To see tribal politics at work in America you don't have to look much further than the local school playground. By high school the tribal culture is ingrained. Gangs are tribes. The police force and law enforcement agencies are tribes. The marketing machine thrives on tribal politics. Look at the cults that have sprouted up around Linux, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Those are just obvious examples that are at play here on Slashdot. Tribal mentality pervades pretty much all aspects of our culture. Our government has just slapped a system of law on top of the innate tribal tendencies to try to unify people and keep us from all returning to our baser instincts.
You bring up good points. The Afghani people want security. The Taliban gave them security. The Taliban defeated the Russians. Up until 9/11, the Afghani people weren't dealing with war on a day to day basis. The Taliban are the force in Afghanistan. They have the popular support of the people. They are providing the services to the people. It's absolutely insane to think that the United States and NATO can dislodge al Qaeda and separate them from the Taliban. Mullah Omar and the Taliban stood strong next to bin Laden and al Qaeda when it seemed like the United States was going to wipe them out. Here we are 8 years later and the Taliban are stronger than ever. If they didn't give up supporting al Qaeda when they were threatened with losing it all, there is no way they are going to give up on al Qaeda now that it's obvious they're winning.
As another poster mentioned, the whole point of keeping American troops in Afghanistan is to expand the empire. We need a presence in Central Asia to mitigate Russian and Chinese influence. We need access to the resources. al Qaeda and the Taliban are just excuse for us to be there. We lose more people in traffic accidents every year than died on 9/11, but we aren't declaring a war on automobiles.
There seems to be some misguided impression that we can win the war from the air. There is the impression that we can take care of al Qaeda with drone attacks. The dynamics of the situation are far more complex than that. The Afghan government does not have very much legitimacy among the people. Society in that part of the world is heavily based on tribal politics. The Taliban has an entire parallel government setup. That parallel government more or less runs the country outside of Kabul. Don't even get started on what a failed state Pakistan is, and how the Pakistani Taliban, and al Qaeda are both supported by the ISI.
The premise of the question asks when to fire a head hunter. That leads me to believe that they have been hired, and are being paid. I've never paid for a head hunter and I get at least one or two job offers a month. I have my resume up on Dice and a few other sites, and over the course of the last couple of years I have submitted my resume for some positions advertised on Dice. Often times those positions are just reposted by hiring agencies and when I apply for the job, they keep my resume on file. Some of them have been pretty worthless, like CyberCoders. Others have been fairly competent, like TekSystems. The TekSystems recruiter I worked with really helped me come up with a good format for my resume. My latest job opportunity came in through LinkedIn of all places.
Maybe Microsoft is just trying to make the launch of a software product so completely lame and uninteresting that people see how stupid marketing really is. Maybe they're trying to poke fun at Apple and everyone else who makes a big deal of their releases. Who am I kidding? Microsoft really is that lame. What else do you expect when the majority of the employees aren't even citizens of the country the product is sold in? Of course they're going to blow things like product launches, and completely fail to connect with their target market.
Or maybe they're hoping that the American economy really is so devastated, and people are so desperate for a reason to come together with their neighbors that a free copy of Windows and some streamers really will be a big hit. Again, who am I kidding?
I actually disabled passwords and had shared keys setup with OpenSSH. I remember reading something on here a couple of months ago about a vulnerability in OpenSSH. Since I just installed whatever was in the 8.04 repository and never updated it, I'm fairly certain that is what was exploited.
On some level Slashdot bills itself as a news aggregator. Information taken straight from software vendors aren't necessarily news articles. They often times contains the most accurate information. If the editors start posting microsoft.com articles, then they have to post apple.com articles, and adobe.com articles and pretty soon this isn't News for Nerds, it's Corporate PR Central.
I'm of the opinion (how ever little that is truly worth) that articles about patch counts are completely worthless. Anything short of discussing actual vulnerabilities is pretty much a waste of time. We all know that Microsoft releases batches of patches from time to time. We all know that any article about Microsoft patches will involve comments about how much MS sucks because their software needs to be patched. There will be a bunch of pro-Linux comments, a couple of Apple fanbois and that will be that.
The extent of your vocabulary cannot conceal the fact that you're a cheapskate and a probably pirate. Microsoft software isn't digital content. It is content creation software. Tools are not free unless you want to write your own, or use tools that others provide you for free. There are plenty of them out there and you can feel free to use them. If you find a feature that your free tools don't have, pay for a tool that has the feature you want.
The number of patches and whether or not Windows or *nix requires more is pretty much a moot point. Both systems need to be updated regularly and both are vulnerable to automated vulnerability scanners that are being run 24/7 on compromised boxes. I won't re-tell the tale here, but you can check my journal if you want to read about the most recent tale of an Ubuntu box that I setup getting owned in under a month. Any OS that falls behind on patches becomes an exploitable target.
Unless your box is compromised by malware it does not seem like there is a significant chance of your connection getting cut of. The article specifically mentions spam as the primary problem. I'd imagine that automated SSL attacks and the like would probably also be noticed. A random FTP transfer probably won't do it.
How do you get to the conclusion that by trying to do something that they open the door to anything that slips past their efforts? Right now they aren't doing anything and aren't suffering any repercussions from that. As myopic as our law makers are here in America, I have to believe that they'd utilize some sort of good Samaritan clause to shield ISPs from any legal exposure for content that might slip past their intentions to clean it up.
The article specifically mentions that Comcast seems aware of the fact that anti-malware tools aren't very well developed and that more research will need to be done in that area. They don't seem to be completely ignorant of the task they have undertaken. In a perfect world it would be great to see ISPs and other large corporations leaning on Microsoft to clean up their products. It would be great to have the CEOs of a couple of the large telcos and cable companies drag Steve Ballmer into the room and beat him over the head because his products are causing them to spend more than they want to.
The idea of quarantine networks have been around for a few years in the enterprise market segment. Any hardware that hasn't been pre-authorized is scanned for compliance and if out of compliance, it is locked into a network DMZ where it can only access servers that assist in bringing it into compliance with network security policies (ie, servers that install anti-virus software, etc). Once it has passed the compliance tests, it gets access to the rest of the network.
Now it would be great if Comcast could pre-screen customers' computers for compliance, but lets face it, that won't happen. They are in the situation where they already have a bunch of compromised computers and they need to deal with them. So they quarantine the compromised computers and hijack their DNS settings so that when they browse the web, they get pointed toward a webpage that has basic cleaning instructions. Since we're talking about Windows boxes they would be forced to download the Microsoft Malicious Software Cleaning tool (or whatever the monthly tool that cleans all of the common infections is called these days). They could be given links to free anti-virus software pages like Microsoft Security Essentials, AVast, etc. They could be given links to alternate browsers like Firefox.
Once the customers run all of those tools, they could be given the number to phone support. Delaying the option to call support could mitigate the volume of support calls.
All things considered, Comcast is going out on a limb with this one. They risk losing customers who might find it easier to just go with another ISP. They are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage if other ISPs don't follow their lead. I think we can all agree that more ISPs should be doing what they can to address the problem of malware infected PCs. I also think we're all mature enough to recognize that addressing the problem isn't simple, and is in a lot of cases, beyond the ability of the average consumer. The last couple malware infected boxes I've had to deal with I ended up formatting and re-installing the OS. Even booting to LiveCDs and scanning the drives from a clean environment wouldn't get rid of everything.
See my previous response to your other post. If you are a contractor who is promising to get things done, it is on you to ensure that you are able to get them done. That means either get an SLA with an ISP who won't cut you off and will promise in writing that they won't cut you off, or get a firewall that will fail over to a secondary connection in case you do run into problems with your primary ISP. If you want to really cover your ass, do both because as we all know, shit happens. The best SLA in the world doesn't do you any good if the CO catches on fire, or if some contractor hits the trunk line with a back hoe.
I'm undoing a bunch of moderation just to point out that you're an idiot. I hate to be so blunt, but it's the truth. If you want uninterrupted, business class service then pay for it and get an SLA in writing that explicitly spells out the obligations of both parties. In fact if you're on Comcast and you go ahead and just cross your fingers and hope for the best, I think a decent lawyer could sue you for negligence if Comcast's proactive measures impact your business. You are now aware that they might be doing this. If you don't take steps to mitigate it, you're the one who is at fault. As a business owner, you need to take steps to ensure that you can deliver what you promise to your clients. Trying to blame Comcast for a technical glitch strikes me as the digital equivalent of "sorry, the dog ate my homework".
Maybe I should have just modded you -1 and gone about my day.
Despite what the article might lead one to believe, the Xbox hardware isn't being hacked. User accounts are being compromised. The accounts aren't be compromised due to weakness in the software, authentication mechanisms, or by virii/malware. They are being compromised by social engineering and phishing. The only slightly disturbing subject mentioned involves introducing latency into game connections by way of DoS attacks and botnets. That sucks for people who play the games, but that isn't a weakness limited to the Xbox. Any internet connected device is susceptible to DoS attacks in some way.
The article states that the probability of a collision went from 1 in 45,000 to about 4 in a million. I never made it very far in math, but it seems like 4 in a million is the same as 1 in 250,000. What's the point of saying 1 in 45,000 and then 4 in a million instead of in 1 in 250,000?
I will never again spend as much as I spent for the MBP on a laptop ever again. I actually bought the previous generation MBP and also purchased accidental damage protection from Best Buy. Sure enough, after about a year of owning the thing my girlfriend dropped it off of her desk and tweaked the DVI port. We took it back to Best Buy and since the version we had was EOL'd, we got the new version. I have it covered with a policy from State Farm now. I'm of the opinion that if you have to have a real insurance policy against a piece of hardware, the hardware is too expensive. It's nice, but honestly if it weren't for the multi-touch functionality, it would just be another laptop with a different OS on it. I dislike the keyboard layout, and I really dislike the lack of a Function lock. It is nice to be able to run tools like nmap and other *nix programs in their native environment though.
I have three PCs and a Mac Book Pro. I bought the MBP for my girlfriend to use at school and because after all of the fanboi wars here on/. I wanted to see what the big deal about OSX was. At the end of the day, OSX is just another operating system with its quirks and strengths. About the only gee whiz thing that the MBP has going for it is the multi-touch pad. I really like that feature. The whole 1, 2, 3 and 4 finger motions are really genius. Other than that, I now find myself trying to do Alt-Q in Windows when I want to close a program instead of Alt-F4.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the DHS doesn't need uber-black hat types doing security for them. What they are looking for is a small army of semi-competent employees who can go from agency to agency, department to department and secure them by implementing generally accepted best practices. They need firewalls installed with the rulesets locked down. They need IDS and IPS devices configured. They need anti-virus and anti-malware on the workstations. They need VLANs configured, servers locked down, disaster recovery plans designed and implemented, etc.
This is the government we're talking about. They aren't looking for the best of the best. They're looking for good enough to get the job done. Maybe you guys have heard of the saying, "It's good enough for government work." ?? The DHS doesn't need anything that your average small business or Fortune ## organization doesn't need. They just need clean workstations, secure servers and reliable data. They need to be able to process their reams and reams of paperwork and forms and all the other nonsense that comes with the huge machinery of the Federal government.
There was an article here a day or two ago with one of the lead developers of Wave. He mentioned the subject of "robots" that monitor the conversation stream. I'll admit to failing to RTFA in both cases, but it seems like Wave is intended as a low level foundation to build upon. The analogy that comes to mind is the data bus in the computer. If you try to use a computer by monitoring the 0s and 1s flying between the CPU and the RAM or the disk subsystem you won't get anywhere fast. On the other hand, if you leave that low level hardware interaction to the drivers and use a software application, the computer becomes useful.
It seems to me, and again I didn't RTFA, that Wave will only be useful when people start writing decent robots and applications to sit on top of it. I imagine it working something like SNMP. The application only traps what is relevant for what it is monitoring, even though there are a lot of conversations going on. Likewise, in terms of collaboration or project management, there might be applications that tag certain types of communication and only pay attention to similar types of communication. Status updates would be monitored by the calendaring robot and only displayed by the calendar application. IM like communication streams might be aggregated into an Inbox like feature so that people can "mute" the conversation stream and go back to it later. I'd imagine that there will be a great demand for threading and search capabilities on those sorts of streams.
Right now it seems like people are looking at Wave from the perspective of an individual user. Does one user need to talk to twelve different people at once? Hell no. On the other hand, your average organization has dozens if not more conversation streams taking place between departments and individuals at any given point during the work day. Different departments might not know what each other are up to in a timely enough manner to be relevant. With something like Wave tying together the various information streams (email, calendaring, wiki, etc), connections can be made between individuals that might otherwise be missed.
Then again, I didn't read either article and for all I know Wave might just be a Twitter clone with a worthless API that can't be leveraged for anything other than talking about Britney Spears.
Printers have become a cheap commodity item. They don't make industrial strength devices anymore. I have an old Laserjet IIp in my garage that still prints great, but it is slow as molasses. I bought a simple Laserjet 1000 a few years ago and it works just fine. I don't expect it to last forever, but for what I paid for it, it's easy enough to replace.
I work in an art museum and we have some digital artwork in the form of mpeg and mov files. They were given to us on external USB drives. One of the drives gave up the ghost. It was a recovery nightmare but once we got everything back together, we settled on the following solution. The works total close to 200GB and are backed up to LTO tape. Whenever they are needed for a show, they are spun off of tape and onto the external drives for display purposes.
I realize that some other posters have called into question the reliability of tapes. I have never dealt with a bad backup tape. I've had experience with DLT, DDS and LTO tapes going back to the mid-1990s. I think the realistic problem with archiving to tape will be maintain the drive to read it. The tape drive will go out long before the media experiences problems.
There isn't a universally agreed upon way to deal with digital artwork. One of the best resources out there is the following mailing list. Ask your question there.
The point that I'm trying to make is that I want people to be able to trust software publishers to only deliver updates that they need. I want to be able to tell my friends and family, "If Apple sends you an update, you can install it. You don't have to second guess it." With Apple pushing software updates on users who don't need them, I can't tell people to trust what Apple is asking them to install. That is the problem.
This makes owning and supporting a computer more difficult for users. I don't have time to answer questions from my friends every time a software publisher pushes out a new update. I've taken to telling them, "If it's a Microsoft auto update, install it. If it's an Apple auto update, install it. If it's an Adobe auto update, install it." When Apple starts pushing out software that is not necessary as part of their update process, it adds unnecessary confusion and software bloat. Like another poster above said, he only has Quicktime installed but the Apple updater is pushing iPhone utilities and Safari onto his desktop. Doing that is just bad form, no matter how descriptive the accompanying text is.
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To see tribal politics at work in America you don't have to look much further than the local school playground. By high school the tribal culture is ingrained. Gangs are tribes. The police force and law enforcement agencies are tribes. The marketing machine thrives on tribal politics. Look at the cults that have sprouted up around Linux, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Those are just obvious examples that are at play here on Slashdot. Tribal mentality pervades pretty much all aspects of our culture. Our government has just slapped a system of law on top of the innate tribal tendencies to try to unify people and keep us from all returning to our baser instincts.
You bring up good points. The Afghani people want security. The Taliban gave them security. The Taliban defeated the Russians. Up until 9/11, the Afghani people weren't dealing with war on a day to day basis. The Taliban are the force in Afghanistan. They have the popular support of the people. They are providing the services to the people. It's absolutely insane to think that the United States and NATO can dislodge al Qaeda and separate them from the Taliban. Mullah Omar and the Taliban stood strong next to bin Laden and al Qaeda when it seemed like the United States was going to wipe them out. Here we are 8 years later and the Taliban are stronger than ever. If they didn't give up supporting al Qaeda when they were threatened with losing it all, there is no way they are going to give up on al Qaeda now that it's obvious they're winning.
As another poster mentioned, the whole point of keeping American troops in Afghanistan is to expand the empire. We need a presence in Central Asia to mitigate Russian and Chinese influence. We need access to the resources. al Qaeda and the Taliban are just excuse for us to be there. We lose more people in traffic accidents every year than died on 9/11, but we aren't declaring a war on automobiles.
I meant to say in "that part" of the world... It hasn't evolved much past the tribal level over there.
There seems to be some misguided impression that we can win the war from the air. There is the impression that we can take care of al Qaeda with drone attacks. The dynamics of the situation are far more complex than that. The Afghan government does not have very much legitimacy among the people. Society in that part of the world is heavily based on tribal politics. The Taliban has an entire parallel government setup. That parallel government more or less runs the country outside of Kabul. Don't even get started on what a failed state Pakistan is, and how the Pakistani Taliban, and al Qaeda are both supported by the ISI.
The premise of the question asks when to fire a head hunter. That leads me to believe that they have been hired, and are being paid. I've never paid for a head hunter and I get at least one or two job offers a month. I have my resume up on Dice and a few other sites, and over the course of the last couple of years I have submitted my resume for some positions advertised on Dice. Often times those positions are just reposted by hiring agencies and when I apply for the job, they keep my resume on file. Some of them have been pretty worthless, like CyberCoders. Others have been fairly competent, like TekSystems. The TekSystems recruiter I worked with really helped me come up with a good format for my resume. My latest job opportunity came in through LinkedIn of all places.
Maybe Microsoft is just trying to make the launch of a software product so completely lame and uninteresting that people see how stupid marketing really is. Maybe they're trying to poke fun at Apple and everyone else who makes a big deal of their releases. Who am I kidding? Microsoft really is that lame. What else do you expect when the majority of the employees aren't even citizens of the country the product is sold in? Of course they're going to blow things like product launches, and completely fail to connect with their target market.
Or maybe they're hoping that the American economy really is so devastated, and people are so desperate for a reason to come together with their neighbors that a free copy of Windows and some streamers really will be a big hit. Again, who am I kidding?
I actually disabled passwords and had shared keys setup with OpenSSH. I remember reading something on here a couple of months ago about a vulnerability in OpenSSH. Since I just installed whatever was in the 8.04 repository and never updated it, I'm fairly certain that is what was exploited.
On some level Slashdot bills itself as a news aggregator. Information taken straight from software vendors aren't necessarily news articles. They often times contains the most accurate information. If the editors start posting microsoft.com articles, then they have to post apple.com articles, and adobe.com articles and pretty soon this isn't News for Nerds, it's Corporate PR Central.
I'm of the opinion (how ever little that is truly worth) that articles about patch counts are completely worthless. Anything short of discussing actual vulnerabilities is pretty much a waste of time. We all know that Microsoft releases batches of patches from time to time. We all know that any article about Microsoft patches will involve comments about how much MS sucks because their software needs to be patched. There will be a bunch of pro-Linux comments, a couple of Apple fanbois and that will be that.
The extent of your vocabulary cannot conceal the fact that you're a cheapskate and a probably pirate. Microsoft software isn't digital content. It is content creation software. Tools are not free unless you want to write your own, or use tools that others provide you for free. There are plenty of them out there and you can feel free to use them. If you find a feature that your free tools don't have, pay for a tool that has the feature you want.
The number of patches and whether or not Windows or *nix requires more is pretty much a moot point. Both systems need to be updated regularly and both are vulnerable to automated vulnerability scanners that are being run 24/7 on compromised boxes. I won't re-tell the tale here, but you can check my journal if you want to read about the most recent tale of an Ubuntu box that I setup getting owned in under a month. Any OS that falls behind on patches becomes an exploitable target.
Unless your box is compromised by malware it does not seem like there is a significant chance of your connection getting cut of. The article specifically mentions spam as the primary problem. I'd imagine that automated SSL attacks and the like would probably also be noticed. A random FTP transfer probably won't do it.
How do you get to the conclusion that by trying to do something that they open the door to anything that slips past their efforts? Right now they aren't doing anything and aren't suffering any repercussions from that. As myopic as our law makers are here in America, I have to believe that they'd utilize some sort of good Samaritan clause to shield ISPs from any legal exposure for content that might slip past their intentions to clean it up.
The article specifically mentions that Comcast seems aware of the fact that anti-malware tools aren't very well developed and that more research will need to be done in that area. They don't seem to be completely ignorant of the task they have undertaken. In a perfect world it would be great to see ISPs and other large corporations leaning on Microsoft to clean up their products. It would be great to have the CEOs of a couple of the large telcos and cable companies drag Steve Ballmer into the room and beat him over the head because his products are causing them to spend more than they want to.
The idea of quarantine networks have been around for a few years in the enterprise market segment. Any hardware that hasn't been pre-authorized is scanned for compliance and if out of compliance, it is locked into a network DMZ where it can only access servers that assist in bringing it into compliance with network security policies (ie, servers that install anti-virus software, etc). Once it has passed the compliance tests, it gets access to the rest of the network.
Now it would be great if Comcast could pre-screen customers' computers for compliance, but lets face it, that won't happen. They are in the situation where they already have a bunch of compromised computers and they need to deal with them. So they quarantine the compromised computers and hijack their DNS settings so that when they browse the web, they get pointed toward a webpage that has basic cleaning instructions. Since we're talking about Windows boxes they would be forced to download the Microsoft Malicious Software Cleaning tool (or whatever the monthly tool that cleans all of the common infections is called these days). They could be given links to free anti-virus software pages like Microsoft Security Essentials, AVast, etc. They could be given links to alternate browsers like Firefox.
Once the customers run all of those tools, they could be given the number to phone support. Delaying the option to call support could mitigate the volume of support calls.
All things considered, Comcast is going out on a limb with this one. They risk losing customers who might find it easier to just go with another ISP. They are putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage if other ISPs don't follow their lead. I think we can all agree that more ISPs should be doing what they can to address the problem of malware infected PCs. I also think we're all mature enough to recognize that addressing the problem isn't simple, and is in a lot of cases, beyond the ability of the average consumer. The last couple malware infected boxes I've had to deal with I ended up formatting and re-installing the OS. Even booting to LiveCDs and scanning the drives from a clean environment wouldn't get rid of everything.
Obvious answer here. Just stream torrents all the time. That way there won't be any abnormal traffic spikes.
See my previous response to your other post. If you are a contractor who is promising to get things done, it is on you to ensure that you are able to get them done. That means either get an SLA with an ISP who won't cut you off and will promise in writing that they won't cut you off, or get a firewall that will fail over to a secondary connection in case you do run into problems with your primary ISP. If you want to really cover your ass, do both because as we all know, shit happens. The best SLA in the world doesn't do you any good if the CO catches on fire, or if some contractor hits the trunk line with a back hoe.
I'm undoing a bunch of moderation just to point out that you're an idiot. I hate to be so blunt, but it's the truth. If you want uninterrupted, business class service then pay for it and get an SLA in writing that explicitly spells out the obligations of both parties. In fact if you're on Comcast and you go ahead and just cross your fingers and hope for the best, I think a decent lawyer could sue you for negligence if Comcast's proactive measures impact your business. You are now aware that they might be doing this. If you don't take steps to mitigate it, you're the one who is at fault. As a business owner, you need to take steps to ensure that you can deliver what you promise to your clients. Trying to blame Comcast for a technical glitch strikes me as the digital equivalent of "sorry, the dog ate my homework".
Maybe I should have just modded you -1 and gone about my day.
Despite what the article might lead one to believe, the Xbox hardware isn't being hacked. User accounts are being compromised. The accounts aren't be compromised due to weakness in the software, authentication mechanisms, or by virii/malware. They are being compromised by social engineering and phishing. The only slightly disturbing subject mentioned involves introducing latency into game connections by way of DoS attacks and botnets. That sucks for people who play the games, but that isn't a weakness limited to the Xbox. Any internet connected device is susceptible to DoS attacks in some way.
The article states that the probability of a collision went from 1 in 45,000 to about 4 in a million. I never made it very far in math, but it seems like 4 in a million is the same as 1 in 250,000. What's the point of saying 1 in 45,000 and then 4 in a million instead of in 1 in 250,000?
I will never again spend as much as I spent for the MBP on a laptop ever again. I actually bought the previous generation MBP and also purchased accidental damage protection from Best Buy. Sure enough, after about a year of owning the thing my girlfriend dropped it off of her desk and tweaked the DVI port. We took it back to Best Buy and since the version we had was EOL'd, we got the new version. I have it covered with a policy from State Farm now. I'm of the opinion that if you have to have a real insurance policy against a piece of hardware, the hardware is too expensive. It's nice, but honestly if it weren't for the multi-touch functionality, it would just be another laptop with a different OS on it. I dislike the keyboard layout, and I really dislike the lack of a Function lock. It is nice to be able to run tools like nmap and other *nix programs in their native environment though.
I have three PCs and a Mac Book Pro. I bought the MBP for my girlfriend to use at school and because after all of the fanboi wars here on /. I wanted to see what the big deal about OSX was. At the end of the day, OSX is just another operating system with its quirks and strengths. About the only gee whiz thing that the MBP has going for it is the multi-touch pad. I really like that feature. The whole 1, 2, 3 and 4 finger motions are really genius. Other than that, I now find myself trying to do Alt-Q in Windows when I want to close a program instead of Alt-F4.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the DHS doesn't need uber-black hat types doing security for them. What they are looking for is a small army of semi-competent employees who can go from agency to agency, department to department and secure them by implementing generally accepted best practices. They need firewalls installed with the rulesets locked down. They need IDS and IPS devices configured. They need anti-virus and anti-malware on the workstations. They need VLANs configured, servers locked down, disaster recovery plans designed and implemented, etc.
This is the government we're talking about. They aren't looking for the best of the best. They're looking for good enough to get the job done. Maybe you guys have heard of the saying, "It's good enough for government work." ?? The DHS doesn't need anything that your average small business or Fortune ## organization doesn't need. They just need clean workstations, secure servers and reliable data. They need to be able to process their reams and reams of paperwork and forms and all the other nonsense that comes with the huge machinery of the Federal government.
There was an article here a day or two ago with one of the lead developers of Wave. He mentioned the subject of "robots" that monitor the conversation stream. I'll admit to failing to RTFA in both cases, but it seems like Wave is intended as a low level foundation to build upon. The analogy that comes to mind is the data bus in the computer. If you try to use a computer by monitoring the 0s and 1s flying between the CPU and the RAM or the disk subsystem you won't get anywhere fast. On the other hand, if you leave that low level hardware interaction to the drivers and use a software application, the computer becomes useful.
It seems to me, and again I didn't RTFA, that Wave will only be useful when people start writing decent robots and applications to sit on top of it. I imagine it working something like SNMP. The application only traps what is relevant for what it is monitoring, even though there are a lot of conversations going on. Likewise, in terms of collaboration or project management, there might be applications that tag certain types of communication and only pay attention to similar types of communication. Status updates would be monitored by the calendaring robot and only displayed by the calendar application. IM like communication streams might be aggregated into an Inbox like feature so that people can "mute" the conversation stream and go back to it later. I'd imagine that there will be a great demand for threading and search capabilities on those sorts of streams.
Right now it seems like people are looking at Wave from the perspective of an individual user. Does one user need to talk to twelve different people at once? Hell no. On the other hand, your average organization has dozens if not more conversation streams taking place between departments and individuals at any given point during the work day. Different departments might not know what each other are up to in a timely enough manner to be relevant. With something like Wave tying together the various information streams (email, calendaring, wiki, etc), connections can be made between individuals that might otherwise be missed.
Then again, I didn't read either article and for all I know Wave might just be a Twitter clone with a worthless API that can't be leveraged for anything other than talking about Britney Spears.
Printers have become a cheap commodity item. They don't make industrial strength devices anymore. I have an old Laserjet IIp in my garage that still prints great, but it is slow as molasses. I bought a simple Laserjet 1000 a few years ago and it works just fine. I don't expect it to last forever, but for what I paid for it, it's easy enough to replace.
I work in an art museum and we have some digital artwork in the form of mpeg and mov files. They were given to us on external USB drives. One of the drives gave up the ghost. It was a recovery nightmare but once we got everything back together, we settled on the following solution. The works total close to 200GB and are backed up to LTO tape. Whenever they are needed for a show, they are spun off of tape and onto the external drives for display purposes.
I realize that some other posters have called into question the reliability of tapes. I have never dealt with a bad backup tape. I've had experience with DLT, DDS and LTO tapes going back to the mid-1990s. I think the realistic problem with archiving to tape will be maintain the drive to read it. The tape drive will go out long before the media experiences problems.
There isn't a universally agreed upon way to deal with digital artwork. One of the best resources out there is the following mailing list. Ask your question there.
http://www.lsoft.com/scripts/wl.exe?SL1=MUSEUM-L&H=HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM
The point that I'm trying to make is that I want people to be able to trust software publishers to only deliver updates that they need. I want to be able to tell my friends and family, "If Apple sends you an update, you can install it. You don't have to second guess it." With Apple pushing software updates on users who don't need them, I can't tell people to trust what Apple is asking them to install. That is the problem.
This makes owning and supporting a computer more difficult for users. I don't have time to answer questions from my friends every time a software publisher pushes out a new update. I've taken to telling them, "If it's a Microsoft auto update, install it. If it's an Apple auto update, install it. If it's an Adobe auto update, install it." When Apple starts pushing out software that is not necessary as part of their update process, it adds unnecessary confusion and software bloat. Like another poster above said, he only has Quicktime installed but the Apple updater is pushing iPhone utilities and Safari onto his desktop. Doing that is just bad form, no matter how descriptive the accompanying text is.