... massive profit is only possible where markets are minimally competitive. I agree completely - it's nice how after a bit of clarification we can agree on the laws of economics. As a private company, I'll be looking for markets that are not well tapped. I understand that by the mere fact of being successful in those marketplaces, I'm fostering the seeds of my own competition - it's how the game works. I'm successful to the degree that I can out-perform against my competitors on any of an unlimited number of metrics including customer service, price, marketing, payment terms, market appropriateness, functionality, look and feel, convenience, etc.
But what's funny is how your point dramatically changed when somebody pointed out that your original argument sucked. Because what you originally said was:
Because you can't make a profit in a competitive market. There's a world of difference between these two statements!
While he is only testing the quantum entanglement portion, changing one light beam and having the same change made in the other beam, his experiment might show that a change made in one beam shows up in the other beam before he actually makes the change. Yeah, sorta like me doing an egg-drop experiment "might show that gravity has no effect on a free-falling egg". If, the egg were to somehow mysteriously not fall to the ground.
I'm not knocking scientific experimentation, but this looks like just another test for the finer details of a well-understood phenomenon: quantum entanglement. Wake me up if anything even slightly unexpected happens.
Just FIY for those of you who've been on the Moon for the last 25 years, for all the chest-thumping economic rhetoric about the free market, it is completely ignored by companies who are actually interested in profit. Why? Because you can't make a profit in a competitive market. It's as simple as that. True competition drives profit margins down to subsistence levels. If you want to haul in billions you need to have a minimally competitive market: monopoly, oligopoly or cartel. BBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!! So sorry you slept thru business 101.
People don't start businesses in areas where there is no profit. So when profits are too low, the market will tend to regulate itself towards higher prices and higher margins. But when there are no other companies in an area, and profits start to climb like mad, other companies start in order to suck up the profit.
Thus a balance tends to emerge where the amount of money you can make in any industry or area is roughly similar to what you can make in others. Sorry your pet area might make wages lower than the norm, but remember that cash isn't the only factor. Other things like respect and work environment play part. For example, your local garbage collector usually gets paid about twice what other, similarly trained people get paid in other fields, simply because the work environment sux0rz so bad.
As a company owner, I will look for markets that are "under-tapped" - where competition is scarce and margins are high. In doing so, I'm actually deflating those margins. If the marketplace is crowded, margins will be thin, work and stress loads will be high, and I'll be looking to differentiate my product by either making it better, cheaper, or both, meanwhile looking for new markets that are as of yet un(der)tapped. Usually, to tap a new market, you have to innovate something new in order to address the needs of the new or untapped marketplace.
See how it self-regulates?
This balance will fail if there are certain factors at work. EG: monopolistic practices - when you have a company with enough market share to "create their own gravity" and aren't afraid to use it to squash competition in other, possibly related fields.
It's the job of a free-market government to promote this competitive environment and prevent any single company from unfairly quashing competition. To the extent that it does so, people can be assured a reasonable wage and a reasonable chance to find work. To the extent that it fails to do so, we see stratification of people into "classes", and we see single, monopolistic companies with the resulting declination in innovation and new development.
For an example of monopolistic practices at work, take a look at Internet Explorer - rapid development until about 2000, then once Netscape died, NOTHING NEW FOR 5 YEARS until Mozilla started eating market share. Suddenly, we have IE 7 with new features!
I think delivering working software frequently is bullshit. Already, you sound smarter than the average... eh...
It greatly multiplies your work. Yeah, much easier to deliver software that, eh, doesn't work? I'll agree with that.
It's like I'm building a car but at various stages the consumer demands to come in a start driving it around. Oh, I get what you mean, now. is the "frequently" part that multiplies your work, not the "working" part...
It's a lot more work to repeatedly get things release worthy than to just keep moving along on the project. Write quality stuff to begin with, stuff that's properly layered, properly abstracted, with high-quality error reporting and a debugging framework built in, and you'll be amazed at what you can do!
Also giving frequent releases leads to scope slippage and creeping featurism. Really? I find the exact opposite.
Let's say I'm asked to write software to do A, B, C, N, and Y. I start by writing software until it reaches a minimal level of functionality - bare bones, every non-critical feature omitted, and frequently not all that well tested. I whisk that in front of my clients, and they immediately start bitching about "it doesn't do Y and we need that very bad!".
I thank the client, and do Y. A week or two later, they get Y. Then I hear a whine about B. So I write it, and and a week or two later, kick out the software with B enabled. A few bug reports later, and everybody's happy.
Notice that features A, C, and Y turned out to be unnecessary! This happens ALL THE TIME. But what's even more interesting is that the client usually finds they need something very important that wasn't on the list to begin with. By keeping the development cycle short and keeping my attention on the customer, I find that I very quickly have something very compelling, and can consistently outperform my competitors in the marketplace. This is always a good thing!
I think that agile software development lends itself very nicely to the "Software as a Service" model rather than the "sell a widget" model. When you're selling software as a service, the release often mentality doesn't get in your way because the customer isn't paying for a bunch of releases, they're paying to always have the most current.
The article starts out by stating that "agile project management is notoriously least effective on very large projects." but then goes on to propose using Agile Programming techniques to fix it! Such as:
From TFA:
"Small, discrete and often" are the guidelines for the milestones for a successful project. And from the Agile Manifesto:
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale. From TFA:
"Make sure everybody really agreed to what the project is going to do," he says. "Make sure everyone has the same goals even when they have conflicting agendas." And from the Agile Manifesto:
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. This is just another shoddy example of "journalism" from an IT rag whose job it is to produce buzzword-laden tripe that can be used to get advertisements in front of tech weenies. Ultimately, the actual value of the articles in mags like CIO.com are marginal at best, and usually only slightly more interesting than the advertisements!
The voting cards in the 2000 Florida election were confusing so that people sometimes were unsure what (who) they were actually voting for. By picking a name that's confusingly similar people would likely lock on to a word they get "Oh, the OPEN one!" and vote for it - which is why the name "Office Open XML" to oppose the "Open Document Format".
Look at it like this:
Microsoft Office (closed proprietary) == Office Open XML
Open Office (Free, Open Source) = Open Document Format. Even the name behind OOXML implies that it has something to do with Open Office! Tell me that OOXML wouldn't easily be misinterpreted as Open Office XML. (since ODF is XML based, eh....)
Disclaimer: Yes I know that there are other implementations of the ODF standard, plugins, blah blah blah. But the most commonly referenced user of ODF is Open Office.
We'd all love to see the proprietary and over-complex OOXML file format die on the vine. It's sickening how they've purposefully obfuscated the issue, how they've picked a name that's confusingly similar (think Florida's 2000 election all over again!) and have lied and misrepresented what it is.
But just look at that graph! The lengths that Microsoft will go to in order to prevent people from being free of the vendor lock-in... Cash is king, and Microsoft has more available cash than many countries's GNP. How far can they corrupt the process? Probably far enough, with enough time and money, and the only holdback is the time.
What we need to do is simple: continue building world-class software. Continue to push for open standards. Make quality, useful, non-locked software and eventually, the marketplace will correct itself. That we've come this far is a testament to the power of the marketplace.
How does prevent the existing real time man in the middle attack?
This question belies a misunderstanding of public-key cryptography. With public cryptography (often called dual-key cryptography) the only thing exposed is a public key, which can only be used to encrypt. Without the matching private key, anything encrypted with the public key is indecipherable.
Except the vast majority of users still just sit there and web-browse, type a paper, and mabe watch a movie or something.
Just because that's what is actually done the vast majority of the time doesn't mean that's all that the average (or majority) of users use the computer for.
I'm a good example - I have an Athlon XP 3200 that sits in my porch with a midrange 3D video card. Admittedly not "high end" but certainly a few cuts about the P3 mentioned earlier. Most of the time it's on playing a flash game, word processing with OpenOffice, or displaying a myspace account, or somebody's reading Email. Lightweight stuff that could be easily done with a P3.
But, there's a few hours per week where I'm in some FPS or GTA San Andreas and I'm mowing down the bad guys, good guys, cops, or whatever. Or I'm goofing off in 2nd life. Of whatever. There's a small percentage of what I do that requires the extra CPU and graphics muscle - and that's enough for me to run the faster machine all the time.
And although my technical skills are a cut or two above average, this usage pattern isn't particularly unusual, and is why people use newer machines. It's not about "usually enough for most of the time" it's "enough for all the time".
I still use an AMD Thunderbird machine for pretty much anything that isnt gaming.
So let me get this straight - you have TWO computers, one for gaming, and one for everything else? Isn't that, eh, inconvenient? Do you have two desks, one for each computer? Or do you have a KVM switch so that you can use the "slow" computer for browsing and the "fast" computer for games?
Sounds pretty inefficient, to me... Me thinks you are wasting power on an old Tbird...
as long as USERS don't understand it, yes it is useless. Secure the communication and provide X509 certs all you want, if the user think it's a bank, he will enter his password.
I don't think you understand what he's really saying - you could hand out RSA key fobs and/or client certificates that authenticate the browser to the bank. Without that, the password would/could be utterly useless.
If the bank uses the key fob, you can't enter by password alone. If the bank uses client certificates, then that must be installed on the browser first. (much more difficult than just lifting a password)
Now, if only they made it easier to set up client certificates...
TCP hijacking is almost just as easy now as it was 10 years ago.
It may be even easier. Who cares? However you look at it, TCP is doing its job. If you want to prevent against hijacking, the layered topology of the communication stack lets you prevent that at a higher level. (EG: Using encryption - which can be interrupted, but not hijacked)
TCP hijacking is merely a side effect of a missing layer in the stack of your application.
As long as people are imperfect (and they always will be) there will be measures, countermeasures, and counter-counter measures. New techniques will make old ones obsolete, and even newer techniques will make the once-new techniques no longer apply.
With this understanding, any technology that can outsurvive more than one or two iterations of other products in the same field becomes "venerable" and "stable".
Which makes now a particularly good time to appreciate the guys who worked out the spec for TCP/IP some 30 (?) years ago. Despite going from mainframes, to minis, to PCs, and now on to the era of ubiquitous computing, the basic concepts and ideas behind the TCP/IP specification continue to hold steady and useful. They managed to come up with a technology, that whatever flaws have actually been found, hasn't come up against any real show-stoppers. None.
Cruftiness is the quality of having cruft. Cruft is the stuff that accumulates on code over time. Cruft has no odor, but it stinks. Cruft has no mass, but it weighs the code down. Cruft can't be seen, but it's ugly. Cruft cannot be young, it's always old.
(WIAK's Law: The longer a Star Wars discussion goes on, especially on Slashdot, the greater the likelyhood that someone mentions either Han shooting first or George Lucas raping their childhood.) Godwin's curse: As an online discussion of nerds grows longer, the probability of lame jokes created by making fun of Godwin's law approaches one.
I have a large (ahem... LARGE) codebase written in PHP4 that's running CentOS 4. Supposedly, CentOS will be updated until 2010. But how could they keep this promise if the underlying packages are no longer supported?
Guess I'll have to see what PHP5 will do to my software, thinking I could put this off for another couple years.
Finally! You post something reasonable, and explain SOME kind of position rather than just rail on mine. For the most part, we've argued semantics. But I have a question for you:
When you say "privacy is dead. Get over it" You're suggesting that the debate already over (I strongly disagree) and that we should all meekly accept increasing levels of surveillance now whilst we campaign for greater openness and accountability at some future time. As far as I'm concerned, that's the wrong way round. You put the infrastructure in place so that we can watch the watchmen, and maybe I'll happily accept that they can watch me more closely in turn.
But until that day comes I continue to value my privacy. But your privacy is already losing to increasing levels of surveillance right now while we debate it.
A) When you buy a beer at the local Kwik-E mart, your credit card gets dinged. That record is processed in near-real-time. You think this hasn't been abused? Think again - credit card records are routinely accessed by our wonderful government for criminal investigations.
B) When you drive through many intersections (especially in the UK, less so in the USA) there are cameras on the light posts. You don't think that OCR can be used with the (very standard font) license plates clearly posted on your car? How ELSE do they send me an automated ticket if I run a red light? 3 seconds at google turns up this.
C) Police cars routinely have 360 degree cameras mounted on them. (It's more common to record everything going out the front windshield) This makes anything that happens near a police car a matter of record. Another 3 seconds to google for this example.
D) AT&T, the NSA, and the amazing GW Bush administration recently got their hands caught in the cookie jar - a case I'm certain you have at least some passing familiarity with.
E) Public records once shrouded in the halls of obscurity are now easily searched online. Locations for registered sex offenders. Anybody who's committed a felony crime. (at least in my jurisdiction) Landownership records, and property deeds.
F) You call your phone company (or any other large XYZ megacorp) for any reason and the first thing you hear on the phone is "This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes". What do you really think that means?
And it goes on, and on, and on. How private did you think you are? Even as a reasonably knowledgeable person, it's probably far worse than you imagined.
And so, I say again: "Privacy is dead. Get over it!" not because it's defeatist or counterproductive or anything like that - it's just TRUE. And the problem (if you feel that this kind of transparency is a problem) is getting worse with every passing day. At the rate things are developing, your nightmare world where the watchers watch everything and we have nothing to protect ourselves with is already well underway!
Do you have a better suggestion than Brin's world?
What interests me is your disinclination to practice what you preach. You post under a pseudonym and include no personal data on your profile - not even a link to a web page. You may not value anyone else's privacy, but you certainly value your own. Oddly enough, that seems to have been Scott McNealy's attitude as well.
Well done on missing my entire point - but you didn't read the David Brin's article, did you?
With increased technology, and perpetually dropping costs for monitoring equipment, the odds that your actions will be recorded is increasing exponentially. But who watches the watcher? To "practice what I preach" I'd have to come up with some way of knowing who is reading my SS#, finds out my website, email, etc. When that's done, and protections are in place to prevent abuse of knowledge like that, I'll post my SS#, website, email, etc.
Feel free to comment further, but don't do so until you have actually consumed my point rather than just knee-jerk react to my words and accuse me of being 13.
Why that's right. I expect everyone here knows that the quote is attributed to Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems. According to a reporter for Wired he was speaking at the launch of Sun's Jini technology in 1999.
Got it so far...
It's just that by saying so up front, you can avoid sounding like an insecure thirteen year old putting on a pose to try and hide the fact that he's too lazy to type three words into Google.
Well, it took a few tries to parse this sentence, since you mix the "you" and the "he", but eventually the truth comes out - you think I'm too lazy to type 3 words into Google. Which is fine, I guess, but I really didn't think I needed to cite the source, since the idea is clear. That you immediately bring up the party I was referring to underscores my point nicely.
That would be David Brin, well known writer of science fiction. I suppose that when you say that, he loses some of the gravitas that might otherwise attach to "an insightful author".
And why would that be? It takes a good understanding of science to write good "hard" Sci-Fi. Perhaps you labor under the misconception that only "authorities" have anything of value to say?
On the other hand, if you really believe that, perhaps you'd like to show us the way forward. You could start by posting your real name, email address, age, racial background, social security number, marital status, any major illnesses, any history of family illness. Just for a start. I'm sure once we see well you fare in a post privacy world, we'll all be eager to join you.
A famous quote by a powerful man. I don't think I need to cite source.
But it's true, and pretending otherwise is just more head-in-the-sand thinking. What's important is what we actually DO about it. How can we prevent the bad stuff with lack of privacy from happening? Nearly 10 years ago, an insightful author at then-amazing Wired answered this question in a way I've not seen matched or beaten anywhere else.
It's not the fact of being private or not, it's what's done about it and why. If we keep pretending we have something we don't, we'll be hurt by things we didn't know were there. We couldn't deal with slavery until we acknowledged that it existed and was a problem. A smoker in denial will remain a smoker until he/she can acknowledge his/her status as a smoker.
I, for one, find it far more effective to deal with what is than what I'd prefer there was to work on, and the reality is that privacy is dead.
The limitation is not because Linus is some asshole, but a practical realisation that GPL3 cannot be retro-fitted to existing kernel code.
Only the owner of the code is allowed to assign the license and people made submissions to Linux under the GPL2-flavored license. Linus has no authority to release all the Linux code under a new license since he only owns a small percentage of the code. There have been thousands of people submitting to Linus under the GPL2-flavored license and it is impractical, if not impossible, to track those submittors down and secure a GPL3 agreement from them.
That's just stupid, and even lawyers are smart enough to realize that. If a lawsuit is performed against an undefined class of people, the process of publication is used to achieve service and notice of change.
If I wanted to perform a legal action that might affect people in, say, a certain county, I'd have to look up a "publisher of record" in that county and print an article for a definable period of time (say, 2 weeks in my local jurisdiction) indicating that the legal action is going to be performed, and provide a venue for redress of grievance.
For example, if the local city wanted to change zoning for a particular part of town, they'd publish in the appropriate publisher of record what their intent is, and provide meeting for people to object. Once the objections are properly handled, the zoning change can commence without hitch.
If Linux was really to be relicensed, then there would be a period of time where the intent to relicense would be broadly published, and contributors who wished to object would have the chance to have their contributed code evaluated for modification/removal, and then the kernel would be relicensed. It might take as long as 6 months to a year, but it would, could, and probably will happen.
He may have been using Linux but he sure as heck wasn't learning Linux.
But, for his purposes, he was learning Linux. You think that knowing a few BASH commands means you "know Linux" - or did you know that BASH is perfectly acceptable on BSD Unix, or MacOSX? Really, very few people who "know Linux" know anything more than a few bash commands and the location of files on their fav distro. Which isn't Linux at all - it wouldn't be hard to replace the actual "Linux" part of a RedHat or Ubuntu distro with a BSD or Mach kernel - the only thing that would change perceptibly for the end-user is driver/hardware support and associated commands.
The desktop is losing its dominant position. To what, a Router? You could say with equal sense - and nonsense - that the desktop PC was losing ground to the Microwave Oven.
Microwave ovens don't process information. Routers do. And he was using the router. My personal home router is an old P3 running Linux. I log into it rarely. So what makes his Linux router different than mine, other than he uses the Linksys UI to administer his router, and I use iptables? Sure, he wasn't using BASH - but as stated above, that's not Linux. Neither is gcc, or tex, or vi, emacs, or any of that. So, in a strict sense, you really don't "know" Linux, either unless you are a kernel hacker and can discuss the various forms of *alloc knowingly. (I can't, and I'm a "Linux User" of the RedHat camp, though I'm smart enough to realize that it's not the "Linux" part that matters much other than the "as reliable as gravity and POSIX compliant" part)
Since you also only know a small really part of your Linux distro, who are you to decide that the smaller part my father-in-law knows is "not Linux"?
Slashdot Mirror
... massive profit is only possible where markets are minimally competitive. I agree completely - it's nice how after a bit of clarification we can agree on the laws of economics. As a private company, I'll be looking for markets that are not well tapped. I understand that by the mere fact of being successful in those marketplaces, I'm fostering the seeds of my own competition - it's how the game works. I'm successful to the degree that I can out-perform against my competitors on any of an unlimited number of metrics including customer service, price, marketing, payment terms, market appropriateness, functionality, look and feel, convenience, etc.But what's funny is how your point dramatically changed when somebody pointed out that your original argument sucked. Because what you originally said was: Because you can't make a profit in a competitive market. There's a world of difference between these two statements!
I'm not knocking scientific experimentation, but this looks like just another test for the finer details of a well-understood phenomenon: quantum entanglement. Wake me up if anything even slightly unexpected happens.
People don't start businesses in areas where there is no profit. So when profits are too low, the market will tend to regulate itself towards higher prices and higher margins. But when there are no other companies in an area, and profits start to climb like mad, other companies start in order to suck up the profit.
Thus a balance tends to emerge where the amount of money you can make in any industry or area is roughly similar to what you can make in others. Sorry your pet area might make wages lower than the norm, but remember that cash isn't the only factor. Other things like respect and work environment play part. For example, your local garbage collector usually gets paid about twice what other, similarly trained people get paid in other fields, simply because the work environment sux0rz so bad.
As a company owner, I will look for markets that are "under-tapped" - where competition is scarce and margins are high. In doing so, I'm actually deflating those margins. If the marketplace is crowded, margins will be thin, work and stress loads will be high, and I'll be looking to differentiate my product by either making it better, cheaper, or both, meanwhile looking for new markets that are as of yet un(der)tapped. Usually, to tap a new market, you have to innovate something new in order to address the needs of the new or untapped marketplace.
See how it self-regulates?
This balance will fail if there are certain factors at work. EG: monopolistic practices - when you have a company with enough market share to "create their own gravity" and aren't afraid to use it to squash competition in other, possibly related fields.
It's the job of a free-market government to promote this competitive environment and prevent any single company from unfairly quashing competition. To the extent that it does so, people can be assured a reasonable wage and a reasonable chance to find work. To the extent that it fails to do so, we see stratification of people into "classes", and we see single, monopolistic companies with the resulting declination in innovation and new development.
For an example of monopolistic practices at work, take a look at Internet Explorer - rapid development until about 2000, then once Netscape died, NOTHING NEW FOR 5 YEARS until Mozilla started eating market share. Suddenly, we have IE 7 with new features!
Let's say I'm asked to write software to do A, B, C, N, and Y. I start by writing software until it reaches a minimal level of functionality - bare bones, every non-critical feature omitted, and frequently not all that well tested. I whisk that in front of my clients, and they immediately start bitching about "it doesn't do Y and we need that very bad!".
I thank the client, and do Y. A week or two later, they get Y. Then I hear a whine about B. So I write it, and and a week or two later, kick out the software with B enabled. A few bug reports later, and everybody's happy.
Notice that features A, C, and Y turned out to be unnecessary! This happens ALL THE TIME. But what's even more interesting is that the client usually finds they need something very important that wasn't on the list to begin with. By keeping the development cycle short and keeping my attention on the customer, I find that I very quickly have something very compelling, and can consistently outperform my competitors in the marketplace. This is always a good thing!
I think that agile software development lends itself very nicely to the "Software as a Service" model rather than the "sell a widget" model. When you're selling software as a service, the release often mentality doesn't get in your way because the customer isn't paying for a bunch of releases, they're paying to always have the most current.
From TFA: "Small, discrete and often" are the guidelines for the milestones for a successful project. And from the Agile Manifesto: Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale. From TFA: "Make sure everybody really agreed to what the project is going to do," he says. "Make sure everyone has the same goals even when they have conflicting agendas." And from the Agile Manifesto: Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done. This is just another shoddy example of "journalism" from an IT rag whose job it is to produce buzzword-laden tripe that can be used to get advertisements in front of tech weenies. Ultimately, the actual value of the articles in mags like CIO.com are marginal at best, and usually only slightly more interesting than the advertisements!
Look at it like this: Microsoft Office (closed proprietary) == Office Open XML
Open Office (Free, Open Source) = Open Document Format. Even the name behind OOXML implies that it has something to do with Open Office! Tell me that OOXML wouldn't easily be misinterpreted as Open Office XML. (since ODF is XML based, eh....)
Disclaimer: Yes I know that there are other implementations of the ODF standard, plugins, blah blah blah. But the most commonly referenced user of ODF is Open Office.
Guys,
We'd all love to see the proprietary and over-complex OOXML file format die on the vine. It's sickening how they've purposefully obfuscated the issue, how they've picked a name that's confusingly similar (think Florida's 2000 election all over again!) and have lied and misrepresented what it is.
But just look at that graph! The lengths that Microsoft will go to in order to prevent people from being free of the vendor lock-in... Cash is king, and Microsoft has more available cash than many countries's GNP. How far can they corrupt the process? Probably far enough, with enough time and money, and the only holdback is the time.
What we need to do is simple: continue building world-class software. Continue to push for open standards. Make quality, useful, non-locked software and eventually, the marketplace will correct itself. That we've come this far is a testament to the power of the marketplace.
How does prevent the existing real time man in the middle attack?
This question belies a misunderstanding of public-key cryptography. With public cryptography (often called dual-key cryptography) the only thing exposed is a public key, which can only be used to encrypt. Without the matching private key, anything encrypted with the public key is indecipherable.
Thus, the man-in-the-middle attack is prevented.
Except the vast majority of users still just sit there and web-browse, type a paper, and mabe watch a movie or something.
Just because that's what is actually done the vast majority of the time doesn't mean that's all that the average (or majority) of users use the computer for.
I'm a good example - I have an Athlon XP 3200 that sits in my porch with a midrange 3D video card. Admittedly not "high end" but certainly a few cuts about the P3 mentioned earlier. Most of the time it's on playing a flash game, word processing with OpenOffice, or displaying a myspace account, or somebody's reading Email. Lightweight stuff that could be easily done with a P3.
But, there's a few hours per week where I'm in some FPS or GTA San Andreas and I'm mowing down the bad guys, good guys, cops, or whatever. Or I'm goofing off in 2nd life. Of whatever. There's a small percentage of what I do that requires the extra CPU and graphics muscle - and that's enough for me to run the faster machine all the time.
And although my technical skills are a cut or two above average, this usage pattern isn't particularly unusual, and is why people use newer machines. It's not about "usually enough for most of the time" it's "enough for all the time".
I still use an AMD Thunderbird machine for pretty much anything that isnt gaming.
So let me get this straight - you have TWO computers, one for gaming, and one for everything else? Isn't that, eh, inconvenient? Do you have two desks, one for each computer? Or do you have a KVM switch so that you can use the "slow" computer for browsing and the "fast" computer for games?
Sounds pretty inefficient, to me... Me thinks you are wasting power on an old Tbird...
as long as USERS don't understand it, yes it is useless. Secure the communication and provide X509 certs all you want, if the user think it's a bank, he will enter his password.
I don't think you understand what he's really saying - you could hand out RSA key fobs and/or client certificates that authenticate the browser to the bank. Without that, the password would/could be utterly useless.
If the bank uses the key fob, you can't enter by password alone. If the bank uses client certificates, then that must be installed on the browser first. (much more difficult than just lifting a password)
Now, if only they made it easier to set up client certificates...
TCP hijacking is almost just as easy now as it was 10 years ago.
It may be even easier. Who cares? However you look at it, TCP is doing its job. If you want to prevent against hijacking, the layered topology of the communication stack lets you prevent that at a higher level. (EG: Using encryption - which can be interrupted, but not hijacked)
TCP hijacking is merely a side effect of a missing layer in the stack of your application.
There will never, ever be an end to this.
As long as people are imperfect (and they always will be) there will be measures, countermeasures, and counter-counter measures. New techniques will make old ones obsolete, and even newer techniques will make the once-new techniques no longer apply.
With this understanding, any technology that can outsurvive more than one or two iterations of other products in the same field becomes "venerable" and "stable".
Which makes now a particularly good time to appreciate the guys who worked out the spec for TCP/IP some 30 (?) years ago. Despite going from mainframes, to minis, to PCs, and now on to the era of ubiquitous computing, the basic concepts and ideas behind the TCP/IP specification continue to hold steady and useful. They managed to come up with a technology, that whatever flaws have actually been found, hasn't come up against any real show-stoppers. None.
To which I can only say: WOW.
Cruftiness is the quality of having cruft. Cruft is the stuff that accumulates on code over time. Cruft has no odor, but it stinks. Cruft has no mass, but it weighs the code down. Cruft can't be seen, but it's ugly. Cruft cannot be young, it's always old.
Hmmm... could it be that cruft is really a manifestation of dark energy being stored in another dimension of N-space?
Wouldn't that mean that cruft just might be a nearly infinite energy source? This could get real interesting!
erp...
Ahem.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. - Alfred North Whitehead
Think about it for a minute...
I have a large (ahem... LARGE) codebase written in PHP4 that's running CentOS 4. Supposedly, CentOS will be updated until 2010. But how could they keep this promise if the underlying packages are no longer supported?
Guess I'll have to see what PHP5 will do to my software, thinking I could put this off for another couple years.
(sigh)
if you're old enough to be a soldier, a sailor, a member of the police force, or a firefighter......
Or buy beer, get married, be tried for a felony with full penalties, etc. etc. etc.
You got my vote.
[rouge angent|hacker|whatever]
So, you think they'd sell Avon on the side?
But until that day comes I continue to value my privacy. But your privacy is already losing to increasing levels of surveillance right now while we debate it.
A) When you buy a beer at the local Kwik-E mart, your credit card gets dinged. That record is processed in near-real-time. You think this hasn't been abused? Think again - credit card records are routinely accessed by our wonderful government for criminal investigations.
B) When you drive through many intersections (especially in the UK, less so in the USA) there are cameras on the light posts. You don't think that OCR can be used with the (very standard font) license plates clearly posted on your car? How ELSE do they send me an automated ticket if I run a red light? 3 seconds at google turns up this.
C) Police cars routinely have 360 degree cameras mounted on them. (It's more common to record everything going out the front windshield) This makes anything that happens near a police car a matter of record. Another 3 seconds to google for this example.
D) AT&T, the NSA, and the amazing GW Bush administration recently got their hands caught in the cookie jar - a case I'm certain you have at least some passing familiarity with.
E) Public records once shrouded in the halls of obscurity are now easily searched online. Locations for registered sex offenders. Anybody who's committed a felony crime. (at least in my jurisdiction) Landownership records, and property deeds.
F) You call your phone company (or any other large XYZ megacorp) for any reason and the first thing you hear on the phone is "This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes". What do you really think that means?
And it goes on, and on, and on. How private did you think you are? Even as a reasonably knowledgeable person, it's probably far worse than you imagined.
And so, I say again: "Privacy is dead. Get over it!" not because it's defeatist or counterproductive or anything like that - it's just TRUE. And the problem (if you feel that this kind of transparency is a problem) is getting worse with every passing day. At the rate things are developing, your nightmare world where the watchers watch everything and we have nothing to protect ourselves with is already well underway!
Do you have a better suggestion than Brin's world?
What interests me is your disinclination to practice what you preach. You post under a pseudonym and include no personal data on your profile - not even a link to a web page. You may not value anyone else's privacy, but you certainly value your own. Oddly enough, that seems to have been Scott McNealy's attitude as well.
Well done on missing my entire point - but you didn't read the David Brin's article, did you?
With increased technology, and perpetually dropping costs for monitoring equipment, the odds that your actions will be recorded is increasing exponentially. But who watches the watcher? To "practice what I preach" I'd have to come up with some way of knowing who is reading my SS#, finds out my website, email, etc. When that's done, and protections are in place to prevent abuse of knowledge like that, I'll post my SS#, website, email, etc.
Feel free to comment further, but don't do so until you have actually consumed my point rather than just knee-jerk react to my words and accuse me of being 13.
Why that's right. I expect everyone here knows that the quote is attributed to Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems. According to a reporter for Wired he was speaking at the launch of Sun's Jini technology in 1999.
Got it so far...
It's just that by saying so up front, you can avoid sounding like an insecure thirteen year old putting on a pose to try and hide the fact that he's too lazy to type three words into Google.
Well, it took a few tries to parse this sentence, since you mix the "you" and the "he", but eventually the truth comes out - you think I'm too lazy to type 3 words into Google. Which is fine, I guess, but I really didn't think I needed to cite the source, since the idea is clear. That you immediately bring up the party I was referring to underscores my point nicely.
That would be David Brin, well known writer of science fiction. I suppose that when you say that, he loses some of the gravitas that might otherwise attach to "an insightful author".
And why would that be? It takes a good understanding of science to write good "hard" Sci-Fi. Perhaps you labor under the misconception that only "authorities" have anything of value to say?
On the other hand, if you really believe that, perhaps you'd like to show us the way forward. You could start by posting your real name, email address, age, racial background, social security number, marital status, any major illnesses, any history of family illness. Just for a start. I'm sure once we see well you fare in a post privacy world, we'll all be eager to join you.
Don't have to. Millions of people already have. And, you might enjoy the fact that some of them are actually 13!
Privacy is dead. Get over it.
A famous quote by a powerful man. I don't think I need to cite source.
But it's true, and pretending otherwise is just more head-in-the-sand thinking. What's important is what we actually DO about it. How can we prevent the bad stuff with lack of privacy from happening? Nearly 10 years ago, an insightful author at then-amazing Wired answered this question in a way I've not seen matched or beaten anywhere else.
It's not the fact of being private or not, it's what's done about it and why. If we keep pretending we have something we don't, we'll be hurt by things we didn't know were there. We couldn't deal with slavery until we acknowledged that it existed and was a problem. A smoker in denial will remain a smoker until he/she can acknowledge his/her status as a smoker.
I, for one, find it far more effective to deal with what is than what I'd prefer there was to work on, and the reality is that privacy is dead.
You are an idiot.
Really? Are you sure?
The limitation is not because Linus is some asshole, but a practical realisation that GPL3 cannot be retro-fitted to existing kernel code.
Only the owner of the code is allowed to assign the license and people made submissions to Linux under the GPL2-flavored license. Linus has no authority to release all the Linux code under a new license since he only owns a small percentage of the code. There have been thousands of people submitting to Linus under the GPL2-flavored license and it is impractical, if not impossible, to track those submittors down and secure a GPL3 agreement from them.
That's just stupid, and even lawyers are smart enough to realize that. If a lawsuit is performed against an undefined class of people, the process of publication is used to achieve service and notice of change.
If I wanted to perform a legal action that might affect people in, say, a certain county, I'd have to look up a "publisher of record" in that county and print an article for a definable period of time (say, 2 weeks in my local jurisdiction) indicating that the legal action is going to be performed, and provide a venue for redress of grievance.
For example, if the local city wanted to change zoning for a particular part of town, they'd publish in the appropriate publisher of record what their intent is, and provide meeting for people to object. Once the objections are properly handled, the zoning change can commence without hitch.
If Linux was really to be relicensed, then there would be a period of time where the intent to relicense would be broadly published, and contributors who wished to object would have the chance to have their contributed code evaluated for modification/removal, and then the kernel would be relicensed. It might take as long as 6 months to a year, but it would, could, and probably will happen.
He may have been using Linux but he sure as heck wasn't learning Linux.
But, for his purposes, he was learning Linux. You think that knowing a few BASH commands means you "know Linux" - or did you know that BASH is perfectly acceptable on BSD Unix, or MacOSX? Really, very few people who "know Linux" know anything more than a few bash commands and the location of files on their fav distro. Which isn't Linux at all - it wouldn't be hard to replace the actual "Linux" part of a RedHat or Ubuntu distro with a BSD or Mach kernel - the only thing that would change perceptibly for the end-user is driver/hardware support and associated commands.
The desktop is losing its dominant position. To what, a Router? You could say with equal sense - and nonsense - that the desktop PC was losing ground to the Microwave Oven.
Microwave ovens don't process information. Routers do. And he was using the router. My personal home router is an old P3 running Linux. I log into it rarely. So what makes his Linux router different than mine, other than he uses the Linksys UI to administer his router, and I use iptables? Sure, he wasn't using BASH - but as stated above, that's not Linux. Neither is gcc, or tex, or vi, emacs, or any of that. So, in a strict sense, you really don't "know" Linux, either unless you are a kernel hacker and can discuss the various forms of *alloc knowingly. (I can't, and I'm a "Linux User" of the RedHat camp, though I'm smart enough to realize that it's not the "Linux" part that matters much other than the "as reliable as gravity and POSIX compliant" part)
Since you also only know a small really part of your Linux distro, who are you to decide that the smaller part my father-in-law knows is "not Linux"?