This is not at all surprising. We contracted a major premises security company to build out the entry-access systems in our company's new buildings a few years ago. Just to be clear, these control the locks to every door into all of the buildings as well as higher security areas within the buildings. The installers insisted that the control boxes for every building needed to have fixed public IP addresses and could not be behind a firewall in order to work. With little understanding of what they were actually asking, they would only enable service if we provided exactly that to them. Do I even need to mention that they left all of these control units running with default username and password?

Needless to say, once functioning service had been established, I immediately moved everything behind a firewall with no forwarding whatsoever to the NAT private address range. Of course, everything works just fine. I later double-checked the installation guide, which allowed for even wider flexibility in installation, with no real network restrictions of the sort that the installers demanded. I'm sure, however, that if they had ever consulted that document, they would not have understood anything about the network installation instructions.

A big part of the problem with things like this is that the systems are installed by people with next to no real network knowledge. They see their job as alarm, plumbing, cabling, construction, or whatever. So when they get to the networked component, they install it in the simplest, most straightforward manner that has been prescribed by someone only slightly more knowledgeable than they are. They are instructions designed to work in every situation for the dimmest of installers, making it possible to complete the contract as possible, even when the client has no one with network knowledge available. The installers, not understanding networks, see them as impenetrably cryptic and therefore secure from intrusion. In most situations there is no one whose job it is to assess security of these connected devices at the completion of the contract, much less tell the customer that they've left them with a risk.

Sadly, the only real advice for these situations is to make companies (the client companies, I mean, not the vendors) understand that they need to be responsible for their own security. If they don't have the necessary expertise on staff, then they absolutely *need* to hire someone - no, not the damn Geek Squad - to check that any network connected device is secure. If they don't then they own the resultant problems. I suppose, in the long run, that insurance companies will require some sort of compliance if potential risk is to be insured.

I'm a tug pilot, you insensitive clod!

So MS is forgoing revenue altogether over this cut? Seems unlikely. I think giving their own mobile offerings a market advantage and the existing competition on iOS probably have more to do with it. After all, the sell software retail and a lot more than 30% goes to retailer and distributor in that model.

Publishing rights, which tend to make more money than mechanicals.

Netflix supports something like 280 different platforms. Silverlight only runs on a handful of those.

I'm not sure that's true. 1080p had always been the goal of HD, even with the original HD spec developed in Japan in the 80s. No matter what, everyone knew we were going to get there and understood the advantages over NTSC and PAL. Consumers and content creators could see the improvements brought by HD. Most of the people who cared about 1080p just waited until prices dropped and skipped 720p and 1080i. That all occurred as part of the big HD uptake over the past 5 years.

The problems with 4k are twofold. First, it isn't part of the existing HD spec. It is a new standard that doesn't have the imprimatur of governments and cable companies designating it as a target to be achieved. Second, it is a move driven entirely by the consumer electronics industry. There isn't demand from users and there is certainly no interest on the production side.

I work in post production and the data hassles of 3D have been enough to keep our company (and many others) away from it. The substantially larger file sizes associated with 4K are even worse. For a production company like ours, we'd have to move to a petabyte SAN just to manage an equivalent amount of 4K footage to what we do now in HD. Transcoding times would go through the roof, bandwidth would be heavily taxed, even the hardware requirements for decoding a single compressed stream (to say nothing of editors handling MANY simultaneous streams) for playback would be much higher. And for what? The only quality improvements would be in resolution (as opposed to the jump to HD, which brought a massive change to color handling over NTSC). Networks don't want to pay higher budgets for something that won't help make them any more competitive. Satellite providers, who already compress the shit out of their HD signals, don't have spare bandwidth for fatter streams. Cable companies, who are basically in the data business now, don't want to waste their bandwidth on it. Even with SDV it would add a lot to their overhead. Game consoles are still struggling to make the most out of HD, so are nowhere near ready to handle that many additional pixels. You might have videophiles willing to spend a ton of money on ultra-premium gear, but even they would be limited to using specialty playback hardware that would have to download massive files because 4k exceeds the storage capacity of any commercially available blu-ray media.

TV manufacturers are pushing this because the great upgrade is over and 3D has failed to excite consumers. They need something to try and convince consumers to replace a perfectly functional, nearly new 1080p TV. So they're going to run with 4K in 2013.

No, this is more like a cop walking by your door and happens to see you taking a bong hit when someone opens it. At that point, no warrant is necessary because he's directly witnessed the act. This isn't a slippery slope (a term which is given to a type of fallacious argument, by the way, not valid ones) it has always been the interpretation of the law.

Nevermind. I completely misread the story. My question isn't at all relevant. Next time I'll RTFA closely.

Are there any lawyers who can comment on whether offering money might constitute inducement to criminal behavior? It seems like that might implicate in WikiLeaks in criminal behavior when simply taking receipt of sensitive information does not.

If speed were the only benefit of SSD, that would be a valid question to use when evaluating a purchase. SSDs additionally offer substantially reduced power usage and - the deciding factor in my case - the substantially increased durability that comes with no moving parts.

Andersen Consulting (which later became Accenture) and Arthur Andersen (a now-defunct major accounting firm) were effectively separate companies for a very long time prior to the renaming and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen.

The lack of a relevant degree may be a problem getting into very large corporate IT, but not elsewhere. Most people I know in the business didn't study anything related in school (I was a Japanese studies major) and it's more useful to have people who have learned on the job and worked their way up. The fact that my #2 has a CS degree has nothing to do with him getting his job - I never even asked about his education background, I just wanted to know about what he could do as a sysadmin. An IT guy with CS training can be very useful, but only in an organization that gives you enough freedom to wear multiple hats and propose solutions you can create.

When I began high school, cigarettes were about $1 a pack. By the time I graduated, they were almost $5 a pack. This most definitely had a deterrent effect on kids who were completely unconcerned with the health risks. It never stopped being cool, but it did become prohibitively expensive. Additionally, it was a more effective enforcement mechanism than a minimum age to purchase. Smokers never had trouble getting cigarettes because the weren't legally old enough - enforcement was never as strict on tobacco as on alcohol - but they couldn't escape the tax effect.

Monitoring connections is pretty easy. Assuming there's even a modest budget behind this project, I'd recommend upgrading to a decent firewall with robust monitoring/logging built in. I use Sonicwall NSA appliances with log servers running their analytical tools, but that space is crowded with many good alternatives.
Your client will never be able to prevent his family from being scammed, though. Sure, you can block phishing sites, etc. by subscribing to various blacklists, but scams rely on the victim's credulity and that exists outside of your control as a network admin.

Actually pulling out data from within those connections simply isn't going to happen. It's not even remotely practical in too many ways. You will only disappoint your client if you ever imply that you might be able to give them access to that sort of data. Be completely honest about the limitations of what you're capable of. You can always block certain traffic types, but if you're dealing with mobile clients, they can sidestep those blocks by disabling the wifi connection and just riding on the cellular.

An artist named Andy Runton has a series of simple comics called "Owly". They use the visual language of comics, but don't require literacy. When the characters rarely speak, they do so in pictograms. The stories and jokes are simple enough for young kids to follow without seeming condescending to adults (i.e. it's not Dick & Jane type stuff). My daughter started on them around that age before she could read and liked them. She's almost 7 and is a great reader, but she still enjoys them. I'm sure there are other good comics out there for pre-literate kids if you ask around. I know the comic stores I frequent usually have a lot of kids books available on Free Comics Day. Stop by and take everything you think might be interesting to your boy and see what sticks.

Once your son begins reading, there are a lot more options: Jeff Smith's "Bone" series, Kazu Kibuishi's "Amulet" Series, Disney Comics (esp. the Carl Barks Duck Adventures). Superhero comics are a bit tougher to get into. Kids are drawn to the costumes and the setup, but the plots and language can be a lot more opaque than you'd expect, especially as they've become oriented towards more sophisticated adult readers over the past 30 years.

Good luck, he's gonna have fun!