I am a bit stymied about why this company has not at least been served cease and desist papers. I can only suppose 1 of 2 things is going on here:
1) Apple knows the EULA is non-binding, and doesn't want to mess with the negative press of trying to squish small startup guy. I find this hard to believe as they have had little problem with this tactic in the past.
2) Steve didn't get the memo about psystar yet...Right.... this is even more unlikely, because if he had, there would be a crater where psystar hq used to be by now.
Just say no and hope that it sticks. Seriously. I find that so many people in the workforce noadays don't know how to say that simple word. No. I disagree. When I need to say "NO" to someone (which happens regularly) I always try to take time to come up with possible alternatives that will still fit the needs of the customer, but not interfere with our business needs as well. For this example, there are several suggestions elsewhere in the comments - setting up a replicating server that they can go to town on, limiting permissions at the table level, restricting processor usage, etc. It's much easier to hear "NO" when you immediately here "but here's what I can do for you, which will accomplis the same goal" (ie, give them the ability to formulate and process their own queries.)
By the same token, based on these results could the last sentence read: "Therefore, the most we can read from the overall balance of marks is that closed source development approaches do not produce software of markedly higher quality than open source software development."
In other words, this study reveals nothing about the relative level of quality of either approach.
Flashbacks to my undergrad work when I had to read Zen...
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?
Re:For those of you that are going to ask
on
eBay Sues Craigslist
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
On the contrary, this is the way a free market should work. I see craigslist as a somewhat scrappy underdog that is getting ahead by offering their services at a lower rate than the other guys. If this makes it more difficult for the other guys to make fat margins, they had better adapt or be prepared to lose their market share. Calling craigslist unfair just because they don't charge as much as the other guys is just silly.
One interesting side note - I have used Craigslist on numerous occasions both to find and get rid of stuff. I've also used eBay to do the same. To post something on Craigslist takes me about 3-5 minutes. To post something on eBay (cause I only do so once or twice a year) seems to take closer to 30 minutes. Lately I've completely abandonded eBay - not because they charge me money, but because the process of using their service is so much more difficult than Craigslist.
I for one welcome our sex deprived robot overlords...
My Father Passed Away 3 Years Ago....
on
Backing Up Your Brain
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
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..
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).
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.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a bit stymied about why this company has not at least been served cease and desist papers. I can only suppose 1 of 2 things is going on here:
1) Apple knows the EULA is non-binding, and doesn't want to mess with the negative press of trying to squish small startup guy. I find this hard to believe as they have had little problem with this tactic in the past.
2) Steve didn't get the memo about psystar yet...Right.... this is even more unlikely, because if he had, there would be a crater where psystar hq used to be by now.
Who knows - maybe Steve is finally going soft....
-- Kimball
www.kimballlarsen.com
By the same token, based on these results could the last sentence read: "Therefore, the most we can read from the overall balance of marks is that closed source development approaches do not produce software of markedly higher quality than open source software development."
In other words, this study reveals nothing about the relative level of quality of either approach.
Flashbacks to my undergrad work when I had to read Zen...
-- Kimball
www.kimballlarsen.com
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
On the contrary, this is the way a free market should work. I see craigslist as a somewhat scrappy underdog that is getting ahead by offering their services at a lower rate than the other guys. If this makes it more difficult for the other guys to make fat margins, they had better adapt or be prepared to lose their market share. Calling craigslist unfair just because they don't charge as much as the other guys is just silly.
One interesting side note - I have used Craigslist on numerous occasions both to find and get rid of stuff. I've also used eBay to do the same. To post something on Craigslist takes me about 3-5 minutes. To post something on eBay (cause I only do so once or twice a year) seems to take closer to 30 minutes. Lately I've completely abandonded eBay - not because they charge me money, but because the process of using their service is so much more difficult than Craigslist.
I for one welcome our sex deprived robot overlords...
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.