They are indeed a utility, and what gets my goat about this so-called "debate" is this: I pay for an Internet connection at home; I also pay for the Internet connection at our colocation facility. Google pays their own bills, too, just as their employees do at their respective homes.
Put another way: I'm paying as a customer to access the world of the Internet, and as a business for the world of the Internet to access my sites. How in the *world* does Google need to contribute to payment in this anywhere?
They pay the bills for the world of the Internet to access Google.com and for Google.com's crawlers to access the world of the Internet.
If Google is costing a particular web hosting company too much, there are numerous remedies, including:
use the tools Google makes available to reduce bandwidth
use generally available network tools to reduce bandwidth
charge customers more
get out of the business altogether and let someone qualified do 1,2, and 3
OT, I know, but speaking of Bluetooth, I remember not long ago there seemed to be worries-aplenty about security issues with Bluetooth itself, but I've heard nary a peep about this in ages.
Maybe I've missed the press releases about it, but isn't this still the case? Aren't there still major concerns about Bluetooth being insecure?
I think that a high percentage of people will just end up buying it later, once units become available.
I, too, think this is definitely the case in general; however, I'm sure there's some halo effect for other consoles, too, as some consumers who're perhaps new to consoles or who aren't really sure what the big deal is with the wii look to other brands thinking (as many folks do) that they're pretty much like computers... so they're pretty much the same.
I for one tooled down to Fry's on a recent Saturday morning just before they opened hoping to get my paws on one (they had a shipment arriving) only to miss out on the line tickets by... one... person.:-(
For a *blink* I thought about sticking around for something else, but that fleeting thought vanished when I remembered that consoles really are all the same... except for the wii.
Instead I [cough] consoled [/cough] myself with a new game for my Mac.
Lesson 2.
Never trust anyone to keep security up. Apple, Microsoft, Linux Distributions, even OpenBSD they are all made by humans and humans make mistakes and forget to check out things...
Ummm.... hardware still runs software. Firmware *is* software.
If anything was ever evidence of a totally, completely, utterly broken patent system, this is it.
How in the world was this ever even submitted?!
There's SOO much prior art out there on this one, it's utterly laughable.
Oooohh.... I've got an idea: I'll patent anything that starts with http: and ends with.com that relies on... TCP/IP... Yeah! That's the ticket! That's how it happened. I was there...*
This is typical MS-style logic: rush garbage out to market just to capitalize on the marketing value.
Bah! I'd much rather have an OS delayed to ensure it's up to par than something rushed to market just to satisfy the short-term goals of "one-upping Microsoft".
'Tis much better long-term to actually do the right thing: a good job, make a good product, and let the market forces work themselves out.
For 24/7 operation a compact flash solution like on a Soekris box is better for this role.
I've looked long and hard at the Soekris machines, but ultimately just kept putting off getting one for a variety of reasons--most of them admittedly pretty shoddy ones.:-)
That said, I did just plonk down the cash for a Fit-PC. I'm hopeful that it will indeed live up to the expectations being set for it.
As for it having a hard drive. Eh. Doesn't bother me. Flash RAM may not have moving parts, but it can and indeed does go bad. Parts--moving or not--failing is par for the course in most anything, even things with what most folks would consider "zero" technology. (Things like glue failing on a chair and falling on your rumpus.)
FWIW all, I just tried this on my G5 with both Excel 2004 and NeoOffice and both calculated correctly.
Mayhaps the MacIntrash (as some are fond of calling it) ain't so bad after all!:-)
Then again, it *did* spawn a copy of Word with Clippy bouncing around the screen "like a Jack Russel Terrier" asking if I wanted it to throw a chair across the room on my behalf. I'm not so sure this was intended, especially from such a simple formula, regardless of any so-called calculation bugs.
Besides which, I wonder where Clippy would even get such an inclination.
My thoughts were the same... or at very least yank the drive out altogether and tell them that it has proprietary company data that cannot be disclosed to a third party due to "corporate security policy."
In a case like this where the functionality of the machine itself isn't the issue, no drive should be no problem.
To all you novice net admins out there: network cards do *not* like chunky peanut butter! Smooth/creamy only, please.
Now you see what happens when some joker thinks [s]he can get away with using chunky for something as critical as proper care and feeding of network cards. Pfft.
Bah! Kids these days... I tell ya. Probably the same folks that think the interwebnet is the same as the World Wide Web.
While the possibilities offered by the iPhone seem to be pretty far-reaching without the "Phone" in "iPhone", you've essentially bought yourself a circa 1999 Palm Pilot with better resolution and color.
Speaking of a PDA, it would allllmost make sense for a "data only" version. Heck, how many people use their phones only for SMS as it is.
In either case, my bet (and hope) is on the phone/network being opened up for third party apps. None of this though makes up for the fact that running this app disables the phone portion which really doesn't make sense IMHO.
Indeed it is. I imagine quite a few companies legitimately change their CID information so that their remote offices, home office workers, and others are able to [bad analogy] essentially NAT [/bad analogy] their real phone numbers with the public ones the firms--and their employees--want shown.
While there may be need for a bill prohibiting it when used for nefarious purposes, this really *is* a feature IMHO.
I notified Ameritrade of this at *least* three times and was met with varying degrees of incompetence, stiff resistance and unaccountability to there even being a problem.
I finally gave up trying because it was so obvious they just didn't care. In my view if they were willing to let this breach go un-addressed, what others would also have the same fate?
Thus, I canceled my account and moved to another brokerage.
Sure, it's a little like closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, but I just couldn't stand by and do nothing.
Personally, I believe this has got to be either:
1.) an inside job (not "lost" tapes) or
2.) an inside job carried out at a company tasked with doing work on Ameritrade's behalf (like issuing the shareholder voting statements).
I wish this were always the case, but I recently ran into an issue when trying to request documents from the Nevada Secretary of State web site. In this case there's no alternative to the official site.
As of mid-April 2007 the official SOS site only supports IE. As a Mac/Firefox user, I quite literally could not use the shopping cart to purchase certain documents as the site simply refused to work. Clicking certain links did nothing. It didn't complain. It didn't bail. It just didn't do anything.
I tried every browser I have (several in all), and none worked. In the end having no Windows machines around I had to have a friend go through and purchase the documents for me from his Windows PC.:-\
I'm lucky to've been in a position where someone could so easily help me out. I'm sure there are plenty of people and situations where this just isn't practical.
In 1996 I might understand this situation, but in 2007? Coding a shopping cart to be cross-browser compatible just isn't that difficult. In fact it sure seems to me it's actually tougher not to be.
Multivariate testing finally getting it's due...
on
Google Website Optimizer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'm so, so glad to see that there's proper attention being drawn to multivariate testing (finally), as it's something that few--very few--companies and individuals alike have ever really understood.
Understanding that Option A may work better than Option B isn't *nearly* as powerful as understanding that if you'd just taken certain components from them both, you'd have something even better still. Instead most marketers end up doing this endless Option A vs Option B stuff and never end up with what's really the "right" answer.
Then, there's the whole patience factor... most marketers don't have the simple willpower to put a test out there and let it run its course--especially when you've got so many options to test to do it right. Often, shortcuts get pulled because one particular version didn't work well, so it's assumed that derivative pages will also perform sub-par. (The reality is often surprising.)
Lastly, while we're on the topic of multivariate testing to my knowledge the only firm that has done proper, fully automated multivariate testing is Memetrics. Having worked with the so-called MVT solutions of other companies (which were mostly a joke) and Memetrics, too, Memetrics is the hands-down winner.
Google may have broader reach and even better marketing, but Memetrics is really a cut above IMHO.
While I myself have never used P2P file sharing software (nor do I intend to), this notion begs the question: If P2P is indeed a dire threat to security, perhaps government employees should simply be restricted from using the software instead of broad sweeping statements of FUD to be shouted from the rooftops. ("Joe, you use Limewire or anything like it, you're fired. End of story.")
Further, I'll go on to say that there are other F-A-R greater dangers to national security, too, like people using traditional telephone lines, dialing in to the government institutions, then using social engineering to trick the person receiving the call to doing their bidding for the callers ill-gotten gain.
Yikes. Let's hope that has never happened....
Funny thing is, I don't seem to recall any calls (no pun intended) for banning phones in government institutions.
Let's face it: Safari isn't bad, but Firefox (and other browsers for Mac) are quite a bit better.
If for no other reason than the plugins like AdBlock and NoScript, Firefox is terrific. That said, Safari really still only serves primarily for me as a springboard to getting Firefox installed. Sure there are a couple of remaing sites that require Safari (or IE on Windows, of course), but aside from that, there's little reason to use Safari IMHO.
Also noteworthy in Mac browser land are Camino (with CamiTools installed) and OmniGroup's OmniWeb are also quite good browsers--certainly light years better than IE.
You can take a British TV set to Australia (and vice versa), and even receive pictures, but the programmes will be the wrong way up.
It's true, I swear.
Sounds to me like turning the tube/tele upside down is the way to go.;-)
It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. And, best of all TVs are easily re-flipped for shows that don't need conversion. Channel surfing becomes challenging though....
"That means a background check won't catch 70% of the malicious insiders."
In many respects, that's an excellent point. In short: background checks aren't perfect, and they really can't be a perfect predictor of the future.
Two other things to consider about them though:
1.) *Good* background checks cover more than just criminal record searches. (Sloppy checks are nothing more than database lookups.) For someone who's about to step into a highly secure situation, let's say a bank programmer responsible for clearing transactions for instance, there are any number of additional checks that should be done, among them a credit report.
(A credit report?! There are *countless* cases of people across the globe who get pressed too far by debt selling company secrets and/or stealing to save themselves from the creditors. It happens. Credit checks may help in that case.) Which leads me to my next point.
2.) Background screening like we do (shameless plug) is an intensive process. Screening reports are not by any means meant to be "yes"/"no" hire/don't hire reports. Instead they're meant to help employers make decisions based upon their needs and risk tolerance.
All that said, on the surface it may seem that conducting pre-hire investigations on those 70% may *not* catch some portion of those who would commit criminal acts like those described in the original article; however, quite often a good background check *will* turn up certain things that might just make an employer want to pause and reconsider their hiring decision for a given job applicant. (Wow, what's with all these arrests on drug charges...." for instance.)
In instances like those chances are a good portion of the applicants that would fall into the category that might give an employer pause would also be the very same ones who would later go on to be in the 70%.
I'm in a somewhat similar position myself and have found that health insurance isn't the only coverage that can be tough to purchase. With any type of insurance, there are a *ton* of options--to say nothing of the multitude of different insurance companies. Multiply that x100 for home owners insurance. Think you've got everything covered? Think again. Better read the fine print. Thrice.
In a way, I'm glad I'm still with the same company for my auto insurance since I began driving nearly 20 years ago. At least that's one less thing to have to find. That said, as for *finding* health insurance, I began my quest for health insurance on AlliedQuotes.com, and ended up choosing an insurer from there.
One suggestion that I came across in my research--perhaps there in fact--is to make a written list ahead of time of what you want from a health insurance provider. Makes sense. And it actually helped me rule out the things I *didn't* need and get to the right plans faster.
What about our friends from IBM with DB2 and our friends at MySQL and PostgreSQL?
I realize they're only comparing the two, but why?
That's a bit like only comparing BMW and Lincoln when comparing car brands for safety. Sure, it's useful to see one relative to the other, but removed from the overall marketplace, it's not a particularly useful comparison.
In that same vein, I'd also say most users don't understand the risks involved in email, either. Running Vista in a virtualized environment in the home may be just the thing for parents with young kids to help minimize the risks to their machine when the kids are cruising around online.
Give 'em a VPC of their own that can't have any data saved to it on reboot, and presto! you've created a way that helps keep the host OS reasonably secure from malware.
I know a lot of parents that would understand that concept.
Prohibiting this technology in the name of safety just doesn't make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Put another way: I'm paying as a customer to access the world of the Internet, and as a business for the world of the Internet to access my sites. How in the *world* does Google need to contribute to payment in this anywhere?
They pay the bills for the world of the Internet to access Google.com and for Google.com's crawlers to access the world of the Internet.
If Google is costing a particular web hosting company too much, there are numerous remedies, including:
OT, I know, but speaking of Bluetooth, I remember not long ago there seemed to be worries-aplenty about security issues with Bluetooth itself, but I've heard nary a peep about this in ages.
Maybe I've missed the press releases about it, but isn't this still the case? Aren't there still major concerns about Bluetooth being insecure?
This Security Focus article on bluetooth in particular is one on the subject that seemed to be widely referenced, but it's quite old: 2005.
I hate it when life imitates art like this. This sounds eerily like the Robin William film "The Final Cut"
I for one tooled down to Fry's on a recent Saturday morning just before they opened hoping to get my paws on one (they had a shipment arriving) only to miss out on the line tickets by... one... person.
For a *blink* I thought about sticking around for something else, but that fleeting thought vanished when I remembered that consoles really are all the same... except for the wii.
Instead I [cough] consoled [/cough] myself with a new game for my Mac.
If anything was ever evidence of a totally, completely, utterly broken patent system, this is it.
.com that relies on... TCP/IP... Yeah! That's the ticket! That's how it happened. I was there...*
How in the world was this ever even submitted?!
There's SOO much prior art out there on this one, it's utterly laughable.
Oooohh.... I've got an idea: I'll patent anything that starts with http: and ends with
* with apologies to Jon Lovett
This is typical MS-style logic: rush garbage out to market just to capitalize on the marketing value.
Bah! I'd much rather have an OS delayed to ensure it's up to par than something rushed to market just to satisfy the short-term goals of "one-upping Microsoft".
'Tis much better long-term to actually do the right thing: a good job, make a good product, and let the market forces work themselves out.
That said, I did just plonk down the cash for a Fit-PC. I'm hopeful that it will indeed live up to the expectations being set for it.
As for it having a hard drive. Eh. Doesn't bother me. Flash RAM may not have moving parts, but it can and indeed does go bad. Parts--moving or not--failing is par for the course in most anything, even things with what most folks would consider "zero" technology. (Things like glue failing on a chair and falling on your rumpus.)
Indeed... and on the surface, you're completely correct; however...
Two words:
dual
ethernet
As much as I love my Macs... and I *do* love 'em. The current Mac Minis are useless as dedicated firewalls as they only have one NIC.
FWIW all, I just tried this on my G5 with both Excel 2004 and NeoOffice and both calculated correctly.
:-)
Mayhaps the MacIntrash (as some are fond of calling it) ain't so bad after all!
Then again, it *did* spawn a copy of Word with Clippy bouncing around the screen "like a Jack Russel Terrier" asking if I wanted it to throw a chair across the room on my behalf. I'm not so sure this was intended, especially from such a simple formula, regardless of any so-called calculation bugs.
Besides which, I wonder where Clippy would even get such an inclination.
My thoughts were the same... or at very least yank the drive out altogether and tell them that it has proprietary company data that cannot be disclosed to a third party due to "corporate security policy."
In a case like this where the functionality of the machine itself isn't the issue, no drive should be no problem.
To all you novice net admins out there: network cards do *not* like chunky peanut butter! Smooth/creamy only, please.
Now you see what happens when some joker thinks [s]he can get away with using chunky for something as critical as proper care and feeding of network cards. Pfft.
Bah! Kids these days... I tell ya. Probably the same folks that think the interwebnet is the same as the World Wide Web.
Great, Scott! What's next?!
My sentiments exactly.
While the possibilities offered by the iPhone seem to be pretty far-reaching without the "Phone" in "iPhone", you've essentially bought yourself a circa 1999 Palm Pilot with better resolution and color.
Speaking of a PDA, it would allllmost make sense for a "data only" version. Heck, how many people use their phones only for SMS as it is.
In either case, my bet (and hope) is on the phone/network being opened up for third party apps. None of this though makes up for the fact that running this app disables the phone portion which really doesn't make sense IMHO.
Indeed it is. I imagine quite a few companies legitimately change their CID information so that their remote offices, home office workers, and others are able to [bad analogy] essentially NAT [/bad analogy] their real phone numbers with the public ones the firms--and their employees--want shown.
While there may be need for a bill prohibiting it when used for nefarious purposes, this really *is* a feature IMHO.
I notified Ameritrade of this at *least* three times and was met with varying degrees of incompetence, stiff resistance and unaccountability to there even being a problem.
I finally gave up trying because it was so obvious they just didn't care. In my view if they were willing to let this breach go un-addressed, what others would also have the same fate?
Thus, I canceled my account and moved to another brokerage.
Sure, it's a little like closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, but I just couldn't stand by and do nothing.
Personally, I believe this has got to be either:
1.) an inside job (not "lost" tapes) or
2.) an inside job carried out at a company tasked with doing work on Ameritrade's behalf (like issuing the shareholder voting statements).
I wish this were always the case, but I recently ran into an issue when trying to request documents from the Nevada Secretary of State web site. In this case there's no alternative to the official site.
:-\
As of mid-April 2007 the official SOS site only supports IE. As a Mac/Firefox user, I quite literally could not use the shopping cart to purchase certain documents as the site simply refused to work. Clicking certain links did nothing. It didn't complain. It didn't bail. It just didn't do anything.
I tried every browser I have (several in all), and none worked. In the end having no Windows machines around I had to have a friend go through and purchase the documents for me from his Windows PC.
I'm lucky to've been in a position where someone could so easily help me out. I'm sure there are plenty of people and situations where this just isn't practical.
In 1996 I might understand this situation, but in 2007? Coding a shopping cart to be cross-browser compatible just isn't that difficult. In fact it sure seems to me it's actually tougher not to be.
I'm so, so glad to see that there's proper attention being drawn to multivariate testing (finally), as it's something that few--very few--companies and individuals alike have ever really understood.
Understanding that Option A may work better than Option B isn't *nearly* as powerful as understanding that if you'd just taken certain components from them both, you'd have something even better still. Instead most marketers end up doing this endless Option A vs Option B stuff and never end up with what's really the "right" answer.
Then, there's the whole patience factor... most marketers don't have the simple willpower to put a test out there and let it run its course--especially when you've got so many options to test to do it right. Often, shortcuts get pulled because one particular version didn't work well, so it's assumed that derivative pages will also perform sub-par. (The reality is often surprising.)
Lastly, while we're on the topic of multivariate testing to my knowledge the only firm that has done proper, fully automated multivariate testing is Memetrics. Having worked with the so-called MVT solutions of other companies (which were mostly a joke) and Memetrics, too, Memetrics is the hands-down winner.
Google may have broader reach and even better marketing, but Memetrics is really a cut above IMHO.
While I myself have never used P2P file sharing software (nor do I intend to), this notion begs the question: If P2P is indeed a dire threat to security, perhaps government employees should simply be restricted from using the software instead of broad sweeping statements of FUD to be shouted from the rooftops. ("Joe, you use Limewire or anything like it, you're fired. End of story.")
Further, I'll go on to say that there are other F-A-R greater dangers to national security, too, like people using traditional telephone lines, dialing in to the government institutions, then using social engineering to trick the person receiving the call to doing their bidding for the callers ill-gotten gain.
Yikes. Let's hope that has never happened....
Funny thing is, I don't seem to recall any calls (no pun intended) for banning phones in government institutions.
Let's face it: Safari isn't bad, but Firefox (and other browsers for Mac) are quite a bit better.
If for no other reason than the plugins like AdBlock and NoScript, Firefox is terrific. That said, Safari really still only serves primarily for me as a springboard to getting Firefox installed. Sure there are a couple of remaing sites that require Safari (or IE on Windows, of course), but aside from that, there's little reason to use Safari IMHO.
Also noteworthy in Mac browser land are Camino (with CamiTools installed) and OmniGroup's OmniWeb are also quite good browsers--certainly light years better than IE.
It's fast. It's cheap. It's easy. And, best of all TVs are easily re-flipped for shows that don't need conversion. Channel surfing becomes challenging though....
Two other things to consider about them though:
1.) *Good* background checks cover more than just criminal record searches. (Sloppy checks are nothing more than database lookups.) For someone who's about to step into a highly secure situation, let's say a bank programmer responsible for clearing transactions for instance, there are any number of additional checks that should be done, among them a credit report.
(A credit report?! There are *countless* cases of people across the globe who get pressed too far by debt selling company secrets and/or stealing to save themselves from the creditors. It happens. Credit checks may help in that case.) Which leads me to my next point.
2.) Background screening like we do (shameless plug) is an intensive process. Screening reports are not by any means meant to be "yes"/"no" hire/don't hire reports. Instead they're meant to help employers make decisions based upon their needs and risk tolerance.
All that said, on the surface it may seem that conducting pre-hire investigations on those 70% may *not* catch some portion of those who would commit criminal acts like those described in the original article; however, quite often a good background check *will* turn up certain things that might just make an employer want to pause and reconsider their hiring decision for a given job applicant. (Wow, what's with all these arrests on drug charges...." for instance.)
In instances like those chances are a good portion of the applicants that would fall into the category that might give an employer pause would also be the very same ones who would later go on to be in the 70%.
I'm in a somewhat similar position myself and have found that health insurance isn't the only coverage that can be tough to purchase. With any type of insurance, there are a *ton* of options--to say nothing of the multitude of different insurance companies. Multiply that x100 for home owners insurance. Think you've got everything covered? Think again. Better read the fine print. Thrice.
In a way, I'm glad I'm still with the same company for my auto insurance since I began driving nearly 20 years ago. At least that's one less thing to have to find. That said, as for *finding* health insurance, I began my quest for health insurance on AlliedQuotes.com, and ended up choosing an insurer from there.
One suggestion that I came across in my research--perhaps there in fact--is to make a written list ahead of time of what you want from a health insurance provider. Makes sense. And it actually helped me rule out the things I *didn't* need and get to the right plans faster.
What about our friends from IBM with DB2 and our friends at MySQL and PostgreSQL?
I realize they're only comparing the two, but why?
That's a bit like only comparing BMW and Lincoln when comparing car brands for safety. Sure, it's useful to see one relative to the other, but removed from the overall marketplace, it's not a particularly useful comparison.
In that same vein, I'd also say most users don't understand the risks involved in email, either. Running Vista in a virtualized environment in the home may be just the thing for parents with young kids to help minimize the risks to their machine when the kids are cruising around online.
Give 'em a VPC of their own that can't have any data saved to it on reboot, and presto! you've created a way that helps keep the host OS reasonably secure from malware.
I know a lot of parents that would understand that concept.
Prohibiting this technology in the name of safety just doesn't make sense.