Slashdot Mirror

It's not a huge step backwards. But it's not a giant leap forward, either.

Mostly it just made me yawn: http://www.kimballlarsen.com/2010/01/27/new-apple-tablet-is-announced-and-the-world-yawns/

-- Kimball

Besides the obvious cool factor (I recall back when earning my undergrad how a fellow student was so excited he could compile Firefox in under 10 hours by using a grid he set up in one of the labs) of being able to crunch massive amounts of data very, very quickly, I'm curious what sorts of applications could use this effectively? Will it be limited to strictly scientific research? Can some of those CPU cycles be sold off to for-profit corporations?

Will pixar be able to render their movies overnight now?

-- Kimball
www.kimballlarsen.com

So, my father held a PhD in Chemical Engineering from CalTech, and had a wonderful life full of rich experiences. He passed away 3 years ago, and in the subsequent time since then, I have come to realize I really didn't know my dad. He did leave a lot of information behind (life story, records of important events, etc), but (while this article is a dupe, and MS isn't getting anywhere near my noggin, etc) the idea of being able to crawl through the data / memories in his brain is admittedly very appealing.

There are huge moral implications to consider here though - what portions of a brain are private/public, can you retrieve (or should we even try) data from folks who have passed on, etc..

I for one am intrigued by the idea.

--Kimball
http://www.kimballlarsen.com/

Of course there are many, many un-firewalled database servers on the internet - for all the reasons that have been stated in other comments it is frequently necessary to do so. However, the article does not point out if any other security techniques are in place at all with all the supposedly exposed databases.

Now, if the headline was "Half a Million Database Servers Left Configured With No Firewall, No Client Restriction, Default Root Credentials, and Listening on Default Ports" - then you have my attention.

Course, the sad fact is that my headline is probably just as likely to be true as the article headline, when you consider all the installs of databases other than SQLServer and Oracle (mysql, postgres, etc).

-- Kimball Larsen
http://www.kimballlarsen.com/

How long before Sco claims they own this as well?

--Kimball

http://www.kimballlarsen.com/

On the other hand, I wonder how many of them may like the interface and openness of the platform more? How many will discover just how much easier/cheaper/better using linux really can be? I'm willing to bet we'll have a fair number of folks return it because it does not have a start menu, but I'd like to think that we'll also see a lot of people actually dump windows all together in favor of their new OS of choice. -- Kimball Larsen http://www.kimballlarsen.com/

I have several macs, and while I updated one right away (a MacMini, as it happens) I have held off on updating the other macs in my household. I put together a write-up about why on my website, but the nuts and bolts of it is this: I use some software that is not yet supported, and I dislike the look and feel of the new unified theme.