I'm still looking for a good case-study/white-paper on successful use of peer-to-peer technologies inside a business.
Like instant messaging, most of the services are created with home users in mind. That means they lack the enterprise-strength management and security features needed by business.
Trying to use MSN Messenger (for example) inside our organization allows connections to the outside world. Same thing with the Fasttrack file sharing systems.
Has anyone used IM or P2P successully in a business? What did you do to keep the system secure, and how did you manage it?
These technologies are awesome and it's easy to see how they could benefit business.
I know this is an amature/not-for-profit project, and I am clueless about Australian law.
But, I'd highly suggest the core people responsible for the administration of this project incorporate and seek legal counsel. If you search around you could probably find a lawyer to help you pro bono. I definetely recommend this approach for everyone thinking about doing this sort of thing in the US (I know several articles discussing that very thing have been on Slashdot).
There are significant risks to these individuals, both from individuals utilizing this service, and from the upstream provider who probably isn't aware that its bandwidth is being shared by an entire metropolitan area. When a user is hacked, or the upstream provider finds out these people are breaking the TOS lawsuits will fly.
This is really cool, and I wish them all the best, just use common sense and get some legal advice.
The latest issue of Wired has an interesting article on just how hard it is to make money selling porn on the Internet. The market is saturated, so new-comers are pretty much shut out.
Even the old dogs are having a difficult time making money. When sites like drbizzaro.com and its partners give away so much product for free, you have to offer a pretty compelling product, or cater to a very specific niche to make money.
The Dreamcast also runs a Hitachi SH-4 processor. Since so much work has been done to port Linux to that device, I'm sure not a whole lot of rework is needed to get linux on this little thing. I'm assuming the ROM on this Xybernaut is flashable.
Hopefully this is a sign that AMD realizes the 1600+ crap was a mistake. All the "Intel Equivalent" numbers do is make AMD look like an Intel wannabe.
And as an enthusiast, I like knowing the actual MHz. It's not like the MHz information isn't widespread on the Internet anyway. AMD might as well tell it like it is.
Or haven't you noticed the rampage of god-corporations (aol/time/warner, etc) creating draconian laws left, right and center?
This has nothing to do with the discussion.
Look, there are insecure software packages out there. But for each of those insecure software packages there is a more secure alternative. If anyone disagrees with me and has a specific example, please reply.
If organizations have been choosing the insecure packages, they have made their bed to sleep in. Asking a government to step in because they made a choice that turned out to have more risks than they anticipated is disengenuous and naive of that organization.
The market should work this issue out on its own if it is healthy.
If organizations want higher security, they won't buy the insecure products. Business that have been burned by Outlook/IIS/Windows in the past will move to alternatives: GroupWise/Apache/*NIX.
Like I don't have enough printer support headaches at work already.
I can just imagine the calls I'll be getting from my boss now:
"Foo Fighter, my printer is smearing my traces all over the place. Could you come by and clean it so I can finish printing my new Palm?"
Or:
"Foo, I was printing my PowerPoint slide show, but the headlines are blinking red instead of blue. And the line chart on page three only animates halfway, then stops. Could you get over here right away and fix this?"
Or:
"Those nanobots I printed and released into the fish tank to monitor polution yesterday have eaten my goldfish. Could you come up with some new nanobots to eat the bad nanobots?"
If you read the article you will learn that they don't even have a fully functioning prototype yet, and anything they say they are going to do is wild speculation at this point. As are the comments here forcasting ecological disaster or weird effects when ingested.
Also, from the article, they currently are trying to learn how to control 5-10 robots. They are a long way from learning how to control the millions of robots needed for any monitoring to be effective. The researches said that nanotechnology today is at the same stage of development as the Internet was in the late 1960's.
I'd say we are a decade or more from seeing any of these things actually released into the wild.
RMS is suggesting that supporters of free software, when they receive an attachment in Microsoft Word format, request the attachment be sent again in a non-proprietary format such as HTML or ASCII text. He provides three boilerplate replies, mostly polite and one includes instuctions.
No where in the article does he ask people to stop using Word, nor does his suggestion limit their choice of wordprocessors.
In his suggested reply text, their is only a passing mention of GNU/Linux in the first and no mentions of Linux/UNIX in the other two.
NPR is reporting this morning that the plan cannot go forward until Nevada has agreed to it. Their Congressional delegation is strongly opposing it, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) is also against it. Until Nevada agrees to it, nothing will happen until Congress votes on it. And they won't vote for it while Daschle is in the driver's seat.
Nevada and Congress are aware of the issues involved in keeping this stuff in temporary locations, but there is a big NIMBY issue as well.
IMO, it can't hurt to be very, very, very sure this will be safely stored. A couple more years of study are not all that much when you consider this crap will still be radioactive 10,000 years from now.
. . . with Apple's products is that they are too trendy and hip.
I picture my living room with an iMac in it, or at the gym with an iPod and just shake my head. Is that not the most conspicous of consumption or what?
Driving around a midwest hamlet in my Saab is bad enough; if the locals see me with an alien looking device in hand I might just get run out of town!
Magazines and newspapers have adds like these all the time. Every so often I come across an interesting headline, but about three paragraphs I start to wonder. Sure enough, there's a tiny "advertisement" on the bottom of the page.
Some of the slicker ads on tv could pass themselves of as regular tv. Anyone see the adds for blimpie sandwhiches which looked like CNN segments?
Even on radio, at least locally, there are bits that sound like "man at the field" reports, but are in fact paid ads for a car dealer or grocer.
Just my opinion here, but I thought the slashdot crowd was by definition smart enough to know when to call a spade a spade. Geeks and nerds are also supposed to be savy to pop culture, but the crowd here is so sensitive to ads as to be quite incredible. Please get a grip everyone.
. ..about surveys of Linux usage in business, is that they are all to frequently based on "spending priorities for executives" and "new license revenue shipments". At least this article mentions that linux being available for free will skew the results in the proprietary offering's favor.
I am trying to sell my boss on bringing linux into our educational institution, both on the desktop and on our servers. When I show him and our CFO that upgrading all of our desktops to Windows 2000 will cost us $100,000 up front while Linux is free they get excited. But when they see reports that only 2% of shipping desktops come with Linux they get understandably (seeing it from their POV) concerned.
It would be nice to see a metric like "Six of the most popular linux distributions report sales of 100 million units, and downloads 500 million units for fiscal year 2001" from organizations like IDC and Gartner Group. That would help account for sales AND downloads and hopefully skew the numbers back to a more correct figure.
Of course there is still the problem of counting installations after the initial purchase or download. Any number you get will be much fuzzier than the "sales and downloads" figure. The solution is to survery the engineers and not the executives. Ask the engineers how many machines they installed their copy of linux on and you will get a much more reliable figure.
The most interesting thing about this article is the problem of linux competing with pirated Microsoft software in third world countries and southeast asia. In these places Windows is effectively as "free" as Linux in monetary terms. When all you care about is price parity, why not choose the more popular of the free solutions?
I'm not sure how anything is executed by simply inserting the device. I didn't see that described in the article.
Also, physical security is the first step in any computer security. If your maintenance people having access to your workers PCs is a security concern, these keys aren't going to affect that one way or another.
If I was in maintenance and wanted your data, I wouldn't screw around with a key. I'd open up your system and take your hard disk, or just take the whole damn machine.
. ..look forward to new features from Square Studios from whatever studio buys them. And I'm sure they will be bought.
I view "The Spirits Within" more as another stepping-stone than the culmination of CG. I start to drool when I think of what an innovative, risk-taking studio like Miramax could do with the tools provided by Square Studios.
Now that a lot of the development is done and the tools have been created, directors can finally tell their stories exactly as they imagined them.
It's the purses that go to the winners. $20,000 for FIFA 2001, $40,000 for Quake III and Counterstrike!!!
And did you take a look at the sponsors? This is no America/Canada/UK "world cup". You've got companies from Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, Australia/Oceania outnumbering the Americans/Canadians/British. I'd imagine that the competitors are also hailing from these nations.
I'm amazed that this thing is so huge and so world wide.
I do think it ironic that the goal of the games is "promoting harmony of humankind" when most of the games are won by destroying or conquering the rest of humankind.
Security wasn't the only consideration in choosing an algorithm for AES. Another major factor was how efficient the candidate was. The winner had to be not only secure, but also fast on very low-end devices and able to scale up to very powerful machines. You can expect to see AES used on emmbedded microcontrollers, smart cards, and appliances (music players, phones, etc.) and also on hulking encryption "mainframes" dedicated to doing huge amounts of cryptographic operations very, very fast.
I'd guess that Rijndael was more efficient on more types of devices than serpent and that led to its being accepted as the standard.
IMO, that doesn't take anything away from the other top five candidates in terms of their usefullness at hiding information.
I think for their next iPod, Apple should add a couple features:
1) Cellphone that works with all the cell networks
in the world.
2) 802.11x or whatever that new superfast wireless
standard is that works with 802.11b, v.92 modem,
Gigabit ethernet, and the LCD backlight should be
able to blink morse code.
3) Military GPS accurate to 1"
4) A keyboard and also hand recognition (but not
graffiti crap, REAL hand recognition). And voice
recognition.
5) It's screen should be color and widescreen
format so I can watch my cracked DVDs on it.
6) It should run linux, but have virtual machines
so it can also run Palm and Windows apps. Oh, and
a gameboy advance emulator.
7) The battery should last at least a week,
preferably two.
8) None of this SDMI crap. I can put on and take
off anything. In fact, it should have a video and
audio in, so I can take input straight from my DVD
player into the device and share them with my
friends.
9) It should be the same size it is now, and still
use firewire.
10) Flash card, Smartmedia, multimedia card and
PCMCIA slots.
I think voice recognition is as useful with this device as it would be on a typical cellphone. By either jog-scrolling a couple lines, or even better, by typing the first couple characters on the device you have the name right there.
I haven't used the cellphone feature before, but I'd be worried about calling my boss when some guy walking by me on the street happens to say "Dave". It's the same problem you run into using voice recognition in a busy office.
>I don't understand why they continue to arrange
>alphanumeric characters in a QWERTY arrangement
>on such a small keyboard, when a different layout
>would make much more sense.
It makes sense to me. I'm a touch typist, and I absolutely refuse to use any keyboard that is not QWERTY, even if, no, especially if it's on a small device like this.
Having to search for the letters is a pain in the butt, especially when the labels are so tiny. I know where the letter 'o' is supposed to be, so I shouldn't have to hunt it down on a non-standard keyboard.
I like the keyboard, I'm curious how the Graffiti works. Do you just write anywhere on the screen, or do you have to bring up a writing area?
It's too bad they don't have a springboard slot. If this could take my Soundsgood MP3 player and my GPS it would really sweeten the deal.
This looks like a great upgrade to my current Visor. I was going to get a springboard phone just before I ended up moving to North Dakota where Handspring didn't have coverage. If their coverage expands, this will let me finally stop having to carry a cell and a PDA.
And 16MB of memory, lord what will I do with it all? I'm doing great with 2!
I've spent all of 10 minutes thinking about it, granted, but I can't figure out how this won't be abused.
And, you know, they do a great job of searching and ranking already. I think their text ads are fair and unobtrusive and a great way to get your page seen.
I keep seeing comments talking about hacking this thing into a $300 linux box.
What's wrong with you?
A quick visit to pricewatch.com will show you can build a higher spec'ed system yourself:
1GHz CPU: $60
Mobo: $60 or less
256MB RAM: $30
20GB HD: $70 or less
DVD: $40 or less
GeForce2 MX200: $40 or less
SoundBlaster Live! Value: $20
Total: ~$300
You can pick up a keyboard, mouse, controller, and modem/NIC for under $30 total if you have decent computer store near you.
If you want a console that plays its games and is also linux ready, check out the Dreamcast. It's been said many times on this forum before. $70 gets you the base system, and for $30 more you can have the keyboard and mouse too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still looking for a good case-study/white-paper on successful use of peer-to-peer technologies inside a business.
Like instant messaging, most of the services are created with home users in mind. That means they lack the enterprise-strength management and security features needed by business.
Trying to use MSN Messenger (for example) inside our organization allows connections to the outside world. Same thing with the Fasttrack file sharing systems.
Has anyone used IM or P2P successully in a business? What did you do to keep the system secure, and how did you manage it?
These technologies are awesome and it's easy to see how they could benefit business.
I know this is an amature/not-for-profit project, and I am clueless about Australian law.
But, I'd highly suggest the core people responsible for the administration of this project incorporate and seek legal counsel. If you search around you could probably find a lawyer to help you pro bono. I definetely recommend this approach for everyone thinking about doing this sort of thing in the US (I know several articles discussing that very thing have been on Slashdot).
There are significant risks to these individuals, both from individuals utilizing this service, and from the upstream provider who probably isn't aware that its bandwidth is being shared by an entire metropolitan area. When a user is hacked, or the upstream provider finds out these people are breaking the TOS lawsuits will fly.
This is really cool, and I wish them all the best, just use common sense and get some legal advice.
Off-topic from article, but. . .
The latest issue of Wired has an interesting article on just how hard it is to make money selling porn on the Internet. The market is saturated, so new-comers are pretty much shut out.
Even the old dogs are having a difficult time making money. When sites like drbizzaro.com and its partners give away so much product for free, you have to offer a pretty compelling product, or cater to a very specific niche to make money.
The Dreamcast also runs a Hitachi SH-4 processor. Since so much work has been done to port Linux to that device, I'm sure not a whole lot of rework is needed to get linux on this little thing. I'm assuming the ROM on this Xybernaut is flashable.
Hopefully this is a sign that AMD realizes the 1600+ crap was a mistake. All the "Intel Equivalent" numbers do is make AMD look like an Intel wannabe.
And as an enthusiast, I like knowing the actual MHz. It's not like the MHz information isn't widespread on the Internet anyway. AMD might as well tell it like it is.
This has nothing to do with the discussion.
Look, there are insecure software packages out there. But for each of those insecure software packages there is a more secure alternative. If anyone disagrees with me and has a specific example, please reply.
If organizations have been choosing the insecure packages, they have made their bed to sleep in. Asking a government to step in because they made a choice that turned out to have more risks than they anticipated is disengenuous and naive of that organization.
The market should work this issue out on its own if it is healthy.
If organizations want higher security, they won't buy the insecure products. Business that have been burned by Outlook/IIS/Windows in the past will move to alternatives: GroupWise/Apache/*NIX.
No problem, go ahead.
Like I don't have enough printer support headaches at work already.
I can just imagine the calls I'll be getting from my boss now:
"Foo Fighter, my printer is smearing my traces all over the place. Could you come by and clean it so I can finish printing my new Palm?"
Or:
"Foo, I was printing my PowerPoint slide show, but the headlines are blinking red instead of blue. And the line chart on page three only animates halfway, then stops. Could you get over here right away and fix this?"
Or:
"Those nanobots I printed and released into the fish tank to monitor polution yesterday have eaten my goldfish. Could you come up with some new nanobots to eat the bad nanobots?"
Great. Just Great.
If you read the article you will learn that they don't even have a fully functioning prototype yet, and anything they say they are going to do is wild speculation at this point. As are the comments here forcasting ecological disaster or weird effects when ingested.
Also, from the article, they currently are trying to learn how to control 5-10 robots. They are a long way from learning how to control the millions of robots needed for any monitoring to be effective. The researches said that nanotechnology today is at the same stage of development as the Internet was in the late 1960's.
I'd say we are a decade or more from seeing any of these things actually released into the wild.
It's obvious you didn't read the article.
RMS is suggesting that supporters of free software, when they receive an attachment in Microsoft Word format, request the attachment be sent again in a non-proprietary format such as HTML or ASCII text. He provides three boilerplate replies, mostly polite and one includes instuctions.
No where in the article does he ask people to stop using Word, nor does his suggestion limit their choice of wordprocessors.
In his suggested reply text, their is only a passing mention of GNU/Linux in the first and no mentions of Linux/UNIX in the other two.
Please take your ignorant posts elsewhere.
NPR is reporting this morning that the plan cannot go forward until Nevada has agreed to it. Their Congressional delegation is strongly opposing it, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) is also against it. Until Nevada agrees to it, nothing will happen until Congress votes on it. And they won't vote for it while Daschle is in the driver's seat.
Nevada and Congress are aware of the issues involved in keeping this stuff in temporary locations, but there is a big NIMBY issue as well.
IMO, it can't hurt to be very, very, very sure this will be safely stored. A couple more years of study are not all that much when you consider this crap will still be radioactive 10,000 years from now.
. . . with Apple's products is that they are too trendy and hip.
I picture my living room with an iMac in it, or at the gym with an iPod and just shake my head. Is that not the most conspicous of consumption or what?
Driving around a midwest hamlet in my Saab is bad enough; if the locals see me with an alien looking device in hand I might just get run out of town!
. . .but definetely not new.
Magazines and newspapers have adds like these all the time. Every so often I come across an interesting headline, but about three paragraphs I start to wonder. Sure enough, there's a tiny "advertisement" on the bottom of the page.
Some of the slicker ads on tv could pass themselves of as regular tv. Anyone see the adds for blimpie sandwhiches which looked like CNN segments?
Even on radio, at least locally, there are bits that sound like "man at the field" reports, but are in fact paid ads for a car dealer or grocer.
Just my opinion here, but I thought the slashdot crowd was by definition smart enough to know when to call a spade a spade. Geeks and nerds are also supposed to be savy to pop culture, but the crowd here is so sensitive to ads as to be quite incredible. Please get a grip everyone.
. . .about surveys of Linux usage in business, is that they are all to frequently based on "spending priorities for executives" and "new license revenue shipments". At least this article mentions that linux being available for free will skew the results in the proprietary offering's favor.
I am trying to sell my boss on bringing linux into our educational institution, both on the desktop and on our servers. When I show him and our CFO that upgrading all of our desktops to Windows 2000 will cost us $100,000 up front while Linux is free they get excited. But when they see reports that only 2% of shipping desktops come with Linux they get understandably (seeing it from their POV) concerned.
It would be nice to see a metric like "Six of the most popular linux distributions report sales of 100 million units, and downloads 500 million units for fiscal year 2001" from organizations like IDC and Gartner Group. That would help account for sales AND downloads and hopefully skew the numbers back to a more correct figure.
Of course there is still the problem of counting installations after the initial purchase or download. Any number you get will be much fuzzier than the "sales and downloads" figure. The solution is to survery the engineers and not the executives. Ask the engineers how many machines they installed their copy of linux on and you will get a much more reliable figure.
The most interesting thing about this article is the problem of linux competing with pirated Microsoft software in third world countries and southeast asia. In these places Windows is effectively as "free" as Linux in monetary terms. When all you care about is price parity, why not choose the more popular of the free solutions?
I'm not sure how anything is executed by simply inserting the device. I didn't see that described in the article.
Also, physical security is the first step in any computer security. If your maintenance people having access to your workers PCs is a security concern, these keys aren't going to affect that one way or another.
If I was in maintenance and wanted your data, I wouldn't screw around with a key. I'd open up your system and take your hard disk, or just take the whole damn machine.
. . .look forward to new features from Square Studios from whatever studio buys them. And I'm sure they will be bought.
I view "The Spirits Within" more as another stepping-stone than the culmination of CG. I start to drool when I think of what an innovative, risk-taking studio like Miramax could do with the tools provided by Square Studios.
Now that a lot of the development is done and the tools have been created, directors can finally tell their stories exactly as they imagined them.
This is exciting.
. . .isn't that there is a World Cyber Games.
It's the purses that go to the winners. $20,000 for FIFA 2001, $40,000 for Quake III and Counterstrike!!!
And did you take a look at the sponsors? This is no America/Canada/UK "world cup". You've got companies from Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, Australia/Oceania outnumbering the Americans/Canadians/British. I'd imagine that the competitors are also hailing from these nations.
I'm amazed that this thing is so huge and so world wide.
I do think it ironic that the goal of the games is "promoting harmony of humankind" when most of the games are won by destroying or conquering the rest of humankind.
Security wasn't the only consideration in choosing an algorithm for AES. Another major factor was how efficient the candidate was. The winner had to be not only secure, but also fast on very low-end devices and able to scale up to very powerful machines. You can expect to see AES used on emmbedded microcontrollers, smart cards, and appliances (music players, phones, etc.) and also on hulking encryption "mainframes" dedicated to doing huge amounts of cryptographic operations very, very fast.
I'd guess that Rijndael was more efficient on more types of devices than serpent and that led to its being accepted as the standard.
IMO, that doesn't take anything away from the other top five candidates in terms of their usefullness at hiding information.
I think for their next iPod, Apple should add a couple features:
;-)
1) Cellphone that works with all the cell networks
in the world.
2) 802.11x or whatever that new superfast wireless
standard is that works with 802.11b, v.92 modem,
Gigabit ethernet, and the LCD backlight should be
able to blink morse code.
3) Military GPS accurate to 1"
4) A keyboard and also hand recognition (but not
graffiti crap, REAL hand recognition). And voice
recognition.
5) It's screen should be color and widescreen
format so I can watch my cracked DVDs on it.
6) It should run linux, but have virtual machines
so it can also run Palm and Windows apps. Oh, and
a gameboy advance emulator.
7) The battery should last at least a week,
preferably two.
8) None of this SDMI crap. I can put on and take
off anything. In fact, it should have a video and
audio in, so I can take input straight from my DVD
player into the device and share them with my
friends.
9) It should be the same size it is now, and still
use firewire.
10) Flash card, Smartmedia, multimedia card and
PCMCIA slots.
Oh, and I won't pay more than $150 for it.
That'd be cool!
I think voice recognition is as useful with this device as it would be on a typical cellphone. By either jog-scrolling a couple lines, or even better, by typing the first couple characters on the device you have the name right there.
I haven't used the cellphone feature before, but I'd be worried about calling my boss when some guy walking by me on the street happens to say "Dave". It's the same problem you run into using voice recognition in a busy office.
>I don't understand why they continue to arrange
>alphanumeric characters in a QWERTY arrangement
>on such a small keyboard, when a different layout
>would make much more sense.
It makes sense to me. I'm a touch typist, and I absolutely refuse to use any keyboard that is not QWERTY, even if, no, especially if it's on a small device like this.
Having to search for the letters is a pain in the butt, especially when the labels are so tiny. I know where the letter 'o' is supposed to be, so I shouldn't have to hunt it down on a non-standard keyboard.
This looks like a nice, solid product.
I like the keyboard, I'm curious how the Graffiti works. Do you just write anywhere on the screen, or do you have to bring up a writing area?
It's too bad they don't have a springboard slot. If this could take my Soundsgood MP3 player and my GPS it would really sweeten the deal.
This looks like a great upgrade to my current Visor. I was going to get a springboard phone just before I ended up moving to North Dakota where Handspring didn't have coverage. If their coverage expands, this will let me finally stop having to carry a cell and a PDA.
And 16MB of memory, lord what will I do with it all? I'm doing great with 2!
No thank you.
I've spent all of 10 minutes thinking about it, granted, but I can't figure out how this won't be abused.
And, you know, they do a great job of searching and ranking already. I think their text ads are fair and unobtrusive and a great way to get your page seen.
I just don't see what the value add is here.
I keep seeing comments talking about hacking this thing into a $300 linux box.
What's wrong with you?
A quick visit to pricewatch.com will show you can build a higher spec'ed system yourself:
1GHz CPU: $60
Mobo: $60 or less
256MB RAM: $30
20GB HD: $70 or less
DVD: $40 or less
GeForce2 MX200: $40 or less
SoundBlaster Live! Value: $20
Total: ~$300
You can pick up a keyboard, mouse, controller, and modem/NIC for under $30 total if you have decent computer store near you.
If you want a console that plays its games and is also linux ready, check out the Dreamcast. It's been said many times on this forum before. $70 gets you the base system, and for $30 more you can have the keyboard and mouse too.