We ship our clients 4GB IronKey flash drives along with postmarked return envelopes so they can securely send my company sensitive financial data. We did discover one security flaw with our IronKey process however. The drive ships to the client blank with a piece of paper with basic instructions, including the password for the drive. The first drive I received from UPS arrived on my desk with the IronKey drive with the client's private data, encrypted and safe from prying eyes. Along with the drive was the damn sheet of paper with the password on it. That prompted me to add a comment to the instructions at the bottom in boldface: "DO NOT RETURN THIS PAPER WITH THE IRONKEY". I have since received two more IronKey drives, with the instructions (and password) included in the package.
Lesson: Never underestimate the stupidity of a client. The IronKey works great however.
Wikipedia should contain whatever it takes to have someone visit the article and UNDERSTAND what they read. On a similar note, I tried to include a layman's explanation of the Riemann Zeta Function on Wiki and got a lot of pushback for attempting to help non-math PhD's be able to understand the article. The response I got was 'this is just an encyclopdedia'. Thats crap. Wikipedia should be as accessible as possible to everyone, and that includes proofs.
for unjustly flagging copyrighted replies, comments, and story submissions of mine as "Offtopic" or "Rejected", respectively, thereby resulting in public humiliation and a Karma rating of 'Bad'. The aforementioned ratings were utterly false and without merit. I must insist that Slashdot and its readers, who share equal blame, restore my Karma to its previous state of 'Neutral' and refrain from future attacks on my character.
I remember when I used Limewire seeing every known file extension shared 'by default' in the settings. It seems like this applied to one shared folder though. Is this not the case (i.e. your entire hard drive is shared) or are people actually sticking non-music files in their shared music folders??
First of all, the ATM was dispensing 20's in place of 5's. Most ATM's I use dispense 1 five dollar bill max regardless of your withdrawal (the rest being 20's or 10's). Therefore, I think if someone were taking advantage of this (e.g. withdrawing $7,000 for example) the paper trail would be obvious that the person was making deliberate withdrawals to maximize the number of five dollar bills dispensed. If you withdrew $25 and received $40, I think the case would be very weak that you took advantage of the flaw. In addition, I would highly recommend against anyone illegally profiting from something that involves recording your personal information (i.e. swiping your own debit card) in the process!
Vista better be more secure than Linux. Windows is the 'McDonalds' of OS's....it caters to the lowest common denominator. Someone who was able to tune a Linux kernel is not going to download "Stephen Speilberg gets Hilarious Prank Call.mp3.vba" off Limewire. Even if Vista was more secure, its because the users need to be protected from themselves.
My grandparents were vegtable farmers in N.C. The profit margin on vegtables is very narrow, and this is using cheap land out in the middle of nowhere. Even the cost of basic farm equipment such as tractors and plows really cut into what you make. The cost of premium real-estate in Manhattan or any large city would make it impossible to not lose money unless you were growing opium poppies. The only way this idea seems feasible to me is in a food-crisis situation in a dense urbanized area like Japan, where it was funded by the government and profit margins were not of concern.
I hope its not based on how many copies of pirated software are used, because a person can own/use a copy of a software that they never would have purchased, using a cheaper alternative instead. Do you know anyone that has dropped $300 for their own personal copy of photoshop?
What makes the iTunes personal meta-data particularly disturbing is the fact that some P2P software such as Limewire have a setting to share your iTunes music folder. In Limwire this setting is enabled by default. In theory you can be using Limewire to share only public domain files (such as a Linux distro) and if you dont know any better, your legally purchased itunes music is being distributed with your name on it.
If you are planning on getting married, it won't matter how much you make because your spouse will either spend it or compalin about anything you want to buy as 'extraneous'.
Tab websites getting harrassed by corporate interests really angers me. But, there are alternatives too. The best way to learn a song on your own (next to tab) is to slow the song down in Windows Media Player or Guitar & Drum Trainer freeware. You can slow it down to half speed or more, loop it, and pick out the notes yourself. This is usually more accurate than tab.
I would never never never pay for tablature, so I say stop harrassing people who share guitar knowledge online. Corporations do not own the internet or should be allowed to police free speech.
Don't forget about business costs people. Changes to software cost money. The smallest code change must be extensively tested in QA, and a software release can have hundreds of potential fixes/features that are queued and must be prioritized.
Thats not really the point, is it? If you dont watch TV, then you dont have a useful opinion regarding whether someone can or cannot fast-foward commercials. You could respond like this for every slashdot story. You are consuming media right now on slashdot, why arent you outside taking a walk?
Im surprised no one knew about this. It was pork in a zinc mining bill passed in 2005. No one else watches C-SPAN? No one can make fun of David Hasselhoff anymore either.
No reason to jeopardize your own job over a licensing issue for Microsoft. "Teacher teacher, Billy was talking when you were out of the room!" Dont go out of your way to rat out your coworkers or your own company that pays you.
I wouldnt install the software though, because you certainly dont want to be liable if they get caught. Like the other posts, I would either make someone else do it or get something in writing from a superior telling you the copies are legal to cover your own a$$. No reason to go telling though.
I think that as certain distros such as Ubuntu get easier to use, Linux will catch on more. An easy to use distro for non-geeks was sorely overdue. Lets be realistic - I love linux and OSS but damn, its hard to use. I had to make a big effort to learn it. I hope that there is an even more dumbed down linux distro in the future that is as similar to Windows as legally possible. This is how to convert Windows users...give them a slow pitch and let them slowly adjust to the differences.
As far as Microsoft's decision, I think this was simply a move to force third parties to become Vista-capable as soon as possible. Dont think its that big of a deal...anyone that counts will get off their a$$ and make sure their drivers work on Vista if they have a hard deadline. It costs money to test software and to make changes, so third parties will procrastinate otherwise.
I used to laugh at all the linux users who pressed for open source (as a Windows IT person), but after learning slackware and realizing what you could do with it, only then did the limitations of Windows become clear. I do hope that linux continues to gain momentum.
Here's an example for you...finance, banking, or investing. I work for a software firm that caters towards these types of offices...small offices. There are a ton of little Windows-based apps that will either not run or will not be supported on a Linux workstation that are widely in use. You have assets at some broker (lets assume Fidelity), you download their little WINDOWS application from their website to download files or see trades. You purchase WINDOWS software to track portfolios from my company. There are lots of applications that are built for Windows that do not have Linux freeware clones. You are talking like all people use is the MS Office suite...thats not the case. How about contact management/call center software? Thats not a highly specialized software suite...you track your client base with it...name, address, record all communication....thats a very common program in the biz world (ie. Remedy, Siebel, Peoplesoft's Vantive). how many linux options are there, WITH SUPPORT?
Our company will not even talk to someone running Linux...why? We dont QA our software with it, none of the tech support staff here has seen it, and the end clients dont know how to use it. Ive worked in IT for almost ten years...I can do light programming, administration, and complete maint. on Windows computers. I can barely work a linux box, except for the most basic things...sure, i could sit around and waste my entire weekend reinventing the wheel, figuring out why a movie wont play or how to apply a RedHat update, but why??? its frusturating...and im in IT for god's sake. most of your avg. non technical office workers do not want to even use the computer, much less learn a whole new OS.
I have run into many cases where a client is fortunate enough to get an IT person who knows linux and attempts to migrate our data to linux servers...but then our software stops working...the IT guy calls us for help, and tech support apologizes and says 'we dont support linux'. its not the IT guy's fault..our software is made for Windows and Windows networks.
Im sure you have some specific example in mind that your hypothetical situation would work perfectly, but thats not the point. The point of the main post is, will we see a significant migration from Windows to Linux due to the retiring of 98. My standpoint is "No". I bet that, although there may be some migration, a majority of Win 98 machines will either not be upgraded at all or will go to a newer version of Windows for all the above reasons. We will not see a significant migration to Linux. Hey, lets wait a few months and see what actually happens.
>>I just think you're wrong. Unless it was a highly specialized field that used equally specialized software (in which case I'd say it's probably impossible anyway), what kind of retraining are we talking about? Examples, please.
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We ship our clients 4GB IronKey flash drives along with postmarked return envelopes so they can securely send my company sensitive financial data. We did discover one security flaw with our IronKey process however. The drive ships to the client blank with a piece of paper with basic instructions, including the password for the drive. The first drive I received from UPS arrived on my desk with the IronKey drive with the client's private data, encrypted and safe from prying eyes. Along with the drive was the damn sheet of paper with the password on it. That prompted me to add a comment to the instructions at the bottom in boldface: "DO NOT RETURN THIS PAPER WITH THE IRONKEY". I have since received two more IronKey drives, with the instructions (and password) included in the package. Lesson: Never underestimate the stupidity of a client. The IronKey works great however.
Wikipedia should contain whatever it takes to have someone visit the article and UNDERSTAND what they read. On a similar note, I tried to include a layman's explanation of the Riemann Zeta Function on Wiki and got a lot of pushback for attempting to help non-math PhD's be able to understand the article. The response I got was 'this is just an encyclopdedia'. Thats crap. Wikipedia should be as accessible as possible to everyone, and that includes proofs.
College students aren't downloading stupid Kiss songs anyway.
That would explain the brownout that rebooted my computer in downtown Raleigh...
for unjustly flagging copyrighted replies, comments, and story submissions of mine as "Offtopic" or "Rejected", respectively, thereby resulting in public humiliation and a Karma rating of 'Bad'. The aforementioned ratings were utterly false and without merit. I must insist that Slashdot and its readers, who share equal blame, restore my Karma to its previous state of 'Neutral' and refrain from future attacks on my character.
Perhaps we should consider RDBM's obsolete when they aren't widely used anymore.
I remember when I used Limewire seeing every known file extension shared 'by default' in the settings. It seems like this applied to one shared folder though. Is this not the case (i.e. your entire hard drive is shared) or are people actually sticking non-music files in their shared music folders??
First of all, the ATM was dispensing 20's in place of 5's. Most ATM's I use dispense 1 five dollar bill max regardless of your withdrawal (the rest being 20's or 10's). Therefore, I think if someone were taking advantage of this (e.g. withdrawing $7,000 for example) the paper trail would be obvious that the person was making deliberate withdrawals to maximize the number of five dollar bills dispensed. If you withdrew $25 and received $40, I think the case would be very weak that you took advantage of the flaw. In addition, I would highly recommend against anyone illegally profiting from something that involves recording your personal information (i.e. swiping your own debit card) in the process!
Vista better be more secure than Linux. Windows is the 'McDonalds' of OS's....it caters to the lowest common denominator. Someone who was able to tune a Linux kernel is not going to download "Stephen Speilberg gets Hilarious Prank Call.mp3.vba" off Limewire. Even if Vista was more secure, its because the users need to be protected from themselves.
My grandparents were vegtable farmers in N.C. The profit margin on vegtables is very narrow, and this is using cheap land out in the middle of nowhere. Even the cost of basic farm equipment such as tractors and plows really cut into what you make. The cost of premium real-estate in Manhattan or any large city would make it impossible to not lose money unless you were growing opium poppies. The only way this idea seems feasible to me is in a food-crisis situation in a dense urbanized area like Japan, where it was funded by the government and profit margins were not of concern.
I hope its not based on how many copies of pirated software are used, because a person can own/use a copy of a software that they never would have purchased, using a cheaper alternative instead. Do you know anyone that has dropped $300 for their own personal copy of photoshop?
What makes the iTunes personal meta-data particularly disturbing is the fact that some P2P software such as Limewire have a setting to share your iTunes music folder. In Limwire this setting is enabled by default. In theory you can be using Limewire to share only public domain files (such as a Linux distro) and if you dont know any better, your legally purchased itunes music is being distributed with your name on it.
If you are planning on getting married, it won't matter how much you make because your spouse will either spend it or compalin about anything you want to buy as 'extraneous'.
What are people thinking?! Install Slackware on them and they're good as new ;)
This is semi-related, but has anyone else noticed that Windows Media will not play some 'borrowed' MP3's but iTunes has no problem with the same file?
Tab websites getting harrassed by corporate interests really angers me. But, there are alternatives too. The best way to learn a song on your own (next to tab) is to slow the song down in Windows Media Player or Guitar & Drum Trainer freeware. You can slow it down to half speed or more, loop it, and pick out the notes yourself. This is usually more accurate than tab. I would never never never pay for tablature, so I say stop harrassing people who share guitar knowledge online. Corporations do not own the internet or should be allowed to police free speech.
Don't forget about business costs people. Changes to software cost money. The smallest code change must be extensively tested in QA, and a software release can have hundreds of potential fixes/features that are queued and must be prioritized.
I want my desk at home to look like a TARDIS console. That way i'll feel like I made it to the 'future' before I die.
Thats not really the point, is it? If you dont watch TV, then you dont have a useful opinion regarding whether someone can or cannot fast-foward commercials. You could respond like this for every slashdot story. You are consuming media right now on slashdot, why arent you outside taking a walk?
Im surprised no one knew about this. It was pork in a zinc mining bill passed in 2005. No one else watches C-SPAN? No one can make fun of David Hasselhoff anymore either.
No reason to jeopardize your own job over a licensing issue for Microsoft. "Teacher teacher, Billy was talking when you were out of the room!" Dont go out of your way to rat out your coworkers or your own company that pays you. I wouldnt install the software though, because you certainly dont want to be liable if they get caught. Like the other posts, I would either make someone else do it or get something in writing from a superior telling you the copies are legal to cover your own a$$. No reason to go telling though.
I think that as certain distros such as Ubuntu get easier to use, Linux will catch on more. An easy to use distro for non-geeks was sorely overdue. Lets be realistic - I love linux and OSS but damn, its hard to use. I had to make a big effort to learn it. I hope that there is an even more dumbed down linux distro in the future that is as similar to Windows as legally possible. This is how to convert Windows users...give them a slow pitch and let them slowly adjust to the differences. As far as Microsoft's decision, I think this was simply a move to force third parties to become Vista-capable as soon as possible. Dont think its that big of a deal...anyone that counts will get off their a$$ and make sure their drivers work on Vista if they have a hard deadline. It costs money to test software and to make changes, so third parties will procrastinate otherwise. I used to laugh at all the linux users who pressed for open source (as a Windows IT person), but after learning slackware and realizing what you could do with it, only then did the limitations of Windows become clear. I do hope that linux continues to gain momentum.
Here's an example for you...finance, banking, or investing. I work for a software firm that caters towards these types of offices...small offices. There are a ton of little Windows-based apps that will either not run or will not be supported on a Linux workstation that are widely in use. You have assets at some broker (lets assume Fidelity), you download their little WINDOWS application from their website to download files or see trades. You purchase WINDOWS software to track portfolios from my company. There are lots of applications that are built for Windows that do not have Linux freeware clones. You are talking like all people use is the MS Office suite...thats not the case. How about contact management/call center software? Thats not a highly specialized software suite...you track your client base with it...name, address, record all communication....thats a very common program in the biz world (ie. Remedy, Siebel, Peoplesoft's Vantive). how many linux options are there, WITH SUPPORT?
Our company will not even talk to someone running Linux...why? We dont QA our software with it, none of the tech support staff here has seen it, and the end clients dont know how to use it. Ive worked in IT for almost ten years...I can do light programming, administration, and complete maint. on Windows computers. I can barely work a linux box, except for the most basic things...sure, i could sit around and waste my entire weekend reinventing the wheel, figuring out why a movie wont play or how to apply a RedHat update, but why??? its frusturating...and im in IT for god's sake. most of your avg. non technical office workers do not want to even use the computer, much less learn a whole new OS.
I have run into many cases where a client is fortunate enough to get an IT person who knows linux and attempts to migrate our data to linux servers...but then our software stops working...the IT guy calls us for help, and tech support apologizes and says 'we dont support linux'. its not the IT guy's fault..our software is made for Windows and Windows networks.
Im sure you have some specific example in mind that your hypothetical situation would work perfectly, but thats not the point. The point of the main post is, will we see a significant migration from Windows to Linux due to the retiring of 98. My standpoint is "No". I bet that, although there may be some migration, a majority of Win 98 machines will either not be upgraded at all or will go to a newer version of Windows for all the above reasons. We will not see a significant migration to Linux. Hey, lets wait a few months and see what actually happens.
>>I just think you're wrong. Unless it was a highly specialized field that used equally specialized software (in which case I'd say it's probably impossible anyway), what kind of retraining are we talking about? Examples, please.