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User: jabella

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  1. font weirdness? on Safari on Windows, Leopard Debut at WWDC · · Score: 1

    Seems to be some font weirdness to me -- i had to mess with the font smoothing options in Preferences. Otherwise it seems to be fine on major sites....

  2. Re:Security is Good on Paper on Has Corporate Info Security Gotten Out of Hand? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, security is most definitely being used as the stick to beat end-users down as far as 'distractions' go. I have had the fortunate experience to work for a company where the motto is:

    "It's the result that matters."

    If you spend time on slashdot or other forums during the day that's ok (and most definitely not filtered) -- but at the end of the month you have XYZ to get done. If you get it done by working nights / weekends that's your prerogative. Flexibility like this is one of the reasons why we've had zero turnover in my department in almost 5 years.

    The tighter companies restrict internet usage and employee behavior, the less personally attached to the company (and their work) the people get, at least in my experience. Companies with fanatic employees can do great things. Companies with people that feel oppressed are just places to work.

    The first problem you mentioned is what we always call 'management by magazine.' Some exec saw something on cnn / in a magazine / at his country club and wants to know what it's not being run. Thankfully most executives are adverse to spending money -- and in this case it's usually a good way to end some of the ideas they bring to the table.

    Speaking of the idea of 'having something just to have it' -- I think this is a problem that's being pushed along by things like SOX / PCI / CISP / and other compliance programs. "We're required to have intrusion detection" so people get out a checkbook and make rash decisions just to put a check in a column.

  3. It's all possible... on Has Corporate Info Security Gotten Out of Hand? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Security like most things, is a balancing act. Being able to manage the 'pain vs. protection' factor is the key to all of it, and unfortunately no tools seem to have the sliding adjustment with those options on it.

    Ideally security will allow everything that's vital while not stepping on any services that are required. With most companies, what is 'required' ends up being pared down as the security net gets closed down tighter.

    Nostalgia is one thing -- how many of us worked on systems that had telnet / ftp open to the outside without a firewall? I know I did back in the day. When management is behind security initiatives, being able to work on the business isses ("No, we CAN'T disable FTP!") becomes less of a problem.

    Regarding individual workstations -- putting the burden on end-users doesn't seem to be a common (thankfully) configuration in the companies I've seen. Most larger places are doing automated patch management and deployment now. I know quite a few places where every single system (desktop and production) is patched within a 15 day window. While it's not bleeding edge, this relatively fast schedule combined with the concept of 'defense in depth' goes a long way to preventing issues. I know places that haven't lost a machine to a virus in YEARS.

    Security that's preventing legitimate work from being done needs to be adjusted. All of the problems you've mentioned are fixable.

  4. this is not a new idea on HBO Attacking BitTorrent · · Score: 3, Informative

    for at least the last 3 or 4 years, a company called overpeer has been doing this for hire in the music industry. labels would pay them a fee, and they would get a few hundred (or thousand) hosts on all of the p2p networks that claimed:

    - high bitrates
    - high bandwidth
    - full artist catalogs

    except all of they files they offered had been re-sampled like 10x, so the music was equivalent to about 24kbps... :) they used to have a large presence in some of the northeast datacenters, but since they got aquired by loudeye, they seem to have moved some gear around.

  5. Re:it's all just rumor... on Video iPod Oct 12? · · Score: 4, Insightful


    personally, i think it's going to be the rebranding of the itms from 'itunes music store' to the new media store.

    they'll sell movies, etc. no new device for watching on tv yet. no new video ipod yet. you need a base of people who use the service that really WANT a remote way to move their media around first. how many people (outside the slashdot community) would even HAVE movies to put on an vipod now?

  6. it's all just rumor... on Video iPod Oct 12? · · Score: 3, Informative

    and think secret is saying the exact opposite: no vIpod, it's powermac and powerbook updates.

    in a week we'll all know!

  7. why is this under hardware? on Rate Your IM Popularity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    just curious.

    highest score i've seen so far is in the 20,000 range.

  8. vague.. on Apple to Lock OSXi to Apple Hardware · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple could use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to ensure that only Mac computers can run its OS X operating system, according to a news analysis from Gartner.

    *snip*

    A spokeswoman for the TPG confirmed to vnunet.com that there is nothing preventing Apple from implementing the module

    it doesn't sound like apple's 'chosen' anything at all yet...?

  9. server locations? on BBC News Under The Bonnet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    maybe it's just me, but i'm never putting physical addresses on ANY network map with any company i work for, especially maps that will be posted publicly.

  10. Re:unix laptop = key on Return of the Mac · · Score: 3, Informative

    ever tried to configure WPA on a RedHat laptop? the last time i tried it wasn't exactly point and click.

    how about making a movie of clips from dvd's, and then burning to your own dvd with menus?

  11. unix laptop = key on Return of the Mac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since around 1993 I've been messing with Unix. SCO, Slackware (1.0-ish), RedHat (pre 4.0...on Sparc!), Caldera, Irix, SunOS, etc.... both in userland, on the desktop, on my own servers, and a professional sysadmin.

    I've got a mac now. The first of my life, from someone who wasn't ever a mac guy (and was probably more 'anti-mac' than most.) My g/f has one too -- more than once I was like 'just open a terminal and do....'

    The fact that she doesn't need to know what the terminal.app is? That's the best part..... I get what I need, she gets what she needs.

  12. TMF? on Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce · · Score: 1

    how did it get out of 'The Mysterious Future' in this condition?

    weird.

  13. 2 in our household on Forbes Predicts 5% Desktop Share for Apple in 2005 · · Score: 2, Informative

    We've got two switchers in our household. One was pre-ipod, one was post ipod.

    Coming from a primarily Unix background, the switch for me was the appeal of nice hardware with the ability to get to all of my command line stuff while still having the slickness factor. I built white-box PC's for years, and was definitely 'anti-mac' for a long time. Using my g/f's powerbook was what got me to switch... "Hey look, you can use vi on it!"

    On my g/f's side, the primary drive was being able to do what she does easier (desktop publishing, email, web, im,) and without as much worry about spyware, ads, etc.

    We're now a 2 mac, 2 ipod household.

  14. Re:perfect match for my Sparc IPC box... on Apple Releases Mac Mini · · Score: 1

    i had a sparc LX that I used for a few years in college in my dorm. it ran RedHat 4.0 back when Dave Miller was doing a LOT of the initial sparc porting at Rutgers.

    it was a fun little box. i had an external cdrom, and an external 400mb drive. we thought it was hot stuff! some of my earliest posts on usenet are from 1995 about that system.

  15. Re:why!? on Mozilla Lightning to Challenge Outlook · · Score: 1

    will it talk to exchange?

    that's the only reason people i know use outlook...

  16. mirror. on A Private Home For Retired Supercomputers · · Score: 2, Informative
  17. i almost did it... on Google Launches Desktop Search Tool · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i installed it, and then it was like: "this will take a few hours to index" and I bailed on it. does it really take that long from what people are seeing? I'd love to use it for searching my outlook mail, but hate the idea of the overhead.

  18. Re:groklaw! on SCO Files for Stay of Execution · · Score: 0, Offtopic



    ...and it looks like i got FP in the process!

    oops!

  19. groklaw! on SCO Files for Stay of Execution · · Score: 5, Informative

    obligatory groklaw coverage

    this line is just filler.

  20. this was on cryptome on Searching For Trouble With Google · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was on bugtraq a week or two ago:

    Check it out and there was a discussion of it a few days later.

    Someone actually has a whole forum dedicated to finding things you can do with google here.

    Apparently this was even a DEFCON speech subject.

  21. Re:self heating soup? on Tempratech Self-Cooling Can · · Score: 2, Insightful

    then again, think about it like this. say you're camping. the best coolers that you can get (without spending $400+ on a cooler) will keep stuff cold for 5 days in 90 degree weather. you need to put a LOT of ice in it, and it's going to be big, and heavy.

    or you could just carry a 12 pack of this, without the cooler. it's quite a big difference....

    then again, i just bring water when i camp, and i don't care if it's cold so it wouldn't matter much to me.

  22. self heating soup? on Tempratech Self-Cooling Can · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I thought this was going to be from the Self-heating Soup can guys, but it's not.

    This one seems a little more real (not a case study), as the company already has some temp technology products that are further along... Also, the Gizmodo link says it holds 10oz.

  23. hahah. on How Google Could Overthrow AIM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    speculates on the possibility

    just made me laugh.

  24. remember this guy? on Open Source a National Security Threat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Remember this guy? He also wrote "Linux Security: Unfit for Retrofit" ( http://www.ghs.com/linux/unfit.html )

    This was covered by LWN back in May: http://lwn.net/Articles/83242/

    IIRC, GHS does development on embedded XP stuff? I don't remember the details...

  25. my classic one... on Where Do Dummy Email Addresses Go? · · Score: 1

    i've always used 'fake@hotmail.com'

    and it doesn't bounce.