"There is no way that the spooks can bypass determined ingenuity for freedom."
Well if they can't bypass it, they can discourage it. A bullet through the brain definitely gives people pause, when considering using secure encryption.
I've said it before: Technology is not a solution to social, political, or legal problems.
Hmm. While Linux has some strong advantages, I'm not sure that many of its tools are well-architected, and I KNOW that the documentation is generally dismal or worse. Stable and secure and slim are good points though.
You're missing the biggest one, and it's not Apple's fault, at all.
I can't play my games on it. Really, it's games that sell new computers as much as everything else put together. They need to threaten some software developers, and get some more games written.
It's really relatively simple. If you know all of the ways that anonymity could be compromised, you can eiminate them, for a certain cost and degree of complexity.
Now, how many ways are there of tracing an anonymous source? Can you itemise them _all_? Are you sure you haven't missed any? How about real-time surveillance?
As usual, the trick isn't in the technology, it's in knowing how and where to apply it.
Hmm. I'd be more inclined to say that they're back in business. They were very definitely unavailable for a few years--I spent almost a year trying to get a reply from them (regarding a flaw in a Pro-Logic processor kit I bought, possibly one of the very last kits they ever sold), and finally got a notice about them no longer being in business.
I love Ellison's work. No question that he's something of an asshole, but he's an entertaining one, and often not nearly as serious as people think he's being.
Since no one else has mentioned it yet, find a copy of "The Deathbird." If you can find the collection called Deathbird Stories, it has many of the other recommended works posted here. Also read "A Boy and his Dog," and then rent the movie (one of the only real SF movies ever made).
Now, why do I like his works? First of all, they're uncompromising--Ellison writes what he wants, and pulls no punches. OK, that's not entirely difficult to manage. However, Ellison taps into the heart of human emotions--his writing in The Deathbird is so powerful that it makes me weep, and not just with sadness but also partly with relief and closure. Not many other authors can manage that--Murakami is one, and I'm not sure I can think of any others--maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Also, there's his wicked sense of humour--A Boy and his Dog is a brilliant black comedy, and too many people have missed that aspect of his writing.
One secret: Read his short stories one at a time. Sit down, read one, and then walk away. Maybe go back to it in a few days, but don't read them back to back, or you'll just glue them all together in your mind.
If you get an MCSE or equivalent, be prepared for people to start devaluing your Unix skills. Most Unix people I know sneer at MS certs, and will toss such resumes in the garbage (fairly or not, it's what happens).
So get an MCSE, and you're likely to get hired for MS support. Once there, your enterprise Unix skills (assuming your a good Unix admin) will make you a very good Windows admin, and you'll be able to easily continue down that path. In a few years, you may not be able to get a job in Unix anymore, because your skills are old, and you're now a MS support guy.
It's up to you if you're willing to do that--it would certainly make you more employable--but if the time comes that I can't get an IT job outside of the Microsoft world, then I'll switch fields.
That's the worst idea I've seen on/. in a long time. Hell, why not just throw ALL mail into the junk folder? Why not add an extension to Excel to make it an email program? Hey, these ideas are lousy, but they might inadvertently provide some benefit!
Let's get a _good_ solution, not an inherently flawed one, and _then_ consider implementing it.
Arrest the fuckers. Throw Scott Richter in jail for a decade or two for fraud and theft. Break the back of the organised crime syndicates that are profiting. Revoke FDIC/CDIC approval for banks who benefit from mortgage spam. Have the CEOs of explicitly supportive ISPs (MCI, for instance) arrested and fined tens of millions of dollars. Threaten economic sanctions against countries who don't take reasonable action.
Like most crime, the laws exist to stop the small criminals, and have no ability to nail the true sources. Technology is always used to try to fix this problem, and always fails.
You're missing a point here. If what you suggest would happen, then it would have already happened. Clearly, though, it hasn't. Why not?
Two reasons: Comfort and disbelief. People may curse Windows with their dying breath, but they're familiar with it, or at least think they are. Going to a different platform with different stuff is a HUGE barrier for most people. Furthermore, as much as viruses and malware and spam are destroying computers and data, people don't generally believe that it'll be any better (or different at all) anywhere else. If you can make people BELIEVE that things will improve, then they'll shift. Unfortunately, you're up against the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (AKA Microsoft), who spend literally billions telling customers otherwise.
Don't forget, though. Sun will regularly be releasing updates of their code. OpenSolaris isn't just a one-time fork from the Solaris code, it's an ongoing concern. In other words, there will be a stable and current base--always--to work from.
Your question is old hat in time-travel discussion.
If I went back two years and killed your dog, your present self would suddenly be in a reality where your dog had been dead for two years. Many things might have changed in your life as a result, and you would have no idea that a day earlier your dog was still alive because that 'reality' never happened.
This is similar to the premise of John Varley's "Millennium," which was a much better book than the movie would suggest. If you like this stuff, pick up a copy.
For the first point, I think you hit the nail on the head: "For smaller companies this could be very easy if it's just one or two guys to train"
The training/time costs scale up VERY fast, as company size increases. I'm admittedly biased because I work at a company of about 3500 people, and something as simple as rolling out a patch often takes a few weeks of prep work. (Note also that I don't support MS stuff at all.) I actually suspect that the break-even point for both support and user cross-training would be about 25 people in six months, 50-100 in a year, and 200 in three years.
Support also scales with size, as well as criticality. An architect's shop won't run AutoCad on an unsupported environment, because if something major happens that they can't help with (an emulation flaw in Wine perhaps?), they can close the doors and go home forever. The Oil and Gas companies pay obscene amounts of money yearly for support on their seismic applications, and they actually tend to use it a fair bit.
In general, migration usually strikes me as the wrong entry into the business. Inertia grows so fast as a company grows and ages (sometimes even for good reasons!) that it quickly becomes almost impossible to make a wholesale change. Targeting new startups who don't have to do things a certain way is a more logical approach, in my mind.
Let's see. If they migrated from Windows to Linux, they'd need...
1) Support people who understand Linux. That means either crosstraining their existing staff ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially personal resistance), or hiring new people ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially faction conflicts)
2) Support from their vendors. "You're running AutoCad 2005 on WHAT?! Sorry, can't help you."
This is a solution for a home PC. This is NOT a solution for an enterprise.
Interesting points. I don't think that the analogy holds very well, though. In the real world, we organise things spatially, because we're living in a three dimensional world, and have spatial cues burned into our brain, probably genetically.
What must be realised is that files in a filesystem have no inherent organisation to begin with. Folders, directories, symbolic links, these are all systems of organisation imposed on the data, based on the metadata. ALL of these things are nothing more than a view onto flat data.
The thing is, we can have multiple forms of organisation exist simultaneously, without conflict. Take your example:
"while it would kick ass if I could open one magic drawer that give me access to all the chef's knives so I can take inventory, or I can decide that it's time to replace, sharpen or retire one or another, and another magic drawer that shows me all kitchen utensils of a certain brand, I don't want these dynamic slice of the current state of my kitchen to become the organization of my kitchen."
This wouldn't become _the_ organisation of your kitchen, it would become _one_ organisation of it. You could have all of the magic drawers you want, each for different purposes, and still have your chef's knife on the top right slot of your knife block. (which is exactly where mine is as well--same knife block, perhaps?)
Also, I'd question another point:
"Users must never confuse the two because a file may be found in more than one smart folder. So it's imperative that the user understand that the file really only exists once."
Why is this imperative? If a user edits a file that exists in two collections, then they should be able to either apply the change to all collections, or just the one that they found it in. In fact, this is pretty close to how hard links work in Unix.
Ultimately, it comes down to set theory applied to file metadata, and it's entirely possible to create as many separate set of completely arbitrary data as well as the 'logical' groupings. At least theoretically. Looking at it from the point of view of your DBA, the data at a low level would be no more or less flat than it currently is, but the metadata would allow it to be dynamically structured into tables, to allow perfectly arbitrary queries against it. In fact, a filesystem like this would be the ultimate holy grail of databases: Select, limit, and sort based on arbitrary and unforseen criteria, not just on the preprogrammed design parameters.
Any company that's making money, is making money that could be going to Microsoft. Thus, every revenue-generating company is a direct competitor to MS.
Yes, that really IS the schizophrenic sort of thinking that goes on in the minds of companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well good luck with that plan. If Bush has his way, that's going to be F**Ked up as well.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05210/545823.stm
Documentation!
Clear, concise, complete, comprehensive, current documentation.
"There is no way that the spooks can bypass determined ingenuity for freedom."
Well if they can't bypass it, they can discourage it. A bullet through the brain definitely gives people pause, when considering using secure encryption.
I've said it before: Technology is not a solution to social, political, or legal problems.
Hmm. While Linux has some strong advantages, I'm not sure that many of its tools are well-architected, and I KNOW that the documentation is generally dismal or worse. Stable and secure and slim are good points though.
You're missing the biggest one, and it's not Apple's fault, at all.
I can't play my games on it. Really, it's games that sell new computers as much as everything else put together. They need to threaten some software developers, and get some more games written.
It's really relatively simple. If you know all of the ways that anonymity could be compromised, you can eiminate them, for a certain cost and degree of complexity.
Now, how many ways are there of tracing an anonymous source? Can you itemise them _all_? Are you sure you haven't missed any? How about real-time surveillance?
As usual, the trick isn't in the technology, it's in knowing how and where to apply it.
Hmm. I'd be more inclined to say that they're back in business. They were very definitely unavailable for a few years--I spent almost a year trying to get a reply from them (regarding a flaw in a Pro-Logic processor kit I bought, possibly one of the very last kits they ever sold), and finally got a notice about them no longer being in business.
And that justifies blind faith in direct contradiction to all science, logic, and rationality, does it?
I love Ellison's work. No question that he's something of an asshole, but he's an entertaining one, and often not nearly as serious as people think he's being.
Since no one else has mentioned it yet, find a copy of "The Deathbird." If you can find the collection called Deathbird Stories, it has many of the other recommended works posted here. Also read "A Boy and his Dog," and then rent the movie (one of the only real SF movies ever made).
Now, why do I like his works? First of all, they're uncompromising--Ellison writes what he wants, and pulls no punches. OK, that's not entirely difficult to manage. However, Ellison taps into the heart of human emotions--his writing in The Deathbird is so powerful that it makes me weep, and not just with sadness but also partly with relief and closure. Not many other authors can manage that--Murakami is one, and I'm not sure I can think of any others--maybe Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Also, there's his wicked sense of humour--A Boy and his Dog is a brilliant black comedy, and too many people have missed that aspect of his writing.
One secret: Read his short stories one at a time. Sit down, read one, and then walk away. Maybe go back to it in a few days, but don't read them back to back, or you'll just glue them all together in your mind.
If you get an MCSE or equivalent, be prepared for people to start devaluing your Unix skills. Most Unix people I know sneer at MS certs, and will toss such resumes in the garbage (fairly or not, it's what happens).
So get an MCSE, and you're likely to get hired for MS support. Once there, your enterprise Unix skills (assuming your a good Unix admin) will make you a very good Windows admin, and you'll be able to easily continue down that path. In a few years, you may not be able to get a job in Unix anymore, because your skills are old, and you're now a MS support guy.
It's up to you if you're willing to do that--it would certainly make you more employable--but if the time comes that I can't get an IT job outside of the Microsoft world, then I'll switch fields.
That's the worst idea I've seen on /. in a long time. Hell, why not just throw ALL mail into the junk folder? Why not add an extension to Excel to make it an email program? Hey, these ideas are lousy, but they might inadvertently provide some benefit!
Let's get a _good_ solution, not an inherently flawed one, and _then_ consider implementing it.
Arrest the fuckers. Throw Scott Richter in jail for a decade or two for fraud and theft. Break the back of the organised crime syndicates that are profiting. Revoke FDIC/CDIC approval for banks who benefit from mortgage spam. Have the CEOs of explicitly supportive ISPs (MCI, for instance) arrested and fined tens of millions of dollars. Threaten economic sanctions against countries who don't take reasonable action.
Like most crime, the laws exist to stop the small criminals, and have no ability to nail the true sources. Technology is always used to try to fix this problem, and always fails.
BS all you want for the media, but PLEASE compete directly with those criminals at paypal! I want that unjust monopoly broken in half!
You're missing a point here. If what you suggest would happen, then it would have already happened. Clearly, though, it hasn't. Why not?
Two reasons: Comfort and disbelief. People may curse Windows with their dying breath, but they're familiar with it, or at least think they are. Going to a different platform with different stuff is a HUGE barrier for most people. Furthermore, as much as viruses and malware and spam are destroying computers and data, people don't generally believe that it'll be any better (or different at all) anywhere else. If you can make people BELIEVE that things will improve, then they'll shift. Unfortunately, you're up against the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (AKA Microsoft), who spend literally billions telling customers otherwise.
However...
Tony Valeri just announced that he's put forth a motion to extend the sitting in the house. It may still happen.
This is true, but the joy of B&W is the darkroom flexibility, and that's just not possible with colour emulsion/C41 process film and paper.
Hmm. I agree with you in general, but didn't think that her outfit was really that bad. Maybe I've become conditioned.
Sadly, it sells games far more effectively than such niceties like good code or intelligent game design.
Don't forget, though. Sun will regularly be releasing updates of their code. OpenSolaris isn't just a one-time fork from the Solaris code, it's an ongoing concern. In other words, there will be a stable and current base--always--to work from.
Your question is old hat in time-travel discussion.
If I went back two years and killed your dog, your present self would suddenly be in a reality where your dog had been dead for two years. Many things might have changed in your life as a result, and you would have no idea that a day earlier your dog was still alive because that 'reality' never happened.
This is similar to the premise of John Varley's "Millennium," which was a much better book than the movie would suggest. If you like this stuff, pick up a copy.
For the first point, I think you hit the nail on the head: "For smaller companies this could be very easy if it's just one or two guys to train"
The training/time costs scale up VERY fast, as company size increases. I'm admittedly biased because I work at a company of about 3500 people, and something as simple as rolling out a patch often takes a few weeks of prep work. (Note also that I don't support MS stuff at all.) I actually suspect that the break-even point for both support and user cross-training would be about 25 people in six months, 50-100 in a year, and 200 in three years.
Support also scales with size, as well as criticality. An architect's shop won't run AutoCad on an unsupported environment, because if something major happens that they can't help with (an emulation flaw in Wine perhaps?), they can close the doors and go home forever. The Oil and Gas companies pay obscene amounts of money yearly for support on their seismic applications, and they actually tend to use it a fair bit.
In general, migration usually strikes me as the wrong entry into the business. Inertia grows so fast as a company grows and ages (sometimes even for good reasons!) that it quickly becomes almost impossible to make a wholesale change. Targeting new startups who don't have to do things a certain way is a more logical approach, in my mind.
Let's see. If they migrated from Windows to Linux, they'd need...
1) Support people who understand Linux. That means either crosstraining their existing staff ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially personal resistance), or hiring new people ($$$, ramp-up time, and potentially faction conflicts)
2) Support from their vendors. "You're running AutoCad 2005 on WHAT?! Sorry, can't help you."
This is a solution for a home PC. This is NOT a solution for an enterprise.
Interesting points. I don't think that the analogy holds very well, though. In the real world, we organise things spatially, because we're living in a three dimensional world, and have spatial cues burned into our brain, probably genetically.
What must be realised is that files in a filesystem have no inherent organisation to begin with. Folders, directories, symbolic links, these are all systems of organisation imposed on the data, based on the metadata. ALL of these things are nothing more than a view onto flat data.
The thing is, we can have multiple forms of organisation exist simultaneously, without conflict. Take your example:
"while it would kick ass if I could open one magic drawer that give me access to all the chef's knives so I can take inventory, or I can decide that it's time to replace, sharpen or retire one or another, and another magic drawer that shows me all kitchen utensils of a certain brand, I don't want these dynamic slice of the current state of my kitchen to become the organization of my kitchen."
This wouldn't become _the_ organisation of your kitchen, it would become _one_ organisation of it. You could have all of the magic drawers you want, each for different purposes, and still have your chef's knife on the top right slot of your knife block. (which is exactly where mine is as well--same knife block, perhaps?)
Also, I'd question another point:
"Users must never confuse the two because a file may be found in more than one smart folder. So it's imperative that the user understand that the file really only exists once."
Why is this imperative? If a user edits a file that exists in two collections, then they should be able to either apply the change to all collections, or just the one that they found it in. In fact, this is pretty close to how hard links work in Unix.
Ultimately, it comes down to set theory applied to file metadata, and it's entirely possible to create as many separate set of completely arbitrary data as well as the 'logical' groupings. At least theoretically. Looking at it from the point of view of your DBA, the data at a low level would be no more or less flat than it currently is, but the metadata would allow it to be dynamically structured into tables, to allow perfectly arbitrary queries against it. In fact, a filesystem like this would be the ultimate holy grail of databases: Select, limit, and sort based on arbitrary and unforseen criteria, not just on the preprogrammed design parameters.
The streaming feeds do. :-)
Well, it's simple.
Any company that's making money, is making money that could be going to Microsoft. Thus, every revenue-generating company is a direct competitor to MS.
Yes, that really IS the schizophrenic sort of thinking that goes on in the minds of companies.