1- What makes you think that cash transactions are really private? They may be harder to trace than entirely electronic transactions, but there is no reason to assume that using cash makes a transaction private.
2- How does this violate integrity? If anything, it enhances integrity by making fraudulent transactions of any type much harder.
3- How does simplifying spending make one less human? If anything, it makes me feel *MORE* human because eventually I can just have one little chip replace my credit cards, driver's license, insurance card, and be able to inform EMTs that I am epileptic. Know what that means? Less stuff in my pocket. Less hassle. Less to think about. And more time to devote to the thing that really does make me human- rational thought.
You paranoids really need to get over this deranged fear that RFID will somehow strip away your silly illusion of privacy. Nobody needs RFID to find out everything you do. These new technologies aren't about stripping away your humanity. It's all about making life easier for everyone, so that we can do more with our humanity.
Are you on crack? Most of the businesses I know that use Solaris do so entirely BECAUSE Sun has better support than anyone else out there, with those exceptions when they make you sign an NDA to find out about a problem that they cannot fix.
"...after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses."
I can see how this would eliminate the accent problem, and believe me, that's a great thing, but what about the scripted responses? Is Dell actually going to start training the phone techs so that they can offer worthwhile advice, or will it still be scripted responses linked to a database of questions and answers? Will I just be able to understand the guy who says "Rebooting didn't work? Try power-cycling it while I check Google..." Or will there actually be a competent techie on the other end who understands me when I say "The SCSI backplane for my eight-disk RAID array is displaying random errors and I need you to send me a new one before the parity stripe gets corrupted and starts overwriting other data!"
I have ADD and am somewhat OCD, so I have a few systems worked out. A big part of each system is to just throw away anything I don't need on a regular basis, unless it is very important to keep it around for reference.
1- Paperwork/Manuals/Warranties: Paperwork all gets filed alphabetically in hanging files in those white cardboard boxes. Rotate old stuff into closets. The best part about filing manuals and warranties is that it means I can throw a box away as soon as I know that the media is not defective.
2- Books: Shelve them or sell them. Be careful with this one, as it is cheaper to buy *nice* bookshelves than it is to replace old books that one sold or trashed. If you have the money, barrister bookshelves (The ones with lift-up glass doors on each shelf.) mitigate the need for frequent dusting.
3- Movies/DVDs: I don't even have a VCR, so all of my videocassettes got trashed. My DVDs are neatly organized in my entertainment center. I only buy a DVD if it is a must-have, otherwise I just use NetFlix so that *they* can store it for me.
4- Old computers: I just give them away now. This gives me more time with the new ones.
5- Cables: Everything is carefully organized and I never leave unused cables laying around. If I have a lot in one place, they are all tied back with velcro, twist-ties, or cable cuffs. I keep a few extras in a box, all of the rest go in the trash. Seriously, how many USB/USB 2.0 cables does one really need to keep now that many devices come with them?
6- CD-ROMs: Software all gets stripped of its box and case and is filed in a CD holder of some sort (Target sells CD pages that go in 3-ring binders!), or on a spindle if I won't need it often. Old video games that aren't "classics" are either traded-in or given away to the children of co-workers. Music CDs are kept on CD storage racks in cast I transport them somewhere, but for the most part I only play my music from the Nomad Zen so that I don't need to use the CDs very often.
If you have more than a few hundred CDs of any one type, just toss the cases, and alphabetize them using zip-loc bags in plastic boxes with cardboard dividers.
Another important thing to remember is to label *every* box. This way you can tell what is in them at a glance once you have fifty of them stuffed into a closet.
When one of my employers moved into a new building, we realized that we were going to have to run one cable very, very far. Fortunately, my boss poked around and found an old 10/100 fiber cable had been run from one end of the office to the other-so we just tossed some copper ethernet adapters on either end and stuck switches on either end. Not wonderful, but it beat the hell out of running cables through 100 feet of plenum.
This one really hurts Microsoft's FUD campaign that presents Linux/Open-Source as an anti-choice, anti-American, anti-Capitalist tool. They'll have a hard time arguing those points against Linux when China is buying Linux and Open-Source from an American corporation.
Way cool.
And on a related note-holy shit! McNealy might be right! His crazy business strategies might actually be working!
No, smarter. Microsoft got where they are by taking a better approach to selling products: spend money on marketing and worry about decent R&D later. Iomega and AOL did the same thing. And while their competitors produced superior products, companies like AOL, Iomega and Microsoft chose profitability instead.
Fortunately, this business model has started fading since Intel realized that they had to make better CPUs to compete with AMD, AOL started dying off as they finally faced competitors with better products AND advertising dollars, and now Microsoft is struggling to keep up with grassroots support for OS X and Linux.
"He is probably smarter then[sic] the lawyer questioning him."
Bill Gates is smarter than plenty of other people, yet he is still incapable of picking out a suit that does not make him look like a department-store shoe salesman. Brilliance and social skills tend to have an inverse relationship.
Is anyone else really, really afraid of putting Stallman on the stand? If that got televised Microsoft would have a field day showing off what a kook the leader of the anti-American commie GNU army is.
We should do whatever it takes to get Stallman on Queer Eye. Only the fab five can get him cleaned up and into an outfit that won't make him look like a nut.
"But you need to put Linux into the hands of the masses if you want to take over the desktop..."
You're making a huge mistake that a huge number of Linux zealots make-that the people up top want Linux to take over the desktop. They don't. Guys like Bruce, Tim, and Linus aren't on some holy war to bring Linux to the masses. They just want to make the best OS they can, keep it open/free, and if the masses come, well, that's just validation and affirmation of the quality of the work.
Pushing out Live CDs is a great idea-but don't do it with the mindset of "taking over." Do it with the mindset of inviting friends over for dinner.
There are so many distros, but most corporate Linux users are running Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE. A large number of "hobbyists," ie. the open-source programmers not working for any big company, are using Debian.
The thing is, much of what goes into the four big distros is culled from the little ones-but the little ones often aren't suited for all-around use because they are developed with very certain featuresets in mind.
If I hire you to work on my network, I don't give a shit if you want to use some obscure distro because it's your flavor of the week for a certain application. On my networks, we will be going with one of the big five-actually just Red Hat or Debian, as they are the most popular distros in my region of the world-because there's a big chance that you won't be running the server forever. You might get promoted, get transferred, get fired, quit, etc., but in all likelihood I'll need to hire another sysadmin to manage that box within two years. And I'm NOT going to hire a senior admin who can handle learning some weird distro when I have the option of bringing in a college kid who knows how to keep a big-distro box running on autopilot.
Parents of teenagers take note, soon you will be able to shut down the car as soon as your kid start driving in the direction of that skanky girl/boyfriend's house!
Anyone care to comment on some thoughts this raises in my mind?
1- This is good for SuSE, and Linux in general because it means that SuSE Linux is now an "US-owned" product, which means that it can be used by divisions of the US Government and US businesses that demand only US-owned products go into their systems. Now there is another competitor to force MSFT to make a better, cheaper product or get out (Or just buy off more Congressional representatives.)
2- This could hurt SuSE in Europe, where being a European company helped sell SuSE to Europeans wanting a continental alternative to Microsoft.
I'm thinking that most control over SuSE will stay in Europe, keeping Europeans happy, and Novell being able to push a Linux distro that is a great alternative to Red Hat in the USA will make Americans happy, and everyone wins. But maybe I'm crazy...
For years open-source/Free Software Advocates have been telling us that the way to make money off of Open-Source software is by selling support. It's too bad that the Open-Source community has decided to treat Red Hat like a pariah for doing so, instead of embracing Red Hat as a company that finally built a working Open-Source business model, and gave up on the silly strategies of the dot-com era.
If you want a free and supported commercial Linux distro, do what the Europeans have done with SuSE- use anti-American/Anti-Capitalist/Anti-Microsoft sentiment to sway governments and businesses toward it. But don't get mad because a Linux business needs a business model appropriate to its locale and customers.
Well, at least now we know that Microsoft isn't really the most evil company out there. MSFT may play dirty, talk a lot of trash, and lie like crazy (not that I haven't seen GNU/open-source advocates do the same), but the people running the dog-and-pony show at SCO are just being assholes.
That's actually a pretty good idea! Why not set up a project with the goal of a massive SCO shorting make sure that Darl can't keep pushing up the stock price this way? If we can get a few thousand geeks to all short SCO in one morning, that alone should have a huge negative effect on the stock price, and the the negative publicity following would hurt it even more. Do it repeatedly and the shorts would be such a PITA for SCO investors that the board might tell Darl to start doing his damned job and make some intelligent choices.
Of course, this might run afoul of SEC regulations, but with careful orchestration handled via servers outside the USA, they might not be able to go after anyone.
This is the perfect phone for geeks who need a new excuse for not getting laid. "I can't date because I'm too busy playing with my phone to use it for calling girls!"
I tend to follow at least the following criteria when deploying patches:
1- If the patch is a Microsoft patch, I deploy it immediately, regardless of severity, because Microsoft has repeatedly lied about the severity of security flaws that were actually quite critical. 2- If the patch is for a very theoretical problem, such as many of the recent OpenSSL patches, I tend to let it wait for the next big update. Good examples are those problems where key-breaking time is reduced to only 50 years or so on a $10,000,000,000 budget. 3- Patches that fix vulnerabilites that are only a problem in stupid configurations (Such as recent OpenSSH problems.) get ignored until the updates have been tested. 4- Patches from Sun go out immediately, because they seem to take so long that the exploits for bugs have been integrated into script-kiddie toolkits.
Slashdot Mirror
That Diebold uses commonly available software that reports home whenever the system connects to the internet, just in case a machine is stolen.
Slashdot users are such a bunch of paranoid freaks!
1- What makes you think that cash transactions are really private? They may be harder to trace than entirely electronic transactions, but there is no reason to assume that using cash makes a transaction private.
2- How does this violate integrity? If anything, it enhances integrity by making fraudulent transactions of any type much harder.
3- How does simplifying spending make one less human? If anything, it makes me feel *MORE* human because eventually I can just have one little chip replace my credit cards, driver's license, insurance card, and be able to inform EMTs that I am epileptic. Know what that means? Less stuff in my pocket. Less hassle. Less to think about. And more time to devote to the thing that really does make me human- rational thought.
You paranoids really need to get over this deranged fear that RFID will somehow strip away your silly illusion of privacy. Nobody needs RFID to find out everything you do. These new technologies aren't about stripping away your humanity. It's all about making life easier for everyone, so that we can do more with our humanity.
"...no-support..."
Are you on crack? Most of the businesses I know that use Solaris do so entirely BECAUSE Sun has better support than anyone else out there, with those exceptions when they make you sign an NDA to find out about a problem that they cannot fix.
"...after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses."
I can see how this would eliminate the accent problem, and believe me, that's a great thing, but what about the scripted responses? Is Dell actually going to start training the phone techs so that they can offer worthwhile advice, or will it still be scripted responses linked to a database of questions and answers? Will I just be able to understand the guy who says "Rebooting didn't work? Try power-cycling it while I check Google..." Or will there actually be a competent techie on the other end who understands me when I say "The SCSI backplane for my eight-disk RAID array is displaying random errors and I need you to send me a new one before the parity stripe gets corrupted and starts overwriting other data!"
And yes, that's a true story about Dell...
I have ADD and am somewhat OCD, so I have a few systems worked out. A big part of each system is to just throw away anything I don't need on a regular basis, unless it is very important to keep it around for reference.
1- Paperwork/Manuals/Warranties: Paperwork all gets filed alphabetically in hanging files in those white cardboard boxes. Rotate old stuff into closets. The best part about filing manuals and warranties is that it means I can throw a box away as soon as I know that the media is not defective.
2- Books: Shelve them or sell them. Be careful with this one, as it is cheaper to buy *nice* bookshelves than it is to replace old books that one sold or trashed. If you have the money, barrister bookshelves (The ones with lift-up glass doors on each shelf.) mitigate the need for frequent dusting.
3- Movies/DVDs: I don't even have a VCR, so all of my videocassettes got trashed. My DVDs are neatly organized in my entertainment center. I only buy a DVD if it is a must-have, otherwise I just use NetFlix so that *they* can store it for me.
4- Old computers: I just give them away now. This gives me more time with the new ones.
5- Cables: Everything is carefully organized and I never leave unused cables laying around. If I have a lot in one place, they are all tied back with velcro, twist-ties, or cable cuffs. I keep a few extras in a box, all of the rest go in the trash. Seriously, how many USB/USB 2.0 cables does one really need to keep now that many devices come with them?
6- CD-ROMs: Software all gets stripped of its box and case and is filed in a CD holder of some sort (Target sells CD pages that go in 3-ring binders!), or on a spindle if I won't need it often. Old video games that aren't "classics" are either traded-in or given away to the children of co-workers. Music CDs are kept on CD storage racks in cast I transport them somewhere, but for the most part I only play my music from the Nomad Zen so that I don't need to use the CDs very often.
If you have more than a few hundred CDs of any one type, just toss the cases, and alphabetize them using zip-loc bags in plastic boxes with cardboard dividers.
Another important thing to remember is to label *every* box. This way you can tell what is in them at a glance once you have fifty of them stuffed into a closet.
When one of my employers moved into a new building, we realized that we were going to have to run one cable very, very far. Fortunately, my boss poked around and found an old 10/100 fiber cable had been run from one end of the office to the other-so we just tossed some copper ethernet adapters on either end and stuck switches on either end. Not wonderful, but it beat the hell out of running cables through 100 feet of plenum.
This one really hurts Microsoft's FUD campaign that presents Linux/Open-Source as an anti-choice, anti-American, anti-Capitalist tool. They'll have a hard time arguing those points against Linux when China is buying Linux and Open-Source from an American corporation.
Way cool.
And on a related note-holy shit! McNealy might be right! His crazy business strategies might actually be working!
No, smarter. Microsoft got where they are by taking a better approach to selling products: spend money on marketing and worry about decent R&D later. Iomega and AOL did the same thing. And while their competitors produced superior products, companies like AOL, Iomega and Microsoft chose profitability instead.
Fortunately, this business model has started fading since Intel realized that they had to make better CPUs to compete with AMD, AOL started dying off as they finally faced competitors with better products AND advertising dollars, and now Microsoft is struggling to keep up with grassroots support for OS X and Linux.
"He is probably smarter then[sic] the lawyer questioning him."
Bill Gates is smarter than plenty of other people, yet he is still incapable of picking out a suit that does not make him look like a department-store shoe salesman. Brilliance and social skills tend to have an inverse relationship.
Is anyone else really, really afraid of putting Stallman on the stand? If that got televised Microsoft would have a field day showing off what a kook the leader of the anti-American commie GNU army is.
We should do whatever it takes to get Stallman on Queer Eye. Only the fab five can get him cleaned up and into an outfit that won't make him look like a nut.
"But you need to put Linux into the hands of the masses if you want to take over the desktop..."
You're making a huge mistake that a huge number of Linux zealots make-that the people up top want Linux to take over the desktop. They don't. Guys like Bruce, Tim, and Linus aren't on some holy war to bring Linux to the masses. They just want to make the best OS they can, keep it open/free, and if the masses come, well, that's just validation and affirmation of the quality of the work.
Pushing out Live CDs is a great idea-but don't do it with the mindset of "taking over." Do it with the mindset of inviting friends over for dinner.
There are so many distros, but most corporate Linux users are running Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE. A large number of "hobbyists," ie. the open-source programmers not working for any big company, are using Debian.
The thing is, much of what goes into the four big distros is culled from the little ones-but the little ones often aren't suited for all-around use because they are developed with very certain featuresets in mind.
If I hire you to work on my network, I don't give a shit if you want to use some obscure distro because it's your flavor of the week for a certain application. On my networks, we will be going with one of the big five-actually just Red Hat or Debian, as they are the most popular distros in my region of the world-because there's a big chance that you won't be running the server forever. You might get promoted, get transferred, get fired, quit, etc., but in all likelihood I'll need to hire another sysadmin to manage that box within two years. And I'm NOT going to hire a senior admin who can handle learning some weird distro when I have the option of bringing in a college kid who knows how to keep a big-distro box running on autopilot.
I'm all for shadenfreude, but isn't it easier for us to just ignore Microsoft's failings and worry about more important things?
Parents of teenagers take note, soon you will be able to shut down the car as soon as your kid start driving in the direction of that skanky girl/boyfriend's house!
You know, if they exclude all of the pr0n and blogging from the model, I bet they could do it for half that cost.
Anyone care to comment on some thoughts this raises in my mind?
1- This is good for SuSE, and Linux in general because it means that SuSE Linux is now an "US-owned" product, which means that it can be used by divisions of the US Government and US businesses that demand only US-owned products go into their systems. Now there is another competitor to force MSFT to make a better, cheaper product or get out (Or just buy off more Congressional representatives.)
2- This could hurt SuSE in Europe, where being a European company helped sell SuSE to Europeans wanting a continental alternative to Microsoft.
I'm thinking that most control over SuSE will stay in Europe, keeping Europeans happy, and Novell being able to push a Linux distro that is a great alternative to Red Hat in the USA will make Americans happy, and everyone wins. But maybe I'm crazy...
The Akira release was pretty limited, mostly late-night showings at art-house/porn theatres in liberal cities. Mononoke made it out into the suburbs.
For years open-source/Free Software Advocates have been telling us that the way to make money off of Open-Source software is by selling support. It's too bad that the Open-Source community has decided to treat Red Hat like a pariah for doing so, instead of embracing Red Hat as a company that finally built a working Open-Source business model, and gave up on the silly strategies of the dot-com era.
If you want a free and supported commercial Linux distro, do what the Europeans have done with SuSE- use anti-American/Anti-Capitalist/Anti-Microsoft sentiment to sway governments and businesses toward it. But don't get mad because a Linux business needs a business model appropriate to its locale and customers.
Well, at least now we know that Microsoft isn't really the most evil company out there. MSFT may play dirty, talk a lot of trash, and lie like crazy (not that I haven't seen GNU/open-source advocates do the same), but the people running the dog-and-pony show at SCO are just being assholes.
That's actually a pretty good idea! Why not set up a project with the goal of a massive SCO shorting make sure that Darl can't keep pushing up the stock price this way? If we can get a few thousand geeks to all short SCO in one morning, that alone should have a huge negative effect on the stock price, and the the negative publicity following would hurt it even more. Do it repeatedly and the shorts would be such a PITA for SCO investors that the board might tell Darl to start doing his damned job and make some intelligent choices.
Of course, this might run afoul of SEC regulations, but with careful orchestration handled via servers outside the USA, they might not be able to go after anyone.
She? ewwww! I keep a midget frat boy down there!
This is the perfect phone for geeks who need a new excuse for not getting laid.
"I can't date because I'm too busy playing with my phone to use it for calling girls!"
As much as I criticize Apple, now and then they do something I really, really like.
This time I actually let out an entirely involuntary orgasmic moan at my desk.
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/272695/2002 -05-13/2002-05-19/0
I tend to follow at least the following criteria when deploying patches:
1- If the patch is a Microsoft patch, I deploy it immediately, regardless of severity, because Microsoft has repeatedly lied about the severity of security flaws that were actually quite critical.
2- If the patch is for a very theoretical problem, such as many of the recent OpenSSL patches, I tend to let it wait for the next big update. Good examples are those problems where key-breaking time is reduced to only 50 years or so on a $10,000,000,000 budget.
3- Patches that fix vulnerabilites that are only a problem in stupid configurations (Such as recent OpenSSH problems.) get ignored until the updates have been tested.
4- Patches from Sun go out immediately, because they seem to take so long that the exploits for bugs have been integrated into script-kiddie toolkits.