From another obituary, apparantly one of his jokes:
"The judge had a lively sense of humor. The Washington Post reported that he once told of a law professor, an appellate judge and a trial judge who went duck hunting. When a bird flew over, the law professor referred to a textbook. By the time he looked up, the duck was gone. When a second bird appeared, the appellate judge studied relevant precedents, and the same thing happened.
The trial judge had no scholarly compunctions when a third bird flew into range. He pushed the other two aside, raised his shotgun and blew the bird from the sky.
“I hope to hell that was a duck,” he said. "
Wonder what would have happened if his ruling, (to split MS into separate 'Windows' and 'Office' divisions) would have stood?
I suspect both a better 'Office and a better 'Windows'...
At the time, it was more about securing revenue from the lucrative expat market than locking-down protest movements. Of course, these latter do exist, but less so in Saudi & UAE than, say, Egypt.
I guess this latest move will just drive more interest in alternatives, which are often 'open' and perhaps more secure...
No thanks; I'll carry on using (free) Google docs plus the Apple apps I already purchased, (for les than the monthly cost of Ofice360) for those very rare occassions that I want to edit 'office' docs on my iDevices.
Follows announcement that search engine for Siri will go from Google to Bing.
Anyway, who cares if they know that I send emails to my Dad and my customers? That's pretty much public knowledge. I'm less keen on people accessing the contents of my mails, especially since they could then re-sell this information to my customers' competition.
Oh, you don't believe Governments or their employees indulge in industrial espionage either?
We have more time than that; plenty of Pu leftover from dismantled nukes, and there's always breeder reactors, (most of which ironically were closed because we discovered lots more Uranium to mine...
Actually, that's a good idea that used to be used for express trains; the last carriages would be 'slipped' from the back of an Express when they arrived at a midpoint destination.
I can see it now, "no passengers to load in Detroit today? OK, let go pod 3!" You'd need a damn good gliding or parachute system, tho', and the system already looks overly complex and thus heavy and costly.
Except that the train is often slower and more expensive than the 'plane. (I travel a lot, and live in the land of the TGV - try travelling by train anywhere in France NOT via Paris; expensive and slow)
Yes, which is why i've been using PGP for emails to/from my more nerdy family and friends for a while. Used to be a free plugin for those of us cursed with using Outlook, now paid. I should take a closer look at this, I suppose: http://code.google.com/p/outlook-privacy-plugin/
Of course, other options exist. Enigmail for Thunderbird works OK too, apparantly...
Is it just me, but how hard would it have been for Microsoft, Apple & Lotus/IBM to have rolled this type of functionality into the base product? (And don't tell me a corp like Exxon or whatever would find it too hard to swap certificates with its major supplier & customers, also presumably mostly big corporations with a vested interest in keeping their emails secure) Why did they not, eh? Conspiracy theorists, off you go!
Because they would probably never get prosecuted there, sometimes because there are no laws, other times because there is no effective system to apply the law, (even international law).
Whilst this tactic is of course open to abuse, and recently has been, it's also good for cases of war crimes etc.
Anyway, I think you're missing the point here; if you are party to/enable a 'crime' to be committed in a certain country, then they can go after you. Seems fair enough. Remember, ignorance of the law is no defense. If you're doing business across borders, better know what you're doing. Finally, you really think guy did NOT know what he was risking? He was selling stolen software!
When IBM realised that people were not going to abandon MVS and CICS/COBOL. Shame, CPF was great. From wikipedia
System/38 and its descendants are unique in being the only existing commercial[citation needed] computers with capability-based addressing. (The earlier Plessey 250 was one of the few other computers with capability architecture ever sold commercially). Capability-based addressing was removed in the follow-on AS/400 and iSeries models.[2]
Additionally, the System/38 and its descendants are the only commercial computers ever to use a machine interface architecture to isolate the application software and most of the operating system from hardware dependencies, including such details as address size and register size. Compilers for System/38 and its successors generate code in a high-level instruction set (originally called MI for "Machine Interface", and renamed TIMI for "Technology Independent Machine Interface" for AS/400). MI/TIMI is a virtual instruction set; it is not the instruction set of the underlying CPU. Unlike some other virtual-machine architectures in which the virtual instructions are interpreted at runtime, MI/TIMI instructions are never interpreted. They constitute an intermediate compile time step and are translated into the processor's instruction set as the final compilation step. The MI/TIMI instructions are stored within the final program object, in addition to the executable machine instructions. If a program is moved from a processor with one native instruction set to a processor with another native instruction set, the MI/TIMI instructions will be re-translated into the native instruction set of the new machine before the program is executed for the first time on the new machine.
The System/38 also has the distinction of being the first commercially available IBM Midrange computer to have a RDBMS integrated into the operating system.
Selected quote: "The variation between websites and the technology they use seems to be far more significant, with YouTube clearly burning up to 3W more power than other popular sites such as Google. And more complex media experiences, delivered by sites using Flash or HTML5, appear to burn even more energy, with heavy HTML5 and Flash sites causing an increase in power draw of up to 8W or 9W (effectively adding 50 percent to the machine’s power draw)"
So maybe IE can make more power-efficient use of Win8 when playing YouTube videos? Not really a surprise... Put noscript, adblock etc. into Ffox and save! (Also on bandwidth..)
Would have been nice to have seen Fraunhofer (who conducted the survey) try and retain some shred of dignity by comparing performance on other platforms. How about Safari on PC & MAC? Chrome & F'fox on Linux also? Maybe because IE only runs natively on Windows?
Understand, me too. However "society" decided that it was the benefit of the common good to force people to wear seatbelts, heltmets etc. Of course, they had to force the boys in Detroit to install them first. When you see the results, (less lives ruined, lower cost in medical care), then on balance it's clearly a good thing. Conflicted? Yes of course I am. But there's a difference between what I might not agree with, and that which I can accept. I accept seat belt, helmet legislation. I accept being searched before getting on a plane.
I do not accept all the losses of more vital and fundamental personal liberties that are happening right now.
You could add to this the 'unofficial' abuses that are possible, such as undermining political opponents, blackmail etc., made possible by this kind of pervasive technology. The temptation is there, and too much for many to resist, despite all the controls that are supposed to be in place.
Just an anecdotal example; a friend of mine was dating a police officer, after a while, one evening after a few drinks she let slip that she'd checked out all his official records before deciding to take things further. OK, understandable, but still an abuse of power. Humans are human; give them these tools and they will abuse them.
I use and like both Google maps and Waze; you can't beat streetview and the quality of Google maps, whilst Waze can give you some handy updates. This really just goes to show what a massive failure Google has been in 'social' stuff, despite its huge success in other areas. I still don't "get" Google plus, despite being a keen user of Gmail, Picasa, Docs etc.(urm, still waiting for the Picasa Android client, guys).
Main thing to remember, though, is always keep a 'hard' map loaded on your device too, for those tricky moments when there's no network coverage and you really need directions. Openstreetmap is OK, commercial offerings (I like iGo, YMMV) are better.
Urm, we're supposed to live in a democracy, right? If there are real threats, (and seems to be plenty of them), that this technology can efficiently and effectively combat, then explain it to the people who vote and also pay for the damn thing. Don't give me BS about how that will somehow "compromise" the security of the system; specific facts (like the names of agents) compromise security, not generic information about what information you are gathering, on whom.
These people lie to avoid oversight, is all. That way leads to tyranny. If they cannot explain why this is in our interests, then it's not.
We have a big mix of Wintels, iDevices and Androids at home & work. They're all pretty good at doing what we need. The iDevices, however, stand out for being harder to get things onto and off. And don't get me started on iTunes, especially when running on a non-Mac. Sure there are alternatives, and apps like SugarSync and Evernote ease the pain, but why make it hard when a USP of Apple is supposed to be the user-friendliness?
Still, as I said, never going to happen...looks like they're going to focus on the cosmetics, rather than listening to their customers. Shades of Windows 8?
Final thought: Why don't they just take the top-selling and/or free apps, for both 'geek/power user' and 'normal consumer' and bake 'em into the OS? They've got the cash...
I fear that this could/will be used to clamp down on whitehatting/fair disclosure, perhaps simply just to avoid Govt. red faces, just as much as a deterrence/punishment for the bad guys.
But when are we going to get something like SOX for critical systems designers and operators? "The X-rays on critical welds for your nuclear plant were faked; 5 years" "The SCADA system for your nuclear plant is exposed to the internet; 2 years". "You have an unpatched known vulnerability on your database which led to personal, private information being stolen; 1 year".
Yeah, I know it's fraught with moral peril, and we'd have to devise mechanisms to ensure that SysAdmins did not get hammered instead of their bosses, but until we do that, nothing much will change on the client side.
Slashdot Mirror
From another obituary, apparantly one of his jokes:
"The judge had a lively sense of humor. The Washington Post reported that he once told of a law professor, an appellate judge and a trial judge who went duck hunting. When a bird flew over, the law professor referred to a textbook. By the time he looked up, the duck was gone. When a second bird appeared, the appellate judge studied relevant precedents, and the same thing happened.
The trial judge had no scholarly compunctions when a third bird flew into range. He pushed the other two aside, raised his shotgun and blew the bird from the sky.
“I hope to hell that was a duck,” he said. "
Wonder what would have happened if his ruling, (to split MS into separate 'Windows' and 'Office' divisions) would have stood?
I suspect both a better 'Office and a better 'Windows'...
This has been going on for a long time - Skype was banned or crippled in the UAE for a long time, but recently unblocked:
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/technology/2013/04/08/Etisalat-unblocks-Skype-website-in-the-UAE.html
At the time, it was more about securing revenue from the lucrative expat market than locking-down protest movements.
Of course, these latter do exist, but less so in Saudi & UAE than, say, Egypt.
I guess this latest move will just drive more interest in alternatives, which are often 'open' and perhaps more secure...
http://www.pidgin.im/
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fed-up-with-skype-here-are-6-of-the-best-free-alternatives/
Agree it's hard to believe these days, but he actually, he seems to be one of the good guys.
He previously co-sponsored legislation to help fight bullshit "business methods" patents,
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/another-bill-fix-patent-troll-problem-well-part-it
And now simply wants to extend that to other areas. Text of proposed bill here.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:S.866:
Hat tip to EPP for article.
No thanks; I'll carry on using (free) Google docs plus the Apple apps I already purchased, (for les than the monthly cost of Ofice360) for those very rare occassions that I want to edit 'office' docs on my iDevices.
Follows announcement that search engine for Siri will go from Google to Bing.
http://tech2.in.com/news/ios/apple-ditches-google-partners-with-bing-for-siri-search/876324
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
So why not for protecting that other 'strategic' resource, films & music!
And you belive them?
Anyway, who cares if they know that I send emails to my Dad and my customers? That's pretty much public knowledge.
I'm less keen on people accessing the contents of my mails, especially since they could then re-sell this information to my customers' competition.
Oh, you don't believe Governments or their employees indulge in industrial espionage either?
We have more time than that; plenty of Pu leftover from dismantled nukes, and there's always breeder reactors, (most of which ironically were closed because we discovered lots more Uranium to mine...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Actually, that's a good idea that used to be used for express trains; the last carriages would be 'slipped' from the back of an Express when they arrived at a midpoint destination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach
I can see it now, "no passengers to load in Detroit today? OK, let go pod 3!"
You'd need a damn good gliding or parachute system, tho', and the system already looks overly complex and thus heavy and costly.
Except that the train is often slower and more expensive than the 'plane.
(I travel a lot, and live in the land of the TGV - try travelling by train anywhere in France NOT via Paris; expensive and slow)
Pity; IT was one of the few industries Ireland was getting right.
And this is linked to banning TPB how?
Stopping people from pirating TV, films & music will somehow magically nuke the local IT industry?
Eh? I couldn't manage without three mouse buttons in Windows, today. The scroll wheel, of course, doubles as a button.
Middle-click is "paste" in an Xterm.
*strokes beard*
FTFY ;)
Yes, which is why i've been using PGP for emails to/from my more nerdy family and friends for a while.
Used to be a free plugin for those of us cursed with using Outlook, now paid.
I should take a closer look at this, I suppose:
http://code.google.com/p/outlook-privacy-plugin/
Of course, other options exist. Enigmail for Thunderbird works OK too, apparantly...
Is it just me, but how hard would it have been for Microsoft, Apple & Lotus/IBM to have rolled this type of functionality into the base product?
(And don't tell me a corp like Exxon or whatever would find it too hard to swap certificates with its major supplier & customers, also presumably mostly big corporations with a vested interest in keeping their emails secure)
Why did they not, eh? Conspiracy theorists, off you go!
Because they would probably never get prosecuted there, sometimes because there are no laws, other times because there is no effective system to apply the law, (even international law).
Whilst this tactic is of course open to abuse, and recently has been, it's also good for cases of war crimes etc.
Anyway, I think you're missing the point here; if you are party to/enable a 'crime' to be committed in a certain country, then they can go after you.
Seems fair enough. Remember, ignorance of the law is no defense. If you're doing business across borders, better know what you're doing.
Finally, you really think guy did NOT know what he was risking? He was selling stolen software!
Just calling to see how that new-fangled "liberty" thing is working out for you?
Oh, you don't give a shit anymore?
Indeed, OS/400 started out as CPF on the S/38, but that grew out of the abandoned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Future_Systems_project
When IBM realised that people were not going to abandon MVS and CICS/COBOL. Shame, CPF was great. From wikipedia
System/38 and its descendants are unique in being the only existing commercial[citation needed] computers with capability-based addressing. (The earlier Plessey 250 was one of the few other computers with capability architecture ever sold commercially). Capability-based addressing was removed in the follow-on AS/400 and iSeries models.[2]
Additionally, the System/38 and its descendants are the only commercial computers ever to use a machine interface architecture to isolate the application software and most of the operating system from hardware dependencies, including such details as address size and register size. Compilers for System/38 and its successors generate code in a high-level instruction set (originally called MI for "Machine Interface", and renamed TIMI for "Technology Independent Machine Interface" for AS/400). MI/TIMI is a virtual instruction set; it is not the instruction set of the underlying CPU. Unlike some other virtual-machine architectures in which the virtual instructions are interpreted at runtime, MI/TIMI instructions are never interpreted. They constitute an intermediate compile time step and are translated into the processor's instruction set as the final compilation step. The MI/TIMI instructions are stored within the final program object, in addition to the executable machine instructions. If a program is moved from a processor with one native instruction set to a processor with another native instruction set, the MI/TIMI instructions will be re-translated into the native instruction set of the new machine before the program is executed for the first time on the new machine.
The System/38 also has the distinction of being the first commercially available IBM Midrange computer to have a RDBMS integrated into the operating system.
But you have to check the PDF to find that...
http://preview.tinyurl.com/kyp6ypz
Selected quote: "The variation between websites and the technology they use seems to be far more significant, with YouTube clearly burning up to 3W more power than other popular sites such as Google. And more complex media experiences, delivered by sites using Flash or HTML5, appear to burn even more energy, with heavy HTML5 and Flash sites causing an increase in power draw of up to 8W or 9W (effectively adding 50 percent to the machine’s power draw)"
So maybe IE can make more power-efficient use of Win8 when playing YouTube videos? Not really a surprise...
Put noscript, adblock etc. into Ffox and save! (Also on bandwidth..)
Would have been nice to have seen Fraunhofer (who conducted the survey) try and retain some shred of dignity by comparing performance on other platforms.
How about Safari on PC & MAC? Chrome & F'fox on Linux also?
Maybe because IE only runs natively on Windows?
Understand, me too. However "society" decided that it was the benefit of the common good to force people to wear seatbelts, heltmets etc.
Of course, they had to force the boys in Detroit to install them first.
When you see the results, (less lives ruined, lower cost in medical care), then on balance it's clearly a good thing.
Conflicted? Yes of course I am. But there's a difference between what I might not agree with, and that which I can accept.
I accept seat belt, helmet legislation. I accept being searched before getting on a plane.
I do not accept all the losses of more vital and fundamental personal liberties that are happening right now.
You could add to this the 'unofficial' abuses that are possible, such as undermining political opponents, blackmail etc., made possible by this kind of pervasive technology.
The temptation is there, and too much for many to resist, despite all the controls that are supposed to be in place.
Just an anecdotal example; a friend of mine was dating a police officer, after a while, one evening after a few drinks she let slip that she'd checked out all his official records before deciding to take things further. OK, understandable, but still an abuse of power.
Humans are human; give them these tools and they will abuse them.
I use and like both Google maps and Waze; you can't beat streetview and the quality of Google maps, whilst Waze can give you some handy updates.
This really just goes to show what a massive failure Google has been in 'social' stuff, despite its huge success in other areas.
I still don't "get" Google plus, despite being a keen user of Gmail, Picasa, Docs etc.(urm, still waiting for the Picasa Android client, guys).
Main thing to remember, though, is always keep a 'hard' map loaded on your device too, for those tricky moments when there's no network coverage and you really need directions. Openstreetmap is OK, commercial offerings (I like iGo, YMMV) are better.
I write in APL, you insensitive clod!
You missed é, which is perhaps more commonly used than the others you cite...
But otherwise, yeah, pretty lame for a nerdy site.
There are others...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_hangar
Urm, we're supposed to live in a democracy, right?
If there are real threats, (and seems to be plenty of them), that this technology can efficiently and effectively combat, then explain it to the people who vote and also pay for the damn thing.
Don't give me BS about how that will somehow "compromise" the security of the system; specific facts (like the names of agents) compromise security, not generic information about what information you are gathering, on whom.
These people lie to avoid oversight, is all. That way leads to tyranny.
If they cannot explain why this is in our interests, then it's not.
We have a big mix of Wintels, iDevices and Androids at home & work.
They're all pretty good at doing what we need.
The iDevices, however, stand out for being harder to get things onto and off.
And don't get me started on iTunes, especially when running on a non-Mac.
Sure there are alternatives, and apps like SugarSync and Evernote ease the pain, but why make it hard when a USP of Apple is supposed to be the user-friendliness?
Still, as I said, never going to happen...looks like they're going to focus on the cosmetics, rather than listening to their customers. Shades of Windows 8?
Final thought: Why don't they just take the top-selling and/or free apps, for both 'geek/power user' and 'normal consumer' and bake 'em into the OS? They've got the cash...
I fear that this could/will be used to clamp down on whitehatting/fair disclosure, perhaps simply just to avoid Govt. red faces, just as much as a deterrence/punishment for the bad guys.
But when are we going to get something like SOX for critical systems designers and operators?
"The X-rays on critical welds for your nuclear plant were faked; 5 years"
"The SCADA system for your nuclear plant is exposed to the internet; 2 years".
"You have an unpatched known vulnerability on your database which led to personal, private information being stolen; 1 year".
Yeah, I know it's fraught with moral peril, and we'd have to devise mechanisms to ensure that SysAdmins did not get hammered instead of their bosses, but until we do that, nothing much will change on the client side.