Am I the only one who doesn't even bother to read these "revolutionary energy breakthrough" stories? Seriously, I read them for a year or two back in the day, but stopped after that, and for the last 5 years I don't feel like I missed anything.
The only thing that makes me pay attention is when it's revealed these new startups are headed by the brother-in-law of some eleceted official who then attempts to get them a sweetheart deal on real estate, tax breaks, regulations, permits, etc.
Java rules the web? Seriously? I've had "Enable Java" unchecked in Firefox for a couple of years now. I seriously doubt there's a whole lot I've missed. To be fair, I have enabled it on occasion for a specific page or two I was visiting, but that hardly qualifies as "rules" in my book.
I smell something fishy. Sounds to me like whoever is making money off securing DoD systems is also involved in specifying what versions to use. If you run something that's been battle tested and known to be "safe" (relative term) then there's no money to be made.
Here's a cheap way to make DoD Linux systems safe: don't connect them to the public internet, period.
Aside from the mathematical tests some have suggested, my gut tells me this is going to be almost impossible. There are tasks that a human can perform that just aren't doable given the present state of our software systems. The gap has as much to do with our understanding about how we perceive through our senses as it does with algorithms and calculation methodologies. We just don't know yet enough about the underlying processes to make a computer do it.
The same goes for other areas where AI is sorely lacking. Things like OCR, language recognition and translation, not to mention a program where you can whistle a tune and have it analyzed to the point where its name can be deduced (if it was written already), or scored as sheet music (if you're creating something new).
Hey Bernie, why don't you tell me where you really hid the money? Scummer. I hope they get his family members who were in on it too some day, along with his SEC enablers. The.gov also settled the case against his wife (former bookkeeper who knew exactly what was going on). They let her keep $2.5 million. Such a deal.
Post-SCO fiasco trial that was a waste of the court system's time and money, I'll go out on a limb here and predict my own actions post-SCO-bankruptcy.
I predict my respect for the legal system will fall several notches on a permanent basis if Darl McBride doesn't do jail time.
Rupert Murdoch's NY rag (the WSJ being the other)? Then it's scurrilous and almost certainly not true. Google isn't worried about Bing. The whole thing smells of astroturf and paid shills operating under cover of darkness.
What you really need is a clause that says any lawmaker or elected official or judge or monarch (or whoever) that even THINKS about violating the letter of the constitution be severely punished. They all you need is reasonable laws in general. With the right kind it should be unnecessary to single out the digital domain as compared to any other.
Oh, and restrict copyrights to 14 or 20 years IN TOTAL and make it unconstitutional to even THINK about extending it. Accepting political donations for any reason whatsoever from a stakeholder who stands to benefit from any official government debate, decision or policy should be SEVERELY punished.
This is one of the best comments I've read all year. Alas, no mod points today. Google is useless for certain types of searches and not manner of tweaking the search terms can fix it. For the few percent of the time when it fails, it's maddening (and I've done the parts search, too). You laid it out better than I ever could. My problems with it are slightly different but the pedantic way Google treats certain searches is enough to drive you crazy.
And there's a new annoyance within the last week or so. Search something on Google. Go forward a few pages into the results. Now jump back, in your browser, to the first "main search page" where you typed in your search terms. Voila! The box of search terms is empty, forcing you to type everything in all over again. THAT is driving me batshit crazy, and it only started happening very recently.
Just last week reps from many dead-tree newspaper publishing companies in America got together at a conference to explore ways they could remain profitable in the face of blogs and other online news sources. The conclusions and statements they agreed on in the end prove out this fact: they are no longer interested in "journalism" (investigative reporting is almost completely dead). No, their main goal is 30% profit margins to ensure "shareholder value".
I suggest that the big search engines - all of them, you know who they are - are also intereted in maximizing profits, not providing "quality search results". That's why MS is censoring searches for "sex" in India, Google caved into the demands of the Chinese government a year ago (or more), possibly they all restrict searching for "Nazi" or "Hitler" in Europe.
They have to be politically the equivalent of non-offensive and milquetoast, or risk the loss of revenue and profits.
There's nothing inherently wrong or evil with those policies. I think it's important to realize what's going on, however, and the last thing these companies will ever do is admit to the truth. The truth goes against what they claim as their mission. At least with Microsoft, everyone on the face of the planet who deals with computers or programming to make a living knows they're a great big lying sack of shit. The masses do not.
Mod parent up. Every generation has "their" shows. "Friends" was a generational answer to something, Seinfeld I guess. Or maybe it was the Love Boat. Anyway, it wasn't very good by all objective measures. Anyone who thinks hanging out at a coffe shop is better than hanging out at a bar (Cheers, anyone?) is smoking something out back in the alley.
Mediocre at best sums it up perfectly. I don't judge people by superficial crappola, but if I overhear someone say they liked Friends (or even worse, LOVED it) then I have a pretty good idea of the kind of person I'm dealing with.
I used to have an old IBM CGA color monitor that I used on an IBM PC-XT. 8 colors IIRC, including lovely shades of magenta and "brown". I was the envy of everyone on the block. When the first addon graphics cards came out, I got a Hercules card and that absolutely ruled for running Flight Simulator.
These days I'm content to run a year or two behind state of the art. The cards and games (the few I play) are cheaper that way. I think it's pretty much a no-brainer to say that gamers have driven this industry since very early on.
That doesn't address the problem of long-term persistent preferences. There are certain domains I would like to exclude on EVERY search I do, and typing in that exclusion filter by hand every time I search doesn't cut it.
He won't make any friends with the government research grant people with that attitude, though. Seriously, if you only occasionally read what Schneier has to say, and follow his advice and guidelines, you'll be more "secure" than 99% of everyone else. That's because 99% of the people (and companies) don't follow his advice, which is often simple and just requires a little effort and awareness. It's the "effort and awareness" thing that most people find challenging.
You want to keep your system safe from hackers? Don't put it on the public internet. Problem solved.
But no, they'll waste millions on this. Some people will take advantage and build lucrative "careers" with it. Other snake oil salesmen will get their start in life.
I thought it meant vxWorks had joined the stimulus software giveaway. Their development environment and cross-compiler suite is called, "Tornado". Too bad.
That's part of it. The other part is how I guess I'm in the 1% who does not have Flashy installed. On my machines I've said "good riddance" to that, too. Except for one, but on that one I use FlashBlock and I probably actually click through maybe 1 out of 500 flashy thingies to let them play.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd call it a Darwinian development. Anyone putting their security in McAfee pretty much deserves what they get.
Am I the only one who doesn't even bother to read these "revolutionary energy breakthrough" stories? Seriously, I read them for a year or two back in the day, but stopped after that, and for the last 5 years I don't feel like I missed anything.
The only thing that makes me pay attention is when it's revealed these new startups are headed by the brother-in-law of some eleceted official who then attempts to get them a sweetheart deal on real estate, tax breaks, regulations, permits, etc.
Java rules the web? Seriously? I've had "Enable Java" unchecked in Firefox for a couple of years now. I seriously doubt there's a whole lot I've missed. To be fair, I have enabled it on occasion for a specific page or two I was visiting, but that hardly qualifies as "rules" in my book.
I smell something fishy. Sounds to me like whoever is making money off securing DoD systems is also involved in specifying what versions to use. If you run something that's been battle tested and known to be "safe" (relative term) then there's no money to be made.
Here's a cheap way to make DoD Linux systems safe: don't connect them to the public internet, period.
Aside from the mathematical tests some have suggested, my gut tells me this is going to be almost impossible. There are tasks that a human can perform that just aren't doable given the present state of our software systems. The gap has as much to do with our understanding about how we perceive through our senses as it does with algorithms and calculation methodologies. We just don't know yet enough about the underlying processes to make a computer do it.
The same goes for other areas where AI is sorely lacking. Things like OCR, language recognition and translation, not to mention a program where you can whistle a tune and have it analyzed to the point where its name can be deduced (if it was written already), or scored as sheet music (if you're creating something new).
This is why I read slashdot. Thanks for that link!
Hey Bernie, why don't you tell me where you really hid the money? Scummer. I hope they get his family members who were in on it too some day, along with his SEC enablers. The .gov also settled the case against his wife (former bookkeeper who knew exactly what was going on). They let her keep $2.5 million. Such a deal.
Spoken like a true Anonymous Coward. How long did it take you to rate this up to a 5 using your sockpuppets?
Post-SCO fiasco trial that was a waste of the court system's time and money, I'll go out on a limb here and predict my own actions post-SCO-bankruptcy.
I predict my respect for the legal system will fall several notches on a permanent basis if Darl McBride doesn't do jail time.
Rupert Murdoch's NY rag (the WSJ being the other)? Then it's scurrilous and almost certainly not true. Google isn't worried about Bing. The whole thing smells of astroturf and paid shills operating under cover of darkness.
What you really need is a clause that says any lawmaker or elected official or judge or monarch (or whoever) that even THINKS about violating the letter of the constitution be severely punished. They all you need is reasonable laws in general. With the right kind it should be unnecessary to single out the digital domain as compared to any other.
Oh, and restrict copyrights to 14 or 20 years IN TOTAL and make it unconstitutional to even THINK about extending it. Accepting political donations for any reason whatsoever from a stakeholder who stands to benefit from any official government debate, decision or policy should be SEVERELY punished.
Are you kidding me? Like the ones with virtually no training that fly commuter planes in and out of Buffalo, New York, in icy conditions?
This is one of the best comments I've read all year. Alas, no mod points today. Google is useless for certain types of searches and not manner of tweaking the search terms can fix it. For the few percent of the time when it fails, it's maddening (and I've done the parts search, too). You laid it out better than I ever could. My problems with it are slightly different but the pedantic way Google treats certain searches is enough to drive you crazy.
And there's a new annoyance within the last week or so. Search something on Google. Go forward a few pages into the results. Now jump back, in your browser, to the first "main search page" where you typed in your search terms. Voila! The box of search terms is empty, forcing you to type everything in all over again. THAT is driving me batshit crazy, and it only started happening very recently.
Just last week reps from many dead-tree newspaper publishing companies in America got together at a conference to explore ways they could remain profitable in the face of blogs and other online news sources. The conclusions and statements they agreed on in the end prove out this fact: they are no longer interested in "journalism" (investigative reporting is almost completely dead). No, their main goal is 30% profit margins to ensure "shareholder value".
I suggest that the big search engines - all of them, you know who they are - are also intereted in maximizing profits, not providing "quality search results". That's why MS is censoring searches for "sex" in India, Google caved into the demands of the Chinese government a year ago (or more), possibly they all restrict searching for "Nazi" or "Hitler" in Europe.
They have to be politically the equivalent of non-offensive and milquetoast, or risk the loss of revenue and profits.
There's nothing inherently wrong or evil with those policies. I think it's important to realize what's going on, however, and the last thing these companies will ever do is admit to the truth. The truth goes against what they claim as their mission. At least with Microsoft, everyone on the face of the planet who deals with computers or programming to make a living knows they're a great big lying sack of shit. The masses do not.
Mod parent up. Every generation has "their" shows. "Friends" was a generational answer to something, Seinfeld I guess. Or maybe it was the Love Boat. Anyway, it wasn't very good by all objective measures. Anyone who thinks hanging out at a coffe shop is better than hanging out at a bar (Cheers, anyone?) is smoking something out back in the alley.
Mediocre at best sums it up perfectly. I don't judge people by superficial crappola, but if I overhear someone say they liked Friends (or even worse, LOVED it) then I have a pretty good idea of the kind of person I'm dealing with.
I used to have an old IBM CGA color monitor that I used on an IBM PC-XT. 8 colors IIRC, including lovely shades of magenta and "brown". I was the envy of everyone on the block. When the first addon graphics cards came out, I got a Hercules card and that absolutely ruled for running Flight Simulator.
These days I'm content to run a year or two behind state of the art. The cards and games (the few I play) are cheaper that way. I think it's pretty much a no-brainer to say that gamers have driven this industry since very early on.
That doesn't address the problem of long-term persistent preferences. There are certain domains I would like to exclude on EVERY search I do, and typing in that exclusion filter by hand every time I search doesn't cut it.
He won't make any friends with the government research grant people with that attitude, though. Seriously, if you only occasionally read what Schneier has to say, and follow his advice and guidelines, you'll be more "secure" than 99% of everyone else. That's because 99% of the people (and companies) don't follow his advice, which is often simple and just requires a little effort and awareness. It's the "effort and awareness" thing that most people find challenging.
I've seen the word "meatspace" in use for almost a decade. Welcome to the world.
If I'm arrested can I just show them my teabag to avoid having my DNA put in the system?
You want to keep your system safe from hackers? Don't put it on the public internet. Problem solved.
But no, they'll waste millions on this. Some people will take advantage and build lucrative "careers" with it. Other snake oil salesmen will get their start in life.
I guess a story on /. with only 75 comments after 7 hours pretty much answers that question, eh?
I thought it meant vxWorks had joined the stimulus software giveaway. Their development environment and cross-compiler suite is called, "Tornado". Too bad.
That's part of it. The other part is how I guess I'm in the 1% who does not have Flashy installed. On my machines I've said "good riddance" to that, too. Except for one, but on that one I use FlashBlock and I probably actually click through maybe 1 out of 500 flashy thingies to let them play.
Elitism? Pot Kettle Black.