Hey! I know a place worse than that by far!
on
Tinfoil Hat House
·
· Score: 1
Like anywhere with Palos Verdes in the name in Los Angeles County, Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Estates, etc.
The Soviet Socialist Republik of Kalifornia has more nuts and more rules than any other group of commies combined. Where else could a Socialist Liberal from Austria call himself a Republican and get elected as Governator? Where else do people that live in cities that never see snow or mud buy huge 4WD vehicles and complain because SUVs don't have trunks to put all their junk in? Where else is the majority of the english speaking population incapable of reading "No Parking" signs?
The problem with those people putting sheet metal on their house isn't that they're nuts, it's only that they're the wrong kind of nuts. If they had claimed, instead of protecting themselves from hostile orgones that they were protecting a rare beetle that took up nesting in their siding, the city would have given them an environmental award. Everyone in Kalifornia knows that rare bugs are more important than brain synapses, sheesh.
Thi's English Professor doe's, sheesh, give him a few break's! Obviously hes not aware that us computer geek's don't care's if we's got bad grammer's. That's what speel checker's are fore.
Too bad/. doesn't have a spell checkers and grammar/syntax correction's.
I make my living herding electons, the apostrophes and such will just have to haul their own bacon.
Everyone in here is talking about the optics, so I'm going to take a shot in the dark here just because no one seems to have mentioned it yet.
What about your power feeds? Bad sine wave, over and undervoltage, etc all eat up electronics. I live in southern L.A. county and the grid power here is way past atrocious. It destroys non-conditioned systems like a bad dream. Everything in my office/shop is on 1500 to 2500 watt UPS's that condition the incoming power. I never have a problem with optical drives and there are 8 of them in the place. 2 commercial DVD players, 1 commercial DVD recorder, 2 CD burners, 2 computer DVD ROM's and 1 computer DVD RW. No failures on any of 'em in the last 5 years. One of the CD burners is a fairly good Yamaha, but the rest of the drives and machines are all about the cheapest you can buy or they're pulls salvaged from equipment I was replacing for clients.
I've never used a cleaning disk or any other kind of cleaning on any of them. I smoke like a chimney. The walls in here are a nice creamy yellow color and if the windows are closed for any amount of time it smells like there's been a fire in here. Which of course there has been, about 40 - 50 little ones a day...
I got a good deal on a bunch of Liebert UPS's a few years ago, so that's why I can put everything electronic in the place on battery backups/line conditioners. (They were being sold as pulls for $15 each)
All considered I guess I wouldn't know if bad power causes optical drive failure or not being as I don't have bad power, so this is just a thought, like I said, no one seems to have mentioned it.
I suppose now that I've written this as soon as I hit the "Submit" button all 8 or them will die simultaneously...
I think we're going to have to change the national anthem. The "Land of the free and home of the brave" line is obsolete now and getting worse. The "home of the brave" part still applies but the "land of the free" has been a misnomer for a long time.
The military has always, since the introduction of the technology to search data either manually or electronically, taken and stored fingerprints that have since ended up in the NCIC (National Crime Information Center). DNA is identification and won't be any different.
This debate seems pretty simple to me. If your genitic coding isn't private, nothing is. If your government has access to your very basic cellular composition you have no "expectation of privacy" in anything.
If you're arrested for ANYTHING it goes in a database. If you're exonerated for ANY reason, that database may or may not show the fact. Even if it does reflect the fact that you were exonerated, pardoned, etc. the presence of that data is sufficient to heighten suspicion and justify further prying into your life. After all, you were arrested by people that don't make mistakes and you were probably guilty and "beat the system".
This isn't a partisan political problem. The left wants your DNA, fingerprints, credit history, etc to "help" you and the right wants the same to "catch" you. The reasons can be juxtaposed arbitrarily depending on who wants to do what to you.
We in America have become a society of fear. There is virtually no one that doesn't have some kind of record. Those without any negative record at all fear any mistake that will remove that status and precipitate a fall from grace. Identity theft means that is in no way under their control. Those with a negative record of any kind know that they'll never again have full status (they "might" be a suspect at any time) no matter what the disposition of their situation. Those who have done something truly wrong know that redemption is impossible under any circumstances. In ALL cases everyone has to fear errors and omissions in the system. George Orwell got it all wrong, Big Brother isn't watching you, he doesn't need to. All Big Brother needs to do is lodge a request with ChoicePoint or similar and you're stuck with the results. ChoicePoint and similar probably won't have direct access to DNA samples, that would make them responsible for their data. They'll just have the results and speculations, erroneous or not.
If your DNA isn't in that particular database, hey look! Your neighbor of 30 years ago IS even though you never lived within 500 miles of that address, so now you're "suspicious". You might have conspired with that non-neighbor and just didn't turn up in the investigation.
It's not just the DNA issue, it's the whole system of prying into, warehousing, and data-mining our lives. The DNA issue is just another brick in the wall, granted that it's a BIG brick. Unfortunately it's going to take the equivalent of a September 11th to wake people up to this problem.
How many people even knew of ChoicePoint and similar before they got scammed and were forced by law to take action? How many people follow current events enough now to know anything about ChoicePoint et.al.? How many people will know if that kind of organization is referencing DNA records? How many times are you in databases that you don't have any awareness of? How accurate are those databases?
Further down in this post some folks mention that the vast tendency is to go after the easiest suspect to convict, disregarding the truth for convience. Keeping DNA records from innocent people will make that even more likely. "We found the suspect's DNA on a cigarette butt {chewing gum, envelope, booger, etc.} near the crime scene, this proves guilt". If everyone has a DNA record there is ALWAYS going to be SOMEONES DNA near a crime scene, depending on how "near" is defined. Your DNA falls off of you constantly in skin exfoliation, hair, etc.
In your experience, can managers with little technical knowledge successfully run a technically-oriented company?
The answer is ->
No.
Any commander must have a fundamental grasp of the mission. If he doesn't the success of the mission no longer relies on his abilty to command well. End of story.
Usually what happens is the bean counters get the upper hand with charts and figures showing that by taking (x) shortcuts a (y) increase in profits will result. Command decisions are based on short term profit gains rather than long term quality and competetive development. Short term the bean counters look good, the manager looks good, the company makes money for a while. Long term, the quality of the product suffers and the market punishes the company for it.
No, you don't have to be an automotive engineer to drive a car but you do have to have a basic understanding of wheels, how they work and why they are necessary. Probably a better analogy would be to compare a technical company to a race car, and in racing the drivers are technically savvy for very good reasons.
There is no such thing as a secure OS. Not Windows, not Linux, Unix, etc. As OS's and software become more and more complex in order to meet the growing needs of IT, I seriously doubt there will EVER be a secure OS. Out of billions+ lines of code it only takes one line to create a vulnerability.
The whole concept of a secure OS is ludicrous. I'm amazed that such learned people as slashdotters waste so much text on it.
If an OS or other software SEEMS secure it's merely because it's not widespread enough for the bad guys to bother with yet, or it's applied in a situation where there's nothing to gain by bothering with it.
Subscribe to the U.S. Governments CERT security bulletins. There are as many vulnerabilities posted for Linux/Unix as there are for Windows. The last bulletin I got showed more vulnerabilities in FireFox than IE...
Don't tell me CERT doesn't know everything, I KNOW THAT. It's a baseline, get a life and live it if you think otherwise.
Firefox and the other Mozilla incarnations are no more secure than IE, they're just less obviously insecure because they sacrifice functionality. That's like making a car that can't go over speed limit and calling it a safer car. It may not go real fast but if a drunk driver crosses the centerline and hits you head on, you're still dead.
The whole focus of this security thing is wrong IMHO, well maybe my O isn't so H but anyway. Let me give a few examples.
If a Bank accidentally leaves it's alarm off and someone breaks in and steals money, stealing the money is still illegal and immoral. The Bank didn't "deserve" to be robbed because of a mistake. The alarm company isn't at fault because they didn't make the alarm automatically turn on rather than require "user" input. Whoever broke in and took the money is still a thief.
If a woman wears skimpy clothing and gets raped, she didn't "deserve" or "ask to" be raped, rape isn't a reasonable penalty for poor taste in clothing.
If I walk out my door and get hit by a stray bullet from a gang-banger that wanted to play with his gun, walking out my door didn't mean I "deserved" to be shot.
If an auto manufacturer makes an otherwise safe car but someone sneaks into your garage and modifies it to drive exclusively and directly to their place of business without your consent or control, and it subsequently crashes into a truck in an intersection because of that and kills you, it's NOT YOUR FAULT OR THE AUTO MANUFACTURER'S!!!
If I make software that does what it's supposed to, runs your computer or your business or whatever, and someone alters that software without authorization I'm not the criminal. It's not because I made "insecure" software, it's because a criminal committed a crime.
My point? Criminalizing criminal activity is a legitimate function of government. I live in the Soviet Socialist Republic of California and mostly hate the legal situation here. BUT!!! This unauthorized use of other people's computer equipment is despicable and it's about time that someone called it what it is; CRIMINAL. I don't care if the law is written perfectly or not, laws like software can and will be patched and updated. This law is the equivalent of DOS 1.0, it's a start and about time.
Computer hacking, intrusion and misuse are never going to end. Let's make the people that do it pay. Let's try not to make laws that harm the innocent and ignore the guilty, but lets get a wiggle on here and go after these criminals. Spyware and Adware? If someone broke into your garage at night and took your car to use it for deliveries and business, making themselves money at your expense and eventually crashed the car it would be criminal. Using your computer for anything without your informed consent is the same thing.
I don't know if the California Legislature and the Governator got it right or not, I'm an IT professional and not a lawyer. As an IT professional I'm glad that someone is making the effort and only time will tel
I'd have to point out that holding Microsoft at fault for the criminal or malicious actions of others is exactly the same as saying that a woman in skimpy clothing is asking to be raped. Rape shouldn't be the penalty for poor taste, and Microsoft isn't wholly to blame for virus, hacking, and spyware attacks. The malice and greed of the malware crafters is the real evil entity in the equation.
The computer industry would be no where near as advanced as it is were it not for Microsoft or it's equivalant. Microsoft deserves serious bashing sometimes but they're not Lucifer Incarnate over there in Redmond. I've worked with every Microsoft OS since DOS 1.1 and I still have an original copy of it.
Having said that, I cannot for the life of me understand what the hell those people are thinking sometimes.
What was the freakin' point with the XP GUI? Everything is still there, more or less, so why move it all over the place and make it look different? As soon as I get my hands on an XP machine I revert it to "Classic" and my users breath a sigh of relief. It wasn't a marketing tool because you don't see the GUI until you own the machine and fire it up. I think they did it to force MCSE's to recertify on the new OS, huh?
Same thing goes for this spyware problem. I don't understand what the hell they're thinking. You can download great and effective tools for free to deal with it. AdAware SE does as good as the best and there are commercial programs that augment it very well, like the one that MS just bought, GIANT.
The thing is, like it or not they DO lead the market and if they want to keep that position, this security issue is going to bite them in the ass. If they want Aunt Tillie to be able to buy a nice computer and plug it in and use it for more than a day, they'd better do something fast about spyware/malware. They already charge enough and I'm not quibbling about the price of MS code, but... It DOES behoove them to keep their product useful and productive without increasing the cost or demanding a subscription to fix the drek they let in.
There are really only two solutions to their business dilemma; 1. Fix the vulnerabilities constantly and immediately. This would mean a whole new branch of the business. Or-2. Buy a decent anti-spyware company, pay them to do what they already know how to do, and incorporate the software in the browser/OS. Update constantly via Windows Update and don't charge anything extra to keep their software usable.
The point being, 80% of home users systems are infected, infested, compromised and possibly propagating. There are people losing big money because they don't know how to protect their computer systems and bad guys are getting access to their finances. If Microsoft can't field a reasonably secure and useful product, Microsoft will have to live off it's past. In this industry I don't think that's going to work for very long.
If this industry is going to thrive, the Aunt Tillies of the world are going to have to be able to buy a computer, plug it in, and not know a damn thing about anti-hacking, antivirus, anti-spyware, etc. And it will WORK for them when they want to dl a coupon from a fabric store or check the local grocery specials.
I live in the Los Angeles Basin and personally I'd be thrilled to death if all the Aunt Tillies never had to drive anywhere at all...
I know people, very intelligent people, Doctors, Lawyers, some of them retired. They're gems in their field but their field isn't computers. They're NOT stupid or lazy but they're NOT the kind of people that would have a subscription to/. either. One of my users is a wonderful retired man who spends ages working on a video biography to give to his grandchildren so they'll know who he was and they are. It's amazing and wonderful the things that you can do now that you never ever could before.
These people shouldn't have their labors risked or their productivity diminsished because they're axle deep in pop
Here's my 2 cents; I'm confident from experience that the vast majority of the FBI constitutes "The Good Guys". It's their prime directive that they go after "The Bad Guys", as it should be. There are procedures for this that are best followed if one wishes to make the best case possible. That's the reason for the rules, not to make an agent's job difficult nor to fail justice. The difference between "The Good Guys" and "The Bad Guys" is that the good guys follow the rules and the bad guys don't have any rules.
The rules don't forbid asking for voluntary cooperation. A botched subpoena can become a disaster at trial though.
Ok, maybe 3 cents...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. (James Webb, The 13th Valley)
Slashdot Mirror
Like anywhere with Palos Verdes in the name in Los Angeles County, Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Estates, etc.
The Soviet Socialist Republik of Kalifornia has more nuts and more rules than any other group of commies combined. Where else could a Socialist Liberal from Austria call himself a Republican and get elected as Governator? Where else do people that live in cities that never see snow or mud buy huge 4WD vehicles and complain because SUVs don't have trunks to put all their junk in? Where else is the majority of the english speaking population incapable of reading "No Parking" signs?
The problem with those people putting sheet metal on their house isn't that they're nuts, it's only that they're the wrong kind of nuts. If they had claimed, instead of protecting themselves from hostile orgones that they were protecting a rare beetle that took up nesting in their siding, the city would have given them an environmental award. Everyone in Kalifornia knows that rare bugs are more important than brain synapses, sheesh.
Thi's English Professor doe's, sheesh, give him a few break's! Obviously hes not aware that us computer geek's don't care's if we's got bad grammer's. That's what speel checker's are fore.
/. doesn't have a spell checkers and grammar/syntax correction's.
Too bad
I make my living herding electons, the apostrophes and such will just have to haul their own bacon.
Everyone in here is talking about the optics, so I'm going to take a shot in the dark here just because no one seems to have mentioned it yet.
What about your power feeds? Bad sine wave, over and undervoltage, etc all eat up electronics. I live in southern L.A. county and the grid power here is way past atrocious. It destroys non-conditioned systems like a bad dream. Everything in my office/shop is on 1500 to 2500 watt UPS's that condition the incoming power. I never have a problem with optical drives and there are 8 of them in the place. 2 commercial DVD players, 1 commercial DVD recorder, 2 CD burners, 2 computer DVD ROM's and 1 computer DVD RW. No failures on any of 'em in the last 5 years. One of the CD burners is a fairly good Yamaha, but the rest of the drives and machines are all about the cheapest you can buy or they're pulls salvaged from equipment I was replacing for clients.
I've never used a cleaning disk or any other kind of cleaning on any of them. I smoke like a chimney. The walls in here are a nice creamy yellow color and if the windows are closed for any amount of time it smells like there's been a fire in here. Which of course there has been, about 40 - 50 little ones a day...
I got a good deal on a bunch of Liebert UPS's a few years ago, so that's why I can put everything electronic in the place on battery backups/line conditioners. (They were being sold as pulls for $15 each)
All considered I guess I wouldn't know if bad power causes optical drive failure or not being as I don't have bad power, so this is just a thought, like I said, no one seems to have mentioned it.
I suppose now that I've written this as soon as I hit the "Submit" button all 8 or them will die simultaneously...
I think we're going to have to change the national anthem. The "Land of the free and home of the brave" line is obsolete now and getting worse. The "home of the brave" part still applies but the "land of the free" has been a misnomer for a long time.
The military has always, since the introduction of the technology to search data either manually or electronically, taken and stored fingerprints that have since ended up in the NCIC (National Crime Information Center). DNA is identification and won't be any different.
This debate seems pretty simple to me. If your genitic coding isn't private, nothing is. If your government has access to your very basic cellular composition you have no "expectation of privacy" in anything.
If you're arrested for ANYTHING it goes in a database. If you're exonerated for ANY reason, that database may or may not show the fact. Even if it does reflect the fact that you were exonerated, pardoned, etc. the presence of that data is sufficient to heighten suspicion and justify further prying into your life. After all, you were arrested by people that don't make mistakes and you were probably guilty and "beat the system".
This isn't a partisan political problem. The left wants your DNA, fingerprints, credit history, etc to "help" you and the right wants the same to "catch" you. The reasons can be juxtaposed arbitrarily depending on who wants to do what to you.
We in America have become a society of fear. There is virtually no one that doesn't have some kind of record. Those without any negative record at all fear any mistake that will remove that status and precipitate a fall from grace. Identity theft means that is in no way under their control. Those with a negative record of any kind know that they'll never again have full status (they "might" be a suspect at any time) no matter what the disposition of their situation. Those who have done something truly wrong know that redemption is impossible under any circumstances. In ALL cases everyone has to fear errors and omissions in the system. George Orwell got it all wrong, Big Brother isn't watching you, he doesn't need to. All Big Brother needs to do is lodge a request with ChoicePoint or similar and you're stuck with the results. ChoicePoint and similar probably won't have direct access to DNA samples, that would make them responsible for their data. They'll just have the results and speculations, erroneous or not.
If your DNA isn't in that particular database, hey look! Your neighbor of 30 years ago IS even though you never lived within 500 miles of that address, so now you're "suspicious". You might have conspired with that non-neighbor and just didn't turn up in the investigation.
It's not just the DNA issue, it's the whole system of prying into, warehousing, and data-mining our lives. The DNA issue is just another brick in the wall, granted that it's a BIG brick. Unfortunately it's going to take the equivalent of a September 11th to wake people up to this problem.
How many people even knew of ChoicePoint and similar before they got scammed and were forced by law to take action? How many people follow current events enough now to know anything about ChoicePoint et.al.? How many people will know if that kind of organization is referencing DNA records? How many times are you in databases that you don't have any awareness of? How accurate are those databases?
Further down in this post some folks mention that the vast tendency is to go after the easiest suspect to convict, disregarding the truth for convience. Keeping DNA records from innocent people will make that even more likely. "We found the suspect's DNA on a cigarette butt {chewing gum, envelope, booger, etc.} near the crime scene, this proves guilt". If everyone has a DNA record there is ALWAYS going to be SOMEONES DNA near a crime scene, depending on how "near" is defined. Your DNA falls off of you constantly in skin exfoliation, hair, etc.
DA Nola Foulston and ilk are part of the pro
The question in [Slashdot] Stories was ->
In your experience, can managers with little technical knowledge
successfully run a technically-oriented company?
The answer is ->
No.
Any commander must have a fundamental grasp of the mission. If he doesn't the success of the mission no longer relies on his abilty to command well. End of story.
Usually what happens is the bean counters get the upper hand with charts and figures showing that by taking (x) shortcuts a (y) increase in profits will result. Command decisions are based on short term profit gains rather than long term quality and competetive development. Short term the bean counters look good, the manager looks good, the company makes money for a while. Long term, the quality of the product suffers and the market punishes the company for it.
No, you don't have to be an automotive engineer to drive a car but you do have to have a basic understanding of wheels, how they work and why they are necessary. Probably a better analogy would be to compare a technical company to a race car, and in racing the drivers are technically savvy for very good reasons.
There is no such thing as a secure OS. Not Windows, not Linux, Unix, etc. As OS's and software become more and more complex in order to meet the growing needs of IT, I seriously doubt there will EVER be a secure OS. Out of billions+ lines of code it only takes one line to create a vulnerability.
The whole concept of a secure OS is ludicrous. I'm amazed that such learned people as slashdotters waste so much text on it.
If an OS or other software SEEMS secure it's merely because it's not widespread enough for the bad guys to bother with yet, or it's applied in a situation where there's nothing to gain by bothering with it.
Subscribe to the U.S. Governments CERT security bulletins. There are as many vulnerabilities posted for Linux/Unix as there are for Windows. The last bulletin I got showed more vulnerabilities in FireFox than IE...
Don't tell me CERT doesn't know everything, I KNOW THAT. It's a baseline, get a life and live it if you think otherwise.
Firefox and the other Mozilla incarnations are no more secure than IE, they're just less obviously insecure because they sacrifice functionality. That's like making a car that can't go over speed limit and calling it a safer car. It may not go real fast but if a drunk driver crosses the centerline and hits you head on, you're still dead.
The whole focus of this security thing is wrong IMHO, well maybe my O isn't so H but anyway. Let me give a few examples.
If a Bank accidentally leaves it's alarm off and someone breaks in and steals money, stealing the money is still illegal and immoral. The Bank didn't "deserve" to be robbed because of a mistake. The alarm company isn't at fault because they didn't make the alarm automatically turn on rather than require "user" input. Whoever broke in and took the money is still a thief.
If a woman wears skimpy clothing and gets raped, she didn't "deserve" or "ask to" be raped, rape isn't a reasonable penalty for poor taste in clothing.
If I walk out my door and get hit by a stray bullet from a gang-banger that wanted to play with his gun, walking out my door didn't mean I "deserved" to be shot.
If an auto manufacturer makes an otherwise safe car but someone sneaks into your garage and modifies it to drive exclusively and directly to their place of business without your consent or control, and it subsequently crashes into a truck in an intersection because of that and kills you, it's NOT YOUR FAULT OR THE AUTO MANUFACTURER'S!!!
If I make software that does what it's supposed to, runs your computer or your business or whatever, and someone alters that software without authorization I'm not the criminal. It's not because I made "insecure" software, it's because a criminal committed a crime.
My point? Criminalizing criminal activity is a legitimate function of government. I live in the Soviet Socialist Republic of California and mostly hate the legal situation here. BUT!!! This unauthorized use of other people's computer equipment is despicable and it's about time that someone called it what it is; CRIMINAL. I don't care if the law is written perfectly or not, laws like software can and will be patched and updated. This law is the equivalent of DOS 1.0, it's a start and about time.
Computer hacking, intrusion and misuse are never going to end. Let's make the people that do it pay. Let's try not to make laws that harm the innocent and ignore the guilty, but lets get a wiggle on here and go after these criminals. Spyware and Adware? If someone broke into your garage at night and took your car to use it for deliveries and business, making themselves money at your expense and eventually crashed the car it would be criminal. Using your computer for anything without your informed consent is the same thing.
I don't know if the California Legislature and the Governator got it right or not, I'm an IT professional and not a lawyer. As an IT professional I'm glad that someone is making the effort and only time will tel
I'd have to point out that holding Microsoft at fault for the criminal or malicious actions of others is exactly the same as saying that a woman in skimpy clothing is asking to be raped. Rape shouldn't be the penalty for poor taste, and Microsoft isn't wholly to blame for virus, hacking, and spyware attacks. The malice and greed of the malware crafters is the real evil entity in the equation.
/. either. One of my users is a wonderful retired man who spends ages working on a video biography to give to his grandchildren so they'll know who he was and they are. It's amazing and wonderful the things that you can do now that you never ever could before.
The computer industry would be no where near as advanced as it is were it not for Microsoft or it's equivalant. Microsoft deserves serious bashing sometimes but they're not Lucifer Incarnate over there in Redmond. I've worked with every Microsoft OS since DOS 1.1 and I still have an original copy of it.
Having said that, I cannot for the life of me understand what the hell those people are thinking sometimes.
What was the freakin' point with the XP GUI? Everything is still there, more or less, so why move it all over the place and make it look different? As soon as I get my hands on an XP machine I revert it to "Classic" and my users breath a sigh of relief. It wasn't a marketing tool because you don't see the GUI until you own the machine and fire it up. I think they did it to force MCSE's to recertify on the new OS, huh?
Same thing goes for this spyware problem. I don't understand what the hell they're thinking. You can download great and effective tools for free to deal with it. AdAware SE does as good as the best and there are commercial programs that augment it very well, like the one that MS just bought, GIANT.
The thing is, like it or not they DO lead the market and if they want to keep that position, this security issue is going to bite them in the ass. If they want Aunt Tillie to be able to buy a nice computer and plug it in and use it for more than a day, they'd better do something fast about spyware/malware. They already charge enough and I'm not quibbling about the price of MS code, but... It DOES behoove them to keep their product useful and productive without increasing the cost or demanding a subscription to fix the drek they let in.
There are really only two solutions to their business dilemma; 1. Fix the vulnerabilities constantly and immediately. This would mean a whole new branch of the business. Or-2. Buy a decent anti-spyware company, pay them to do what they already know how to do, and incorporate the software in the browser/OS. Update constantly via Windows Update and don't charge anything extra to keep their software usable.
The point being, 80% of home users systems are infected, infested, compromised and possibly propagating. There are people losing big money because they don't know how to protect their computer systems and bad guys are getting access to their finances. If Microsoft can't field a reasonably secure and useful product, Microsoft will have to live off it's past. In this industry I don't think that's going to work for very long.
If this industry is going to thrive, the Aunt Tillies of the world are going to have to be able to buy a computer, plug it in, and not know a damn thing about anti-hacking, antivirus, anti-spyware, etc. And it will WORK for them when they want to dl a coupon from a fabric store or check the local grocery specials.
I live in the Los Angeles Basin and personally I'd be thrilled to death if all the Aunt Tillies never had to drive anywhere at all...
I know people, very intelligent people, Doctors, Lawyers, some of them retired. They're gems in their field but their field isn't computers. They're NOT stupid or lazy but they're NOT the kind of people that would have a subscription to
These people shouldn't have their labors risked or their productivity diminsished because they're axle deep in pop
I agree with the bulk of that, miu.
Here's my 2 cents; I'm confident from experience that the vast majority of the FBI constitutes "The Good Guys". It's their prime directive that they go after "The Bad Guys", as it should be. There are procedures for this that are best followed if one wishes to make the best case possible. That's the reason for the rules, not to make an agent's job difficult nor to fail justice. The difference between "The Good Guys" and "The Bad Guys" is that the good guys follow the rules and the bad guys don't have any rules.
The rules don't forbid asking for voluntary cooperation. A botched subpoena can become a disaster at trial though.
Ok, maybe 3 cents...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. (James Webb, The 13th Valley)
Da Komradski! Thank you for reminding us!