Uh-oh. You better run, Jimmy.
Oh, Jimmy?! *Rachel Marsden??!!*
If you have a pet rabbit that is not boiling in a pot right now, please, get it to a safe spot. Word to the wise and all that.
Posts by T. Scheisskopf
7 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2007
Jimbo Wales dumps lover on Wikipedia
Québec cops bust massive botnet ring
Ubuntu chief ushers in the age of Intrepid Ibex
Top-secret US labs penetrated by phishers
Saturday 8th December 2007 03:34 GMT 
A friend works in IT for a defense contractor.
One of the problems is that a lot of the people using these networks in the course of their work day are experts in their own little field, but are of the opinion that their expertise extends to all of existence and beyond. As such, they are resistant to and tend to ignore common-sense IT rules, because...well...they are them and they are really far too important. Besides, they know what they are doing. They are eckspurts.
Needless to say, The Defense Department has a huge and expensive security initiative going on right now and the colones and yes, even the generals are starting to growl and gnaw people's heads off, where appropriate.
They are starting to roll out standardized desktop images and that is really starting to get up noses, because the users no longer have their admin rights on their machine. They want to install what they want, when they want it, damn the security concerns.
All in all, it sounds like too much fun for me.
Oh, and Linux in these situations? Rare, except for some HPC's running RedHat and only RedHat. Other than that, it's Microsoft all the way. In fact, they have been upgrading to Exchange 2007. Hours of fun for the whole family, that.
The broken terror systems that killed de Menezes
Monday 12th November 2007 01:50 GMT 
A response to 1865
Oh my.
Look, in any military operation(and make no mistake: this was, by virtue of its ROE, just that. No a police op.), responsibility for one's actions are not thrown out the window. Osman was not a good guy, by any means, but that shoot of DM flat stinks to high heaven.
It stinks so much and is so outside the boundaries of standard police doctrine, especially classic UK police doctrine, I would not be surprised when, sometime in the future, to find out that the shooters were, in fact, NOT policemen at all, but SAS/SBS shooters TDY'ed to the operation.
Because the whole shoot is straight out of the specops anti-terr primer: no niceties like "Hands Up! Throw down your weapon and lay on the floor". If you think the person is A Bad Guy and might have a weapon, you double-tap him and that is that. But just gazing upon DM should have been enough to rule out a bomb on his person.
And if those operators were, in fact, SAS/SBS, then the questions are: What the hell were they doing on a police op? Did they have enough juice to countermand any orders and ROE? If so, why? And why was operational intelligence so bad, if they had taken over the op? If their OPINTEL was so bad, why did they forge ahead? After all, professionals know when they are entering into the classic and colorfully-named "Goat F***".
A few questions about this that I have not been able to shake.
One more thing: if this is a result of the purported Israeli ANTITERR training, then it is time for TPTB to take a close look at the quality of that training. Close and with a bilious eye.
AMD's marketing chief bails ahead of Barcelona
Thursday 23rd August 2007 21:40 GMT
I'm with Richard.
The comment about "great smelling hands" was a bit abusive of my oh-so-delicate sensibilities. The only thing that could have taken me to greater heights of risen gorge was reference to the olfactory qualities of other body parts and muscle groups of the worthy in question.
I know that Sillycon Valley is a relatively small and close knit community, Ashleeeeee, but there are limits to disclosure, you know?
What next can we expect to read from you, the aroma of Carl Sassenrath's 10-year-old Wolverines? In 20 lines or less of REBOL?
Yeesh.
Desktop Linux: That dog will mount
Wednesday 8th August 2007 15:11 GMT
Oh Dear. Someone is about to be Hoist on her own Petard of Cleverness
Ashleeeeee, petal:
I build systems for just regular folks. Yes, I do build Windows systems for those whom the addiction is too far gone(Think: "The Man with The Golden Arm"), but I also have a good number of intrepid souls for whom I have built Linux Desktop systems. I use Mandriva because, well, I know it, and better the devil you know, right, you clever little minx of letters?
So guess what? They love it. It works for them. Women, especially, grok it at a ridiculously fast rate. I never hear from them because there are no complex maintenance issues, unlike some OS's we know. One woman worked for a VERY important state agency, telecommuted and created all work product on FOSS software and Linux and not a peep was heard from the PHB's. Or her. The older folks get their email, do their surfing, IM their grandchildren, one even uses a webcam with the little brats and at no time does The Music of The Spheres hit a discordant note. Another woman did all her college course work on it. She graduated. With honors and real monetary achievement awards.
When I install Linux, everything, except them fershlugganah Broadcom WIFI chips just...works. The Broadcom chips take me all of 5 minutes to get working. Try THAT with Vista or XP x64! Hoo. Hah. Errm. I mean this whole "Linux Hardware driver" thing(Oh, and they are called "modules", if you must know) is so hoary and trite.
Please, m'dear, Clever people are nice. They are fun. But that's clever and FACTUAL people. Desktop Linux is here, it's ready and it works. The only thing that seems to be holding it up is PHB's who feel that they simply must spend huge gouts of company money on seat licenses, consultant fees and selling their first born male into white slavery, and if they don't have to, then the alternative must be crap. For such is the time-honored wisdom of PHB's.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
