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Four page article? by nascarguy27 · 2008-09-06 01:48 · Score: 1 · on FAA's Aging Flight-Plan System Having Problems

Article on one page

The article says that the FAA's air traffic control system is broken and needs a bunch of help, but the article doesn't give any real suggestions. I'll give mine.
1) Give pilots in-flight radar.
2) Create new ATC system to make sure pilots follow flight plan
3) ??????
4) Lose money (cause you're an airline)
5) ??????
6) Profit?

hacking .. ? by rs232 · 2008-08-28 22:23 · Score: 1 · on BBC Profiles Extradited Cracker Gary McKinnon

How is accessing passwordless machines 'hacking'?

"There were hackers from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Thailand ... Every night."

'I'd instant-message them, using WordPad, with a bit of a political diatribe. You know, I'd leave a message on their desktop that read, 'Secret government is blah blah blah."'

Re:there is a difference by KURAAKU+Deibiddo · 2008-08-05 00:59 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Linux Pre-Installs In the UK Hit 2.8%

You are aware that Mac OS X 10.5.x (Leopard) is POSIX compliant and conforms to the Single UNIX Specification, right? The difference in file system layout that you're complaining about most likely has to do with user directories being in /Users instead of /home, and mounted volumes in /Volumes instead of /media, assuming that you're comparing it to Ubuntu. If you're really concerned about having exactly the same paths between OSes, you can use 'ln -s' exactly the same on Mac OS X as you can on Ubuntu. Although for a home directory, it's pretty pointless, since ~ and $HOME work exactly the same way on Mac OS X as any other *nix distro that I've ever used (including Ubuntu).

Just because your sysadmin is lost without Apple's GUI does not mean that Mac OS X encourages ignorance and obfuscation. Sure, most Mac users use GUI applications instead of terminal-based applications, but it doesn't mean that you can't. (I should know; I run both Mac OS X and Linux boxes, and probably my most-used application is Terminal.) You don't have to use the GUI. 90% of the time, I control my desktop via SSH. (If you want to do this on Ubuntu, you'd need to install the 'ssh' package. In Mac OS X, sshd is included by default, but is not running as a service until you enable it.) I watch video in my self-compiled SVN of mplayer, controlling it over SSH while doing other things on my laptop (in fact, I'm doing that as I post this). It's silly to base your assumptions of what can be done with Mac OS X based on your observations of one person. I know people who run Ubuntu who only know how to do things the GUI way, but that doesn't mean that Ubuntu encourages ignorance and obfuscation.

I've helped quite a few people migrate to Ubuntu/Kubuntu because they're sick of Windows and don't want to have to buy new hardware. I really like what Canonical is doing. But you really can't say that Canonical can't learn anything from Apple (or Apple from Canonical). Mark Shuttleworth has been quoted talking about emulating and surpassing Apple. While I currently think that Apple's Aqua is a more polished interface than Gnome and KDE, there are definitely things that Apple didn't come up with first (e.g. multiple desktops were not built into Mac OS X prior to Leopard [Spaces], although there were third-party add-ons that would enable this). And the KDE developers aren't standing still, they're continuing to innovate with KDE4. Canonical is working on an interface lift for Ubuntu 8.10. The Gnome developers continue to incrementally improve Gnome.

I don't think anyone seriously believes that Linux is suddenly trying to be a cheap knockoff of Mac OS X.

Having competition and choices is good for everyone but Microsoft.

Re:irrelevant analysis by MrKaos · 2008-08-01 21:13 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Microsoft and Apache - What's the Angle?

How long will it take before people realize that the GPL is holding Linux back? It's the greatest single strategic weakness of the beloved-by-socialist-wanna-be-programmers.

What? Are you dressed up as old king troll? People and especially companies take if they can get away with it. BSD lets Microsoft (and who ever else) get away with taking code, the GPL does not. You have to catch up before you can overtake and finally the Open Source community is positioned to overtake. You wanna play then you have to pay by code, that's not socialist that's leveling the playing field. It's those provisions that make companies like IBM take the GPL seriously and construct legal guidelines and codes of conduct to inter-operate properly.

The BSD style licensed projects get more momentum and make forward progress. Meanwhile, GPL-style projects fork and fork and fork and fork endlessly

People don't talk about FreeBSD they talk about Linux, it's called brand awareness. Tell a windows zealot they use a BSD license and they'd go "a what?", they don't think of BSD as Open Source. But they know what Linux is and respect it, even if they don't like it, because they perceive the GPL as a threat to the Microsoft hegemony.

That's not a criticism of BSD projects, there are great projects under BSD licenses and people put things under those licenses for their own reasons. The difference is the GPL promotes a new type of business model to function. Who cares if there is a forked project, that's a strength that allows business adaptations to flourish or die without ramifications.

Apache isn't in danger from Microsoft because Apache is still free...Like get over yourself copyleft freaks, free.

Even if I partially agree with you about the purist GPL approach I can't get over the "free, as in you work for free" part of the BSD license, why would Microsoft write compression libraries if they can get them for free or fix the flaws and return them to the community. I don't know about the Apache license, but I do know for certain that Microsoft has *never* done anything unless it is to *their* advantage, they don't give a fork about OSS except how they can use it to benefit themselves.

Re:hexagonal scrabble? by mdwh2 · 2008-07-31 11:32 · Score: 1 · on Scrabulous Returns To Facebook, As Wordscraper

No one questioned why Lindows was sued by Microsoft for sounding like Windows

But people did question the validity of that action. And in fact, so did the Judge: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Lindows-Wins-a-Big-One-in-Windows-Trademark-Suit/ . In the end, Microsoft decided to settle instead of risk losing their trademark.

agreed, but .... by TV+Barn · 2008-07-08 04:17 · Score: 1 · on Your Mashup Is Probably Legal

... again, I don't see a transformational use of the music in the video. If RevoLucian were sufficiently antisocial, for instance, he could sue the dude who made a YouTube video out of his O'Reilly Dance Remix, because simply adding the video to go with the audio, from the exact same Inside Edition rant, would likely not pass a judge's transformational test.

However, in the real world there has been much skittishness over the years about using ANYTHING that comes from Big Media over fear of legal action. This document suggests there is a way out of that, by distinguishing pure ripoff (e.g., last night's Colbert reposted to YouTube) from creative reuse (the famed, 100% Viacom-approved Colbert mashups).

Also, remember these guys have a track record. Pat Aufderheide told me that after their statement on docufilms came out in 2005, Kirby Dick used more than 150 classic Hollywood movie clips in his documentary about the MPAA ... and didn't license a one. If you've seen This Film Is Not Yet Rated, you'd know why - and see a textbook example of transformational use.

Many Problems With Methodology In This Study by lseltzer · 2008-07-06 23:02 · Score: 2, Insightful · on Firefox Users Stay Ahead On the Update Curve

(Warning: Self-promotion)

In my eWEEK column on this study I point out numerous problems with it. Many have been mentioned by others.

The main issue is that the study is based on user-agent string data from Google's logs, and Microsoft does not supply minor version information in that string, unlike Firefox, Safari and others. Microsoft considers this to be an "information disclosure vulnerability" because it would help an attacker to commit version-specific attacks.

Because of this, the authors only know about IE major versions (5, 6. 7, 8) and decided that all IE7 users were secure, while nobody else was. Microsoft is still providing security updates for IE5 and IE6; while they are not as secure as IE7 for a variety of reasons, it's not reasonable to lump them into a group with people who don't update their browser. Conversely, if you have IE7 and haven't applied any of the security updates to it, the study says you're up to date.

Be that as it may, as others have said, the issue here is that business users use IE and the other browsers have minimal footprint in it. Firefox, by default, has no support for managed updates, and IT in a big company would (make that should) never allow users to apply updates willy-nilly to their systems. Another point is that while Microsoft supports old version for years, at the demand of their customers, Mozilla withdraws all support for old versions within 6 months of a new one being released. In fact, support for Firefox 2 will end in December of this year. Businesses won't tolerate this. IE5 support on Windows 2000 will continue till 2010 and IE6 as late as 2015.

Why is this considered a world record? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-06-18 10:08 · Score: 3, Interesting · on A Few Firefox 3 Followups

Adobe has routinely hit greater than 10 million downloads per day.

There are other companies as well. Hell, what about MS updates? How many of those bastards get downloaded on Patch Tuesday?

This is a fake attempt at a record.

Re:Change in paradigm by TubeSteak · 2008-06-08 17:07 · Score: 2, Informative · on Cell-based "Roadrunner" Tops Elusive Petaflop Mark

all BlueGene CPUs were running at less than a GHz. And it seemed those low power cores were key to HPC (high performance computing). Supercomputing is on its way to a water cooled infrastrucure.
IBM is already selling a product under the name bluefire
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100873
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/IBM-Ships-First-WaterCooled-Supercomputer/

I hope we see more water & less air in the future

Re:The Price of Flash by Kjella · 2008-05-31 11:22 · Score: 4, Informative · on Intel & Micron Show 34-nm, 32-Gbit Flash Memory Chip

Probably this:

(...) Jim Handy, an analyst with Objective Analysis (...) "At a die size [they are using], the price of a 32Gb chip will be just shy of $4, which works out to about 99 cents/GB. The companies will be the first to break the $1/GB barrier with this product," Handy said. Today's NAND prices are hovering near $2.50 per gigabyte, Handy said. So an external analyst said thar, nor Intel/Micron. It sounds rather nice if you can get a good boot disk for 1$/GB+margins though. The bulk multimedia will probably still go on HDDs though, but I'd definately get one at those prices.

Re:Much as I hate to defend Apple's prices... by itsdapead · 2008-05-20 23:40 · Score: 1 · on Mac Cloner Psystar Ships First Service Pack

Dude, I'm not complaining about the higher prices of the Mac. I accept it. I'm willing to pay for that profit margin for Apple because that profit margin is what pays for Apple's software development, and that's what I'm paying for.

Then you're probably in a minority - and a minority of which enough members will succumb to buying a Mac Pro to offset any loss to Apple.

But the size, shape, weight, and design? They have negative value. I would pay *more* for a Mac mini that had exactly the same specs but was in a mini-ITX case and had the power provisioning and port complement of a Mini-ITX PC.

You might, but I think you're at odds with Apple's target market - you're asking them to go back to the business model which was failing for them in the 90s. The turning point for Apple was when they dumped the beige boxes and launched the all-in-one iMac which eschewed internal expansion for USB peripherals and came in a fancy designer case.

I'd predict (and no-one can know unless they tried) that an Apple mini-tower would get lousy reviews on the basis of poor price comparison with comparable PCs. At the moment, Macs are getting pretty good reviews, even in the PC press, because they are reasonably competitive with other SFFs and high-end laptops.

Virtually nobody is *buying* the AOpen mini clone, or the Dell iMac clone, because virtually nobody really *wants* that stuff enough to pay for

No - the problem with these systems is that Dell and AOpen (or the AOpen resellers) are "utility" brands trying to compete with Apple's "designer label". To do that you need a product which is significantly cheaper but which looks just as good as the "designer" one: most of the iMac/Mini clones to date have failed miserably on both counts.

So don't tell me that making a laptop without a screen is value added over making a desktop PC, because it's not. It's dross.

Well 70% of customers at brick-and-mortar PC stores seem to disagree with you - seriously, I wouldn't set much store by those figures but Apple do seem to be doing something right.

Re:Outsorcing phones while charging for the privil by yuna49 · 2008-05-16 07:50 · Score: 1 · on Verizon Joins Linux Mobile Foundation

Getting out of the phone business seems all the rage these days.

I've been really suspicious of Verizon's sudden turn to openness since the original announcement. The contrast between its announced future plans and its past actual behavior is stunning.

I'm also wondering where OpenMoko falls into all of this. Are they just whistling in the dark while the carriers line up behind Linux Mobile, Android and Apple?

Re:Downside of OSS by Paradise+Pete · 2008-05-08 01:48 · Score: 4, Informative · on Firefox Vietnamese Language Pack Infected With Trojan

I'm not saying commercial software is perfect in that regard (there have been cases of commerically distributed software containing malware too), but at least there is generally some level of quality control there.

Creative MP3 players ship with virus
Apple Ships iPods with Windows Virus
Seagate Storage Units Ship with Virus
Sega Dreamcast console game spreads virus
Maxtor USB Hard Drives Ship Virus Infected
Digital photo frames ship with computer virus
Sony Ships Rootkit

Credulity rides again by thethibs · 2008-05-02 13:11 · Score: 1 · on Twitter Reportedly May Abandon Ruby On Rails

TechCrunch is speculating and clearly getting it wrong. Arrington's article comes out on the same day as an as an eWeek interview where Twitter's Britt Selvitelle talks about how they scaled up with Rails and offers some advice on the topic.

As to abandoning Rails:

Selvitelle told eWEEK that reports of Twitter abandoning Rails are "Not true in any sense. We use Ruby as our primary language. We have plenty of back-end architecture in other languages. Especially prototypes. We still use Rails and have no plans to discontinue this in the future."

Circular logic by penguin_dance · 2008-05-02 02:47 · Score: 1 · on SCO's McBride Testifies "Linux Is a copy of UNIX"

This is from McBride's own website (ego much?)

From 2005: "But since SCO owns the UNIX operating system and it made up 95 percent of our company's revenue, and we were getting strong demand from customers for a next generation version of UNIX, that's where we concentrated our efforts."

Well the courts will decide that. "'Isn't SCO just all about defeating Linux?' Of course we are innovating and we absolutely want to defeat Linux, just as we want to defeat any other competitor."

Following is usual FUD about how Linux costs more in the long run because of (reaches back to pull numbers out of ass) subscription fees. And of course Microsoft has been a great contributor to SCO's fight against Linux.

But here's the kicker:

"SCO Has a Superior Kernel - SCO OpenServer 6 includes the UNIX System V Release 5 (SVR5) kernel, the result of more than 25 years of high-end development work that has created a proven track record of stability and reliability. With our latest release, OpenServer provides support for up to 32 processors, 64 GB of memory, terabyte file sizes, and full support for multi-threaded applications. Linux is still young from an operating system perspective. I would challenge any kernel out there to match us head-to-head. While Linux may appeal to some as the sleek, new "racer" on the track, the experienced IT professional will truly see the real power under the hood when they test the UNIX kernel and the tried and true power of UNIX combined with the new capabilities of SCO OpenServer 6."

Now the obvious: If Linux = UNIX, then how can their kernel be superior? There's NOTHING on this page saying Linux copied UNIX in whole or part.

Then some more FUD--I actually laughed at this figure:

"Unfortunately for Linux, mi2g also confirmed that the Linux operating system has become somewhat of a hacker's paradise. In a study conducted only seven months ago they found that overall, the most vulnerable operating system for manual hacker attacks was Linux, accounting for 65.64% of all hacker breaches reported.

Again, how can you be oh-so superior in security if your product is identical to Linux? You can't have it both ways. BTW, I tried to find this figure in context on mi2g site, but got this error from the search box:

ht://Dig error htsearch detected an error. Please report this to the webmaster of this site. The error message is:
Unable to read word database file
Did you run htmerge?

Hmmm. Maybe they got hacked....

Keep twisting those numbers by Toreo+asesino · 2008-04-26 15:19 · Score: 1 · on Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations

Again, at best you've proved that Windows popularity has fallen and that Linux "could make inroads". "Could", if for example, it started selling.

Mac sales are up true, in the US mainly and this has slightly dented Vista sales.

Now, i'm not going to be disingenuous here; the OLPC and the eePC are doing well; almost in their own category, but even they run Windows now.

And what of the server end? Well, Windows seems to be gaining there too; let's be honest, if there's one area Windows could do better in, it's the server.

And you know what, I hope Linux does do better in the desktop to be honest. FireFox was one hell of a kick up the arse for Microsoft, and we all resulted in better browsing experiences for everyone because of it. Something similar in the desktop arena won't be unappreciated, but, putting it politely, progress is slow in that area right now.

When you can give me hard evidence desktop Linux is installed even at 5% market share globally, then you may be onto something.

Not reading your messages? by symbolset · 2008-04-26 09:48 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Call For Open Source Awards 2008 Nominations

and yet, what I find intriguing is OSS has capitalised on this "failure" exactly 0% with regards to desktop coverage; or no noticeable difference anyhow.

If you have read your messages I know you've seen these figures:

Windows sinks 24%

The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.

PC Shipments up 12%

Overall, PC shipments in the first quarter increased 12.3% compared with the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, despite fears that souring economic conditions might pinch PC sales.

This gap is about 1/3 of the market. Apple's computer sales are up 50%, but as you note their numbers are well counted and can't account for a gap this large. Those computers shipped with some OS on them. What was it?

eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows. I think you'll find that's where the missing numbers are, though Redhat is doing well too as is Asus with their eee and myriad others.

Now you can't deny you've seen the figures.

Maybe your part wasn't fine by symbolset · 2008-04-26 06:16 · Score: 1 · on Ballmer Calls Vista 'A Work In Progress'

If Vista evangelism was your gig I'm going to have to mark this one a Fail. PC Shipments up 12%, Windows sales down 24%. Bleeding share... how's that feel?

It looks like just about everybody is ignoring the death of XP. Microsoft may "wake up smarter" but it may be too late.

Re:That must be why by symbolset · 2008-04-26 03:02 · Score: 1 · on KDE Desktops For 52 Million Students In Brazil

Windows sinks 24%

The world's biggest software maker said sales of Windows for PCs sank 24 percent and revenue from its online advertising unit came in at the low end of its projections. Microsoft's report contrasted with positive comments from chipmaker Intel Corp. and computer company International Business Machines Corp.

PC Shipments up 12%

Overall, PC shipments in the first quarter increased 12.3% compared with the first quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, despite fears that souring economic conditions might pinch PC sales.

Interesting, eh? Maybe that's why eWeek, which I've always regarded as a loyal Microsoft fan, has declared Ubuntu ready to take on Windows.

Re:Backpedaling faster tha you can say... by Fluffeh · 2008-04-21 15:45 · Score: 5, Interesting · on PayPal Denies It Will Block Safari

There were quite a few indications that Safari would have been included in the list of browsers that no longer were supported:

Ars link
Anti Phishing Block

So, the general meaning of "so we will stop you possibly getting yourself into trouble" really wasn't wrong. Just because you don't type it in with black and white fonts doesn't mean you don't mean it.

"Lets put this out and check public reaction before we make it 100% official.

Re:I'm not voting for him, but... by ijustam · 2008-04-15 11:43 · Score: 3, Informative · on End of the Internet's Tax-Free Ride?

Probably not the best place to mention McCain, considering he opposes network neutrality

Why Single Out Bill? by theodp · 2008-04-12 14:11 · Score: 4, Informative · on Bill Gates's Wish Is Homeland Security's Command

Granted, Microsoft is far from alone when it comes to relying on the Visa Crutch. But it was Bill Gates whose pleas were singled out by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as he rationalized the need for 'emergency' action.

Re:Award-winning? by geminidomino · 2008-04-01 04:27 · Score: 1 · on Wireshark 1.0 Released

Eweek: Most important OpenSource Apps of All time

Infoworld 2007 BOSSIE award

from tfa once removed by razorh · 2008-03-28 06:50 · Score: 1 · on US Broadband Policy Called "Magical Thinking"

from this link imbeded in the article http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/Politics-Warms-Up-Tech-Policy-Summit/

For all the inflammatory debate, though, former Congressman Rick White noted, "Tech policy drives zero votes. The president and any administration are going to focus on what people care about."

I don't know about anyone else here, but that's pretty high on my list of what drives my vote...

Man, if only Samuel L Jackson were here... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-27 13:25 · Score: 3, Funny · on Is There Room For a Secure Web Browser?

He'd know what to say...

Whiny-bitch-free version of the motherfucking link provided by parent.

or

Really fucking easy, which is why we don't need a karma whoring bitch such as yourself providing the motherfucking thing.

or

About as easy as shutting your editorializing bitchass mouth motherfucker.

Ad-free version of article by jroysdon · 2008-03-27 12:39 · Score: 3, Informative · on Is There Room For a Secure Web Browser?

Ad-free version of article.

How hard is it to look for the "Print version" w/o ads and link to that?

thus quoteth the idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2008-03-13 13:35 · Score: 0 · on The Secret China-U.S. Hacking War?

"He quotes Gadi Evron"
if anything other than, "I am a media-whoring fucktard" follows that, the article can safely be ignored:

-> curl http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/The-Secret-ChinaUS-Hacking-War/ | egrep '(whore|fucktard)'

[snip curl verbosity for junk filter]

->

yup, ignore away.

actually, the point the article makes is interesting; it's just a shame they chose to quote someone who will go out on such a limb as to state that china in a dangerous place for the internet.

Thank you for that gem, Gadi. Don't you have some important security conference to organize? Some reporter/blogger to bug?

Re:What the hell? by renegadesx · 2008-03-05 16:57 · Score: 5, Informative · on SCO Preps Appeals Against Novell and IBM

Serious answer: Apparently this is Saudi money.
However the jury is still out on weather this is another Microsoft thing like BayStar
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Whats-Behind-the-SCO-Buyout/ SJVN's oppinion incase you are interested

Re:Expect a Clinton surge per the Republicans by Stradivarius · 2008-03-05 07:53 · Score: 1 · on Clinton Takes Ohio, Texas; McCain Seals The Deal

I agree that we need to keep an open, non-discriminatory Internet. But the Wikipedia link doesn't tell the full story. A more complete picture (including the quote you cited) appears here, and it adds some context:

"Unless there is a clear-cut, unequivocal restraint of competition, the government should stay out of it. These things will sort themselves out."

"The great thing about the Internet is that it has enjoyed, to a large degree, immunity from federal interference and federal regulation," McCain recently told Michael Arrington in a TechCrunch podcast. "So, I have a tendency to say, look, lets see how this thing all turns out, rather than anticipate a problem that so far has not arisen in any significant way." To me taking a wait-and-see approach is reasonable. When you are dealing with federal regulations, you take the risk that the cure might be worse than the disease. He's not saying he completely rules out regulatory actions, just that you have to clearly have a problem before creating regulations that might have unintended negative consequences.