Not to be rude, but this is complete and utter hogwash. What you said might apply to the average or below-average user, but there are plenty of above-average users who never even have to think about malware. I've had the same install of XP for well over 2 years with absolutely NO malware problems. Not a virus, not a spyware program, NOTHING. And it's really not that hard to keep it that way. Put your computer behind a router and/or firewall, keep a virus-protection program monitoring things, and don't install crap without knowing what it is, who makes it, and what it bundles. True, for the average user, even these simple steps may be too much, but there are many intelligent users who keep their systems nice and clean with little to no effort.
A clean image is still a smart thing to keep around, but it by no means is a requirement for keeping your system safe. Basic precautions do a world of good for users of any OS.
You're forgetting an important fact. A LARGE percentage of America is knowingly or unknowingly a shareholder in oil companies. You know that retirement plan you have? Your 401k? Those mutual funds you bought? Guess what they include as part of your portfolio? That's right. Shares in those horrible oil companies. The American public loses sight of the fact that while high gas prices certainly hurt your pocketbook right now, there's a silver lining... in the long run, it's actually building up your retirement fund.
Now that's not to say I'm happy with the oil companies. Along with a responsibility to please your shareholders, an ethical company also has a responsibility to act for the benefit of society when they can. In the oil companies' cases, this would mean pumping some of those huge profits into R&D and building new refineries so that we have the capacity to keep artificial shortages from happening.
Just saying though... with the amount of people who hold shares in these companies either directly or through mutual funds, the actions that are best for shareholders might actually be those that are best for society in the long run.
Love it when people think like that. I had a guy telling me the other day that his computers were making the room too hot, so he was going to fix it by installing water cooling on a few of them to make them run cooler. Hmmm... now where do you think those cooling systems are going to exhaust their heat to? Could it be... the room?!
I liked myspace better in the olden days... when it was called Geocities.
Seriously. Myspace is just the whole "make your own homepage" concept all over again, but this time with a built in way to search for other homepages that look as crappy as yours.
OMG! U got a [insert craptacular emo/hiphop/boy band] vide0 on yur page 2! Letz like be friendz forever!
While this may be true, I'd like to ask, what difference does it make?
Given a person with enough time and a book worth copying, they could probably reconstruct almost the entire thing.
If a person wants to reconstruct a book this badly, there are PLENTY of other, probably easier ways to do it. For instance - checking it out from the library and scanning it themselves, using a pen scanner at your local Barnes and Noble, stealing the book from your local library, stealing the book from your local bookseller, or just plain buying the freaking book.
Just because something CAN be done doesn't mean it's GOING to be done, and even if it IS done, it doesn't mean it's all that harmful. Unless someone is going to full out hack Google's servers and find some way to download full copies of books, this argument against the service just doesn't hold water.
Speaking of eerie... that's almost the EXACT conversation I just had with MY wife. But then again, considering that this is Slashdot, I'd say this conversation's most likely been happening all over the world tonight.
Apparently you haven't tried the latest cvs builds with altivec support, because they're getting gosh darn SNAPPY. Admittedly, it's still got a ways to go... my athlon64 3200 runs OSX at about the same speed as my wife's old 300Mhz iMac, a pretty significant slowdown. But it's definitely usable.
No offense, but the majority of the posters so far have no CLUE what they're talking about. I work for one of the largest building automation companies in the US (and world) and write the logic for programmable controllers.
First of all, there is no way you'd EVER want an IT department taking control of your HVAC system unless they've been trained VERY well and their building's controllers were programmed with an IT department in mind. I started off in the IT world, and thought moving to building automation would be a cinch, but let me assure you, there was a huge deal to learn. When you're dealing with Chillers that can blow a cap that costs $10,000+ to replace, just because you accidentally allowed a chilled water valve to open up while your return water was still too hot after the a switchover in your 2-pipe plant... well... let's just say you want a building maintenance guy dealing with these situations.
As far as standards go, just because IT people don't know about them hardly means they don't exist. The most prevalent standards today are the ones mentioned by the article - BACNet and LonTalk. Both are fairly simple protocols that allow for efficient communication over a wide range of network media. They were designed with slower networks in mind, so that if your bandwidth is only 100k/sec, you're still going to be fine. Usually the controllers are on a slower copper wire network, and then routed through an ethernet network to the frontend computer. Personally, I'd like to see the business go towards using standard ethernet and tcp/ip the whole way through, because of the lower costs of standard routers, repeaters, bridges, etc.
As far as security concerns go... If they're worried about someone hacking in to their HVAC system and harming things, then their system was progammed shoddily. A well programmed system always takes into account the stupidity of users. You place safeguard upon safeguard upon safeguard. Even guys that have been facility managers for years will try to do stupid things, so you plan ahead and only let them make non-harmful changes from the frontend.
Sigh. Does no one read the subject line? The comment is labeled "Editing nazi." Gee. Let's think. Maybe the comment is NOT actually asking a question about scalability, but is ACTUALLY a cleverly disguised jab at.... hmmmm... could it be.... an editing mistake? Just maybe? Like, perhaps, the word... sclae? Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be rude, but this is complete and utter hogwash. What you said might apply to the average or below-average user, but there are plenty of above-average users who never even have to think about malware. I've had the same install of XP for well over 2 years with absolutely NO malware problems. Not a virus, not a spyware program, NOTHING. And it's really not that hard to keep it that way. Put your computer behind a router and/or firewall, keep a virus-protection program monitoring things, and don't install crap without knowing what it is, who makes it, and what it bundles. True, for the average user, even these simple steps may be too much, but there are many intelligent users who keep their systems nice and clean with little to no effort.
A clean image is still a smart thing to keep around, but it by no means is a requirement for keeping your system safe. Basic precautions do a world of good for users of any OS.
You're forgetting an important fact. A LARGE percentage of America is knowingly or unknowingly a shareholder in oil companies. You know that retirement plan you have? Your 401k? Those mutual funds you bought? Guess what they include as part of your portfolio? That's right. Shares in those horrible oil companies. The American public loses sight of the fact that while high gas prices certainly hurt your pocketbook right now, there's a silver lining... in the long run, it's actually building up your retirement fund.
Now that's not to say I'm happy with the oil companies. Along with a responsibility to please your shareholders, an ethical company also has a responsibility to act for the benefit of society when they can. In the oil companies' cases, this would mean pumping some of those huge profits into R&D and building new refineries so that we have the capacity to keep artificial shortages from happening.
Just saying though... with the amount of people who hold shares in these companies either directly or through mutual funds, the actions that are best for shareholders might actually be those that are best for society in the long run.
Love it when people think like that. I had a guy telling me the other day that his computers were making the room too hot, so he was going to fix it by installing water cooling on a few of them to make them run cooler. Hmmm... now where do you think those cooling systems are going to exhaust their heat to? Could it be... the room?!
I liked myspace better in the olden days... when it was called Geocities.
Seriously. Myspace is just the whole "make your own homepage" concept all over again, but this time with a built in way to search for other homepages that look as crappy as yours.
OMG! U got a [insert craptacular emo/hiphop/boy band] vide0 on yur page 2! Letz like be friendz forever!
While this may be true, I'd like to ask, what difference does it make?
Given a person with enough time and a book worth copying, they could probably reconstruct almost the entire thing.
If a person wants to reconstruct a book this badly, there are PLENTY of other, probably easier ways to do it. For instance - checking it out from the library and scanning it themselves, using a pen scanner at your local Barnes and Noble, stealing the book from your local library, stealing the book from your local bookseller, or just plain buying the freaking book.
Just because something CAN be done doesn't mean it's GOING to be done, and even if it IS done, it doesn't mean it's all that harmful. Unless someone is going to full out hack Google's servers and find some way to download full copies of books, this argument against the service just doesn't hold water.
Speaking of eerie... that's almost the EXACT conversation I just had with MY wife. But then again, considering that this is Slashdot, I'd say this conversation's most likely been happening all over the world tonight.
Apparently you haven't tried the latest cvs builds with altivec support, because they're getting gosh darn SNAPPY. Admittedly, it's still got a ways to go... my athlon64 3200 runs OSX at about the same speed as my wife's old 300Mhz iMac, a pretty significant slowdown. But it's definitely usable.
No offense, but the majority of the posters so far have no CLUE what they're talking about. I work for one of the largest building automation companies in the US (and world) and write the logic for programmable controllers. First of all, there is no way you'd EVER want an IT department taking control of your HVAC system unless they've been trained VERY well and their building's controllers were programmed with an IT department in mind. I started off in the IT world, and thought moving to building automation would be a cinch, but let me assure you, there was a huge deal to learn. When you're dealing with Chillers that can blow a cap that costs $10,000+ to replace, just because you accidentally allowed a chilled water valve to open up while your return water was still too hot after the a switchover in your 2-pipe plant... well... let's just say you want a building maintenance guy dealing with these situations. As far as standards go, just because IT people don't know about them hardly means they don't exist. The most prevalent standards today are the ones mentioned by the article - BACNet and LonTalk. Both are fairly simple protocols that allow for efficient communication over a wide range of network media. They were designed with slower networks in mind, so that if your bandwidth is only 100k/sec, you're still going to be fine. Usually the controllers are on a slower copper wire network, and then routed through an ethernet network to the frontend computer. Personally, I'd like to see the business go towards using standard ethernet and tcp/ip the whole way through, because of the lower costs of standard routers, repeaters, bridges, etc. As far as security concerns go... If they're worried about someone hacking in to their HVAC system and harming things, then their system was progammed shoddily. A well programmed system always takes into account the stupidity of users. You place safeguard upon safeguard upon safeguard. Even guys that have been facility managers for years will try to do stupid things, so you plan ahead and only let them make non-harmful changes from the frontend.
Sigh. Does no one read the subject line? The comment is labeled "Editing nazi." Gee. Let's think. Maybe the comment is NOT actually asking a question about scalability, but is ACTUALLY a cleverly disguised jab at.... hmmmm... could it be.... an editing mistake? Just maybe? Like, perhaps, the word... sclae? Just a thought.