The last time I anthropomorphized a program it got quite angry at me.

Mrs Compiler wouldn't let me sleep in C: for a week, and even then she wouldn't let me declare unsigned variable types for the rest of the month!

So bitcoin is bad because the metal presses that stamp out coins and the printing presses and cutters that make bills all run on magical unicorn farts instead of electricity?

Try three, and yes not only do I think it is fair, but clearly you too think it is fair by your actions (or you're just admitting to being a parasite criminal stealing my work... either way you look pretty bad)

To claim you don't think it is fair, you need to send me my first payment, and continue sending me payments every month for the rest of your life.
Until those checks clear, you're just being a lying hypocrite.

In fact, you seem to be arguing that even ONE payment is too much, let alone multiple ones.
So I thank you for your permission to take anything you make for free - or I would if you actually made anything.

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!

How can you distinguish one thing from another thing if you can't look at either of the things?

The only way to prevent "10000 packets in a second were sent, but my connection can only transfer 1000 packets in a second" (aka a DoS attack) is to not have those extra 9000 packets sent in that particular second.

If they aren't sent, you can't see them (they aren't there to see!), so you have exactly Zero variables to use for decision making upon.

If they are sent so you can make a choice based on some characteristic of the packet, then the packet must be sent, and you have failed in your goal of not having the packet sent.

Worse in a typical DDoS, any characteristic of 1 packet will not match the same characteristic of the other 8999 packets.
So not only is your choice of "do I want to receive this packet" too late after it has already been sent and received, but any choice you might decide to make will also not apply towards helping the problem in the future.

Fortunately science doesn't much care about our definition of life (or the lack of definition, in this case)

But discovering a thing acting similar to a virus but doesn't operate by any of the methods we know would still be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

Discovering a thing similar in structure to a crystal where no known methods of crystal growth are apparent would also be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

Discovering a chemical reaction that is different from any known chemical reaction would too be an amazing discovery and a wealth of knowledge to research.

History shows us both the individual cells as well as the larger organism, not to mention the cell behavior, higher structures formed out of the cells, and the organism as a whole will all be fascinating and a wealth of knowledge to research.

If any of the things on your list was discovered and found to not work in a way we already know about, someone somewhere on our planet will jump at the chance to research it - life or not.
And the best part, even if that would come to be and we do discover any of those things completely different from what we know, it will matter as little afterwards as it did before if they are called life or not.

More knowledge being gained is always a good thing, since the worst case is no gain but no losses and the best case is huge gains with no loses.

Gaining just some knowledge instead of much more than some knowledge is not a valid reason to avoid learning.

Personally I haven't made it to stateless yet. People still address me as CDIR, but your point still remains.

Or put another way:
"Oh no, Windows includes an "Administrators" group by default that grants superuser privileges to users in it! And an existing administrator could possibly add themselves to that group and gain administrator access!"

Agreed, stupidest vulnerability ever.

I dunno, they need to up the lack of class if they ever hope to top drive through funerals

Well I did just happen to come by one of those at a recent auction.

While my original thought was to have a bronze statue of myself constructed to display it I suppose I can keep it in a back pocket instead, though it might present an obstacle being in such close proximity to where I usually pull my slashdot posts from...

How about you keep your opinion to yourself until you stop being a hypocrite about it.

You are currently at this very second resisting arrest. If you feel so strongly that fact should mean you must die, then you have to put your money where your mouth is and actually die before your viewpoint will even be considered. Anything less means your actions show you don't at all believe what you said, so why should we?

So are your actions going to follow your words and you kill yourself?
Or are your actions going to be hypocritical and the exact opposite of your words, and you post a reply instead?

I've been using Meraki MDM for a bit over a year now for managing my own devices, and have been quite pleased so far.

Sadly about a year back Cisco acquired them so there have been some changes in pricing and scope, but the free standard version is still available even if slightly hidden (most 'try now' links go to the enterprise signup page)
It now manages Cisco APs, Cisco switches, MDM, and a bit more random stuff.

Their main page is:
https://meraki.cisco.com/

MDM specific info is at:
https://meraki.cisco.com/solut...

Standard version signup is at:
https://meraki.cisco.com/form/...

Note that they now offer two versions, standard and enterprise. Feature wise they are pretty identical except for technical support.
Standard is free for up to 50 devices, then device 51 and after will run you $1/device/month.
I've no idea the pricing details on enterprise, other than the 30 day trial involves them sending you an access point that works with it. I assume even device #1 has a monthly cost.

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If you run Spiceworks, their latest major-version provides basic access to MDM for free through IBMs MaaS360.
They have a free version that adamantly doesn't have near enough features, and a paid version that is $3/device/month.
The paid version has all the features of IBMs branded version, but is a little cheaper per device.

http://www.spiceworks.com/free...

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If you want free and DIY, check out the "iPhone Configuration Utility" (mac/win versions available from apple) that let you create your own policy files - but you need to get them onto each iPhone "manually".
By manual this can be as easy as an email attachment or wifi-portal webpage download or something.
For devices you purchase and allocate to staff this is usually fine, but BYOD can be a problem without incentives for the user to install the profile themselves.

I used this method at work since I only had two profiles available then.
To get on the wifi network you needed to install our wifi profile, which grants access to the network and then enforces the network policy.
They didn't HAVE to install this policy, but then no wifi access at all.

I have a second profile to setup Cisco VPN client settings for users with VPN access, but my profile is more akin to a .PCF config (shared secret and IP stuff users don't need to worry about) and nothing else, so it just saves some typing for them. Not much arm twisting needed here.

http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/...
(Download links at the bottom of this wiki, or just use Google)

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Sadly all other MDM platforms I evaluated over a year ago either no longer exist or in the 'rather expensive' category.

The list I used at the time for the higher end providers was
http://www.enterpriseios.com/w...

I found 2-3 good gems in that list at the time (Meraki and MaaS360/Spiceworks being the best priced then)
Might still be worth a look for you.

Strange, seeing as iPhone is one of the most manageable devices out there, second only to Blackberry and not by a very wide margin even then.

Not only can you push a wifi policy automatically for any BYOD iPhones that join your wifi to control network related policies, but managed (MDM) iPhones give you as much control over them as windows group policy does over windows desktops.

In fact the only one feature iPhone doesn't measure up on compared to Blackberry is app pushing over cellular. Since the discussion seems to be more about "letting them on the network" assuming wifi access isn't unreasonable, and removes that one limitation completely.

Has any progress what so ever been made with enterprise managing of android without any 3rd party solutions? As of the last android OS there was basically nothing to speak of, so I can't see them catching up these last 8ish years in just a few months.

Letting android on the network is about as secure as letting non-domain home windows systems on, so it is quite amusing you feel this is a better option!

It takes an absurd argument to counter an equally absurd argument.

One absurd argument is that configuring a web server to instruct a browser to download a bunch of image files (as linked in the HTML) is a crime if a human being did not grant you that permission directly, since permission via configuration settings clearly doesn't matter.

This argument has been used (successfully) in court before, and in the US is a crime.

So an equally absurd argument is that me making my web browser connect to their server and being fed data, despite my browsers configuration to go ahead and do that, what matters is nothing but my wishes. If I wish for that data to not be downloaded, then at that point the data was forced upon me, and should be equally criminal.

You don't get it both ways.

A CPU is nothing but a ton of logic gates wired mostly to each other inside of a tiny package, and logic gates are made from multiple transistors.

Here is a page showing how each type of logic gate is made from transistors:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.g...

Within a logic gate chip, all gates have their ground and power lines wired together and out to two pins on the chip, while the inputs/outputs typically also end up at pins on the chip, with everything else being internal to the IC.

Scaling up a level you can wire together multiple gates similarly.
A CPU is generally nothing but thousands to billions of these transistors wired together into gates that are wired together into "logical blocks" (think basic lego parts put together to form shapes, which you make a lot of, and then build your thing with the shapes)
This is why even today CPUs generally have a "transistor count", the number of the most basic elements on the chip making those gates that make up logical blocks that end up actually doing things.

The first CPUs in fact were boards (and boards and boards) of nothing but transistors wired together this way, before we could put them on a tiny silicon package in a small enough form to be called a microchip.

The first chips (at least that I am aware of) that packaged standard gates together in an IC is the 7400 line of chips. A 7402 chip for example contains four separate NOR gates for example.

Here is a Z80 CPU built using nothing but these 7400 gate chips:
http://cpuville.com/Z80.htm

The Z80 was used in home computers like the TRS-80, the ZX Spectrum, the Osborne, and I think even some of the old Commodore line. It was also in the original Nintendo Gameboy and Gameboy Color, and a ton more systems.
It's still used today although more for things we would think of as embedded devices. I have a SCSI card powered by one, for example.

Instead of a tiny IC measuring roughly an inch squared, when using 7400 chips the CPU is as large as you see in the picture on that page.

Just as it is rare to code in assembly these days, assemblers take higher level commands that consist of many assembly instructions and compiles those high level instructions down to blocks of assembly code (and then proceeds, hopefully, to optimize those blocks... but pretending optimization is disabled may give you a better idea visually)

Hope that explains some of it and didn't make the confusion worse ;}