Shutting down the military while waging war is not an option, but the idea of continuing to operating critical defense systems even after known penetration by hostile hackers or damaging worms will take some getting used to."
What do they think the military goes home when someone gets killed or they find out there might be a spy? That's why our military security is completely segmented. The whole concept of need to know basis, is the understanding that information will fall into the wrong hands, you just want to minimize how much information can fall into the wrong hands when someone or something is compromised. That computers, especially military computers would follow this highly pragmatic principle shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
At least they are putting some strong language into this version of the bill "No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense... or to any other department, agency or element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."
If the full senate doesn't approve this bill, the entire issue is pretty much stillborn. Assuming they approve it though, there are still several more steps for it to go through.
The main concern at this point is what happens when the bill goes to committee. This process has always held concerns for me, but it worries me that whether or not the defunding stays in the bill or not is so dependant on one person. "The defunding has a chance of surviving committee " Schwartz says "If Stevens is behind it, then it almost certainly will happen.". I would have felt more comfortable if he had said "It will almost certainly succeed."
Let's just hope he's behind defunding it. Removing the defunding would completely remove the teeth from this bill IMO.
I also didn't see any comments from President Bush. As I understand it, he is supportive of the TIA. Will he sign a bill that is going to kill one of his pet projects? Again, let's hope so.
There are still a lot of steps for this bill to go through before it becomes law. Progress is being made, but let your senator know that you are against TIA, and maybe this bill will make it.
I'm not buying your Red Hat 5.2 : Red Hat 9:: Win3.1 : Win2k analogy. Windows 3.1 is a 16-bit DOS shell with a crude UI, and Windows 2000 is a 32-bit protected OS with pre-emptive multi-tasking.
So by your logic, Windows XP really isn't all that different than Windows NT 3. I mean Windows NT 3.0 was 32 bit pre-emptively multi-tasked operating system. In fact if you look at the help about for Windows XP you will see that it is in fact only Windows 5.1 (Windows 2000 was 5.0). Windows XP, just has better hardware support and a better interface (packages aren't any better though).
You are of course falling into the unfortunately common mistake of equating the kernel to the OS. They are not the same thing, yes Red Hat 9 runs a kernel that descended from the same kernel it ran with 5.2 (albeit significantly improved). However a kernel does not an Operating System make, just as a heart doesn't make a human being.
There are significant differences between Red Hat 5.2 and Red Hat 9.0. All the Linux distributuins have underdone *tremendous* amounts of growth during the past 5 years. In fact they have changed far more dramatically than Windows has in that same time frame.
There are some good points made in this article. Working at a software company, there is quite frequently an incredible amount of pressure to get new features in as quickly as possible.
However I don't think that phenomenon is ever going to go away. To a certain extent there is market pressure to add new features to your product, people always want the new bells and whistles. There has been a tremendous market pressure over the last decade to add bells and whisltes over bullet proofing your code. Perhaps there will be some pressure now towards bullet proofing your code, but until customers stop demanding more features and start demanding quality code, software won't change.
There are some companies out there (M$ being the prime example) that don't add much in the way of new functionality, but rather repackage things, move buttons and menus around and make the new incompatible with the old. At the same time they only fix certain bugs, but leave others alone. Yet people buy their crap at record rates.
I think most developers would love to see a move towards software quality rather than software features, but until the market dictates that as a priority it just won't happen.
This will be another solid update
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Microsoft should (but won't) take a page from Apple's book. You can as a company, co-exist peacefully with the Open Source community. Apple has put themselves in a great position IMO for the future. Their releases add actual features, making people *want* to upgrade instead of forcing them to. It's a beautiful thing, because you can still use OS 10.0 if you want to, but they add so many features, bells, whistles and in general cool stuff - people really want to get the newest version of their software.
That is just pure lunacy. Hatch has said some pretty crazy things over the years, but this has to top the list.
I've been a supporter of Hatch for several years, even helping with the election effort on several occasions. This takes the cake though, it's time to get fresher blood into that office.
If you want to call his office and complain (as I will): DC Office: 202.224.5251 SLC Office: 801.524.4380
here is his website: http://www.senate.gov/~hatch/
Please call and voice your extreme antagonism to these types of statements. Although the other Senators called him down, he needs to know that we hear these statements and are against them in the extreme.
I just got off the phone with the Salt Lake Office, and they had no idea he had made statements of this nature. In fact she was quite taken back to hear of them. Please call and let them know how you feel about this. If they know their voters are against this type of behavior, they will change it.
As I stated, there is room to argue on this point. Most of the difference hinges on definitions. Such as defining the difference between an act of Creation and an act of Discovery. Is it an act of observation, or an act of Imagination? There are some things that if that person had not lived, and had not produced those works (Shakespeare, Mozart) the world likely never would have benefitted from them. There are others that we would have regardless (Electricity, Projectiles). The problem is with those things in between these two extremes. It's not 100% clear cut which way it should go in some cases. I can understand allowing limited patents on certain algorithms, however others are ludicrous. Thus my problem on simply allowing patents on algorithms. It depends greatly on the algorithm and whether or not it was truly an act of Creation or of Discovery.
What I do like about their version of this law is that it has to be Novel, pushing those patented towards the more rigorous side of the spectrum.
Business method patents weren't added until the late 1990's. In fact our patent and copyright system has gone through extensive changes to make it less beneficial IMO. I would argue in fact that version 1.0 was *far* more desireable than what we have now.
Laws are not like software. Software gets better with time, Laws and regulations often go the other direction.
It sounds like they have learned from some of the mistakes our patent system has made.
Under the European law, software companies would obtain
exclusive rights only for programs that demonstrate novelty in
their "technical contribution."
Their reasoning: "We don't want to arrive at a model where in the U.S. everything under the sun can be patented,"
I think they are approaching this from a better angle. I still disagree with the general notion of patenting algorithms as such. I don't think algorithms are invented any more than mathematical truths are invented, rather they are discovered. IMO, there is a difference and a patent shouldn't be granted on that. Although, I will admit there is room to disagree with that position.
It looks like they will be avoiding the major abuses we are experiencing though, since you can patent a novel approach to hand writing recognition, but not hand writing recognition in general.
Now, the question is how do we get the U.S. government to adopt this standard? Will it be like the Metric system, where we are too entrenched to switch to a better system? Let's hope not for our sakes.
From the underlying study: The survey, conducted online for Symantec by Applied Research, a full service market research firm, interviewed 1,000 youths between the ages of seven and 18.
I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their parents and seven year olds.
I would like to know how many of the children in this study were 12 or under.
When asked how often they check emails, 72 percent of the respondents said a few times a week to a few times a day. When asked how important it is to always have mom or dad check emails with them, nearly one in three said it is not important, 21 percent said they don't care and 16 percent said they don't want their parents to check their emails with them. Furthermore, when asked whether they get parents' permission before giving out their personal email addresses to friends or even people and Web sites with which they are not familiar, 46 percent of the youths responded that they do not..
Again, this is highly dependant on the ages of the children. Younger children would be more likely to ask their parents to help them get their e-mail, while teenagers would be far more likely to want their parents to just leave them alone.
It's difficult to infer anything meaningful from these numbers.
Re:Frustratingly typical day in the life of Micros
on
Yet Another Windows Worm
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Yeah, because it's a lot of work to set windows to do updates automatically. Just a troll, nothing to see here.
You obviously don't administer servers with Enterprise Level Code. If you did, you'd know that with Microsoft you can't simply use automatic updates. Microsoft Service Packs break systems all the time. If you run ASP.NET and Sql Server code, you get bitch slapped everytime they release a service pack or "security fix". They consistently change functionality, without warning. Then they just post on their website (three months later) that the service pack changed the way some undocumented feature worked, but you weren't supposed to use it that way anyway, so tough shit.
Ha!! Automatic updates my ass.
Frustratingly typical day in the life of Microsoft
on
Yet Another Windows Worm
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's frustrating how many viruses Windows keeps getting slammed with. There are some people that will point to a Linux worm or virus here or there, but I run both Windows and Linux servers and there is simply no comparison with the amount of worms Windows based machines receive. Some people say it's because Windows is much more prevalent than the Linux, but there are a lot of servers running Linux now.
The amount of work required to keep up with just doing updates has finally gotten to me. Last night I noticed my Windows server was sending packets like mad, suspicious I did a netstat -an, it was making connections to hundreds of other machines. Tired of this dance, I decided to just shut the windows server down. Maybe one day I'll patch it...then again, maybe I'll just leave it shut down for good.
Interestingly, my GNU\Debian Linux box is happily sitting right next to it serving up pages. I haven't had to reboot it in ages, I imagine it will be running until a nifty new kernel comes out that I just have to have.
It is interesting to note that if what Ravichner is saying "the NDA does not exclude information that the recipient obtained in ways other than from SCO" is true, then signing the NDA could prevent you from disclosing any information about SCO code even if the court rules that SCO's distribution of the code (with Linux) made it public.
So you could in theory be binding yourself to confidentiality with regards to SCO's code even if (when?) the ruling goes against SCO!!
As SCO has said, binding legal agreements are far more compelling in a court of law than copyrights. I wouldn't touch that agreement with a ten foot pole.
Unfortunately, as we knew it would be all along, this is just another ploy by SCO. They won't give you full access to the code, you can't talk about the specifics, they can bind you from disclosing already public information, and to top it all off, they can make you come to Utah to defend yourself in court.
Something you have to wonder is if they are going to patent this information? I would hope that since this is being done at a University that won't happen. Although with all the recent patent craziness, I wouldn't be completely suprised if they granted a patent on it.
It still concerns and dismays me greatly that there is any discussion of patenting things like the human genome. As many have said, they are a discovery rather than an invention. Let's hope this research follows that philosophy.
Sadly, the fact that stem cells have great potential application to ease human suffering is seen by many people as a great way to make a buck. It's even worse that most of this research is funded by our tax dollars, then we have to turn right back around and pay a high per item cost to help defray research costs.::sigh::
Ok, I will admit to having a bias. I definitely like OS X, better than windows. I never in my life thought I would make that statement, because prior to OS X, I was not a big Mac fan.
I can see your point about large datasets in a list view, although windows is not super great about dealing with large datasets like this either. I know, because I work with huge amounts of data daily, and windows leaves much to be desired in that area. Just try deleting 10,000 files from a folder some time, and you'll know what I mean. If you do this through the gui, it will take somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour or more (on a 2 Ghz machine with 1 gig of Ram). Do it through the command line and this take less than five minutes, so the problem is definitely with the gui code.
Admittedly I haven't tried this specific example on OS X, for comparison. I guess my bias comes from using OS X and Windows (95, 98, Me , NT, 2K, XP) on an everyday basis. OS X is far more stable and responsive. Rarely does my mouse and keyboard simply stop responding for 10 seconds to do who the hell knows what on OS X, but this happens consistently on windows machines.
Of course there are many more issues to the OS than just the Widget Set, and maybe I unfairly painted the Windows Widgets, based on larger problems I have with Windows.
Windows widgets are slow? Compared to Mac OS X widgets? Have you used Win2k recently, or WinXP with the Fisher-Price theme turned off? Absolutely no argument to clunky and ugly, but I wouldn't call Mac OS X's UI fast.
Unfortunately at work I run Win XP, but I have a powerbook running OS 10.2. IMO, it screems, compared to the Windows graphics code. Windows is fine for small things, but try moving arounds large files or large amounts of files using the gui, and then try the same thing using the command prompt. Ugh, the gui is orders of magnitude slower.
Ultimately, it depends what you are using for Windows Widgets on how fast they are. If you are doing pure bare bones Win32 API programming, it's pretty damn fast. But if you are using Visual Basic, MFC or a dot net language with generated code, they are god awful slow. I suppose as with anything, it really boils down to the programmer, and how much they optimized their code, unfortunately that doesn't seem to be heavily stressed in the windows world.
If you happen to use C#, compare the differences with a Visual Studio.Net generated Windows form with a hand coded one using the techniques advocated by Petzold in his book programming Windows with C#. There is a world of difference in speed and size.
especially if Apple were to release Safari for Windows
Now that would be awesome. Safari is by far the best looking and fastest browser I use. However the release of Safari for windows is probably just a huge pipe dream.
Safari is one of the few browsers that uses native OS widgets for rendering pages. So safari is based around the Aqua interface and rendered in OpenGL. In essense it is 100% glued to OS X. Even if they did port it to windows, you wouldn't see the same type of speed or beauty in the browser simply because Windows widgets are clunky, ugly and slow.
I have to agree with the poster on this. I'm really disappointed by this development. I would rather have seen an agreement that required Microsoft to bundle AOL and Netscape with their operating systems for the next 7 years. As much as I get bugged by AOL's marketing, I really detest the thought of these two combining forces.
I hope some of the states stick it out, and take the Anti-Trust suit to the Supreme court. I think it would be incredibly beneficial for the industry as a whole if Microsoft got busted into chunks.
Sadly this ruling is nothing to Microsoft. $750 million is something they can afford to pay using some interest from their massive cash reserves
"The San Luis Obispo, Calif., software company has reached a settlement in a landmark U.S. case that could have far-reaching impact for companies that try to disguise their online banner ads."
That seems like a pretty drastic over-statement. This is a settlement, the judge didn't decide in their favor. I don't think settlements have any value as far as precedent goes. That's why so many people settle cases in the first place. To classify this as a "landmark" case looks like someone is having delusions of grandeur.
I am happy to see that they'll stop using those irritating banners though. They don't usually get me anymore, but every once in a while they'll cause a minor palpitation (unless of course I'm on a Linux box).
I was looking at those images and for some reason they just didn't look right to me. If you browse down the page a bit, you'll see that not only was the moon "processed" into the image. Essentially the entire "earth" and Jupiter images were "processed" as well.
Why does Jupiter look so big in that picture? Did anyone catch what magnification that picture was taken at? Jupiter was behind the earth, and a long ways away, why does it still look so big?
Looks like the server puked under the load, hopefully they'll come back up soon.
I'm as against the invasion of federal powers as the next guy, but something that hurts that cause is overly reactionary or alarmist agruments. This articles strikes me that way.
Anyone who has spent some time in a court room realizes that judges are not the completely inept morons they are often made out to be. Sure someone could "sue" you for breaking a wiretapping law, that doesn't however mean they would win. People seldom appreciate the difference between those two things, anyone can sue for just about anything. Whether or not they win the case is an entirely different thing.
Saying that monitoring a honey pot is a violation of the federal wiretapping act is a huge legal stretch IMO. Even though a honeypot is designed to be hacked, it still has to be hacked. They still have to commit a felony to get into it, that's the equivalent of saying that if someone hacks into your workstation and you happen to be monitoring it at the time you are then in violation of the federal wiretapping act. That is just patently absurd.
The one example they use isn't very compelling to me either. They are as usual light on the details, but "tapping" a cell phone that isn't yours is an entirely different story than monitoring a computer that you own and operate.
Every once in a while we get crazy laws on the books, and off the wall judges pushing their own agenda's, but when things make it to the supreme court or the higher courts, things usually shake out in a logical and reasonable fashion. The first time someone get's *successfully* prosecuted under this, then I'll buy it.
Sheesh, it's amazing how much the SCO PR department has in common with M$ PR department. They both must read slashdot and then formulate their responses accordingly.
When this law suit first came out, I dismissed it as rubbish. Then I started to think about it, and I got a little worried there was some truth to it. Then I read the OSI Position Paper. I don't worry about this too much any more. The OSI position paper makes some very compelling points, which SCO hasn't addressed yet. In many cases they simply won't be able to address them.
I'm not suprised that SCO has an opinion that this doesn't hurt their case. Of course they'd have that opinion publicly, no matter how pissed they are about it privately. Ultimately the only opinion(s) that will matter are the judges.
Did you notice that hughes deflected and had no opinion on a more questions than he answered? I suspect he is right about the fact that the GPL can't make code free if the original author didn't make it free, however the fact that they as the original authors *were* distributing it under the GPL complicates that claim greatly.
Of course that is all supposing there is any merit to their claim that Linux contains enterprise code from SCO in the first place. That is a claim that I and many others are dubious of in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Shutting down the military while waging war is not an option, but the idea of continuing to operating critical defense systems even after known penetration by hostile hackers or damaging worms will take some getting used to."
What do they think the military goes home when someone gets killed or they find out there might be a spy? That's why our military security is completely segmented. The whole concept of need to know basis, is the understanding that information will fall into the wrong hands, you just want to minimize how much information can fall into the wrong hands when someone or something is compromised. That computers, especially military computers would follow this highly pragmatic principle shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
At least they are putting some strong language into this version of ... or to any other department, agency or
the bill "No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the
Department of Defense
element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on
research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness
program."
If the full senate doesn't approve this bill, the entire issue is
pretty much stillborn. Assuming they approve it though, there are
still several more steps for it to go through.
The main concern at this point is what happens when the bill goes to
committee. This process has always held concerns for me, but it
worries me that whether or not the defunding stays in the bill or not
is so dependant on one person. "The defunding has a chance of
surviving committee " Schwartz says "If Stevens is behind it, then it
almost certainly will happen.". I would have felt more comfortable if
he had said "It will almost certainly succeed."
Let's just hope he's behind defunding it. Removing the defunding
would completely remove the teeth from this bill IMO.
I also didn't see any comments from President Bush. As I understand
it, he is supportive of the TIA. Will he sign a bill that is going to
kill one of his pet projects? Again, let's hope so.
There are still a lot of steps for this bill to go through before it
becomes law. Progress is being made, but let your senator know that
you are against TIA, and maybe this bill will make it.
It is a misconception that Python is not strongly typed. It is strongly typed, it is not *statically* typed.
// Java
Python is a stronly typed, dynamically typed, extremely late bound language.
Double check your facts before calling someone else a dumbass.
The difference between a dynamically typed language and a statically typed language is this:
int myvar = 1;
# Python
myvar = 1
The difference is that the Java compiler assigns a datatype to the location of myvar, but python assigns a datatype to the value held in myvar.
It's a subtle difference, and many python newbies think it's not strongly typed, however that is a mistake.
They are comparing a development version to an un-named commercial web server?
Why don't they compare it to apache 2.0.46 if they want a newer, but release product? I expect they did, but they didn't get the results they wanted.
This is a development version, it's an odd numbered release for crying out loud.
I wouldn't be suprised to see this is bankrolled by M$. Let's compare IIS in development to Apache 2.1, and then see what IIS bug density rate is.
Bah!!
I'm not buying your Red Hat 5.2 : Red Hat 9 :: Win3.1 : Win2k analogy. Windows 3.1 is a 16-bit DOS shell with a crude UI, and Windows 2000 is a 32-bit protected OS with pre-emptive multi-tasking.
So by your logic, Windows XP really isn't all that different than Windows NT 3. I mean Windows NT 3.0 was 32 bit pre-emptively multi-tasked operating system. In fact if you look at the help about for Windows XP you will see that it is in fact only Windows 5.1 (Windows 2000 was 5.0). Windows XP, just has better hardware support and a better interface (packages aren't any better though).
You are of course falling into the unfortunately common mistake of equating the kernel to the OS. They are not the same thing, yes Red Hat 9 runs a kernel that descended from the same kernel it ran with 5.2 (albeit significantly improved). However a kernel does not an Operating System make, just as a heart doesn't make a human being.
There are significant differences between Red Hat 5.2 and Red Hat 9.0. All the Linux distributuins have underdone *tremendous* amounts of growth during the past 5 years. In fact they have changed far more dramatically than Windows has in that same time frame.
There are some good points made in this article. Working at a
software company, there is quite frequently an incredible amount
of pressure to get new features in as quickly as possible.
However I don't think that phenomenon is ever going to go away.
To a certain extent there is market pressure to add new features
to your product, people always want the new bells and whistles.
There has been a tremendous market pressure over the last decade
to add bells and whisltes over bullet proofing your code.
Perhaps there will be some pressure now towards bullet proofing
your code, but until customers stop demanding more features and
start demanding quality code, software won't change.
There are some companies out there (M$ being the prime example)
that don't add much in the way of new functionality, but rather
repackage things, move buttons and menus around and make the new
incompatible with the old. At the same time they only fix
certain bugs, but leave others alone. Yet people buy their crap
at record rates.
I think most developers would love to see a move towards
software quality rather than software features, but until the
market dictates that as a priority it just won't happen.
Microsoft should (but won't) take a page from Apple's book. You can as a company, co-exist peacefully with the Open Source community. Apple has put themselves in a great position IMO for the future. Their releases add actual features, making people *want* to upgrade instead of forcing them to. It's a beautiful thing, because you can still use OS 10.0 if you want to, but they add so many features, bells, whistles and in general cool stuff - people really want to get the newest version of their software.
Kudos to Apple for that.
That is just pure lunacy. Hatch has said some pretty crazy
things over the years, but this has to top the list.
I've been a supporter of Hatch for several years, even helping
with the election effort on several occasions. This takes the
cake though, it's time to get fresher blood into that office.
If you want to call his office and complain (as I will):
DC Office: 202.224.5251
SLC Office: 801.524.4380
here is his website:
http://www.senate.gov/~hatch/
Please call and voice your extreme antagonism to these types of
statements. Although the other Senators called him down, he
needs to know that we hear these statements and are against them
in the extreme.
I just got off the phone with the Salt Lake Office, and they had
no idea he had made statements of this nature. In fact she was
quite taken back to hear of them. Please call and let them know
how you feel about this. If they know their voters are against
this type of behavior, they will change it.
As I stated, there is room to argue on this point. Most of the difference hinges on definitions. Such as defining the difference between an act of Creation and an act of Discovery. Is it an act of observation, or an act of Imagination? There are some things that if that person had not lived, and had not produced those works (Shakespeare, Mozart) the world likely never would have benefitted from them. There are others that we would have regardless (Electricity, Projectiles). The problem is with those things in between these two extremes. It's not 100% clear cut which way it should go in some cases. I can understand allowing limited patents on certain algorithms, however others are ludicrous. Thus my problem on simply allowing patents on algorithms. It depends greatly on the algorithm and whether or not it was truly an act of Creation or of Discovery.
What I do like about their version of this law is that it has to be Novel, pushing those patented towards the more rigorous side of the spectrum.
Business method patents weren't added until the late 1990's. In fact our patent and copyright system has gone through extensive changes to make it less beneficial IMO. I would argue in fact that version 1.0 was *far* more desireable than what we have now.
Laws are not like software. Software gets better with time, Laws and regulations often go the other direction.
It sounds like they have learned from some of the mistakes our
patent system has made.
Under the European law, software companies would obtain
exclusive rights only for programs that demonstrate novelty in
their "technical contribution."
Their reasoning: "We don't want to arrive at a model where
in the U.S. everything under the sun can be patented,"
I think they are approaching this from a better angle. I still
disagree with the general notion of patenting algorithms as
such. I don't think algorithms are invented any more than
mathematical truths are invented, rather they are discovered.
IMO, there is a difference and a patent shouldn't be granted on
that. Although, I will admit there is room to disagree with
that position.
It looks like they will be avoiding the major abuses we are
experiencing though, since you can patent a novel approach to
hand writing recognition, but not hand writing recognition in
general.
Now, the question is how do we get the U.S. government to adopt
this standard? Will it be like the Metric system, where we are
too entrenched to switch to a better system? Let's hope not for
our sakes.
From the underlying study:
The survey, conducted online for Symantec by Applied Research, a
full service market research firm, interviewed 1,000 youths
between the ages of seven and 18.
I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast
difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their
parents and seven year olds.
I would like to know how many of the children in this study were
12 or under.
When asked how often they check emails, 72 percent of the
respondents said a few times a week to a few times a day. When
asked how important it is to always have mom or dad check emails
with them, nearly one in three said it is not important, 21
percent said they don't care and 16 percent said they don't want
their parents to check their emails with them. Furthermore, when
asked whether they get parents' permission before giving out
their personal email addresses to friends or even people and Web
sites with which they are not familiar, 46 percent of the youths
responded that they do not..
Again, this is highly dependant on the ages of the children.
Younger children would be more likely to ask their parents to
help them get their e-mail, while teenagers would be far more
likely to want their parents to just leave them alone.
It's difficult to infer anything meaningful from these numbers.
Yeah, because it's a lot of work to set windows to do updates automatically. Just a troll, nothing to see here.
You obviously don't administer servers with Enterprise Level Code. If you did, you'd know that with Microsoft you can't simply use automatic updates. Microsoft Service Packs break systems all the time. If you run ASP.NET and Sql Server code, you get bitch slapped everytime they release a service pack or "security fix". They consistently change functionality, without warning. Then they just post on their website (three months later) that the service pack changed the way some undocumented feature worked, but you weren't supposed to use it that way anyway, so tough shit.
Ha!! Automatic updates my ass.
It's frustrating how many viruses Windows keeps getting slammed with.
There are some people that will point to a Linux worm or virus here
or there, but I run both Windows and Linux servers and there is
simply no comparison with the amount of worms Windows based machines
receive. Some people say it's because Windows is much more prevalent
than the Linux, but there are a lot of servers running Linux now.
The amount of work required to keep up with just doing updates has
finally gotten to me. Last night I noticed my Windows server was
sending packets like mad, suspicious I did a netstat -an, it was
making connections to hundreds of other machines. Tired of this
dance, I decided to just shut the windows server down. Maybe one day
I'll patch it...then again, maybe I'll just leave it shut down for
good.
Interestingly, my GNU\Debian Linux box is happily sitting right next
to it serving up pages. I haven't had to reboot it in ages, I imagine
it will be running until a nifty new kernel comes out that I just
have to have.
See ya Microsoft.
It is interesting to note that if what Ravichner is saying "the
NDA does not exclude information that the recipient obtained in
ways other than from SCO" is true, then signing the NDA could
prevent you from disclosing any information about SCO code even
if the court rules that SCO's distribution of the code (with
Linux) made it public.
So you could in theory be binding yourself to confidentiality
with regards to SCO's code even if (when?) the ruling goes
against SCO!!
As SCO has said, binding legal agreements are far more
compelling in a court of law than copyrights. I wouldn't touch
that agreement with a ten foot pole.
Unfortunately, as we knew it would be all along, this is just
another ploy by SCO. They won't give you full access to the
code, you can't talk about the specifics, they can bind you from
disclosing already public information, and to top it all off,
they can make you come to Utah to defend yourself in court.
Something you have to wonder is if they are going to patent this
::sigh::
information? I would hope that since this is being done at a
University that won't happen. Although with all the recent patent
craziness, I wouldn't be completely suprised if they granted a patent
on it.
It still concerns and dismays me greatly that there is any discussion
of patenting things like the human genome. As many have said, they
are a discovery rather than an invention. Let's hope this research
follows that philosophy.
Sadly, the fact that stem cells have great potential application to
ease human suffering is seen by many people as a great way to make a
buck. It's even worse that most of this research is funded by our
tax dollars, then we have to turn right back around and pay a high
per item cost to help defray research costs.
I mean, really, your bias is showing through here
Ok, I will admit to having a bias. I definitely like OS X, better than windows. I never in my life thought I would make that statement, because prior to OS X, I was not a big Mac fan.
I can see your point about large datasets in a list view, although windows is not super great about dealing with large datasets like this either. I know, because I work with huge amounts of data daily, and windows leaves much to be desired in that area. Just try deleting 10,000 files from a folder some time, and you'll know what I mean. If you do this through the gui, it will take somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour or more (on a 2 Ghz machine with 1 gig of Ram). Do it through the command line and this take less than five minutes, so the problem is definitely with the gui code.
Admittedly I haven't tried this specific example on OS X, for comparison. I guess my bias comes from using OS X and Windows (95, 98, Me , NT, 2K, XP) on an everyday basis. OS X is far more stable and responsive. Rarely does my mouse and keyboard simply stop responding for 10 seconds to do who the hell knows what on OS X, but this happens consistently on windows machines.
Of course there are many more issues to the OS than just the Widget Set, and maybe I unfairly painted the Windows Widgets, based on larger problems I have with Windows.
Windows widgets are slow? Compared to Mac OS X widgets? Have you used Win2k recently, or WinXP with the Fisher-Price theme turned off? Absolutely no argument to clunky and ugly, but I wouldn't call Mac OS X's UI fast.
.Net generated Windows form with a hand coded one using the techniques advocated by Petzold in his book programming Windows with C#. There is a world of difference in speed and size.
Unfortunately at work I run Win XP, but I have a powerbook running OS 10.2. IMO, it screems, compared to the Windows graphics code. Windows is fine for small things, but try moving arounds large files or large amounts of files using the gui, and then try the same thing using the command prompt. Ugh, the gui is orders of magnitude slower.
Ultimately, it depends what you are using for Windows Widgets on how fast they are. If you are doing pure bare bones Win32 API programming, it's pretty damn fast. But if you are using Visual Basic, MFC or a dot net language with generated code, they are god awful slow. I suppose as with anything, it really boils down to the programmer, and how much they optimized their code, unfortunately that doesn't seem to be heavily stressed in the windows world.
If you happen to use C#, compare the differences with a Visual Studio
especially if Apple were to release Safari for Windows
Now that would be awesome. Safari is by far the best looking and fastest browser I use. However the release of Safari for windows is probably just a huge pipe dream.
Safari is one of the few browsers that uses native OS widgets for rendering pages. So safari is based around the Aqua interface and rendered in OpenGL. In essense it is 100% glued to OS X. Even if they did port it to windows, you wouldn't see the same type of speed or beauty in the browser simply because Windows widgets are clunky, ugly and slow.
Before someone else nitpicks me. It was a settlement, not a court ruling.
I have to agree with the poster on this. I'm really
disappointed by this development. I would rather have seen an
agreement that required Microsoft to bundle AOL and Netscape
with their operating systems for the next 7 years. As much as I
get bugged by AOL's marketing, I really detest the thought of
these two combining forces.
I hope some of the states stick it out, and take the Anti-Trust
suit to the Supreme court. I think it would be incredibly
beneficial for the industry as a whole if Microsoft got busted
into chunks.
Sadly this ruling is nothing to Microsoft. $750 million is
something they can afford to pay using some interest from their
massive cash reserves
"The San Luis Obispo, Calif., software company has reached a
settlement in a landmark U.S. case that could have far-reaching
impact for companies that try to disguise their online banner
ads."
That seems like a pretty drastic over-statement. This is a
settlement, the judge didn't decide in their favor. I don't
think settlements have any value as far as precedent goes.
That's why so many people settle cases in the first place. To
classify this as a "landmark" case looks like someone is having
delusions of grandeur.
I am happy to see that they'll stop using those irritating
banners though. They don't usually get me anymore, but every
once in a while they'll cause a minor palpitation (unless of
course I'm on a Linux box).
I was looking at those images and for some reason they just didn't look right to me. If you browse down the page a bit, you'll see that not only was the moon "processed" into the image. Essentially the entire "earth" and Jupiter images were "processed" as well.
Why does Jupiter look so big in that picture? Did anyone catch what magnification that picture was taken at? Jupiter was behind the earth, and a long ways away, why does it still look so big?
Looks like the server puked under the load, hopefully they'll come back up soon.
I'm as against the invasion of federal powers as the next guy,
but something that hurts that cause is overly reactionary or
alarmist agruments. This articles strikes me that way.
Anyone who has spent some time in a court room realizes that
judges are not the completely inept morons they are often made
out to be. Sure someone could "sue" you for breaking a
wiretapping law, that doesn't however mean they would win.
People seldom appreciate the difference between those two
things, anyone can sue for just about anything. Whether or not
they win the case is an entirely different thing.
Saying that monitoring a honey pot is a violation of the federal
wiretapping act is a huge legal stretch IMO. Even though a
honeypot is designed to be hacked, it still has to be hacked.
They still have to commit a felony to get into it, that's the
equivalent of saying that if someone hacks into your workstation
and you happen to be monitoring it at the time you are then in
violation of the federal wiretapping act. That is just patently
absurd.
The one example they use isn't very compelling to me either.
They are as usual light on the details, but "tapping" a cell
phone that isn't yours is an entirely different story than
monitoring a computer that you own and operate.
Every once in a while we get crazy laws on the books, and off
the wall judges pushing their own agenda's, but when things make
it to the supreme court or the higher courts, things usually
shake out in a logical and reasonable fashion. The first time
someone get's *successfully* prosecuted under this, then I'll
buy it.
Sheesh, it's amazing how much the SCO PR department has in
common with M$ PR department. They both must read slashdot and
then formulate their responses accordingly.
When this law suit first came out, I dismissed it as rubbish.
Then I started to think about it, and I got a little worried
there was some truth to it. Then I read the OSI
Position Paper. I don't worry about this too much any more. The
OSI position paper makes some very compelling points, which SCO
hasn't addressed yet. In many cases they simply won't be able
to address them.
I'm not suprised that SCO has an opinion that this doesn't hurt
their case. Of course they'd have that opinion publicly, no
matter how pissed they are about it privately. Ultimately the
only opinion(s) that will matter are the judges.
Did you notice that hughes deflected and had no opinion on a
more questions than he answered? I suspect he is right about
the fact that the GPL can't make code free if the original
author didn't make it free, however the fact that they as the
original authors *were* distributing it under the GPL
complicates that claim greatly.
Of course that is all supposing there is any merit to their
claim that Linux contains enterprise code from SCO in the first
place. That is a claim that I and many others are dubious of in
the first place.