Problem is that technically VOIP is NOT a phone service.
Phone in most (all?) countries are goverened by a strict set of regulations regarding billing, level of service etc. etc.
VOIP on the other hand is a novelty application for the internet and is not geverned by any regulations and cannot paricipate in many regulated telephone services. The problem with 911,999,912,914 type services is that the service provider is supposed to supply subscriber details and location details to the emergency operator. "133t5ax0r" at rackspace is not quite detailed enough.
So far SOX has returned no visable benefits to society.
Sure there are more complex and harder to implement accounting regulations. Enron in theory had to complied with the GAAP rules SOX is essentially GAAP++.
This is the basic flaw in regime. GAAP rules are meant to cover every accounting eventuallity and over the years this has grown into a monumental stack of rules and exceptions. This has on the whole led to worse accounting as the more rules and regulations you have the more loopholes you have and professionals in the accounting area are generally judged on there abilty to exploit and manipulate these rules.
So given that the problem is a large and complex set of rules. The US government imposes more rules as the solution.
This is a particular problem for non US comapnies which have a large presence in the US as they are now forced to apply SOX to a set of figures which is not based on GAAP rules.
If they really wanted prevent another Enron type fraud, the answer is simple. Force companies to pay out at least 10% of there stated profits as dividend to the shareholders. You need to have real cash in the bank to do this and "on paper" profits dont hack it.
I dont think the argument that a monolithic kernal only works because Linus did it is valid. All *nix OSes and several other very succesful OSes (zOS,VMS, etc. etc. ) are monolithic. The security problems with this type of kernal are well known; the solutions/workarounds are also well known. There are very few microkernal OSes that have aquired a large installed base (at least since the demise of OS/2). There are very sound and rational reasons for this, microkernels offer increase security/predictabilty/stability at the cost of a performance hit where it really hurts. Adding just a tiny amount of overhead to each IO, memory management and synchronisation operation adds up to a large performance hit. Single purpose, real time command and control systems are the only environment where it makes sense to take this performance hit.
There was actually nothing much new in the article. Java has been available on the mainframe in some form for at least 6 years , C++ for at least 9 and pure C for at least 15.
You currently have two third generation Java VMs one which runs in Unix System Services (basicly the mainframe pretends its a POSIX comliant UNIX) and a whole separate one which runs inside CICS ('cause CICS does its own thread and memory management).
Under the USS JVM you can run any standard Java or J2EE application you just install the jar/war files as you would on any other Java platform.
Also suported under USS are perl/python, gzip, vim, X, etc. etc.
There can be real wierdness though as to schedule a Java program you need to use JCL to run the USS shell, and, you can mix HSM files ( Unix like/dir/dir/filenames ) with tradational IBM datasets and VSAM files ( DSN=VERY.RIGID.NAMING.CON.VENTION )
My personal opinion is that while there is no compeling reason to move applications off the mainframe and certainly no reason whatsoever to move to windows, there are really no complelling reasons to choose the mainframe over high end unix for new applciations.
Apart from the arcane languages and utilities that 40 years of backward compatability brings with it, the main bugbear is that while hardware and base software costs have plumited third party software costs have remained very high.
Poster obviously took "capitalism 101 " but skipped "capitalism 103".
"Google" is no longer about technoligy it has become a brand name.
A good brand name is an incredibly valuable thing. People pay 10* the cost for a pair of running shoes because it has a "Nike" logo, Detroit can produce a car just as good a Mercedes but it must sell them at half the price.
Along with Apple and Amazon google is one of the few hi tech companies to make the transition to "trusted brand name". Microsoft is a recognised "brand" but not a trusted one, and "Yahoo" is pushing for "untrusted brand" status.
" To be honest with you, I don't know how to spend that much vacation time "
This reminds me of the well know phenomenon of Battery Hens released into the real world. They dont know what to do so they hudle up to the nearest other hen and sit there all day without moving.
I had 12 weeks vacation last year and still ended up with a list of things to do next year.
Aside from my opinion that SCO should specify what they believe was copied, rather than IBM prove that none of thier zillion lines of AIX and Linux breach copyright.
This Edit Distance would work rather well for "breach of copyright" as what is protected is particular text and not general ideas or methods. If I lokked over your shoulder and saw a neat algorithm which I them implemneted myself this would not violate your copyright unless I did a line for line copy of you code.
All the "loopholes" described in the rather brain dead article describe security holes at the server end. Anyone serioulsly trying to exploit this will not be using javascript and a browser but something like curl and perl. At this level there is really no difference between between "get" and "post" as curl can handle both equally easily, and, there is really not much difference between a URL designed to be read directly by the browser and a URL designed to be read by AJAX. What the article is really saying is that your web server application is insecure if you code it badly and even if you code it well you can still be subject to DOS attacks. This is not news.
Well if it was a Korean form giving away DVD players for free, or, an Indian giving away steel cheap. It would be (and is) considered illegal dumping. So whay not for software?
Warning - Phillip K. Dick considered frustrating! Phillip K. Dick is brilliant at character development, and, probably better at the "vision thing" than any SF writer. But storytelling, plots, endings and other stuff condsidered essential by most novelists was considered optional by Phill. I gave up on him after too books in a row (one was the "Simalcrum") which just suddenly ended with all plot lines dangling and all issues unresolved, as in, the major characters got taken to an asylum and thats it.
Now this was very much like real life as far as PKD was concerned but it doesnt make for an artisticly satisfying book.
Yes your right! A release going out of support is definately a "Do this because you have to". But my main point is most corporate IT managers are quite pleased if the next Office release is delayed by a year or more because they can move a tiresome upgrade with no business benifits into next years plan.
Its not going to bother IT managers
on
Office Delayed, Too
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Most well run companies base there IT planning around business cases, and business cases generally fall into three catagories:- 1. Do this and the company will make more money. 2. Do this and the company will spend less money. 3. Do this because you have to.
Upgrading to something like Office 2007 is definately a type "3" business case and most companies wont upgrade until either support is withdrawn or the current version wont work on the latest hardware or OS.
My current client a well run, well known mega corp is still runnig a version of "Office 2000" which is "Copyright 1983-1999" according to the about box.
I have never heard anyone gripe about running such an old version and the company is doing as well as ever.
Under the regime of "Bill the Bonker" as he is known here the DoJ were winning the case against MS hands down. Queue the "Bush Brothers" and after a bit of vote rigging in Florida the DoJ were instructed to quietly drop the case.
I was pleasntly surprised during the US anti-trust case that Microsofts legeal team was so inept. Microsoft surivived that because of politics.
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
Could be that us Brits are deeply uncomfortable with any deal involving the US at the moment. The current US adminisration is deeply unpopular in Britian with almost everyone except Tony Blair. Now Tony is on the way out the US is losing its British cheer leader. None of the potential new leaders see any politcal adavantage in a "special" relationship with the US, to the extent that even a closer alliance with the hated French is the now prefered option.
Considering centuries of mutual hate and loathing there is between the Glorious subjects of her Brittanic Majesty and the unwashed garlic chewing frogs it is one of the great acheivments of the Bush dynasty to get the US rated below the French in British public perception.
I was planning to put a request for an on-line calender on Googles wish list next time I was truly stuck for something to do.
Since g-mail the only non-browser based activity I do regularly on my various machines is updateing calenders. When google releases this nearly everything I do outside actual development will be browser based.
So what, well I move around a lot and I need never lug 3 three kilos of Dell hardware again.
As much as people don't want to hear it terrorists, whether they are IRA, UDA, Hammas, Shining Light etc. etc., tend to be the brightest and best that there society can offer.
The maze prison in Nothern Ireland was full of bright young men from good families with above average educational acheivement.
And to being the discussion a bit more on Topic most of these people are either self funding or funded by handing round the collection plate.
Although the IRA got more into organised crime twoards the end of its tenure the majority of funding still came from passing around buckets in the Irish bars of Boston and NewYork. Yes private US citizens were the major source of funds for a terrorist organisation. So why is it so hard to believe that private citizens are the major source of funding for Islamic terrorists?
The main problems here is that if you are in a government department responsable for say seat belt standards in automobiles and you want a bigger budget, you can get your hands on some "Homeland Security" dollars by pointing out that most of the 9/11 terroists were known seat belt wearers and reasearch into seat belts could help identify future terrorists.
I have lots of trouble getting much more than 12 hours uptime from Sun. At present only about 8 hours a day. Although Linus has reported an uptime of nearly 64 hours he hasn't been able to repeat it since moving to California.
Actually the day job is as a middleware guru. Various other posters have commented on the lines of "why don't I get a job consulting on this if I know so much" the answer is that I get paid more than a SAP consultant and the work is much more rewarding and interesting.
BASIC was not designed as a teaching language, it, was conceived of as a language that could be used without extensive teaching.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:-- - - The eight design principles of BASIC were:
-- Be easy for beginners to use. -- Be a general-purpose programming language. -- Allow advanced features to be added for experts (while keeping the language simple for beginners). -- Be interactive. -- Provide clear and friendly error messages. -- Respond fast for small programs. -- Not require an understanding of computer hardware. -- Shield the user from the operating system - -
Whether this was such a good idea is debatable. My personal opinion is that is was like developing an easy to use automobile which didn't need driving lessons.
Slashdot Mirror
Problem is that technically VOIP is NOT a phone service.
Phone in most (all?) countries are goverened by a strict set of regulations regarding billing, level of service etc. etc.
VOIP on the other hand is a novelty application for the internet and
is not geverned by any regulations and cannot paricipate in many regulated
telephone services. The problem with 911,999,912,914 type services is
that the service provider is supposed to supply subscriber details and
location details to the emergency operator. "133t5ax0r" at rackspace
is not quite detailed enough.
So far SOX has returned no visable benefits to society.
Sure there are more complex and harder to implement accounting regulations. Enron in theory had to complied with the GAAP rules
SOX is essentially GAAP++.
This is the basic flaw in regime. GAAP rules are meant to cover every
accounting eventuallity and over the years this has grown into a monumental
stack of rules and exceptions. This has on the whole led to worse accounting
as the more rules and regulations you have the more loopholes you have
and professionals in the accounting area are generally judged on there
abilty to exploit and manipulate these rules.
So given that the problem is a large and complex set of rules. The
US government imposes more rules as the solution.
This is a particular problem for non US comapnies which have a large
presence in the US as they are now forced to apply SOX to a set of figures
which is not based on GAAP rules.
If they really wanted prevent another Enron type fraud, the answer is
simple. Force companies to pay out at least 10% of there stated profits
as dividend to the shareholders. You need to have real cash in the bank
to do this and "on paper" profits dont hack it.
I dont think the argument that a monolithic kernal only works because Linus
did it is valid.
All *nix OSes and several other very succesful OSes (zOS,VMS, etc. etc. ) are monolithic. The security problems with this type of kernal are well
known; the solutions/workarounds are also well known.
There are very few microkernal OSes that have aquired a large installed
base (at least since the demise of OS/2).
There are very sound and rational reasons for this, microkernels offer
increase security/predictabilty/stability at the cost of a performance
hit where it really hurts. Adding just a tiny amount of overhead to
each IO, memory management and synchronisation operation adds up to
a large performance hit. Single purpose, real time command and control
systems are the only environment where it makes sense to take this
performance hit.
If you dont think JCL is wierd then you've been working on
OS/MFT, OS/MVT, OS/VS, MVS, MVS-XA, OS/390, zOS etc. etc. for too long.
Especially when you have instream bash and perl in with
the JCL. -- it hurts your brain.
There was actually nothing much new in the article.
/dir/dir/filenames ) with tradational
Java has been available on the mainframe in some form for
at least 6 years , C++ for at least 9 and pure C for at least 15.
You currently have two third generation Java VMs one which runs
in Unix System Services (basicly the mainframe pretends its a
POSIX comliant UNIX) and a whole separate one which runs inside
CICS ('cause CICS does its own thread and memory management).
Under the USS JVM you can run any standard Java or J2EE
application you just install the jar/war files as you would
on any other Java platform.
Also suported under USS are perl/python, gzip, vim, X, etc. etc.
There can be real wierdness though as to schedule a Java program
you need to use JCL to run the USS shell, and, you can mix
HSM files ( Unix like
IBM datasets and VSAM files ( DSN=VERY.RIGID.NAMING.CON.VENTION )
My personal opinion is that while there is no compeling reason to
move applications off the mainframe and certainly no reason whatsoever
to move to windows, there are really no complelling reasons to choose
the mainframe over high end unix for new applciations.
Apart from the arcane languages and utilities that 40 years of backward
compatability brings with it, the main bugbear is that while hardware
and base software costs have plumited third party software costs
have remained very high.
Poster obviously took "capitalism 101 " but skipped "capitalism 103".
"Google" is no longer about technoligy it has become a brand name.
A good brand name is an incredibly valuable thing. People pay 10* the cost
for a pair of running shoes because it has a "Nike" logo, Detroit can
produce a car just as good a Mercedes but it must sell them at half the price.
Along with Apple and Amazon google is one of the few hi tech companies
to make the transition to "trusted brand name".
Microsoft is a recognised "brand" but not a trusted one, and "Yahoo" is
pushing for "untrusted brand" status.
A few days ago I installed Adobe Acrobat on a windows PC so I could RTFM.
I was rather surpised to see the "Yahoo" toolbar appear on the IE browser
next time I fired it up.
I didnt ask for it, there were no "do you to install?" questions it just appeared. And it was a pig to get rid of.
It wasn't my PC and I felt guilty about leaving it in a polluted state,
and I have come to regard anything Yahoo as pollution.
Isnt there some sort of law against this kind of stuff?
" To be honest with you, I don't know how to spend that much vacation time "
This reminds me of the well know phenomenon of Battery Hens released into the real world. They dont know what to do so they hudle up to the nearest other hen and sit there all day without moving.
I had 12 weeks vacation last year and still ended up with a list of things to do next year.
Aside from my opinion that SCO should specify what they believe was copied, rather than IBM prove that none of thier zillion lines of AIX and Linux breach copyright.
This Edit Distance would work rather well for "breach of copyright" as what is protected is particular text and not general ideas or methods. If I lokked over your shoulder and saw a neat algorithm which I them implemneted myself this would not violate your copyright unless I did a line for line copy of you code.
All the "loopholes" described in the rather brain dead article describe security holes at the server end.
Anyone serioulsly trying to exploit this will not be using javascript and a browser but something like curl and perl.
At this level there is really no difference between between "get" and "post" as curl can handle both equally easily, and, there is really not much difference between a URL designed to be read directly by the browser and a URL designed to be read by AJAX.
What the article is really saying is that your web server application is insecure if you code it badly and even if you code it well you can still be subject to DOS attacks.
This is not news.
Well if it was a Korean form giving away DVD players for free, or,
an Indian giving away steel cheap. It would be (and is) considered illegal
dumping. So whay not for software?
Yeah, but what is the market. Internet shopping? ...
It cant much use for downloading pron as one you would need a free hand
Warning - Phillip K. Dick considered frustrating!
Phillip K. Dick is brilliant at character development, and, probably better at the "vision thing" than any SF writer.
But storytelling, plots, endings and other stuff condsidered essential by most novelists was considered optional by Phill.
I gave up on him after too books in a row (one was the "Simalcrum") which just suddenly ended with all plot lines dangling and all issues unresolved, as in, the major characters got taken to an asylum and thats it.
Now this was very much like real life as far as PKD was concerned but it doesnt make for an artisticly satisfying book.
Yes your right! A release going out of support
is definately a "Do this because you have to".
But my main point is most corporate IT managers
are quite pleased if the next Office release
is delayed by a year or more because they can
move a tiresome upgrade with no business benifits
into next years plan.
Most well run companies base there IT planning around business cases,
and business cases generally fall into three catagories:-
1. Do this and the company will make more money.
2. Do this and the company will spend less money.
3. Do this because you have to.
Upgrading to something like Office 2007 is definately a type "3"
business case and most companies wont upgrade until either support
is withdrawn or the current version wont work on the latest hardware
or OS.
My current client a well run, well known mega corp is still runnig
a version of "Office 2000" which is "Copyright 1983-1999" according
to the about box.
I have never heard anyone gripe about running such an old version
and the company is doing as well as ever.
Under the regime of "Bill the Bonker" as he is known here the DoJ were winning the case against MS hands down.
Queue the "Bush Brothers" and after a bit of vote rigging in Florida the DoJ were instructed to quietly drop the case.
I was pleasntly surprised during the US anti-trust case that Microsofts legeal team was so inept. Microsoft surivived that because of politics.
Thier lawyers seem even better at p****ng off European judges. Only this time there is no President of Texas to ride to the rescue. They are not a major generator of jobs or revenue for any european state, and, they cannot legally contibute to any European polititions campaign fund. Thier only hope was a sound legal case and ass kissing, but, its too late for that now. I think this is just starting out and Microsoft will be paying anf paying for years to come.
Could be that us Brits are deeply uncomfortable with any deal involving the US at the moment.
The current US adminisration is deeply unpopular in Britian with almost everyone except Tony Blair.
Now Tony is on the way out the US is losing its British cheer leader.
None of the potential new leaders see any politcal adavantage in a "special" relationship with the US, to the extent that even a closer alliance with the hated French is the now prefered option.
Considering centuries of mutual hate and loathing there is between the Glorious subjects of her Brittanic Majesty and the unwashed garlic chewing frogs it is one of the great acheivments of the Bush dynasty to get the US rated below the French in British public perception.
I was planning to put a request for an on-line calender on Googles wish list next time I was truly stuck for something to do.
Since g-mail the only non-browser based activity I do regularly on my
various machines is updateing calenders. When google releases this
nearly everything I do outside actual development will be browser based.
So what, well I move around a lot and I need never lug 3 three kilos
of Dell hardware again.
I have to second this.
As much as people don't want to hear it terrorists, whether they
are IRA, UDA, Hammas, Shining Light etc. etc., tend to be the
brightest and best that there society can offer.
The maze prison in Nothern Ireland was full of bright young
men from good families with above average educational acheivement.
And to being the discussion a bit more on Topic most of these people
are either self funding or funded by handing round the collection plate.
Although the IRA got more into organised crime twoards the end of its
tenure the majority of funding still came from passing around buckets
in the Irish bars of Boston and NewYork.
Yes private US citizens were the major source of funds for a
terrorist organisation. So why is it so hard to believe that private
citizens are the major source of funding for Islamic terrorists?
The main problems here is that if you are in a government department
responsable for say seat belt standards in automobiles and you want a
bigger budget, you can get your hands on some "Homeland Security" dollars
by pointing out that most of the 9/11 terroists were known seat belt
wearers and reasearch into seat belts could help identify future terrorists.
I have lots of trouble getting much more than 12 hours uptime from Sun.
At present only about 8 hours a day.
Although Linus has reported an uptime of nearly 64 hours he hasn't
been able to repeat it since moving to California.
Most IBM slavelings don't care about windows vis redhat vis suse, if only they would dump Lotus notes client everybody would be a lot happier.
Bug fix:-
while {
$beer = new Beer();
while ($beer != full) {
chug($beer);
}
} ($beer == empty);
Translation: I'm a helpdesk monkey
Actually the day job is as a middleware guru.
Various other posters have commented on the lines
of "why don't I get a job consulting on this if I know so much"
the answer is that I get paid more than a SAP consultant and
the work is much more rewarding and interesting.
A bit of pedantry here.
BASIC was not designed as a teaching language, it, was conceived of as a language that could be used without extensive teaching.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:--
- -
The eight design principles of BASIC were:
-- Be easy for beginners to use.
-- Be a general-purpose programming language.
-- Allow advanced features to be added for experts (while keeping the language simple for beginners).
-- Be interactive.
-- Provide clear and friendly error messages.
-- Respond fast for small programs.
-- Not require an understanding of computer hardware.
-- Shield the user from the operating system
- -
Whether this was such a good idea is debatable.
My personal opinion is that is was like developing an
easy to use automobile which didn't need driving lessons.