Beyond the other answers, anything that can be powered by a human can be powered even better by a small inexpensive engine. This could easily result in an inexpensive personal recreational aircraft. Think Ultralights. Regardless, pure science is pure science. Even if this particular application never results in anything, he surely had to solve problems and understand principles that no one has ever worked out before. Parts of that research will have value somewhere.
There was an article on Idle a while back about the Sumo Wrestling federation in Japan buying iPads for their schools, because the wrestler's fingers were too big for phone keyboards. Maybe it's the device for you too:-P
They can help prevent an infection from spreading beyond the local machine as well as other network management, depending on the needs.
It think you're being unrealistic here. To do that would require literally every machine on your network to be in its own segment. Firewall appliances aren't built to work work like that. You'd either have to have your switch *be* a firewall, filtering each port at both the Transport/Network layer and the Data Link layer, or you'd have to route everything through your firewall for even local traffic. You'd have a bottle neck at the firewall box, and potentially it'd be hugely expensive (a lot of vendors charge per segment).
Exactly. He brings this point up in the beginning of the article, but then never satisfactorily explains his reasons for not having both. He states that systems administration is all about trade-offs, and using time effectively, then admits that you'd have to go out of your way to turn off the Windows Firewall. The Windows (or Linux, or Mac, or whatever your OS of choice is) Firewall:
1) Rarely causes problems. 2) Is trivial to fix when it does cause a problem. 3) Is free (as in beer, it's a non-monetized component of every major modern Operating System). 4) Is as much of an effort to disable as it is to work around 5) Provides an additional (if small) layer of security to your severs and workstations.
So, the question (which the author asks and never answers) is "Why *not* use it?" It's free. It's easy. It provides an extra layer of protection in your security plan. The plus side to turning it off is?
Unless something has changed recently in HTML, hidden values on forms are a much inferior method for storing state than cookies. Typically when a cookie is being used to store state (as opposed to to tracking info or something) is only stores a session ID. That session ID is the index to all of your stored values on the server. Let's say you have a multipage form, on the first page you enter your name, address and phone number, n the second your credit card information. The information from the first page isn't stored in the cookie and sent back and forth, it's stored on the server and a session ID identifies it. The ID is sent back and forth. This has the dual benefit of reducing bandwidth and reducing the number of times your info is sent back and forth (making it vulnerable to interception).
You could in theory send session IDs back and forth via hidden field data, but anytime there was a interruption in the session: You accidentally close the tab, your browser crashes, your Internet connection goes wonky and refuses to load the next page, You click a non-form link on the site, whatever... you'll have to start over. Because the session ID only exists on the page you currently have up, hidden in the HTML, not in a data structure (like a cookie).
If anything the Mac is becoming a slowly but steadily larger platform for games. Valve just started supporting MacOS after seeing its growing market share. Now that some significant number of games are coming to the Mac, Apple is also trying to optimize their drivers for gaming too, hopefully that will further grow the market. Blizzard has kept making Mac versions of its games through the worst of Apple's nears death experience, and is starting to see real return on that investment. I don't see either company giving up on the platform now (at least not unless Apple flounders). The real question is starting to become, "who else will follow them?"
You work for the wrong people. When I *tried* to leave I got a 17% raise (The new job would have been 30%, but it was in DC, so Meh). Good companies want to keep good people. It's how they stay good companies.
But the most important thing is they don't challenge you. You don't even have to explain what you want or provide a document. They just complete the job
Yeah this line just blew my mind. "So, in addition to being an awesome coder you need a developer who is psychic? Because that's the only way you're going to get the product you want without providing any specs." What a moron. Also, if you're not providing them the least amount of guidance, of course they're not going to challenge you. You're effectively letting them write whatever strikes their fancy and implement it without any controls. Sounds like a dream job to me (at least until the boss comes back and say it's all wrong and you need to fix it (still without guidance) by Monday).
To be fair, while most of the article was drek, this was by far the worst section. Most of it was merely useless, rather than counterproductive.
But the alternative is to ignore the issue completely and look completely clueless. Not to mention that some of us believe that there should be regulation of the Internet at least to the point of telling the corporations that exercise passive control of it to leave it alone. As much as it would be cool if the Internet just kept on Internetting, the fact is that a number of entities (governments and corporations) are trying to exercise various amount of control all ready. To just ignore that in favor of being high minded is kind of foolish.
AS a sweeping overview, presented in a non-legal and non-technical news source this sounds like a great idea. Whether it turn out to be as good an idea when you get down to the proposed details and specifics is another matter, but so far I like it. It's very easy, in politics, to cover changes that will accomplish one set of goals with rhetoric that claims they will do the opposite. In this case I suspect the devil is very much in the details, but I'd love to see what they come up with.
The guy hates his own name and his proud heritage.
Where do you get that? Lots of showbiz people change their names to something they think will be easier to remember or increase their chances to be successful. In his case, the very entry you link suggests he probably did it because he doesn't get along with his father. He's never hidden his Jewish heritage and it features prominently in several bits I've seen him do (and I don't even watch the show much).
Yeah, you'd want to play with the times. 1-5 minute expirations work well for RSA dongles and similar systems, but you might be right that a longer time frame would be better for these types of systems. Really even a solid day would probably be fine. The chances of someone stealing your credit card number from a database then immediately using it are relatively slim (and stealing the physical card wouldn't help them without your PIN).
It's pretty much infinitely more secure than what we have now. Here's my suggestion to improve it further. You enter your pin, and rather than displaying your static credit card number, it displays a static identifier combined with an RSA style changing number. So say, the first 10 digits of the "card number" is a static identifier, then the last 6 digits are a code based on a shared secret between the card and your bank, changing every 5 minutes say. The magnetic strip can also have the same system. So if you enter the pin, then you can either swipe the card or enter the displayed number into a online system. Your card is approved based on the currently active code. 5 minutes later, that code is no longer valid so if someone gets the card database it doesn't matter.
Downside of course is that it will break any kind of storing your card number for monthly payments or stuff like Amazons One-click. It would be very secure though.
Umm. Novell already owns SuSE. They have for years. They're trying to sell it not buy it. VMWare is the potential buyer and they have no name recognition in the OS field. Hence it would be good for them to buy a recognized name.
I'm not sure what your point is? My parent said that VMWare should buy Mandriva instead or SuSE. I said that buying Mandriva would be a mistake because companies want name recognition in their OS purchases, and that SuSE would be a better choice. Now you say that Novell has name recognition... This is true, but beside the point. Novell is not up for sale, its SuSE division is. Even if it were all of Novell that was up for sale your comment would reinforce my point, not counter it. Yes, having the Novell name associated with your product is good. That's immaterial to whether VMWare buy Mandriva instead of SuSE.
OK, I can understand, if not agree with the sentiment that Apple is bad because they release so little of their software and, have a closed ecosystem, use a Walled Garden approach, etc ad nauseum; but "leeches off free software"? From everything I've read Apple is a pretty good company to work with when it come to them using your project. They follow license terms of course; but also contribute patches, work with project leads, and generally try to be good members of communities. They've also created at least one large project that I know of. I understand that in your ideal world they would simply open up everything they do, but failing that how could they be better members of the community?
Free Software projects exist to be used. The people that wrote them and released them presumably want people to use them. Apple uses them, follows the rules imposed to use them, and often goes out of their way to be more helpful than they really have to be. What more can you ask for?
They could be acquired if enough of the preferred shares are available, but a good chunk, if not the majority of Red Hat's preferred shares are in the hands of company officers and Open Source partisans IIRC. Those people could simply refuse to sell the stock at any price. Since the company is doing well (relatively speaking), there's no real leverage to force the issue. Of course someone like Apple or Oracle could dangle so much money that people essentially couldn't refuse, but it would probably take more than $7 billion. There's a pretty small number of companies in the world that could do that, and I don't see most of those having an interest.
It's kind of a moot point if you don't want the 3G though. It's a 170 pounds more for a not as nice tablet and a 3G modem that I don't want. That's not chump change. (For the lazy, 170 pounds is around $260 at current exchange rates)
I dunno, if it's true (and it seems to be) that you have to have a phone data plan to access the Android App Store, that's going to be a huge impact on the tablet/PDA market. The sales numbers on iPod Touch indicate that while tablet and phones are both more popular, there's a pretty big market for unconnected phone sized devices (PDAs essentially). That's two markets Android is essentially cutting itself out of by making people pay an unnecessary monthly fee. Google needs to change that pronto if they want to get into this market.
It won't be taken as seriously. You can *say* it's as good as an Enterprise Distro, it might even *be* as good. People that buy OSes for companies want to see a name they recognize. Right now those names are Red Hat (not available), SuSE, and to a less extent Canonical/Ubuntu (not available). Red Hat would probably be the one everyone wants to buy, but between being the market leader and being fairly profitable (not Microsoft or Apple levels of profitable, but plenty of money to keep everyone in kibble for sure), that's not much of an option.
The "ecosystem" is really more complicated than I (attempting to be brief) described though. I don't have a Mac at the moment either. I gave mine to my wife because her laptop sucked. I do however have iTunes because I need it to sync my phone... Which mean I mostly buy music from Apple, because iTunes makes it easy. You don't have to be using everything Apple makes to be participating in their ecosystem concept.
You're right of course that good products generate brand loyalty, I thought that's what I said, but maybe I worded it wrong. My point is that brand loyalty provides a steady income, as opposed to the "spikey" income you get from always trying to be the "best" thing on the market. This month HTC is making money hand over fist, because everyone wants the new "Desire: Youreallydesirethisone", next month they're hind teat because everyone *now* wants the "Droid: AwesomerthantheDesire"
The only Malware we were infected by in Q2 was McAfee. It decided a few critical systems files were viruses and shut us down for hours. Stupid Malware creators.
It's a proof of concept. Once we have pigeon packets proved out we can give them proper packet headings and implement IP on them. We'll just have to modify the protocol standards to account for really *large* packets (16GB? 32? How big are these little drives getting these days?). Also, have you considered purchasing a sense of humor?:-)
Both models have pluses and minuses. If you want the "best" phone on the market (Defined by tech specs- CPU, camera, memory, etc) you almost certainly want an Android phone. The churn that the competing manufacturers create by their constant upgrade cycles means that Moto, or HTC, or Nokia (do they make Android?) probably currently has the most powerful thing available this week. On the other hand the Apple hardware updates often enough to stay reasonably current, if not cutting edge. So advantage Android, but not a huge advantage.
The Android OS is certainly more open, at least in theory. In practice it seems like the manufacturers and providers often lock shit down pretty hard. So, again, advantage Android, but how much of an advantage probably depends entirely on what model phone you have and who's network you're using it on.
The iPhone's advantages tend to harder to measure. The UI is well done, for sure. The design is very consistent. The "ecosystem" concept has a lot of advantages. I was really pleased when I upgraded my 1st gen iPhone to a 3GS a while back. The backup and restore function was such that I literally felt like I was using the same phone, but better. Like upgrading the CPU, RAM, and VC on a computer and keeping the OS as it is. Everything was faster and shinier (and GPSier), but otherwise identical. And of course my 3GS runs iOS 4 pretty well and that's like a whole new upgrade.
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Beyond the other answers, anything that can be powered by a human can be powered even better by a small inexpensive engine. This could easily result in an inexpensive personal recreational aircraft. Think Ultralights. Regardless, pure science is pure science. Even if this particular application never results in anything, he surely had to solve problems and understand principles that no one has ever worked out before. Parts of that research will have value somewhere.
There was an article on Idle a while back about the Sumo Wrestling federation in Japan buying iPads for their schools, because the wrestler's fingers were too big for phone keyboards. Maybe it's the device for you too :-P
They can help prevent an infection from spreading beyond the local machine as well as other network management, depending on the needs.
It think you're being unrealistic here. To do that would require literally every machine on your network to be in its own segment. Firewall appliances aren't built to work work like that. You'd either have to have your switch *be* a firewall, filtering each port at both the Transport/Network layer and the Data Link layer, or you'd have to route everything through your firewall for even local traffic. You'd have a bottle neck at the firewall box, and potentially it'd be hugely expensive (a lot of vendors charge per segment).
Exactly. He brings this point up in the beginning of the article, but then never satisfactorily explains his reasons for not having both. He states that systems administration is all about trade-offs, and using time effectively, then admits that you'd have to go out of your way to turn off the Windows Firewall. The Windows (or Linux, or Mac, or whatever your OS of choice is) Firewall:
1) Rarely causes problems.
2) Is trivial to fix when it does cause a problem.
3) Is free (as in beer, it's a non-monetized component of every major modern Operating System).
4) Is as much of an effort to disable as it is to work around
5) Provides an additional (if small) layer of security to your severs and workstations.
So, the question (which the author asks and never answers) is "Why *not* use it?" It's free. It's easy. It provides an extra layer of protection in your security plan. The plus side to turning it off is?
Unless something has changed recently in HTML, hidden values on forms are a much inferior method for storing state than cookies. Typically when a cookie is being used to store state (as opposed to to tracking info or something) is only stores a session ID. That session ID is the index to all of your stored values on the server. Let's say you have a multipage form, on the first page you enter your name, address and phone number, n the second your credit card information. The information from the first page isn't stored in the cookie and sent back and forth, it's stored on the server and a session ID identifies it. The ID is sent back and forth. This has the dual benefit of reducing bandwidth and reducing the number of times your info is sent back and forth (making it vulnerable to interception).
You could in theory send session IDs back and forth via hidden field data, but anytime there was a interruption in the session: You accidentally close the tab, your browser crashes, your Internet connection goes wonky and refuses to load the next page, You click a non-form link on the site, whatever... you'll have to start over. Because the session ID only exists on the page you currently have up, hidden in the HTML, not in a data structure (like a cookie).
If anything the Mac is becoming a slowly but steadily larger platform for games. Valve just started supporting MacOS after seeing its growing market share. Now that some significant number of games are coming to the Mac, Apple is also trying to optimize their drivers for gaming too, hopefully that will further grow the market. Blizzard has kept making Mac versions of its games through the worst of Apple's nears death experience, and is starting to see real return on that investment. I don't see either company giving up on the platform now (at least not unless Apple flounders). The real question is starting to become, "who else will follow them?"
You work for the wrong people. When I *tried* to leave I got a 17% raise (The new job would have been 30%, but it was in DC, so Meh). Good companies want to keep good people. It's how they stay good companies.
But the most important thing is they don't challenge you. You don't even have to explain what you want or provide a document. They just complete the job
Yeah this line just blew my mind. "So, in addition to being an awesome coder you need a developer who is psychic? Because that's the only way you're going to get the product you want without providing any specs." What a moron. Also, if you're not providing them the least amount of guidance, of course they're not going to challenge you. You're effectively letting them write whatever strikes their fancy and implement it without any controls. Sounds like a dream job to me (at least until the boss comes back and say it's all wrong and you need to fix it (still without guidance) by Monday).
To be fair, while most of the article was drek, this was by far the worst section. Most of it was merely useless, rather than counterproductive.
But the alternative is to ignore the issue completely and look completely clueless. Not to mention that some of us believe that there should be regulation of the Internet at least to the point of telling the corporations that exercise passive control of it to leave it alone. As much as it would be cool if the Internet just kept on Internetting, the fact is that a number of entities (governments and corporations) are trying to exercise various amount of control all ready. To just ignore that in favor of being high minded is kind of foolish.
AS a sweeping overview, presented in a non-legal and non-technical news source this sounds like a great idea. Whether it turn out to be as good an idea when you get down to the proposed details and specifics is another matter, but so far I like it. It's very easy, in politics, to cover changes that will accomplish one set of goals with rhetoric that claims they will do the opposite. In this case I suspect the devil is very much in the details, but I'd love to see what they come up with.
The guy hates his own name and his proud heritage.
Where do you get that? Lots of showbiz people change their names to something they think will be easier to remember or increase their chances to be successful. In his case, the very entry you link suggests he probably did it because he doesn't get along with his father. He's never hidden his Jewish heritage and it features prominently in several bits I've seen him do (and I don't even watch the show much).
Yeah, you'd want to play with the times. 1-5 minute expirations work well for RSA dongles and similar systems, but you might be right that a longer time frame would be better for these types of systems. Really even a solid day would probably be fine. The chances of someone stealing your credit card number from a database then immediately using it are relatively slim (and stealing the physical card wouldn't help them without your PIN).
It's pretty much infinitely more secure than what we have now. Here's my suggestion to improve it further. You enter your pin, and rather than displaying your static credit card number, it displays a static identifier combined with an RSA style changing number. So say, the first 10 digits of the "card number" is a static identifier, then the last 6 digits are a code based on a shared secret between the card and your bank, changing every 5 minutes say. The magnetic strip can also have the same system. So if you enter the pin, then you can either swipe the card or enter the displayed number into a online system. Your card is approved based on the currently active code. 5 minutes later, that code is no longer valid so if someone gets the card database it doesn't matter.
Downside of course is that it will break any kind of storing your card number for monthly payments or stuff like Amazons One-click. It would be very secure though.
Umm. Novell already owns SuSE. They have for years. They're trying to sell it not buy it. VMWare is the potential buyer and they have no name recognition in the OS field. Hence it would be good for them to buy a recognized name.
I'm not sure what your point is? My parent said that VMWare should buy Mandriva instead or SuSE. I said that buying Mandriva would be a mistake because companies want name recognition in their OS purchases, and that SuSE would be a better choice. Now you say that Novell has name recognition... This is true, but beside the point. Novell is not up for sale, its SuSE division is. Even if it were all of Novell that was up for sale your comment would reinforce my point, not counter it. Yes, having the Novell name associated with your product is good. That's immaterial to whether VMWare buy Mandriva instead of SuSE.
OK, I can understand, if not agree with the sentiment that Apple is bad because they release so little of their software and, have a closed ecosystem, use a Walled Garden approach, etc ad nauseum; but "leeches off free software"? From everything I've read Apple is a pretty good company to work with when it come to them using your project. They follow license terms of course; but also contribute patches, work with project leads, and generally try to be good members of communities. They've also created at least one large project that I know of. I understand that in your ideal world they would simply open up everything they do, but failing that how could they be better members of the community?
Free Software projects exist to be used. The people that wrote them and released them presumably want people to use them. Apple uses them, follows the rules imposed to use them, and often goes out of their way to be more helpful than they really have to be. What more can you ask for?
They could be acquired if enough of the preferred shares are available, but a good chunk, if not the majority of Red Hat's preferred shares are in the hands of company officers and Open Source partisans IIRC. Those people could simply refuse to sell the stock at any price. Since the company is doing well (relatively speaking), there's no real leverage to force the issue. Of course someone like Apple or Oracle could dangle so much money that people essentially couldn't refuse, but it would probably take more than $7 billion. There's a pretty small number of companies in the world that could do that, and I don't see most of those having an interest.
It's kind of a moot point if you don't want the 3G though. It's a 170 pounds more for a not as nice tablet and a 3G modem that I don't want. That's not chump change. (For the lazy, 170 pounds is around $260 at current exchange rates)
I dunno, if it's true (and it seems to be) that you have to have a phone data plan to access the Android App Store, that's going to be a huge impact on the tablet/PDA market. The sales numbers on iPod Touch indicate that while tablet and phones are both more popular, there's a pretty big market for unconnected phone sized devices (PDAs essentially). That's two markets Android is essentially cutting itself out of by making people pay an unnecessary monthly fee. Google needs to change that pronto if they want to get into this market.
It won't be taken as seriously. You can *say* it's as good as an Enterprise Distro, it might even *be* as good. People that buy OSes for companies want to see a name they recognize. Right now those names are Red Hat (not available), SuSE, and to a less extent Canonical/Ubuntu (not available). Red Hat would probably be the one everyone wants to buy, but between being the market leader and being fairly profitable (not Microsoft or Apple levels of profitable, but plenty of money to keep everyone in kibble for sure), that's not much of an option.
The "ecosystem" is really more complicated than I (attempting to be brief) described though. I don't have a Mac at the moment either. I gave mine to my wife because her laptop sucked. I do however have iTunes because I need it to sync my phone... Which mean I mostly buy music from Apple, because iTunes makes it easy. You don't have to be using everything Apple makes to be participating in their ecosystem concept.
You're right of course that good products generate brand loyalty, I thought that's what I said, but maybe I worded it wrong. My point is that brand loyalty provides a steady income, as opposed to the "spikey" income you get from always trying to be the "best" thing on the market. This month HTC is making money hand over fist, because everyone wants the new "Desire: Youreallydesirethisone", next month they're hind teat because everyone *now* wants the "Droid: AwesomerthantheDesire"
The only Malware we were infected by in Q2 was McAfee. It decided a few critical systems files were viruses and shut us down for hours. Stupid Malware creators.
It's a proof of concept. Once we have pigeon packets proved out we can give them proper packet headings and implement IP on them. We'll just have to modify the protocol standards to account for really *large* packets (16GB? 32? How big are these little drives getting these days?). Also, have you considered purchasing a sense of humor? :-)
To be fair, Pigeon Protocol may be high bandwidth, but the latency is terrible. And Gods forbid you miss a packet.
Both models have pluses and minuses. If you want the "best" phone on the market (Defined by tech specs- CPU, camera, memory, etc) you almost certainly want an Android phone. The churn that the competing manufacturers create by their constant upgrade cycles means that Moto, or HTC, or Nokia (do they make Android?) probably currently has the most powerful thing available this week. On the other hand the Apple hardware updates often enough to stay reasonably current, if not cutting edge. So advantage Android, but not a huge advantage.
The Android OS is certainly more open, at least in theory. In practice it seems like the manufacturers and providers often lock shit down pretty hard. So, again, advantage Android, but how much of an advantage probably depends entirely on what model phone you have and who's network you're using it on.
The iPhone's advantages tend to harder to measure. The UI is well done, for sure. The design is very consistent. The "ecosystem" concept has a lot of advantages. I was really pleased when I upgraded my 1st gen iPhone to a 3GS a while back. The backup and restore function was such that I literally felt like I was using the same phone, but better. Like upgrading the CPU, RAM, and VC on a computer and keeping the OS as it is. Everything was faster and shinier (and GPSier), but otherwise identical. And of course my 3GS runs iOS 4 pretty well and that's like a whole new upgrade.
Meh, to each their own.