"Requirements" are a static line in the ground. Malicious individuals are a moving target. You will never thwart the attackers through a fixed set of defenses, hence the oft quoted "security as a process, not a feature".
"..., I use Linux and FOSS because once it's on my computer I own it."
-snip-
Excuse me? You most certainly do NOT own any FOSS you have on your computer unless you actually wrote it. This would be the point of copyright. You have a license to use and distribute said FOSS under the terms of the individual licenses. Ownership != right to use/distribute.
I'm curious; I wonder what would happen if you brought back your munged HD-DVD/BlueRay disc and asked that it be replaced? Would the store replace a unusable disc? See, this is the point I disagree with; why are stores selling items, but the MPAA/RIAA selling "licenses"? They are mutally exclusive. For example, in the parent's case, why shouldn't he be able to walk down to the store he purchased the original DVD from (with the bill) and request that they exchange his destroyed DVD for a new one? I mean, it's the license he paid for, right? Not the physical media... but stores don't deal very well with licensing (just look at buying copies of software; it's a license, not a "thing"). Stores are geared towards selling items, physical things that are working or not, and if they're not working through your fault, then tough for you.
I think the right to make "backup" copies would be a lot less required if one could simply produce a bill and the "unusable" media and get an exchange for a new media (of the same type or even better another type). Of course, there goes the cash cow:)
If Canada wants access to US movies and music then they have to play by our rules. You're also welcome to not shoot your movies up here in Canada to save money, thanks. It'll help us improve our independent movie industry.
And what's wrong with that? The only people that will be up in arms about it are those that don't "get it" (ie those for whom it's all about the hardware/software). That would be us techies:) For the demographic that Apple is targetting with it's products, the focus is and should be the usability, fitting into people's lives and not being the focus of people's lives.
I have a friend that asked me why I paid extra for a PowerBook when a Dell etc-etc would do me just fine. I answered "I'm happy with spending more money for something that does what I need it to rather than saving money on something that makes me do what it needs me to".
There are already things that can be done to dramatically reduce the likelihood of buffer overflows as well as things like numeric (math) overflows and underflows.
Sure. Stop using C.
It is just that it is more work (and time) for the developers to do this.
Only if you use C.
This is a misleading point of view. Any language that includes signed and unsigned representations of the same type (int or long for example) would in no way benefit from managed memory. It will still be possible to "over-flow" a long in a calculation and without checks on the results, these types of bugs can be just as bad or worse (ie you don't get an obviously broken system; you get a system that sometimes returns a valid wrong answer) to track down and fix.
You mean not as many of "our" people are people are getting killed. If you look up a bit on the Cold War of the 80's, you'll see alot of policy of supporting fighting in other countries and many many people dying elsewhere. Hardly "fun" for those involved directly.
Thank you for the setup for my point. At the rules you follow are NOT precise for anyone except yourself. You know your exact definition of "simple", "small", "single-function", "testable" and your experience is what allows you to adjust your definition to a given problem. This is why it is so difficult to build software, because you can't explain to me in static way how you do what you do. I believe this is why building good software is difficult to do and teach others to do. I think a previous poster's comment that the state of software development is a "craft", and should be taught much like plumbing, carpentry (think apprenticeship, tradesman, etc).
When you ask a carpenter "are you done ?", no one can verify the answer just by looking at it without knowing fist what he is supposed to be building.
When you ask a programmer "are you done ?", it is possible to verify the answer by simply using what he's built.
There are so many ways to accomplish the primary goal in business (to exchange something for something else) but you need basic arithmetic to validate the result. Very few programmers take the time to learn how to do it however many managers are able to accomplish this.
Eventually everything breaks down when the programmers start making business decisions that they are not qualified to make and it's all downhill from there.
I'm going from memory here a bit (I read a few papers on these accidents a while back), but I recall that in these series of accidents, the manufacturer was not intentionally trying to screw the clients (hospitals directly, patients indirectly). Most of the mistakes were failures in the development/design process, as well as the support processes. This is NOT to say that ACEL was not responsible (because they sure as hell were imho), but puling this out to prove the "managment made us choose the bad solution!" meme is misleading at best.
Who cares as long as it is ready to operate when I come back?
Actually, I think that's exactly what the author of the TFA is trying to hit home. There are some times when multiple options are unavoidable. For everything else, there should be simplicity where mainstream software is concerned (and I would be willing to argue even specialized software can benefit from this mode of thought as well).
What are some of the "business strategies" you use to make money off of a freely available open-source product? How do they differ/compare with tradional strategies of selling a non-opensource or freely available product?
Interestingly enough, the ability to compromise allows people to work together. However, the ability to recongnize when something is NOT worth compromising for allows people to push the boundries and affect change. I see RMS and Theo providing this valuable contribution to us. So really, for me, we need people that are willing to compromise to get the job done in certain cases, and others to push for their ideals to move things forward. Assuming that either of those types of people are wrong or not required is asking for either no practical work being done or having social-norms stagnate.
These large storage systems for media fail because the non-comercial users of them are being silly. 3TB of media (not porn); do you really need that much media accessible at a moment's notice? Would it really be that much more difficult to put visual media on DVD's and just store audio media (which may actually need to be available for iTunes or the like)? How much audio media does one actually listen to on a regular basis?
This problem is not new, in fact it's merely the digital equivalent of the "pack-rat" syndrome.:) Come on people, stop stockpiling, and start actually thinking about what you use and listen to!:) You'll find out you actually don't need those "monster" drives for residential use (commercial A/V on the other hand is a totally different beast;)
Actually, while I agree with the sentiment that one must take responsiblity for one's actions, she did the company more damage by leaving. As someone mentioned in a previous post, if someone makes a mistake and truly means to learn from it, they are MORE valuable after a screwup, and should not be let go. In this sort of case, a pay cut or some other "punishment" for the mistake or perhaps just a reprimand with the warning that if the same thing happens again that person is fired would be a better response from upper management. But without knowing the background, I can't say this whether this was an appropriate response or not (or instance, if there were telltale signs of the impending situation, why wasn't any action taken? These sorts of considerations must be taken into account when deciding what to do in a situation like this).
Ofcourse, this all assumes a good head at the top of the company who's watching out for the good of company (and for it's employees who generally do want to succeed and not screw up) and not for themselves:)
The importance of this cannot be stressed enough: one of the main factors in "document creep" in business is the ability for users to create documents and leave them on their PC's, network shares, and whereever they please. This would eliminate two massive headaches for IT staff; 1) the maintenance of office apps on individual workstations, and 2) the storage of said documents in a central place. This provides a company with centralized control of documents, with centralized control of access to said documents.
This I have to totally disagree with. While I would never expect anyone to be an expert in even more then a couple of areas, the point of general education is to "round-out" everybody's understanding of the world they live in. Things like geography, math, chemistry, literature, language, history, socialology; these aren't just poopoo topics. These are things that MAY be exciting to someone, and denying the opportunity for someone to discover their love of a field is saddening. In a world where education is moving more towards specialization sooner, I think we really are missing a large chunk of who we are as people by not teaching the "soft" subjects to the technical, and the "hard" subjects to the technically-disinterested.
As a software developer, I have to say that I also love history. I might never have discovered this had it not been for Mr. Riley. To you sir, I thank you for opening a world I would never have normally been interested in discovering.
>It is NOT being accepting to give all viewpoints equal weight. If you told me that gravity was created by invisible gnomes >pouring out anti-wedgies that held me down to earth by the seat of my pants, I'd have no problem telling you that you're an >idiot for believing it.
Actually, I think this response is the root of most of this discussion; the problem is if an idea is so ridiculous, it should be fairly easy to (dis-)prove it using some basic scientific method. This is "important" point the article is trying to make: an opinion does not a fact make. Those in search of opinions are only inhibiting those in search of facts.
It seems interesting the timing of this; I wonder if Apple will pick this up if they are indeed going to bring out a new IPod video. It seems to me this chip would be a perfect fit, with its resolution and H.264 capability.
That ends up turning into a "religous" war about whether or not better quality is "better"...:) Some photographers would say that grainy can be good depending on your subject.
Touche.:) But I think that given the want, you'll soon be able to buy digital SLR's at reasonable prices (bodies for sub 1000$), so at that point one could buy high-quality lens' for their digital.
One thing that I usually think is usually overlooked with digital cameras is the fact that when you pick up a 5,6 even 10 megapixel digial body, that's the max resolution that THAT BODY WILL EVER DO. If you need higher quality, you'll need to buy another camera body. Ouch:)
Film SLR cameras are interesting in that the resolution of your photos is determined by the film you put in (which is usually toted as a bad thing(tm) with respect to film photography). So I think that film photography is a bit more flexible in this respect... just my 2cents.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"Requirements" are a static line in the ground. Malicious individuals are a moving target. You will never thwart the attackers through a fixed set of defenses, hence the oft quoted "security as a process, not a feature".
"..., I use Linux and FOSS because once it's on my computer I own it."
-snip-
Excuse me? You most certainly do NOT own any FOSS you have on your computer unless you actually wrote it. This would be the point of copyright. You have a license to use and distribute said FOSS under the terms of the individual licenses. Ownership != right to use/distribute.
I'm curious; I wonder what would happen if you brought back your munged HD-DVD/BlueRay disc and asked that it be replaced? Would the store replace a unusable disc? See, this is the point I disagree with; why are stores selling items, but the MPAA/RIAA selling "licenses"? They are mutally exclusive. For example, in the parent's case, why shouldn't he be able to walk down to the store he purchased the original DVD from (with the bill) and request that they exchange his destroyed DVD for a new one? I mean, it's the license he paid for, right? Not the physical media... but stores don't deal very well with licensing (just look at buying copies of software; it's a license, not a "thing"). Stores are geared towards selling items, physical things that are working or not, and if they're not working through your fault, then tough for you.
:)
I think the right to make "backup" copies would be a lot less required if one could simply produce a bill and the "unusable" media and get an exchange for a new media (of the same type or even better another type). Of course, there goes the cash cow
And what's wrong with that? The only people that will be up in arms about it are those that don't "get it" (ie those for whom it's all about the hardware/software). That would be us techies :) For the demographic that Apple is targetting with it's products, the focus is and should be the usability, fitting into people's lives and not being the focus of people's lives.
I have a friend that asked me why I paid extra for a PowerBook when a Dell etc-etc would do me just fine. I answered "I'm happy with spending more money for something that does what I need it to rather than saving money on something that makes me do what it needs me to".
Sure. Stop using C.
It is just that it is more work (and time) for the developers to do this.
Only if you use C.
This is a misleading point of view. Any language that includes signed and unsigned representations of the same type (int or long for example) would in no way benefit from managed memory. It will still be possible to "over-flow" a long in a calculation and without checks on the results, these types of bugs can be just as bad or worse (ie you don't get an obviously broken system; you get a system that sometimes returns a valid wrong answer) to track down and fix.You mean not as many of "our" people are people are getting killed. If you look up a bit on the Cold War of the 80's, you'll see alot of policy of supporting fighting in other countries and many many people dying elsewhere. Hardly "fun" for those involved directly.
I don't know at what point in time you researched prior to buying, but this search turned up the parallels bug you described in the first 5 results:
M ac+Pro&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a& rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
http://www.google.ca/search?q=Parallels+problems+
Thank you for the setup for my point. At the rules you follow are NOT precise for anyone except yourself. You know your exact definition of "simple", "small", "single-function", "testable" and your experience is what allows you to adjust your definition to a given problem. This is why it is so difficult to build software, because you can't explain to me in static way how you do what you do. I believe this is why building good software is difficult to do and teach others to do. I think a previous poster's comment that the state of software development is a "craft", and should be taught much like plumbing, carpentry (think apprenticeship, tradesman, etc).
If you'll pardon the different point of view :)
--
When you ask a carpenter "are you done ?", no one can verify the answer just by looking at it without knowing fist what he is supposed to be building.
When you ask a programmer "are you done ?", it is possible to verify the answer by simply using what he's built.
There are so many ways to accomplish the primary goal in business (to exchange something for something else) but you need basic arithmetic to validate the result. Very few programmers take the time to learn how to do it however many managers are able to accomplish this.
Eventually everything breaks down when the programmers start making business decisions that they are not qualified to make and it's all downhill from there.
I'm going from memory here a bit (I read a few papers on these accidents a while back), but I recall that in these series of accidents, the manufacturer was not intentionally trying to screw the clients (hospitals directly, patients indirectly). Most of the mistakes were failures in the development/design process, as well as the support processes. This is NOT to say that ACEL was not responsible (because they sure as hell were imho), but puling this out to prove the "managment made us choose the bad solution!" meme is misleading at best.
That's
Actually, I think that's exactly what the author of the TFA is trying to hit home. There are some times when multiple options are unavoidable. For everything else, there should be simplicity where mainstream software is concerned (and I would be willing to argue even specialized software can benefit from this mode of thought as well).
Doing things for "cred"... you mean like participating in Open Source software projects?
What are some of the "business strategies" you use to make money off of a freely available open-source product? How do they differ/compare with tradional strategies of selling a non-opensource or freely available product?
Interestingly enough, the ability to compromise allows people to work together. However, the ability to recongnize when something is NOT worth compromising for allows people to push the boundries and affect change. I see RMS and Theo providing this valuable contribution to us. So really, for me, we need people that are willing to compromise to get the job done in certain cases, and others to push for their ideals to move things forward. Assuming that either of those types of people are wrong or not required is asking for either no practical work being done or having social-norms stagnate.
These large storage systems for media fail because the non-comercial users of them are being silly. 3TB of media (not porn); do you really need that much media accessible at a moment's notice? Would it really be that much more difficult to put visual media on DVD's and just store audio media (which may actually need to be available for iTunes or the like)? How much audio media does one actually listen to on a regular basis?
:) Come on people, stop stockpiling, and start actually thinking about what you use and listen to! :) You'll find out you actually don't need those "monster" drives for residential use (commercial A/V on the other hand is a totally different beast ;)
This problem is not new, in fact it's merely the digital equivalent of the "pack-rat" syndrome.
Actually, while I agree with the sentiment that one must take responsiblity for one's actions, she did the company more damage by leaving. As someone mentioned in a previous post, if someone makes a mistake and truly means to learn from it, they are MORE valuable after a screwup, and should not be let go. In this sort of case, a pay cut or some other "punishment" for the mistake or perhaps just a reprimand with the warning that if the same thing happens again that person is fired would be a better response from upper management. But without knowing the background, I can't say this whether this was an appropriate response or not (or instance, if there were telltale signs of the impending situation, why wasn't any action taken? These sorts of considerations must be taken into account when deciding what to do in a situation like this).
:)
Ofcourse, this all assumes a good head at the top of the company who's watching out for the good of company (and for it's employees who generally do want to succeed and not screw up) and not for themselves
END TRANSMISSION
The importance of this cannot be stressed enough: one of the main factors in "document creep" in business is the ability for users to create documents and leave them on their PC's, network shares, and whereever they please. This would eliminate two massive headaches for IT staff; 1) the maintenance of office apps on individual workstations, and 2) the storage of said documents in a central place. This provides a company with centralized control of documents, with centralized control of access to said documents.
I can see this as a "big thing" for businesses.
This I have to totally disagree with. While I would never expect anyone to be an expert in even more then a couple of areas, the point of general education is to "round-out" everybody's understanding of the world they live in. Things like geography, math, chemistry, literature, language, history, socialology; these aren't just poopoo topics. These are things that MAY be exciting to someone, and denying the opportunity for someone to discover their love of a field is saddening. In a world where education is moving more towards specialization sooner, I think we really are missing a large chunk of who we are as people by not teaching the "soft" subjects to the technical, and the "hard" subjects to the technically-disinterested.
As a software developer, I have to say that I also love history. I might never have discovered this had it not been for Mr. Riley. To you sir, I thank you for opening a world I would never have normally been interested in discovering.
>I might be feeding the trolls, but here goes...
>It is NOT being accepting to give all viewpoints equal weight. If you told me that gravity was created by invisible gnomes >pouring out anti-wedgies that held me down to earth by the seat of my pants, I'd have no problem telling you that you're an >idiot for believing it.
Actually, I think this response is the root of most of this discussion; the problem is if an idea is so ridiculous, it should be fairly easy to (dis-)prove it using some basic scientific method. This is "important" point the article is trying to make: an opinion does not a fact make. Those in search of opinions are only inhibiting those in search of facts.
It seems interesting the timing of this; I wonder if Apple will pick this up if they are indeed going to bring out a new IPod video. It seems to me this chip would be a perfect fit, with its resolution and H.264 capability.
That ends up turning into a "religous" war about whether or not better quality is "better"... :) Some photographers would say that grainy can be good depending on your subject.
:)
Point taken though
Touche. :) But I think that given the want, you'll soon be able to buy digital SLR's at reasonable prices (bodies for sub 1000$), so at that point one could buy high-quality lens' for their digital.
Chris
One thing that I usually think is usually overlooked with digital cameras is the fact that when you pick up a 5,6 even 10 megapixel digial body, that's the max resolution that THAT BODY WILL EVER DO. If you need higher quality, you'll need to buy another camera body. Ouch :)
:)
Film SLR cameras are interesting in that the resolution of your photos is determined by the film you put in (which is usually toted as a bad thing(tm) with respect to film photography). So I think that film photography is a bit more flexible in this respect... just my 2cents.
Chris