Funny thing about land. It slides, it shakes, it sinks. It even burns when there are combustibles on it. Perhaps the whole "it is a swamp" thing should have been the first clue.
Some in the house and senate have voiced the politically incorrect position of "maybe it was a little dumb to build below sea level, right next to the sea."
I happen to agree. Move New Orleans to higher ground. Let the ocean have the original site. Spending billions on ANY plan is a waste of my tax dollars.
I live on the side of the fault that slides into the ocean when the big one hits California. I don't expect the US government to spend billions to reattach it. But, I would expect them to save me a spot on the new beach front property to replace my previous submarine property.
They built a city below sea level, in a swamp. A hurrican came, it blew away, burnt down and sunk into the swamp. What did they expect?
I would see England as having a more progressive, better funded police force. I would see China as a less progressive and under funded police force. As demonstrated by the need to block all of China's IP numbers as hackers run rampant in the streets there.(I would link to the recent Slash Dot story on the subject, but I'm not interested in learning how at the moment...how unprogressive of me)
I would see a country, or police force that believed a crime that is wholly on a computer as being unimportant as being, not only not progressive, but, in fact backwards and incompetent.
While the US might not know what to do with all their tax dollars, as evidenced by the fact are not sinking billions into hydrogen fuel research, and instead are subsidizing farmers to not grow crops, there is no country with more tax dollars to spend. One would think some of that could go into some computer training courses for Bob the police sargent.
Perhaps we should make all guns the same calibur. All cars the same weight, size and color and all criminals the guilty of the same crime? Would that make it easy enough for them?
It would be called an "investigation" for a reason. And not just because it fit in well with the show title CSI: Miami.
In the US, there is an appaling lack of technical expertise in local police departments. Frequently extending to state and federal departments also.
I can only imagine what it is like in a less well funded or less progressive country.
Computer geeks could probably make a small mint on contracting with police departments.
Perhaps some sort of sortware update would be in order.
Maybe if we had some kind of global network that manufacturers could send updates directly to end users, it would even speed things up. Arizona might be a problem though. They currently maintain their own timezone.
I could certainly see where changing a 10 to an 11 in Windows code could bring about the downfall of western civilization.
I personally think the whole DST is crap. Who cares if it is light or dark out? I go home in the dark every day. Sun doesn't get it my eyes while I drive. It's nice. This is just another example of tunnel vision in government. "Let's save 100,000 barrels of oil a day by changing what time it is." The side effect being chaos in the streets as Windows blue screens. The alternative being not using oil any more and waving goodbye to the Alaska pipeline. Of course why would Chevron and Exxon want to start producing hydrogen when they have drilling for oil down to a science.
Greenwich: "If we make this information public, Saddam might bomb our latte shops."
Court: "Saddam is in jail."
Greenwich: "We meant Iran. There is great personal risk to our over-priced coffee industry."
Court: "I think you can survive."
Greenwich: "What about trade secrets. A map of our town is a trade secret."
Court: "You are aware that they are available at the corner gas station for a dollar fifty, right?"
Greenwich: "Not the electronic kind."
Court: "...which is free at Mapquest."
Greenwich: "You are abusing your authority!"
Court: "Get out before I have you shot."
Greenwich: "The next time you are drinking an double express mocha and a AGM-154 JSOW lands on you, just remember, we told you so."
Court: "Next case!"
Without the FCC, there would be no standards of television. For example...
There would just be a bunch of squabbling, propriitary (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) standards out there (Standard gauge and narrow gauge) that are just about the same damn thing, but don't really work (Unix and Windows) together.
So give those hard working federal employees a break...
Any alteration of the writing on the document would, in theory constitute a "new" message.
I was thinking more along the lines of them contacting the US Treasury department. They are pretty much experts at making paper "unique and identifiable". Something as simple as black fibers embedded in the paper making a barcode. In this case, "not one character" is added as it is already there.
Most American Indian tribes live on reservations and run casions far from there homeland.
Most Aborigines are only in comparitively recent times getting some rights back.
And the South American rain forests are being burned to the waterline.
Just because their homeland is part of another country doesn't mean they haven't been displaced.
But this discussion is about something completely else.
Whether it can be disabled or not isn't the issue. The fact that it is unused and can't be removed it the issue. I have a hardware based firewall that works much better than any security Microsoft has ever provided. They should leave it to the professionals.
The Security Center is exactly an example of how XP "knows better than you" and you should just except the defaults. It can't be REMOVED, only disabled. And the disabling only remains disabled under certain circumstance.
If I get a crash, or a security breech or have trouble with a virus scanner, how do I know that Security Center isn't the problem? I don't, because it is there and it is in the way. McAfee even had to come out with a workaround for SP2 when it was released.
XP is likely the last Windows product I will ever use at home. Linux or Apple will be next up.
It seems to me this is exactly what Microsoft has just paid almost a billion dollars about. They add software (media player) that can't be removed (IE), call it an OS feature. I guess if they add Office in, thats a feature too?
I used Windows 2000 for years. It was a vast improvement over Windows 95/98. Then again, chalk on the sidewalk is an improvment over Windows 95/98. And, while Windows 2000 isn't quite as stable as chalk on cement, it also doesn't wash away in the rain. Probably an artifact from having been developed in the Seattle area.
Of recent, I have been using XP Pro. If you immediately change the Romper Room interface back to "Classic", it is an improvement over 2000. The problem comes in when you update to SP2. The Windows Security... and I type those words realizing they are as compatible as two dogs with their tails tied together...Center is the worst piece of garbage to spew forth from Redmond since Steve Ballmer's last speech. It can't be removed or disabled, only the individual features can be disabled. And if you remove a replacement feature (McAfee Antivirus for example) it reenabled the Microsoft feature...and I trust Microsoft to protect my system about as far as I can throw Bill Gates. I don't know how far that is, but I am willing to spend the afternoon finding out.
XP, like most of the current software from Microsoft also tries too hard. It thinks for you and you are just suppose to sit there and except its defaults (faults?). "My Documents" for example. I don't want to use that name. Changing it isn't so easy, but it can be done.
I would still go from 2000 to XP, but I might not install SP2 so quickly again.
PS: If you want IE7, which will no doubt be the greatest browser ever produced by a Redmond based company, it will not be available on 2000.
Sprint planned on bring single service phone, internet and pretty much any media you want over ATM to the house with their ION product. They where about 5 years ahead of their time and the project fell apart. It was a cool demo though.
A while back (pre-2000) I worked at a company that had 20+ Frame Relay lines (56K to T1) through Sprint. The contract we had with them was that they owned the line all the way to the jack on our DSU/CSU. Even if the building wiring had a problem, it was THEIR problem. I only had to call the support centre. They handled the phone comapny (BellSouth, SBC, Sprint Local, etc). I usually got a very good response time.
The downfall was that there was no Internet connection from the same line. But the up side of that was there was no need to worry about getting hacked from every monkey on the net. I think that has changed. They might have a gateway service.
That is the question. The answer is keep it, for a while.
Email records can be subpoenaed just like anything else. If it benefits your case, it would be nice to have, if it hurts our case, it would not be so nice to have.
When I write computer use policies, I recommend keeping it for 1 to 2 years. Depending on the type of business that might get extended out much longer. A start-up company might want to keep it 10 or more years to cover any possible arguments with their VCs over who owns the IP.
So why not keep it forever? Unless you want to have the lady sueing you for sexual harassment making your companies email part of the public record, you might want to set some limits.
The key is to document, in writing, what that limit should be. For example, maybe put it in your companies Computer Use policy. You have one...right?
1) Why can't you get software out the door that doesn't contain security flaws that you will be spending the next 6 years trying to fix, and still not get it right?
2) Word association: Microsoft -> buffer overflow.
3) Do you understand the concept of "Deny All Except" or has it ever been mentioned to you?
4) Do the 1 million monkeys Douglas Adams referred to work in Redmond?
5) Why is Bill Gates such an ass?
6) Who will protect us from Microsoft?
Ok. So it was more than one question. But one wasn't technically a question.
Aren't Star Wars fans the pencil necks, wearing the fake pointy ears and working the McDonald's drive-thru?
Somehow I think the world economy will survive their absense for a day or two...or forever.
The only people on the face of this earth, or possibly any other earth, that might think there is any sort of implied social contract between ad viewers and the grinning marketing idiots, pushing their dreck, is the grinning marketing idiots.
The advertisers pay the information brokers to "sponsor" the information. In return, the information broker includes information about the sponsor with the message. In the last few years, the sponsor's message has begun drowned out the original information. What started out as a little tag in the corner of the screen during the show, has grown to cover the bottom third of the screen with animations and advertising from sponsors. When is the last time you watch a 30 minute show commercial TV that didn't break for commercials every five minutes, so they could inform you they could fix your runny nose, you need a new car and Cindy Crawford looks better than you in tight jeans. The more blatant and intrusive the advertising, the more likely I am to take action against it. I have mail rules, firewall policies and a DNS configuration specifically setup to reject this type of intrusion. For my television viewing, I have a 30 second skip button and fast forward. For my radio pleasure, I have K-MYCDPlayer. Maybe some day I'll by an iPod (see an unobtrusive product plug).
If the owners and operators of these web sites, television and radio stations don't like it, tough. Nobody can force me to watch advertising content. I did not agree to any such contract. I reject entirely the concept and if required willingly pay for advertising free access. I watch very little commercial television for this exact reason.
Information is not free, like everything in this planet, and possibly others, there is a cost. It is a case of supply and demand. The only question is who will pay the cost. For my part, I will not pay the cost, if it is having to be overrun my loud Shockwave animations, tampon ads and pop-ups that bury the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny thing about land. It slides, it shakes, it sinks. It even burns when there are combustibles on it. Perhaps the whole "it is a swamp" thing should have been the first clue.
Some in the house and senate have voiced the politically incorrect position of "maybe it was a little dumb to build below sea level, right next to the sea."
I happen to agree. Move New Orleans to higher ground. Let the ocean have the original site. Spending billions on ANY plan is a waste of my tax dollars.
I live on the side of the fault that slides into the ocean when the big one hits California. I don't expect the US government to spend billions to reattach it. But, I would expect them to save me a spot on the new beach front property to replace my previous submarine property.
They built a city below sea level, in a swamp. A hurrican came, it blew away, burnt down and sunk into the swamp. What did they expect?
I would see England as having a more progressive, better funded police force. I would see China as a less progressive and under funded police force. As demonstrated by the need to block all of China's IP numbers as hackers run rampant in the streets there.(I would link to the recent Slash Dot story on the subject, but I'm not interested in learning how at the moment...how unprogressive of me)
I would see a country, or police force that believed a crime that is wholly on a computer as being unimportant as being, not only not progressive, but, in fact backwards and incompetent.
While the US might not know what to do with all their tax dollars, as evidenced by the fact are not sinking billions into hydrogen fuel research, and instead are subsidizing farmers to not grow crops, there is no country with more tax dollars to spend. One would think some of that could go into some computer training courses for Bob the police sargent.
Yes, it is.
They Write the Right Stuff
Perhaps we should make all guns the same calibur. All cars the same weight, size and color and all criminals the guilty of the same crime? Would that make it easy enough for them?
It would be called an "investigation" for a reason. And not just because it fit in well with the show title CSI: Miami.
In the US, there is an appaling lack of technical expertise in local police departments. Frequently extending to state and federal departments also.
I can only imagine what it is like in a less well funded or less progressive country.
Computer geeks could probably make a small mint on contracting with police departments.
You are getting mired in the real. This book is clearly intended to be a surreal examination of the philosophy of time.
Besides, TCP/123 is assigned to NTP and anybody who wants to is more than welcome to use it.
So free your mind...become one with the book to attain a higher level of NTP protocol.
Perhaps some sort of sortware update would be in order.
Maybe if we had some kind of global network that manufacturers could send updates directly to end users, it would even speed things up. Arizona might be a problem though. They currently maintain their own timezone.
I could certainly see where changing a 10 to an 11 in Windows code could bring about the downfall of western civilization.
I personally think the whole DST is crap. Who cares if it is light or dark out? I go home in the dark every day. Sun doesn't get it my eyes while I drive. It's nice. This is just another example of tunnel vision in government. "Let's save 100,000 barrels of oil a day by changing what time it is." The side effect being chaos in the streets as Windows blue screens. The alternative being not using oil any more and waving goodbye to the Alaska pipeline. Of course why would Chevron and Exxon want to start producing hydrogen when they have drilling for oil down to a science.
I am firmly in favor of equal rights. We should not discriminate due to race, gender or sexual preference. You should be more open minded.
I also believe in our right to watch it on film.
Maybe with that blonde Cylon chick...yeah...
Greenwich: "If we make this information public, Saddam might bomb our latte shops."
Court: "Saddam is in jail."
Greenwich: "We meant Iran. There is great personal risk to our over-priced coffee industry."
Court: "I think you can survive."
Greenwich: "What about trade secrets. A map of our town is a trade secret."
Court: "You are aware that they are available at the corner gas station for a dollar fifty, right?"
Greenwich: "Not the electronic kind."
Court: "...which is free at Mapquest."
Greenwich: "You are abusing your authority!"
Court: "Get out before I have you shot."
Greenwich: "The next time you are drinking an double express mocha and a AGM-154 JSOW lands on you, just remember, we told you so."
Court: "Next case!"
Maybe they should get off their, beer drinking, television watching, welfare check cashing asses and get a job?
Without the FCC, there would be no standards of television. For example...
There would just be a bunch of squabbling, propriitary (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) standards out there (Standard gauge and narrow gauge) that are just about the same damn thing, but don't really work (Unix and Windows) together.
So give those hard working federal employees a break...
Scripture Manifest Destiny?
But the threads where their first. They would be embedded in the parchment that the torah is written on.
I didn't invent dogma, I only circumnavigated it.
Any alteration of the writing on the document would, in theory constitute a "new" message.
I was thinking more along the lines of them contacting the US Treasury department. They are pretty much experts at making paper "unique and identifiable". Something as simple as black fibers embedded in the paper making a barcode. In this case, "not one character" is added as it is already there.
Most American Indian tribes live on reservations and run casions far from there homeland.
Most Aborigines are only in comparitively recent times getting some rights back.
And the South American rain forests are being burned to the waterline.
Just because their homeland is part of another country doesn't mean they haven't been displaced.
But this discussion is about something completely else.
Every American Indian tribe ever.
The Australian Aborigines.
Dozens of tribes in the South American rain forests.
Braille MD5 sums. No doubt this idea was the Holy Grail of cryptography.
But, a character is a character, whether it is holes punched in paper or pen and ink. I think this is cheating.
Or perhaps this is just religious dogma getting in the way of the greatest idea in secruity codes since Leonidas scrapped off the wax.
Whether it can be disabled or not isn't the issue. The fact that it is unused and can't be removed it the issue. I have a hardware based firewall that works much better than any security Microsoft has ever provided. They should leave it to the professionals.
The Security Center is exactly an example of how XP "knows better than you" and you should just except the defaults. It can't be REMOVED, only disabled. And the disabling only remains disabled under certain circumstance.
If I get a crash, or a security breech or have trouble with a virus scanner, how do I know that Security Center isn't the problem? I don't, because it is there and it is in the way. McAfee even had to come out with a workaround for SP2 when it was released.
XP is likely the last Windows product I will ever use at home. Linux or Apple will be next up.
It seems to me this is exactly what Microsoft has just paid almost a billion dollars about. They add software (media player) that can't be removed (IE), call it an OS feature. I guess if they add Office in, thats a feature too?
I used Windows 2000 for years. It was a vast improvement over Windows 95/98. Then again, chalk on the sidewalk is an improvment over Windows 95/98. And, while Windows 2000 isn't quite as stable as chalk on cement, it also doesn't wash away in the rain. Probably an artifact from having been developed in the Seattle area.
...Center is the worst piece of garbage to spew forth from Redmond since Steve Ballmer's last speech. It can't be removed or disabled, only the individual features can be disabled. And if you remove a replacement feature (McAfee Antivirus for example) it reenabled the Microsoft feature...and I trust Microsoft to protect my system about as far as I can throw Bill Gates. I don't know how far that is, but I am willing to spend the afternoon finding out.
Of recent, I have been using XP Pro. If you immediately change the Romper Room interface back to "Classic", it is an improvement over 2000. The problem comes in when you update to SP2. The Windows Security... and I type those words realizing they are as compatible as two dogs with their tails tied together
XP, like most of the current software from Microsoft also tries too hard. It thinks for you and you are just suppose to sit there and except its defaults (faults?). "My Documents" for example. I don't want to use that name. Changing it isn't so easy, but it can be done.
I would still go from 2000 to XP, but I might not install SP2 so quickly again.
PS: If you want IE7, which will no doubt be the greatest browser ever produced by a Redmond based company, it will not be available on 2000.
Sprint planned on bring single service phone, internet and pretty much any media you want over ATM to the house with their ION product. They where about 5 years ahead of their time and the project fell apart. It was a cool demo though.
A while back (pre-2000) I worked at a company that had 20+ Frame Relay lines (56K to T1) through Sprint. The contract we had with them was that they owned the line all the way to the jack on our DSU/CSU. Even if the building wiring had a problem, it was THEIR problem. I only had to call the support centre. They handled the phone comapny (BellSouth, SBC, Sprint Local, etc). I usually got a very good response time.
s printLinkFrameRelay.jsp
http://www.sprint.com/business/products/products/
The downfall was that there was no Internet connection from the same line. But the up side of that was there was no need to worry about getting hacked from every monkey on the net. I think that has changed. They might have a gateway service.
That is the question. The answer is keep it, for a while.
Email records can be subpoenaed just like anything else. If it benefits your case, it would be nice to have, if it hurts our case, it would not be so nice to have.
When I write computer use policies, I recommend keeping it for 1 to 2 years. Depending on the type of business that might get extended out much longer. A start-up company might want to keep it 10 or more years to cover any possible arguments with their VCs over who owns the IP.
So why not keep it forever? Unless you want to have the lady sueing you for sexual harassment making your companies email part of the public record, you might want to set some limits.
The key is to document, in writing, what that limit should be. For example, maybe put it in your companies Computer Use policy. You have one...right?
1) Why can't you get software out the door that doesn't contain security flaws that you will be spending the next 6 years trying to fix, and still not get it right?
2) Word association: Microsoft -> buffer overflow.
3) Do you understand the concept of "Deny All Except" or has it ever been mentioned to you?
4) Do the 1 million monkeys Douglas Adams referred to work in Redmond?
5) Why is Bill Gates such an ass?
6) Who will protect us from Microsoft?
Ok. So it was more than one question. But one wasn't technically a question.
Aren't Star Wars fans the pencil necks, wearing the fake pointy ears and working the McDonald's drive-thru? Somehow I think the world economy will survive their absense for a day or two...or forever.
The only people on the face of this earth, or possibly any other earth, that might think there is any sort of implied social contract between ad viewers and the grinning marketing idiots, pushing their dreck, is the grinning marketing idiots.
The advertisers pay the information brokers to "sponsor" the information. In return, the information broker includes information about the sponsor with the message. In the last few years, the sponsor's message has begun drowned out the original information. What started out as a little tag in the corner of the screen during the show, has grown to cover the bottom third of the screen with animations and advertising from sponsors. When is the last time you watch a 30 minute show commercial TV that didn't break for commercials every five minutes, so they could inform you they could fix your runny nose, you need a new car and Cindy Crawford looks better than you in tight jeans. The more blatant and intrusive the advertising, the more likely I am to take action against it. I have mail rules, firewall policies and a DNS configuration specifically setup to reject this type of intrusion. For my television viewing, I have a 30 second skip button and fast forward. For my radio pleasure, I have K-MYCDPlayer. Maybe some day I'll by an iPod (see an unobtrusive product plug).
If the owners and operators of these web sites, television and radio stations don't like it, tough. Nobody can force me to watch advertising content. I did not agree to any such contract. I reject entirely the concept and if required willingly pay for advertising free access. I watch very little commercial television for this exact reason.
Information is not free, like everything in this planet, and possibly others, there is a cost. It is a case of supply and demand. The only question is who will pay the cost. For my part, I will not pay the cost, if it is having to be overrun my loud Shockwave animations, tampon ads and pop-ups that bury the desktop.