Where? In Mother Russia, Cossix, ahem, COSSACKS call YOU...
You will NEVER catch me using a suppository phone, but you might catch SOME people who have to smuggle a phone into a country somewhere (maybe into North Korea to do an "expose" on hunger, and so forth).
Would this redefine "'colo' cation"?. Would this constitute dirty digital communication?
I can see it now: "Makers of Fly-Eating Robot Offer Corneal Shine Job, Bionic Optical Implants, and Fecal-Powered Power Supply".
"ET PHONE HOME" would, ahem, 'entail' a new form of digital dialup.
And, if anakin BLEW the clones in front of a blue screen in "Attack of the Clones" would they hear a "clack of the tones" as those bots drizzled and sizzled?
What would be "shot" entirely in front of the blue screen? Cordon Bleu?
The POWER of Blue... The blouer off poo...
Not exactly the Spoonerism any credit card advertiser wants to hear...
"One feature of Gnome that I like is the ability to add "mini-icons" around the sides of an icon to indicate that a file is important, belongs to a certain category, or just that it's cool. After you've tried Gnome and KDE, you can learn that there is an entirely different layer underneath them, the "window manager," which you can also change."
This I find VERY KEWL. I've noticed it I guess since Mdk 10, and maybe I saw it in Mdk 9.x. I really am starting to like this feature because it minimizes the time spent digging around or into folders.
I hope this is a first, or that there is prior art. We cannot let the hegemon from the northwest hijack this.
In fact, we should have ALL contributors go back and research their own contributions, trace the time, and show prior art and get it listed on a web site. Since the USPTO is either overworked or blatantly corrupt, there needs to be an authoritative ALTERNATIVE, one that the UN, and any othe nation so interested, can turn to and bypass the USPTO when the USPTO is too slow or too beholden to Corporation XYZ. This new authoritative source, OF, BY, and FOR the people should carry enough rights, weight, and clout that even a half-brained judge or respectable lawyer could override, ignore, expose, or refute bogus patents 'awarded' to ever-growing number of greedy or omnivorous corporations.
Oh, I digressed...
What might be useful is if a popup shows a list of ALL the types of file extensions or metadata that are in the folder. The default time to popup should be user-set.
There is out there some developer who created a pie-like metaphor for file structure contents and where files are scattered all over the disk. Something a cross between that and the file structure recently-used apps (like in win xp, from that company called microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual, with me...), but which has changing colors or changing dot-shapes/other shapes could assist the visually-impaired when color is a poor choice of indicator.
Something I think which would be useful is a change in the typical shape of LCD or other displays. We need to (or it would be nice to) have more paper-size-proportioned displays that show text at better resolutions. I would love to have an LCD that nicely shows side-by-side pages, not just what the word processing app itself renders, but one that removes from exclusivity the rotate type of LCDs. They're nice, but pricey.
Not likely. There is prior art: DOD Communications System, the DCS.
When I was in the navy, as a Radioman, we had a PLAD, or Plain Language Addressing System and it was/is a list of valid ship, shore, base, activity, and approved contractors. There were/are many other lists and layers of communications, but what I liked about it, and don't see a pervasive civilian parallel on a global scale, is that if you weren't on the list, you didn't get sent any messages, nor could you participate with the traffic flow (assuming you didn't crack the system or spoof an address, which would mean getting access to equipment, cyphers, codes, addresses, and pass off well enough to not arouse immediate suspicion...) Everything from operational to supply, administrative to medical, intelligence to routine reports, virtuall all of it was on an internal net.
Corporate/civilian e-mail systems can also do the same: Only Approved Vendors List contacts should be able to send or receive message traffic to one another. Traffice trying to come in is summarily logged, filed, and dealt with legally (spammers, etc.) or administratively (abusive employees, contractors).
When I temped at Bay Networks back around 1994 we were using SoftArc's (from Canada) First Class mailing system. It was e-mail, browsing, BBS, archives, discussion groups, forums and more. It was not POP, so we had to log on to see messages. Metaphorically, what I liked was that messages "hung from a tree" and all concerned could log in and see the ONE COPY. If you deleted it, you only realy deleted you "pointer" to it. This eliminated the abusive or brain-dead approach of emailing a copy to EVERY employee. To me, that's DUMB. Only remote, off-line users need a hard/duplicate copy. The rest can read the single, original or updated version.
Every case of prior art should be exhaustively dug up to prevent asinine patents from being sought, considered or awarded.
Ahem, SINCE you assed, ahem, aSKED, I guess if Saturns moons are IN Uranus, those could be called "Moonheroids"... THese are NOT the kind of "kling-ons" you want hanging around...
WOuld Klingons on earth be "anti-government polyps"?
I remember back around 1990 seeing a new Saturn with the license plate:
HazRngs
or maybe
HzRings
It was/is cute pun on Saturn Has Rings and the car being a Saturn, heheh.
Now, these:
http://www.thecommentarybox.co.uk/issue45/kickas s. htm
See, microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual) cannot innovate, but they also don't want keychain Linux (or other) OS's piggybacking on the hardware without even having to install. I'll bet ms will eventually slip in the real trojan: BIOS INTERACTIVITY.
Once booted, the windows box will offer the option to lock the BIOS (maybe this already happens, since Linux can permit the knowledgable user to write stuff to the BIOS...)
Then, they'll try to claim a patent on it.
IT managers and savvy computer owners SHOULD be able to-- regardless of OS-- lock down their peripherals ports. Running an OS or being just booted, the ports are an all-too-easy way to pull or vacuum data.
It's just that mshaft is putting a spin on the issue, likely to lay patents over it. But, I think too much prior art in existence should foil any attempt on their part.
The bigger question is WHY is microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual) being allowed to take the lead on this. ANY OS (or even BIOS) should be capable of banning or blocking undesirable external devices, the operative phrase being "undesirable external devices".
At home, it should be possible, too, for it offers privacy from snooping friends, landlords (if you live in an apartment), and others.
This, to me, is not a "revolutionary" or patentable idea. It is common sense. Cars have locks, homes have them, and any security perimeters have granular restrictions: Sensitive stores and business or government operations (courts, military or nuclear labs), and even hospitals restrict whether or not a person can bring in any kind of electronic device capable of recording or causing disruptions.
Metaphorically and in actuality, a computer, once owned, is an extension of its primary or other users, all of whom should have complete or granular control over what is granted communications access across peripherals ports.
All that said, the REALLY scary part to worry about is will microsoft "escrow" the "keys" to turn on and turn off your ports for government "investigations"? "Sneak and peak" could be disrupted if machine owners left ports onboard, but simply encrypted or disrupted the access. This could play minor havoc with passive snoops who are accustomed to microwave, but landlords and other (persons who would dare to be) snoops with physical access to a computer pose a risk, regardless of what role they play.
Better than waiting around to have ms stepping all over them, too...
What Sybase should do is foist this upon colleges, and maybe even high schools.
If enough companies get students into doing SOMEthing productive, challenging, and interesting, such as making people more SOFTware and hardware literate before they reach college, then some of these non-microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation of ms by me is intentional/perpetual) vendors can at least confuse or fragment the market and try to keep mshaft from penetrating too many vertical and horizontal markets.
MySQL, and PostgreSQL,for that matter ALSO should jump in on this. Anything to help people see the world from a "databasable" perspective (as I do) means it chips away at patenting aspects of database schemas or such. After all, the more that becomes "obvious", the more only TRUE innovations should be allowed to obtain or receive patents, much less even get more than a cursory prequalification review.
Unfortunately, there are a LOT of smart teachers, but they are so swamped in homework and mired in petty district politics that many of them cannot recall or get remedial training to improve their skills. Hence, as much as school districts and teachers would be thrilled to get new computers, they generally don't have the time, budget, or other resources to keep at bay mischievous students, much less cannot avoid being embarrassed by precocious or prescient students who can redesign some schoold district's database environments.
The flies are or could be a devious disinformation ploy.
Maybe this model of robot is supposed to feed on enemy carcasses...
Talk about developing an exterminator to become a terminator.
Or, it could be used to do a "head count" or body count of enemy dead and wounded, but feed on the flies and strips of flesh wherever it can find them. This, could be demoralizing if the food is still alive and unable to defend itself.
I don't think WSJ portrayed the CC as what you say, debit cards. I guess that's an unfortunate side of rushed "journalism", and the lack of paper space to put the read "right there", on the ground.
I really do need to subscribe or log in to some of the indigenous papers to be more balanced. I do have friends from places around the world, but unfortunately, sometimes people don't like talking much about some of these things.
I end up combing Barnes & Noble books for recent, lived-there (purportedly, or by references cited) people. Right now I'm studying about Japan. I have some books on China, and I sometimes go to SINA and other sites, but I haven't been to SINA for maybe a year. Inevitably, something always comes along and competes for time...
"mySQLcc ("control center") is no longer under development,"
In addition to MySQLGUI not being further developed.
I have used MySQL Administrator on my Mandrake boxes at home and on my W2KP box at work. I prefer the GUI/CS apps over the web-based controls.
Also I use or "play with" DBDesigner from www.fabforce.net as well as AquaData Studio from www.aquafold.com.
For my development stuff for my hobby and for things which I hope to convert and sell in the near future, I use (have been since 1994 or so) Lotus Approach. THAT is a GUI to be rekoned with, for cubicle users.
Sadly, though I can export my fields (less picture and date/time fields (the D&T have to be converted to "text" first), I cannot get correct summary counts on detal tables. Lotus' reply is to bring the data back to the desktop. Since Approach is not a standalone app (as in runtime executable like ms access is/can be), this may not be much of a problem until data synchronization gets out of control when some fields change. They CAN be remapped, but you're likely better off locking the app so regular users cannot change the interface and start adding their own data. If they are privileged, then make them part of the development team's contacts.
What I do like about MySQL is that it will let me use Approach to export my various schemas/tables although my field names have spaces. A former director of mine suggested I "get used to" using underscores in field names and not use spaces. Well, I don't care for databases that cannot cope with HUMAN-FRIENDLY/readable field names. The technology should be smart enough to permit user-friendly field naming, even if the names still have to be truncated to 45 characters or so.
For the longest time, I did not get PostgreSQL to work distro after distro upgrade of Mandrake because I simply did not figure out the password was 'postgres' or 'postgresql'. Now that I've been on MySQL for a couple years or so, and found some nice GUI apps for it, and it has an ODBC (3.51 or 3.52) driver that lets me export and read my Lotus Approach data, I am happy, but not as happy as I'd be if IBM and Lotus dual-sourced or dual-licensed Approach and SmartSuite.
This reminds me of a couple weeks ago when at Fry's Electronics I cought glimpse of a BlueMan video. This particular vid mad me think of River Dance.
Imagine the River Dance people decked out in blue, and Blue Man and the ensemble stompin' the hell out of a stage, arcs, sparks, showering all over the place.
Maybe in the desert, Genesis "will bring LIFE from LIFElessness".
Maybe someone told the solar wind, "You were trying to IRRADIATE and KILL us, but you're going to HAVE to COME down HERE. You HAVE to COME DOWN HERE!!!"
BTW, I also read an August 2004 copy of WSJ, and this year, China is considering forcing automobile buyers to pay down at least 20% on a vehicle.
Why? Well, too many borrowers get a vehicle financed and when they lose their job or drown in debt, they just either abandon the car -- and the debt-- or worse, they keep the car and abandon the creditor. The serious part of that problem is when the debtor KEEPS the car without paying it off, and they relocate, it is hard for the title holder of the car to repossess it.
Maybe China is going to have to have a Yakuza-like repossession agency -- if they don't already have one. But, forcing the purchaser to pay 20% down might be better, since more money down theoretically will make the borrower more committed to just paying it off.
Local layoffs or economic malaise or disasters, though, can still undermine that plan.
"especially considering there are no such things as credit cards, personal loans (in the US sense), and various other things people here take for granted"
What? Chinese on Mainland China are getting into "Love American Style, singing in the Red, White, and Blue" with serious credit debt and all the other vagaries of having credit cards when borrowing heavily and paying back on low income.
WADR (with all due respect), evangellydonut, please... see:
"USCBC: US China banking Council: Foreign Participation in China's Financial Sector"
http://www.uschina.org/statistics/foreign_partic ip ation.html
And, China is "awash" in credit cards.... See:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~glee/Fall 3.htm
"Surge in Lending
In China Stokes
Economic Worries
Spending, Investment Sprees Point
To Overheating; Bad Debts Rise"
The intro paragraph reads:
"SHANGHAI -- Liu Yijun is 27 years old and works as a real-estate agent. He and his wife, a supermarket purchasing agent, together make about $8,000 a year. On that modest income, this year they've bought a new Mazda for more than $19,000 and a new apartment priced at almost $91,000.
How did they do it? "Bank loans changed our life," Mr. Liu says.
China is awash in easy credit these days, spurring a national spending and investment spree in everything from residential property to wine, cars, steel and shopping malls. Banks' liberal lending policies -- Mr. Liu and his wife, for instance, financed at rates between 5% and 6% -- have boosted lifestyles and helped fuel China's white-hot economic growth. Gross domestic product hit $1.236 trillion last year, up 50% from 1996, according to the International Monetary Fund. The average annual growth rate during that period was nearly 7%."
Kirk: Scotty! Get down there FAST! Kill M-5. Pull dah PLUHGGG, SCOTTY!
Scotty: Aye, Kep-ten.
---------
Really bring back Voyager, with Harry Kim as a captain. And, god, PLEASE,
--No more Excelsior or 1701 variants!
--No revisits to kirk and 2215/2315!
--No more hollywoodization of audience: the future belongs to EARTH, not the USA, not hollywood, not Los Angeles. Trek, if it needs to die, needs to do so and be reborn as a TRUE international representation of the future. Foreign actors/actresses, not just from up North, or from the UK. A REAL, Native Asian, a REAL, recurring Indian (yeh, they had Engineer Singh, but he dropped or was written out/ignored/replaced)
I for one would like to see the aftereffects of DU or TA CIWS rounds raking the hull of a "combatant" ship. Not that it needs to be manned and personnel wounded or killed, but I'd like the see the HULL and what happens to it from various ranges (I can't recall reading any such stuff in Clancy's or others' novells, but mine will include such things, of course, as the result of desperation under fire...).
What would a pair of CIWS guns raking from stem and stern to amidships do to a DD-963 or DDG-51 or other navy's similar hulls if raked at the waterline? Would they sag, heave, and gasp like Clint Eastwoods bus (or the shack the police shot the hell out of) he and Bullock were holed up in?
I'm also curious as to what a bunker buster dropped onto a ship would look like. Not the sort of stuff ANY navy wants to feel except on decommissioned hulls, but we in the public don't get to see much of that, like we don't see the A-6 Intruder/S-3 Viking ("people-eaters") footage of half-chewed deck personnel...
Again, I'm not interested in seeing personnel hurt, I just want to visualize the effects of DU on 1/2 or 3/4 in steel. (Note: I realize anyone hard up to attack a gas turbine is better off holing the hell out of the uptakes and intakes, since that is not much different from holing a carburator or even ripping out a fuel injector, but...).
(Yep, I'm the kind of guy who mastered dropping wing tanks on my wing men and escort bombers in Falcon 2.0 and other sims, and I mastered strafing tents and foot soldiers, landing my Longbow Apache on tents, strafing the control tower, etc... Not the kind of stuff anyone really wants to DO, but probably don't mind IMAGINING...)
I somewhere read and wholeheartedly ascribe to this:
"It is not the duty of a consumer to keep a business alive; it is the duty of the consumer to consumer ONLY what they need."
If more people believed in this, we'd have less redundancy, tho at the risk of predatory pricing. However, those who stick to this principle will drive out the predators and drive out the inferior-quality knockoff shit-makers whose knockoffs don't "deserve" to be on a shelf. Those with good knockoffs of reasonable quality and durability would served to make it possible for predators to be kept in check.
I also read/heard, and wholly ascribe to this:
"Businessess don't have a RIGHT or a GUARANTEE to PROFIT; they have an OPPORTUNITY to TRY to make a profit."
Once people understand that, they might ideally make reasonable, worthwhile, upgradable but durable products for a GOOD price, even if conventional "wisdom" claims good quality and good price to be virtually mutually exclusive.
Unfortuntely, my position is not in congruence with reality.
What I find interesting about those frontloaders is one a friend has. I think it's a Neptune or something from Maytag.
It is very quiet, I mean verry quiet. If you push on and grab to tilt the "basket", it tips and bounces in a cushy silent manner.
Being an ex-sailor (but not a submariner (suhb-mare-in-ur, but some say it like "sub-muh-reenur") and being interested in subs since I was maybe 8 or 9, and knowing a little about the engine room "rafts" the entire plant sits on in some of the stealthier boats, I began wondering if this wasther is really based on declassified (or partially classified) submarine stealth technology. After all, though it is reported you could drop a hammer or fire a pistol inside an SSN-688/later class and not be detected even within some 5 or 15 nautical miles, I doubt washers would be run regularly like the old-style crap most people continue to buy. Most machines agitators/baskets spin like hell, churn and plunge to and fro, and have a distinctive metallic POP or brake snap sound when they change cycles or go from wash to rinse, etc.
I then wondered, "Well, hell, if this washer is based on tax-paid military technology, and if the military PAID someone to design it, I wonder who really owns this technology."
But, that was just one other piece of interesting technology/mechanics...
This may be a bigger pain in the ass than Y2K. Imagine all the scrambling around.
Imagine ALL the financial and banking and retail shops that have ground-level operations with all their pretty "we exist, we live" displays. All of them will/could be moving up to higher-level digs, forcing another irrational exuberance in the retail space market that'll try to jack up rents or leasing costs.
Companies will have to scramble like crazy to once again inventory ALL their systems, networked AND stand-alone, just to make sure nothing can be (easily) ripped from them, and to make sure that the machines cannot be read, then used as propagators.
It would be quite embarrassing if a company were jacked, then used for relaying their own information. And, if a data thief is caught in an office, but manages to destroy the medium sufficiently, the charges against him/her might be reduced, if the data was not propagated or not removed from the premises or the secure room. But, that depends on locales (some places might cut your head off if you see state secrets, while others may release you with reduced charges if you or your hirers could not benefit from the act, though trespass, tampering, unauthorized removal or relocation (like USN "rape", "penetration, however slight, constitutes rape"), however non-removed, still constitutes theft.
But, the security industry can come up with some bastion or firewall or improved monitoring and access/credentials tools to slow down these weird ideas.
One rule I have is NEVER offer up destructive information without at least a few antidotes our counters. After all, it may be a matter of time before certain thoughts REALLY ARE illegal, but offering a fix might diminish the punishment meted out.
Corporate perceived risk of unmonitored systems (or my instigation by this commentary) will likely spark a frenetic rush to secure sensitive systems.
I think that with these OS-Sticks likely taking off, legally loadable with Linux, but very unlikely to have windoze loaded legally (except for sysadmin purposes, I suppose), sysadmins everywhere should be worried about machines being shut down, booted by these OS-Sticks, and then pilfered or trashed out by malicious types.
Imagine a pissed off, marauding employee going around booting up and instantly killing partitions. Or, someone doing it to an Internet cafe, or worse, to a police station, hospital, transit or power station, etc. Or, to a store. Just ONE compromised system will spark a frenzy to check out the others.
Imagine if a person hides a USB-based device on their person (well, given the pocket and bag checking some sensitive companies carry out, I imagine a desperate data corruptor or data thief will hide theirs in a suppository--assuming hand wands and cavity searches are not in corporate style...) and entered a government, military, or sensitive information facility and STOLE data... the LLNL and Sandia/New Mexico data device losses will pale in comparison to this, even if peripheral or virtual data port logging is being done.
So, I posit that VMWare and the various BIOS makers can carve out a new market for themselves:
VMWare:
DITCH the stand-alone or networked OS-loaded nodes, hook them up to the protected/isolated central or workgroups server (something I've been advocating for environments large and small where trust and security are issues, ESPECIALLY in companies)...
Phoenix/other BIOS makers:
We make BIOS that don't let ANYTHING boot or run if it is booted by a peripheral media device... First it has to boot to the master server, then send credentials, then do XYZ...
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulations might very well force the financial sector as well as others to secure their data, especially where offices have too much free, unmonitored access.
Maybe when windoze is in airplane cockpits we'll have to worry about USB ports in chair arms. Maybe somebody will hijack the headrest-mounted Playstations. Oh, wait, I think playstations and DVDs are just in JAL/INA.
Imagine how bloody angry ms would be if someone placed windoze on USB sticks. That could really mess up ms' licensing scheme.
Regardless of which OS is on a USB stick, what really will become a problem is abusers who use customized "OS-Sticks" (a term I'm coining and will continue to use even if some big powerhouse pickes it up and tries to hijack it as their own...) to wreak havoc on the Kinko's and other places where computers might be carelessly (by then) be deployed with their peripherals ports left (physically) unsecured or left installed.
With an OS-Stick, the user's privileges are all in hand, unless the BIOS of more or all computers has control over the data flow and control of the machine.
"Firewall-in-a-BIOS", anyone?
David Syes
Let's start displaying Tux with a family (wife/partner/spouse/whatever (industry/standards bodies), along with offspring or adoptees (we users and adoptees/friends of FOSS/Linux/GPL, etc)...
Slashdot Mirror
"THAN", try this "THEN"...
Where? In Mother Russia, Cossix, ahem, COSSACKS call YOU...
You will NEVER catch me using a suppository phone, but you might catch SOME people who have to smuggle a phone into a country somewhere (maybe into North Korea to do an "expose" on hunger, and so forth).
Would this redefine "'colo' cation"?. Would this constitute dirty digital communication?
I can see it now: "Makers of Fly-Eating Robot Offer Corneal Shine Job, Bionic Optical Implants, and Fecal-Powered Power Supply".
"ET PHONE HOME" would, ahem, 'entail' a new form of digital dialup.
And, if anakin BLEW the clones in front of a blue screen in "Attack of the Clones" would they hear a "clack of the tones" as those bots drizzled and sizzled?
What would be "shot" entirely in front of the blue screen? Cordon Bleu?
The POWER of Blue...
The blouer off poo...
Not exactly the Spoonerism any credit card advertiser wants to hear...
"One feature of Gnome that I like is the ability to add "mini-icons" around the sides of an icon to indicate that a file is important, belongs to a certain category, or just that it's cool. After you've tried Gnome and KDE, you can learn that there is an entirely different layer underneath them, the "window manager," which you can also change."
This I find VERY KEWL. I've noticed it I guess since Mdk 10, and maybe I saw it in Mdk 9.x. I really am starting to like this feature because it minimizes the time spent digging around or into folders.
I hope this is a first, or that there is prior art. We cannot let the hegemon from the northwest hijack this.
In fact, we should have ALL contributors go back and research their own contributions, trace the time, and show prior art and get it listed on a web site. Since the USPTO is either overworked or blatantly corrupt, there needs to be an authoritative ALTERNATIVE, one that the UN, and any othe nation so interested, can turn to and bypass the USPTO when the USPTO is too slow or too beholden to Corporation XYZ. This new authoritative source, OF, BY, and FOR the people should carry enough rights, weight, and clout that even a half-brained judge or respectable lawyer could override, ignore, expose, or refute bogus patents 'awarded' to ever-growing number of greedy or omnivorous corporations.
Oh, I digressed...
What might be useful is if a popup shows a list of ALL the types of file extensions or metadata that are in the folder. The default time to popup should be user-set.
There is out there some developer who created a pie-like metaphor for file structure contents and where files are scattered all over the disk. Something a cross between that and the file structure recently-used apps (like in win xp, from that company called microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual, with me...), but which has changing colors or changing dot-shapes/other shapes could assist the visually-impaired when color is a poor choice of indicator.
Something I think which would be useful is a change in the typical shape of LCD or other displays. We need to (or it would be nice to) have more paper-size-proportioned displays that show text at better resolutions. I would love to have an LCD that nicely shows side-by-side pages, not just what the word processing app itself renders, but one that removes from exclusivity the rotate type of LCDs. They're nice, but pricey.
Anyway, those were my few cents' worth...
David Syes
Not likely. There is prior art: DOD Communications System, the DCS.
When I was in the navy, as a Radioman, we had a PLAD, or Plain Language Addressing System and it was/is a list of valid ship, shore, base, activity, and approved contractors. There were/are many other lists and layers of communications, but what I liked about it, and don't see a pervasive civilian parallel on a global scale, is that if you weren't on the list, you didn't get sent any messages, nor could you participate with the traffic flow (assuming you didn't crack the system or spoof an address, which would mean getting access to equipment, cyphers, codes, addresses, and pass off well enough to not arouse immediate suspicion...) Everything from operational to supply, administrative to medical, intelligence to routine reports, virtuall all of it was on an internal net.
Corporate/civilian e-mail systems can also do the same: Only Approved Vendors List contacts should be able to send or receive message traffic to one another. Traffice trying to come in is summarily logged, filed, and dealt with legally (spammers, etc.) or administratively (abusive employees, contractors).
When I temped at Bay Networks back around 1994 we were using SoftArc's (from Canada) First Class mailing system. It was e-mail, browsing, BBS, archives, discussion groups, forums and more. It was not POP, so we had to log on to see messages. Metaphorically, what I liked was that messages "hung from a tree" and all concerned could log in and see the ONE COPY. If you deleted it, you only realy deleted you "pointer" to it. This eliminated the abusive or brain-dead approach of emailing a copy to EVERY employee. To me, that's DUMB. Only remote, off-line users need a hard/duplicate copy. The rest can read the single, original or updated version.
Every case of prior art should be exhaustively dug up to prevent asinine patents from being sought, considered or awarded.
Ahem, SINCE you assed, ahem, aSKED, I guess if Saturns moons are IN Uranus, those could be called "Moonheroids"... THese are NOT the kind of "kling-ons" you want hanging around...
s s. htm
WOuld Klingons on earth be "anti-government polyps"?
I remember back around 1990 seeing a new Saturn with the license plate:
HazRngs
or maybe
HzRings
It was/is cute pun on Saturn Has Rings and the car being a Saturn, heheh.
Now, these:
http://www.thecommentarybox.co.uk/issue45/kicka
Unusable.
See, microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual) cannot innovate, but they also don't want keychain Linux (or other) OS's piggybacking on the hardware without even having to install. I'll bet ms will eventually slip in the real trojan: BIOS INTERACTIVITY.
Once booted, the windows box will offer the option to lock the BIOS (maybe this already happens, since Linux can permit the knowledgable user to write stuff to the BIOS...)
Then, they'll try to claim a patent on it.
IT managers and savvy computer owners SHOULD be able to-- regardless of OS-- lock down their peripherals ports. Running an OS or being just booted, the ports are an all-too-easy way to pull or vacuum data.
It's just that mshaft is putting a spin on the issue, likely to lay patents over it. But, I think too much prior art in existence should foil any attempt on their part.
David Syes
The bigger question is WHY is microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual) being allowed to take the lead on this. ANY OS (or even BIOS) should be capable of banning or blocking undesirable external devices, the operative phrase being "undesirable external devices".
At home, it should be possible, too, for it offers privacy from snooping friends, landlords (if you live in an apartment), and others.
This, to me, is not a "revolutionary" or patentable idea. It is common sense. Cars have locks, homes have them, and any security perimeters have granular restrictions: Sensitive stores and business or government operations (courts, military or nuclear labs), and even hospitals restrict whether or not a person can bring in any kind of electronic device capable of recording or causing disruptions.
Metaphorically and in actuality, a computer, once owned, is an extension of its primary or other users, all of whom should have complete or granular control over what is granted communications access across peripherals ports.
All that said, the REALLY scary part to worry about is will microsoft "escrow" the "keys" to turn on and turn off your ports for government "investigations"? "Sneak and peak" could be disrupted if machine owners left ports onboard, but simply encrypted or disrupted the access. This could play minor havoc with passive snoops who are accustomed to microwave, but landlords and other (persons who would dare to be) snoops with physical access to a computer pose a risk, regardless of what role they play.
David Syes
Better than waiting around to have ms stepping all over them, too...
What Sybase should do is foist this upon colleges, and maybe even high schools.
If enough companies get students into doing SOMEthing productive, challenging, and interesting, such as making people more SOFTware and hardware literate before they reach college, then some of these non-microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation of ms by me is intentional/perpetual) vendors can at least confuse or fragment the market and try to keep mshaft from penetrating too many vertical and horizontal markets.
MySQL, and PostgreSQL,for that matter ALSO should jump in on this. Anything to help people see the world from a "databasable" perspective (as I do) means it chips away at patenting aspects of database schemas or such. After all, the more that becomes "obvious", the more only TRUE innovations should be allowed to obtain or receive patents, much less even get more than a cursory prequalification review.
Unfortunately, there are a LOT of smart teachers, but they are so swamped in homework and mired in petty district politics that many of them cannot recall or get remedial training to improve their skills. Hence, as much as school districts and teachers would be thrilled to get new computers, they generally don't have the time, budget, or other resources to keep at bay mischievous students, much less cannot avoid being embarrassed by precocious or prescient students who can redesign some schoold district's database environments.
Anyway...
David Syes
Mechanical Swamp Thing?
The flies are or could be a devious disinformation ploy.
Maybe this model of robot is supposed to feed on enemy carcasses...
Talk about developing an exterminator to become a terminator.
Or, it could be used to do a "head count" or body count of enemy dead and wounded, but feed on the flies and strips of flesh wherever it can find them. This, could be demoralizing if the food is still alive and unable to defend itself.
Alright now,
don't tease David Hedison (The Fly, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea...)
David Syes
Say, THANKS!,
This is really interesting stuff.
I don't think WSJ portrayed the CC as what you say, debit cards. I guess that's an unfortunate side of rushed "journalism", and the lack of paper space to put the read "right there", on the ground.
I really do need to subscribe or log in to some of the indigenous papers to be more balanced. I do have friends from places around the world, but unfortunately, sometimes people don't like talking much about some of these things.
I end up combing Barnes & Noble books for recent, lived-there (purportedly, or by references cited) people. Right now I'm studying about Japan. I have some books on China, and I sometimes go to SINA and other sites, but I haven't been to SINA for maybe a year. Inevitably, something always comes along and competes for time...
Best Regards,
David Syes
"mySQLcc ("control center") is no longer under development,"
.
In addition to MySQLGUI not being further developed.
I have used MySQL Administrator on my Mandrake boxes at home and on my W2KP box at work. I prefer the GUI/CS apps over the web-based controls.
Also I use or "play with" DBDesigner from www.fabforce.net as well as AquaData Studio from www.aquafold.com
For my development stuff for my hobby and for things which I hope to convert and sell in the near future, I use (have been since 1994 or so) Lotus Approach. THAT is a GUI to be rekoned with, for cubicle users.
Sadly, though I can export my fields (less picture and date/time fields (the D&T have to be converted to "text" first), I cannot get correct summary counts on detal tables. Lotus' reply is to bring the data back to the desktop. Since Approach is not a standalone app (as in runtime executable like ms access is/can be), this may not be much of a problem until data synchronization gets out of control when some fields change. They CAN be remapped, but you're likely better off locking the app so regular users cannot change the interface and start adding their own data. If they are privileged, then make them part of the development team's contacts.
What I do like about MySQL is that it will let me use Approach to export my various schemas/tables although my field names have spaces. A former director of mine suggested I "get used to" using underscores in field names and not use spaces. Well, I don't care for databases that cannot cope with HUMAN-FRIENDLY/readable field names. The technology should be smart enough to permit user-friendly field naming, even if the names still have to be truncated to 45 characters or so.
For the longest time, I did not get PostgreSQL to work distro after distro upgrade of Mandrake because I simply did not figure out the password was 'postgres' or 'postgresql'. Now that I've been on MySQL for a couple years or so, and found some nice GUI apps for it, and it has an ODBC (3.51 or 3.52) driver that lets me export and read my Lotus Approach data, I am happy, but not as happy as I'd be if IBM and Lotus dual-sourced or dual-licensed Approach and SmartSuite.
David Syes
Here is a Segue (not Segway...)...
This reminds me of a couple weeks ago when at Fry's Electronics I cought glimpse of a BlueMan video. This particular vid mad me think of River Dance.
Imagine the River Dance people decked out in blue, and Blue Man and the ensemble stompin' the hell out of a stage, arcs, sparks, showering all over the place.
Blue Dance and River Man
talk about Lightening Boots...
David Syes
CHUTE!
Why couldn't Project Genesis JUST CHUTE ME?!?!
DOH!!!!
Maybe in the desert, Genesis "will bring LIFE from LIFElessness".
Maybe someone told the solar wind, "You were trying to IRRADIATE and KILL us, but you're going to HAVE to COME down HERE. You HAVE to COME DOWN HERE!!!"
JUST CHUTE ME!!!
BTW, I also read an August 2004 copy of WSJ, and this year, China is considering forcing automobile buyers to pay down at least 20% on a vehicle.
Why? Well, too many borrowers get a vehicle financed and when they lose their job or drown in debt, they just either abandon the car -- and the debt-- or worse, they keep the car and abandon the creditor. The serious part of that problem is when the debtor KEEPS the car without paying it off, and they relocate, it is hard for the title holder of the car to repossess it.
Maybe China is going to have to have a Yakuza-like repossession agency -- if they don't already have one. But, forcing the purchaser to pay 20% down might be better, since more money down theoretically will make the borrower more committed to just paying it off.
Local layoffs or economic malaise or disasters, though, can still undermine that plan.
David Syes
"especially considering there are no such things as credit cards, personal loans (in the US sense), and various other things people here take for granted"
c ip ation.html
& q= wsj+china+bad+automobile+loans+down+payments&btnG= Search
What? Chinese on Mainland China are getting into "Love American Style, singing in the Red, White, and Blue" with serious credit debt and all the other vagaries of having credit cards when borrowing heavily and paying back on low income.
WADR (with all due respect), evangellydonut, please... see:
"USCBC: US China banking Council: Foreign Participation in China's Financial Sector"
http://www.uschina.org/statistics/foreign_parti
And, China is "awash" in credit cards.... See:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~glee/Fall 3.htm
"Surge in Lending
In China Stokes
Economic Worries
Spending, Investment Sprees Point
To Overheating; Bad Debts Rise"
The intro paragraph reads:
"SHANGHAI -- Liu Yijun is 27 years old and works as a real-estate agent. He and his wife, a supermarket purchasing agent, together make about $8,000 a year. On that modest income, this year they've bought a new Mazda for more than $19,000 and a new apartment priced at almost $91,000.
How did they do it? "Bank loans changed our life," Mr. Liu says.
China is awash in easy credit these days, spurring a national spending and investment spree in everything from residential property to wine, cars, steel and shopping malls. Banks' liberal lending policies -- Mr. Liu and his wife, for instance, financed at rates between 5% and 6% -- have boosted lifestyles and helped fuel China's white-hot economic growth. Gross domestic product hit $1.236 trillion last year, up 50% from 1996, according to the International Monetary Fund. The average annual growth rate during that period was nearly 7%."
From WSJ, Oct 2003
=========
For more details on other links, google this:
wsj china credit cards automobile loans
Or, just use the google URL/cache link:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
David Syes
Kirk: And, M-5, what is the punishment for murder?
M-5: Thisss... Unit... Must... Die...
(M-5 winks out) Sound/music (dew-diu-do-doo-doo)
Kirk: Scotty! Get down there FAST! Kill M-5. Pull dah PLUHGGG, SCOTTY!
Scotty: Aye, Kep-ten.
---------
Really bring back Voyager, with Harry Kim as a captain. And, god, PLEASE,
--No more Excelsior or 1701 variants!
--No revisits to kirk and 2215/2315!
--No more hollywoodization of audience: the future belongs to EARTH, not the USA, not hollywood, not Los Angeles. Trek, if it needs to die, needs to do so and be reborn as a TRUE international representation of the future. Foreign actors/actresses, not just from up North, or from the UK. A REAL, Native Asian, a REAL, recurring Indian (yeh, they had Engineer Singh, but he dropped or was written out/ignored/replaced)
-- Add you suggestions here
DHLS: All your kites and kamerus are now blong to us/US.
Yakov/Amerikov/Davidov: In Mother USA, Kites bring YOU Down...
Anyone for using bunkerbusters on a tank or two?
I for one would like to see the aftereffects of DU or TA CIWS rounds raking the hull of a "combatant" ship. Not that it needs to be manned and personnel wounded or killed, but I'd like the see the HULL and what happens to it from various ranges (I can't recall reading any such stuff in Clancy's or others' novells, but mine will include such things, of course, as the result of desperation under fire...).
What would a pair of CIWS guns raking from stem and stern to amidships do to a DD-963 or DDG-51 or other navy's similar hulls if raked at the waterline? Would they sag, heave, and gasp like Clint Eastwoods bus (or the shack the police shot the hell out of) he and Bullock were holed up in?
I'm also curious as to what a bunker buster dropped onto a ship would look like. Not the sort of stuff ANY navy wants to feel except on decommissioned hulls, but we in the public don't get to see much of that, like we don't see the A-6 Intruder/S-3 Viking ("people-eaters") footage of half-chewed deck personnel...
Again, I'm not interested in seeing personnel hurt, I just want to visualize the effects of DU on 1/2 or 3/4 in steel. (Note: I realize anyone hard up to attack a gas turbine is better off holing the hell out of the uptakes and intakes, since that is not much different from holing a carburator or even ripping out a fuel injector, but...).
(Yep, I'm the kind of guy who mastered dropping wing tanks on my wing men and escort bombers in Falcon 2.0 and other sims, and I mastered strafing tents and foot soldiers, landing my Longbow Apache on tents, strafing the control tower, etc... Not the kind of stuff anyone really wants to DO, but probably don't mind IMAGINING...)
TAO(Tactical Action Officer)/David Syes
Real Doll in orbit...
for some Zero-G fun... For increased frictive pleasure, there'll be no ablative armor.
Contoured surfaces are flexible and conformal for maximum fit and gain.
For command and control, "the eyese have it".
I somewhere read and wholeheartedly ascribe to this:
"It is not the duty of a consumer to keep a business alive; it is the duty of the consumer to consumer ONLY what they need."
If more people believed in this, we'd have less redundancy, tho at the risk of predatory pricing. However, those who stick to this principle will drive out the predators and drive out the inferior-quality knockoff shit-makers whose knockoffs don't "deserve" to be on a shelf. Those with good knockoffs of reasonable quality and durability would served to make it possible for predators to be kept in check.
I also read/heard, and wholly ascribe to this:
"Businessess don't have a RIGHT or a GUARANTEE to PROFIT; they have an OPPORTUNITY to TRY to make a profit."
Once people understand that, they might ideally make reasonable, worthwhile, upgradable but durable products for a GOOD price, even if conventional "wisdom" claims good quality and good price to be virtually mutually exclusive.
Unfortuntely, my position is not in congruence with reality.
David Syes
What I find interesting about those frontloaders is one a friend has. I think it's a Neptune or something from Maytag.
It is very quiet, I mean verry quiet. If you push on and grab to tilt the "basket", it tips and bounces in a cushy silent manner.
Being an ex-sailor (but not a submariner (suhb-mare-in-ur, but some say it like "sub-muh-reenur") and being interested in subs since I was maybe 8 or 9, and knowing a little about the engine room "rafts" the entire plant sits on in some of the stealthier boats, I began wondering if this wasther is really based on declassified (or partially classified) submarine stealth technology. After all, though it is reported you could drop a hammer or fire a pistol inside an SSN-688/later class and not be detected even within some 5 or 15 nautical miles, I doubt washers would be run regularly like the old-style crap most people continue to buy. Most machines agitators/baskets spin like hell, churn and plunge to and fro, and have a distinctive metallic POP or brake snap sound when they change cycles or go from wash to rinse, etc.
I then wondered, "Well, hell, if this washer is based on tax-paid military technology, and if the military PAID someone to design it, I wonder who really owns this technology."
But, that was just one other piece of interesting technology/mechanics...
david syes
This may be a bigger pain in the ass than Y2K. Imagine all the scrambling around.
Imagine ALL the financial and banking and retail shops that have ground-level operations with all their pretty "we exist, we live" displays. All of them will/could be moving up to higher-level digs, forcing another irrational exuberance in the retail space market that'll try to jack up rents or leasing costs.
Companies will have to scramble like crazy to once again inventory ALL their systems, networked AND stand-alone, just to make sure nothing can be (easily) ripped from them, and to make sure that the machines cannot be read, then used as propagators.
It would be quite embarrassing if a company were jacked, then used for relaying their own information. And, if a data thief is caught in an office, but manages to destroy the medium sufficiently, the charges against him/her might be reduced, if the data was not propagated or not removed from the premises or the secure room. But, that depends on locales (some places might cut your head off if you see state secrets, while others may release you with reduced charges if you or your hirers could not benefit from the act, though trespass, tampering, unauthorized removal or relocation (like USN "rape", "penetration, however slight, constitutes rape"), however non-removed, still constitutes theft.
But, the security industry can come up with some bastion or firewall or improved monitoring and access/credentials tools to slow down these weird ideas.
One rule I have is NEVER offer up destructive information without at least a few antidotes our counters. After all, it may be a matter of time before certain thoughts REALLY ARE illegal, but offering a fix might diminish the punishment meted out.
David Syes
Corporate perceived risk of unmonitored systems (or my instigation by this commentary) will likely spark a frenetic rush to secure sensitive systems.
I think that with these OS-Sticks likely taking off, legally loadable with Linux, but very unlikely to have windoze loaded legally (except for sysadmin purposes, I suppose), sysadmins everywhere should be worried about machines being shut down, booted by these OS-Sticks, and then pilfered or trashed out by malicious types.
Imagine a pissed off, marauding employee going around booting up and instantly killing partitions. Or, someone doing it to an Internet cafe, or worse, to a police station, hospital, transit or power station, etc. Or, to a store. Just ONE compromised system will spark a frenzy to check out the others.
Imagine if a person hides a USB-based device on their person (well, given the pocket and bag checking some sensitive companies carry out, I imagine a desperate data corruptor or data thief will hide theirs in a suppository--assuming hand wands and cavity searches are not in corporate style...) and entered a government, military, or sensitive information facility and STOLE data... the LLNL and Sandia/New Mexico data device losses will pale in comparison to this, even if peripheral or virtual data port logging is being done.
So, I posit that VMWare and the various BIOS makers can carve out a new market for themselves:
VMWare:
DITCH the stand-alone or networked OS-loaded nodes, hook them up to the protected/isolated central or workgroups server (something I've been advocating for environments large and small where trust and security are issues, ESPECIALLY in companies)...
Phoenix/other BIOS makers:
We make BIOS that don't let ANYTHING boot or run if it is booted by a peripheral media device... First it has to boot to the master server, then send credentials, then do XYZ...
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulations might very well force the financial sector as well as others to secure their data, especially where offices have too much free, unmonitored access.
Maybe when windoze is in airplane cockpits we'll have to worry about USB ports in chair arms. Maybe somebody will hijack the headrest-mounted Playstations. Oh, wait, I think playstations and DVDs are just in JAL/INA.
Imagine how bloody angry ms would be if someone placed windoze on USB sticks. That could really mess up ms' licensing scheme.
Regardless of which OS is on a USB stick, what really will become a problem is abusers who use customized "OS-Sticks" (a term I'm coining and will continue to use even if some big powerhouse pickes it up and tries to hijack it as their own...) to wreak havoc on the Kinko's and other places where computers might be carelessly (by then) be deployed with their peripherals ports left (physically) unsecured or left installed.
With an OS-Stick, the user's privileges are all in hand, unless the BIOS of more or all computers has control over the data flow and control of the machine.
"Firewall-in-a-BIOS", anyone?
David Syes
Let's start displaying Tux with a family (wife/partner/spouse/whatever (industry/standards bodies), along with offspring or adoptees (we users and adoptees/friends of FOSS/Linux/GPL, etc)...