I'm finding it hard to believe that MS brought down the behemoth by secretly bringing down those domain names.
On the other hand, maybe the little miscreants that created this botnet actually made the assumption that the domains couldn't be suspended. That still brings up the question, how long can this court-ordered suspension really last? Indefinitely is not a definite answer.
Going to go check my spam folder now... maybe it's got less crap in it now.
I'm actually curious how log this has been going on. It seems like the corporations, and legal bodies could find more creative ways to spend the money. I would think paying more money to lawyers would be an obvious negative by now.
The comedians of this world have already written hundreds of jokes about lawyers and their self-serving nature. Maybe these litigious companies will realize, one day, there's a reason why.
Who should have kept the price high? InterNIC? So, the booty of the late 90's, and now the early 21st century is a bad thing? Rather than snarl at the squatters, they should have made squatting less attractive by allowing more TLDs. A lot of people might be pleased that.xxx will be opening up soon. Imagine the possibilities now!
se.xxx sells.
Works fine for removing data. Might not work if advanced forensic techniques are used.
Most thieves don't have access to those forensic tools. And I'm assuming you don't need this level of protection. I'm assuming you're not trying to obfuscate your illegal Tracy Lord mpegs.
A lot of people misinterpret what "freedom of expression" means.
People believe they have the write to "express" themselves as they please in the workplace. That simply isn't the case. Our rights -- our freedoms -- are protected against government interference not private interference. Your employer -- even a government office -- can silence you. There are laws for the workplace that take precedence over your rights. The law protects employees against being discriminated against or being harassed because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, disabilities, sexual orientation, and gender. Those aren't rights, however. You don't have a right not to be harassed. You are protected by laws.
Quite simply, these officers are out of line, and have broken laws. They don't have a choice but to change their behavior. If they want to frequent this site from home in their private time that is when their right to express themselves is enforceable. However, we all know there are consequences to actions in our private lives as well. But trying to make people behave to serve their best-interest is just a futile effort at protecting "stupid."
The comments about this story are already ridiculous (search news.google.com, and blogs.google.com). Everyone thinks they know their rights, but I can tell by the comments none really know what their rights are, or what a right is.
I seem to recall that NYSE does. Then again, I'm old.
They may have switched to Linux at some point.
I think too much significance is being given to this announcement. Linux has already been quite dominant on the web for some time now. But most people couldn't care less about what delivered their content. How would you even know? Aside from server side errors.
RedHat's best contribution is Tom Lane to PostgreSQL.
We just don't let the executive team know we're using it, lest they read all the hype about it on the internet and get the idea we can draw the pictures and code just writes itself.
We often find the "loopholes" in our methodology by drawing it out first. We plug those glaring holes. Then start coding. At that point, the UML becomes historical.
Excuse me, but do most people keep large amounts of "random data" on their drives? Perhaps large amounts of "random data" on one's drives indecates the possibility of encrypted data?
Uhm, actually, yes they do. Not intentionally, of course. But people that have installed, reinstalled, upgraded, moved files, defragged, and otherwise USED their hard-drive will have random data strewn all about their platters.
I won't provoke you further... you seem to have a rather short fuse.
This isn't stupid enough by itself. It gets even stupider.
In order for a web site to know that a person has "opted out" of tracking, the site would have to set a cookie to track that user's preference to not be tracked.
While I realize there is a difference between a cookie like:
Cookie: optout=yes;
...and...
Cookie: trackmeforever=someWeIrD_unique_ID;
It's still tracking. Maybe I'm nitpicking...but, so are they, yes?
The only MTBF I've found is based solely on stress testing. Estimates vary wildly from 500,000 hours, up to 1 million hours.
I think that getting this to market will improve MTBF (and, of course, give us REAL numbers). It will also spur competition in two areas. First, other companies that provide storage solutions will take it seriously, which may drive prices way down. Second, the NAND flash drive companies will try to improve MTBF to be able to sell more flash. Of course, their prices may drop as well -- spurred by competition.
I haven't personally experienced any flash RAM failures, yet. I used my flash drives quite heavily, and swap data on them frequently. So far, so good; and I'm not even a big spender (in fact, I buy the cheapest I can find).
Going to flash based storage would be a boon for RDBMS (DMBS in general, really). And people would devise clever ways of syncing to magnetic media (warehousing?), and using the flash for the hardcore querying.
Microsoft, of late, has been pretty responsive to public outcries. Now, I know at the heart of it they're just responding for financial reasons. But, an era ago they didn't have to care -- and they didn't care. They were the game.
But now, I don't think we care. We being the few, the proud, the OS hackers. I would love to get my hands on the Windows kernel, and it's "DOS". I would love to get into its scheduler.
Until some monumental step by Microsoft, I can't be impressed. (But, sir, they released a package that allowed the OSS community to create Windows installers! -- and they'd never scrutinize what we package with it.)
It's a Sunday. I guess this is the best reused story I can expect on church day.
WoW is kinda like the "Dummy's Guide to MMORPG" -- it doesn't cover very much; and, like a "Dummy's Guide", it's far from being the definitive source.
Now, for the rest of the story...
Lord of the Rings Online is only similar to WoW from the stand-point of not reinventing the wheel. The keypresses are very similar. The general layout is familiar. Combat is as similar to WoW as it is to any other MMORPG. It stops there. LotRO is vastly different.
EverQuest is still more of a definitive source since there are some classes in the game that require actual skill. I remember long conversations about who the best enchanter, or bard was. And, of course, the ever popular monks. To play a "puller" (usually a monk) in EverQuest required quite a bit of skill, and timing. But what really made EverQuest great was the amount of coordination necessary. The warriors had to be doing their thing. The rogues had to be conscientious about potential mishaps and plan for recovery. Priests had to heal, and still be able to resurrect players while in combat. Shaman had to slow at the right times and keep track of what was slowed. Rangers and Druids had to snare... and so on. Just one person not doing their job could cost the raid.
In WoW, every class (and variation of that class) was basically a simplified, and trivialized version of their EverQuest counterpart. Coordination among 3 or 4 attentive players was usually all that was needed prior to Burning Crusade. I never raided in Burning Crusade because Blizzard took the same path that Sony did... the reason I quit EverQuest, and the reason I quit WoW: reputation based advancement with NO character development. (At least EverQuest had the Alternate Abilities system.)
Now, we've come full circle to something that more resembles the original EverQuest than WoW. Absent, however, are the costly deaths, and the enormous grind times. In LotRO they have replaced the grind with quests. Embedded in some of those quests are some grinds, however. The classes, being so few, are well defined, and do make sense in the context of Tolkien's world. What stands out is that they reward you for the grind. Each of those classes can develop traits that suit them. The burglar is going to want to hone his ability to take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses. The guardian is going to want to improve his ability to tank and taunt; and so on. So, Turbine took into account that the highend grind was inevitable, but provided a reward system (much like EverQuest's AA system). So, it seems well planned from end-to-end.
Only time will tell if this is true. If not, I'm sure some other MMO publisher will have something new for me to try soon.
We've never gotten so much Bush in all of our lives. Bush is somehow tied to everything. In college, it was Bush motivated me to sacrifice my morals. Bush often made us all do things we wouldn't normally have done.
...
Oh, the Bush administration. What was I thinking?!
How is this flamebait? How is the parent a "troll?" Moderators using their points to express their agendas/viewpoints.
Now, to get back on-topic.
The complete incompetence of the U.S. intelligence agencies is now painfully evident. You can blame Clinton. You can blame Bush. It doesn't really matter because, frankly, neither of them did anything to change that before 9/11. Sure, Bush changed it after 9/11, out of necessity. But, even given "necessity", Clinton didn't do anything. He was president during two relatively serious attacks on the U.S. (WTC and U.S.S. Cole). But, he's no more to blame than Daddy Bush, or Reagan. I can guarantee that level of incompetence took at least 15 years to develop.
The point is simple, we don't respond unless the attack is extremely serious. How pathetic for the greatest, and most powerful country on the planet. And now, about 42% of the country wants to "cut and run." Supposedly our war in Iraq is encouraging terrorism... If that's the case, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that leaving Iraq would be the worst thing we could do. Seriously, does anyone think for themselves anymore? Or, are you all too busy listening to CNN, Fox, and "Big 3" editorials?
I agree with some of what each of them says. I agree with Hannity sometimes. Sometimes I agree with Dan Rather. But I always think for myself.
Instead of vocalizing with mod-points, why not reply instead?
Each person gets a desktop machine valued at $1250 (or so). A case has to be made for an additional $1200 (or so) to be spent on a laptop. If 106 out of 122 are leaving the laptop at work right next to their desktop machine 99.9% of the time, they clearly did not need a laptop.
My experience as a government employee is just the opposite.
I am very busy, and I have written code and implemented systems for people who care about the publics money and work hard.
I also worked very hard, as did many of the people on my team. But I realized early on that the work I was doing was "make work." I'm a software engineer that was sorting text files, and removing "outdated" comments from SQR (SQRibe) files. I was clearly not doing "engineer" level work. I resigned because it wasn't rewarding, and I was getting way too much for what I was doing. I wanted to advance my career. I moved on.
Assuming your phoning home software story is true, I find it interesting that your company would take that kind of liability risk.
Safe assumption. There is no liability risk at all. The machine is the property of the company, not the user. Think "Lo-jack"...
A woman keeping a job for 6 weeks is not an example of government ineffiency.
It could be that she wants to change and keep a job.
But people like you don't want to believe that, and you don't even bother to check your assumptions against budget reports, you just want an excuse to hate something.
I didn't give you enough background on this woman for you to draw any conclusions, especially not the one you've drawn. But, for the sake of clarity, I'll elaborate.
She's 32 years old, she has 3 kids, each has a different father. She has never, ever, had a job for more than 3 weeks. Most jobs, she's not even held for 3 days. No, this is not an exaggeration. She landed many jobs she never even showed up for. She milks the system (do I have to describe what this means to you too?).
Her current job, working for the Arizona Department of Transportation is a job born of nepotism. She gets payed $39,900 a year to [literally] put stamps on envelopes. When she's done, she just gets to sit around (her words, trying to convince my wife she should apply there too). This girl is lazy, and always has been. And she knows ten more just like herself. (birds of a feather?)
Her keeping the job for six weeks is a perfect example of government inefficiency. She's a deadbeat, and she finally found a place where she fits in. Hell, she's already missed 6 days of work... So she's only actually worked 5 weeks. I know, for a fact, that her relative is a hard working individual. Sadly, when this girl ends up quitting, or getting fired, it'll reflect poorly on that relative...
I don't need an excuse to hate anything... of that, you can be sure.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm finding it hard to believe that MS brought down the behemoth by secretly bringing down those domain names.
On the other hand, maybe the little miscreants that created this botnet actually made the assumption that the domains couldn't be suspended. That still brings up the question, how long can this court-ordered suspension really last? Indefinitely is not a definite answer.
Going to go check my spam folder now... maybe it's got less crap in it now.
I'm actually curious how log this has been going on. It seems like the corporations, and legal bodies could find more creative ways to spend the money. I would think paying more money to lawyers would be an obvious negative by now.
The comedians of this world have already written hundreds of jokes about lawyers and their self-serving nature. Maybe these litigious companies will realize, one day, there's a reason why.
Who should have kept the price high? InterNIC? So, the booty of the late 90's, and now the early 21st century is a bad thing? Rather than snarl at the squatters, they should have made squatting less attractive by allowing more TLDs. A lot of people might be pleased that .xxx will be opening up soon. Imagine the possibilities now!
se.xxx sells.
Try Eraser
Works fine for removing data. Might not work if advanced forensic techniques are used.
Most thieves don't have access to those forensic tools. And I'm assuming you don't need this level of protection. I'm assuming you're not trying to obfuscate your illegal Tracy Lord mpegs.
A lot of people misinterpret what "freedom of expression" means.
People believe they have the write to "express" themselves as they please in the workplace. That simply isn't the case. Our rights -- our freedoms -- are protected against government interference not private interference. Your employer -- even a government office -- can silence you. There are laws for the workplace that take precedence over your rights. The law protects employees against being discriminated against or being harassed because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, disabilities, sexual orientation, and gender. Those aren't rights, however. You don't have a right not to be harassed. You are protected by laws.
Quite simply, these officers are out of line, and have broken laws. They don't have a choice but to change their behavior. If they want to frequent this site from home in their private time that is when their right to express themselves is enforceable. However, we all know there are consequences to actions in our private lives as well. But trying to make people behave to serve their best-interest is just a futile effort at protecting "stupid."
The comments about this story are already ridiculous (search news.google.com, and blogs.google.com). Everyone thinks they know their rights, but I can tell by the comments none really know what their rights are, or what a right is.
Good catch there.
When I wrote that I didn't stop to think about the difference between the S&P 500 and NYSE.
I was actually curious about McGraw-Hill, not the S&P 500 as an entity. It's moot now since we'll likely be moderated down anyway.
I seem to recall that NYSE does. Then again, I'm old.
They may have switched to Linux at some point.
I think too much significance is being given to this announcement. Linux has already been quite dominant on the web for some time now. But most people couldn't care less about what delivered their content. How would you even know? Aside from server side errors.
RedHat's best contribution is Tom Lane to PostgreSQL.
Right up until you brought up Richard Stallman.
That guy would protest clean underwear, not just RFID tagged underwear.
Next.
Do you know how many times I've died in WoW because of his porn downloading?
He's paying up, I need my epic flying mount...
We just don't let the executive team know we're using it, lest they read all the hype about it on the internet and get the idea we can draw the pictures and code just writes itself.
We often find the "loopholes" in our methodology by drawing it out first. We plug those glaring holes. Then start coding. At that point, the UML becomes historical.
Uhm, actually, yes they do. Not intentionally, of course. But people that have installed, reinstalled, upgraded, moved files, defragged, and otherwise USED their hard-drive will have random data strewn all about their platters.
I won't provoke you further... you seem to have a rather short fuse.
This isn't stupid enough by itself. It gets even stupider.
In order for a web site to know that a person has "opted out" of tracking, the site would have to set a cookie to track that user's preference to not be tracked.
While I realize there is a difference between a cookie like:
It's still tracking. Maybe I'm nitpicking...but, so are they, yes?
The only MTBF I've found is based solely on stress testing. Estimates vary wildly from 500,000 hours, up to 1 million hours.
I think that getting this to market will improve MTBF (and, of course, give us REAL numbers). It will also spur competition in two areas. First, other companies that provide storage solutions will take it seriously, which may drive prices way down. Second, the NAND flash drive companies will try to improve MTBF to be able to sell more flash. Of course, their prices may drop as well -- spurred by competition.
I haven't personally experienced any flash RAM failures, yet. I used my flash drives quite heavily, and swap data on them frequently. So far, so good; and I'm not even a big spender (in fact, I buy the cheapest I can find).
Going to flash based storage would be a boon for RDBMS (DMBS in general, really). And people would devise clever ways of syncing to magnetic media (warehousing?), and using the flash for the hardcore querying.
I want one of these drives... NOW!
Microsoft, of late, has been pretty responsive to public outcries. Now, I know at the heart of it they're just responding for financial reasons. But, an era ago they didn't have to care -- and they didn't care. They were the game.
But now, I don't think we care. We being the few, the proud, the OS hackers. I would love to get my hands on the Windows kernel, and it's "DOS". I would love to get into its scheduler.
Until some monumental step by Microsoft, I can't be impressed. (But, sir, they released a package that allowed the OSS community to create Windows installers! -- and they'd never scrutinize what we package with it.)
It's a Sunday. I guess this is the best reused story I can expect on church day.
They were...the cameras on the satellites are not Microsoft Vista Approved.
Italian is way more in.
WoW is kinda like the "Dummy's Guide to MMORPG" -- it doesn't cover very much; and, like a "Dummy's Guide", it's far from being the definitive source.
Now, for the rest of the story...
Lord of the Rings Online is only similar to WoW from the stand-point of not reinventing the wheel. The keypresses are very similar. The general layout is familiar. Combat is as similar to WoW as it is to any other MMORPG. It stops there. LotRO is vastly different.
EverQuest is still more of a definitive source since there are some classes in the game that require actual skill. I remember long conversations about who the best enchanter, or bard was. And, of course, the ever popular monks. To play a "puller" (usually a monk) in EverQuest required quite a bit of skill, and timing. But what really made EverQuest great was the amount of coordination necessary. The warriors had to be doing their thing. The rogues had to be conscientious about potential mishaps and plan for recovery. Priests had to heal, and still be able to resurrect players while in combat. Shaman had to slow at the right times and keep track of what was slowed. Rangers and Druids had to snare... and so on. Just one person not doing their job could cost the raid.
In WoW, every class (and variation of that class) was basically a simplified, and trivialized version of their EverQuest counterpart. Coordination among 3 or 4 attentive players was usually all that was needed prior to Burning Crusade. I never raided in Burning Crusade because Blizzard took the same path that Sony did... the reason I quit EverQuest, and the reason I quit WoW: reputation based advancement with NO character development. (At least EverQuest had the Alternate Abilities system.)
Now, we've come full circle to something that more resembles the original EverQuest than WoW. Absent, however, are the costly deaths, and the enormous grind times. In LotRO they have replaced the grind with quests. Embedded in some of those quests are some grinds, however. The classes, being so few, are well defined, and do make sense in the context of Tolkien's world. What stands out is that they reward you for the grind. Each of those classes can develop traits that suit them. The burglar is going to want to hone his ability to take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses. The guardian is going to want to improve his ability to tank and taunt; and so on. So, Turbine took into account that the highend grind was inevitable, but provided a reward system (much like EverQuest's AA system). So, it seems well planned from end-to-end.
Only time will tell if this is true. If not, I'm sure some other MMO publisher will have something new for me to try soon.
Then it'll be vaporware...
An occasional "flamebait" mod isn't going to offend me. It just means I'm smarter than the mods that had points to blow that day.
At least they blew them on Bush.
We've never gotten so much Bush in all of our lives. Bush is somehow tied to everything. In college, it was Bush motivated me to sacrifice my morals. Bush often made us all do things we wouldn't normally have done.
Oh, the Bush administration. What was I thinking?!
(Seriously... This is such flamebait)
You may just get what you want.
How is this flamebait? How is the parent a "troll?" Moderators using their points to express their agendas/viewpoints.
Now, to get back on-topic.
The complete incompetence of the U.S. intelligence agencies is now painfully evident. You can blame Clinton. You can blame Bush. It doesn't really matter because, frankly, neither of them did anything to change that before 9/11. Sure, Bush changed it after 9/11, out of necessity. But, even given "necessity", Clinton didn't do anything. He was president during two relatively serious attacks on the U.S. (WTC and U.S.S. Cole). But, he's no more to blame than Daddy Bush, or Reagan. I can guarantee that level of incompetence took at least 15 years to develop.
The point is simple, we don't respond unless the attack is extremely serious. How pathetic for the greatest, and most powerful country on the planet. And now, about 42% of the country wants to "cut and run." Supposedly our war in Iraq is encouraging terrorism... If that's the case, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that leaving Iraq would be the worst thing we could do. Seriously, does anyone think for themselves anymore? Or, are you all too busy listening to CNN, Fox, and "Big 3" editorials?
I agree with some of what each of them says. I agree with Hannity sometimes. Sometimes I agree with Dan Rather. But I always think for myself.
Instead of vocalizing with mod-points, why not reply instead?
Who cares! You miss the point.
Other countries will try to emulate our budgeting and collapse.
World Domination at its best.
Each person gets a desktop machine valued at $1250 (or so). A case has to be made for an additional $1200 (or so) to be spent on a laptop. If 106 out of 122 are leaving the laptop at work right next to their desktop machine 99.9% of the time, they clearly did not need a laptop.
I also worked very hard, as did many of the people on my team. But I realized early on that the work I was doing was "make work." I'm a software engineer that was sorting text files, and removing "outdated" comments from SQR (SQRibe) files. I was clearly not doing "engineer" level work. I resigned because it wasn't rewarding, and I was getting way too much for what I was doing. I wanted to advance my career. I moved on.
Safe assumption. There is no liability risk at all. The machine is the property of the company, not the user. Think "Lo-jack"...
I didn't give you enough background on this woman for you to draw any conclusions, especially not the one you've drawn. But, for the sake of clarity, I'll elaborate.
She's 32 years old, she has 3 kids, each has a different father. She has never, ever, had a job for more than 3 weeks. Most jobs, she's not even held for 3 days. No, this is not an exaggeration. She landed many jobs she never even showed up for. She milks the system (do I have to describe what this means to you too?).
Her current job, working for the Arizona Department of Transportation is a job born of nepotism. She gets payed $39,900 a year to [literally] put stamps on envelopes. When she's done, she just gets to sit around (her words, trying to convince my wife she should apply there too). This girl is lazy, and always has been. And she knows ten more just like herself. (birds of a feather?)
Her keeping the job for six weeks is a perfect example of government inefficiency. She's a deadbeat, and she finally found a place where she fits in. Hell, she's already missed 6 days of work... So she's only actually worked 5 weeks. I know, for a fact, that her relative is a hard working individual. Sadly, when this girl ends up quitting, or getting fired, it'll reflect poorly on that relative...
I don't need an excuse to hate anything... of that, you can be sure.