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Comments · 92
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Wireless blogging
Wireless blogging is going to be a way to get around many restrictions. Of course this doesn't help if they are blocking the servers. Fortunately these days there are a vast number of hosting companies which provide blog hosting. And wireless net is huge in China, with hundreds of millions of WAP-enabled phones. I think that the government will at some point just give up on this and realize that free expression is not that much of a threat. They should look over at the example of Singapore, where the government is very strict, but it tolerates a little joking commentary. The PRC will realize that people complaining is not the same thing as a real challenge.
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It's a question of when and how, not ifI think terraforming Mars is inevitable if it's possible to do it at all. Even if a group of scientists convened by NASA all decide that it's ethically wrong, there is no way for that decision to bind all the other countries which have the capability of doing it. If it's possible, someone will do it. This is a similar situation to the non-proliferation treaty. We have this treaty, and a big chunk of the world's population, including its most powerful country, want to maintain the NPT, but were unable to enforce it. Unlike non-proliferation, stopping terraforming on Mars is unlikely to ever be a top foreign policy issue for any country, so if it's possible for it to happen and if any country has a motive to do it (like having a population of 1.2 billion people) then it will be done.
So the question is, how can it be done in the least destructive way? That's what they should be asking. I'm guessing that the best thing would be to do as much exobiology research on it as possible before anyone starts thinking about terraforming. We may not be able to stop terraforming but at least we could learn as much as possible before the Mars environment is thoroughly corrupted with Earth biology.
Also, terraforming may be a long and slow process. Earth and Mars organisms could coexist for a long time during this process. In fact, if Mars organisms are related to Earth organisms, they might play a role in terraforming.
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A definite possibility of a firm maybeAccording to the article, "its presence could provide unequivocal proof"! That settles it for me.
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I'm ready!It is too much trouble to tweak Linux to run correctly on many notebooks, because things like software suspend are tricky and very hardware-dependent. Hopefully HP will give us some notebook choices that come with everything set up correctly. That is enough to make my purchasing decision. One thing I hope they do not do is charge the same price for the same notebook with Linux vs. MS Windows. If they do that, Linux customers are essentially paying for an MS Windows license that they aren't receiving, which is wrong. We should be able to buy hardware without a MS Windows license and also not pay for the MS Windows license. I personally prefer the X brand of Windows, not the MS brand of Windows.
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Sure is!So strong I've never heard of it, and looking through the websites, all the faqs are simply lists of links to other faqs, and when I finally get to one that isn't a list of links, it just gives me some information about problems I might be having with Rexx executables, with no info anywhere about what Rexx is. Let's see, there's Java, C++, C, perl, Python, Intercal and a host of other languages with clear and obvious purposes and faqs, and therefore I should care about Rexx because? Maybe this would be a good opportunity for a
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YawnI'm bored of these OpenSSL advisories. On and on they go. An unchecked null and an out-of-bounds read. Someday, people will realize that unsafe data (anything that comes in over the net) really can't be safely manipulated in a language like C. If OpenSSL had been implemented in Java, there types of errors couldn't exist, or if they did exist, they would throw exceptions which could be caught and handled in some reasonable way.
Rule #1: Unsafe data should be handled in sandboxed languages.
Rule #2: Programs that are exposed to unsafe data (server processes) should run at some minimum and constrained privilege level, not as root. The "must be root to bind to ports less than 1024" rule on Unix is almost exactly the opposite of what the rule should be.
I'm sure many people who don't understand these issues will flame me or say I am trolling, but oh well, someone needs to keep bringing this up until it sinks in.
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Gnome may be on its wayIt looks like there is more emphasis on Gnome than on KDE in this press release. As a KDE fan, that concerns me a bit. Suse has always been a great KDE distro. I hope that Novell + Ximian + Suse does not mean Suse -> Gnome, although it seems inevitable.
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And I just ordered Mandrake 10Let's see, OpenBSD+SMP is out soon, Mandrake 10 is here, and now Suse 9.1 with Linux 2.6 KDE 3.2.1 is out. I'm in "new OS overload" here. I think I'll install Redhat 7.3 and VMWare and then I can install them all.
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FantasticMy dream system for security work would be a thin SMP OpenBSD environment with a Java runtime on it. That way there would be a solid, very security OS, with a sandboxed VM environment to run the server code, resulting in strong security at every level. I am looking forward to this. Now, if it can run KDE 3.2 and OOo 1.1 and Evolution, that is all I need in a desktop and development system. I've been using OpenBSD for years but I switched to Linux when it pulled ahead on desktop functionality, but maybe it's time to take another look at OpenBSD.
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SpinNotice how they are always talking about using these bots to "ferry supplies"? Have you ever seen the DoD say something about using these bots in actual combat roles? That is somehow never mentioned.
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LuteinI can't believe this thread has gone on so long with no one mentioning lutein. Lutein is a natural anti-oxidant nutrient found in leafy vegetables. Very few of us get enough of it in our diets naturally. All the opthamologists I know take it every day. It is the best thing we know of for prevening macular degeneration, something which frequently causes blindness in old people. This isn't crackpot new-age herbal stuff. If you don't believe this, ask any opthamologist if he has heard of lutein and what he thinks of it.
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Red Team can't really "win" in my opinionThe Red Team is favored by everyone to win, but is it really winning? What they have done is constructed an amazingly accurate and detailed map of every last bit of topography, down to the size of a big rock, of the region the race is going to be in. Their on-board sensors and navigation equipment doesn't have to do much sensing and navigation at all; they will get a foot-by-foot map of where they should be going. This doesn't strike me as "autonomous". It strikes me as just another version of remote control. Their victory will be an impressive technical feat but it certainly isn't the same as having a vehicle that you can plop down on unknown rugged terrain (be it a war zone or the surface of Mars) and have it get around on its own.
I will be more impressed if the autonomous motorcycle makes it ten miles than I will be for Red Team to win the whole thing, because at least this bike is fully autonomous and has some radical new ideas going into it, instead of just tons of resources and brute-force mapping.
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Strange contours have been tried before...The Octagon houses, domes, all kinds of shapes have been tried, but when it comes down to it, plain old right-angle planes are what really work. You can bolt things to them, modify them, cut passages through them, and make additions to them more easily than any other shape. I agree, cubes and rectangles are boring, but alas, they are what seem to work the best for real living.
If you want to see some beautiful uses of curves and non-right-angles in architecture, check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. It is truly beautiful, and the kind of thing which could not possibly have been built even 15 years ago because the computer modeling technology wasn't there. But that is a place you go to spend a few hours once a month, not to live there, and it was built with plenty of open space around it, not packed in like a house.
But I think this house-creating technology is cool and I'm sure it will find uses in more spread-out areas where there is room to be creative.
The logical next step is P2P architecture, right?
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It's a cliche, but true...Porn moves technology forward. Who would pay $2,000 for a VCR when there are no movies to rent? Guys who want to watch videos in their own homes. Who would put up with expensive ISPs, difficult modems and slow computers? Guys who want to see porn on their computers. The future is wireless porn according to Larry Flynt.
It is a great market for testing many things because it is such a commoditized and competitive market. The material is all the same boring stuff, so they need to explore new ways to market it. Is there a porn version of Netflix yet? Who is going to be the first in wireless porn?
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It's mostly marketing but it's a good idea
These companies need to do anything they can do to get more mobile data use out of their networks, hardware and software. Margins on voice traffic are dropping and will continue to drop, hastened by VoIP, so how to make up for lost revenue? Pretty soon a large chunk of high-margin international calling traffic will be VoIP, which basically means flat rate, which means... no more big bucks for ATT, etc. By selling new services, like wireless data the carriers can save themselves (they hope). Another problem for Nokia and friends is that handsets are starting to be manufactured in China, and Nokia will not be able to build plain old voice handsets at competitive prices, so it needs to get away from the commoditized market of voice handsets, which means it needs better entertainment abilities, which means wireless data. A TLD could really fit into that. The wireless web has great potential but consumer awareness is poor, because there aren't any good ways for consumers to identify mobile content and there aren't any easy ways for websites to produce mobile content without learning a bunch of new technologies. Well, there are some ways to do it now...
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We must not accept thisFor as long as I can remember, everyone has been saying that computer security flaws are inevitable. Somehow they are part of the "laws of physics" of the computer world and we must learn to live with them. This thought pattern is out of date and is holding us back from having secure systems. We have accepted this idea of inevitability of security problems just like we used to accept the inevitability of cars leaking oil or that certain medical conditions were incurable.
Computer security problems almost always fall into a few well-known (beaten to death is more accurate) patterns. One such pattern is the "buffer overflow attack". Why does anyone accept this? There is absolutely no reason for modern software to be subject to buffer overflows. We have languages like Java which run everything within a protected virtual machine and don't use buffers. We can design CPUs which allow sections of memory to be marked "execute only, don't write". We can use safe string libraries instead of creaky old standard lib. And yet I still hear people saying that buffer overflows are a given.
Same with root escalations. For years we have had ideas of how to have systems that are compartmented and don't have root. In the Unix world, we have the idiocy of "trusted ports" (ports I could go on and on. The only reason why computers are so insecure is because we have accepted that they are and decided to live with it. This is just wrong.
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Cold fusion will always be with usIt is the perpetual motion of the nuclear age. It works even better than zero-point energy and has replaced the 200mpg carburetor..
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I think this could be a good thingI am tired of doing searches and finding the top twenty results all by the same company that has learned how to spam the rankings. You click on one of them and guess what, they don't even have the keyword you were searching for. For example, try a Google search on "ringtones" and the top hits are all the same company in the UK. Search for a specific ringtone you are looking for, and you'll get that same company, even if it doesn't have what you're looking for.
Paid placement would cure this problem. The company that thinks it has the best stuff and is willing to pay for that will get to the top. Right now, Google determines placement by a variety of factors, the most important of which is "voting with links". Switching to paid placement or inclusion is "voting with bucks". Ultimately there is no ideal method of determining placement but "voting with bucks" is not such a bad way to go. Hopefully it will take out many of the spamming sites.
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They already have RC versions of these...
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The Matrix is their new strategy?Remember when the MS Matrix trailer was shown at that conference, with Steve-o, and Agent Smith saying, "Write a device driver and recompile the kernel"? I'm wondering if someone high up over there has seen the Matrices a few too many times...
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I use WAP all the timeWAP is not dead, far from it. There are more WAP browsers in the world today than there are PCs. Some people say that WAP browsers will be replaced by mobile IE or mobile Opera, but this is also not true. Those browsers will only be on larger phones and anyway, the typical HTML page does not look good from those browsers. Most people still want cheaper, smaller phones, and those will only work with WAP. WAP was designed for mobile use, and HTML was designed for... well, I'm not sure. It was more of an accident then a design.
One thing holding WAP back has been that it is technically difficult to create a WAP site and it is very difficult to do device detection, which is essential for WAP. However, Wireless-Enabled Hosting makes it much easier.
Btw, you can go to http://chiralsoftware.net from either your web browser or your WAP browser. One URL, one set of files works on both types of devices.
As our favorite British commedy group says "I'm not dead yet!"
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I use WAP all the timeWAP is not dead, far from it. There are more WAP browsers in the world today than there are PCs. Some people say that WAP browsers will be replaced by mobile IE or mobile Opera, but this is also not true. Those browsers will only be on larger phones and anyway, the typical HTML page does not look good from those browsers. Most people still want cheaper, smaller phones, and those will only work with WAP. WAP was designed for mobile use, and HTML was designed for... well, I'm not sure. It was more of an accident then a design.
One thing holding WAP back has been that it is technically difficult to create a WAP site and it is very difficult to do device detection, which is essential for WAP. However, Wireless-Enabled Hosting makes it much easier.
Btw, you can go to http://chiralsoftware.net from either your web browser or your WAP browser. One URL, one set of files works on both types of devices.
As our favorite British commedy group says "I'm not dead yet!"
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There's one legitimate place for rewriting codeOne and only one: JIT compilation. For example, when Sun's JVM executes Java bytecode, certain portions of it may get compiled to native machine language and then run. In fact, Sun's compiler has a technology called HotSpot which is supposed to dynamically optimize some of this machine code as it runs. Certainly JIT compilation has big benefits. I believe that perl/parrot will be doing that. How much benefit HotSpot has in the real world, I'm not sure, but it is a cool trick.
And all of these are cases of an executing piece of code dynamically creating and executing another piece of code which is exactly what happens in a buffer overflow situation.
However, the number of programs that have a legitimate need to do this is tiny. I'm not sure how this chip will accomdoate those. There may need to be some kind of OS-layer thing with code that is trusted. Maybe the JVM itself could switch modes, so that only when it is actively attempting to write code would that feature be allowed. There are definitely work-arounds to allow JIT to continue working.
As for copy protection, given a choice between having a system which is secure for me and a system which is secure for them, I'll take the system which is secure for me. What about you?
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There's no excuse for buffer overflowsRemember back in the 60s and before, all cars leaked oil? People just accepted, "Cars leak oil." They didn't realize that it didn't have to be that way.
Then the Japanese started making cars that didn't leak oil. Now, no one would accept a car that leaks oil. People have realized that cars don't have to leak and we shouldn't accept it.
It's the same thing with buffer overflows. People now have this attitude "well, there's nothing you can do. Just write code really carefully. Anyone who makes buffer overflows in his code is just a sloppy coder!"
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no way anyone can code a large project in plain old C and not make buffer overflows. Look at OpenBSD, who are masters of secure C. They still have buffer problems.
And yet, there is absolutely no reason for code to have any buffer overflows! There are programatic tools, such as virtuams machines (think JVM) and safe libraries which mean that programmers never have to manipulate buffers in unsafe ways.
Putting in hardware-level support for this would be fantastic. It is time for people to change their attitude about what they accept in computers. Crashes and security holes are not inherent aspects of software. Mistakes are inherent in writing code, but these mistakes don't always need to have such disasterous consequences.
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Slashdot vs. PHPSlashdot wins with a knockout in the first round!
Could someone mirror pages before aiming the unammed predatory slashdot effect at PHP pages?
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In other news...Scientists observe for the millionth time the Slashdot Effect ripping apart a perfectly good website. "If this were a black hole ripping apart a star, it would be astonishing, but unfortunately, this happens every day," one frustrated website operator said.
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There are reasons why Sun can't open-source JavaI imagine the big one is patents. All large companies like Sun have cross-licensing agreements with all the other large companies in the areas they work in. All of these companies have hundred or thousands of patents, and they all know that fighting over patents in court is not the way they want to spend their resources, so they cross-license. Sun's lawyers have probably said (correctly) that some aspects of Java may be protected by some of these patents. There is a lot of innovative computer science going on in Java: virtual machines, JIT compilers, the HotSpot optimizer, and many others. By licensing something under the GPL, the licensor also grants royalty-free patent use, which Sun can't necessarily do because of cross licensing. So it's a mess. I believe the same issue affected BeOS.
Similar issues apply to copyrights. I assume there are portions of the Java implementation which are copyrighted from other companies which have licensed to Sun, but do you think these agreements are compatible with Sun putting something out under GPL or BSD? I wouldn't think so.
All of this is a bummer, to put it one way. I can think of some awesome projects to do with Java. How about a TRUE Java Desktop, where we take just enough of the Linux kernel to boot, and rewrite most of the system (device drivers and all) in Java and run the JVM essentially on the "bare metal" with all the apps in Java? That would be awesome, but impossible unless the JVM is Open Source.
Ah, and this brings me to MONO, a project which is a tragedy because it is walking into a big trap called "patents".
The right thing to do is to put the effort into gcj and Kaffe to bring them up to commercial usability. I really think it is time to abandon C/C++ for writing apps. We could debate this all day long (ok, on
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I vote for thatIt would be the best thing for Java to do what Linus has done with Linux: Set it free, but maintain control by having a trademark. That really is a great use of the idea of a brand and trademark.
However, I would not be surprised if Sun is reluctant to do this because of software patent problems. Their lawyers might be telling them that it's impossible.
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I've never heard Java described this way before"Java technology, in contrast, enjoys exceptional immunity to viruses because of its sandbag architecture."
I've never heard of "sandbag architecture". It must be something that Sun came up with to compete with
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Congratulations to Opera - WAP on the desktop, tooTheir smartphone browser is definitely showing up in the logs. Also, their regular desktop browser can display WAP, so they get it both ways: WAP on the desktop, HTML on mobiles. Of course, there is only so much that can be done to transform HTML content.
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There is a danger in the SCO caseWhat if a) the SCO case is composed primarily of "dark matter" and b) dark matter is what is holding the universe together and c) the SCO case crumbles? What would happen to the universe?
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It's great for software manuals
especially manuals for commercial products. Manuals are full of information and are in some ways "ads" for a company's products. Chiral Software's manual for its WAP server software is licensed under the Creative Commons system.
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Is this code useful anymore?Will this lead to anything useful or is it just "cool that they made it open source"?
Also, are there terms of use for viewing the code? If so, anyone who is interested in developing for other FOSS video projects (VideoGimp, etc) should understand the terms of use before looking at any of this source code. It would be terrible if a bunch of developers looked at this code, went on to do amazing (but unrelated) things with VideoGimp and a few years down the line we get an eerie feeling of deja-vu.
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Timing could add another layerSome posters have suggested sniffing as a way to get through a port knocking defense. That is true, but what if the "knock" pattern changed in some pseudo-random way and the same knock could never be used twice? Think s/key. Then even sniffers wouldn't know what to do. Sometime when I have time I'm also going to write a PAM module for Cryptocard authentication for SSH to provide two-factor authentication, too.
I think this whole idea is a cool technique. It isn't the same as security through obscurity because the security still relies in a key. It is more like "network protocol steganography" actually.
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Wireless Web supportI'm sure many of us are saying "finally" about many features: AMD-64 and generics being the big ones. My big FINALLY is that it finally supports WBMP in the image IO framework. Also improvements in sound and startup speed.
This release is fantastic. Java keeps on growing.
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Telling timeAnalog watches are not about telling time. We all have cellphones, VCRs, microwave ovens, car dashboards and little clocks on our computer screens that tell us the exact time wherever we look. Analog watches are worn for for many reasons, one of which is that a little wheel that oscilates back and fourth five times a second, is powered by wrist movements (in automatic watches) and somehow manages to keep time accurately to within a few seconds per day is an awesome triumph of engineering, something to be admired on its own.
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Re:Tom's Hardware benchmark?I'm glad the moderators had the wisdom to switch my comment from "insightful" to "funny". If that is "insightful" the moderators need help!
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Cell "phones" are fading, yes
The word "phone" means sound, meaning speaking to someone. The way to think of cellphones now is to think of them as "all the electronic devices I need to carry with me all in one package." That is the future of them, and it's great. Sure, a lot of people still just want voice and a phone book, but that is a commodity market now. Manufacturers don't make money selling those. Manufacturers make money selling camera/PDA/Web/music/video/game phones. Hey, you can always buy the lowest-end phone and you won't be paying for extra features you don't want. However, you can't really buy a phone without messaging and wireless web these days. Just don't use those features and let the rest of us have fun sending phone pictures.
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This is great news for developersPhones have more "peripherals" and capabilities than many computers today. A camera, a radio, two phones, speaker, microphone, a GPS. Does your computer have those things? I'm looking forward to writing server software and games for these, too.
Serve WAP and WML content automatically from your existing Apache web server.
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And yet the most loved....
would include picture phones, SMS, and PDA phones. Maybe it's time for a phone that has all the features of a modern high-end mobile phone (camera, mobile Web, SMS, organizer) just without the voice features?
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It can be very good quality
Modern color phones have good displays. Remember, porn happens in the mind, not on the screen. If they want to provide good porn, howevery, they will need a good content transformation system which can detect devices and transform and serve content appropriate for the device. Otherwise, if they have to use the least common denominator approach, you are right, all the images will be lame WBMPs.
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Testing
Just testing. mobile web. Please ignore this.