It's not just crypto training that is needed: organizations need to be giving a lot more computer and security training to employees in general.
It doesn't matter how easy it is to use crypto software. If you send an e-mail to a random employee saying "Hi, this is Bob from the IT department. We're having a problem with your e-mail account. Please send me your private key and passphrase so that we can fix it.", chances are that the key will be sent back to you.
And as soon as some idiot encrypts ILoveYouAnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs, then that file is going to travel throughout the organization with no chance of e-mail filters catching it.
How is Section 2, Source Code "irrevilant"? The article is asking for input on improving the OSD. This poster is suggesting what he feels to be an improvement.
(I'm sure you'll now try to mod me down with this Karma Cop silliness. Go ahead.)
Copyrighted works theoretically become public domain some number of years after the death of the author. I think the current period is 75 years. However, due to lobbying by the Disney corporation and others, the threshold keeps increasing. It's unlikely that anything published after 1930 will ever fall into the public domain.
I agree that there is little chance of Linux PDAs taking away a lot of market share from Palm any time in the near future. But as the hardware advances and demand for new technologies increases (wireless, etc.), I think Palm OS's limits will become a problem, and the need for a "real operating system" will be obvious.
FWIW, I've been playing around with the Agenda VR3 PDA. Most Linux console apps compile for it without problems. GUI applications compile fine as long as they use FLTK, although you might have to change the window layouts to fit a 160x240 display.
I think there is some episode or movie where they have models of space ships that were also called "Enterprise". These came before TOS Enterprise.
Also, my understanding is that NCC stands for Naval Construction Contract. It doesn't directly imply Starfleet or UFP, so it seems possible that earlier Enterprises weren't NCC-something.
And perhaps the later A, B, C,... designations reflected that fact that Kirk and his crew were legendary heroes, and so Starfleet wanted to keep a ship with that name and numerical designation 1701 in service.
(This is without a doubt the geekiest set of comments I've ever made to/.)
Yeah, from the X-Files I've become accustomed to hare-brained theories that turn out to be correct. But when Byers guesses that the hitman slipped and fell on the carpet--where the hell did that come from?
The "fudging of technical aspects" is pretty annoying. In the pilot, the good guys are worried because the bad guys are "modulating our bitstream" and "scanning our services".
It's almost as bad as when the TNG crew solved problems by "reversing positronic flows". The difference is that 23rd century technology is completely fictional, whereas Lone Gunmen addresses real technology that many viewers are familiar with.
I expect that every episode of this series is going to have a couple of hacking-into-computers sequences, and I hope they're not all as silly as this. I don't expect technical accuracy. But why not put in somewhat-believable gibberish rather than complete gibberish? Non-techie viewers won't know the difference, but it won't turn off techies..
Cliff edited out the important (to me) part of my question. Exactly how would we go about re-creating computers. Assuming we had to start with simple devices (transistors, diodes, etc.), what would be the most efficient way to create the first working computers and software, and then use those to create the next generation of computers and software, and so on until we get "useful" stuff again?
I have to ask the same thing everyone else is: what are you doing with your mice to cause them to wear out so quickly?
My own mouse history:
- Microsoft IntelliMouse at home--3 years old, still works fine
- Microsoft IntelliMouse at work--2 years old, still works fine
- Macintosh Mouse--12 years old, still works fine
BTW, I play Quake III with my mouse, and do other "mouse-intensive" activities. The only mouse I've ever had problems with was the really cheap one that came with the original PS/2's.
I've had mine for a little over a week. Here are my impressions:
The size is nice. You can't tell from the web site photos, but it's about the size of the Palm m100, but with a larger screen. The screen provides 160x240 pixels.
The kernel (2.4.0), device drivers, and basic utilities are still under development. But it's good enough to use as a development platform--very stable in my experience.
It's "real" Linux, with an X server, TCP/IP stack, etc. It's not a dumbed-down "embedded Linux".
It's slow. Part of this is due to lack of FPU. The developers are working on this.
FLTK is the primary API for doing GUIs. There is an FLPDA library that provides common look-and-feel across apps.
The handwriting recognition is not usable. You'll have to use the on-screen keyboard (or telnet in from a desktop machine).
There's a SourceForge project, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/agtoys, that will provide an area for developers to post their stuff. You may want to pay attention to see what people are doing. (The site is new, so there's nothing there yet.)
It's also about supporting a hardware company that truly endorses the open-source model. It's sad to see so many open-source afficionados buying PDAs from Compaq (and thus indirectly paying license fees to Microsoft).
-- Kris
All the linux-running coolness doesn't count for Jack Shit if you can't actually, physically, right-now-not-next-quarter-or-"soon" buy the thing.
Well, yeah, if you're looking for a "product" then the Agenda Developer Edition will disappoint you. I'm betting it will be at least a year before they can sell these things to the general public.
But I like the Linux-running coolness, and it's nice to see existing Linux apps compiling without change and running on this thing. Like you say, if there's an app you want, then quitcherbitchin and port.
The cameras are really low-res. And they really should use some sort of morphing/tweening technology when switching from view to view to eliminate the jerkiness.
Actually, what they really should do is paste ping-pong balls all over the players' uniforms, and get the system to digitize the positions and create a full 3D model. Then we could play Quake on the Super Bowl field and keep track of the action while fragging each other.
I broke into my school's Xenix computer system when I was in high school. Believe it or not, the root password set up by the teacher was "security".
The teachers were so embarrased about it that I didn't get into any trouble. This was about 15 years ago--I hope that today's teachers are a little more security conscious.
If you want to bring up hypocrisy: how about not mentioning the unrealistic portrayal of MEN? Not too many male game players match up to the tall, square-jawed, hypermuscular, broad-shouldered and thin-waisted male characters. Why is this considered to be harmless (or even positive), while unrealistic portrayals of women are considered to be part of some vast misogynistic conspiracy?
Why do questions such as this keep coming up on Slashdot? Why are people continually surprised when companies use copyright law to protect their corporate assets? Is there really anyone here who doesn't understand this?
I'm not defending copyright law or the abusers of it. I'm just wondering why every day we have to read articles of the form "Company X Doesn't Want People Copying Their Stuff".
Not true. It's true that you can't upgrade the ROM, but "patches" can be installed in RAM. Handspring has already released at least one OS update.
This does have the disadvantage that if you reset your PDA's memory, you have to reinstall the patch. But you'll have to restore your data and third-party apps, so I don't see what the big deal is.
One of the points in the article is that lots of this "work" is finding and fixing bugs that should never have been there in the first place. Capers Jones and other software engineering gurus believe that if the proper techniques are used, the number of bugs can be cut drastically from the current norm. So, such bug fixing is not "productive work", it is "wasted time".
It's certainly true that testing and debugging are part of a programmer's job. But it would be nice if they didn't make up 90% of a programmer's job.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter how easy it is to use crypto software. If you send an e-mail to a random employee saying "Hi, this is Bob from the IT department. We're having a problem with your e-mail account. Please send me your private key and passphrase so that we can fix it.", chances are that the key will be sent back to you.
And as soon as some idiot encrypts ILoveYouAnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs, then that file is going to travel throughout the organization with no chance of e-mail filters catching it.
(I'm sure you'll now try to mod me down with this Karma Cop silliness. Go ahead.)
Back in the good old days, it didn't refresh the page. You kids today, with your fancy browsers and...
Copyrighted works theoretically become public domain some number of years after the death of the author. I think the current period is 75 years. However, due to lobbying by the Disney corporation and others, the threshold keeps increasing. It's unlikely that anything published after 1930 will ever fall into the public domain.
FWIW, I've been playing around with the Agenda VR3 PDA. Most Linux console apps compile for it without problems. GUI applications compile fine as long as they use FLTK, although you might have to change the window layouts to fit a 160x240 display.
Also, my understanding is that NCC stands for Naval Construction Contract. It doesn't directly imply Starfleet or UFP, so it seems possible that earlier Enterprises weren't NCC-something.
And perhaps the later A, B, C,... designations reflected that fact that Kirk and his crew were legendary heroes, and so Starfleet wanted to keep a ship with that name and numerical designation 1701 in service.
(This is without a doubt the geekiest set of comments I've ever made to /.)
Yeah, from the X-Files I've become accustomed to hare-brained theories that turn out to be correct. But when Byers guesses that the hitman slipped and fell on the carpet--where the hell did that come from?
It's almost as bad as when the TNG crew solved problems by "reversing positronic flows". The difference is that 23rd century technology is completely fictional, whereas Lone Gunmen addresses real technology that many viewers are familiar with.
I expect that every episode of this series is going to have a couple of hacking-into-computers sequences, and I hope they're not all as silly as this. I don't expect technical accuracy. But why not put in somewhat-believable gibberish rather than complete gibberish? Non-techie viewers won't know the difference, but it won't turn off techies..
All your invention are belong to us.
Actually, I thought "hot babe on a motorcycle, kicking ass" was the major theme of Dark Angel.
Cliff edited out the important (to me) part of my question. Exactly how would we go about re-creating computers. Assuming we had to start with simple devices (transistors, diodes, etc.), what would be the most efficient way to create the first working computers and software, and then use those to create the next generation of computers and software, and so on until we get "useful" stuff again?
My own mouse history:
- Microsoft IntelliMouse at home--3 years old, still works fine
- Microsoft IntelliMouse at work--2 years old, still works fine
- Macintosh Mouse--12 years old, still works fine
BTW, I play Quake III with my mouse, and do other "mouse-intensive" activities. The only mouse I've ever had problems with was the really cheap one that came with the original PS/2's.
I do use a mouse pad. Maybe that helps?
There's a SourceForge project, http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/agtoys, that will provide an area for developers to post their stuff. You may want to pay attention to see what people are doing. (The site is new, so there's nothing there yet.)
It's also about supporting a hardware company that truly endorses the open-source model. It's sad to see so many open-source afficionados buying PDAs from Compaq (and thus indirectly paying license fees to Microsoft). -- Kris
Well, yeah, if you're looking for a "product" then the Agenda Developer Edition will disappoint you. I'm betting it will be at least a year before they can sell these things to the general public.
But I like the Linux-running coolness, and it's nice to see existing Linux apps compiling without change and running on this thing. Like you say, if there's an app you want, then quitcherbitchin and port.
Actually, what they really should do is paste ping-pong balls all over the players' uniforms, and get the system to digitize the positions and create a full 3D model. Then we could play Quake on the Super Bowl field and keep track of the action while fragging each other.
"Let's f***ing rock!"
and
"Let's beat those mother f***ers!"
I'm surprised CBS doesn't have a few seconds of delay that would allow them to bleep this out.
According to the press release, the whole corporation is part of the deal.
The teachers were so embarrased about it that I didn't get into any trouble. This was about 15 years ago--I hope that today's teachers are a little more security conscious.
If you want to bring up hypocrisy: how about not mentioning the unrealistic portrayal of MEN? Not too many male game players match up to the tall, square-jawed, hypermuscular, broad-shouldered and thin-waisted male characters. Why is this considered to be harmless (or even positive), while unrealistic portrayals of women are considered to be part of some vast misogynistic conspiracy?
I'm not defending copyright law or the abusers of it. I'm just wondering why every day we have to read articles of the form "Company X Doesn't Want People Copying Their Stuff".
This does have the disadvantage that if you reset your PDA's memory, you have to reinstall the patch. But you'll have to restore your data and third-party apps, so I don't see what the big deal is.
-- Kris
Take a look at pedit Pro, which includes a word count function and is very keyboard-friendly.
It's certainly true that testing and debugging are part of a programmer's job. But it would be nice if they didn't make up 90% of a programmer's job.