that GIANT doesn't and GIANT picks up registry snippets that Ad-Aware ignores. Both programs have a hard time with trojans that make a point of hiding or overwhelming the CPU during anti-spyware scans. Incidentally, Spybot is a decent concept with a lot of cool free features but it's not updated often enough to be considered a legitimate contender.
Regardless, one should use a combination of passive and active products. On Windows XP machines, I like a combination of SP2, Zone-Alarm, Proxomitron, Spyware Blaster, and Ad-Aware. I've gone for months without anything worse than a few cookies.
I went to the Talon site and looked at the machines they were proposing. It immediately struck me that I had seen these military robots before, in 1983:a uncher.shtml
http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/83/pacrats/missilel
Yo Joe!
Just a twisted little thought. It might not be an effective way to fight a company, but it would create an amusing story for a slow news day.
I don't mind the SP2 firewall. It's better than nothing and it is far less intrusive than something like ZoneAlarm for the less technical person. The SP2 firewall is also particularly seamless if the user is working exclusively on a Windows network.
I had a user that needed strong security but had zero knowledge about technology... What I did was install a third party firewall, set it to "learning mode" for a weekend plus a business day, came back on Tuesday and quickly reviewed the programs requiring network access. After I ensured the system was still clean, I then locked down the firewall. If she needed help installing a new program, she could give me a call and I can lead her through the process in under twenty seconds by phone.
But yeah, for someone who doesn't need the additional security, SP2's firewall's not bad. It's really just a backup for everything other fix/patch on the machine. Restricting the registry and blocking ActiveX should be enough for most remotely-knowledgeable users.
Your suggestions are good. I'd also add that if your clients insist on using Windows XP and IE, I highly recommend installing SP2. The SP2 version of IE is much more secure and allows you to control "add-ons" or plugins. This, in turn, helps control the explorer browser where a user will spend a bit of time each day (and thus triggering some of the more annoying spyware).
Now, as to Spyware Guard, that's a good program but I prefer to run as few background programs as possible on a machine. You might consider Spyware Blaster from the same company. It's not as secure but considerably less resource intensive.
On an infected Windows XP machine, my usual course of action is to run Ad-Aware SE to clean the computer, install SP2, turn off the firewall and the built-in pop-up blocker. I then install proxomitron and Spyware Blaster. Then I run regedit and manually check out what stuff is remaining in the Run keys. That pretty much cleans out a machine, protects it fairly well, and keeps CPU usage to a minimum. It's also a simple enough solution that I can explain to most users in layman's terms - which is a bonus.
I work in a "laptop school" and one of my responsibilities is to review and research new laptop bags on the market. (Yeah, I have a weird job description.)
You really aren't supposed to carry more than 15% of your body weight. Any more than that and your body's not going to be happy over a prolonged period of time. Two laptops, a mouse, power bricks, doodads, CDs, and a couple of hardcover manuals will load down a 160 pound man. Also, even with sleeves, laptops subjected to continually cramming into a backpack will start to show signs of wear on the LCD. The keys of your keyboard will press into the screen and leave indents.
The short of this is, a normal backpack may not be the answer for everyone. Some people may need a combination of a backpack and one of those wheelie, travel bags with the extended handles. Some may opt for a bag with rigid compartments. Some may opt for a camping backpack with the funky bracing.
Here's a Canadian site discussing the war:
http://www.hamilton-scourge.city.hamilton.on.ca/w
Here's Wikipedia's article on the War of 1812:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812
According to Wikipedia, the combatants were the United States of America and the United Kingdom, which is technically correct, but the losses and the effects of the war was probably greatest on Canada. Non-Canadian accounts of the war tend to reduce the effects the war had on us to a paragraph or two. The war helped unify Upper and Lower Canada and gave us a cultural identity. As a Canadian, the discussion is worth more than a paragraph or two. How do you reconcile inconsistencies due to social/cultural relevance? Do we keep editing until the document becomes unwieldly large, inclusive, and flavourless?
I hate car analogies. Here's a question relating to the situation you mention:
You have a key to to open the lock on your car door. You have to use the key to start the motor. You wanted me to imagine a car that doesn't require a key to open the door and doesn't require a key to start the engine... Can we add unbreakable windows and remove the need to require a key to start the car? We've replaced an active security feature (using the key to start the engine) with a passive, hardening of existing security (unbreakable windshields). We've simplified the process for operating the car while maintaining a high level of security.
Just because you have multiple levels of security doesn't necessarily mean your product is better. In the car key example, your security increases by a multiple of two, rather than a power of two. Increasing the windshields' strength, you've reduced one step (50% decrease in startup time) without significant loss of security.
Revisiting your argument, why can we not have an operating system that is as usable as Windows with the security of Linux? Somebody already suggested that usability should be a sub-requirement of security. I would argue similarly. There are ways to harden a system invisibly (at least to the user).
Gee, brilliant idea. Telling the employee to "find another job" is usually a cop-out. If an employer offers a horrendous work environment, the onus is on the employee to leave and find a better job. If this continues to happen, and the unemployment rate is not at 0% (which it will probably never be at), what incentive would an employer ever have to change or improve?
Compounding matters, to stay competitive, other businesses in the same industry would also have to start cutting corners and offering the same lousy environment to keep up with the driven pace of the initial company. If I can bring in the same revenue as you with half the employees, guess which company will look more impressive to potential stock holders?? Very soon "finding a different job" is no longer an option. The good companies will have become employee-unfriendly or simply gone out of business. On some occasions, there's something to be said about employees standing their ground or making noise.
...My first thought was that terrorists were contemplating using flash mobs to create an instant victim base...
Sure, you have security crawling all around a popular building - big deal. The terrorist, posing as a fan of say, Britney Spears, creates a flash mob two blocks away from the secured building claiming that she was spotted there - and shows up at that spot with a bomb. Voila, several hundred victims appearing of their own free will, close enough to the security site to create absolute chaos.
It didn't even occur to me that the Man considered flash mobs to be a threat in themselves... After all, there are certain Amendment rights to make this train of thought silly. I thought that the government was concerned about the public - not their right to assemble!
Final Fantasy X is actually in my PS2 right now. I like the story but the game play is a little annoying.
When I first started playing, I was ticked-off that there were so many cut-scenes breaking the pace of my game play. I'm 3/4 through FFX now and I find myself getting ticked-off that the game play is interrupting my animated movie...
I would have liked FFX's gameplay more tied-in with the story such as NeverWinter Nights or Splinter Cell, to cut down on the extreme use of cut-scenes - or less emphasis on the constant need to power-up so we could spend more time exploring, like Myst or Syberia, and enjoying the pretty scenery and cool music.
Oh, another cool trick to mess with Best Buy (Canada) stores is to get flyers from your local Chinatown computer stores and have Best Buy price match them.
If you have time to kill, it's fun watching them trying to verify a price when the person on the other end only speaks Cantonese. The other amusing thing is, the product could have "fallen off the back of a truck" or be a clever knock-off or a repackaged OEM item, but the Chinese computer store would never admit to it. I got an iRiver mp3 player for almost 50% off this way and an ATI video card for 50% off as well. Hours of amusement and hundreds of dollars in savings - the sneakiest Best Buy employee can't outsmart a sneaky customer.
Living in Canada and having a Best Buy and Future Shop next to each other, I have to say that there IS a difference in sales quite often - but you have to research carefully.
For example, yesterday, I went into a Future Shop looking for a Game Boy Advanced SP. They had it bundled with Splinter Cell for a total of $139 (Cdn.). I walk over to Best Buy and they have the GBA SP bundled with Splinter Cell as well, for the same $139 Cdn., but it also came with Prince of Persia. That's an extra game for the same price as found in Future Shop, for the exact same price.
Best Buy owns Future Shop and the prices are almost always similar but Best Buy tends to toss in extra freebies on selected products.
Oh, I took the Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia games to EB and traded them in. So the difference between Best Buy's deal and Future Shop's deal becomes even more pronounced even if you're not interested in the extra freebie. There are advantages to Best Buy if you're willing to do the leg-work.
It's "eh", eh, not "ay", eh. Oy vey.
What part of MSN don't we have in Canada? We have MSN Canada (www.msn.ca).
Now if the Supreme Court did say, "sure, charge a tariff on the ISPs", would this have meant that we, as Canadians, would not only have the right to make copies of CDs or download them on to our iPaqs, but that we would also then gain the right to upload and download them from the Internet?? All music, all the time, no music industry to bother us!
That, too, would have been an interesting situation.
Either way, the Supreme Court of Canada rocks my world. They actually have clue.
It's good news on the eve of Canada Day.
Actually, "hacker" has always had an negative conotation. By always, I mean since the early 80s.
A "hacker" used to suggest someone who tried to achieve a goal but found an obstacle in his way. The industrious person found a way to hack through the obstacle to reach his goal.
It was a pretty generic term that could apply to hobbyists who innovate, people who broke into computers, people who took a chainsaw to break down a door to access a server room. The thing is, all these acts have an air of subversiveness - subverting the status quo - and that's the connotation that's stuck with "hacker" until about 1987, where it became that much more subversive and, now, evil (with a mystique).
Back then, there were only two legitimate ways to be labeled a "hacker" - an established hacker publicly referred to you as a hacker or someone clueful in law enforcement referred to you as a hacker. In the good old days, it was very much a meritocracy. Nowadays, "hackers" are a dime a dozen chosen by clueless media people.
If it has an EULA and people have to "accept" the program before it runs, should it be placed in the same category as other spyware? If you say "no - it's still spyware all the same - people just click through the EULA without reading it", then what would you say about Windows XP, where you have an EULA and data gets transferred to and from Microsoft regularly (especially if you use Windows Media Player 9)?? Is that the same thing?
Users need to take some responsibility for clicking through EULAs. There are many laws against reckless driving but I still have to CHOOSE to drive down a one-way street in the wrong direction. Who's at fault here? The law for not being strong enough or me for being an idiot? Users who choose to install software without thought are in the same boat. There are limits to the effectiveness of any law.
If spyware makers create a valid EULA and requires a valid install procedure (one which doesn't hide additional installs, for example), I would say, grudgingly, that there's a place for these programs in the world.