Agreed... Hopefully this will stay away from a Linux/Windows flame war, nothing annoys me more.
The reason we are giving a serious look at BitLocker is for the simple fact that it's integrated. That's just how it is. Keep in mind, that we haven't tested BitLocker 1-bit yet. We're waiting for the final release of Vista before we take our first look at it. We're not one of the firms that will judge a final product based on its Betas/RCs.
If it turns out that Bitlocker doesn't meet our expectations or the security reviews are poor, then we will certainly look at other solutions. The company we used in the past was 'PC Guardian' ( I think the link is http://www.guardianedge.com/products/Encryption_Pl us/Hard_Disk.html).... so, they will probably be the 2nd piece of software we evaluate (previous relationship and all that).
I've never seen TrueCrypt, but I will take a look at that as well. Not because of the Windows & Linux support, but more because it may simply support our needs better. Although we have Linux on some backend servers, there's no chance that we would ever have it on workstation. The majority of the packages we use don't have linux ports... besides, it's hard enough teaching some of these accountants how to set their screen saver... I don't think they would take to linux very well, heh.
How about the Encrypting File System that's already available in Windows XP Pro? Just wondering how the BitLocker is something worth eagery awaiting...
To my knowledge, EFS doesn't allow you to encrypt the entire OS partition. We'd want the entire drive to be encrypted and I believe this is something allowed with BitLocker.
What? Sorry if that's the impression you got, I must have mis-typed. We aren't trying to keep auditors out of the files, we are trying to keep thieves out of the files. We've had laptops stolen while our auditors were out in the field before. The last thing we want is for our client's data to find its way into the wild. If we were working on your tax return, wouldn't you prefer that *if* it was copied to a laptop HD, that the laptop HD be encrypted? Protecting information if very important to us.
Encryption wouldn't have helped cover up Enron. Even if your drives were 100% encrypted, you still have paper copied the Feds could go after. Even if you shred all your paper (which would look very fishy, even in a 'paperless office'), you still have backup tapes. And if every single one of your backup tapes were encrypted AND you just happen to have 'forgot' the password to the tapes as well... well, I think the judge will have you for obstruction at that point.
Trust me.. accountants aren't the most tech savvy individuals. They just do their job and get the hell outta here. Enron and AA had some bad people at the top. A few bad apples which hurt a lot of very good people. They may have been very good at fudging some numbers, but when it comes to "tech savvy'ness".... well, there's a reason that in all the scandle movies.. the only things accounts know how to do is shred paper.
Interesting... You don't want it in your IT Dept, yet we are eagerly awaiting it in our IT Dept. We're not going to go with the Seagate solution, however we are eagerly awaiting the release of Vista so we can take advantage of the BitLocker Encryption. I work for a CPA firm; privacy is pretty important.... especially when you have auditors in the field and the occasional laptop getting stolen. The slight slowness in full harddrive encryption is well worth the price. 99.9% of the users will never notice it.... Excel/Word isn't exactly a HD intensive application.
And yes... in the past (5 years ago), we did full HD encryption and it wasn't bad at all (slowness wise). The only issues came into play if you wanted to remove the encyption, or if the drive started to fail and you wanted to boot off a boot disk to grab your data (it was possible, but cumbersome). Hopefully Vista's solution will be more robust. If the trials work out as we hope, full encryption firm wide will be the next step (possibly within 6 to 8 months).
Don't get carried away. I think I read here last week that MS aren't going to allow Vista to run inside a virtual machine - am I correct? And there's Vista messing up the boot sector too. It looks like this is not a two-way street.
I think you are recalling the licensing story that was posted on slashdot. Vista should run just fine in a VM. We are already running the RC beta in a VM and it works great.
An MSI would be nice for deployment in large network, yes. However, deploying firefox for us on our large network would be a piece of cake when bundled with the scripting application we use (WinBatch). Winbatch makes deploying apps like FireFox a piece of cake.
I would love to see FF start supporting group policies. When the day comes that FF supports MSI deployment and Group Policies, that will be the day (for me) when FF is ready to be taken seriously for corporate deployment.
I long for the day when FF steps up to the plate are makes itself more attactive to the corporate world. I'm not talking about just basic FF either. For me, basic FF sucks. FF only begins to shine after you add a few extentions to is. Nothing would make me happier than if a mandate came out that all FF extentions had to support MSI deployement and GP integration as well.
It has been a very long time since I've ever heard of a virus on a PC. My view of a virus is an application that actually modifies another application. It injects its own code into the EXE (a la a parasite), and that is how it spreads. An AV software package would 'clean' the virus from the file.
This doesn't happen anymore. Nowadays, 'virus' are just rouge scripts that run and AV software simply deletes the script. Most the 'viruses' we see at work are started by someone double-clicking a bad EXE. It's pretty much impossible for an OS to be written to stop user from clicking an EXE. For this reason, AV software will always be needed regardless of how well Windows is written. You will need to software to protect the user from themselves. This isn't much of an issue in Linux because few people care enough to write a malware script to affect such a small percentage of the market. Also, the average linux user is more savvy than the average windows user. Linux poeple are less likely to click on random files someone may email them.
Where MS does fall short is exploits within their apps (IE: Internet Explorer). In the testing at my firm, we were able to avoid most/all exploits by not running as a local admin. Not running as a local admin avoids so many problems for us. It does takes some permissions tweaking in order to make all apps work tho (IE: relaxing security on some reg keys or file/folders). We have yet to run across any application that we couldn't get to run as under a local user account (note: not power user.. but 'user'). At my firm, we run approximately 250 different software packages (I work for a CPA firm). It's a shame more programs don't relax the needed keys/file/folders upon install so that they are more easily ran under 'user' account.
Unfortunatly, running as a local user only 'avoids' problems.. it doesn't solve them. As time goes on, MS will need to close the holes. I trust they will in time. In the mean time, I fully support having an integrated virus/firewall/spyware filter out of the box. It not only protects buggy MS apps.. but it also protects apps from other companies. However.. I also want the option to disable these once I install my own more 'professional' virus/firewall/spyware filters... Bring on the bloat!
and if Microsoft didn't warn you people would complaine about that.
"Microsoft didn't tell me my Antivirus protection had expired, just because I had a power point slide open!"
There is no way to make everyone happy, so you provide the best protection you can and try to make the least number of people pissed. To me, a better question would be "why did you let your antivirus expire?".
Exactly! People bitch if MS doesn't pop up a notification and people will bitch if MS does pop up a notification. MS tries to make everyone happy by making everything customizable (IE: local/group policies for everything under the sun it seems)..... however, the extra code to accomodate the configurable options adds to bloat. So people will bitch about the bloat and the higher machine requirements.
You will never be able to make everyone happy. Particularly certain linux crowds that will complain over any little thing MS does.
It's ironic that a major source of the bloat in the MS code can be traced back to end users whining about wanting (or nor wanting) certain options. Of course, if MS didn't listen and just said 'Tough.. your getting it the way we want you to have it so that we can keep the code base small'... people would whine about the lack of options.
It just like politics... Dems/Reps will complain all day about 4.7% of the public being unemployeed, while ignoring the 95.3% of the people that are employeed.
I wonder if you get extra points for having your car honk its horn at other drivers and extend it's little robotic middle finger at anyone that gets in its way?
"The FAA's successful and impressive migration truly exemplifies the value, performance and security of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,"
All the stories talks about is how they came in under budget. Another reason for saving 15 million could be that someone simply budgeted too much money. Much like when your wife spends $200 on a pocket book that normally cost $250, and then she tells you that she saved $50!.
D*mn women.. oh wait.. what was I talking about again?
Citrix pretty much runs on top of Terminal Services nowadays. So yes, all the stuff you mentioned is possible with TS. The fancy bells and whistles are not possible yet tho (IE: Application sharing instead of desktop sharing, Failover/Clustering of apps, etc). At our office, we run Citrix for stuff hosted for external clients, but run TS for internal stuff (primarily for failover). It works well as long as you accespt the shortcommings a pure TS environment. We'd all kill for Citrix all over, but it's just not cost effective right now. I think I heard something at one time about the next version of TS having some time of App level publishing built it, but I can't truly recall.
My home is automated.... I call it having a wife. Everyday when I come home from work, my home automation system has already cleaned the house and cooked me dinner. Granted, the upkeep on such a system is quite expensive sometimes, but it's worth it for the most part.
I'm already planning on the Mark 2 home automation system referred to as 'children' in a couple of years. This system takes a bit longer to train, but runs on peanuts.. or well.. maybe jelly beans.
From the article: The system can simultaneously engage several threats, arriving from different directions...
Let's hope the bad guys don't shoot two RPG's from the same direction at the same time!
For some reason, I'm getting this image in my head of 2 of our tanks side-by-side, automatically shooting each other with their 'force field' because they are in an infinite loop of sorts. Hmmm... automated friendly fire... that's new!
I think they're making way more money than they need to. Just like gas companies. Being successful doesn't make it right.
Comments like yours are the ones that the 'other side' love. Someone who doesn't have the slightest grasp as to what is going on and makes comments that lead everyone else to believe that you don't have a grasp on capitalism. The simple fact that a company makes a lot of money doesn't make them bad or mean that restrictions should be placed on them. The company makes what the market permits, supply and demand. It's not up to you to say 'they are making too much money', there's no such thing as too much money (legally).
You're probably one of those people that think the rich should be taxed to death for the simple fact that they have more money. "You make 1 million dollars a year.. I think we should tax you to death so you only take on 50k a year!... that is fair in my warped concept of fair".
* Now, to be fair... you may very well have grasp on the facts, in fact I hope you do. Your comment alone is what I find rediculous, however you'll prolly get mod'd up as 'insightful' based on this crowd.
This is making news because this is Slashdot. When it comes to bashing MS, facts are secondary... spin is primary. It's sad but true. If MS delays a product, everyone here will complain because it's taking so long for the updates. If MS releases frequent updates to products (new version), then people complain that MS is trying to constantly milk people out of their money by forcing them to buy new version of the SW. If MS releases security patches frequently, then people scream about how insecure MS is. If MS releases security updates on a bi-monthly process, people scream about how MS is slow to release (drags their feet on) their security updates. It goes on and on.
I deal with people like this everyday. Heck, we have an IT girl at here that now dual boots her laptop to linux at home and uses 'open vpn' to connected to our network and firefox to browse our intranet just so 'she doesn't have to use MS'. I just let her drink her koolaid and and go about my day.
I find it so ironic that people on this site will b*tch and moan about how 'MS Sucks!' and claim they refuse to run anything Microsoft, and then in the same breath will complain that Office/Windows/etc happens to be delayed.
A product has been delayed... BIG DEAL! The world will not end. As someone in IT, I see this as a good thing. To me, this means that if all goes as planned, every PC in my firm will be WinXP once the next batch of laptops gets retired. It's been a long time since that has happened. It's nice to have every laptop/desktop running the same OS. Also, the money that would have been associated with a new OS entering (testing, new images, trainging, etc) the mix and now be reallocated to other projects or hardware (New Cisco Concentrator, Compaq MSA, EMC upgrade, automation software, etc). Usually, when new OS's first come out... service request spike.. thankfully we won't have that problem this year.
Now, I realize the article only talked about the consumer version being delayed. I guess you could say that I'm also hoping that all versions are delayed. Even tho my laptop is set to be retired/replaced in 60 days.. I would much prefer to get WinXp again instead of having to go thru the hassles that come with a a new OS entering the market. Please please please.. be delayed.
Sadly, the BOMARCs were eventually phased out because they were expensive and completely
ineffective. The Arrow could have been re-purposed, or even re-designed, but even this was not to be -- for reasons never explained, all of the plans for the Arrow were destroyed, alone with all of the working prototypes. The Canadian Government poured all of that money into the Arrow, and didn't even bother to store the blueprints for future use or defense research.
*If* my memory is correct, I saw a story about he Arrow a while back on TV (history channel maybe?). Initially, the Canadian gov't canceled the Arrow and claimed it was because they wanted to divert money to the local farmers (or some BS story like that). The gov't later said that the true reason the Arrow was cancel was because their was a suspected KBG spy in the program and the plans were being copied. Therefore, everything was destroyed. And yes, the Arrow was supposed to be truely remarkable. It set Canada back a great deal having to play damage control.
What to have some fun? Count how many post show up that try to make excuses for the Mac. Man, if this were a windows box, I assure you that 99% of the the post would be slamming MS w/o a second thought.
Although people want to point out that they shouldn't have allowed people to have a SSH connection, you need to keep in mind that an SSH connection was allowed because they thought the config was secure enough to handle it.
I do give them kodos for allowing the hack contest to take place. The best way to test your software is to allow others to try and break it. Hopefully they will fix the exploit and run the contest again.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed... Hopefully this will stay away from a Linux/Windows flame war, nothing annoys me more.
l us/Hard_Disk.html).... so, they will probably be the 2nd piece of software we evaluate (previous relationship and all that).
The reason we are giving a serious look at BitLocker is for the simple fact that it's integrated. That's just how it is. Keep in mind, that we haven't tested BitLocker 1-bit yet. We're waiting for the final release of Vista before we take our first look at it. We're not one of the firms that will judge a final product based on its Betas/RCs.
If it turns out that Bitlocker doesn't meet our expectations or the security reviews are poor, then we will certainly look at other solutions. The company we used in the past was 'PC Guardian' ( I think the link is http://www.guardianedge.com/products/Encryption_P
I've never seen TrueCrypt, but I will take a look at that as well. Not because of the Windows & Linux support, but more because it may simply support our needs better. Although we have Linux on some backend servers, there's no chance that we would ever have it on workstation. The majority of the packages we use don't have linux ports... besides, it's hard enough teaching some of these accountants how to set their screen saver... I don't think they would take to linux very well, heh.
How about the Encrypting File System that's already available in Windows XP Pro? Just wondering how the BitLocker is something worth eagery awaiting...
To my knowledge, EFS doesn't allow you to encrypt the entire OS partition. We'd want the entire drive to be encrypted and I believe this is something allowed with BitLocker.
So you want to keep auditors out of your files.
What? Sorry if that's the impression you got, I must have mis-typed. We aren't trying to keep auditors out of the files, we are trying to keep thieves out of the files. We've had laptops stolen while our auditors were out in the field before. The last thing we want is for our client's data to find its way into the wild. If we were working on your tax return, wouldn't you prefer that *if* it was copied to a laptop HD, that the laptop HD be encrypted? Protecting information if very important to us.
Encryption wouldn't have helped cover up Enron. Even if your drives were 100% encrypted, you still have paper copied the Feds could go after. Even if you shred all your paper (which would look very fishy, even in a 'paperless office'), you still have backup tapes. And if every single one of your backup tapes were encrypted AND you just happen to have 'forgot' the password to the tapes as well... well, I think the judge will have you for obstruction at that point.
Trust me.. accountants aren't the most tech savvy individuals. They just do their job and get the hell outta here. Enron and AA had some bad people at the top. A few bad apples which hurt a lot of very good people. They may have been very good at fudging some numbers, but when it comes to "tech savvy'ness".... well, there's a reason that in all the scandle movies.. the only things accounts know how to do is shred paper.
Interesting... You don't want it in your IT Dept, yet we are eagerly awaiting it in our IT Dept. We're not going to go with the Seagate solution, however we are eagerly awaiting the release of Vista so we can take advantage of the BitLocker Encryption. I work for a CPA firm; privacy is pretty important.... especially when you have auditors in the field and the occasional laptop getting stolen. The slight slowness in full harddrive encryption is well worth the price. 99.9% of the users will never notice it.... Excel/Word isn't exactly a HD intensive application. And yes... in the past (5 years ago), we did full HD encryption and it wasn't bad at all (slowness wise). The only issues came into play if you wanted to remove the encyption, or if the drive started to fail and you wanted to boot off a boot disk to grab your data (it was possible, but cumbersome). Hopefully Vista's solution will be more robust. If the trials work out as we hope, full encryption firm wide will be the next step (possibly within 6 to 8 months).
Without commercials, an hour long episode of Lost would actually have to be a full hour instead of the 30 minutes it seems to be.
Don't get carried away. I think I read here last week that MS aren't going to allow Vista to
run inside a virtual machine - am I correct? And there's Vista messing up the boot sector too. It
looks like this is not a two-way street.
I think you are recalling the licensing story that was posted on slashdot. Vista should run just
fine in a VM. We are already running the RC beta in a VM and it works great.
An MSI would be nice for deployment in large network, yes. However, deploying firefox for us
on our large network would be a piece of cake when bundled with the scripting application we
use (WinBatch). Winbatch makes deploying apps like FireFox a piece of cake.
I would love to see FF start supporting group policies. When the day comes that FF supports
MSI deployment and Group Policies, that will be the day (for me) when FF is ready to be taken
seriously for corporate deployment.
I long for the day when FF steps up to the plate are makes itself more attactive to the
corporate world. I'm not talking about just basic FF either. For me, basic FF sucks. FF only
begins to shine after you add a few extentions to is. Nothing would make me happier than if a
mandate came out that all FF extentions had to support MSI deployement and GP integration as
well.
It has been a very long time since I've ever heard of a virus on a PC. My view of a virus is an application that actually
modifies another application. It injects its own code into the EXE (a la a parasite), and that is how it spreads. An AV
software package would 'clean' the virus from the file.
This doesn't happen anymore. Nowadays, 'virus' are just rouge scripts that run and AV software simply deletes the script.
Most the 'viruses' we see at work are started by someone double-clicking a bad EXE. It's pretty much impossible for an OS to
be written to stop user from clicking an EXE. For this reason, AV software will always be needed regardless of how well
Windows is written. You will need to software to protect the user from themselves. This isn't much of an issue in Linux
because few people care enough to write a malware script to affect such a small percentage of the market. Also, the average
linux user is more savvy than the average windows user. Linux poeple are less likely to click on random files someone may
email them.
Where MS does fall short is exploits within their apps (IE: Internet Explorer). In the testing at my firm, we were able to
avoid most/all exploits by not running as a local admin. Not running as a local admin avoids so many problems for us. It
does takes some permissions tweaking in order to make all apps work tho (IE: relaxing security on some reg keys or
file/folders). We have yet to run across any application that we couldn't get to run as under a local user account (note:
not power user.. but 'user'). At my firm, we run approximately 250 different software packages (I work for a CPA firm). It's
a shame more programs don't relax the needed keys/file/folders upon install so that they are more easily ran under 'user'
account.
Unfortunatly, running as a local user only 'avoids' problems.. it doesn't solve them. As time goes on, MS will need to close
the holes. I trust they will in time. In the mean time, I fully support having an integrated virus/firewall/spyware filter
out of the box. It not only protects buggy MS apps.. but it also protects apps from other companies. However.. I also want
the option to disable these once I install my own more 'professional' virus/firewall/spyware filters... Bring on the bloat!
and if Microsoft didn't warn you people would complaine about that.
"Microsoft didn't tell me my Antivirus protection had expired, just because I had a power point slide open!"
There is no way to make everyone happy, so you provide the best protection you can and try to make the least number of people
pissed. To me, a better question would be "why did you let your antivirus expire?".
Exactly! People bitch if MS doesn't pop up a notification and people will bitch if MS does pop up a notification. MS tries
to make everyone happy by making everything customizable (IE: local/group policies for everything under the sun it seems).....
however, the extra code to accomodate the configurable options adds to bloat. So people will bitch about the bloat and the
higher machine requirements.
You will never be able to make everyone happy. Particularly certain linux crowds that will complain over any little thing MS
does.
It's ironic that a major source of the bloat in the MS code can be traced back to end users whining about wanting (or nor
wanting) certain options. Of course, if MS didn't listen and just said 'Tough.. your getting it the way we want you to have
it so that we can keep the code base small'... people would whine about the lack of options.
It just like politics... Dems/Reps will complain all day about 4.7% of the public being unemployeed, while ignoring the 95.3% of
the people that are employeed.
Will all virgins please raise their hands... http://lug.oregonstate.edu/gallery/firefox-crop-ci rcle/img_5374_1
I just asked my wife if she'd be interested in talking on the bone phone....
...she didn't find it nearly as funny as I did.
I wonder if you get extra points for having your car honk its horn at
other drivers and extend it's little robotic middle finger at anyone that
gets in its way?
"The FAA's successful and impressive migration truly exemplifies the value, performance and security
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,"
All the stories talks about is how they came in under budget. Another reason for saving 15 million
could be that someone simply budgeted too much money. Much like when your wife spends $200 on a pocket
book that normally cost $250, and then she tells you that she saved $50!.
D*mn women.. oh wait.. what was I talking about again?
I would think with unemployment sky rocketing in France, that many French towns world be accustomed to a
cashless society.
I was pretty upset over having to pay the state $13 this year, but I do believe that Symantec has it worse, heh.
Citrix pretty much runs on top of Terminal Services nowadays. So yes, all the stuff you mentioned is possible with TS. The fancy bells and whistles are not possible yet tho (IE: Application sharing instead of desktop sharing, Failover/Clustering of apps, etc). At our office, we run Citrix for stuff hosted for external clients, but run TS for internal stuff (primarily for failover). It works well as long as you accespt the shortcommings a pure TS environment. We'd all kill for Citrix all over, but it's just not cost effective right now. I think I heard something at one time about the next version of TS having some time of App level publishing built it, but I can't truly recall.
My home is automated.... I call it having a wife. Everyday when I come home from work, my home
automation system has already cleaned the house and cooked me dinner. Granted, the upkeep on such a
system is quite expensive sometimes, but it's worth it for the most part.
I'm already planning on the Mark 2 home automation system referred to as 'children' in a couple of
years. This system takes a bit longer to train, but runs on peanuts.. or well.. maybe jelly beans.
From the article: The system can simultaneously engage several threats,
arriving from different directions...
Let's hope the bad guys don't shoot two RPG's from the same direction at the
same time!
For some reason, I'm getting this image in my head of 2 of our tanks
side-by-side, automatically shooting each other with their 'force field'
because they are in an infinite loop of sorts. Hmmm... automated friendly
fire... that's new!
I think they're making way more money than they need to. Just like gas companies. Being successful
doesn't make it right.
Comments like yours are the ones that the 'other side' love. Someone who doesn't have the slightest
grasp as to what is going on and makes comments that lead everyone else to believe that you don't have
a grasp on capitalism. The simple fact that a company makes a lot of money doesn't make them bad or
mean that restrictions should be placed on them. The company makes what the market permits, supply
and demand. It's not up to you to say 'they are making too much money', there's no such thing as too
much money (legally).
You're probably one of those people that think the rich should be taxed to death for the simple fact
that they have more money. "You make 1 million dollars a year.. I think we should tax you to death so
you only take on 50k a year!... that is fair in my warped concept of fair".
* Now, to be fair... you may very well have grasp on the facts, in fact I hope you do. Your comment
alone is what I find rediculous, however you'll prolly get mod'd up as 'insightful' based on this
crowd.
Heh.. Asking Slashdot users what they think of IE is like asking the Chinese
government what they think of free speech.
Now why is this making news!!!??
This is making news because this is Slashdot. When it comes to bashing MS,
facts are secondary... spin is primary. It's sad but true. If MS delays a
product, everyone here will complain because it's taking so long for the
updates. If MS releases frequent updates to products (new version), then
people complain that MS is trying to constantly milk people out of their
money by forcing them to buy new version of the SW. If MS releases security
patches frequently, then people scream about how insecure MS is. If MS
releases security updates on a bi-monthly process, people scream about how
MS is slow to release (drags their feet on) their security updates. It goes
on and on.
I deal with people like this everyday. Heck, we have an IT girl at here
that now dual boots her laptop to linux at home and uses 'open vpn' to
connected to our network and firefox to browse our intranet just so 'she
doesn't have to use MS'. I just let her drink her koolaid and and go about
my day.
I find it so ironic that people on this site will b*tch and moan about how
'MS Sucks!' and claim they refuse to run anything Microsoft, and then in the
same breath will complain that Office/Windows/etc happens to be delayed.
A product has been delayed... BIG DEAL! The world will not end. As
someone in IT, I see this as a good thing. To me, this means that if all
goes as planned, every PC in my firm will be WinXP once the next batch of
laptops gets retired. It's been a long time since that has happened. It's
nice to have every laptop/desktop running the same OS. Also, the money that
would have been associated with a new OS entering (testing, new images,
trainging, etc) the mix and now be reallocated to other projects or hardware
(New Cisco Concentrator, Compaq MSA, EMC upgrade, automation software, etc).
Usually, when new OS's first come out... service request spike..
thankfully we won't have that problem this year.
Now, I realize the article only talked about the consumer version being
delayed. I guess you could say that I'm also hoping that all versions are
delayed. Even tho my laptop is set to be retired/replaced in 60 days.. I
would much prefer to get WinXp again instead of having to go thru the
hassles that come with a a new OS entering the market. Please please
please.. be delayed.
Anything worth doing can be done in 6 seconds! ;)
Sadly, the BOMARCs were eventually phased out because they were expensive and completely
ineffective. The Arrow could have been re-purposed, or even re-designed, but even this was not
to be -- for reasons never explained, all of the plans for the Arrow were destroyed, alone with
all of the working prototypes. The Canadian Government poured all of that money into the Arrow,
and didn't even bother to store the blueprints for future use or defense research.
*If* my memory is correct, I saw a story about he Arrow a while back on TV (history channel
maybe?). Initially, the Canadian gov't canceled the Arrow and claimed it was because they
wanted to divert money to the local farmers (or some BS story like that). The gov't later
said that the true reason the Arrow was cancel was because their was a suspected KBG spy in
the program and the plans were being copied. Therefore, everything was destroyed. And yes, the
Arrow was supposed to be truely remarkable. It set Canada back a great deal having to play
damage control.
What to have some fun? Count how many post show up that try to make excuses
for the Mac. Man, if this were a windows box, I assure you that 99% of the
the post would be slamming MS w/o a second thought.
Although people want to point out that they shouldn't have allowed people to
have a SSH connection, you need to keep in mind that an SSH connection was
allowed because they thought the config was secure enough to handle it.
I do give them kodos for allowing the hack contest to take place. The best
way to test your software is to allow others to try and break it. Hopefully
they will fix the exploit and run the contest again.
What I want to see introduced is a 'Commercial' flag. This was my PVR could
more effectively autoskip commericials!