In reality, the auditor typically has minimal technical competency, and is running a canned set of tools that throw out so many false positives that the reports are practically worthless -- or if followed to the letter would make a system fail to even perform it's function. Or in some cases even boot. They even may not have the a canned set of tools for the right OS in the first place, making the reports even more useless.
Universally true? No. But it's been true in my experience dealing with PCI auditors with one of the major credit card processors. The processors are interested in demonstrating compliance, which may or may not have anything to do with real world security or actual deep inspection of the security of the systems.
And yes, nobody, including the credit card processors, wants to take the blame or the responsibility. IT is overhead to them, which cuts into the bottom line -- therefore there's little to no interest in hiring people qualified (and with sufficient authority) to properly protect the systems in question. Not to mention the infrastructure investment to go with it.
PCI compliance tends to leave a false sense of security to organizations that don't understand IT in the first place.
The 360? Oh you mean that white thing that sits on my shelf with the nice blinky red rings when you attempt to power it on. So... unless it is capable of resurrecting RROD Xboxes it's not going to integrate all that well...
Contemplate the state of your Windows box 17 years ago.
Can't do that personally, since I was running slackware Linux right about that time...:-) (I think the beta was around before 1993, but close enough for slashdot posts.)
I was going to vote for Obama, but the scores of mindless drones has really turned me off. I'm off to vote in about 20 minutes, I think I'll throw my vote away on a 3rd party candidate.
Personally I was going to vote McCain prior to his VP pick, but I threw my vote in with the Libertarians since I don't want a religious fruitcake (i.e. Palin) so close to the white house. I didn't want Obama in the white house for numerous reasons but I just couldn't stomach voting for McCain. I think he shot himself in the foot with his running mate.
What I'm saying is that it's best not to trust in systems to operate according to the rules.
We have to know who to contact at our work every time there's a "dataspill", which seems to happen a few times a year. The problem with portals and such that make file exchange and whatnot easy... is that it's maybe too convenient. I have a hard time believing that every incident is an accident - how can they not realize that they are not supposed to exchange classified files on non classified networks? Some of these folks must be willing to ignore the rules out of convenience.
What's worse sometimes is the documents that almost certainly should be classified... but aren't. I'm mostly ignorant of the document classification process, but just some of the filenames make my head hurt. Having to dig up someone with clearance to investigate in the middle of the night due to suspect filenames on what's technically supposed to be a non-classified system sucks. They really need to buy more disk space so I can go years without having to see who the disk hogs are.:-)
The other advantage is maximum top speed. If your hydrazine rocket can expel mass at, say, 1000 mph (making numbers up here) then the top speed of your rocket is 1000mph for reasons I hope are obvious. But ion engines can potentially eject mass at much higher speeds.
The expelled mass and velocity defines the energy, which in turn you derive the important part -- the force vector and acceleration, not velocity. Velocity is the acceleration over time and is only limited by the acceleration and how long you accelerate. So yeah, your top speed is greater given the efficiency assuming higher velocity propellant over the same period of time, or acceleration over a longer time period. Not as you described. Even that explanation is overly simplified since your hypothetical rocket ship mass will also change over time at different rates due to the propellant burn rate differences, but the general idea is sound.
The much shorter version is that you can achieve any speed short of the speed of light with acceleration over a long enough period of time; it's not at all limited to the particle velocity of the propellant. (Speaking theoretically of course and completely ignoring all kinds of practical details.)
You may wait months to see a specialist, but not when it's a life threatening emergency. I have to schedule visits to my cardiologist months in advance, but I had immediate access to him when I had to have a cardiac cath and bypass surgery. (That's part of the reason you have to schedule far in advance - for the people who need urgent care.)
As far as the "bankrupt you even if you thought you had insurance" comment goes - no idea. We had excellent coverage at my employer up until this year. My out of pocket for a quad heart bypass was $100 for the ambulance ride.
Of all the above WoW seems to have it the most under control, but that doesn't mean they don't have room to improve.
It's been a while since I've been playing, but have you seen the number of autoleveling bots every time they open up a new server? It's a joke. I spent a couple of hours one night killing an ally priest who was doing the level grind with a bot. (I quit after something like 40 kills... very boring). Screenshots, appeals - no actions by a GM. Saw the same guy a night or two later at a much higher level. Same with speedhacks.
This is why I quit bothering with WoW. Humans are now obsolete.
Americans are getting fatter. They don't want to waddle over to a player every time they play a different movie.
Amazing how a discussion on HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray gets switched over to an anti-american agenda. Is this news for nerds or the propoganda channel? Give it a rest.
f you have a permit then I'm not sure that a sign at a business trumps your legal right to carry in that location.
Actually the answer varies state by state. In Missouri a business can post the store off limits to concealed carry, but the most they can do is ask you to leave voluntarily to disarm. (Which you would - CCW permit holders are by and large a law abiding bunch.) There's further escalation from there if you were to refuse, but I don't remember offhand what it is. You risk your CCW privileges for refusing, which would be dumb after the fees and background checks you go through to get it in the first place.
I just don't shop in any stores or malls that are off limits to concealed carry. It's easy enough to do where I live - for every place that doesn't respect a law abiding citizen's right to defend themselves, there's two more stores that do.
If it wasnt for the bot, he probably wouldn't be playing anymore. And this is exactly the way it should be, and a good reason to come down hard on the bot clients. Good riddance.
Instead of playing, he watches his bot play...is he paying them? yes. is he interfering with other peoples play? no., so wtf? Actually, he is interfering with other peoples games. First of all, it's a decidedly unfair advantage to auto-level on a PvP server. One of the reasons that I got disgusted with the game in the extreme was all the speed hacks and autoleveling hacks. In one area alone, I killed the same bot over 20 times (PvP server), took screenshots, and reported the player in question - only to see them again 2 nights later, in a slightly different spot - 10 levels higher than I was. That's supposed to be fair? Please.
Even if it's a PVE server, he's still tying up an area where a real player might be trying to gain experience or faction. Are you saying it's fair for a 50 something character to compete against level 60+ bots faction-grinding in, say, the plaguelands fields? Been there, done that too - which is why I don't waste money on Blizzard games now. The only way I'd be back is if they start banning the cheaters.
Blizzard should stfu, and be happy they are getting his money every month. WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards... It's a business. And the good players are leaving due to the inability to enforce the no-bot and client hacks. They will lose players in droves when the newer games come out. (And don't bother saying they won't... look at Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, etc.).
However, Blizzard trying to play the DMCA card is out of line. Frankly they should be liberal with the banstick, and spend a lot more time on detecting cheaters and locking accounts. Even associating themselves with the DMCA is most likely publicity that they really didn't want.
Sunspots DO NOT cause global warming. At all....So they're NOT the excuse you need to justify continuance of your retarded, selfish, polluting lifestyle.
Dear US Citizens: Please GET WITH THE PROGRAM. You don't need a gas-guzzling quasi-military vehicle just to go shopping. Such a brilliant, well thought out post that points out all the relevant facts leading to the obvious conclusion! Oh, it's so clear to me now! I realize that US bashing is currently in fashion, but whoever modded the parent insightful should be ashamed...
More like when you are racing to beat the timing on sequential sets of lights designed to slow you down. Just remember though, that sets of lights you can get through at 40mph you can also get through at 160mph!
Ok this just sounds a bit ridiculous. This is essentially vigilante cyber justice. Now it had a bit more of a law enforcement/good guy vs bad guy twist, but I just don't see how this can be allowed. Where is this special need and why was this an acceptable method to go about anything? Let me put it another way. If you come into my place of employment with a laptop, plug it into my network, and it's doing something dubious - I have every right to protect our network acting as the systems administrator here. This includes anything up to and including hacking into the machine in question in the course of gathering information to determine the level of compromise or threat. By plugging into our network, you accept our company policy towards allowed usage. It's just plain that simple. If that is determined to "taint" the evidence, that's not a problem - we're protecting company assets, not enforcing the law. I'd almost certainly take the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a compromised machine rather than someone being up to something (this not being a university, and I'd be dealing with professionals - not students). However, they would remove the machine from the network, and potentially asked to leave if the situation escalated.
This is just rediculous. (sic) So no, it's not ridiculous, it's just called being a professional systems administrator. We enforce company (or university policy in that case) - we are not law enforcement. We have neither the same restrictions nor do we have the same privileges.
ObBOFHJoke: So what's your IP address again? (clickety click)
A CS degree requirement is not artificial. There is a good deal of non-trivial theory that a degree holder is expected to have a good handle on. I agree with the second (in that a technical education of some variety is important, although I know this isn't what you really meant), but don't necessarily agree that a CS degree is predominant. Experience plays a bigger role when you have a good core staff since so much of what is taught in school isn't necessarily relevant to what works in the real world. I won't go so far as to say 4 years of education is a waste of time, but 4 years of equivalent on the job experience was far more valuable. (No more of this silly "assume a spherical cow falling from the top of a building" type of nonsense - real problems are far more interesting, which IMO the college system leaves most grads utterly unprepared for.) Theory is fine as a basis for understanding but it's not the only thing that matters.
The recent CS grads we've been hiring tend to think they know it all the minute they walk in the door, yet don't understand why it's not a good idea to spool up a JVM with a 1 gig memory min memory model every minute in cron just to check and see if a file exists. These are the same chuckleheads who had a very major project get canned recently since they could discuss the abstract concepts but couldn't actually troubleshoot the code they were writing -- because for all the buzzwords they didn't really understand how computers in general or the hardware architecture they were running on work. Java - the great write once, debug everywhere programming model... but I digress.
But then again you're admittedly doing work that "a monkey" could do (boring), so it isn't anything a respected programmer would want to touch. What color is the sky in your world? It must be a nice place, but this is the planet "Earth". You sometimes have to do what pays the bills to support yourself and your family. As a sysadmin I get to come in and clean up the messes that our developers (CS degrees and otherwise) leave behind. Being the zookeeper is just part of my job -- it pays the bills, and I've been a unix admin for just shy of 20 years now. Besides, somebody has to take responsibility for the code monkeys since they tend to perch on the edge of their cubicles and sling poo when left to themselves otherwise...:-) I have some fun projects at work -- like designing and implementing an enterprise storage and backup infrastructure for ourselves and one of our major customers -- but being a zookeeper is a necessary evil.
I'm sorry that you chose the wrong major for yourself. Go back 25-30 years and look at the course offerings and then lets discuss exactly the relevance of a CS degree back then on where technology is today. If I were to do it all over again, I might have gone the EE route instead of math/physics. The EE's I work with have a firm grasp on how computers actually work since they have to understand the low level fundamentals. Unfortunately a lot of the new CS types (at least that I've met recently) don't. Frankly though, I'm happy with both my degree path and my profession. Diversity in backgrounds makes for a more creative group in general even if IT is our core company focus.
I'm in the same boat myself. I was completely thrilled by the iPhone announcement. The very first thought I had was - "it runs on top of OS X? Cool! I'll bet there will be a secure shell daemon in a week... and then you can ssh *to* your phone!"
If it's going to be closed to third party applications though, my interest level just became zero. We'd planned on having 2 of them (one for me, one for my wife) and now I have no plans to purchase one at all. That's pretty sad considering that our family owns 2 MacBook Pro's and just by showing off what can be done with a Mac a few people at work own them now as well. I'm telling people to steer clear of the iPhone until apple gets it's cranial-rectal inversion sorted out.
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In reality, the auditor typically has minimal technical competency, and is running a canned set of tools that throw out so many false positives that the reports are practically worthless -- or if followed to the letter would make a system fail to even perform it's function. Or in some cases even boot. They even may not have the a canned set of tools for the right OS in the first place, making the reports even more useless.
Universally true? No. But it's been true in my experience dealing with PCI auditors with one of the major credit card processors. The processors are interested in demonstrating compliance, which may or may not have anything to do with real world security or actual deep inspection of the security of the systems.
And yes, nobody, including the credit card processors, wants to take the blame or the responsibility. IT is overhead to them, which cuts into the bottom line -- therefore there's little to no interest in hiring people qualified (and with sufficient authority) to properly protect the systems in question. Not to mention the infrastructure investment to go with it.
PCI compliance tends to leave a false sense of security to organizations that don't understand IT in the first place.
The 360? Oh you mean that white thing that sits on my shelf with the nice blinky red rings when you attempt to power it on. So ... unless it is capable of resurrecting RROD Xboxes it's not going to integrate all that well...
Can't do that personally, since I was running slackware Linux right about that time ... :-) (I think the beta was around before 1993, but close enough for slashdot posts.)
...one would think, RIAA is trying to abolish the Constitution or something...
Nah, Obama is going to get rid of that pesky Constitution thing for them.
I was going to vote for Obama, but the scores of mindless drones has really turned me off. I'm off to vote in about 20 minutes, I think I'll throw my vote away on a 3rd party candidate.
Personally I was going to vote McCain prior to his VP pick, but I threw my vote in with the Libertarians since I don't want a religious fruitcake (i.e. Palin) so close to the white house. I didn't want Obama in the white house for numerous reasons but I just couldn't stomach voting for McCain. I think he shot himself in the foot with his running mate.
What I'm saying is that it's best not to trust in systems to operate according to the rules.
We have to know who to contact at our work every time there's a "dataspill", which seems to happen a few times a year. The problem with portals and such that make file exchange and whatnot easy ... is that it's maybe too convenient. I have a hard time believing that every incident is an accident - how can they not realize that they are not supposed to exchange classified files on non classified networks? Some of these folks must be willing to ignore the rules out of convenience.
What's worse sometimes is the documents that almost certainly should be classified ... but aren't. I'm mostly ignorant of the document classification process, but just some of the filenames make my head hurt. Having to dig up someone with clearance to investigate in the middle of the night due to suspect filenames on what's technically supposed to be a non-classified system sucks. They really need to buy more disk space so I can go years without having to see who the disk hogs are. :-)
...sounds like vaporware to me!
The other advantage is maximum top speed. If your hydrazine rocket can expel mass at, say, 1000 mph (making numbers up here) then the top speed of your rocket is 1000mph for reasons I hope are obvious. But ion engines can potentially eject mass at much higher speeds.
The expelled mass and velocity defines the energy, which in turn you derive the important part -- the force vector and acceleration, not velocity. Velocity is the acceleration over time and is only limited by the acceleration and how long you accelerate. So yeah, your top speed is greater given the efficiency assuming higher velocity propellant over the same period of time, or acceleration over a longer time period. Not as you described. Even that explanation is overly simplified since your hypothetical rocket ship mass will also change over time at different rates due to the propellant burn rate differences, but the general idea is sound.
The much shorter version is that you can achieve any speed short of the speed of light with acceleration over a long enough period of time; it's not at all limited to the particle velocity of the propellant. (Speaking theoretically of course and completely ignoring all kinds of practical details.)
Probably because T-Mobile and Google don't have the Apple hype-machine/blogosphere/rumor sites going insane over unreleased products?
Yup, because google doesn't know anything about advertising ...
You may wait months to see a specialist, but not when it's a life threatening emergency. I have to schedule visits to my cardiologist months in advance, but I had immediate access to him when I had to have a cardiac cath and bypass surgery. (That's part of the reason you have to schedule far in advance - for the people who need urgent care.)
As far as the "bankrupt you even if you thought you had insurance" comment goes - no idea. We had excellent coverage at my employer up until this year. My out of pocket for a quad heart bypass was $100 for the ambulance ride.
All these worlds are yours except Europa ... attempt no landings there ...
This is why I quit bothering with WoW. Humans are now obsolete.
Command Detonated Claymores ...
Microsoft will be fine. Fear may be cured, but Uncertainty and Doubt are certainly still viable business strategies.
I just don't shop in any stores or malls that are off limits to concealed carry. It's easy enough to do where I live - for every place that doesn't respect a law abiding citizen's right to defend themselves, there's two more stores that do.
Even if it's a PVE server, he's still tying up an area where a real player might be trying to gain experience or faction. Are you saying it's fair for a 50 something character to compete against level 60+ bots faction-grinding in, say, the plaguelands fields? Been there, done that too - which is why I don't waste money on Blizzard games now. The only way I'd be back is if they start banning the cheaters. Blizzard should stfu, and be happy they are getting his money every month. WoW is a cash cow, and they are just trying to milk it to the Max...those bastards... It's a business. And the good players are leaving due to the inability to enforce the no-bot and client hacks. They will lose players in droves when the newer games come out. (And don't bother saying they won't
However, Blizzard trying to play the DMCA card is out of line. Frankly they should be liberal with the banstick, and spend a lot more time on detecting cheaters and locking accounts. Even associating themselves with the DMCA is most likely publicity that they really didn't want.
I realize that US bashing is currently in fashion, but whoever modded the parent insightful should be ashamed...
More like when you are racing to beat the timing on sequential sets of lights designed to slow you down.
Just remember though, that sets of lights you can get through at 40mph you can also get through at 160mph!
ObBOFHJoke: So what's your IP address again? (clickety click)
The recent CS grads we've been hiring tend to think they know it all the minute they walk in the door, yet don't understand why it's not a good idea to spool up a JVM with a 1 gig memory min memory model every minute in cron just to check and see if a file exists. These are the same chuckleheads who had a very major project get canned recently since they could discuss the abstract concepts but couldn't actually troubleshoot the code they were writing -- because for all the buzzwords they didn't really understand how computers in general or the hardware architecture they were running on work. Java - the great write once, debug everywhere programming model... but I digress.
But then again you're admittedly doing work that "a monkey" could do (boring), so it isn't anything a respected programmer would want to touch. What color is the sky in your world? It must be a nice place, but this is the planet "Earth". You sometimes have to do what pays the bills to support yourself and your family. As a sysadmin I get to come in and clean up the messes that our developers (CS degrees and otherwise) leave behind. Being the zookeeper is just part of my job -- it pays the bills, and I've been a unix admin for just shy of 20 years now. Besides, somebody has to take responsibility for the code monkeys since they tend to perch on the edge of their cubicles and sling poo when left to themselves otherwise...
I'm sorry that you chose the wrong major for yourself. Go back 25-30 years and look at the course offerings and then lets discuss exactly the relevance of a CS degree back then on where technology is today. If I were to do it all over again, I might have gone the EE route instead of math/physics. The EE's I work with have a firm grasp on how computers actually work since they have to understand the low level fundamentals. Unfortunately a lot of the new CS types (at least that I've met recently) don't. Frankly though, I'm happy with both my degree path and my profession. Diversity in backgrounds makes for a more creative group in general even if IT is our core company focus.
I'm in the same boat myself. I was completely thrilled by the iPhone announcement. The very first thought I had was - "it runs on top of OS X? Cool! I'll bet there will be a secure shell daemon in a week ... and then you can ssh *to* your phone!"
If it's going to be closed to third party applications though, my interest level just became zero. We'd planned on having 2 of them (one for me, one for my wife) and now I have no plans to purchase one at all. That's pretty sad considering that our family owns 2 MacBook Pro's and just by showing off what can be done with a Mac a few people at work own them now as well. I'm telling people to steer clear of the iPhone until apple gets it's cranial-rectal inversion sorted out.