DISQUS

Facebook is available in China from my hotel. upload.facebook.com appears to be blocked along with youtube. Both are simply timing out.

I think FB is a great tool and I've been using friend groups since before the latest redesign. Because my weekend job/hobby is DJing and promoting concerts I'm going to have a ton of people who are casual acquaintances from the club who simply want to know when/where our next event will be held. Breaking them into a separate group and only inviting that group to an event is great. MySpace isn't that versatile for promoting events. I also have school-alumni and work-alumni to keep up with former classmates and coworkers. Finally I have my Top 20 IRL friends and the unknown bucket. The latter has almost no access to my profile or other information. I rarely look at the full stream of updates and concentrate on my Top 20 IRL friends. Plaxo tried to be the only address book you need, but Facebook is better suited to that because of the number of people on the service. LinkedIn has only close business associates, people I would hire/contract with, or well known movers & shakers at your local professional association meetings who are out spoken enough to call upon if you need an opinion on a topic.

That really depends on your school. Our slogan is "The Campus of Tomorrow" (www.ggc.usg.edu) and all of the professors are strongly encouraged to choose books that have an e-book component. So far every class I've been in since I decided to go back to school has had an electronic book option. I've had classes where you can buy the paper book, the PDF in its entirety, or pay per chapter for a PDF. My microeconomics class has either a paper book, or you can pay to rent a flash version that is online only for a 6 month subscription. I've only taken one class recently that had a Kindle option, but I'll be sure to suggest that they seek out publishers that do have Kindle textbooks.

The real payoff in e-books is college textbooks. A typical undergrad book costs around $300 at your college book store. The PDF versions of most textbooks are 50%-60% off the paper book price. Also consider that many professors change books every semester, which means you can't sell your book back so DRM really isn't a concern, and I actually managed to put my Statistics and Accounting books to use in my IT Security job so I'm keeping them anyway. The last time I managed to sell a book was on Facebook and the person I sold it to had to drive from a college 50 miles away. If you were to buy 1 semesters worth of text books on a Kindle you've paid for the kindle. You also get the benefit of not carrying around a backpack full of books. I never loan out books and mass market paperbacks will only fetch you $1 at a used book store, so putting them in the recycle bin is more convenient than making a special trip just for $2-$3. I see e-publishing in the academic space as being very economical TODAY. With the money you save on your college text books the kindle will pay for itself in 1 semester and then any leisure reading is cheaper than buying paper books, doesn't take up room in your house/apt, and has the environmental benefit of not using paper. As far as I'm concerned e-publishing has reached its prime and will only get better.

@Carl M

You are correct that many 401K and pension plans either have no choice or limited choice Blame your HR department for the latter since they approve all the mutual funds in the company 401k.

However, everyone has access to Roth IRAs. The fact that people CHOOSE not to have them invalidates your statement that they are not a viable solution. Most financial advisors believe that the 6% that most companies do a 401K match on is insufficient for retirement. Therefore if you are on the ball you will be contributing to your own retirement in addition to what you get through your employer. If you open a Roth with Fidelity or any of the other large firms you have your choice of mutual funds that you can put your retirement in. There are free market solutions that people can participate in to bolster their retirement and short term wealth. The fact that they may not be informed is one barrier to entry. We don't need higher taxes, but rather we need to educate people on how to take care of themselves and make wiser decisions for themselves. I also believe that people should depend on their extended families (or clan for you Asians and Scots) if they hit on hard times. The private sector solved the wealth problem hundreds of years ago if you look at it from the clan perspective.

@Carl M

You are correct that many 401K and pension plans either have no choice or limited choice Blame your HR department for the latter since they approve all the mutual funds in the company 401k.

However, everyone has access to Roth IRAs. The fact that people CHOOSE not to have them invalidates your statement that they are not a viable solution. Most financial advisors believe that the 6% that most companies do a 401K match on is insufficient for retirement. Therefore if you are on the ball you will be contributing to your own retirement in addition to what you get through your employer. If you open a Roth with Fidelity or any of the other large firms you have your choice of mutual funds that you can put your retirement in. There are free market solutions that people can participate in to bolster their retirement and short term wealth. The fact that they may not be informed is one barrier to entry. We don't need higher taxes, but rather we need to educate people on how to take care of themselves and make wiser decisions for themselves. I also believe that people should depend on their extended families (or clan for you Asians and Scots) if they hit on hard times. The private sector solved the wealth problem hundreds of years ago if you look at it from the clan perspective.

To Zealot. Trickle down economics does work, but what people are looking for is a kick in their pay check or savings in lower priced goods. That is where people think it does not work. If multiple company's profit margin increases due to tax cut, expense reductions, or better management it allows them to cut prices to compete. Now if the board of directors says they want to keep the profits and the stock prices high it might not trickle down to individuals in the form of a pay check or lower priced goods, but it does in terms of their 401K or Roth IRA. As I told one of my friends, don't complain about the evil oil companies. Put your retirement investments in oil until Bush leaves office and enjoy a bigger or earlier retirement. An individual's wealth is no different than a company. I look at myself as a company of one. I have short and long term debt, as well as short and long term investments. Americans tend to only look at their pay check and not retirement accounts, land equity, etc. as a form of income/wealth. If the big evil corporations are making money I am happy because I have a Roth IRA and a 401K. The more money they make the earlier I can retire.

To Zealot. Trickle down economics does work, but what people are looking for is a kick in their pay check or savings in lower priced goods. That is where people think it does not work. If multiple company's profit margin increases due to tax cut, expense reductions, or better management it allows them to cut prices to compete. Now if the board of directors says they want to keep the profits and the stock prices high it might not trickle down to individuals in the form of a pay check or lower priced goods, but it does in terms of their 401K or Roth IRA. As I told one of my friends, don't complain about the evil oil companies. Put your retirement investments in oil until Bush leaves office and enjoy a bigger or earlier retirement. An individual's wealth is no different than a company. I look at myself as a company of one. I have short and long term debt, as well as short and long term investments. Americans tend to only look at their pay check and not retirement accounts, land equity, etc. as a form of income/wealth. If the big evil corporations are making money I am happy because I have a Roth IRA and a 401K. The more money they make the earlier I can retire.

What you have to ask is how these "rich" small business owners are organized. I need some hard evidence, but according to most conservative "think tanks" many small business owners operate as a sole proprietorship or an LLC. This means that all income from the business goes on the individual's tax return. People that don't organize as an S-Corp or a C-Corp are going to be paying higher taxes. For many people the trouble of organizing a corporation and hiring all the necessary CPAs is not worth it from a hassle standpoint, eventhough they could pay less taxes than a corporation would. This is where cutting taxes on the so called rich would be a benefit.

Then there's the issue of corporate taxes. From what I've read Obama wants to raise taxes on corporations. This is a bad idea. If a corporation's taxes go up by 10% then you can surely bet there will be at least a 10% budget cut across the board. If your IT department has a $2M operating budget be prepared to get rid of $200,000 at a minimum, which is about 4 entry to mid-level head count. It's no wonder that people get PO boxes in Ireland or Hungary and organize their corporations there where they pay 12% and 16% respectively.

What you have to ask is how these "rich" small business owners are organized. I need some hard evidence, but according to most conservative "think tanks" many small business owners operate as a sole proprietorship or an LLC. This means that all income from the business goes on the individual's tax return. People that don't organize as an S-Corp or a C-Corp are going to be paying higher taxes. For many people the trouble of organizing a corporation and hiring all the necessary CPAs is not worth it from a hassle standpoint, eventhough they could pay less taxes than a corporation would. This is where cutting taxes on the so called rich would be a benefit.

Then there's the issue of corporate taxes. From what I've read Obama wants to raise taxes on corporations. This is a bad idea. If a corporation's taxes go up by 10% then you can surely bet there will be at least a 10% budget cut across the board. If your IT department has a $2M operating budget be prepared to get rid of $200,000 at a minimum, which is about 4 entry to mid-level head count. It's no wonder that people get PO boxes in Ireland or Hungary and organize their corporations there where they pay 12% and 16% respectively.

Russia has been less than useful in the so called "War on Terror" by selling weapon systems to people I would rather not see. So from that perspective I would say "Bad Russia". As a matter of fact, as a juror in US Georgia I can legally nullify based on personal belief and at this point anyone who does bad things to Russia, no matter how bad, is "not guilty" in my book. Outrage and sympathy should be reserved for people who deserve it.

Russia has been less than useful in the so called "War on Terror" by selling weapon systems to people I would rather not see. So from that perspective I would say "Bad Russia". As a matter of fact, as a juror in US Georgia I can legally nullify based on personal belief and at this point anyone who does bad things to Russia, no matter how bad, is "not guilty" in my book. Outrage and sympathy should be reserved for people who deserve it.

Would you say that anyone who installs a v1.0 of a software product is ignorant? What about buying the 1st model year of a newly redesigned vehicle? There are risks and rewards with using anything new. The fact that people do not perform a formal risk analysis does not make them ignorant. In American society newer is always better (think gadgets, cars, houses, etc). The only difference is that drugs may seriously mess you up as opposed to giving you a blue screen or leaving you stranded on the side of the road.

Would you say that anyone who installs a v1.0 of a software product is ignorant? What about buying the 1st model year of a newly redesigned vehicle? There are risks and rewards with using anything new. The fact that people do not perform a formal risk analysis does not make them ignorant. In American society newer is always better (think gadgets, cars, houses, etc). The only difference is that drugs may seriously mess you up as opposed to giving you a blue screen or leaving you stranded on the side of the road.

I recently dropped Bally Fitness after being a member for the past 9 years because they started offering 3 year contracts only. I joined Lifetime Fitness because they don't offer contracts as part of their business model. Granted there was a lot of sales puffery, but I can admire a company that says we want you to be happy with our services and if you aren't then we want you to cancel. They gauge their performance on the number of cancellations they process, which is something you can't do if your members are locked in a long term contract. If only cellphone companies would operate this way.

I recently dropped Bally Fitness after being a member for the past 9 years because they started offering 3 year contracts only. I joined Lifetime Fitness because they don't offer contracts as part of their business model. Granted there was a lot of sales puffery, but I can admire a company that says we want you to be happy with our services and if you aren't then we want you to cancel. They gauge their performance on the number of cancellations they process, which is something you can't do if your members are locked in a long term contract. If only cellphone companies would operate this way.

You have to consider who is going to be consuming the risk assessment. Ranum is a very technical person and I'm sure he's thinking that the consumers of the report will be very technical as well. The fact is that many consumers of RA's will be professional managers at the VP or C-Level who will in turn have to condense the report down to one or two PowerPoint slides for the Board of Directors meeting. I believe you are on target with using RA's to bring awareness to management. The presentation must be tailored to the proper group. In my experience it takes a VP or Officer's financial signing authority to bring a consulting firm in and the COO or CFO is not going to be interested in hearing about SQL Injection or specific vulnerabilities. They want to hear a general exposure report and the compensating controls in place to reach an executive decision as to how much residual risk they want to live with. A CTO, CISO, or CIO might want to hear what Ranum is suggesting, but most RA's are being driven by the SOX compliance division under the CFO or through the Legal or Compliance departments, not by IT and the final report will be tailored to suit the department paying for the engagement.

You have to consider who is going to be consuming the risk assessment. Ranum is a very technical person and I'm sure he's thinking that the consumers of the report will be very technical as well. The fact is that many consumers of RA's will be professional managers at the VP or C-Level who will in turn have to condense the report down to one or two PowerPoint slides for the Board of Directors meeting. I believe you are on target with using RA's to bring awareness to management. The presentation must be tailored to the proper group. In my experience it takes a VP or Officer's financial signing authority to bring a consulting firm in and the COO or CFO is not going to be interested in hearing about SQL Injection or specific vulnerabilities. They want to hear a general exposure report and the compensating controls in place to reach an executive decision as to how much residual risk they want to live with. A CTO, CISO, or CIO might want to hear what Ranum is suggesting, but most RA's are being driven by the SOX compliance division under the CFO or through the Legal or Compliance departments, not by IT and the final report will be tailored to suit the department paying for the engagement.

Good luck with the new opportunity! Not too much to worry about the economy. If you are with a company that big hopefully they have good foreign business to get them through any slow sales in the US.

Good luck with the new opportunity! Not too much to worry about the economy. If you are with a company that big hopefully they have good foreign business to get them through any slow sales in the US.

Another thing to consider is the 29 minute window for the connection to be IDLE. I have used both VGSMail and Flexmail 2007 for PocketPC and neither worked properly with default settings. For my carrier and IMAP provider I found through trial and error changing the default from 29 to 3 minutes fixed the problem. Both programs send the IDLE heart beat back to the IMAP sever after a certain amount of time and if the connection has been dropped you will see an authentication attempt in the logs. I kept reducing the IDLE time until I was consistently able to keep the connection open. 3 minutes was the sweet spot. It still uses less power than doing POP3 every 10 minutes, which shows the true resource savings of IMAP IDLE. Keep an eye out for the P-IMAP standard which is designed for mobile devices.

Another thing to consider is the 29 minute window for the connection to be IDLE. I have used both VGSMail and Flexmail 2007 for PocketPC and neither worked properly with default settings. For my carrier and IMAP provider I found through trial and error changing the default from 29 to 3 minutes fixed the problem. Both programs send the IDLE heart beat back to the IMAP sever after a certain amount of time and if the connection has been dropped you will see an authentication attempt in the logs. I kept reducing the IDLE time until I was consistently able to keep the connection open. 3 minutes was the sweet spot. It still uses less power than doing POP3 every 10 minutes, which shows the true resource savings of IMAP IDLE. Keep an eye out for the P-IMAP standard which is designed for mobile devices.