It's a small university of about 4000 students, but known through most of the world. I worked for IBM during the late 90's when these things were being implemented. They had some great success with the program, and there are tons of case studies on the net on various sites about the trials of it.
The Acadia Advantage is an academic programme unique in Canada whereby each of the undergraduate (and many of the graduate) students receive laptop computers to use from September to May. Honours students may use their computers in the summer before their last year. Other students have the option to rent their laptops over the summer months. From 1996-2004, the university had a contract with IBM; the 2004-2005 year saw a shift to the Dell Lattitude D600 computers.
Throughout the entirety of the Acadia Advantage program, the following laptops have been employed, each for a two year "turnover" (lease) period:
*snip*
Currently, an insurance policy is available through the USC (User Support Centre), the university's first and only point of contact for hardware and software technical support. This insurance policy, a "total care package" will cover most all accidental damage to the laptops. This is a boon to the student body, as the fast pace of university life, coupled with general lack of regard towards the laptops, results in hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage each year.
Students come to Acadia with different computer backgrounds, but almost every student leaves with some highly developed computer skills. Students have access to resources like the User Support Centre, and faculty receive a lot of support from the Acadia Institute for Teaching and Technology.
Most of the classrooms at Acadia are equipped with ergonomic chairs, acoustic tile, data projectors, and network drops or wireless network access. There are over 7,000 data connections on the campus, and many areas support wireless internet access including the Student Union Building (Acadia Students' Union), the Vaughan Memorial Library, the Acadia Divinity College, and the KC Irving Centre (named for K.C. Irving).
Don't forget PDO in v5.1. It's a _GREAT_ feature, really simplifying database functionality for PostgreSQL, MySQL and others. The calls and itterators are really smart, and syntax is golden. It makes heavy use of exceptions. See http://www.php.net/pdo for more details and examples.
Internet Explorer 7 struggled to properly render some Web pages, and I found local network connectivity to be a hit-or-miss affair.
Big cons are glanced over here. IE is probably the most used feature on most peoples' computers. From surfing for fun to surfing for business, I'd say most users spend most of their time in their Web browser (or maybe a document editor). Especially with 'web applications' being so popular.
Local network connectivity? Is this going back to Windows 98 days where despite being on the same network, with the proper settings, you still can't use file/printer sharing with the computer you can easily ping? Isn't this a big thing for home users (broadband) and more importantly corporate users (files, printers, workgroup, shared workspace, groupware, and of course the Internet).
these two things should be the first to be made rock-solid. They're well into beta testing, with it being over a year (let alone alpha testing internally before). These would be the first thing I would perfect, especially considering the huge dependency on it.
Yet this guy just runs over it, as if they were minor bugs, like an interface quirk or debugging message. Already a few paragraphs in he discredits himself by paying no attention to the biggest glaring errors. Talk about being PAID to be positive about the article.
Now one more issue.
Microsoft did the smart thing by offering Aero Basic and Windows Classic looks as well, which will let older and slower PCs run Vista
Greeeeaaaaat. Just what we need- another interface look. Get with the program. The interface should by consistent. 100%. Turn off rendering shadows and transparencies. Turn off anything 3D. Make it a 2D bitmap for all I care. But keep it looking the same. Replace the 3D bar with a static image, and then don't need the rendering features. Look is the same, but it's not as crisp. This is just another way to tell users to look for the little green start button and them to go "you mean the blue one" because they were dumb enough to feel the need to change it.
1. First they seem to break stuff from time to time. A recent IE6 patch to XP caused.gif images to stop displaying on Web pages if they were made in certani programs. There have been more major bugs, but a proper test cycle is key, if not to lock things down short-term and then open them up with a better solution a few days later. There is no reason why these patches should change functionality when enabling security. Service packs and updates, sure. Not security updates that are required.
2. Microsoft gives the choice and this is bad. Formerly you had to go into windows update (a web site) and download updates you wanted (mixed in with crap like.net 1.0 framework, ipv6, and media player fixes... not to start the 'are these crap' discussion, but I mean they're not core security updates). So a user sees a bunch of checkboxes and users have no idea what any of it is.
Users should NOT have the choice. 'Safety recalls' on cars send letters and request that the user comes in as soon as possible, but this is because the actual recall of, say, an ignition switch causing a fire, may happen ever-so-rarely. With Windows, security issues will happen to 99% of the users with unpatched systems. Microsoft needs to force the upgrade to go in. No choice in the matter. No 'I'll do it later', no notification (maybe a log but nothing that you can change). It needs to just happen. No questions asked. Users will always say no. Users will always question whether this is mixed in with the thousands of other 'your computer is insecure' popup messages.
3. Microsoft's upgrades are intrusive. They require reboots. They thrash the hard drive for a good few minutes even on the fastest machines to replace a few DLLs sized at a few KB. Why? I should be able to turn my computer on and work. Not have it prompt me 5 minutes after I turned it on and got into work that I need to restart. It shouldn't need to be restarted in _most_ cases (I realize sometimes you need to for kernel upgrades). Restart the file-sharing subsystems, the web server, the shell... just don't make me save what I'm doing and leave. Not to mention the timing 'reboot countdown' feature that just keeps coming back whenever you tell it to go away.
4. Windows starts up open to the world. The network subsystem is one of the first to come up these days, due to the huge dependency on it for other services including login. Should a network connection be detected, or when a network cable is attached, or when a wireless network is connected to, Windows should have everything firewalled. It should then do a quick check to see if there are necessary security issues and make sure they're fixed before it lets you implement them. A simple overall 'security version' for the system could be easily probed right away. If all is up to date, the system then, and ONLY THEN, opens up its own firewall to accept and allow connections. This could also happen on dialup connections of course.
This may sound crazy to some, but think of the implications of this. Windows PCs get infected between seconds and minutes after bootup. We know an unpatched system will get infected quickly. We know the amount of spyware and viruses that you can get through just the IE browser is massive. So why does it let you start IE? Why does it let you fire up an unpatched IIS? Why does it let you run MSSQL Server with the Slammer worm on the loose infecting computers within 45 minutes (by my experience)? Why does it let you open up your e-mail when it KNOWS that Outlook will execute arbitrary code and attachments and that these viruses are so common that your average corporate users will get one within a few days in their inbox?
The answer is that it shouldn't! You shouldn't be able to execute code for which SECURITY updates exist (I don't mean general product updates). It's absolutely stupid to run MSSQL server su
The Internet is made to work entirely decrentalized with multiple paths through BGP and so on and so forth. All this has been said.
The argument that seems to be coming up is why we let a few Tier-1's (MCI, Verizon, etc) take most of the bandwidth. It's the same reason why most towns have one power company and water supplier. Sure there isn't a monopoly due to the few players out there, but the number of people who can push insane amounts of data are those tier-1's. And why peer with 100's of people when you can peer with one or two and have access to the whole network?
It's simply that unless you want to be paying a lot more for your net access (and more importantly, corporate dedicated access), you need to bring a lot of bandwidth together.
Think of all of the idle bandwidth if every major ISP in North America were to have to connect to all of the others (keeping in mind peak speed, 95th percentile or whatever you want to classify as 'enough' bandwidth). That's a lot of wires, and a lot of capacity bottlenecks and constant upgrading. Compare that to everyone connecting to a few Tier-1 providers and suddenly the long hauls are done on large and fast circiuts, not to mention taking a ton of monitoring and planning burden off of the ISPs.
Thinking that for one second that MCI/WorldCom's (and others') role of the Internet can be replaced by tons of peering. It's necessary in order to have the speed and quality of service you've grown to expect from it.
Please get the headlines straight. A memory leak is not freeing memory that is no longer used or needed ever. This is often accompanied by destroying the references to it instead of freeing it before that is done. That memory then can not be recovered until the application is terminated and memory is restored to the operating system.
Growing memory demand is not a leak! Otherwise the archives of 10 years worth of data on most corporate networks is considered a 'leak', as it will just keep growing. As long as you know that it's there and can access it in the future, it's A-Okay.
Given that, there should of course be a deemed maximum size at which point such pages are written to the disk, though then again, the OS probably does that anyway.
One worry is often seen in both Windows and UNIX-based operating systems is that memory even when freed in the application remains allocated to the application. So allocating 500MB of memory and freeing it still means that 500MB of memory can't be used by anything but the application that originally allocated it. This worries me somewhat in regards to the memory demand on a multi-user system. A brake needs to be put into place.
Nonetheless, it's not a bug, or a memory leak. Just an oversight.
This is a stupid partnership, as there is just no reason at all to do it.
This is like some cars going faster on certain roads (ignoring speed limits here of course, I'm talking capability). Maybe one 'supported' platform for tech support, but why would anyone possibly want to tie an application to a specific processor? Who knows what the road may bring.
Next: Games that run on ATI-only video cards versus NVidia
I stand corrected on Mathemtica. I know Maple is Linux as well.
Mainstream was the wrong word I suppose, but I couldn't think of a better one.
When a student comes out of university and wants to enter the business world, being familiar with Excel, Visual Studio, SourceSafe, Adobe Photoshop, Visio, Macromedia Flash, etc _CAN_ all work to their benefit and are probably used in more businesses for non-tech jobs than OpenOffice, GCC, CVS, Gimp, ???, ???.
This isn't an attack at anything, as I use Linux and Windows in many contexts (both as server and workstation facilities) and their various support programs. I love my Linux. I'm just saying that when microsoft offers 10,000 workstations of software for $200,000 [20 bucks a workstation] you have to jump on that opportunity, as it'd normally be a few thousand per workstation. I don't have the exact figures, but when you buy in volume and for academics, things get cheap. Not to mention, more users know it from high school.
If I offer you a $5000 in the box plasma TV for $500, whether you need a TV or not, you're damn-well surely going to buy it!
It would be neat to see signalling in major centres (thinking of a big DoS conspiracy though). A device in a movie theatre that signals all phones to not ring or to be dimmer when they are opened during a movie. Walking away from this device will turn it off. It's like the 'anti-cell phone' blocking devices, but doesn't inhibit service... it just enforces politeness.
Similarly, in a hospital, it should do the same, or near an MRI machine turn off the wireless. These things are all neat, but a schedule is a bit much. Who geoes to the movies that regularly? Who goes to sleep at the same time every day?
-M
The Pocket *gasp* Only two inches away...
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Polite Cell Phones
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· Score: 1
a hip-worn cell vibrating against a Wooden Pew makes a lot of noise...
Why people wear their cell phones on their belts a mere two inches away from their pocket, I don't know. Is it to advertise to the world that they're important? Is it to scream "look at me, I have a Blackberry"? Is it so that people around them know that they answer their phone just so often that that two inches adds up to miles of extra movement over the course of a given year?
No No No- None of this inventing words crap. We're going to have another edu-tainment for kids or something silly like that.
Why not just adapt what people consider to be a game. We all know what games are, but they just have a general negative ora about them. A game can be many things and people need to realize it's more than playing Street Fighter in the arcade, or tetris on a GameBoy, or those handheld games that play a single game on the unit using crappy LCDs. Games have evolved and are considered anything interactive and entertaining.
So as opposed to making up a new word, why not just let the word 'game' adjust in people's minds. The definition is right for all of those ( http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/game ) "activity engaged in for diversion or amusement".
A game is something different to different people. A club to an adult may be a strip club. A restaurant to a rich person probably doesn't include Boston Market. The word is correct, but is interpreted differently depending on the market (in this case mostly age/maturity level).
Why don't I see more of a push to get Linux into the realm of academia?
The answer is 'free stuff', or at least very 'cheap stuff'. Microsoft practically gives away copies of Windows, Office, and Visual Studio (for example), so that those fresh out of high school and university are trained in it.
Ultimately, why go with a less compatible solution when you can have the mainstream one for pretty cheap? Also application support (Adobe, CAD software, Mathemtica, etc are all Windows)
It's similar to the tiered health care system as well (USA as an example) The government provides some basic services to get buy, but you should pay for more to get more. Compare to Canada where a single health tier exists. It essentially splits the cost of health care across everyone.
Roads are just the same. They provide a basic service, and if you want something a bit more, you should be willing to pay. How is it different from a toll highway? You _could_ save money and take other roads but you want to use a toll route, and you help paying for that road. The only difference is that the lanes that you're paying for (or not paying for) are right beside the other ones you're driving on.
There's nothing wrong with this! The only thing to watch is that the services provided free from the government don't degrade and always meet a minimum level. As soon as you can't even get some basic medical services or things everyone needs included, then you have problems.
Now taking this back to networked services... If the minimum level of broadband is reasonable for many (lets think 16KB/s ISDN is fair for a single user or small house with 2-3 people) and this is what they need, why provide them a 6Mbit/s cable pipe?A tiered system is not bad, as long as the minimum level is reasonable to those who use it. Many houses I visit use the Internet to check their mail, occasionally transfer a file to the office, and do online banking- none of which would make too much of a difference to have 6Mbit or a half-Mbit. So why should everyone pay for 3Mbit when there are TONS of users who only use half?
Getting mugged here gets a whole new meaning, as now you're going to have the great back-alley forced surgery. I'd rather they just take my damn keys. It's bad enough they're already skinning my fingers, stealing my retinas, and hair. -M
Violate guidelines; would you do one quake frag?
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Fired for Solitare At Work
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· Score: 2, Informative
Oh come on.
Plain and simple, what you do at work must be within the guidelines of your employer and its computer usage policy.
You wouldn't bring up quake, even for just a single frag, so why do people think it's suddenly okay to pull up solitaire, hearts, or the latest java/flash game from third party Web sites? The employer couldn't care less that you wanted only a single frag, playing games is probably against their computer policy, and this person is a clear violator of it. You wouldn't pull out a deck of cards either and start playing a game on your desk, though that'd be more of a company policy than a computer and company policy.
So this is simply that someone didn't follow the rules and is now whining. Some employers are a bit more lax during lunch hours, and that's okay, but you should never just assume that the employer will be okay with you checking personal mail, surfing the net, or playing games during lunch.
I'm sure what happened in more detail is a boss walked by a few times in a week at varying times (11, 2p, 3p, etc) and saw half the time that this person was playing games instead of working. The employer has every right to kick them out. They're on someone elses dollar, so they damn-well be worth it
SOunds like it's just noise to me... Realistically, with all of the talk of people listening to music all day damaging their hearing, wouldn't silence be golden? Maybe some sort of light beacon flashing red could do the exact same thing, or a projector with a few graphs on the wall?
It's a different department sir. You'll have to call our OS department between the hours of 11a and 2p PST (their working day) for any issues with the operating system.
Please- you really think the left hand knows what the right is doing at Microsoft? You really think they're going to make a good feedback loop in this process?
Nothing is perfect, and I never said Bonded Sender was anything close to it. However the concept is the same. We're talking about backing recipients with dollars in order to put a financial burden on those for their e-mail. The reason why Spam is so common is because it's dirty cheap to send. If you suddenly add a cost to sending it, it's less worthwhile and more difficult to manage. You need to link it wiht a credit card number or business name.
Keeping in mind, buying lists is not always a bad thing. Ever used a credit card? Airmiles card? Donated to a charity? Signed up for an in-store loyalty card? Your address and phone number is on many lists being sold and traded by countless organizations.
ALT.com buying a list isn't bad. It may be frowned upon in the e-mail world to not use opt-in or double-opt-in, but that doesn't necessarily make them Spam right away. The question is, if you try and unsubscribe from their lists, do they honour it? Do you end up on other lists instead? What is their privacy policy?
Bebo.com is sending you mail because OTHER PEOPLE have entered your e-mail address. These are probably your friends. These services are known for logging into messenger and passport and obtaining your address book (by permission... though personally I think M$ needs to do a good blocking on their IP range). This is as much Spam as me saying to a caller "No- I don't need windows or doors, but my friend does. Why not give him a call.". Bebo.com, hi5 and others all honour your request to never ever ever receive e-mail from them again.
Google mail bounces is of course an error on their part, and got fixed.
People are so scared of unsubscribe links. Use your judgement people. If Microsoft sends you a newsletter, odds are, even if you didn't ask for it, you're on some list. I'm sure they'll honour your removal request. Most bigger names in the public will. Sending mail without a specific opt in is frowned upon, but that doesn't mean that one click can stop it all. Obviously don't unsubscribe from your m0r7gag3 or viagikra *sic* but when you get some real e-mail from real companies that you know at least have some sense of self-preservation to not keep sending you e-mail, then that's what to do.
PS: A good idea is to use qmail's extension addresses. username-MS@mydomain.com , username-NIGHTCLUB@mydomain.com , username-ALT@mydomain.com. All ways to be able to quickly block one person who has your e-mail (or filter) and know who's spreading your e-mail address.
Of course most spam these days seems to come from worms on people's computers that harvest address books, web pages, and e-mail archives for e-mail addresses and submit them.
The key here is the feedback loop that people often ignore. As an ISP, every message AOL users mark as junk shows up in one of my mailboxes. You may this this is a bad thing, and yes I do find the occasional person who uses the junk button instead of the delete button (they are AOL users after all), however being a big ISP and on a lot of harvested lists, they're one of the first to get Spam. A compromise in a script, a stolen password, or just a user that needs a good whooping will make itself apparent pretty quickly and we handle and remove it, clear out messages and make sure it doesn't happen again by the same means. Yes mistakes happen, people love compromised formmail scripts for Spam, but we keep in that feedback loop and make sure that we find out about them ASAP. This is of course rare for us in particular.
So why this lovely comment? The feedback loop. Without it, we'd keep sending Spam. Possibly we wouldn't notice until a few weeks later when the queue starts looking a bit big on our various graphs and we go check it out to find that AOL has been rejecting our SMTP conversations. So suddenly, as opposed to sending Spam and continuing to try for a week, we have to neutralized in 10 minutes.
If sightings aren't fed back, RBL databases can't update. SpamAssassin can't learn your mail types. Bonded Sender can't fine senders.
The balance for these agencies that you report to is protecting privacy, while still providing enough data to the sender to make sure you don't get more mail... though more often the Spam that cares to take you off is the one who you'll recognize and remove yourself from anyway.
First let me point out Bonded Sender. THis is not the same, but has the same effect. It is essentially putting up a bond (a few thousand dollars usually for even the slightest volume) and in doing so, you say "for every Spam message you get, take something from the bond to compensate yourself for it". This is a way for legitimate senders (CNN, Mailing lists, Slashdot, Microsoft's security updates, newspapers, etc) to white-list their e-mail with those recipients who follow this white-list (Hotmail, MSN, RoadRunner, etc for example, is one who does). It puts the "we swear we're not sending Spam, and we'll put money on it".
http://www.bondedsender.com/fees.html shows their rates (for If it costs $12.50 for 5000 users (1/4 cent per e-mail), to make big e-mail providers (particularly webmail providers) to like their e-mail, that's a legitimate cost to the cover and drinks they'll make off of each person. If it brings in one person it's probably worth it.
These folks aren't Spammers, in the same way that when you sign up for news on CNN or your favourite software company, they're not Spammers either. People _WANT_ and _CHOOSE_ to get their mail. It is BULK mail, and I'll admit that (bulk not meaning junk). Spam filters continue to get smarter in knowing the difference between Spam, Bulk, and Personal mail. Personal mail is sent by a user. Bulk mail is things you want like newsletters. Spam offers a bigger penis through the use of Viagikra *sic*.
ISPs that group bulk and Spam into one category are missing the point of a Spam filter. It is not to keep bulk e-mail out but to be programmed to determine what the mail someone wants (or may want) to read and something that is unsolicited. The solicited/unsolicited mix is the important one.
Person-to-person mail is good. Solicited mail is good. Unsolicited commercial e-mail is bad.
As a Rogers customer I'm really ticked off at this as well. They continue to cut news services and block P2P. The result? We're forced to use VoIP ports in order to get around traffic shapers, and it's only a matter of time until those are closed.
The statement in the article couldn't be more right about how they shape. A 100MB torrent with 800 odd seeders and 100 leechers and a good swarm speed starts to trickle in at 1-2KB/s off and on... If it works at all. Isn't that a bit excessive? Fine- throttle down to 40KB/s. Fine, make a pool of a few tens of Mbit and share that amoungst all BitTorrent. Do something reasonable rather than cut people off entirely.
They would have never even been noticed if they brought the 385KB/s or so that I normally get on their basic service down to 150-200KB/s. Even 50KB/s... but they took it to the extreme and have no interest in fixing it.
Not only that, they LIE to customers. They tell customers nothing is wrong. No shaping is being done (meanwhile inside sources say that a nice order of those Cisco traffic shapers was purchased 8mo ago or so). With good PR, admiting what's happening and why, and maybe peopel wouldn't be pissed off.
Every auto-maker I've seen (at least in North America) uses Flash more than most Pr0n sites. They love those 3D views of the car, and the road moving under the car, and the clouds and menus... This isn't good for search engines.
I understand why they'd do it for this reason, but the key is how they went about it. If they make a text-only version of the site for Google, that's a-okay in my books. If they used a ton of keywords, then that's not as good.
Now I'd suggest that if Macromedia (et al.) really wanted people to use Flash, they'd create a 'text only' section that is easy for search engines to pick up and index.
Slashdot Mirror
Patent System Broken,
Will never actually hold up,
Yadda Yadda Yadda
At least one of these articles every week,
Nothing to see here
Move along
Why not go to one of the key players? IBM is one of the stronger firms with experience in higher ed:
IBM's K-12: http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/ca/en/education/
And higher education: http://www-03.ibm.com/learning/ca/en/highered/
Case Study Archive: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf
Specifics on Acadia from wikipedia (just FYI)
Don't forget PDO in v5.1. It's a _GREAT_ feature, really simplifying database functionality for PostgreSQL, MySQL and others. The calls and itterators are really smart, and syntax is golden. It makes heavy use of exceptions. See http://www.php.net/pdo for more details and examples.
Big cons are glanced over here. IE is probably the most used feature on most peoples' computers. From surfing for fun to surfing for business, I'd say most users spend most of their time in their Web browser (or maybe a document editor). Especially with 'web applications' being so popular.
Local network connectivity? Is this going back to Windows 98 days where despite being on the same network, with the proper settings, you still can't use file/printer sharing with the computer you can easily ping? Isn't this a big thing for home users (broadband) and more importantly corporate users (files, printers, workgroup, shared workspace, groupware, and of course the Internet).
these two things should be the first to be made rock-solid. They're well into beta testing, with it being over a year (let alone alpha testing internally before). These would be the first thing I would perfect, especially considering the huge dependency on it.
Yet this guy just runs over it, as if they were minor bugs, like an interface quirk or debugging message. Already a few paragraphs in he discredits himself by paying no attention to the biggest glaring errors. Talk about being PAID to be positive about the article.
Now one more issue.
Greeeeaaaaat. Just what we need- another interface look. Get with the program. The interface should by consistent. 100%. Turn off rendering shadows and transparencies. Turn off anything 3D. Make it a 2D bitmap for all I care. But keep it looking the same. Replace the 3D bar with a static image, and then don't need the rendering features. Look is the same, but it's not as crisp. This is just another way to tell users to look for the little green start button and them to go "you mean the blue one" because they were dumb enough to feel the need to change it.
-M
There are flaws in Microsoft's Windows Updates:
.gif images to stop displaying on Web pages if they were made in certani programs. There have been more major bugs, but a proper test cycle is key, if not to lock things down short-term and then open them up with a better solution a few days later. There is no reason why these patches should change functionality when enabling security. Service packs and updates, sure. Not security updates that are required.
.net 1.0 framework, ipv6, and media player fixes... not to start the 'are these crap' discussion, but I mean they're not core security updates). So a user sees a bunch of checkboxes and users have no idea what any of it is.
1. First they seem to break stuff from time to time. A recent IE6 patch to XP caused
2. Microsoft gives the choice and this is bad. Formerly you had to go into windows update (a web site) and download updates you wanted (mixed in with crap like
Users should NOT have the choice. 'Safety recalls' on cars send letters and request that the user comes in as soon as possible, but this is because the actual recall of, say, an ignition switch causing a fire, may happen ever-so-rarely. With Windows, security issues will happen to 99% of the users with unpatched systems. Microsoft needs to force the upgrade to go in. No choice in the matter. No 'I'll do it later', no notification (maybe a log but nothing that you can change). It needs to just happen. No questions asked. Users will always say no. Users will always question whether this is mixed in with the thousands of other 'your computer is insecure' popup messages.
3. Microsoft's upgrades are intrusive. They require reboots. They thrash the hard drive for a good few minutes even on the fastest machines to replace a few DLLs sized at a few KB. Why? I should be able to turn my computer on and work. Not have it prompt me 5 minutes after I turned it on and got into work that I need to restart. It shouldn't need to be restarted in _most_ cases (I realize sometimes you need to for kernel upgrades). Restart the file-sharing subsystems, the web server, the shell... just don't make me save what I'm doing and leave. Not to mention the timing 'reboot countdown' feature that just keeps coming back whenever you tell it to go away.
4. Windows starts up open to the world. The network subsystem is one of the first to come up these days, due to the huge dependency on it for other services including login. Should a network connection be detected, or when a network cable is attached, or when a wireless network is connected to, Windows should have everything firewalled. It should then do a quick check to see if there are necessary security issues and make sure they're fixed before it lets you implement them. A simple overall 'security version' for the system could be easily probed right away. If all is up to date, the system then, and ONLY THEN, opens up its own firewall to accept and allow connections. This could also happen on dialup connections of course.
This may sound crazy to some, but think of the implications of this. Windows PCs get infected between seconds and minutes after bootup. We know an unpatched system will get infected quickly. We know the amount of spyware and viruses that you can get through just the IE browser is massive. So why does it let you start IE? Why does it let you fire up an unpatched IIS? Why does it let you run MSSQL Server with the Slammer worm on the loose infecting computers within 45 minutes (by my experience)? Why does it let you open up your e-mail when it KNOWS that Outlook will execute arbitrary code and attachments and that these viruses are so common that your average corporate users will get one within a few days in their inbox?
The answer is that it shouldn't! You shouldn't be able to execute code for which SECURITY updates exist (I don't mean general product updates). It's absolutely stupid to run MSSQL server su
The Internet is made to work entirely decrentalized with multiple paths through BGP and so on and so forth. All this has been said.
The argument that seems to be coming up is why we let a few Tier-1's (MCI, Verizon, etc) take most of the bandwidth. It's the same reason why most towns have one power company and water supplier. Sure there isn't a monopoly due to the few players out there, but the number of people who can push insane amounts of data are those tier-1's. And why peer with 100's of people when you can peer with one or two and have access to the whole network?
It's simply that unless you want to be paying a lot more for your net access (and more importantly, corporate dedicated access), you need to bring a lot of bandwidth together.
Think of all of the idle bandwidth if every major ISP in North America were to have to connect to all of the others (keeping in mind peak speed, 95th percentile or whatever you want to classify as 'enough' bandwidth). That's a lot of wires, and a lot of capacity bottlenecks and constant upgrading. Compare that to everyone connecting to a few Tier-1 providers and suddenly the long hauls are done on large and fast circiuts, not to mention taking a ton of monitoring and planning burden off of the ISPs.
Thinking that for one second that MCI/WorldCom's (and others') role of the Internet can be replaced by tons of peering. It's necessary in order to have the speed and quality of service you've grown to expect from it.
-M
Please get the headlines straight. A memory leak is not freeing memory that is no longer used or needed ever. This is often accompanied by destroying the references to it instead of freeing it before that is done. That memory then can not be recovered until the application is terminated and memory is restored to the operating system.
Growing memory demand is not a leak! Otherwise the archives of 10 years worth of data on most corporate networks is considered a 'leak', as it will just keep growing. As long as you know that it's there and can access it in the future, it's A-Okay.
Given that, there should of course be a deemed maximum size at which point such pages are written to the disk, though then again, the OS probably does that anyway.
One worry is often seen in both Windows and UNIX-based operating systems is that memory even when freed in the application remains allocated to the application. So allocating 500MB of memory and freeing it still means that 500MB of memory can't be used by anything but the application that originally allocated it. This worries me somewhat in regards to the memory demand on a multi-user system. A brake needs to be put into place.
Nonetheless, it's not a bug, or a memory leak. Just an oversight.
-M
This is a stupid partnership, as there is just no reason at all to do it.
This is like some cars going faster on certain roads (ignoring speed limits here of course, I'm talking capability). Maybe one 'supported' platform for tech support, but why would anyone possibly want to tie an application to a specific processor? Who knows what the road may bring.
Next: Games that run on ATI-only video cards versus NVidia
-M
" instead just use the Exchange servers that they are already using "
They're using Exchange? That's a pretty bold statement.
And with Microsoft's security record...
-M
I stand corrected on Mathemtica. I know Maple is Linux as well.
Mainstream was the wrong word I suppose, but I couldn't think of a better one.
When a student comes out of university and wants to enter the business world, being familiar with Excel, Visual Studio, SourceSafe, Adobe Photoshop, Visio, Macromedia Flash, etc _CAN_ all work to their benefit and are probably used in more businesses for non-tech jobs than OpenOffice, GCC, CVS, Gimp, ???, ???.
This isn't an attack at anything, as I use Linux and Windows in many contexts (both as server and workstation facilities) and their various support programs. I love my Linux. I'm just saying that when microsoft offers 10,000 workstations of software for $200,000 [20 bucks a workstation] you have to jump on that opportunity, as it'd normally be a few thousand per workstation. I don't have the exact figures, but when you buy in volume and for academics, things get cheap. Not to mention, more users know it from high school.
If I offer you a $5000 in the box plasma TV for $500, whether you need a TV or not, you're damn-well surely going to buy it!
-M
It would be neat to see signalling in major centres (thinking of a big DoS conspiracy though). A device in a movie theatre that signals all phones to not ring or to be dimmer when they are opened during a movie. Walking away from this device will turn it off. It's like the 'anti-cell phone' blocking devices, but doesn't inhibit service... it just enforces politeness.
Similarly, in a hospital, it should do the same, or near an MRI machine turn off the wireless. These things are all neat, but a schedule is a bit much. Who geoes to the movies that regularly? Who goes to sleep at the same time every day?
-M
Why people wear their cell phones on their belts a mere two inches away from their pocket, I don't know. Is it to advertise to the world that they're important? Is it to scream "look at me, I have a Blackberry"? Is it so that people around them know that they answer their phone just so often that that two inches adds up to miles of extra movement over the course of a given year?
-M
No No No- None of this inventing words crap. We're going to have another edu-tainment for kids or something silly like that.
Why not just adapt what people consider to be a game. We all know what games are, but they just have a general negative ora about them. A game can be many things and people need to realize it's more than playing Street Fighter in the arcade, or tetris on a GameBoy, or those handheld games that play a single game on the unit using crappy LCDs. Games have evolved and are considered anything interactive and entertaining.
So as opposed to making up a new word, why not just let the word 'game' adjust in people's minds. The definition is right for all of those ( http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/game ) "activity engaged in for diversion or amusement".
A game is something different to different people. A club to an adult may be a strip club. A restaurant to a rich person probably doesn't include Boston Market. The word is correct, but is interpreted differently depending on the market (in this case mostly age/maturity level).
-M
The answer is 'free stuff', or at least very 'cheap stuff'. Microsoft practically gives away copies of Windows, Office, and Visual Studio (for example), so that those fresh out of high school and university are trained in it.
Ultimately, why go with a less compatible solution when you can have the mainstream one for pretty cheap? Also application support (Adobe, CAD software, Mathemtica, etc are all Windows)
-M
It's similar to the tiered health care system as well (USA as an example)
The government provides some basic services to get buy, but you should pay for more to get more.
Compare to Canada where a single health tier exists. It essentially splits the cost of health care across everyone.
Roads are just the same. They provide a basic service, and if you want something a bit more, you should be willing to pay. How is it different from a toll highway? You _could_ save money and take other roads but you want to use a toll route, and you help paying for that road. The only difference is that the lanes that you're paying for (or not paying for) are right beside the other ones you're driving on.
There's nothing wrong with this! The only thing to watch is that the services provided free from the government don't degrade and always meet a minimum level. As soon as you can't even get some basic medical services or things everyone needs included, then you have problems.
Now taking this back to networked services... If the minimum level of broadband is reasonable for many (lets think 16KB/s ISDN is fair for a single user or small house with 2-3 people) and this is what they need, why provide them a 6Mbit/s cable pipe?A tiered system is not bad, as long as the minimum level is reasonable to those who use it. Many houses I visit use the Internet to check their mail, occasionally transfer a file to the office, and do online banking- none of which would make too much of a difference to have 6Mbit or a half-Mbit. So why should everyone pay for 3Mbit when there are TONS of users who only use half?
-M
Getting mugged here gets a whole new meaning, as now you're going to have the great back-alley forced surgery. I'd rather they just take my damn keys. It's bad enough they're already skinning my fingers, stealing my retinas, and hair.
-M
Oh come on.
Plain and simple, what you do at work must be within the guidelines of your employer and its computer usage policy.
You wouldn't bring up quake, even for just a single frag, so why do people think it's suddenly okay to pull up solitaire, hearts, or the latest java/flash game from third party Web sites? The employer couldn't care less that you wanted only a single frag, playing games is probably against their computer policy, and this person is a clear violator of it. You wouldn't pull out a deck of cards either and start playing a game on your desk, though that'd be more of a company policy than a computer and company policy.
So this is simply that someone didn't follow the rules and is now whining. Some employers are a bit more lax during lunch hours, and that's okay, but you should never just assume that the employer will be okay with you checking personal mail, surfing the net, or playing games during lunch.
I'm sure what happened in more detail is a boss walked by a few times in a week at varying times (11, 2p, 3p, etc) and saw half the time that this person was playing games instead of working. The employer has every right to kick them out. They're on someone elses dollar, so they damn-well be worth it
SOunds like it's just noise to me...
Realistically, with all of the talk of people listening to music all day damaging their hearing, wouldn't silence be golden? Maybe some sort of light beacon flashing red could do the exact same thing, or a projector with a few graphs on the wall?
-M
It's a different department sir. You'll have to call our OS department between the hours of 11a and 2p PST (their working day) for any issues with the operating system.
Please- you really think the left hand knows what the right is doing at Microsoft? You really think they're going to make a good feedback loop in this process?
-M
Could make for an interesting FORK! :)
Nothing is perfect, and I never said Bonded Sender was anything close to it. However the concept is the same. We're talking about backing recipients with dollars in order to put a financial burden on those for their e-mail. The reason why Spam is so common is because it's dirty cheap to send. If you suddenly add a cost to sending it, it's less worthwhile and more difficult to manage. You need to link it wiht a credit card number or business name.
Keeping in mind, buying lists is not always a bad thing. Ever used a credit card? Airmiles card? Donated to a charity? Signed up for an in-store loyalty card? Your address and phone number is on many lists being sold and traded by countless organizations.
ALT.com buying a list isn't bad. It may be frowned upon in the e-mail world to not use opt-in or double-opt-in, but that doesn't necessarily make them Spam right away. The question is, if you try and unsubscribe from their lists, do they honour it? Do you end up on other lists instead? What is their privacy policy?
Bebo.com is sending you mail because OTHER PEOPLE have entered your e-mail address. These are probably your friends. These services are known for logging into messenger and passport and obtaining your address book (by permission... though personally I think M$ needs to do a good blocking on their IP range). This is as much Spam as me saying to a caller "No- I don't need windows or doors, but my friend does. Why not give him a call.". Bebo.com, hi5 and others all honour your request to never ever ever receive e-mail from them again.
Google mail bounces is of course an error on their part, and got fixed.
People are so scared of unsubscribe links. Use your judgement people. If Microsoft sends you a newsletter, odds are, even if you didn't ask for it, you're on some list. I'm sure they'll honour your removal request. Most bigger names in the public will. Sending mail without a specific opt in is frowned upon, but that doesn't mean that one click can stop it all. Obviously don't unsubscribe from your m0r7gag3 or viagikra *sic* but when you get some real e-mail from real companies that you know at least have some sense of self-preservation to not keep sending you e-mail, then that's what to do.
PS: A good idea is to use qmail's extension addresses. username-MS@mydomain.com , username-NIGHTCLUB@mydomain.com , username-ALT@mydomain.com. All ways to be able to quickly block one person who has your e-mail (or filter) and know who's spreading your e-mail address.
Of course most spam these days seems to come from worms on people's computers that harvest address books, web pages, and e-mail archives for e-mail addresses and submit them.
-M
The key here is the feedback loop that people often ignore. As an ISP, every message AOL users mark as junk shows up in one of my mailboxes. You may this this is a bad thing, and yes I do find the occasional person who uses the junk button instead of the delete button (they are AOL users after all), however being a big ISP and on a lot of harvested lists, they're one of the first to get Spam. A compromise in a script, a stolen password, or just a user that needs a good whooping will make itself apparent pretty quickly and we handle and remove it, clear out messages and make sure it doesn't happen again by the same means. Yes mistakes happen, people love compromised formmail scripts for Spam, but we keep in that feedback loop and make sure that we find out about them ASAP. This is of course rare for us in particular.
So why this lovely comment? The feedback loop. Without it, we'd keep sending Spam. Possibly we wouldn't notice until a few weeks later when the queue starts looking a bit big on our various graphs and we go check it out to find that AOL has been rejecting our SMTP conversations. So suddenly, as opposed to sending Spam and continuing to try for a week, we have to neutralized in 10 minutes.
If sightings aren't fed back, RBL databases can't update. SpamAssassin can't learn your mail types. Bonded Sender can't fine senders.
The balance for these agencies that you report to is protecting privacy, while still providing enough data to the sender to make sure you don't get more mail... though more often the Spam that cares to take you off is the one who you'll recognize and remove yourself from anyway.
-M
First let me point out Bonded Sender. THis is not the same, but has the same effect. It is essentially putting up a bond (a few thousand dollars usually for even the slightest volume) and in doing so, you say "for every Spam message you get, take something from the bond to compensate yourself for it". This is a way for legitimate senders (CNN, Mailing lists, Slashdot, Microsoft's security updates, newspapers, etc) to white-list their e-mail with those recipients who follow this white-list (Hotmail, MSN, RoadRunner, etc for example, is one who does). It puts the "we swear we're not sending Spam, and we'll put money on it".
http://www.bondedsender.com/fees.html shows their rates (for If it costs $12.50 for 5000 users (1/4 cent per e-mail), to make big e-mail providers (particularly webmail providers) to like their e-mail, that's a legitimate cost to the cover and drinks they'll make off of each person. If it brings in one person it's probably worth it.
These folks aren't Spammers, in the same way that when you sign up for news on CNN or your favourite software company, they're not Spammers either. People _WANT_ and _CHOOSE_ to get their mail. It is BULK mail, and I'll admit that (bulk not meaning junk). Spam filters continue to get smarter in knowing the difference between Spam, Bulk, and Personal mail. Personal mail is sent by a user. Bulk mail is things you want like newsletters. Spam offers a bigger penis through the use of Viagikra *sic*.
ISPs that group bulk and Spam into one category are missing the point of a Spam filter. It is not to keep bulk e-mail out but to be programmed to determine what the mail someone wants (or may want) to read and something that is unsolicited. The solicited/unsolicited mix is the important one.
Person-to-person mail is good.
Solicited mail is good.
Unsolicited commercial e-mail is bad.
-M
As a Rogers customer I'm really ticked off at this as well. They continue to cut news services and block P2P. The result? We're forced to use VoIP ports in order to get around traffic shapers, and it's only a matter of time until those are closed.
The statement in the article couldn't be more right about how they shape. A 100MB torrent with 800 odd seeders and 100 leechers and a good swarm speed starts to trickle in at 1-2KB/s off and on... If it works at all. Isn't that a bit excessive? Fine- throttle down to 40KB/s. Fine, make a pool of a few tens of Mbit and share that amoungst all BitTorrent. Do something reasonable rather than cut people off entirely.
They would have never even been noticed if they brought the 385KB/s or so that I normally get on their basic service down to 150-200KB/s. Even 50KB/s... but they took it to the extreme and have no interest in fixing it.
Not only that, they LIE to customers. They tell customers nothing is wrong. No shaping is being done (meanwhile inside sources say that a nice order of those Cisco traffic shapers was purchased 8mo ago or so). With good PR, admiting what's happening and why, and maybe peopel wouldn't be pissed off.
-M
Every auto-maker I've seen (at least in North America) uses Flash more than most Pr0n sites. They love those 3D views of the car, and the road moving under the car, and the clouds and menus... This isn't good for search engines.
I understand why they'd do it for this reason, but the key is how they went about it. If they make a text-only version of the site for Google, that's a-okay in my books. If they used a ton of keywords, then that's not as good.
Now I'd suggest that if Macromedia (et al.) really wanted people to use Flash, they'd create a 'text only' section that is easy for search engines to pick up and index.
-M