How do criminals think they'll get away with something like this? I just don't get it really. Even if you successfully set up the botnet and the company decides they do want to pay you off, how do they think they're going to remain anonymous, collect the money, and fade into oblivion (or fade into bolivian if you're Mike Tyson). Perhaps I just don't have the cunning mind of a criminal but the logic really escapes me.
My favorite part of the interview is the discussion on social engineering. Funny how we invest all of this money into improved security, hardware, etc, etc, etc and then people can make a phone call and get passwords over the net. Years ago when I was in high school, we had a class project to make a little website on our internal server at school. A friend of mine and myself ended up getting two different hosting accounts at different ISP's and moving our little projects online for the rest of the world. Long story short, he tells me one day on the phone, "I can hack your site." I challenged him to do so and 5 minutes later all the text on the index was changed. All he did was call the ISP and tell them he had forgotten his password, gave my name and address (all common knowledge) and they gave him my password over the phone. The entire call took about 30 seconds. This was years ago and I'm sure quite a bit has changed with ISP's, but it just goes to show how dangerous a naive employee and a telephone can be.
Completely obvious, but it seems to me that the target market for office software would be the corporate world. The problem I see with Google's idea is that it runs on the web, no? I can tell you right now that the publicly traded company I work for would never switch to Google's online office software because of the security risk associated with us putting our closely held financials online with the potential of them getting stolen. Even if the software had never been broken, or if it ran on Java with no connection to the net once it were running, the folks that make the decisions around here would still perceive it to be a huge security risk and not give it the light of day. Just my $0.02.
I'm not at all familiar with the legality (or illegality) of modchips. Are they legal in the U.S. and Canada? How do companies like Modchipman operate if these chips are illegal? I remember seeing Lik Sang sued a few times for the products they were selling.
While speaking at a conference on piracy, they used the term "fail safe." Doesn't that strike you as odd? I have yet to see anything fail safe. Everything so far has ultimately been hacked. You look at any copy-protection schemes out there and they all ultimately get broken. I'm in no way discounting their efforts and I really wish them the best, but it seems almost aloof to use "fail safe" before the product is even launched. Are they really naive enough to think that their technology will never be broken?
This is completely psuedo-altruistic. Intel is standing up for themselves as it has the opportunity to create a market for these "home servers." Although this may be good for consumers, this is fully in Intel's best interest, plain and simple.
I'm just wondering how many calories would be burned turning the hand crank to use the laptop. If you're on a 2000 calorie a day diet, it's a null issue. But, if you're struggling to get just enough food to survive, 100 calories of crank turning might be a big factor.
I hope the good folks over at Apple are looking at this technology for their next line of machines. I was going to buy a Powermac a little while ago to replace my powerbook but the machine was far more noisy than I had expected. With Apple focusing so much on aesthetics and the user experience, it seems like a sure fit to reduce the noise level of their machines.
Wouldn't embedding something in the movie and then giving the movie to people to watch--all while waiting for them to break the law... is this not entrapment?
That's pretty funny. I've never tried it here so I can't speculate. But in a little less than 8 weeks I can let you know!
IT requiring password changes
on
Too Many Passwords
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I can definitely relate to what they're saying in the article. At the company where I work, we are required to change our Windows password every 8 weeks and the password to get into the financial software every 3 months. To make matters worse, we can't use a password we used in the past again. So, you have a bunch of folks here that aren't concerned at all about passwords creating anything they can think of every 2 months minimum, and forgetting it that same day. It's a huge drain on the IT department and it constantly happens. Also, after 3 unsuccessful attemps at getting in the financial software, you're locked out. You have to call a completely different person that the usual IT guys to get the specialist for PeopleSoft to fix the screw up. It really amazes me at how much time gets wasted in our IT department alone, just fixing passwords for people.
Right, I completely agree with you. What's somewhat bizarre to me is that typically on my site I'll see advertisements from Morgan Stanley, UBS, etc. All big name companies... however, they must be paying quite low for their ads. I'm under the impression you can't negotiate with Google but somehow they aren't paying top dollar. It's a weird system, but I'm still very pleased with it.
I have Adsense on my small site and what is frustrating for me isn't the earnings but the lack of consistency. Sometimes I'll have one click that pays more than the 15 clicks the day before. It is very hit or miss with Google. I'd love to see MSN provide a more consistent income stream or at least something I can understand. I see how people bid on the ads and so they're clearly going to have different earnings, but the disparity between them really astounds me. Just my $0.02.
I'm always interested to see the culture at Google and the things they do for the employees. We always hear about the food that's on campus there and the activities they plan for the employees. I wonder if any big celebration is planned for today. I can only imagine what they have in store...
I recently visited a friend and while he and his wife were at work during a rainy day, I stayed at home and played The Sims 2 on his PC. I have to tell you, I couldn't get into it. I played it for a couple of hours, waiting for the fun to start and it never happened. This isn't meant to be a troll post, just my $0.02. The thing is, the game felt like work to me. Managing the lives of these characters was really a pain, and it just felt like it was just keeping me busy instead of actually entertaining me. I used to love to play Sim City ironically, but this one I just couldn't get into. Anybody else agree with me on this one?
Let's not forget the cost of making those 'hip' 'trendy' 'moronic' commercials and the cost of the airtime to show them. I seem to see an iPod ad about once every commercial break mo matter what channel I happen to be watching, so I'm sure it's a significant cost.
Marketing is a G&A expense and is below the gross margin line as well.
Even if Apple didn't turn a profit on the iPod the benefit to the Apple brand from the iPod has been huge. People will be more likely to by other Apple products because Apple is "cool" again.
Interesting take really, but I don't think that is entirely valid. Apple is a publicly traded company and shareholders buy on earnings. They must make decisions that will increase shareholder value. Sure, lots of companies sell products at a loss in the short-term for one reason or another, but I really don't think this would be beneficial for Apple in this instance. Millions of units selling at a loss would undermine their overall profits. For each nano sale, they're likely cannibalizing the sale of a different iPod model. So to sell them at a loss to pick up a bit of profit on the sale of some other Apple product really doesn't seem to practical to me.
The article is light on details. I hope they took account of amortization of any tooling or plant investment. It's this sort fo thing that stops the small players, hobbyists and enthusiasts producing anything similar for reasonable money.
Those costs would be included in Overhead, which is below the gross margin line on the P&L so they are likely not included. There's a lot in between gross margin and net margin.
I've bought Monarch computers before, usually on the value-end for simple workstations. They held up fairly well. But there was always some small problem like a CD burner never worked on a new system, or the CPU fan would die and nuke the CPU. I'm sure they love you plugging their products on such a major website. Did you disclose if you work for them or not?
But there's a 62 point inspection as the article claims. Perhaps the CD burner is check #63 and the CPU fan is check #64. Better add two more checks to the already inflated list.
I really have to disagree with you. You're looking at what Google is now and what AOL is now. I'm sure the marketing teams at Microsoft have a plan for turning AOL into what they want it to be. That having been said, I think it would take a lot of time to completely change the image of an existing company, but it has been done in the past and could be done again. FYI, Black and Decker did this with their DeWalt brand. Construction guys wouldn't use Black and Decker products at all because they had this cheesy "at home" use to them and it was purely an image thing. So Black and Decker spun off the DeWalt brand and gave it more of a jobsite feel. Next thing you know, construction workers were using DeWalt power tools and loving them, even though they were Black and Decker products with a new name and painted yellow. Admittedly, every case is different, but Microsoft could surely change the image of AOL with the right marketing and new approaches to AOL's business.
Slashdot Mirror
How do criminals think they'll get away with something like this? I just don't get it really. Even if you successfully set up the botnet and the company decides they do want to pay you off, how do they think they're going to remain anonymous, collect the money, and fade into oblivion (or fade into bolivian if you're Mike Tyson). Perhaps I just don't have the cunning mind of a criminal but the logic really escapes me.
My favorite part of the interview is the discussion on social engineering. Funny how we invest all of this money into improved security, hardware, etc, etc, etc and then people can make a phone call and get passwords over the net. Years ago when I was in high school, we had a class project to make a little website on our internal server at school. A friend of mine and myself ended up getting two different hosting accounts at different ISP's and moving our little projects online for the rest of the world. Long story short, he tells me one day on the phone, "I can hack your site." I challenged him to do so and 5 minutes later all the text on the index was changed. All he did was call the ISP and tell them he had forgotten his password, gave my name and address (all common knowledge) and they gave him my password over the phone. The entire call took about 30 seconds. This was years ago and I'm sure quite a bit has changed with ISP's, but it just goes to show how dangerous a naive employee and a telephone can be.
Completely obvious, but it seems to me that the target market for office software would be the corporate world. The problem I see with Google's idea is that it runs on the web, no? I can tell you right now that the publicly traded company I work for would never switch to Google's online office software because of the security risk associated with us putting our closely held financials online with the potential of them getting stolen. Even if the software had never been broken, or if it ran on Java with no connection to the net once it were running, the folks that make the decisions around here would still perceive it to be a huge security risk and not give it the light of day. Just my $0.02.
I'm not at all familiar with the legality (or illegality) of modchips. Are they legal in the U.S. and Canada? How do companies like Modchipman operate if these chips are illegal? I remember seeing Lik Sang sued a few times for the products they were selling.
While speaking at a conference on piracy, they used the term "fail safe." Doesn't that strike you as odd? I have yet to see anything fail safe. Everything so far has ultimately been hacked. You look at any copy-protection schemes out there and they all ultimately get broken. I'm in no way discounting their efforts and I really wish them the best, but it seems almost aloof to use "fail safe" before the product is even launched. Are they really naive enough to think that their technology will never be broken?
There's a debate between Linux and BSD? Hmm, I must have missed it.
This is completely psuedo-altruistic. Intel is standing up for themselves as it has the opportunity to create a market for these "home servers." Although this may be good for consumers, this is fully in Intel's best interest, plain and simple.
I'm just wondering how many calories would be burned turning the hand crank to use the laptop. If you're on a 2000 calorie a day diet, it's a null issue. But, if you're struggling to get just enough food to survive, 100 calories of crank turning might be a big factor.
I hope the good folks over at Apple are looking at this technology for their next line of machines. I was going to buy a Powermac a little while ago to replace my powerbook but the machine was far more noisy than I had expected. With Apple focusing so much on aesthetics and the user experience, it seems like a sure fit to reduce the noise level of their machines.
Wouldn't embedding something in the movie and then giving the movie to people to watch--all while waiting for them to break the law... is this not entrapment?
That's pretty funny. I've never tried it here so I can't speculate. But in a little less than 8 weeks I can let you know!
I can definitely relate to what they're saying in the article. At the company where I work, we are required to change our Windows password every 8 weeks and the password to get into the financial software every 3 months. To make matters worse, we can't use a password we used in the past again. So, you have a bunch of folks here that aren't concerned at all about passwords creating anything they can think of every 2 months minimum, and forgetting it that same day. It's a huge drain on the IT department and it constantly happens. Also, after 3 unsuccessful attemps at getting in the financial software, you're locked out. You have to call a completely different person that the usual IT guys to get the specialist for PeopleSoft to fix the screw up. It really amazes me at how much time gets wasted in our IT department alone, just fixing passwords for people.
"warchest of cash" is a great term. It made me wonder what their balance sheet is looking like. For those interested, here's the link:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=MSFT&annual
Right, I completely agree with you. What's somewhat bizarre to me is that typically on my site I'll see advertisements from Morgan Stanley, UBS, etc. All big name companies... however, they must be paying quite low for their ads. I'm under the impression you can't negotiate with Google but somehow they aren't paying top dollar. It's a weird system, but I'm still very pleased with it.
I have Adsense on my small site and what is frustrating for me isn't the earnings but the lack of consistency. Sometimes I'll have one click that pays more than the 15 clicks the day before. It is very hit or miss with Google. I'd love to see MSN provide a more consistent income stream or at least something I can understand. I see how people bid on the ads and so they're clearly going to have different earnings, but the disparity between them really astounds me. Just my $0.02.
I'm always interested to see the culture at Google and the things they do for the employees. We always hear about the food that's on campus there and the activities they plan for the employees. I wonder if any big celebration is planned for today. I can only imagine what they have in store...
I recently visited a friend and while he and his wife were at work during a rainy day, I stayed at home and played The Sims 2 on his PC. I have to tell you, I couldn't get into it. I played it for a couple of hours, waiting for the fun to start and it never happened. This isn't meant to be a troll post, just my $0.02. The thing is, the game felt like work to me. Managing the lives of these characters was really a pain, and it just felt like it was just keeping me busy instead of actually entertaining me. I used to love to play Sim City ironically, but this one I just couldn't get into. Anybody else agree with me on this one?
Let's not forget the cost of making those 'hip' 'trendy' 'moronic' commercials and the cost of the airtime to show them. I seem to see an iPod ad about once every commercial break mo matter what channel I happen to be watching, so I'm sure it's a significant cost.
Marketing is a G&A expense and is below the gross margin line as well.
Even if Apple didn't turn a profit on the iPod the benefit to the Apple brand from the iPod has been huge. People will be more likely to by other Apple products because Apple is "cool" again.
Interesting take really, but I don't think that is entirely valid. Apple is a publicly traded company and shareholders buy on earnings. They must make decisions that will increase shareholder value. Sure, lots of companies sell products at a loss in the short-term for one reason or another, but I really don't think this would be beneficial for Apple in this instance. Millions of units selling at a loss would undermine their overall profits. For each nano sale, they're likely cannibalizing the sale of a different iPod model. So to sell them at a loss to pick up a bit of profit on the sale of some other Apple product really doesn't seem to practical to me.
Why is it assumed that profit is a bad thing?
Interesting. I didn't get that take from the article at all.
The article is light on details. I hope they took account of amortization of any tooling or plant investment. It's this sort fo thing that stops the small players, hobbyists and enthusiasts producing anything similar for reasonable money.
Those costs would be included in Overhead, which is below the gross margin line on the P&L so they are likely not included. There's a lot in between gross margin and net margin.
If the original poster is reading this, could you do me a favor and run an Excel benchmark on it, since that's what I'd be using it for?
Get back to me with the results ASAP... the bank just approved my $5k loan.
I've bought Monarch computers before, usually on the value-end for simple workstations. They held up fairly well. But there was always some small problem like a CD burner never worked on a new system, or the CPU fan would die and nuke the CPU. I'm sure they love you plugging their products on such a major website. Did you disclose if you work for them or not?
But there's a 62 point inspection as the article claims. Perhaps the CD burner is check #63 and the CPU fan is check #64. Better add two more checks to the already inflated list.
I, for one, welcome our new CSS-touting overlords.
On a serious note though, excellent work. It's a welcomed change.
I really have to disagree with you. You're looking at what Google is now and what AOL is now. I'm sure the marketing teams at Microsoft have a plan for turning AOL into what they want it to be. That having been said, I think it would take a lot of time to completely change the image of an existing company, but it has been done in the past and could be done again. FYI, Black and Decker did this with their DeWalt brand. Construction guys wouldn't use Black and Decker products at all because they had this cheesy "at home" use to them and it was purely an image thing. So Black and Decker spun off the DeWalt brand and gave it more of a jobsite feel. Next thing you know, construction workers were using DeWalt power tools and loving them, even though they were Black and Decker products with a new name and painted yellow. Admittedly, every case is different, but Microsoft could surely change the image of AOL with the right marketing and new approaches to AOL's business.