There is a concept from marketing known as branding. Brands are not merely a convenient name by which your company or product is known. Consumers respond to brands themselves, either positively or negatively. This is known as brand equity.

A brand with good equity will sell a product simply by having its name attached to it. A Calvin Klein shirt will sell for more than a comparable shirt from a less famous brand. Likewise, a brand with bad equity will inhibit sales of an otherwise good product.

Brands that become toxic are abandoned. The company will change its name, or change the name of the product, or release a new product under a new name. Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria for example. IBM sold off its hard drive business to another firm when their "Deathstar" line of drives became irredeemably associated with poor quality.

Ideas also have brands.

When an idea keeps getting rebranded under new names, it means the people peddling that idea are having a hard time. The more familiar potential consumers (believers) of that idea become with it, the more likely they are to reject it. So the people who want to push that idea repackage it under a new name and try to pretend it is something different.

I'm not surprised that global warming / climate change / climate chaos / etc has been given yet another name. I'm just surprised that it took them so long to think one up.

He recommended deploying an alternative browser, not replacing IE altogether. That way when IE has a bad vulnerability you notify everyone to temporarilly use the alternate on external sites, use group policy to disable vulnerable features, or even block it at the firewall depending on the severity. They can keep using IE internally during that time. Then when a patch comes out you deploy it and lift the restrictions. The next week when firefox has a zero-day, you do the same for it, and recommend people use IE for the time being. It is a very sensible way to allow the most productivity possible while staying secure.

If they really need to use Active X on externall websites during a vulnerability, you can whitelist those sites in Group Policy if needed, but honestly I would just consider the downtime a cost of doing business with outdated insecure technology in most cases. Cleaning up a bad worm/virus that spread through the entire campus could be much more expensive.

Agreed. I've done this in the past and starting as close to the original analog telemetry stream as possible is essential. Even if the noise is so bad that analog filtering doesn't recover any new data in the preD, simply knowing where there is missing data and exactly how much can help tremendously in reconstructing the data. Their raw mpeg files don't provide any of that information.

It is the market that will determine whether Tesla has potential, not its competitors.

Same here. I tried TurboTax one year and it didn't save me any money, didn't really save me any time, and had annoying DRM. You have to research what you can deduct on your own anyway in advance anyway so you can preserve documentation throughout the year, and that is the time consuming part. So paying money just to have software fill out and submit the form doesn't seem worth it for me.

If you're working with people who are comfortable with technology, then making such a transition should not cause too much pain. Annoyances yes, especially with file format compatibility issues, but nothing too serious. You'll be answering lots of questions, but the questions themselves will be from a position of needing some details filled in, not failure to understand basic concepts.

On the other hand, if you're working with people for whom computers and technology are PFM (Pure @#%$ing Magic) then ANY CHANGE, no matter how trivial, will lead to nervous breakdowns. For such people, use of a computer involves memorized incantations (if not outright prayers) based on mouse movements, clicks, and magic words typed into the screen. If these change, even slightly, they will be utterly lost and terrified -- and they'll blame YOU.

If this is the case, then you're going to have to create a standardized installation of Linux with a normal desktop interface (Cinnamon, KDE) and then TRAIN your employees on how to use it. Mint is a good choice. I'm using the KDE version of Mint 16 on all my workstations. The cinnamon version is also perfectly usable. There are of course other options. The key is to create an environment that is as close to what they know as possible. Not necessarily in terms of how it looks, but how it BEHAVES.

Even so, there will always be some differences that will trip such users up. You guys might have to hire a temp worker whose sole job will be to train and support your employees until they learn the new incantations.

The good news is that moving from XP/Vista/7 to a normal desktop Linux distro will actually be easier than trying to retrain these employees to use the malware that is Windows 8.

Future victims of this criminal organization should sue Symantec.

Class action lawsuit.

I also think that criminal charges for aiding and abetting would apply as well.

"Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it," executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker wrote. "We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves. We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better."

The only way this statement would make the least bit of rational sense is as an apology for capitulating to the mob who called for Eich's head.

But sadly, that isn't how this statement was intended.

I'm genuinely disgusted that the Mozilla Foundation would behave this way. How can I trust a group to produce valid products when they have no integrity?

How will this affect the central mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Muslim outreach?

There are lots of Muslims in Russia NASA might not be able to reach now.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...

The translation of a literary work can be purely scholarly or purely artistic, but usually it is a mix of both. Given Tolkien's mastery of both worlds, and the fact that his love of Beowulf went far beyond linguistic and historical study, it is pretty clear that his translation will be of broad literary interest, not just scholarly.

He called it "Much ado about nothing."

Insensitive clods, idiots, and outright jackasses get to express themselves just like everyone else.

That they do so is not a crisis to be solved.

But it is a great excuse and cover story for efforts to deny freedom of expression.

Not all are fooled.

You make a lot of great points....that have been made for decades now.

Hasn't discouraged hustlers like Jackson from their perpetual shake downs.

They're not interested in the truth. They're not even interested in pursuing the goals they claim to have. They're interested in playing the race card for profit.

The best way to deal with them is with ridicule.

Is it horrible how those black students at your high school and university discriminated against themselves by choosing not to pursue CS opportunities? /sarc

The very notion of a "minority" is a scam.

It is just a made up word that seems to mean someone who isn't "white."

People are encouraged to fret over whether some person or another is a "minority" or not, instead of just treating them like a human being.

What is more, in fields that tap a global talent pool, people who aren't "white" are the numerical majority.