Stop whining about how they're forcing you into piracy, and just buy it over the internet like a normal person.
Some of us don't have region free DVD players and can't be arsed with the extra expense of finding a region free solution or a new player. It's got a lot to do with the artificial limitations the media companies put in place a long time ago to try and gouge the consumer.
I agree with "that guy" when he says that if it ain't available in R4 on the release day don't expect me to buy it when they finally (if ever) get around to it. Not a technical choice, but a moral protest against the wank that is region coding.
Now we can miss faster! It's win/win. The quicker we miss the first target and kill a bunch of non-related civillians the quicker we can launch a second attack and kill even more civillians.
Off on a tangent though, it seems we (collectively as the human species, but some nations more than others) are putting so much time and effort into finding better ways of killing each other off. Wouldn't it seem that a better expenditure for most of that energy would be a little patience so we can all get along and resolve our differences?
Me; I'd probably drop the guy a brief informal note asking permission to reuse the code and see what he does. More often than not if he's like me he'll probably say "sure, I don't mind."
I skimmed most of the posts up to this point and this is the first that clearly said "call the guy and ask him". No fair, I was going to say that!
It stands to reason that if you email the guy and point out his post then tell him his code solves your problem nicely he will probably let you use it. What you don't do is say that you found it already in use and that you'd like to verify the license.
Has nobody ever considered that the guy in question might have been an ex employee and the code in the program and the code on the web are the same thing? Perhaps he posted it there for some crazy reason.
How would this work with file vault? I have all of my data in file vaults. I know it's just a disk file at the end of the day but can you simply back up the file to another machine, reinstall and copy the file back and be up and running again?
The beauty of OTR messaging is that it claims to guarantee perfect forward secrecy. In other words, if you lose control of your private keys no previous conversation is compromised. This is a big plus, because even if they force you to turn over the keys they can't see the previous conversations.
It works (as I understand) by using your key pair to derive and exchange public session keys. The session keys then are used to do actual encryption and are changed frequently. The private key at each end is only ever stored in RAM and is discarded when the session ends or after a timeout.
It's neat because even listening in to the whole session and obtaining the public session keys isn't enough to compromise the session. Of course, having the public keys and obtaining the master private key may go a long way to helping with a mathematical attack of the algorithm.
Your ideas intrigue me, can I subscribe to you newsletter?
I must concede that I like your plan, but I forsee one difficulty:
Botnet protocols can be made encrypted and travel on random ports.
With protocols like Skype and Bittorrent using encryptions and any number of random TCP or UDP ports to bypass firewalls it's quite hard to know what is legitimate Internet usage by your client and what is from the botnets these days.
Given your experience, I'm very surprised to see you make this statement.
It is my experience that users read popups because they are unsure of what's happening. The ones they see regularly they eventually start to be ignored and the user just clicks "piss off and let me do my work". Any unexpected popups get read because they're too afraid of bollocksing up their computer. Usually they come in (when at work) and ask what they should be clicking if it's confusing.
It's also the case that a lot of popups are from shifty websites that say something along the lines of "your computer is at risk, let us install our risk assessment and repair program for you" and the user (not knowing any better) clicks yes because they think they're getting a good deal that will make their computer better.
I don't give most users much credit but they are generally pretty concerned about screwing their computer because that would mean they can't get whatever it is done. Most of them just do stupid things because said stupid thing is passed off by some shifty website or "expert" as being a good thing to do.
Unless we deny users the right to use their computers... or educate them.
You can't educate most of them. They don't want to learn. It's unfortunate but it's the truth. Laypeople think that "firewall" and "anti virus" is all they need to keep them safe from nasty people. I have the unfortunate task of dealing with people like that on a daily basis (many ask why I'm so jaded) and they don't care what the real experts say.
If you tell average Joe that he shouldn't do something that he wants to because it's a bad idea and then Joe's "expert" mate says "nah man you've got firewall and AV installed you'll be right" he'll ignore you. He will listen to the "expert" mate of theirs that installed Windows once or twice using the restore disk that came with their shiny Dull PC and now thinks they know everything because the "expert" doesn't get in their way of doing stupid things.
The number of users who click 'yes' and 'no' will be split 50/50, depending on the question. I don't think it's possible to predict what people are going to click because it all depends on the type of message and the wording.
A lot of people always click allow or always click block when ZoneAlarm pops up a warning. They'll always click "Allow" when Windows pops up and says that they are trying to install an unsigned program. They have seen that type of dialog before and kind of know what to expect when they make their usual response.
Random Internet questions are different because people aren't expecting them to be there. There is no preconceived notion of how to respond to the random question other than to read it and work out what it's trying to say.
I should be able to buy a cell phone and use it with any carrier I choose, technical limitations notwithstanding.
That was the original point of the GSM standard. You were supposed to be able to buy a single phone and take it anywhere in the world that supported GSM. Sure, you may or may not have to pop in another SIM card if your provider didn't have roaming in the place where you were at. The whole locking the phones thing breaks that compatibility, as do the different band allocations around the place now.
If you want to unlock your (common) mobile phone Google can help. The Nokias can be unlocked by entering some code on the keypad that's derived from the IEMI number in the phone. There are several sites that will take an IEMI and give you the code. The same thing exists for all other major brands.
As for iPhone being locked to T-mobile. It sucks because I want one (not that I can get one here) but I don't want to be forced to use a particular carrier (of Apple's choice) just to use what is essentially a standard mobile phone with a few nice extra features.
I agree. You can't design and implement the patch, regression test it, functional test it, test that it actually upgrades a live system without borking it and then package it up for the customer in 48 hours.
I've been in similar situations regularly with managers pushing for shorter and shorter release times. When they rush it out without allowing time for thought of what the implications of their one "small" change are they invariably alter the system in some way that breaks regression testing. It's their fault it broke because they didn't allow a time for a proper investigation but they invariably blame the developers anyway.
Correction. This is another reason why you shouldn't pay money for DRM'ed content.
I have always been wary of things with DRM including iTunes. I have purchased a couple of tracks from iTunes but I immediately convert them to unencumbered MP3s so that I don't risk losing the music if iTunes one day decides that I shouldn't be able to play it any more. At least iTunes allows me to do that still. Sure you lose a bit of quality, but while ever you can play the original files it's good. It's only when you can't play the encrypted files that you need to revert to the MP3s. I won't be buying any more tracks from there though.
I would hazard a guess that a similar thing could have been done with the MLB videos (probably not legally), but people were either complacent or just not aware of the problems DRM could cause them.
Then you need to speak with the people you associate with about your expectations of privacy. It's not facebook's fault your friends are violating your privacy.
This is true, but Facebook, Myspace and others provide a really simple means for people to upload photos and associate them with email addresses or real names. They are a data harvester's dream.
Trying to tell some of the (I'll hesitate to use the word I want) lesser savvy users why I don't want them putting my real name, anything about me or photos of me into the Intarwebs is like trying to talk to a brick wall. They just don't get why it's a problem. One idiot went ahead and actually put my phone number on her myspace page (after my little chat about why not to) with a helpful hint of "he's got a new number now, if he hasn't told you yet here it is". Not like I didn't change my number so that some of those people didn't have it in the first place!!!
I also had a myspace account that had no identifying marks in it. I used an alias and a dodgy email that I hardly use for anything (except dodgy, incapable of using BCC: to 100 people friends) to sign up to see what it was all about. One of my friends decided to try and add me using that email address and put my real name in one of the fields. Until I deleted it, if you searched for my real name on Myspace you could find that profile even though I'd never entered my true name into it.
You could probably s/myspace/facebook/g in this post and still be mostly accurate too.
Of the 62% who paid nothing, how many of them would have bought the disc at retail at launch?
Of the 62% who paid nothing, how many were previewing the album and then went back and paid for it if they liked it? That is pretty common practice in record stores. You get them to put the CD on and you listen to a few tracks to decide if you like enough of it to justify the price.
Another thought springs to mind... is this even that critical? Doesn't leopard have the time machine in it? Can't you just go back and get your files out of the time machine if they were that important?
I haven't "upgraded" yet so I don't actually know much about this Time Machine thing and how it works.
Knowing it exists means you can also work around it by doing copies every time and only manually deleting the source entry when you're sure the copy has completed properly. Now all you need to do is be mindful every time you want to move a file anywhere.
Sucks to be a Mac user (I am one, I know) but I'm sure Apple will have this fixed pretty quick.
In one way, GPL allows anyone to use the sources of any GPL O/S to 'build' a new O/S, as long as all copyrighted material is left out.
This has allowed a few people to 're-release' the combination/dependency/compatibility work of a commercial GPL O/S
If they left out all the copyrighted stuff there would be nothing left. What they are obliged to leave out is all the stuff that they are not at liberty to reproduce. This can include non-foss code, trademarks (Redhat, the redhat logo, etc), patented things if the original distribution has paid to license and distribute the patented material, etc.
Internal knowledge, it seems, is unfakeable.
You haven't dealt with many technical vendors lately have you? They all claim to have an immense knowledge of the internals of whatever it is they're selling but most have a support staff that are nothing more than trained monkeys. We've dealt with too many companies where they assume you're a moron and the level 1 support monkeys ask you to do dumb thinks like reboot or run 'make clean' and a long list of other equally useless suggestions when trying to solve a clearly defined problem.
I could list the handful of good companies I've dealt with and the list would be very short. I will say that Trolltech and Ada Core tech were two of the most helpful in terms of real solutions to real problems (not OS vendors, I know). Most of the time Trolltech even came back with "we are aware of this and it's fixed in the next version, this patch should fix our software or you can do this workaround in your own code". Redhat falls somewhere between good and bad. I've dealt with hundreds of other support services and they range from good to really really bad.
On the other hand (like the post above), CentOS allows people to have a good look at RHEL without having to request a temporary 'test licence'
(Yes they are available on request, you just have to dig a little deeper to find them).
When I evaluated RHEL for the company I used to work at test licenses were available without digging. They were linked from the main product page. The test license license agreement was enormous though, and only lasts 30 days. In some of the work I was doing (ClearCase) we needed to prove that the server and modules would be reliable over a longer term than that (the Clearcase kernel modules seemed to have a habit of bringing down the whole machine at seemingly random times). In the end we installed CentOS and ran the tests over some number of months. My evaluation machines eventually turned into productions machines with a tonne of NX sessions hanging off them. CentOS was pretty neat.
Redhat wins with their support and their cool Redhat network. It was nice to log into that as an admin and see "all" of the PCs we had listed out along with which ones needed software updates. You could use the RHN console to schedule updates on machines, install a new package one one or many machines or do a bunch of other things. It was all pretty cool. As an admin it would have simplified my job of having to check all the RH machines for updates or to roll out a new package that everyone needed because they were listed all in one place neatly for me. I can see why it is useful to pay for a license for each machine when you have something like the RHN. It gives you nothing you can't do yourself with a bit of ssh and some scripting, but it makes it pretty and has wank factor to impress non-technical people as well.
I taught myself LaTeX in the first year of my Ph.D. Best thing I ever did. OO.org equations can be entered into the editor using a similar type of notation to TeX. I felt quite at home using OO.org after I understood the basics of LaTeX.
There really comes a point where the right tool for the job. A P.O.S word processor is great for hacking out a letter to aunt millie asking her about the weather in Kazakhstan. It certainly saves the hacking out the text into an editor and a 'make' phase of running the right LaTeX commands to get a printable version.
LaTeX is amazingly simple for enormously complex documents. You just define your format requirements at the top of the TeX sources and then hammer in text; assigning tags to hint at the layout engine what you need it to do for you. If you need to change the entire document format/layout you edit the configuration in one place and the whole document changes.
Sure, it's a learning curve and you have to remember to run the LaTeX interpeter to actually get a document but the effort saved in other places more than makes up for the hassle.
At least on the Mac you don't get (full) admin rights by just logging in as your user. There are some permissions set on users who you tag as admins so they have some level of access to things without the admin password. Dragging an application bundle to the system-wide Applications folder is one thing they can do without being prompted for a password. I believe (Though I haven't checked it lately) they you can overwrite some of the system libraries too so long as they're not being used at the time.
A certain other OS makes the first user on the machine the full and powerful admin by default so they are extremely vulnerable to any form of exploit.
Most Linux distros take the other tact and there is no admin ability at all without confirming it by a password. Worst you can lose if you're sensible is your user files.
IT is a service industry, yet. I am in the business of providing a reliable, stable network to the company I work for. That includes the Internet connection. There's a lot that passes over my Internet links. Email, WWW, some VoIP, and whatever else I need to allow. Email and the handful of calls that we do need to route over VoIP are of the highest priority.
I run a tight Internet policy so that I can guarantee that some clueless n00b won't come along and set up his torrent client to run flat out, effectively slowing down the connection for everyone else and breaking email or VoIP. Like most admins I don't have the budget to bring in a bigger or more links to handle general traffic separately.
I don't need worms on my internal network hammering at my servers. It's one thing to keep them patched and another to protect them from the very client machines that need to use them. I don't run firewalls on the internal machines because that would limit their utility, achieve no real effect and cause unnecessary restrictions.
Now, why wouldn't people be able to get web content or email through my network? The only good reason that content wouldn't be delivered to them is if it failed the virus or spam tests at the border. In either case the user is notified and the content is quarantined. If they really need the content they can follow the directions they are given when they are notified and one of the admins can run further tests to yay or nay it then pass it on if it's really safe.
Thus far, I have had no complaints except about access to external pop3 servers being blocked. I haven't (to date) blocked external webmail providers like Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail. I don't see any need to, as most webmail services these days offer spam and virus filtering anyway. Sure, there's always the chance something will slip through but the protections running on each local machine should hopefully catch it.
I'd really like to block some of the streaming video sites because I see one user (unfortunately the only person above me) using a LOT of data from youtube (2G in aobut 8 hours) and he wasn't even in the office. He'd just set it up do download a stack of files so he could watch them later. So far I haven't blocked it yet. I am tempted because it is wasteful and while it only costs a little, it's still a cost that has to be covered.
There are a lot of things that you can do to protect your network and limit what your users can and cannot do without actually imposing restrictions that they will notice. The only major blockages I put on people is the external pipe.
I've really only talked about the Internet pipe here. That is the biggest place that I see problems with everyone expecting to do everything, regardless of how it might effect things. I have pretty strict rules on doing other things in my network too. Nothing changes are made without good reason. If it ain't broke don't fix it, so they say. It's important to keep the network running as the users expect it to. With changes comes the potential for breakages even if those breakages didn't occur in your test cases.
I've been asked to do some really dumb things in my time. The most blatantly offensive two I was asked to do was store passwords unencrypted or require users to store their passwords in a text file so the boss could access their accounts (why I don't know; the admins had enough access if it was ever needed). The other was to forward all email passing through the server to the director's mailbox so he could "keep abreast of company goings on" (read: snoop). That violated my sense of privacy - it's a reasonable expectation that if I send an email to a person only that person gets it, not that person and his boss. When the boss wouldn't back down I resigned.
So, when providing a service you have to impose restrictions to keep the quality of that service high and also protect your users. There is only so much budget for bandwidth, hardware
I am about the same age. I actually meant ~ten years _ago_, although I forgot to type that. Also, I don't live in the US.
When I was around the 12-15 mark you needed proof that you were 18 to buy the fuel. When I got to 18ish you also needed proof of identity and address, which they insisted on recording at every shop where you could get the fuel packs.
Depending on the operating system iso file you may or may not get the BOFH treatment from me.
Huge usage isn't a problem if it's justified. I don't record anything from our ISP's local mirror because it has terabytes of stuff and it's not metered (doesn't cost us). There's about every Linux distribution on there you could think of, a couple of BSDs, a Windows software archive (was Tucows, now I think it's Majorgeeks but I haven't checked).
Huge usage usually == youtube or pr0nz. If I have a copy on DVD on my desk within 20 minute then access_log might get a little forgetful about what you downloaded;) I'm not a complete bastard (yet) but I am the point of blame if/when someone comes knocking with a complaint about something. It's nice to make sure the users know that they are accountable for their actions.
Now how do I get my shell script to sleep for a random time between loading pf.conf and pf_drop_boss_packets.conf in a loop?;)
I agree that there are ways of tunneling data through the HTTP and HTTPS proxies. You're never going to stop it happening. Best you can do is make it hard so that the technically inept can't abuse your system and then keep an eye on who's doing what.
Proxy logins let you keep track of who is sending how much data through the proxy at least. It's amazing how emailing everyone with the top 10 proxy users with their total usage each week cuts your Internet usage bill. Nobody wants to be in the top 10 because the top 10 get special attention to what they were doing.
Amateur rocketry was dying anyway. I remember trying to buy rocket engines when I was a bit younger (~10 years) and you already needed to provide photo ID with your current address on it. I gave up on that day, as did a lot of people because you can't even find rocketry supplies in the local model store anymore.
In other news, one sixth of one third of all IT admins are stupid enough to not block P2P traffic on their networks.
It's quite hard to block p2p traffic explicitly while leaving other protocols open. P2P traffic moves in a number of arbitrary ports and uses a lot of protocols. New protocols are coming and going regularly. L7 packet filtering helps with the common protocols but if they are also using encryption you've got bugger all chance of blocking them totally.
I was playing cat and mouse for a while. Block Kazaa and they move to Emule. Block that and they move to torrent. Block that and they start using gnutella. The game goes on and on.
The only way I've found to reliably block all p2p and other things without major hassles in the firewall is to block everything, install a proxy server for HTTP, HTTPS and FTP and then only punch out ports from trusted machines and with good valid reasons from people (and a paper trail for those reasons). eg, the PBX can talk to our upstream SIP provider, the mail server can speak port 25 to the outside world but nobody else can and my desktop PC has rsync access to our ISPs file mirror.
I have procedures in place to get things like torrents because they occasionally have legitimate uses. I have one machine that only I have a user account on. If someone thinks a torrent is useful and related to work they can ask me to get that torrent for them. It keeps them from running clients on their own PCs and still allows them to get files if needed. Half the time they just want torrents of files like Linux distros that are available on our ISP's mirror at no data charge to us.
With all that security comes problems. The boss wants to violate his own Internet policy (bittorrent for movies and all that) and the new firewall stops him from doing it. He has a personal email account he insists on checking with pop3 but can't now because that's blocked. There are no end of complaints about how all these violating things that used to be possible now aren't. For many admins there is a lot of pressure from management to not block things because the managers want to have a free run. Not every IT person is gutsy enough to stand up and say "no fucking way".
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Some of us don't have region free DVD players and can't be arsed with the extra expense of finding a region free solution or a new player. It's got a lot to do with the artificial limitations the media companies put in place a long time ago to try and gouge the consumer.
I agree with "that guy" when he says that if it ain't available in R4 on the release day don't expect me to buy it when they finally (if ever) get around to it. Not a technical choice, but a moral protest against the wank that is region coding.
Now we can miss faster! It's win/win. The quicker we miss the first target and kill a bunch of non-related civillians the quicker we can launch a second attack and kill even more civillians.
Off on a tangent though, it seems we (collectively as the human species, but some nations more than others) are putting so much time and effort into finding better ways of killing each other off. Wouldn't it seem that a better expenditure for most of that energy would be a little patience so we can all get along and resolve our differences?
I skimmed most of the posts up to this point and this is the first that clearly said "call the guy and ask him". No fair, I was going to say that!
It stands to reason that if you email the guy and point out his post then tell him his code solves your problem nicely he will probably let you use it. What you don't do is say that you found it already in use and that you'd like to verify the license.
Has nobody ever considered that the guy in question might have been an ex employee and the code in the program and the code on the web are the same thing? Perhaps he posted it there for some crazy reason.
How would this work with file vault? I have all of my data in file vaults. I know it's just a disk file at the end of the day but can you simply back up the file to another machine, reinstall and copy the file back and be up and running again?
The beauty of OTR messaging is that it claims to guarantee perfect forward secrecy. In other words, if you lose control of your private keys no previous conversation is compromised. This is a big plus, because even if they force you to turn over the keys they can't see the previous conversations.
It works (as I understand) by using your key pair to derive and exchange public session keys. The session keys then are used to do actual encryption and are changed frequently. The private key at each end is only ever stored in RAM and is discarded when the session ends or after a timeout.
It's neat because even listening in to the whole session and obtaining the public session keys isn't enough to compromise the session. Of course, having the public keys and obtaining the master private key may go a long way to helping with a mathematical attack of the algorithm.
Your ideas intrigue me, can I subscribe to you newsletter?
I must concede that I like your plan, but I forsee one difficulty:
Botnet protocols can be made encrypted and travel on random ports.
With protocols like Skype and Bittorrent using encryptions and any number of random TCP or UDP ports to bypass firewalls it's quite hard to know what is legitimate Internet usage by your client and what is from the botnets these days.
It is my experience that users read popups because they are unsure of what's happening. The ones they see regularly they eventually start to be ignored and the user just clicks "piss off and let me do my work". Any unexpected popups get read because they're too afraid of bollocksing up their computer. Usually they come in (when at work) and ask what they should be clicking if it's confusing.
It's also the case that a lot of popups are from shifty websites that say something along the lines of "your computer is at risk, let us install our risk assessment and repair program for you" and the user (not knowing any better) clicks yes because they think they're getting a good deal that will make their computer better.
I don't give most users much credit but they are generally pretty concerned about screwing their computer because that would mean they can't get whatever it is done. Most of them just do stupid things because said stupid thing is passed off by some shifty website or "expert" as being a good thing to do.
You can't educate most of them. They don't want to learn. It's unfortunate but it's the truth. Laypeople think that "firewall" and "anti virus" is all they need to keep them safe from nasty people. I have the unfortunate task of dealing with people like that on a daily basis (many ask why I'm so jaded) and they don't care what the real experts say.
If you tell average Joe that he shouldn't do something that he wants to because it's a bad idea and then Joe's "expert" mate says "nah man you've got firewall and AV installed you'll be right" he'll ignore you. He will listen to the "expert" mate of theirs that installed Windows once or twice using the restore disk that came with their shiny Dull PC and now thinks they know everything because the "expert" doesn't get in their way of doing stupid things.
The number of users who click 'yes' and 'no' will be split 50/50, depending on the question. I don't think it's possible to predict what people are going to click because it all depends on the type of message and the wording.
A lot of people always click allow or always click block when ZoneAlarm pops up a warning. They'll always click "Allow" when Windows pops up and says that they are trying to install an unsigned program. They have seen that type of dialog before and kind of know what to expect when they make their usual response.
Random Internet questions are different because people aren't expecting them to be there. There is no preconceived notion of how to respond to the random question other than to read it and work out what it's trying to say.
That was the original point of the GSM standard. You were supposed to be able to buy a single phone and take it anywhere in the world that supported GSM. Sure, you may or may not have to pop in another SIM card if your provider didn't have roaming in the place where you were at. The whole locking the phones thing breaks that compatibility, as do the different band allocations around the place now.
If you want to unlock your (common) mobile phone Google can help. The Nokias can be unlocked by entering some code on the keypad that's derived from the IEMI number in the phone. There are several sites that will take an IEMI and give you the code. The same thing exists for all other major brands.
As for iPhone being locked to T-mobile. It sucks because I want one (not that I can get one here) but I don't want to be forced to use a particular carrier (of Apple's choice) just to use what is essentially a standard mobile phone with a few nice extra features.
I think they're smoking crack.
I agree. You can't design and implement the patch, regression test it, functional test it, test that it actually upgrades a live system without borking it and then package it up for the customer in 48 hours.
I've been in similar situations regularly with managers pushing for shorter and shorter release times. When they rush it out without allowing time for thought of what the implications of their one "small" change are they invariably alter the system in some way that breaks regression testing. It's their fault it broke because they didn't allow a time for a proper investigation but they invariably blame the developers anyway.
Ahh but those legal and financial gurus at Apple took care of all that for me when they made iTunes able to encode to MP3 files. They are so smart :p
I have always been wary of things with DRM including iTunes. I have purchased a couple of tracks from iTunes but I immediately convert them to unencumbered MP3s so that I don't risk losing the music if iTunes one day decides that I shouldn't be able to play it any more. At least iTunes allows me to do that still. Sure you lose a bit of quality, but while ever you can play the original files it's good. It's only when you can't play the encrypted files that you need to revert to the MP3s. I won't be buying any more tracks from there though.
I would hazard a guess that a similar thing could have been done with the MLB videos (probably not legally), but people were either complacent or just not aware of the problems DRM could cause them.
This is true, but Facebook, Myspace and others provide a really simple means for people to upload photos and associate them with email addresses or real names. They are a data harvester's dream.
Trying to tell some of the (I'll hesitate to use the word I want) lesser savvy users why I don't want them putting my real name, anything about me or photos of me into the Intarwebs is like trying to talk to a brick wall. They just don't get why it's a problem. One idiot went ahead and actually put my phone number on her myspace page (after my little chat about why not to) with a helpful hint of "he's got a new number now, if he hasn't told you yet here it is". Not like I didn't change my number so that some of those people didn't have it in the first place!!!
I also had a myspace account that had no identifying marks in it. I used an alias and a dodgy email that I hardly use for anything (except dodgy, incapable of using BCC: to 100 people friends) to sign up to see what it was all about. One of my friends decided to try and add me using that email address and put my real name in one of the fields. Until I deleted it, if you searched for my real name on Myspace you could find that profile even though I'd never entered my true name into it.
You could probably s/myspace/facebook/g in this post and still be mostly accurate too.
Of the 62% who paid nothing, how many were previewing the album and then went back and paid for it if they liked it? That is pretty common practice in record stores. You get them to put the CD on and you listen to a few tracks to decide if you like enough of it to justify the price.
Another thought springs to mind... is this even that critical? Doesn't leopard have the time machine in it? Can't you just go back and get your files out of the time machine if they were that important?
I haven't "upgraded" yet so I don't actually know much about this Time Machine thing and how it works.
But entirely fixable.
Knowing it exists means you can also work around it by doing copies every time and only manually deleting the source entry when you're sure the copy has completed properly. Now all you need to do is be mindful every time you want to move a file anywhere.
Sucks to be a Mac user (I am one, I know) but I'm sure Apple will have this fixed pretty quick.
If they left out all the copyrighted stuff there would be nothing left. What they are obliged to leave out is all the stuff that they are not at liberty to reproduce. This can include non-foss code, trademarks (Redhat, the redhat logo, etc), patented things if the original distribution has paid to license and distribute the patented material, etc.
You haven't dealt with many technical vendors lately have you? They all claim to have an immense knowledge of the internals of whatever it is they're selling but most have a support staff that are nothing more than trained monkeys. We've dealt with too many companies where they assume you're a moron and the level 1 support monkeys ask you to do dumb thinks like reboot or run 'make clean' and a long list of other equally useless suggestions when trying to solve a clearly defined problem.
I could list the handful of good companies I've dealt with and the list would be very short. I will say that Trolltech and Ada Core tech were two of the most helpful in terms of real solutions to real problems (not OS vendors, I know). Most of the time Trolltech even came back with "we are aware of this and it's fixed in the next version, this patch should fix our software or you can do this workaround in your own code". Redhat falls somewhere between good and bad. I've dealt with hundreds of other support services and they range from good to really really bad.
When I evaluated RHEL for the company I used to work at test licenses were available without digging. They were linked from the main product page. The test license license agreement was enormous though, and only lasts 30 days. In some of the work I was doing (ClearCase) we needed to prove that the server and modules would be reliable over a longer term than that (the Clearcase kernel modules seemed to have a habit of bringing down the whole machine at seemingly random times). In the end we installed CentOS and ran the tests over some number of months. My evaluation machines eventually turned into productions machines with a tonne of NX sessions hanging off them. CentOS was pretty neat.
Redhat wins with their support and their cool Redhat network. It was nice to log into that as an admin and see "all" of the PCs we had listed out along with which ones needed software updates. You could use the RHN console to schedule updates on machines, install a new package one one or many machines or do a bunch of other things. It was all pretty cool. As an admin it would have simplified my job of having to check all the RH machines for updates or to roll out a new package that everyone needed because they were listed all in one place neatly for me. I can see why it is useful to pay for a license for each machine when you have something like the RHN. It gives you nothing you can't do yourself with a bit of ssh and some scripting, but it makes it pretty and has wank factor to impress non-technical people as well.
I taught myself LaTeX in the first year of my Ph.D. Best thing I ever did. OO.org equations can be entered into the editor using a similar type of notation to TeX. I felt quite at home using OO.org after I understood the basics of LaTeX.
There really comes a point where the right tool for the job. A P.O.S word processor is great for hacking out a letter to aunt millie asking her about the weather in Kazakhstan. It certainly saves the hacking out the text into an editor and a 'make' phase of running the right LaTeX commands to get a printable version.
LaTeX is amazingly simple for enormously complex documents. You just define your format requirements at the top of the TeX sources and then hammer in text; assigning tags to hint at the layout engine what you need it to do for you. If you need to change the entire document format/layout you edit the configuration in one place and the whole document changes.
Sure, it's a learning curve and you have to remember to run the LaTeX interpeter to actually get a document but the effort saved in other places more than makes up for the hassle.
So true.
At least on the Mac you don't get (full) admin rights by just logging in as your user. There are some permissions set on users who you tag as admins so they have some level of access to things without the admin password. Dragging an application bundle to the system-wide Applications folder is one thing they can do without being prompted for a password. I believe (Though I haven't checked it lately) they you can overwrite some of the system libraries too so long as they're not being used at the time.
A certain other OS makes the first user on the machine the full and powerful admin by default so they are extremely vulnerable to any form of exploit.
Most Linux distros take the other tact and there is no admin ability at all without confirming it by a password. Worst you can lose if you're sensible is your user files.
I won't quote your post, but I disagree with it.
IT is a service industry, yet. I am in the business of providing a reliable, stable network to the company I work for. That includes the Internet connection. There's a lot that passes over my Internet links. Email, WWW, some VoIP, and whatever else I need to allow. Email and the handful of calls that we do need to route over VoIP are of the highest priority.
I run a tight Internet policy so that I can guarantee that some clueless n00b won't come along and set up his torrent client to run flat out, effectively slowing down the connection for everyone else and breaking email or VoIP. Like most admins I don't have the budget to bring in a bigger or more links to handle general traffic separately.
I don't need worms on my internal network hammering at my servers. It's one thing to keep them patched and another to protect them from the very client machines that need to use them. I don't run firewalls on the internal machines because that would limit their utility, achieve no real effect and cause unnecessary restrictions.
Now, why wouldn't people be able to get web content or email through my network? The only good reason that content wouldn't be delivered to them is if it failed the virus or spam tests at the border. In either case the user is notified and the content is quarantined. If they really need the content they can follow the directions they are given when they are notified and one of the admins can run further tests to yay or nay it then pass it on if it's really safe.
Thus far, I have had no complaints except about access to external pop3 servers being blocked. I haven't (to date) blocked external webmail providers like Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail. I don't see any need to, as most webmail services these days offer spam and virus filtering anyway. Sure, there's always the chance something will slip through but the protections running on each local machine should hopefully catch it.
I'd really like to block some of the streaming video sites because I see one user (unfortunately the only person above me) using a LOT of data from youtube (2G in aobut 8 hours) and he wasn't even in the office. He'd just set it up do download a stack of files so he could watch them later. So far I haven't blocked it yet. I am tempted because it is wasteful and while it only costs a little, it's still a cost that has to be covered.
There are a lot of things that you can do to protect your network and limit what your users can and cannot do without actually imposing restrictions that they will notice. The only major blockages I put on people is the external pipe.
I've really only talked about the Internet pipe here. That is the biggest place that I see problems with everyone expecting to do everything, regardless of how it might effect things. I have pretty strict rules on doing other things in my network too. Nothing changes are made without good reason. If it ain't broke don't fix it, so they say. It's important to keep the network running as the users expect it to. With changes comes the potential for breakages even if those breakages didn't occur in your test cases.
I've been asked to do some really dumb things in my time. The most blatantly offensive two I was asked to do was store passwords unencrypted or require users to store their passwords in a text file so the boss could access their accounts (why I don't know; the admins had enough access if it was ever needed). The other was to forward all email passing through the server to the director's mailbox so he could "keep abreast of company goings on" (read: snoop). That violated my sense of privacy - it's a reasonable expectation that if I send an email to a person only that person gets it, not that person and his boss. When the boss wouldn't back down I resigned.
So, when providing a service you have to impose restrictions to keep the quality of that service high and also protect your users. There is only so much budget for bandwidth, hardware
I am about the same age. I actually meant ~ten years _ago_, although I forgot to type that. Also, I don't live in the US.
When I was around the 12-15 mark you needed proof that you were 18 to buy the fuel. When I got to 18ish you also needed proof of identity and address, which they insisted on recording at every shop where you could get the fuel packs.
Depending on the operating system iso file you may or may not get the BOFH treatment from me.
;) I'm not a complete bastard (yet) but I am the point of blame if/when someone comes knocking with a complaint about something. It's nice to make sure the users know that they are accountable for their actions.
;)
Huge usage isn't a problem if it's justified. I don't record anything from our ISP's local mirror because it has terabytes of stuff and it's not metered (doesn't cost us). There's about every Linux distribution on there you could think of, a couple of BSDs, a Windows software archive (was Tucows, now I think it's Majorgeeks but I haven't checked).
Huge usage usually == youtube or pr0nz. If I have a copy on DVD on my desk within 20 minute then access_log might get a little forgetful about what you downloaded
Now how do I get my shell script to sleep for a random time between loading pf.conf and pf_drop_boss_packets.conf in a loop?
I agree that there are ways of tunneling data through the HTTP and HTTPS proxies. You're never going to stop it happening. Best you can do is make it hard so that the technically inept can't abuse your system and then keep an eye on who's doing what.
Proxy logins let you keep track of who is sending how much data through the proxy at least. It's amazing how emailing everyone with the top 10 proxy users with their total usage each week cuts your Internet usage bill. Nobody wants to be in the top 10 because the top 10 get special attention to what they were doing.
Amateur rocketry was dying anyway. I remember trying to buy rocket engines when I was a bit younger (~10 years) and you already needed to provide photo ID with your current address on it. I gave up on that day, as did a lot of people because you can't even find rocketry supplies in the local model store anymore.
It's quite hard to block p2p traffic explicitly while leaving other protocols open. P2P traffic moves in a number of arbitrary ports and uses a lot of protocols. New protocols are coming and going regularly. L7 packet filtering helps with the common protocols but if they are also using encryption you've got bugger all chance of blocking them totally.
I was playing cat and mouse for a while. Block Kazaa and they move to Emule. Block that and they move to torrent. Block that and they start using gnutella. The game goes on and on.
The only way I've found to reliably block all p2p and other things without major hassles in the firewall is to block everything, install a proxy server for HTTP, HTTPS and FTP and then only punch out ports from trusted machines and with good valid reasons from people (and a paper trail for those reasons). eg, the PBX can talk to our upstream SIP provider, the mail server can speak port 25 to the outside world but nobody else can and my desktop PC has rsync access to our ISPs file mirror.
I have procedures in place to get things like torrents because they occasionally have legitimate uses. I have one machine that only I have a user account on. If someone thinks a torrent is useful and related to work they can ask me to get that torrent for them. It keeps them from running clients on their own PCs and still allows them to get files if needed. Half the time they just want torrents of files like Linux distros that are available on our ISP's mirror at no data charge to us.
With all that security comes problems. The boss wants to violate his own Internet policy (bittorrent for movies and all that) and the new firewall stops him from doing it. He has a personal email account he insists on checking with pop3 but can't now because that's blocked. There are no end of complaints about how all these violating things that used to be possible now aren't. For many admins there is a lot of pressure from management to not block things because the managers want to have a free run. Not every IT person is gutsy enough to stand up and say "no fucking way".