I don't think it's all just ego. Expert systems (the article calls them "knowledge couplers") have been around for years. In the vast majority of cases they aren't all that helpful.
For example, your typical computer phone support uses an expert system because that way the company can employ $10/hour inexperienced phone jockeys. You describe your problem and the phone jockey clicks his/her way through the menus of questions until you reach an "answer". In practise this means you're up the creek if your problem is something that a reboot cannot solve. Can you imagine putting your life in the trust of the medical equivalent of phone support?
I admire what he's doing, but reading his answers I'm having second thoughts about my optimism for his success. He simply doesn't answer the first question, and in another say's he's "no genius." Rocket Scientists have that expression about them for a reason, it takes a lot of know how and intelligence to do something like this safely and successfully,
But he's not forging new ground. He's using off-the-shelf equipment that was designed by real rocket scientists. The spacesuit, the rockets, the chutes, all off-the-shelf. He is putting it all together and filling in some gaps, but that's nothing that requires a rocket scientist's mind.
Think of it like a PC. I can "build" a PC by purchasing a bunch of components from the local store and assembling it. However I'm not an electrical engineer. I could not possibly build any of the individual components. Luckily I don't need to: those problems have already been solved by the computer industry equivalent of a "rocket scientist".
If this guy actually succeeds (I'm skeptical) then he will have proven that COTS has reached a point where you can build manned rockets. That's fucking incredible.
On the other hand, if I spend some time and get creative and construct a witty, self-referential post that admits that it's there to whore karma, then I can win a lot of points.
Or write something that starts with "I'm going to lose karma for this..." and watch the karma points just roll in.
In Minority Report, there was scene of a guy on a train reading an "E-USA Today." The front page, which he was reading, changed to the Official Story about the A-Large PreCriminal without the reader requesting it. The reader was told what to read.
Or perhaps the reader had set his E-USA Today Preferences to automatically switch to #1 priority news as it was released. The E-USA Today provider was simply giving the consumer what he asked for. There's no reason for you to assume the worst.
Calling Romero a professor is going too far, even in jest. It's bad enough that every numbskull who can code Visual Basic calls himself an "engineer", and anybody who knows that Cisco makes routers is suddenly an "architect", but it takes a shitload of hard work combined with an incredible intellect to become a professor. Giving a couple of lectures doesn't warrant that sort of honorific.
This will just force the various P2P developers to scramble to develop counter-measures. The music companies are giving the developers a gift - not enough DoS to stop everybody from using P2P but still enough DoS to give the developers a decent target to aim at. The only realistic result is that the P2P programs will become "stronger" (ie, more resistant to future attacks).
It's as silly as a criminal wandering around a bank and informing the staff that he's casing the joint for the heist next week.
The article says nothing of the sort. The article says that the hologram is still captured on a 2D piece of film. All that's different is that the image is computer-generated rather than from light shining off a physical 3D object. The only mention of Star Wars in the article is as an analogy.
Re:Brazil & Jeesus - one fan less
on
World Cup Final
·
· Score: 2
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but it sounds awfully like the "Not A True Scotsman" fallacy. I'm not going to dispute what somebody labels themself: if they say they are Christian then I'm not going to label them agnostic simply because they don't attend church.
Re:Brazil & Jeesus - one fan less
on
World Cup Final
·
· Score: 2
They chose to reveal that, and in a world where the assumption seems to be that most people are agnostic and afraid to be different
You're living in denial if you think most of the world population is agnostic.
Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.
So you're saying some companies did poorly, some did OK, and some did great. SPOOKY!!!
You discredit Tekken and SSX, but you credit Gun Valkyrie? I suppose if you have to ignore reality to support your argument then you're doing a damn fine job.
I don't see what the fuss is. I doubt seriously that all Christians or even monotheistic theologists agree on all tenants of what God is.
If you don't see what the fuss is all about then perhaps you wouldn't mind changing it to "one nation, under Satan". Christians might have a whinge but they can just shutup and deal with it, just like the atheists have had to do for the past 50 years.
Did you bother reading the article? OpenSSH is 27000 lines of code and the workaround is "privsep" which makes only 3000 odd lines run with root privs. That means 24000 lines of code might have contained the exploit.
Looking at the diff file is a damn useless way of figuring out what the exploit is.
How is this an irresponsible announcement? This is about as responsible as you can get. "There's an exploit in our code.We can't tell you exactly what it is yet,
That's why it's irresponsible. If we were told what the problem was then we could make informed decisions about how to deal with it. Some of us might upgrade to 3.3. Some of us might turn openssh off. Some of us might use a different workaround.
And it wouldn't even be necessary for Theo to personally tell every admin what the problem is. It would be enough (for me) if the Debian packagers were told. But Theo won't even do that! Theo won't even tell Alan Cox! If we can't trust Alan Cox then who can we trust?
because we don't have a full patch yet, and we don't want exploits flying around until we do, but if you do [insert procedure here] (which is a good idea anyways) the vulnerability is not exploitable.
Because there are 3 obvious problems here.
Black hats probably already know the exploit. Theo is keeping the information away from the white hats and the users. This is irresponsible.
It's not a simple procedure. It's a complete software upgrade to a known buggy version with missing functionality. And because Theo won't disclose the exploit there's no real certainty that the new version isn't also broken.
It's not about having a full patch. It's about trusting other people to make intelligent decisions when given all the information. Theo never allows this level of trust, and that says worlds about Theo.
Honestly if Theo had said "we have an exploit, here it is, we won't have a fix for 3 months" then I'd be LESS angry than with his non-disclosure and his "YOU DO THIS NOW" demands.
The patch adds privsep which means the exploit is somewhere inside 24000+ lines of code. The diff probably doesn't even fix the exploit: it just avoids using that code as root. Your advice is less than useful.
The DDC module in XFree86 probably was working properly. What needs work is the database of modelines. If you send those modelines you copied from BeOS to the XFree86 maintainers then they can put them into the next release.
Why does X require a specific definition of each suitable resolution? can't it query the current monitor like Macs and Winders do (DPMS)?
DDC. Yes, XFree86 supports DDC level 1 and level 2. Look in XFree86.0.log and you'll see XFree86 talking to your monitor, discovering refresh rates and supported resolutions, then populating your modelines with what it found. It's all automatic and has been for at least a year.
Re:Gentoo is great!!
on
Gentoo Linux 1.2
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Anyway, I've been 99% satisfied with Gentoo and I'd recommend it to anyone with a little Linux experience (though definitely not as a server distro) who wants to have fun with a desktop Linux setup.
If you think installing and compiling software is fun, sure. Gentoo fills a specific niche for people who (like yourself) want to learn more about their systems, and also the rare breed of people who want everything compiled from source. It's not for everyone. Some people don't like their desktops to break. And I personally don't care how my desktop works just as long as it does! That's why I stick with Debian: it may not have all the latest stuff but I can install software with 99% certainty that it will work because the maintainers have built and tested the packages.
And when I say that you're a niche user I don't mean to belittle you. Nor do I intend to put you on a pedestal. Gentoo is attractive to you. Debian is attractive to me. RedHat is attractive to other people. They all fit a particular niche. Gentoo offers features that you find attractive and this makes Gentoo a worthwhile distribution. But don't make the mistake of thinking that because you find Gentoo fun that everybody "with a little Linux experience" will find it fun too. I've tried Gentoo and RedHat and I think RedHat is more "fun" as a desktop. But that's because I think compiling software is boring and pointless.
The diversity in Linux distributions is an incredible strength. If there was only one Linux distribution then I strongly believe there would be fewer Linux users.
Adobe has Acrobat Reader for the Palm. It's rather good for reading PDF. Although I would run "pdftotext" and use Weasel Reader: consumes less space and is easier to read.
I don't understand the nearly unanimous anti-calculator response. When I did school we were expected to SHOW ALL WORKING. So it didn't matter that we were permitted calculators: if you didn't show your working you get zero marks even if you had the right "magic number" at the end.
This was the case even in primary school (ie, ages 5-11).
If the calculator is showing the steps then good: it's time for people to move on and stop pretending that (for example) being able to do long division by hand is a useful skill. I wouldn't expect most children need to know how to light tallow candles or shoe a horse either.
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that pattern-matching is going to do the conversion. REXX scripts are only going to futz the syntax and that's not nearly enough. As a bare minimum the conversion tool will need to understand the semantics, and as you correctly surmise this is going to require at least a 4GL parser. If your company is lucky they'll get 10% of the way with the REXX scripts - the easy 10%.
Afterall, porting is more than making it compile! You have to make it work too. That the contractors don't even have regression tests proves that they are inexperienced, ignorant, or con artists.
My advice is to bail ship now: the company is doomed because the managers don't know what they're doing. Even the choice of J2EE makes it look like they're playing buzzword of the month. They've sunk lots of money into a half-assed attempt at a port instead of just biting the bullet and doing it properly. And the outsourcing company is taking them for a ride: whether this is fradulence or incompetence doesn't matter. Either way you don't want to be anywhere near this stinky shit.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's all just ego. Expert systems (the article calls them "knowledge couplers") have been around for years. In the vast majority of cases they aren't all that helpful. For example, your typical computer phone support uses an expert system because that way the company can employ $10/hour inexperienced phone jockeys. You describe your problem and the phone jockey clicks his/her way through the menus of questions until you reach an "answer". In practise this means you're up the creek if your problem is something that a reboot cannot solve. Can you imagine putting your life in the trust of the medical equivalent of phone support?
But he's not forging new ground. He's using off-the-shelf equipment that was designed by real rocket scientists. The spacesuit, the rockets, the chutes, all off-the-shelf. He is putting it all together and filling in some gaps, but that's nothing that requires a rocket scientist's mind.
Think of it like a PC. I can "build" a PC by purchasing a bunch of components from the local store and assembling it. However I'm not an electrical engineer. I could not possibly build any of the individual components. Luckily I don't need to: those problems have already been solved by the computer industry equivalent of a "rocket scientist".
If this guy actually succeeds (I'm skeptical) then he will have proven that COTS has reached a point where you can build manned rockets. That's fucking incredible.
What are you talking about? Run "xdpyinfo" and look at all the visuals.
What has happened is that (a) most people now use TrueColor visuals and (b) applications are well-behaved these days.
Or write something that starts with "I'm going to lose karma for this..." and watch the karma points just roll in.
Or perhaps the reader had set his E-USA Today Preferences to automatically switch to #1 priority news as it was released. The E-USA Today provider was simply giving the consumer what he asked for. There's no reason for you to assume the worst.
Calling Romero a professor is going too far, even in jest. It's bad enough that every numbskull who can code Visual Basic calls himself an "engineer", and anybody who knows that Cisco makes routers is suddenly an "architect", but it takes a shitload of hard work combined with an incredible intellect to become a professor. Giving a couple of lectures doesn't warrant that sort of honorific.
This will just force the various P2P developers to scramble to develop counter-measures. The music companies are giving the developers a gift - not enough DoS to stop everybody from using P2P but still enough DoS to give the developers a decent target to aim at. The only realistic result is that the P2P programs will become "stronger" (ie, more resistant to future attacks).
It's as silly as a criminal wandering around a bank and informing the staff that he's casing the joint for the heist next week.
Then everybody gets sick of this damn quote being repeated to death. Did you think somebody failed to read it the first million times?
Tenacious D.
The article says nothing of the sort. The article says that the hologram is still captured on a 2D piece of film. All that's different is that the image is computer-generated rather than from light shining off a physical 3D object. The only mention of Star Wars in the article is as an analogy.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but it sounds awfully like the "Not A True Scotsman" fallacy. I'm not going to dispute what somebody labels themself: if they say they are Christian then I'm not going to label them agnostic simply because they don't attend church.
You're living in denial if you think most of the world population is agnostic.
So you're saying some companies did poorly, some did OK, and some did great. SPOOKY!!!
You discredit Tekken and SSX, but you credit Gun Valkyrie? I suppose if you have to ignore reality to support your argument then you're doing a damn fine job.
If you don't see what the fuss is all about then perhaps you wouldn't mind changing it to "one nation, under Satan". Christians might have a whinge but they can just shutup and deal with it, just like the atheists have had to do for the past 50 years.
Did you bother reading the article? OpenSSH is 27000 lines of code and the workaround is "privsep" which makes only 3000 odd lines run with root privs. That means 24000 lines of code might have contained the exploit.
Looking at the diff file is a damn useless way of figuring out what the exploit is.
That's why it's irresponsible. If we were told what the problem was then we could make informed decisions about how to deal with it. Some of us might upgrade to 3.3. Some of us might turn openssh off. Some of us might use a different workaround.
And it wouldn't even be necessary for Theo to personally tell every admin what the problem is. It would be enough (for me) if the Debian packagers were told. But Theo won't even do that! Theo won't even tell Alan Cox! If we can't trust Alan Cox then who can we trust?
Because there are 3 obvious problems here.
Honestly if Theo had said "we have an exploit, here it is, we won't have a fix for 3 months" then I'd be LESS angry than with his non-disclosure and his "YOU DO THIS NOW" demands.
The patch adds privsep which means the exploit is somewhere inside 24000+ lines of code. The diff probably doesn't even fix the exploit: it just avoids using that code as root. Your advice is less than useful.
The DDC module in XFree86 probably was working properly. What needs work is the database of modelines. If you send those modelines you copied from BeOS to the XFree86 maintainers then they can put them into the next release.
DDC. Yes, XFree86 supports DDC level 1 and level 2. Look in XFree86.0.log and you'll see XFree86 talking to your monitor, discovering refresh rates and supported resolutions, then populating your modelines with what it found. It's all automatic and has been for at least a year.
If you think installing and compiling software is fun, sure. Gentoo fills a specific niche for people who (like yourself) want to learn more about their systems, and also the rare breed of people who want everything compiled from source. It's not for everyone. Some people don't like their desktops to break. And I personally don't care how my desktop works just as long as it does! That's why I stick with Debian: it may not have all the latest stuff but I can install software with 99% certainty that it will work because the maintainers have built and tested the packages.
And when I say that you're a niche user I don't mean to belittle you. Nor do I intend to put you on a pedestal. Gentoo is attractive to you. Debian is attractive to me. RedHat is attractive to other people. They all fit a particular niche. Gentoo offers features that you find attractive and this makes Gentoo a worthwhile distribution. But don't make the mistake of thinking that because you find Gentoo fun that everybody "with a little Linux experience" will find it fun too. I've tried Gentoo and RedHat and I think RedHat is more "fun" as a desktop. But that's because I think compiling software is boring and pointless.
The diversity in Linux distributions is an incredible strength. If there was only one Linux distribution then I strongly believe there would be fewer Linux users.
Adobe has Acrobat Reader for the Palm. It's rather good for reading PDF. Although I would run "pdftotext" and use Weasel Reader: consumes less space and is easier to read.
I don't understand the nearly unanimous anti-calculator response. When I did school we were expected to SHOW ALL WORKING. So it didn't matter that we were permitted calculators: if you didn't show your working you get zero marks even if you had the right "magic number" at the end.
This was the case even in primary school (ie, ages 5-11).
If the calculator is showing the steps then good: it's time for people to move on and stop pretending that (for example) being able to do long division by hand is a useful skill. I wouldn't expect most children need to know how to light tallow candles or shoe a horse either.
What's really sad is that you haven't watched enough Bruce Lee movies.
There's not a snowball's chance in hell that pattern-matching is going to do the conversion. REXX scripts are only going to futz the syntax and that's not nearly enough. As a bare minimum the conversion tool will need to understand the semantics, and as you correctly surmise this is going to require at least a 4GL parser. If your company is lucky they'll get 10% of the way with the REXX scripts - the easy 10%.
Afterall, porting is more than making it compile! You have to make it work too. That the contractors don't even have regression tests proves that they are inexperienced, ignorant, or con artists.
My advice is to bail ship now: the company is doomed because the managers don't know what they're doing. Even the choice of J2EE makes it look like they're playing buzzword of the month. They've sunk lots of money into a half-assed attempt at a port instead of just biting the bullet and doing it properly. And the outsourcing company is taking them for a ride: whether this is fradulence or incompetence doesn't matter. Either way you don't want to be anywhere near this stinky shit.