Acquiring a drone-disrupting net is much easier than acquiring a drone-disrupting directional microwave weapon, BUT establishing plausible deniability and concealing responsibility for the drone's failure is much easier with the gun than with the net.
If, say, you say that Russia is an authoritarian regime, you don’t need evidence. If you say that the US is an authoritarian regime, you need plenty. Here, that is. In Russia it’s reversed.
I support Quickbooks as a consultant/sysadmin for SMBs.
I have felt your pain. Which is why I wanted to respond when I noticed this part...
And it's compounded by the fact Windows XP doesn't route data over the ethernet as a priority over WiFi connection.
Check out the first set of instructions in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894564 which should let you set a wired connection to a higher priority than a wireless.
I could write one of several variations on the theme of Google's "sheep's clothing" strategy, but seeing as how the bought-and-paid-for mods are already clicking away on a lot of these comments (-1 on my earlier post, based on...what exactly?), I don't know that it's worth my time.
You explained a lot about why Google should be perceived differently based on the fuzziness of "Don't Be Evil" but you can't disagree about it's corporate priority.
As a publicly traded company, Google has a fiduciary duty to maximize return on investment for the shareholders. If their actions -- no matter how altruistic they may appear on the surface -- do not/would not translate into shareholder profit, they won't be approved by the shot-callers, assuming the leadership is rational and proper. This is no different than any other public company. As a Google employee, I can see why you may want to believe Google is somehow different in this regard, but it's not.
If you truly want to work somewhere that does good for the public at their own expense, find a non-profit with a mission you support. And work unpaid overtime.
Our American leaders know we won't believe obvious fabrications like those goofy Russian yokels, so they temper the vote fraud just enough to fly under the radar. And thus they demonstrate how much more they respect the American people's intelligence than the Russian leaders respect their people's intelligence.
*whoosh* "But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do." You apparently missed that bit, where the point I make is precisely that such a position (one role must be superior/more valuable/better paid than the other) is silly.
ACs, either we are defining what falls within IT differently (I would say anything to do with operations, from the support desk on up to the enterprise architect), or your knowledge of the salary range within such positions is extremely limited. There are plenty of operations people making near or above six figures and then some, and plenty of programmers in the same markets who will never see that kind of money until the dollar devalues like the currency of a third world junta.
But it's *real* cute how I whipped you into such a frothy-mouthed frenzy with the mere suggestion that you can't perform under pressure.
I could just as easily say "if programmers could think on their feet and fix problems that cost the bottom line thousands of dollars per minute of downtime they would be IT guys." But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do.
In part, it's due to a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge necessary to do battle against would-be adversaries.
Based on my own experience, I would argue that there is a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge and desire to do battle against would-be adversaries. Whether it's a personal financial concern or a personal ethical concern, there are lots of great reasons for skilled and knowledgeable experts to seek employment elsewhere.
I once had the occasion to rent a car and drive it around on a fine Sunday afternoon. The afternoon was so fine, so inspiring to my pedal-mashing sensibilities, that on a whim I decided to take the car as close to airborne as I could over a rather steep hill.
I ended up catching a little too much air, and bottomed-out the car pretty hard. Upon landing with a loud crunchy thud, all the dash lights went out, the power steering died, and I had to wrestle the car off the road in quite a hurry.
Sitting there, miles from home, on the day of the week when it would be hardest to get a tow and make other transportation arrangements, and worried about what I had done to the car (I was sure it was really messed up based on the noise and the behavior), I was a bit panicked for a second there. After a moment's reflection, I decided "what the hell" and turned the key in the ignition to see what would or wouldn't happen.
And the damn thing started right up, with nary a complaint or anomaly. I deduced that the shock of bottoming-out must have crashed the computer and killed all the electronics, and the good old "reboot and see what happens" actually worked!
Why are you so angry about the point I made? I have interrupted nothing, and in the spirit of my own beliefs, I'll forgive you the ad hominem.
I happen to consider myself a believer, though I have major philosophical, moral, and ethical disagreements with the majority of human beings who identify with the same beliefs/Religion that I do.
That is why I take exception to the notion that a Religion can have an "attitude" -- because that perpetuates stereotypes that if person X identifies with Religion Y, then they believe Z. You say that we all ought to interpret this "shortcut" in one way, but I have observed many different interpretations in my own experience.
It is interesting to me that your comment history shows a pronounced frequency of Troll moderations, and yet you don't appear to be just "having a laugh" -- you sound genuinely unhappy. Do you want to take our discussion off the site? I feel compelled to offer my assistance in raising your spirits.
In a previous life I made my living working for a mortgage lender that did a high volume of VA and FHA loans. Though the end result of the loan origination process in the FHA/VA world is the same as that when dealing with a commercial bank (property owner gets check, loan applicant gets house and mortgage), the "how you get there" was completely different.
Perhaps the single biggest difference, at least in terms of impact on my job, was the trouble resolution process.
All the banks operated slick websites with functioning trouble-ticket systems, staffed call centers with actual human beings you could talk to about your issues, and generally made an acceptable effort to fix problems.
When you had a technical problem with FHA or VA, what could you do? You could email a generic mailbox with your question and hope for the best. That's it!
Once I managed to track down a real, somewhat technically-aware human being at the VA so I could inquire about a persistent, apparently unaddressed trouble we were having accessing a particular feature of the va.gov site. Her answer? "Yeah, that goes down all the time, just give it a few days and they'll get it fixed." This was accepted as normal there, and probably still is.
1) Copy desired formatted/linked/etc text to clipboard.
2) Windows key-R (opens Run box)
3) Ctrl-V (paste the text into the Run box)
4) Shift-Home (select the now-plaintext)
5) Ctrl-C (copy the now-plaintext)
6) Esc (close Run box)
I use this all the time when copying and pasting in Windows, and it works great for me.
I've no points so this will have to do. If you talk to almost anyone about commercials, they might admit to liking a few of the funny ones here or there, but by and large, I think you'd struggle to find a lot of people who want to watch commercials, who seek them out, and take measures to watch them when they would otherwise be interrupted. Basically nobody gives a shit either way about watching commercials.
I don't watch a lot of "live" TV these days, and as a result I really have no tolerance for commercials when I encounter them. So I mute them.
My "opt-in" approach is nothing novel -- on the slim chance that I want to hear whatever the un-programming is saying, I'll un-mute, but otherwise I assume that the sounds coming from commercials are at best disposable to me, and at worst, really fucking annoying.
I do this everywhere I can, and I've yet to meet a single person who wanted to hear commercials when I was muting them.
But really the whole mission statement of Adbusters is stupid. Removing all ads from the internet will destroy pretty much every service on the internet. Think youtube would be profitable without ads? How about any site you visit with alot of images. Bandwidth isn't free so sites make money from either ads, donations or memberships. Most sites with memberships remove the ads for you so this goal is STUPID. Just use Adblock if you hate them so much
...but here's the actual mission statement:
"We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency."
No amount of prefacing will ever deter all you whooshers -- and I can admit, "whoosh-spotting" entertains me as well. But in truth, I took this as an opportunity to reiterate the precise quotation that comprised the troll-fodder, and I feel I made my perception of the OP's trollery more than apparent (he was -1 Troll at the time of my post, though the subsequent Funny mod isn't undeserved either). The trolls who blend fact and fiction aren't usually worth responding to, but since the one in question was so perfectly opposed to the reality of the source, I feel no shame or regret in biting. The net result is that an exceptionally salient bit of TFA got a few more eyeballs.
Now I just have to worry if you've quasi-meta-trolled me. Oh the horror!
Avoid Microsoft products where possible. Computers using the Microsoft Windows platform are especially vulnerable as of this writing (although no operating system is immune to all potential attacks). Consider using a non-Microsoft operating system if possible. However, if you have to use Microsoft Windows and you are connecting to the Internet, your best bet is to minimize the number of Microsoft Internet applications you use â" for example, use Firefox as a browser or Thunderbird as a mail client. Microsoftâ(TM)s Internet Explorer and its email programs Outlook and Outlook Express are very difficult for even professionals to secure. Furthermore, adversaries tend to attack more popular platforms and applications.
Keep your software updated. Use the latest stable version of your operating system. As of this writing, Windows 95, 98, and ME are utterly obsolete. You should be using at least Windows Server 2003 for servers and Windows XP for clients, with all patches and service packs applied. For Macintosh computers, use OS X 10.4 or greater, with all patches applied. For Linux and Unix, get whatever version is the most recent stable release, and follow all updates. It is especially important not to let server software versions lag behind, since servers are always on and always connected.
Maintain your firewalls. Firewalls are software or hardware components that protect your computer or network from the Internet, blocking traffic based on network-related parameters like IP addresses and port numbers. Firewalls can protect against those who want to access your computer without permission. Configuring network firewalls is pretty tough for the layperson and beyond the scope of this guide, but you should learn how to use the personal firewall software thatâ(TM)s included in most recent operating systems.
For more detailed information about malware, check out the Malware article in the Defensive Technology section.
Except that breaks the ability to use chapter-like bookmark links from one PDF to another, which are frequently used in business contexts.
So another reminder: Lock your corporate user accounts down as far as you can, because they are going to need every stupid little feature in the world, even if it kills them (and you).
Based on the FoxIt and Sumatra support forums, it appears you're correct. Of course, a quick read of the FoxIt forum tells me it has major problems with creating freakishly large print jobs and taking its sweet ole time even when printing a few simple pages. So neither is ready for primetime business use, and I still have to decide which anvil I'm going to drop on my foot come Monday morning.
Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Bird. When a user notices the names, it's a great conversation starter - and takes their mind off the annoyance for what would otherwise be an awkward minute of angrily "watching the progress bar."
"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate." - Bertrand Russell
"Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place." - Robert A. Heinlein
Slashdot Mirror
Acquiring a drone-disrupting net is much easier than acquiring a drone-disrupting directional microwave weapon, BUT establishing plausible deniability and concealing responsibility for the drone's failure is much easier with the gun than with the net.
That leaves more evidence and is less fun than something like http://fear-of-lightning.wonde...
If, say, you say that Russia is an authoritarian regime, you don’t need evidence. If you say that the US is an authoritarian regime, you need plenty. Here, that is. In Russia it’s reversed.
I support Quickbooks as a consultant/sysadmin for SMBs.
I have felt your pain. Which is why I wanted to respond when I noticed this part...
And it's compounded by the fact Windows XP doesn't route data over the ethernet as a priority over WiFi connection.
Check out the first set of instructions in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894564 which should let you set a wired connection to a higher priority than a wireless.
I could write one of several variations on the theme of Google's "sheep's clothing" strategy, but seeing as how the bought-and-paid-for mods are already clicking away on a lot of these comments (-1 on my earlier post, based on...what exactly?), I don't know that it's worth my time.
You explained a lot about why Google should be perceived differently based on the fuzziness of "Don't Be Evil" but you can't disagree about it's corporate priority.
As a publicly traded company, Google has a fiduciary duty to maximize return on investment for the shareholders. If their actions -- no matter how altruistic they may appear on the surface -- do not/would not translate into shareholder profit, they won't be approved by the shot-callers, assuming the leadership is rational and proper. This is no different than any other public company. As a Google employee, I can see why you may want to believe Google is somehow different in this regard, but it's not.
If you truly want to work somewhere that does good for the public at their own expense, find a non-profit with a mission you support. And work unpaid overtime.
And that makes me proud to be an American.
Our American leaders know we won't believe obvious fabrications like those goofy Russian yokels, so they temper the vote fraud just enough to fly under the radar. And thus they demonstrate how much more they respect the American people's intelligence than the Russian leaders respect their people's intelligence.
Suck it, Russia! USA Number 1!
Great, so now we can expect a Spinning Wing of Death when things go awry?
*whoosh*
"But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do."
You apparently missed that bit, where the point I make is precisely that such a position (one role must be superior/more valuable/better paid than the other) is silly.
ACs, either we are defining what falls within IT differently (I would say anything to do with operations, from the support desk on up to the enterprise architect), or your knowledge of the salary range within such positions is extremely limited. There are plenty of operations people making near or above six figures and then some, and plenty of programmers in the same markets who will never see that kind of money until the dollar devalues like the currency of a third world junta. But it's *real* cute how I whipped you into such a frothy-mouthed frenzy with the mere suggestion that you can't perform under pressure.
I could just as easily say "if programmers could think on their feet and fix problems that cost the bottom line thousands of dollars per minute of downtime they would be IT guys." But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do.
In part, it's due to a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge necessary to do battle against would-be adversaries.
Based on my own experience, I would argue that there is a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge and desire to do battle against would-be adversaries. Whether it's a personal financial concern or a personal ethical concern, there are lots of great reasons for skilled and knowledgeable experts to seek employment elsewhere.
I once had the occasion to rent a car and drive it around on a fine Sunday afternoon. The afternoon was so fine, so inspiring to my pedal-mashing sensibilities, that on a whim I decided to take the car as close to airborne as I could over a rather steep hill.
I ended up catching a little too much air, and bottomed-out the car pretty hard. Upon landing with a loud crunchy thud, all the dash lights went out, the power steering died, and I had to wrestle the car off the road in quite a hurry.
Sitting there, miles from home, on the day of the week when it would be hardest to get a tow and make other transportation arrangements, and worried about what I had done to the car (I was sure it was really messed up based on the noise and the behavior), I was a bit panicked for a second there. After a moment's reflection, I decided "what the hell" and turned the key in the ignition to see what would or wouldn't happen.
And the damn thing started right up, with nary a complaint or anomaly. I deduced that the shock of bottoming-out must have crashed the computer and killed all the electronics, and the good old "reboot and see what happens" actually worked!
Why are you so angry about the point I made? I have interrupted nothing, and in the spirit of my own beliefs, I'll forgive you the ad hominem.
I happen to consider myself a believer, though I have major philosophical, moral, and ethical disagreements with the majority of human beings who identify with the same beliefs/Religion that I do.
That is why I take exception to the notion that a Religion can have an "attitude" -- because that perpetuates stereotypes that if person X identifies with Religion Y, then they believe Z. You say that we all ought to interpret this "shortcut" in one way, but I have observed many different interpretations in my own experience.
It is interesting to me that your comment history shows a pronounced frequency of Troll moderations, and yet you don't appear to be just "having a laugh" -- you sound genuinely unhappy. Do you want to take our discussion off the site? I feel compelled to offer my assistance in raising your spirits.
Religions don't have attitudes. People have attitudes. Sorry for being OT, but elucidating this distinction has become a bit of a hobby of mine.
But I do agree with you and the GP in the points you make.
In a previous life I made my living working for a mortgage lender that did a high volume of VA and FHA loans. Though the end result of the loan origination process in the FHA/VA world is the same as that when dealing with a commercial bank (property owner gets check, loan applicant gets house and mortgage), the "how you get there" was completely different.
Perhaps the single biggest difference, at least in terms of impact on my job, was the trouble resolution process.
All the banks operated slick websites with functioning trouble-ticket systems, staffed call centers with actual human beings you could talk to about your issues, and generally made an acceptable effort to fix problems.
When you had a technical problem with FHA or VA, what could you do? You could email a generic mailbox with your question and hope for the best. That's it!
Once I managed to track down a real, somewhat technically-aware human being at the VA so I could inquire about a persistent, apparently unaddressed trouble we were having accessing a particular feature of the va.gov site. Her answer? "Yeah, that goes down all the time, just give it a few days and they'll get it fixed." This was accepted as normal there, and probably still is.
1) Copy desired formatted/linked/etc text to clipboard.
2) Windows key-R (opens Run box)
3) Ctrl-V (paste the text into the Run box)
4) Shift-Home (select the now-plaintext)
5) Ctrl-C (copy the now-plaintext)
6) Esc (close Run box)
I use this all the time when copying and pasting in Windows, and it works great for me.
THANK YOU! (Was that loud enough?)
I've no points so this will have to do. If you talk to almost anyone about commercials, they might admit to liking a few of the funny ones here or there, but by and large, I think you'd struggle to find a lot of people who want to watch commercials, who seek them out, and take measures to watch them when they would otherwise be interrupted. Basically nobody gives a shit either way about watching commercials.
I don't watch a lot of "live" TV these days, and as a result I really have no tolerance for commercials when I encounter them. So I mute them.
My "opt-in" approach is nothing novel -- on the slim chance that I want to hear whatever the un-programming is saying, I'll un-mute, but otherwise I assume that the sounds coming from commercials are at best disposable to me, and at worst, really fucking annoying.
I do this everywhere I can, and I've yet to meet a single person who wanted to hear commercials when I was muting them.
But really the whole mission statement of Adbusters is stupid. Removing all ads from the internet will destroy pretty much every service on the internet. Think youtube would be profitable without ads? How about any site you visit with alot of images. Bandwidth isn't free so sites make money from either ads, donations or memberships. Most sites with memberships remove the ads for you so this goal is STUPID. Just use Adblock if you hate them so much
"We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century. To this end, Adbusters Media Foundation publishes Adbusters magazine, operates this website and offers its creative services through PowerShift, our advocacy advertising agency."
- http://www.adbusters.org/about/adbusters
I personally am still weighing the pros and cons of the clickfraud approach, but the comment that your post is FUD is spot-on.
Whoosh all you want, I'll make more =)
No amount of prefacing will ever deter all you whooshers -- and I can admit, "whoosh-spotting" entertains me as well. But in truth, I took this as an opportunity to reiterate the precise quotation that comprised the troll-fodder, and I feel I made my perception of the OP's trollery more than apparent (he was -1 Troll at the time of my post, though the subsequent Funny mod isn't undeserved either). The trolls who blend fact and fiction aren't usually worth responding to, but since the one in question was so perfectly opposed to the reality of the source, I feel no shame or regret in biting. The net result is that an exceptionally salient bit of TFA got a few more eyeballs. Now I just have to worry if you've quasi-meta-trolled me. Oh the horror!
Avoid Microsoft products where possible. Computers using the Microsoft Windows platform are especially vulnerable as of this writing (although no operating system is immune to all potential attacks). Consider using a non-Microsoft operating system if possible. However, if you have to use Microsoft Windows and you are connecting to the Internet, your best bet is to minimize the number of Microsoft Internet applications you use â" for example, use Firefox as a browser or Thunderbird as a mail client. Microsoftâ(TM)s Internet Explorer and its email programs Outlook and Outlook Express are very difficult for even professionals to secure. Furthermore, adversaries tend to attack more popular platforms and applications.
Keep your software updated. Use the latest stable version of your operating system. As of this writing, Windows 95, 98, and ME are utterly obsolete. You should be using at least Windows Server 2003 for servers and Windows XP for clients, with all patches and service packs applied. For Macintosh computers, use OS X 10.4 or greater, with all patches applied. For Linux and Unix, get whatever version is the most recent stable release, and follow all updates. It is especially important not to let server software versions lag behind, since servers are always on and always connected.
Maintain your firewalls. Firewalls are software or hardware components that protect your computer or network from the Internet, blocking traffic based on network-related parameters like IP addresses and port numbers. Firewalls can protect against those who want to access your computer without permission. Configuring network firewalls is pretty tough for the layperson and beyond the scope of this guide, but you should learn how to use the personal firewall software thatâ(TM)s included in most recent operating systems.
For more detailed information about malware, check out the Malware article in the Defensive Technology section.
Except that breaks the ability to use chapter-like bookmark links from one PDF to another, which are frequently used in business contexts. So another reminder: Lock your corporate user accounts down as far as you can, because they are going to need every stupid little feature in the world, even if it kills them (and you).
Based on the FoxIt and Sumatra support forums, it appears you're correct. Of course, a quick read of the FoxIt forum tells me it has major problems with creating freakishly large print jobs and taking its sweet ole time even when printing a few simple pages. So neither is ready for primetime business use, and I still have to decide which anvil I'm going to drop on my foot come Monday morning.
Miles, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus, Bird. When a user notices the names, it's a great conversation starter - and takes their mind off the annoyance for what would otherwise be an awkward minute of angrily "watching the progress bar."
"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate." - Bertrand Russell
"Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place." - Robert A. Heinlein