At the rate Amazon and company are charging for bandwidth, monthly storage cost, doubly so for redundancy and then still manage to lose your data or frequently lose connection to your 'pod' it IS cheaper to build your own even if you use a comparable top-of-the line SAS/FC enclosure such as the SASBeast or SATABeast.
Backblaze simply drops the price for 'backup' or large amounts (talking about multiple racks full) storage even more than we are used with current solutions. $8000 for 135TB ($60/TB) is CHEAP. We currently buy similar units at roughly $300/TB. I can have a fully redundant system and still come out cheaper even if it is slightly less space and energy effective. After all the costs are counted, Amazon is roughly $1500/TB.
a) The Dutch speaking part of blue-collar Belgium are likewise saying that the Walloon (French-like) speaking part is dumber. This is because of their lower educational standards (you are obligated to learn Dutch AND French AND English in the Dutch schools, you can choose Dutch and English in the French schools). However the Dutch speaking part has more educated (as in college) people that understand the differences and usually don't get involved in that kind of Fox News (VTM if you're in Belgium) banter. b) The papers that ran the suit against Google were from the French paper association (a lot of common interest organizations in Belgium are separated across the language border). I would call that pretty dumb.
The move was predicted by Slashdot when the suit was brought. The ruling of the judge could be interpreted to mean just that. The goal from the papers was licensing content but Google rather just uses the original (English) source, Le Soir (the main paper of that association) was originally a fairly good paper but recently the quality (as with most dead tree news sources) has gone down in favor of the internet-age quick online news cycle.
Besides the fact that not cooperating in the US might land you in jail regardless of the constitution, if you really do bad things and make a business out of it, maybe you should use enterprise tools such as using an alphanumeric password for your iPhone or use an Android that can actually do encryption, remote wipe whenever you call your lawyer etc. etc.
Thanks to advances in computer security, cops are simply not equipped to deal with somebody actively protecting their rights. However most criminals are just stupid, good criminals are the smart ones.
I had a thinnet network at home in the late 80s when some companies started to get rid of their 10Base2 and 10Base5 stuff for the fast 16Mbps TokenRing (which was nearly double the speed and way more reliable).
The speed was limited by the computer interface (ISA @ 8MHz) and PCI/VLB/MCA cards were expensive for home use so I had like 6Mbps throughput between 2 computers. 10Base2 was still specced at 10Mbps but most networks (especially as they grew beyond 5 computers) never got those speeds because of collisions, cable management issues (bus topology) and simply bad installation (bad wiring, next to TL tubes, open splitters or someone forgot or put the wrong terminators at the end).
Among research students, 90% buys a Mac because it abstracts the Unix shell away but it's still available. Also, compiling custom code is a lot simpler (gcc program.c) than setting up and dealing with either Visual Studio (and it's odd licensing for redistribution and compiler quirks) or Cygwin.
Among customers, too many have been bitten by Dell and the like which could offer a cheap computer but will be filled with crapware and fail within 2 years. Customer service is abysmal with some of these companies and they seem to want to squeeze every dollar out before giving you a replacement part.
Those Linux-based routers do very well. I have an Asus RT-N16 and this should be able to route both WiFi and up to 5 Ethernet links (each port is separately addressable). There are also specific dual-wan routers but the hardware and software is identical, the configuration changes. There is an example on the DD-WRT wiki on how to set up iptables so any Linux distro would work just as well. If you run out of resources on those ARM devices (Linksys hardware is particularly underpowered for anything beyond 10Mbps) you can get a cheap VIA system with a couple of decent PCI wireless and wired cards.
It used to be that you unlocked extra levels and cars by playing the game. Micro transactions historically always bombed. When micro transactions were first introduced in DRM platforms like Steam, Xbox Network or PlayStation Network and the only way to get them was through the DRM all of a sudden these extras started costing a dollar and now they're up to 10 or more. I don't buy such games anymore.
I don't have those types of stores here (except Wal-Mart). But usually you can fill out all types of false information on those club cards, they'll give them to you regardless. You get the discounts and/or points but nothing in your mailbox.
I must use a respectable bank (local Credit Union) because I never see any correlation between junk mail and the stuff I buy with my card, I don't get a whole lot of junk mail and cold calls on average once a month. I buy EVERYTHING with my card and get annoyed when stores don't accept cards and will actively avoid such stores where possible. I hate change as it usually gets put by the side until you either lose it or get it together and put it in one of those automated counters that spews out a gift certificate.
I do get more calls whenever I use my Bank of America card (only use it for online purchases from shady sites since I can dispute online as well) but I prefer not to use their services for anything else.
If you claim safe, safes can be opened quite easily and usually only contain sensitive material relating a locked computer to a safe would imply it would be easy to open the computer up and that it's full of sensitive material (it's not) so why don't you just type in the password in order to equate it to a safe.
For a judge to understand it this analogy is better: It's like them getting a warrant to your house to search for evidence and they can't find it because you hid it somewhere in your house.
You are not obliged to cooperate with that search warrant but they can take your house apart piece by piece (as long as they restore it (or not in some cases - they break stuff and then claim they didn't)) or get a special scanner to search for it. They can also just give up and not have that piece of evidence.
There have been cases where search warrants didn't find the stash of children in the basement or the dead bodies in the backyard. There have been few or no cases where they couldn't open a safe (unless the accused has one of those tamperproof safes).
MySQL has been historically faster than PostgreSQL though although hardware improvements have closed that gap. MySQL may not be as persistent with the data as other SQL engines try to be but in Facebook's world, that's not really a problem. If you lose some data on FaceBook the world is not going to end, you're not losing money, all you do is maybe make an emo teen a bit sad but then just offer him a special cow on FarmVille and they're happy again.
VoltDB is a commercial solution (yeah it has a free 'demo' but for large systems it expects you to pay) so pushing something like it as the be-all, end-all of some perceived, unknown problem is at best a sales tactic.
I have heard a lot from several No/NewSQL folks and it's great to push large amounts of specific data in and out of it but it's a solution looking for a problem most of the time. If you spend a lot of time designing and normalizing your data structures (large well-designed data warehouses) it is a great solution but in most cases that's not what developers want or need. They just need to store some values in a relation to each other quickly and get it out quickly. MySQL (or any other SQL flavor) will do for that. For example most posts on Facebook would do much better in performance with a NoSQL solution but it would be pretty hard to get eg. relationship trees or commercial value out of that data. Facebook 'fixed' the SQL problem with a heavy-caching middle layer (and if data gets lost, it's not important). Most companies can 'fix' their SQL problems by throwing some cash at it - it's easier (and usually cheaper) to just add some SSD's to your SQL system than having to move and shard your data into a farm.
Asbestos abatement equipment will filter the particles out of the air for the fiberglass. A shop-vac or industrial vacuum with a HEPA filter for fine dust will usually work well enough if it were simply fiberglass (it is not). A local shower, eye-wash station, protective suit, safety glasses and respiratory equipment will also be required (not just suggested) because of the other products and even if it were just fiberglass, getting that stuff in your clothing or on your skin or around your house may be an irritant.
Besides fiberglass a motherboard usually contains other metals, plastics, gasses and chemicals from the chips, solder, components, conduits which could contain toxic brominated substances (flame retardant), gold (still a heavy metal!), lead, silver, tin, aluminum, lithium, copper, mica, glass, ceramic, electrolyte fluid and that's just off the top of my head.
Unless you can make a machine that's entirely closed off and properly filtered to do the cutting, washing extensively and waste removal autonomous I would NOT suggest you do this AT ALL. Get a recycler to pick up the stuff. Also, your "arts and crafts project" result may have to be classified as hazardous material/waste or require at least an MSDS.
And yet many have replaced their hard drives (yours truly included) with SSD's or other gear and had no problems.
First of all, Apple doesn't "block" you from using other hard drives nor do they use any specific firmware. The only thing that happens is that your fans may spin a bit harder (and they're very quiet to begin with) and that the optional Apple Hardware Test may fail on 1 test reporting a bad temperature sensor.
The issue seems to be (and you can read this in several other forums and blogs as well) is in the way that some hard disk manufacturers report back temperature to the system. It appears that the hard drives Apple uses report back temperature using the spare wiring in SATA cables. So if you get the same brand and model hard drive (not necessarily capacity), people don't have any issues. Also certain SSD's don't seem to give any issues. The main problem is that the industry hasn't yet standardized how to report data using these extra wiring and some manufacturers go ahead and implement it however they want.
There is also a fix for it as well (short the 2 wires) and somebody developed a simple temperature chip that replicates the functionality found on these new hard drives for older/other hard drives.
If somebody swaps out their hard drive and the iMac doesn't work anymore, that would be an issue with how they handled the 'repair' (most likely they didn't correctly put it back together), not Apple blocking their upgrade abilities or inhibiting their dexterity.
The "problem" that other companies have is that they loathe to do R&D themselves. They rather spew out similar-looking products that are slightly cheaper but miss half the functionality than build something themselves. They are making more profit per unit initially but when the market starts working and the prices start going down (as has been the case over the last decade), Apple has positioned themselves better over the long term while the management of eg. HP has been replaced 3 times already because they got good quarterly results but lost the war in the end.
By standard, companies without much competition are very risk-averse while Apple is not. This translates in the pricing (Dell being ~10% cheaper than Apple to remain competitive) but also translates in the quality (Dell's having less than half the battery life, much heavier, getting much hotter and breaking as soon as you drop it).
However Apple has to make enormous risks for this. In order to remain competitive with their products, they bought these factories which if the iPod/iPad/iPhone had been too early or too late to market or too expensive or not functional enough or the economy collapsed they would be in much trouble as these things are not cheap to either build or run.
The health care bill was ill conceived because the Dems thought that compromising with Reps was going to give them something. It was good in it's "promise stage" but then the compromising started and now it's a toothless piece of toilet paper with the remains of all the benefits going only to the insurance companies.
It's not that Dems would've done it any better if they were alone, they just as well are inside the pockets of the insurance companies but to blame it on either party is just wrong. The blame is on the electorate being able to be bought.
Read the T-Mobile small print. The "unlimited" data is "unlimited" until 200MB (69.99 contract), 2GB (79.99 contract), 5GB (89.99 contract) or 10GB (119.99 contract) after which you'll be throttled to 50kbps speeds but they reserve the right to throttle or even block your data transfer whenever they feel necessary or use any data that is duplicated by their plans (such as VoIP, online messages etc.) or whenever you use a 'disproportionate' amount of data.
The iPad also has a keyboard, encryption and remote IT/enterprise access controls and most Android tablets do as well. The thing is I don't want a tablet to be a computer - a tablet is simply not powerful enough since it is (or should be) optimized for battery operation. I don't want a computer acting as a tablet either since it's not optimized for battery operation or touchscreen controls.
For $10 you can buy plenty a indie game that is going to be endlessly more fun and probably on-par or exceeding the graphics of this Nintendo game. Look at the Humble Indie Bundle or The IndieGamesPack (http://www.indiegamespack.com/). For $10 you can get 6 games.
I do get his point though. There is no real reason, ever, to use server-side enterprise controls to force a client-side program to do anything. If nothing else, I'll bring in my own client over which you'll have no control. If you want to prevent your network to be used for something you don't want (whether that be porn, games or visiting your competitors job listings) you prevent your network from being able to do these things and in one swoop you'll have all clients in control regardless of who owns them.
As a developer I feel the same way, I'm not going to devote large amounts of my time to satisfy some control freak in a cubicle (the IRS supervisor from Dinner for Schmucks comes to mind). I may have to explain my boss or my client on how to do the same thing with less effort but Group Policy in my educated opinion is the hammer that makes everything look like a nail.
That's not a browser issue though. If I can MitM somehow and abort the session logging off in IE, the same issue appears.
The problem with major companies using IE is poorly written (internal) web applications which not only makes the browser choice insecure but also the web application potentially having to run on legacy platforms whenever Microsoft drops the spec (as they have done approximately every 3-5 years, more recently with WFP, Silverlight and.NET)
I have never seen a good case for Group Policy control of the browser, it can usually be circumvented by the client. I worked in a help desk once when I was very young and they had Group Policy controls restricting websites but we circumvented it by putting a copy of Netscape in our home folder and running it. Off course you can then lock that down but it becomes a vicious circle in which you're always behind and at some point you're going to start preventing real work from being done efficiently.
If you want to control the websites and time suckers your employee's go to use a proxy, outgoing firewall or DNS based solution but it won't stop it because there's always a way around them and people will find them during downtime. You should just have good management to weed out the slackers but preventing/punishing people from playing games when nothing is going on (or the phone lines or the network is down) is just poor choices from higher management.
Really, most University library resources shouldn't have password protection as getting a credential at most University libraries requires practically no validation or identification. The problem however is when employees, students and others that are using other University resources share their credentials they may be getting more access due to lack of access control than the University or the donator is aware of.
The actual cost of the metal and carbon compounds used for any car is way less than the retail price of a car. The main cost (like with drugs) is the research and development costs. However Tesla does have very expensive components (Lithium, rare earth magnets) which are also becoming increasingly scarce.
Electric vehicles are not really what we need imho for the far future. In the near future they will do loads of good until we are running out of resources to make them. What we need is a more individualized but central system such as high-tech rail where we only have to drive ~15 minutes to get to a boarding station, then you can use standard batteries or even capacitors in the car and then hop the vehicle onto a rail system or use the zip-car method in cities.
What's important is what a judge/jury will hear and think. They don't understand the difference and even saying "IRC is an anonymous chat system" will mean you're a hacker terrorist that needs to be locked up.
Thanks to the sensationalist media and government even the First Amendment rights have been all but relegated to the academia. Guilt by association is the norm now.
Slashdot Mirror
At the rate Amazon and company are charging for bandwidth, monthly storage cost, doubly so for redundancy and then still manage to lose your data or frequently lose connection to your 'pod' it IS cheaper to build your own even if you use a comparable top-of-the line SAS/FC enclosure such as the SASBeast or SATABeast.
Backblaze simply drops the price for 'backup' or large amounts (talking about multiple racks full) storage even more than we are used with current solutions. $8000 for 135TB ($60/TB) is CHEAP. We currently buy similar units at roughly $300/TB. I can have a fully redundant system and still come out cheaper even if it is slightly less space and energy effective. After all the costs are counted, Amazon is roughly $1500/TB.
a) The Dutch speaking part of blue-collar Belgium are likewise saying that the Walloon (French-like) speaking part is dumber. This is because of their lower educational standards (you are obligated to learn Dutch AND French AND English in the Dutch schools, you can choose Dutch and English in the French schools). However the Dutch speaking part has more educated (as in college) people that understand the differences and usually don't get involved in that kind of Fox News (VTM if you're in Belgium) banter.
b) The papers that ran the suit against Google were from the French paper association (a lot of common interest organizations in Belgium are separated across the language border). I would call that pretty dumb.
The move was predicted by Slashdot when the suit was brought. The ruling of the judge could be interpreted to mean just that. The goal from the papers was licensing content but Google rather just uses the original (English) source, Le Soir (the main paper of that association) was originally a fairly good paper but recently the quality (as with most dead tree news sources) has gone down in favor of the internet-age quick online news cycle.
Besides the fact that not cooperating in the US might land you in jail regardless of the constitution, if you really do bad things and make a business out of it, maybe you should use enterprise tools such as using an alphanumeric password for your iPhone or use an Android that can actually do encryption, remote wipe whenever you call your lawyer etc. etc.
Thanks to advances in computer security, cops are simply not equipped to deal with somebody actively protecting their rights. However most criminals are just stupid, good criminals are the smart ones.
I had a thinnet network at home in the late 80s when some companies started to get rid of their 10Base2 and 10Base5 stuff for the fast 16Mbps TokenRing (which was nearly double the speed and way more reliable).
The speed was limited by the computer interface (ISA @ 8MHz) and PCI/VLB/MCA cards were expensive for home use so I had like 6Mbps throughput between 2 computers. 10Base2 was still specced at 10Mbps but most networks (especially as they grew beyond 5 computers) never got those speeds because of collisions, cable management issues (bus topology) and simply bad installation (bad wiring, next to TL tubes, open splitters or someone forgot or put the wrong terminators at the end).
Among research students, 90% buys a Mac because it abstracts the Unix shell away but it's still available. Also, compiling custom code is a lot simpler (gcc program.c) than setting up and dealing with either Visual Studio (and it's odd licensing for redistribution and compiler quirks) or Cygwin.
Among customers, too many have been bitten by Dell and the like which could offer a cheap computer but will be filled with crapware and fail within 2 years. Customer service is abysmal with some of these companies and they seem to want to squeeze every dollar out before giving you a replacement part.
Those Linux-based routers do very well. I have an Asus RT-N16 and this should be able to route both WiFi and up to 5 Ethernet links (each port is separately addressable). There are also specific dual-wan routers but the hardware and software is identical, the configuration changes. There is an example on the DD-WRT wiki on how to set up iptables so any Linux distro would work just as well. If you run out of resources on those ARM devices (Linksys hardware is particularly underpowered for anything beyond 10Mbps) you can get a cheap VIA system with a couple of decent PCI wireless and wired cards.
It used to be that you unlocked extra levels and cars by playing the game. Micro transactions historically always bombed. When micro transactions were first introduced in DRM platforms like Steam, Xbox Network or PlayStation Network and the only way to get them was through the DRM all of a sudden these extras started costing a dollar and now they're up to 10 or more. I don't buy such games anymore.
I don't have those types of stores here (except Wal-Mart). But usually you can fill out all types of false information on those club cards, they'll give them to you regardless. You get the discounts and/or points but nothing in your mailbox.
I must use a respectable bank (local Credit Union) because I never see any correlation between junk mail and the stuff I buy with my card, I don't get a whole lot of junk mail and cold calls on average once a month. I buy EVERYTHING with my card and get annoyed when stores don't accept cards and will actively avoid such stores where possible. I hate change as it usually gets put by the side until you either lose it or get it together and put it in one of those automated counters that spews out a gift certificate.
I do get more calls whenever I use my Bank of America card (only use it for online purchases from shady sites since I can dispute online as well) but I prefer not to use their services for anything else.
If you claim safe, safes can be opened quite easily and usually only contain sensitive material relating a locked computer to a safe would imply it would be easy to open the computer up and that it's full of sensitive material (it's not) so why don't you just type in the password in order to equate it to a safe.
For a judge to understand it this analogy is better: It's like them getting a warrant to your house to search for evidence and they can't find it because you hid it somewhere in your house.
You are not obliged to cooperate with that search warrant but they can take your house apart piece by piece (as long as they restore it (or not in some cases - they break stuff and then claim they didn't)) or get a special scanner to search for it. They can also just give up and not have that piece of evidence.
There have been cases where search warrants didn't find the stash of children in the basement or the dead bodies in the backyard. There have been few or no cases where they couldn't open a safe (unless the accused has one of those tamperproof safes).
MySQL has been historically faster than PostgreSQL though although hardware improvements have closed that gap. MySQL may not be as persistent with the data as other SQL engines try to be but in Facebook's world, that's not really a problem. If you lose some data on FaceBook the world is not going to end, you're not losing money, all you do is maybe make an emo teen a bit sad but then just offer him a special cow on FarmVille and they're happy again.
VoltDB is a commercial solution (yeah it has a free 'demo' but for large systems it expects you to pay) so pushing something like it as the be-all, end-all of some perceived, unknown problem is at best a sales tactic.
I have heard a lot from several No/NewSQL folks and it's great to push large amounts of specific data in and out of it but it's a solution looking for a problem most of the time. If you spend a lot of time designing and normalizing your data structures (large well-designed data warehouses) it is a great solution but in most cases that's not what developers want or need. They just need to store some values in a relation to each other quickly and get it out quickly. MySQL (or any other SQL flavor) will do for that. For example most posts on Facebook would do much better in performance with a NoSQL solution but it would be pretty hard to get eg. relationship trees or commercial value out of that data. Facebook 'fixed' the SQL problem with a heavy-caching middle layer (and if data gets lost, it's not important). Most companies can 'fix' their SQL problems by throwing some cash at it - it's easier (and usually cheaper) to just add some SSD's to your SQL system than having to move and shard your data into a farm.
Asbestos abatement equipment will filter the particles out of the air for the fiberglass. A shop-vac or industrial vacuum with a HEPA filter for fine dust will usually work well enough if it were simply fiberglass (it is not). A local shower, eye-wash station, protective suit, safety glasses and respiratory equipment will also be required (not just suggested) because of the other products and even if it were just fiberglass, getting that stuff in your clothing or on your skin or around your house may be an irritant.
Besides fiberglass a motherboard usually contains other metals, plastics, gasses and chemicals from the chips, solder, components, conduits which could contain toxic brominated substances (flame retardant), gold (still a heavy metal!), lead, silver, tin, aluminum, lithium, copper, mica, glass, ceramic, electrolyte fluid and that's just off the top of my head.
Unless you can make a machine that's entirely closed off and properly filtered to do the cutting, washing extensively and waste removal autonomous I would NOT suggest you do this AT ALL. Get a recycler to pick up the stuff. Also, your "arts and crafts project" result may have to be classified as hazardous material/waste or require at least an MSDS.
The issue with the MacBooks is different than the issue with the iMac that the GP instigated. Either is not Apple DRM on hardware.
And yet many have replaced their hard drives (yours truly included) with SSD's or other gear and had no problems.
First of all, Apple doesn't "block" you from using other hard drives nor do they use any specific firmware. The only thing that happens is that your fans may spin a bit harder (and they're very quiet to begin with) and that the optional Apple Hardware Test may fail on 1 test reporting a bad temperature sensor.
The issue seems to be (and you can read this in several other forums and blogs as well) is in the way that some hard disk manufacturers report back temperature to the system. It appears that the hard drives Apple uses report back temperature using the spare wiring in SATA cables. So if you get the same brand and model hard drive (not necessarily capacity), people don't have any issues. Also certain SSD's don't seem to give any issues. The main problem is that the industry hasn't yet standardized how to report data using these extra wiring and some manufacturers go ahead and implement it however they want.
There is also a fix for it as well (short the 2 wires) and somebody developed a simple temperature chip that replicates the functionality found on these new hard drives for older/other hard drives.
If somebody swaps out their hard drive and the iMac doesn't work anymore, that would be an issue with how they handled the 'repair' (most likely they didn't correctly put it back together), not Apple blocking their upgrade abilities or inhibiting their dexterity.
The "problem" that other companies have is that they loathe to do R&D themselves. They rather spew out similar-looking products that are slightly cheaper but miss half the functionality than build something themselves. They are making more profit per unit initially but when the market starts working and the prices start going down (as has been the case over the last decade), Apple has positioned themselves better over the long term while the management of eg. HP has been replaced 3 times already because they got good quarterly results but lost the war in the end.
By standard, companies without much competition are very risk-averse while Apple is not. This translates in the pricing (Dell being ~10% cheaper than Apple to remain competitive) but also translates in the quality (Dell's having less than half the battery life, much heavier, getting much hotter and breaking as soon as you drop it).
However Apple has to make enormous risks for this. In order to remain competitive with their products, they bought these factories which if the iPod/iPad/iPhone had been too early or too late to market or too expensive or not functional enough or the economy collapsed they would be in much trouble as these things are not cheap to either build or run.
The health care bill was ill conceived because the Dems thought that compromising with Reps was going to give them something. It was good in it's "promise stage" but then the compromising started and now it's a toothless piece of toilet paper with the remains of all the benefits going only to the insurance companies.
It's not that Dems would've done it any better if they were alone, they just as well are inside the pockets of the insurance companies but to blame it on either party is just wrong. The blame is on the electorate being able to be bought.
Read the T-Mobile small print. The "unlimited" data is "unlimited" until 200MB (69.99 contract), 2GB (79.99 contract), 5GB (89.99 contract) or 10GB (119.99 contract) after which you'll be throttled to 50kbps speeds but they reserve the right to throttle or even block your data transfer whenever they feel necessary or use any data that is duplicated by their plans (such as VoIP, online messages etc.) or whenever you use a 'disproportionate' amount of data.
The iPad also has a keyboard, encryption and remote IT/enterprise access controls and most Android tablets do as well. The thing is I don't want a tablet to be a computer - a tablet is simply not powerful enough since it is (or should be) optimized for battery operation. I don't want a computer acting as a tablet either since it's not optimized for battery operation or touchscreen controls.
For $10 you can buy plenty a indie game that is going to be endlessly more fun and probably on-par or exceeding the graphics of this Nintendo game. Look at the Humble Indie Bundle or The IndieGamesPack (http://www.indiegamespack.com/). For $10 you can get 6 games.
I do get his point though. There is no real reason, ever, to use server-side enterprise controls to force a client-side program to do anything. If nothing else, I'll bring in my own client over which you'll have no control. If you want to prevent your network to be used for something you don't want (whether that be porn, games or visiting your competitors job listings) you prevent your network from being able to do these things and in one swoop you'll have all clients in control regardless of who owns them.
As a developer I feel the same way, I'm not going to devote large amounts of my time to satisfy some control freak in a cubicle (the IRS supervisor from Dinner for Schmucks comes to mind). I may have to explain my boss or my client on how to do the same thing with less effort but Group Policy in my educated opinion is the hammer that makes everything look like a nail.
That's not a browser issue though. If I can MitM somehow and abort the session logging off in IE, the same issue appears.
The problem with major companies using IE is poorly written (internal) web applications which not only makes the browser choice insecure but also the web application potentially having to run on legacy platforms whenever Microsoft drops the spec (as they have done approximately every 3-5 years, more recently with WFP, Silverlight and .NET)
I have never seen a good case for Group Policy control of the browser, it can usually be circumvented by the client. I worked in a help desk once when I was very young and they had Group Policy controls restricting websites but we circumvented it by putting a copy of Netscape in our home folder and running it. Off course you can then lock that down but it becomes a vicious circle in which you're always behind and at some point you're going to start preventing real work from being done efficiently.
If you want to control the websites and time suckers your employee's go to use a proxy, outgoing firewall or DNS based solution but it won't stop it because there's always a way around them and people will find them during downtime. You should just have good management to weed out the slackers but preventing/punishing people from playing games when nothing is going on (or the phone lines or the network is down) is just poor choices from higher management.
Login: rms
Password: rms
Really, most University library resources shouldn't have password protection as getting a credential at most University libraries requires practically no validation or identification. The problem however is when employees, students and others that are using other University resources share their credentials they may be getting more access due to lack of access control than the University or the donator is aware of.
The actual cost of the metal and carbon compounds used for any car is way less than the retail price of a car. The main cost (like with drugs) is the research and development costs. However Tesla does have very expensive components (Lithium, rare earth magnets) which are also becoming increasingly scarce.
Electric vehicles are not really what we need imho for the far future. In the near future they will do loads of good until we are running out of resources to make them. What we need is a more individualized but central system such as high-tech rail where we only have to drive ~15 minutes to get to a boarding station, then you can use standard batteries or even capacitors in the car and then hop the vehicle onto a rail system or use the zip-car method in cities.
What's important is what a judge/jury will hear and think. They don't understand the difference and even saying "IRC is an anonymous chat system" will mean you're a hacker terrorist that needs to be locked up.
Thanks to the sensationalist media and government even the First Amendment rights have been all but relegated to the academia. Guilt by association is the norm now.