But VC's seems completely focused on the IP of the product. Without that it seems that even a good business based on knowhow and delivery of services are unworthy of investment.
Of course, because the big companies can throw $$$ at know-how and delivery and marketing and take over the market at any time. You may be able to create a viable business, but you're not likely to be able to grow enough to be the huge success VCs want in order to offset the risk.
Another possible reason people may be focused on IP, is that it is something they can easily steal. There are people out there who will act like VCs, pretend to be very interested in investing in your company, but when it comes time to actually sign a deal they walk away. Away, to the patent office, where they will patent anything that you haven't.
NDAs are supposed to prevent this sort of thing, but in practice they are completely ineffective. It's hard to prove that Bob the VC-who-wasn't actually violated the NDA when some seemingly unrelated company is the one filing the patents. Ideas are very easy to launder.
For Java, there is ProGuard, which can shrink and obfuscate a jar (or just shrink, or just obfuscate). The shrinking works by stripping out classes and members that are not referenced (directly or indirectly) by the entry point (main()). Obfuscation also shrinks things further, by shortening symbol names.
There are others, but ProGuard looks like the best free one.
I don't think this really saves memory though, it just results in a smaller.jar file. The Java classloader does not load the whole multi-megabyte runtime into memory all at once, it loads and initializes classes as they are referenced. Unused classes are neither loaded nor initialized.
I guarantee you that the Ford motor company's IT department is bigger than either RedHat or SuSE. Why choose a distro when you can make your own system so easily?
I guarantee you that the combination of Ford's IT department and either RedHat or SuSE is bigger than Ford's IT department alone. Why re-invent the wheel?
Re:Warding off the inevitable "switch to Java" com
on
Secure Programming
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Buffer overruns are just one kind of problem you need to deal with when writing secure code.
Buffer overruns are one of the problems you don't need to deal with when writing secure code because modern languages (not C/C++) can detect that condition for you, leaving you to concentrate on the real bugs.
In this case, they've pruned 37 weeks of related emails from their employees' computers and their mail servers, so what's to stop them doctoring the emails recovered from backups?
Or, handing over all but 37 weeks, then while waiting for the judge to say "hand over the rest or else", going through the 37 weeks worth pruning out the incriminating parts.
That's true, the Java API has a very large number of classes. But what I like about their docs is the use of frames, which is normally quite annoying, but is well-done in the case of JavaDoc.
I find javadoc frames annoying. Easily fixed of course, just use the non-frames version.
My javadoc navigation solution is to create a folder on my mozilla personal toolbar with bookmarks for the packages and classes I refer to most often, and one for the package list (so I can reach the other packages). It's like a separate bookmarks button just for java API stuff. Works pretty well for me.
Worms, such as the latest one that attacks Windows RPC services, only need to make outgoing TCP connections in order to propogate. This does not require root access. The fact that network daemons under *nix don't usually run as root has no impact on worms; worms don't need root.
Root access would be needed for viruses (that modify executables), more sophisticated worms that install rootkits to hide their presense (has that been done yet?), and human attackers that want to snoop around users files or sniff network traffic or install rootkits. A simple worm is one of the few cases where containing a compromise to a user account is not a major win.
For instance, someone like M$FT may say, "See, what if another SCO comes out with a law suit"
Intellectual property[*] issues are not unique to open source. SCO could have just as easily claimed that Windows contains SCO-owned code, and put forth as much evidence as they have publicly in the Linux (which is none).
[*] I hate that term. Property is something you own, it is yours until you choose to give it up. IP on the other hand is just a temporary exclusive right that goes away after a while (patent, copyright) or when the owner fails to properly defend it (trademark, trade secret). "Intellectual lease"?
An object with no fields requires 8 bytes of memory. I would guess that four bytes are a reference to the class, and the other four are related to synchronization.
And if they don't count the ballots AT THE POLLING PLACE in plain view of the public BEFORE they ship them off to the court house you can't trust the result.
Here in Canada (and probably most other democracies) we have "scrutineers" so the general public doesn't have to worry about that. Each candidate sends a representative to each polling station to observe and make sure things are handled properly. It is in the candidate's best interests to make sure the other guy doesn't get any unfair advantage, so as long as there is more than one scrutineer and they aren't colluding (which is less likely the more scutineers there are) the system is secure.
Scrutineers are very effective with paper ballots, but only with paper ballots. They are not equipped to verify an electronic voting system. So yeah, demand paper ballots. Anyone promoting electronic voting is promoting the neutralization of a very important election security mechanism.
Anyone else feel ID got a little scared when they saw the Half Life II trailer? Much like the 3D Realms guys see their technology be eclipsed every six months?
Looking at the HL2 and D3 trailers, it is pretty clear that the lighting effects in Doom are far superior. Watch the HL2 guys pass through a shadow and their entire body changes shade all at once (kinda like in the original Doom:P). In D3 the shadows pass over the creatures in a far more realistic fasion, including shadows cast by dynamic lights (remember the bathroom scene?).
The HL2 physics appear to be a lot better though. Not a big suprise there, Id has never really shown much interest in good physics (strafejumping anyone?). I'd also bet HL2 will have the better AI. And the HL2 engine will probably be more versatile: larger areas, more enemies on the screen, stuff like that.
I expect HL2 will be the choice for "kill your friends online", and D3 for "at home with the lights off getting the shit scared out of you". Personally I'm getting kinda tired of the former, so I'm really looking forward to D3.
Java is very flexible but slow (to start and run).
A while back I created a small Java applet that did some minor client-side image mangling. There was a delay of a fraction of a second bringing up the image. Not "slow" by any means. Most of that delay was probably the time it took to download the image from the server.
The real problem is that you have to stick to what is available to the 1.1 runtime. Yes, that's "1.1" from the previous century, because that's what most Windows users have.
Then please explain the millions of Netscape/Mozilla downloads that have not shown up in the user-agent stats.
It does show up, as a very small percentage. Which is about right. Millions of Netscape/Mozilla downloads, compared to hundreds of millions of IE pre-installed.
Personally I'd say it's more like 9 out of 10 people are perfectly happy with what they have and don't want to move away from something they're comfortable with.
Which is exactly the same as saying 9 out of 10 people don't want Mozilla.
>
It's not the same.
Everyone I've introduced to Mozilla has used it over IE. They don't always go to the effort to download and Mozilla themselves, but when IE and Moz are both installed (a level playing field), everyone I've shown Moz to has continued to click on Moz instead of IE.
Most people do want Mozilla. They just don't know it yet.
You could take this oppertunity to use something like http://www.phpgroupware.org/ which will replicate all the mail/collabaration/task/meeting scheduling functions of Outlook.
I tried phpgroupware a few months ago. Looked like it would have been nice if it had actually worked. Some of the apps worked, but most of them didn't. Many of them appear to have been poorly coded, with little or no error checking. Many PHP errors spewed onto the screen while the apps tried to happily chug along anyway, and some apps pretended to work but didn't actually do anything.
This is just stupid. Clearly, something needs to be done about copyright laws. Save Tanya Grotter!
I encourage you all to email, fax, or snail-mail your WTO representative and have them raise this important issue at their next meeting.
Remember, we live in a democracy, and policy makers are there to represent the people, not just wealthy business interests. Contact your WTO representative now!
Most command-line MP3 players (mpg123, for example) have options to specify the sound device. This would allow you to control which room the music was sent to.
CPU-wise, decoding a bunch of MP3s should be no problem at all; mpg123 typically uses only 1-2% CPU on a modern machine. I don't think you'll run into PCI bandwidth limits either (guestimate 1.4 megabits per second per output).
You may need to create your own player front-end, to select songs/playlists for each room.
Try writing a bunch of numbers in hex but then do all of your calculations in decimal. you'll have the same problem.
Actually, you won't. You would the other way though.
The problem occurs when you try to represent a (properly reduced) fraction whos denominator has one or more prime factors not in common with your number base.
You can represent one tenth in base 10 because all the prime factors in the denominator (10: 5,2) are found within the factorization of the base (also 10: 5,2). You can not represent one sixth in base 10 because one of the factors of 6 is not found in the factorization of 10 (3). Likewise, you cannot represent one tenth in base 2, because the denominator (10) is a multiple of 5, which is a prime not found in the factorization of the base (2).
Because the factorization of 16 contains only primes that are in the factorization of 10 (2) all fractions that can be represented in hexadecimal can be represented in decimal. The reverse is not true, because 10 is the product of a prime (5) that is not found in the factorization of 16. So there is no way to get the "fifths" aspect of a decimal number into a hexadecimal number.
I mean, people make a big deal on "windows is so insecure that's why this happens blah blah".. but in reality it's just because it's so much more popular...
Bullshit. There existed popular products before MS entered the market, and they did not have the gaping holes that MS products have had.
Before Outlook arrived on the scene, the whole idea of an "email virus" was considered so unlikely - even for Windows users - that it was often the subject of jokes and obvious hoaxes (remember "Good Times"?).
Sure you could catch regular file infector viruses through running an infected attachment, but you had to go out of your way to do it, and those viruses didn't even contain any email-related code.
Likewise, before Word, viruses infecting word processor documents were unheard of.
And yes, there were programs that dominated before Outlook and Word. Eudora and Word Perfect had their day in the sun without getting ass-raped by thirteen year olds.
Sorta funny that it took them 45 years to actualy get a patent and just recently enforce it.
Some companies actually do this intentionally. File a patent, delay the paperwork, then when a competitor starts selling something with the patent-pending tech, allow the paperwork to finish and the patent to be granted. Then torpedo the competition with patent claims.
This practice is common enough to have a name: "submarine patents".
Or when Linus developes a reality distortion field of his own.
Little known fact: Linus already developed a reality distortion field. However, it was done using IP misappropriated from SCO, so Linus opted to do the honorable thing and give the field generator to SCO. Considering SCO's recent usage of the device, I'm sure Linus regrets that decision.
There is a "Let's replace SMTP to stop spammers!" meme floating around. I haven't seen a single example of a new SMTP protocol that will actually stop spamming - they only make it marginally harder. Replace SMTP and you've gone to a whole lot of effort, and the spammers will still find a way to spam.
People shouldn't dismiss client-side filtering on the grounds that spammers are still wasting our resources. That's a temporary situation! Right now most people don't have good client-side filtering - most people are using Outlook(| Express) without any of the Bayesian tools. Once that changes spamming will be futile, and the spammers will go away and stop wasting our resources. Spammers are not script kiddies trying to DoS the system, they are sleazy business people trying to make a buck. Eliminate the profit from the sleazy business and the sleazy business people will go away.
That said, SMTP will probably go the way of the dinosaur anyway, replaced by whatever instant-messaging standard we eventually end up with. Better support open standards unless you want a single company controlling your communications.
"Bigger" drives are faster when all else is equal, but not so much for the reason you've stated (fragmentation).
You mentioned seek time, which is one reason, but not because of fragmentation... If you're only using 3GB of data, on a 3GB disk a read may have to seek from the innermost track to the outermost track and back. With a larger drive 3GB full, it would only be using the outermost tracks, and would not have to seek as far.
Bigger drives also pack the bits more densely. This means that for every rotation more data is passed by the read/write heads, resulting in a faster transfer rate.
Higher RPM and bigger drive both give you better transfer rates. What higher RPM also gets you, though, is lower rotational latency. Suppose one part of the disk is under the read head, but the part of the disk you want to read is on the other side of the platter. You have to wait a full half rotation before the data can be read. The higher the RPM the quicker the right part of the platter reaches the read head.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, because the big companies can throw $$$ at know-how and delivery and marketing and take over the market at any time. You may be able to create a viable business, but you're not likely to be able to grow enough to be the huge success VCs want in order to offset the risk.
Another possible reason people may be focused on IP, is that it is something they can easily steal. There are people out there who will act like VCs, pretend to be very interested in investing in your company, but when it comes time to actually sign a deal they walk away. Away, to the patent office, where they will patent anything that you haven't.
NDAs are supposed to prevent this sort of thing, but in practice they are completely ineffective. It's hard to prove that Bob the VC-who-wasn't actually violated the NDA when some seemingly unrelated company is the one filing the patents. Ideas are very easy to launder.
For Java, there is ProGuard, which can shrink and obfuscate a jar (or just shrink, or just obfuscate). The shrinking works by stripping out classes and members that are not referenced (directly or indirectly) by the entry point (main()). Obfuscation also shrinks things further, by shortening symbol names.
There are others, but ProGuard looks like the best free one.
I don't think this really saves memory though, it just results in a smaller .jar file. The Java classloader does not load the whole multi-megabyte runtime into memory all at once, it loads and initializes classes as they are referenced. Unused classes are neither loaded nor initialized.
I guarantee you that the combination of Ford's IT department and either RedHat or SuSE is bigger than Ford's IT department alone. Why re-invent the wheel?
Buffer overruns are one of the problems you don't need to deal with when writing secure code because modern languages (not C/C++) can detect that condition for you, leaving you to concentrate on the real bugs.
So much for "warding off". :p
Or, handing over all but 37 weeks, then while waiting for the judge to say "hand over the rest or else", going through the 37 weeks worth pruning out the incriminating parts.
I find javadoc frames annoying. Easily fixed of course, just use the non-frames version.
My javadoc navigation solution is to create a folder on my mozilla personal toolbar with bookmarks for the packages and classes I refer to most often, and one for the package list (so I can reach the other packages). It's like a separate bookmarks button just for java API stuff. Works pretty well for me.
Worms, such as the latest one that attacks Windows RPC services, only need to make outgoing TCP connections in order to propogate. This does not require root access. The fact that network daemons under *nix don't usually run as root has no impact on worms; worms don't need root.
Root access would be needed for viruses (that modify executables), more sophisticated worms that install rootkits to hide their presense (has that been done yet?), and human attackers that want to snoop around users files or sniff network traffic or install rootkits. A simple worm is one of the few cases where containing a compromise to a user account is not a major win.
Intellectual property[*] issues are not unique to open source. SCO could have just as easily claimed that Windows contains SCO-owned code, and put forth as much evidence as they have publicly in the Linux (which is none).
[*] I hate that term. Property is something you own, it is yours until you choose to give it up. IP on the other hand is just a temporary exclusive right that goes away after a while (patent, copyright) or when the owner fails to properly defend it (trademark, trade secret). "Intellectual lease"?
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javatips/jw-jav atip130.html
An object with no fields requires 8 bytes of memory. I would guess that four bytes are a reference to the class, and the other four are related to synchronization.
Here in Canada (and probably most other democracies) we have "scrutineers" so the general public doesn't have to worry about that. Each candidate sends a representative to each polling station to observe and make sure things are handled properly. It is in the candidate's best interests to make sure the other guy doesn't get any unfair advantage, so as long as there is more than one scrutineer and they aren't colluding (which is less likely the more scutineers there are) the system is secure.
Scrutineers are very effective with paper ballots, but only with paper ballots. They are not equipped to verify an electronic voting system. So yeah, demand paper ballots. Anyone promoting electronic voting is promoting the neutralization of a very important election security mechanism.
I hope they both lose!
Looking at the HL2 and D3 trailers, it is pretty clear that the lighting effects in Doom are far superior. Watch the HL2 guys pass through a shadow and their entire body changes shade all at once (kinda like in the original Doom :P). In D3 the shadows pass over the creatures in a far more realistic fasion, including shadows cast by dynamic lights (remember the bathroom scene?).
The HL2 physics appear to be a lot better though. Not a big suprise there, Id has never really shown much interest in good physics (strafejumping anyone?). I'd also bet HL2 will have the better AI. And the HL2 engine will probably be more versatile: larger areas, more enemies on the screen, stuff like that.
I expect HL2 will be the choice for "kill your friends online", and D3 for "at home with the lights off getting the shit scared out of you". Personally I'm getting kinda tired of the former, so I'm really looking forward to D3.
A while back I created a small Java applet that did some minor client-side image mangling. There was a delay of a fraction of a second bringing up the image. Not "slow" by any means. Most of that delay was probably the time it took to download the image from the server.
The real problem is that you have to stick to what is available to the 1.1 runtime. Yes, that's "1.1" from the previous century, because that's what most Windows users have.
It does show up, as a very small percentage. Which is about right. Millions of Netscape/Mozilla downloads, compared to hundreds of millions of IE pre-installed.
It's not the same.
Everyone I've introduced to Mozilla has used it over IE. They don't always go to the effort to download and Mozilla themselves, but when IE and Moz are both installed (a level playing field), everyone I've shown Moz to has continued to click on Moz instead of IE.
Most people do want Mozilla. They just don't know it yet.
As usual, slashdotters aren't reading the article.
The article says that BSD-based services are very reliable, and tend to not die. And it is a Netcraft article, so...
Netcraft confirms: *BSD is not dying.
I tried phpgroupware a few months ago. Looked like it would have been nice if it had actually worked. Some of the apps worked, but most of them didn't. Many of them appear to have been poorly coded, with little or no error checking. Many PHP errors spewed onto the screen while the apps tried to happily chug along anyway, and some apps pretended to work but didn't actually do anything.
This is just stupid. Clearly, something needs to be done about copyright laws. Save Tanya Grotter!
I encourage you all to email, fax, or snail-mail your WTO representative and have them raise this important issue at their next meeting.
Remember, we live in a democracy, and policy makers are there to represent the people, not just wealthy business interests. Contact your WTO representative now!
Most command-line MP3 players (mpg123, for example) have options to specify the sound device. This would allow you to control which room the music was sent to.
CPU-wise, decoding a bunch of MP3s should be no problem at all; mpg123 typically uses only 1-2% CPU on a modern machine. I don't think you'll run into PCI bandwidth limits either (guestimate 1.4 megabits per second per output).
You may need to create your own player front-end, to select songs/playlists for each room.
Actually, you won't. You would the other way though.
The problem occurs when you try to represent a (properly reduced) fraction whos denominator has one or more prime factors not in common with your number base.
You can represent one tenth in base 10 because all the prime factors in the denominator (10: 5,2) are found within the factorization of the base (also 10: 5,2). You can not represent one sixth in base 10 because one of the factors of 6 is not found in the factorization of 10 (3). Likewise, you cannot represent one tenth in base 2, because the denominator (10) is a multiple of 5, which is a prime not found in the factorization of the base (2).
Because the factorization of 16 contains only primes that are in the factorization of 10 (2) all fractions that can be represented in hexadecimal can be represented in decimal. The reverse is not true, because 10 is the product of a prime (5) that is not found in the factorization of 16. So there is no way to get the "fifths" aspect of a decimal number into a hexadecimal number.
Bullshit. There existed popular products before MS entered the market, and they did not have the gaping holes that MS products have had.
Before Outlook arrived on the scene, the whole idea of an "email virus" was considered so unlikely - even for Windows users - that it was often the subject of jokes and obvious hoaxes (remember "Good Times"?).
Sure you could catch regular file infector viruses through running an infected attachment, but you had to go out of your way to do it, and those viruses didn't even contain any email-related code.
Likewise, before Word, viruses infecting word processor documents were unheard of.
And yes, there were programs that dominated before Outlook and Word. Eudora and Word Perfect had their day in the sun without getting ass-raped by thirteen year olds.
Some companies actually do this intentionally. File a patent, delay the paperwork, then when a competitor starts selling something with the patent-pending tech, allow the paperwork to finish and the patent to be granted. Then torpedo the competition with patent claims.
This practice is common enough to have a name: "submarine patents".
Little known fact: Linus already developed a reality distortion field. However, it was done using IP misappropriated from SCO, so Linus opted to do the honorable thing and give the field generator to SCO. Considering SCO's recent usage of the device, I'm sure Linus regrets that decision.
Mod parent up!
There is a "Let's replace SMTP to stop spammers!" meme floating around. I haven't seen a single example of a new SMTP protocol that will actually stop spamming - they only make it marginally harder. Replace SMTP and you've gone to a whole lot of effort, and the spammers will still find a way to spam.
People shouldn't dismiss client-side filtering on the grounds that spammers are still wasting our resources. That's a temporary situation! Right now most people don't have good client-side filtering - most people are using Outlook(| Express) without any of the Bayesian tools. Once that changes spamming will be futile, and the spammers will go away and stop wasting our resources. Spammers are not script kiddies trying to DoS the system, they are sleazy business people trying to make a buck. Eliminate the profit from the sleazy business and the sleazy business people will go away.
That said, SMTP will probably go the way of the dinosaur anyway, replaced by whatever instant-messaging standard we eventually end up with. Better support open standards unless you want a single company controlling your communications.
"Bigger" drives are faster when all else is equal, but not so much for the reason you've stated (fragmentation).
You mentioned seek time, which is one reason, but not because of fragmentation... If you're only using 3GB of data, on a 3GB disk a read may have to seek from the innermost track to the outermost track and back. With a larger drive 3GB full, it would only be using the outermost tracks, and would not have to seek as far.
Bigger drives also pack the bits more densely. This means that for every rotation more data is passed by the read/write heads, resulting in a faster transfer rate.
Higher RPM and bigger drive both give you better transfer rates. What higher RPM also gets you, though, is lower rotational latency. Suppose one part of the disk is under the read head, but the part of the disk you want to read is on the other side of the platter. You have to wait a full half rotation before the data can be read. The higher the RPM the quicker the right part of the platter reaches the read head.