What will happen to all the developers who love their Macs today? It seems like every developer conference I go to these days, Macs outnumber all other computers by 4 or 5 to 1, at least. If those devs can't install new/untested/unapproved stuff on their mac, how could they possibly do their jobs? I'd guess, if you're right about the trend, there'll be a "developer workstation" where you pay a premium on the hardware/OS, and then buy the right to do whatever you want with it, kind of how itunes was charging more for DRM-free music for a while.
Good points. But Wikipedia in general seems to "average towards correctness" on a vast array of topics.. So it's a dilemma -- prefer more accurate/professional sources, which the public can't validate as readily or prefer more mainstream sources which can be crowdsourced for accuracy but which aren't all that reliable to begin with? Seems like Wales' precursor to Wikipedia preferred the professional editor/source model and it didn't work, whereas Wikipedia did/does?
Any thoughts on how to improve Wikipedia without losing the public editor model which seems to be the thing that is generating the bulk of the material on the site (most of which is pretty darn good)?
Yeah - of course, that's obvious. But according to Wikipedia's policy, citing her on the subject is legitimate b/c it appeared in a major media outlet. So we have a gap between what we (I, anyway) want in Wikipedia (authoritative sources citing facts and strongly supported/expert opinions) and what Wikipedia's policy permits (authoritative sources citing non-authoritative sources). It seems to be occurring b/c Palin is newsworthy, no matter what she says.
Very true, but for purposes of comparing a plaintext password with a previously stored hash of same, it amounts to encryption for that specific use case. You could do the same thing with PKI of course, but PKI can do a lot more (or preshared key encryption), which is I think your point.
Or make it the "freemium" model (even if I do hate that word) - where you can apply for (say) 3 patents per year with no "prior art surcharge." 4-10 patents = $1000 each. 20 = $2000 each, etc?
Of course, make sure you backup that password safe somewhere. I use spideroak to keep that file synced on lots of systems. Dropbox probably works fine too..
I'm more interested in the problem on the discussion page dealing with authoritative sourcing.
The issue seems to be:
Wikipedia wants to be a neutral source and just report what is asserted by trusted sources. The Palin-camp wants to include quotes from her, cited in mainstream media, on this page (same as you would quote and source a historian on this same page who wrote something in a published book).
This is interesting as it puts horns on the dilemma for wikipedia about authoritative. I can't just write a blog article on my personal website, post a link in wikipedia and call it a source. But if the LA times quotes my blog, I can use that as a source. But when someone who is not an expert is quoted in the media b/c they are sensational (in the sense of worth quoting right or wrong, in terms of newspaper sales), the notion of authoritative source kind of goes out the window.
Not sure how wikipedia will cope with this - or whether it's just a corner case that we can ignore most of the time?
That first article seems pretty theoretical (meaning they are postulating something), and they aren't making a case that the earth's quantum wave function impacts its orbit, they are arguing that the same *math* that can be used for calculating quantum wave functions can also be used *analogously* for describing orbits of captured satellites in star systems.
There's a notion in quantum physics (remember I am not a physicist) that the bigger an object is the smaller it's quantum wave "vibration" or function. So the argument is that a lump of lead will have a teeny wave function (let alone a planet). And I think many physicists believe that above a certain size, the macroworld forces (heat exchange, etc) swamps the wave function. Nevertheless physicists have continued to postulate the upper-limit of where the wave function will be swamped and other physicists continue to push that limit upwards. But still, that upper-limit size is still really really small compared to a planet.
I'm not a physicist but I'm pretty sure this is wrong. It is true that macroscopic objects are predicted to have wave functions, and some macroscopic objects have had quantum properties measured (in pretty esoteric experimental setups), but planet sized objects don't follow orbits around the sun based on their wave functions at all. I'm not even sure if you're suggesting that, but I wanted to clarify in case someone thought you were.
Not to be pedantic (and I'm not a physicist) but you don't "sacrifice any clue to the position" you only sacrifice a precise clue. You still have a pretty darn good clue where the particle is via the quantum wave functions. It's much more likely to be near where it was emitted than far away from that spot for example - you have a statistical clue as to it's position in other words.
I'm not saying you don't know this, just wanted to clarify the language for other readers.
SHA-512 is a one-way hashing algorithm, not a signing algorithm. It's main purpose (for passwords) is to allow you to store a representation of the password which can be compared with a future submission of the same password, to see if they are in fact the same. You can create a kind of signatures with such a hashing algorithm but what most people think of as "digital signatures" involves public/private key signatures. These signatures allow you to verify (roughly) "the person who controls the private key associated with this public key, is the same person who authored this message." PGP and X.509 are good places to read up on digital signatures.
With salts in place, they wouldn't be creating "their own specialized rainbow table for the job." They would have to create N rainbow tables - one for each salt value. That's the point. You don't have one salt for your whole table, you should have one salt per hash. This makes it much more difficult to brute force the entire set of passwords at once (which is the point of a rainbow table).
I'm not saying you don't know this, but I wanted to clear this up for anyone who might read your statement and get confused.
We are talking about MySQL vs Postgres -- isn't that the general rule between the two for almost everything? The fact is that it's much easier to find shared hosting on the cheap that supports MySQL than PG. I myself never use MySQL -- agreeing with you that Postgres is better for everything I need, at least afaik.
This is second hand info but the providers I've talked with over the years say that partitioning users, databases, rights, resources, etc in MySQL is more built from the ground up for a co-sharing environment, whereas PG isn't as easy to setup and manage in that configuration. It can be done for sure (geekisp.com does it well) but maybe it requires more expertise or care/feeding or something. I don't know, but that's what I've been told. HTH
It's hard b/c it seems that for many companies they perceive (maybe accurately) Postgres as more expensive to operate in a shared environment than MySQL. I believe there's been a fair bit of work to fix this over the last few years in PG, but it's still a problem in the field. Plus the demand from devs for PG is much lower than MySQL (kind of chicken and egg).
I've found support from providers at all levels for PG. My personal web host is www.geekisp.com and they do a great job giving me the tools I want, including PG. I used EngineYard a while back (middle tier host) and they were willing to support PG b/c I and a few other people requested it and they wanted to be full service.
So my rec is to look around - you'll probably find someplace you like supporting PG. And if you find a place you like that doesn't support it, give them a call and talk with management - they might be willing to add it to the mix..
The Rubicon was crossed at the beginning of Rome's "greatness" -- Julius Caesar (and his army) crossed the Rubicon when he (essentially) took power. Rome fell to the Germans some 500 years later.
I don't get the difference. If Microsoft were the de facto operating system, the fact that you could build a competing OS seems irrelevant. Making a new and better OS doesn't mean anyone will use, and specifically b/c MS can take certain actions to make sure it's not adopted. Like forcing Dell to commit to buying Windows for all their machines even if it's not installed, for example.
This is like saying anyone can build competing train engines, or buy land and lay new tracks. Sure it's competitive, but there's a network of services in play that make it very hard to unseat an incumbent. My understanding of anti-trust (admittedly limited) is to ensure that such an incumbent has limits on their behavior to ensure they don't unfairly abuse their position. I believe that is exactly what Clinton's DoJ attempted to accomplish and I think to some extent succeeded, at least in terms of changing MS's behavior (which may have changed voluntarily to avoid anti-trust action).
The fact that the technology sector's natural monopolies are generally short lived b/c the technology changes much faster than say railroads, makes it a special case in that sense, but I don't see a fundamental/economic difference between the kind of power MS held with desktop computers in the late 90's and the kind of power train networks held over businesses a hundred years ago.
Yeah not to mention the fact that Apple has already done them one better and said "there will be one hardware manufacturer for our iPad."
So MS is pretty broad minded even with this recent request in comparison. I don't think they could possibly run into trouble on this given that Apple is far, far more closed about its manufacturing and licensing.
I'm not saying one is worse than the other, but in terms of anti-trust, as P says, MS is pretty unassailable these days.
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Let's not dredge up the bang path wars.
And I'm not holding my breath for the world to switch to year first dates. US will go metric first.
I don't have an iPhone, but what happens when it runs out of batteries? My android reboots when I plug it back in.
What will happen to all the developers who love their Macs today? It seems like every developer conference I go to these days, Macs outnumber all other computers by 4 or 5 to 1, at least. If those devs can't install new/untested/unapproved stuff on their mac, how could they possibly do their jobs? I'd guess, if you're right about the trend, there'll be a "developer workstation" where you pay a premium on the hardware/OS, and then buy the right to do whatever you want with it, kind of how itunes was charging more for DRM-free music for a while.
Should you be modded insightful or funny? I can't tell..
Good points. But Wikipedia in general seems to "average towards correctness" on a vast array of topics.. So it's a dilemma -- prefer more accurate/professional sources, which the public can't validate as readily or prefer more mainstream sources which can be crowdsourced for accuracy but which aren't all that reliable to begin with? Seems like Wales' precursor to Wikipedia preferred the professional editor/source model and it didn't work, whereas Wikipedia did/does?
Any thoughts on how to improve Wikipedia without losing the public editor model which seems to be the thing that is generating the bulk of the material on the site (most of which is pretty darn good)?
Yeah - of course, that's obvious. But according to Wikipedia's policy, citing her on the subject is legitimate b/c it appeared in a major media outlet. So we have a gap between what we (I, anyway) want in Wikipedia (authoritative sources citing facts and strongly supported/expert opinions) and what Wikipedia's policy permits (authoritative sources citing non-authoritative sources). It seems to be occurring b/c Palin is newsworthy, no matter what she says.
Very true, but for purposes of comparing a plaintext password with a previously stored hash of same, it amounts to encryption for that specific use case. You could do the same thing with PKI of course, but PKI can do a lot more (or preshared key encryption), which is I think your point.
Or make it the "freemium" model (even if I do hate that word) - where you can apply for (say) 3 patents per year with no "prior art surcharge." 4-10 patents = $1000 each. 20 = $2000 each, etc?
Of course, make sure you backup that password safe somewhere. I use spideroak to keep that file synced on lots of systems. Dropbox probably works fine too..
I'm more interested in the problem on the discussion page dealing with authoritative sourcing.
The issue seems to be:
Wikipedia wants to be a neutral source and just report what is asserted by trusted sources. The Palin-camp wants to include quotes from her, cited in mainstream media, on this page (same as you would quote and source a historian on this same page who wrote something in a published book).
This is interesting as it puts horns on the dilemma for wikipedia about authoritative. I can't just write a blog article on my personal website, post a link in wikipedia and call it a source. But if the LA times quotes my blog, I can use that as a source. But when someone who is not an expert is quoted in the media b/c they are sensational (in the sense of worth quoting right or wrong, in terms of newspaper sales), the notion of authoritative source kind of goes out the window.
Not sure how wikipedia will cope with this - or whether it's just a corner case that we can ignore most of the time?
It was obvious - and a nice write up. Thanks. That guy's a troll or a pedant.
That first article seems pretty theoretical (meaning they are postulating something), and they aren't making a case that the earth's quantum wave function impacts its orbit, they are arguing that the same *math* that can be used for calculating quantum wave functions can also be used *analogously* for describing orbits of captured satellites in star systems.
There's a notion in quantum physics (remember I am not a physicist) that the bigger an object is the smaller it's quantum wave "vibration" or function. So the argument is that a lump of lead will have a teeny wave function (let alone a planet). And I think many physicists believe that above a certain size, the macroworld forces (heat exchange, etc) swamps the wave function. Nevertheless physicists have continued to postulate the upper-limit of where the wave function will be swamped and other physicists continue to push that limit upwards. But still, that upper-limit size is still really really small compared to a planet.
I'm not a physicist but I'm pretty sure this is wrong. It is true that macroscopic objects are predicted to have wave functions, and some macroscopic objects have had quantum properties measured (in pretty esoteric experimental setups), but planet sized objects don't follow orbits around the sun based on their wave functions at all. I'm not even sure if you're suggesting that, but I wanted to clarify in case someone thought you were.
Not to be pedantic (and I'm not a physicist) but you don't "sacrifice any clue to the position" you only sacrifice a precise clue. You still have a pretty darn good clue where the particle is via the quantum wave functions. It's much more likely to be near where it was emitted than far away from that spot for example - you have a statistical clue as to it's position in other words.
I'm not saying you don't know this, just wanted to clarify the language for other readers.
SHA-512 is a one-way hashing algorithm, not a signing algorithm. It's main purpose (for passwords) is to allow you to store a representation of the password which can be compared with a future submission of the same password, to see if they are in fact the same. You can create a kind of signatures with such a hashing algorithm but what most people think of as "digital signatures" involves public/private key signatures. These signatures allow you to verify (roughly) "the person who controls the private key associated with this public key, is the same person who authored this message." PGP and X.509 are good places to read up on digital signatures.
With salts in place, they wouldn't be creating "their own specialized rainbow table for the job." They would have to create N rainbow tables - one for each salt value. That's the point. You don't have one salt for your whole table, you should have one salt per hash. This makes it much more difficult to brute force the entire set of passwords at once (which is the point of a rainbow table).
I'm not saying you don't know this, but I wanted to clear this up for anyone who might read your statement and get confused.
We are talking about MySQL vs Postgres -- isn't that the general rule between the two for almost everything? The fact is that it's much easier to find shared hosting on the cheap that supports MySQL than PG. I myself never use MySQL -- agreeing with you that Postgres is better for everything I need, at least afaik.
This is second hand info but the providers I've talked with over the years say that partitioning users, databases, rights, resources, etc in MySQL is more built from the ground up for a co-sharing environment, whereas PG isn't as easy to setup and manage in that configuration. It can be done for sure (geekisp.com does it well) but maybe it requires more expertise or care/feeding or something. I don't know, but that's what I've been told. HTH
It's hard b/c it seems that for many companies they perceive (maybe accurately) Postgres as more expensive to operate in a shared environment than MySQL. I believe there's been a fair bit of work to fix this over the last few years in PG, but it's still a problem in the field. Plus the demand from devs for PG is much lower than MySQL (kind of chicken and egg).
I've found support from providers at all levels for PG. My personal web host is www.geekisp.com and they do a great job giving me the tools I want, including PG. I used EngineYard a while back (middle tier host) and they were willing to support PG b/c I and a few other people requested it and they wanted to be full service.
So my rec is to look around - you'll probably find someplace you like supporting PG. And if you find a place you like that doesn't support it, give them a call and talk with management - they might be willing to add it to the mix..
The Rubicon was crossed at the beginning of Rome's "greatness" -- Julius Caesar (and his army) crossed the Rubicon when he (essentially) took power. Rome fell to the Germans some 500 years later.
Ha ha only serious right? Well said.
Couldn't agree more.
Good point! Seems like those two strategies often go together, which is maybe a self-regulating principle for society in general..
I don't get the difference. If Microsoft were the de facto operating system, the fact that you could build a competing OS seems irrelevant. Making a new and better OS doesn't mean anyone will use, and specifically b/c MS can take certain actions to make sure it's not adopted. Like forcing Dell to commit to buying Windows for all their machines even if it's not installed, for example.
This is like saying anyone can build competing train engines, or buy land and lay new tracks. Sure it's competitive, but there's a network of services in play that make it very hard to unseat an incumbent. My understanding of anti-trust (admittedly limited) is to ensure that such an incumbent has limits on their behavior to ensure they don't unfairly abuse their position. I believe that is exactly what Clinton's DoJ attempted to accomplish and I think to some extent succeeded, at least in terms of changing MS's behavior (which may have changed voluntarily to avoid anti-trust action).
The fact that the technology sector's natural monopolies are generally short lived b/c the technology changes much faster than say railroads, makes it a special case in that sense, but I don't see a fundamental/economic difference between the kind of power MS held with desktop computers in the late 90's and the kind of power train networks held over businesses a hundred years ago.
Any thoughts on that?
Yeah not to mention the fact that Apple has already done them one better and said "there will be one hardware manufacturer for our iPad."
So MS is pretty broad minded even with this recent request in comparison. I don't think they could possibly run into trouble on this given that Apple is far, far more closed about its manufacturing and licensing.
I'm not saying one is worse than the other, but in terms of anti-trust, as P says, MS is pretty unassailable these days.