"That is the odd thing... you never hear about the huge attacks on the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, etc."
Not hearing is not the same as not happening. They may and probably DO not talk about those incidents. We live in a free-er society, and this stuff comes out because our press is marginally functional. That is, when it's not being willingly led by the nose by the current 'cause'. And slamming the current administration is always good business for our press.
I would presume that every government is probing other governments' networks, looking for weakness and potential exploits.
Though it will be a pain when my wife asks me what that message means, and can't I get it off the screen so she can finish the I.Q. test she's taking... this is important stuff she does, you know, so interruptions should be kept to a minimum...
Then I can teach her what she needs to know about Unbuntu. Should take about 15 minutes.
Yeah, the consultants will have to battle this billable hour after billable hour...
We have plenty of checks. I have to fight for access to every system I use, and justify the use sometimes quarterly. We've been denied access to systems our group *OWNS* on occasion, and then have to threaten corporate disaster to get it back...
Actually, it's not so bad. Our network and security teams make us do the right thing, depsite our inclinations to be lazy.
But PCI never will solve the proble of keeping customer-service types out of the celebs accounts. It will, however, get thos reps on the local fishwrap faster and faster.
I do work in a PCI DSS - compliant environment, and intnerface with other compliant systems.
One misconception about PCI compliance is that it can prevent unauthorized access to records. I work with data in response to requests for information about certain activities. PCI cannot aid in predicting what records I may need, so I may well be expected to see customer data that would be even more sensitive than data for some other customer.
We do not, here at least, distinguish between more or less sensitive customer data, all is equally private and equally sensitive, and I would be fired just as fast for looking at some everyday person's record without a genuine business need as I would for looking at the President-Elect's data, if he actually has any here, which I would not know nor would look into.
PCI compliance does permit better auditing, which is just as important. As well as good controls on who has access, the knowledge of who actually used their access is crucial. VZW apparently got that part right.
I'm at a major financial institution. technically, I have fairly broad access to records that could include payment and credit information, personal information, and even a great deal of info on the places people shop.
It would not only not occur to me to look up someone's records just because they are a celeb etc, but if I had a case involving a recognizable person or business, I would be very careful and keep my inquiries to a minimum. I would expect our security teams to be watching accesses to any number of accounts.
And I wouldn't be whining if in a moment of weakness I went too far. There are some things you just don't do. Someone is watching. Count in it.
I also know a few people who provide services or support to the sort of customer you would consider a person of note. We don't discuss anything of a sensitive nature, though I offer them congratulations when I recognize they did something exceptional for a customer that made our newsletter. If we are working on issues that disclose sensitive data, I just work the issue and keep my comments to myself. And I secure any data I work with temporarily, destroying it when I don't need it any more.
Seems incredibly stupid, on a par with the ID10Ts looking through Britney's medical records not so long ago. I hope these VZW ex-employees find work, but perhaps a stint at McDonalds will give them the proper perspective on privacy. An expensive lesson, and one earned from the sounds of it.
I might lose a gum wrapper in the blade server chassis now and then..
No, wait, that was the telecom tech who, being in charge of the machine room, dictated that we have no food or beverages in the room. His gum fetish was the exception, and the shard of gum foil wrapper in the Cubix box just a minor inconvenience for 500+ users.
But hey, it wasn't me! I just tripped over the T-1 cable he thoughtfully left out for me, after I had dressed them into *his* cable tray without permission.
But I'm not bitter.
Like the astronaut who's wondering who untied her tool bag... Hell hath no fury...
There was a time when indeed, custom software runs some dangerous and life-threatening machines, such as radiotherapy devices, and even the custom stuff will occasionally fail, with unfortunate consequences.
Then again, would a PDP-11 have been considered off-the-shelf hardware back in 1985?
Custom programming is no guarantee, and there is in fact no substitute for testing. It's not about how good your software is, it is even about how users actually use it...
We go around this issue on a pretty regular basis on/. and it isn't changing.
If you buy a phone and a contract, and you know the terms and conditions, please don't think I'm interested in your 'it oughta be...' complaints. If you didn't read/grok the deal, sorry. This is why I do not consider Verizon when I look at carriers. And why I resist AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile is the least offensive of the bunch IMHO. Heck, My BlackBerry will run Google Maps, even if it does leak memory worse than a sieve.
I'm ready to buy a G1, just for the sheer novely of it, and I'll deal with having to buy/download apps from the store unless/until it is jailbroken. I might, might run Debian on it for a lark, but I don't run Debian on my mail server... I might wait for Ubuntu...:-)
Then again, I could easily live with an OpenMoko, except it's uglier than a stump fence. And expensive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H unsubsidized, and 850/900, or so the U.S. distributor websites say, which doesn't seem right. And there is no 850 T-Mobile in Arizona. Looks like it's G1 for me.
Thriving on *what* is the question that comes to mind for me... Thriving on manufacturing nifty cell phones, cool. Thriving on hosting pr0n and v1@35a sites, not so much. Thriving on midnight hotel-room kidney transplants, eewww! Make them stop!
Shanghai could the the melamine capital of China for all we know.
if it works, there will be complaints about how long it took, how it's different, and of course it breaks something obscure but crucial to someone's self-esteem...
That's a viable plan in Iowa, or even in Phoenix where I live (unless you live near Camelback Mountain...).
But try that plan in rural Maine, my hometown for instance. Not working. 900MHz is a struggle, and anything above 1.5G is a waste of time for rural distances. Just not happening.
This is the problem with metro wireless solutions. Real rural areas are largely hilly, forested, and unfriendly to microwave spectrum. Get down a little bit, even to 700MHz, and it all becomes so much easier. Oh, and one other thing: In most rural areas, it looks good now. Wait a few years to let the trees grow a bit. Woopsie. Ask any satellite TV guy. Getting a clean LOS today doesn't mean much. Watch out for that poplar tree over there. It will block you in 3 years. Darn. Wireless is only as much about technology as it is about terrain.
When we cease to be the 'United STATES of America', and become something like 'America', then the Electoral college is no longer required.
But we are the United STATES of America, and Article 10 of the Constitution is very much diminished and overlooked. States elect presidents, and if we went to a more federal form of government, it would change our nation in ways I'm not in favor of.
And the traditional explanations for the Electoral College, such as solving the problems of accurate results 'back then', or amplifying the results of the popular vote, my high school American history teacher pretty much debunked. He kept flogging Article 10 at us. And I still accept states as useful.
Having states as useful political entities is valuable in ways most people don't consider. The Electoral College was, and is, not a dumb idea. It's just inconvenient to some people.
"sorry for not 'towing' the slashdot corporate boycott line"
I grimace when people mangle perfectly good metaphors, but I like your version better than the original in this case. In my mind's eye, I see you with a banner streaming behind you... "Another happy user, doing what I want..."
Aw crap, Jefferson isn't a Mississippi representative, he's a Louisiana rep, and former new Orleans mayor. Darn, Mississippi had their chance... But...
'Nobody' WANTS to pursue it. well, not many Democrats, but they have pretty much given in:
Not his constituents - they might re-elect him, but he seems to be 2nd or 3rd in the race. He beat out 6 other Democrats in the primary.
The FBI raided his offices in May 06. The House predictably opposed this and challenged the legality of the raid, and no suprise there. The SCOTUS upheld the legality of the raid.
The House did strip him of committee appointments, on Jun 15 06, by a 99-56 Democrat caucus vote, and a voice vote of the House later. Darn, they actually did it.
But WANT to? I dunno. Speaker Nancy was mighty unhappy about it.
Of course, maybe they did want to. After all, he's from New Orleans.
No one (that is, not the media, majority party in the House, nor any candidate) is tle least bit interested in pursuing the Jefferson case. It simply doesn't matter to them.
It is hypocrisy of the highest order, but there is so much of that to go around that complaining about it is the functional equivalent of complaining about cigarette butts on the side of the road. Even when we see someone toss one out the window, it's just not worth the trouble to confront them with their insulting behaviour, much less actually ask for the minimal sanctions available under the law.
And at best, you would get slapped up the side of the head for doing so. And get no sympathy from anyone. You should know better. Let it go. Not worth it.
Of course, that gets us cans, bottles, bags full of trash, mattresses, dead pets, and occasionally people of no importance tossed out along the road as well.
Very little to do about Mr. Jefferson, since his constituents seem to believe he was framed.
My Blackberry 7105 will turn on my Norelco shaver if it is left too close (0-3") to the shaver. It just comes on. I don't notice that it turns it off either.
GSM in particular seems to have a pretty harsh signal. I've never listened to CDMA signals, but GSM has great stuff going on.
Interesting, but not entirely unique. Heck, my Explorer's fuel pump is harsh enough to make my AM radio barf up whining instead of program. Even after the fixes and suppressoin kits. Feh.
First, as I pointed out, Microsoft crippled the Novell client over and over, even before directory services.
Second, I enver thought of the NT security model as 'fine-grained'. But if tiiwere, there was this thing called ZenWorks for Windows - clever, let NDS manage the AD model for an NT/2000/XP machine. So good that if Microsoft told you that pixing the problem you were having meant removing Zen, you could, and it was undetectable. Let MS fix the issue, and then reapply Zen. Novell understood and leveraged the NT and AD models just fine, thank you.
I also didn't say Novell invented directory services. I even referenced SteetTalk, the first PC-available dirctory services I'm aware of. But DEC did some work on DS before that, I think. I always thought LDAP was an independent development, like ADS. Of course, LDAP was not designed to break NDS, and NDS can and did use LDAP if you wanted to.
Remember, the court case revoled around Microsoft both failing to accurately disclose the API to Windows and NT/ADS, and purposefully changing Windows to fail the Novell clients, back to v2 clients. Several times, Microsoft published specs that were false, and at least twice made changes intended to cause the Novell client to fail.
And then there's the little thing about NT and 2000 just not working well at all in multiprotocol networking. But that's growing pains, and Microsoft might be excused for not working on making competitors' product function well, if at all. Call it competition, of course.
Sorry, but you're pretty much in the tank. I suspect you just don't know any better.
Checking around here, most dealer stores had their initial orders pre-sold, and I could have bought one yesterday at 5pm. But, they warned me, they epxected to sell out today. Company stores were different.
And just so you know, I think iPhone fanboyz and G-Phone freaks are different. I'll be buying a G-Phone, and I don't need to stand in line for three days, bring a solar-powered cappuchino machine, or have my picture taken for Gizmodo. There's a Starbucks next to the T-Mobile store, I have a day job and can't take the time off, don't need to be 'first', and hey, it is really just a FREEKIN PHONE, OK???
whew.
ps- I hope someone will make an SSH client for it. I could dig a real keyboard to compile a kernel while I'm in the car...
Slashdot Mirror
"That is the odd thing... you never hear about the huge attacks on the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, etc."
Not hearing is not the same as not happening. They may and probably DO not talk about those incidents. We live in a free-er society, and this stuff comes out because our press is marginally functional. That is, when it's not being willingly led by the nose by the current 'cause'. And slamming the current administration is always good business for our press.
I would presume that every government is probing other governments' networks, looking for weakness and potential exploits.
Though it will be a pain when my wife asks me what that message means, and can't I get it off the screen so she can finish the I.Q. test she's taking... this is important stuff she does, you know, so interruptions should be kept to a minimum...
Then I can teach her what she needs to know about Unbuntu. Should take about 15 minutes.
Shakespeare didn't know about the Internet, or he would have written 'first, we kill all the spammers'.
Fraud. They watch everything.
Yeah, the consultants will have to battle this billable hour after billable hour...
We have plenty of checks. I have to fight for access to every system I use, and justify the use sometimes quarterly. We've been denied access to systems our group *OWNS* on occasion, and then have to threaten corporate disaster to get it back...
Actually, it's not so bad. Our network and security teams make us do the right thing, depsite our inclinations to be lazy.
But PCI never will solve the proble of keeping customer-service types out of the celebs accounts. It will, however, get thos reps on the local fishwrap faster and faster.
I do work in a PCI DSS - compliant environment, and intnerface with other compliant systems.
One misconception about PCI compliance is that it can prevent unauthorized access to records. I work with data in response to requests for information about certain activities. PCI cannot aid in predicting what records I may need, so I may well be expected to see customer data that would be even more sensitive than data for some other customer.
We do not, here at least, distinguish between more or less sensitive customer data, all is equally private and equally sensitive, and I would be fired just as fast for looking at some everyday person's record without a genuine business need as I would for looking at the President-Elect's data, if he actually has any here, which I would not know nor would look into.
PCI compliance does permit better auditing, which is just as important. As well as good controls on who has access, the knowledge of who actually used their access is crucial. VZW apparently got that part right.
I'm at a major financial institution. technically, I have fairly broad access to records that could include payment and credit information, personal information, and even a great deal of info on the places people shop.
It would not only not occur to me to look up someone's records just because they are a celeb etc, but if I had a case involving a recognizable person or business, I would be very careful and keep my inquiries to a minimum. I would expect our security teams to be watching accesses to any number of accounts.
And I wouldn't be whining if in a moment of weakness I went too far. There are some things you just don't do. Someone is watching. Count in it.
I also know a few people who provide services or support to the sort of customer you would consider a person of note. We don't discuss anything of a sensitive nature, though I offer them congratulations when I recognize they did something exceptional for a customer that made our newsletter. If we are working on issues that disclose sensitive data, I just work the issue and keep my comments to myself. And I secure any data I work with temporarily, destroying it when I don't need it any more.
Seems incredibly stupid, on a par with the ID10Ts looking through Britney's medical records not so long ago. I hope these VZW ex-employees find work, but perhaps a stint at McDonalds will give them the proper perspective on privacy. An expensive lesson, and one earned from the sounds of it.
There is no excuse.
I might lose a gum wrapper in the blade server chassis now and then..
No, wait, that was the telecom tech who, being in charge of the machine room, dictated that we have no food or beverages in the room. His gum fetish was the exception, and the shard of gum foil wrapper in the Cubix box just a minor inconvenience for 500+ users.
But hey, it wasn't me! I just tripped over the T-1 cable he thoughtfully left out for me, after I had dressed them into *his* cable tray without permission.
But I'm not bitter.
Like the astronaut who's wondering who untied her tool bag... Hell hath no fury...
Magnets. I bet half the ISS is non-ferrous.
There was a time when indeed, custom software runs some dangerous and life-threatening machines, such as radiotherapy devices, and even the custom stuff will occasionally fail, with unfortunate consequences.
Then again, would a PDP-11 have been considered off-the-shelf hardware back in 1985?
Custom programming is no guarantee, and there is in fact no substitute for testing. It's not about how good your software is, it is even about how users actually use it...
You're not quite right.
T-Mobile is ok by me. An entirely not offensive carrier would:
Charge me half as much as they do now.
Require no contract.
Price phones much less than currently.
In other words, an insustainable business model in the current US market.
How do European carriers compete for subscribers?
In the US, it seems to be hardware.
We go around this issue on a pretty regular basis on /. and it isn't changing.
If you buy a phone and a contract, and you know the terms and conditions, please don't think I'm interested in your 'it oughta be...' complaints. If you didn't read/grok the deal, sorry. This is why I do not consider Verizon when I look at carriers. And why I resist AT&T and Sprint. T-Mobile is the least offensive of the bunch IMHO. Heck, My BlackBerry will run Google Maps, even if it does leak memory worse than a sieve.
I'm ready to buy a G1, just for the sheer novely of it, and I'll deal with having to buy/download apps from the store unless/until it is jailbroken. I might, might run Debian on it for a lark, but I don't run Debian on my mail server... I might wait for Ubuntu...:-)
Then again, I could easily live with an OpenMoko, except it's uglier than a stump fence. And expensive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H unsubsidized, and 850/900, or so the U.S. distributor websites say, which doesn't seem right. And there is no 850 T-Mobile in Arizona. Looks like it's G1 for me.
I bet the tri-mode Neo will work here fine...
Probably beats liking in Detroit...
Thriving on *what* is the question that comes to mind for me... Thriving on manufacturing nifty cell phones, cool. Thriving on hosting pr0n and v1@35a sites, not so much. Thriving on midnight hotel-room kidney transplants, eewww! Make them stop!
Shanghai could the the melamine capital of China for all we know.
First saw this on Usenet, quite a while ago.
Ah, Usenet. Home of whackadoodles extraordinaire.
...and this pretty much says it all. Even for Windows.
We are in serious trouble, and have been for a while now. And nowhere to migrate to.
wow. you sure sucked the life out of that...
if it works, there will be complaints about how long it took, how it's different, and of course it breaks something obscure but crucial to someone's self-esteem...
feh.
That's a viable plan in Iowa, or even in Phoenix where I live (unless you live near Camelback Mountain...).
But try that plan in rural Maine, my hometown for instance. Not working. 900MHz is a struggle, and anything above 1.5G is a waste of time for rural distances. Just not happening.
This is the problem with metro wireless solutions. Real rural areas are largely hilly, forested, and unfriendly to microwave spectrum. Get down a little bit, even to 700MHz, and it all becomes so much easier. Oh, and one other thing: In most rural areas, it looks good now. Wait a few years to let the trees grow a bit. Woopsie. Ask any satellite TV guy. Getting a clean LOS today doesn't mean much. Watch out for that poplar tree over there. It will block you in 3 years. Darn. Wireless is only as much about technology as it is about terrain.
When we cease to be the 'United STATES of America', and become something like 'America', then the Electoral college is no longer required.
But we are the United STATES of America, and Article 10 of the Constitution is very much diminished and overlooked. States elect presidents, and if we went to a more federal form of government, it would change our nation in ways I'm not in favor of.
And the traditional explanations for the Electoral College, such as solving the problems of accurate results 'back then', or amplifying the results of the popular vote, my high school American history teacher pretty much debunked. He kept flogging Article 10 at us. And I still accept states as useful.
Having states as useful political entities is valuable in ways most people don't consider. The Electoral College was, and is, not a dumb idea. It's just inconvenient to some people.
"sorry for not 'towing' the slashdot corporate boycott line"
I grimace when people mangle perfectly good metaphors, but I like your version better than the original in this case. In my mind's eye, I see you with a banner streaming behind you... "Another happy user, doing what I want..."
you go there...!
Aw crap, Jefferson isn't a Mississippi representative, he's a Louisiana rep, and former new Orleans mayor. Darn, Mississippi had their chance...
But...
'Nobody' WANTS to pursue it. well, not many Democrats, but they have pretty much given in:
Not his constituents - they might re-elect him, but he seems to be 2nd or 3rd in the race. He beat out 6 other Democrats in the primary.
The FBI raided his offices in May 06. The House predictably opposed this and challenged the legality of the raid, and no suprise there. The SCOTUS upheld the legality of the raid.
The House did strip him of committee appointments, on Jun 15 06, by a 99-56 Democrat caucus vote, and a voice vote of the House later. Darn, they actually did it.
But WANT to? I dunno. Speaker Nancy was mighty unhappy about it.
Of course, maybe they did want to. After all, he's from New Orleans.
No one (that is, not the media, majority party in the House, nor any candidate) is tle least bit interested in pursuing the Jefferson case. It simply doesn't matter to them.
It is hypocrisy of the highest order, but there is so much of that to go around that complaining about it is the functional equivalent of complaining about cigarette butts on the side of the road. Even when we see someone toss one out the window, it's just not worth the trouble to confront them with their insulting behaviour, much less actually ask for the minimal sanctions available under the law.
And at best, you would get slapped up the side of the head for doing so. And get no sympathy from anyone. You should know better. Let it go. Not worth it.
Of course, that gets us cans, bottles, bags full of trash, mattresses, dead pets, and occasionally people of no importance tossed out along the road as well.
Very little to do about Mr. Jefferson, since his constituents seem to believe he was framed.
Plenty to go around.
My Blackberry 7105 will turn on my Norelco shaver if it is left too close (0-3") to the shaver. It just comes on. I don't notice that it turns it off either.
GSM in particular seems to have a pretty harsh signal. I've never listened to CDMA signals, but GSM has great stuff going on.
Interesting, but not entirely unique. Heck, my Explorer's fuel pump is harsh enough to make my AM radio barf up whining instead of program. Even after the fixes and suppressoin kits. Feh.
First, as I pointed out, Microsoft crippled the Novell client over and over, even before directory services.
Second, I enver thought of the NT security model as 'fine-grained'. But if tiiwere, there was this thing called ZenWorks for Windows - clever, let NDS manage the AD model for an NT/2000/XP machine. So good that if Microsoft told you that pixing the problem you were having meant removing Zen, you could, and it was undetectable. Let MS fix the issue, and then reapply Zen. Novell understood and leveraged the NT and AD models just fine, thank you.
I also didn't say Novell invented directory services. I even referenced SteetTalk, the first PC-available dirctory services I'm aware of. But DEC did some work on DS before that, I think. I always thought LDAP was an independent development, like ADS. Of course, LDAP was not designed to break NDS, and NDS can and did use LDAP if you wanted to.
Remember, the court case revoled around Microsoft both failing to accurately disclose the API to Windows and NT/ADS, and purposefully changing Windows to fail the Novell clients, back to v2 clients. Several times, Microsoft published specs that were false, and at least twice made changes intended to cause the Novell client to fail.
And then there's the little thing about NT and 2000 just not working well at all in multiprotocol networking. But that's growing pains, and Microsoft might be excused for not working on making competitors' product function well, if at all. Call it competition, of course.
Sorry, but you're pretty much in the tank. I suspect you just don't know any better.
This is not the dumbest idea I've heard today.
Maybe a decent BF or Half-Life mod is in order here. I, for one, welcome our new chair-hurling Half-Life overlords...
Maybe she'll get a COBOL job and leave..
I can hope...
Checking around here, most dealer stores had their initial orders pre-sold, and I could have bought one yesterday at 5pm. But, they warned me, they epxected to sell out today. Company stores were different.
And just so you know, I think iPhone fanboyz and G-Phone freaks are different. I'll be buying a G-Phone, and I don't need to stand in line for three days, bring a solar-powered cappuchino machine, or have my picture taken for Gizmodo. There's a Starbucks next to the T-Mobile store, I have a day job and can't take the time off, don't need to be 'first', and hey, it is really just a FREEKIN PHONE, OK???
whew.
ps- I hope someone will make an SSH client for it. I could dig a real keyboard to compile a kernel while I'm in the car...