The lame theme song for Enterprise alone is worthy of burying the entire franchise.
The biggest problem with the series is that they've pretty much exhausted their ever-redundant plot devices: time travel, super-superior uber hostile aliens that all conveniently have simple secret weaknesses, crew members going bad, intra-crew sexual tension, emotion as an asset/liability, etc. I'm so tired of watching a new episode only to see an old theme played out with different actors.
Wow, look, the Enterprise season finale has them tossed back in time to where? Of course, WWII and Nazi Germany./yawn
We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.
Left, More-Left, and Extreme-Left. There, is that an accurate representation of slashdot's "diverse spectrum of political ideologies"? Me thinks so.
A person's political slant is irrelevant except to those who have lost the ability to be reasoned with and engage in productive debate. Who cares about "left" or "right" if you really want to talk about issues. But if you don't want to talk about issues and you just want to create a smokescreen, you start labelling people as "liberal" as if that's an excuse to discount their wisdom and experience.
Luckily not everyone is so shallow. I look forward to some substantive debate, which is what's sorely lacking amongst all the pundit-inspired name-calling.
If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology.
- Noam Chomsky
A more apropos symbol would be a hand coming out of a $1000 suit collecting a big wad of cash from a defense contractor, pharmaceutical or healthcare corporation.
I believe the issue is that the media has its own agenda and if a story conflicts with that agenda, it's not likely to be given attention. It's arguable as to whether or not you could call this censorship.
In the realm of this area, there are tons of stories that have a snowball's chance in hell of getting much media attention, because they open up big cans of worms that upset very powerful corporations:
* Mad cow disease has been discovered in the US but isn't acknowledged -- that would upset the beef lobby - very powerful
* In the US there's virtually no dialogue about the concerns of genetically-modified food. Another issue of not pissing off the advertisers.
* The DU armament issue is another hot potato that the American media doesn't want to touch.
* There's a plethora of amazing stories about bills that have been mischaracterized or inaccurately reported on, from the Medicare bill to the various legislation involving the Iraqi invasion that has been bastardized in 30sec soundbytes as a perversion of the truth.
* Lots of stories about dangers of pharmaceuticals that would hurt big pharma.
* The SEC investigations and sanctions against almost every major financial corporation in America for illegal/unethical activity - which are also heavy advertisers and thus, won't be mentioned by name even if a story on the issue is reported.
* Shell's fraud in reporting oil reserves.
* Without a doubt, the administration's outing of a CIA agent, and how docile the media became is another prime example. Had a democrat/liberal done what Novak did, he'd be hanging from a tree.
You can't really say these stories have been "censored" - they've been "selectively dismissed" as a result of being in conflict with the media's agenda.
It's a foolish, idealistic notion these days, that any of the major media really have that much of a "responsibility" to their audience, at least in contrast to their responsibility to their management, shareholders and advertisers.
...how all of these 'censored' stories reflect a left-leaning viewpoint.
It's not that interesting. Power right now rests with the right; stories with a right-wing slant are promoted, left-leaning stories demoted or censored. The time to complain about a left-wing slant in when power rests with the left.
Good point. Another to consider is that the left are typically less supportive of corporate globalization. Left-leaning stories tend to take pot-shots at large commercial institutions (which IMO includes the Bush administration) and the media makes its money from advertising, much of it provided by entities that exploit their power to eliminate or downplay any legitimate criticism.
Perhaps one of the biggest glaring omissions in the media of late has been the controversy surrounding virtually all the major corporations and investment brokers engaging in illegal and unethical activity. In some cases the stories have been lightly covered and then quickly ignored, in others they've been outright removed from the public spotlight. The SEC has been fining investment companies like never before but it's almost impossible to see any major media call out the sanctioned corporations by name. Shell Oil seriously under-reported their oil reserves - it made international news and resulted in investigations and fines and I didn't see a smidgeon of it in the mainstream media - even though this is an issue that drives to the heart of the middle east situation and rising gas prices. But you cricize Shell, you risk losing a lot of advertising. Is this left-leaning? The problem is, a lot of conservatives basically consider criticizing any corporation to be leftist.
Ironically, let's summarize for those herein who won't RTFA...
What is really astounding is not just the almost total lack of knowledge by practitioners, experts, and even academics, of the history and foundation of their own field (which does not stop them from making broad pronouncements; they even boast about it; Unskilled and Unaware of It indeed). Rather, it's also the lack of most basic reasoning ability--confusion, vagueness, inconsistency and a total disregard for evidence. In my writings I at least strive to be logical, and back arguments with either direct evidence, or references to sources (the reader is invited to judge to what extent I succeeded in my article under consideration). Yet in the whole Slashdot exchange the reasoning and evidence for my arguments are thoroughly ignored, while nothing resembling such is offered for opposing arguments. Yet I am the one accused of unsubstantiated claims. Poor reasoning in a field founded on logic is scary, and it sure provides yet another reason why the relational model has not been properly appreciated in the industry.
About two weeks ago, we had an issue with our SSHD server. I didn't have Kerberos enabled but someone sent a malformed handshake that crashed the ssh server. It turns out the version of OpenSSH we had installed by default had Kerberos enabled. The later versions do not, so if you're using OpenSSH, make sure you're using the latest version.
No, what he's saying has nothing to do with MS vs. Unix. He's saying that the effort/time/money required to create the code in the first place is less than the effort required to keep it running: - for the next decade or three - on hardware that wasn't even on the drawing boards when the program was written - for uses that, while within the program's theoretical capability, were never comprehended by the original creators.
Ever maintain a code base for a decade? It's painful - more painful than writing new code. That's his point.
I have code that I've maintained for 15-20 years. I understand what he means. It doesn't have to be painful if the code is well designed and running on a solid platform. Having also run Unix and MS-based systems, in some cases side-by-side using almost identical applications, I can authoritatively state that based on my experience, Microsoft-platforms require exponentially more maintenance.
The modular nature of Unix makes it a lot easier to expand functionality. Microsoft's departure from these ideals makes attaining the same expansion flexibility more tedious and difficult.
I can't remember a time where a patch to my Unix box made me wonder whether all my apps would cease to function. This is a constant source of concern for every Microsoft admin. There's no way that maintenance costs are comparable.
I'm not meaning to bash Microsoft. If you get paid by the hour, that's the field to be in. You definitely have job security. If you get paid to get the job done, and want to not have to slave over servers and applications constantly, there are better alternatives that have dramatically less maintainence requirements.
If you don't believe me, try to find a 10+ year old application for Unix and Microsoft. Chances are the Unix application will run without a hitch on the latest OS versions. Roll the dice with Microsoft. Odds are it won't run.
Fact 1: The most important factor in software work is not the tools or techniques used by the programmers, but rather the quality of the programmers themselves.)
I don't necessarily agree with this statement. It's truthfulness is ultimately circumstantial. In theory, it's a fact, but in practice it's a lot more complicated.
Yes, the quality of the programmer is most important, but for the very reason that a seasoned programmer will select the best software and tools, which is equally as important. So the question is basically circular in nature.
Second, the goal of software engineering is to produce a viable product. The best programmer in the world may still be subject to the whims of management which may override his choice of approach or tools.
Fact 41: Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent) of software costs. Therefore, it is probably the most important life cycle phase of software.
I think this is once again, circumstantial. If you're running a Microsoft shop, it's a fact. If you're running a Unix shop, the maintainenace costs can be negligible depending upon the quality of the program design.
It seems to me that you're simply biased against Java. I dunno if you really have 5 different machines running applications of poor performance, but mind you, it is possible to write slow code in just about any language - even Java!
You sir, DO have a point, and quite a poignant and significant one at that.
Any developer foolish enough to choose a language because it's "cool" regardless of whether it's the most suitable language for the application at hand, is in all likelyhood going to be a lousy programmer. Therefore, that would back up my contention that I've never seen a stable Java application that performed worth a shit. It's not necessarily the language. It's the programmers.
Of course, this still doesn't explain what Java is good for, besides getting a job with a company that's a slave to tech-fashion.
I like the Treo, but let's hope the higher-megapixel camera is also higher-quality. More pixels of the world's WORST phone/pda-based camera ever created doesn't mean much.
Does this make any sense? I can see if your legitimate traffic is exceeding a bandwidth limit that you might get dropped/forced to pay more. But a denial of service attack? Wouldn't most service providers want to help their customer with this kind or problem?
In a perfect world, maybe not, but the smaller providers simply can't afford to fight for a little client who's inviting tons of hostile bandwidth (that they wouldn't pay for). The smaller ISPs also cannot get the feds or the uplink providers to do much to combat the attacks unless their pipes are 90+% saturated.
A few years back we were hit with a DOS when we were using Sprint as our primary backbone provider. They refused to get involved because our pipe wasn't non-functional yet.
RapidSatellite.com, which sells satellite TV receivers, was hit at the same time and with similar results. The company responded by quickly moving their electronic storefront to the distributed content delivery services of Speedera, only to be crippled three days later by an attack on that provider's DNS servers, which for an hour also blocked access to other Speedera-hosted sites, including Amazon.com and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the FBI affidavit. RapidSatellite then moved to Akamai, but were out again within a week when the attackers switched to an HTTP flood attack, running massive numbers of queries through RapidSatellite.com's search engine.
I'm not being cynical, but realistic. How much you want to bet the FBI didn't really get involved until either Amazon.com or the Department of Homeland Security's resources got peripherally hit?
Every day there are thousands of DDOS attacks going on, usually against small providers or companies that don't have enough political clout to get the authorities to care much. The perps biggest mistake was probably targetting a provider that had some more substantive clients.
I've been shopping around for some decent control software with C/C++ or Perl APIs (Not Java or X10). Does anyone have any recommendations?
There are lots of interesting applications for these things. Turning lights on if there are unauthorized probes or scans, or some kind of color-coded indicator of network/web traffic. Most of the systems I've seen aren't very Unix-friendly or they're very low level. Any suggestions?
I agree. Java is so slow and resource-intensive it's not a good choice for high-traffic environments, which blows me away when I see some popular sites using this technology. They're destined to fail unless they spend ten times the money in hardware resources they'd otherwise need.
"Java has been considered slow"
Perl and Python are also not considered fast, but
those who use them consider themselves cool.
No, the speed is not such a big factor.
True, but the use of Perl and Python in a real-time, interactive environment is bad design. Those languages were not meant for those types of applications. (despite Slashdot's use of Perl, which has been optimized, but I still contend if they used PHP, they'd be able to handle more traffic with less resources).
Good programmers don't select languages because they're "cool!"
And this epitomizes what is wrong with Java. It's a technology that accompanies a marketing campaign. Why? Because for the most part, unlike other computer languages, Java doesn't address a specific niche or application area in any superior way. Therefore there is no substantive need for Java which explains why it has to be heavily marketed to be "cool" so people will use it.
Having been programming for more than 20 years now, I've noticed a dramatic increase in misguided questions newer techs ask me, specifically, "What language should I program in?" as if there is one universal language that will do everything. I've always found this annoying. I'm asked, "Should I learn Perl or PHP?" as if it's merely a question of picking a single language to do everything. While that may be possible, it doesn't do justice to the application if you try to hack a less-suitable language to address a scenario where another choice would be superior.
Java has been dead for a long time. More marketing isn't going to revive it. No computer language will last if it isn't OBVIOUS to developers that it is the best choice for an application.
The bottom line is that C/C++ is more portable than Java, despite the myth of Java being marketed as more portable. Java has better garbage collection and string handling and some higher-level abilities, but none of those features couldn't be plugged into C/C++ with a few libraries. Most Java applications are interpreted or p-code and run hundreds of times slower than lower-level counterparts.
A good example is Puzzle Pirates. A pretty nifty online game written in Java. Unfortunately, the thing is so goddam slow it really detracts from the experience. This application and the company is suffering because they chose an inferior technology as the base of their service.
email is an unreliable system, so dont expect it to deliver every message flawlessly to begin with.
Sorry, but I completely disagree with you.
If you know little about the technology and what is possible, it would be reasonable to assume the e-mail system is "unreliable" but the system itself doesn't have to be -- that's mainly a symptom of badly configured networks and mail servers. The spamidemic(tm) (in the spirit of egotism expressed in today's story, I claim credit for inventing that word;) has forced ISPs to haphazardly append filtering systems which have caused the e-mail system to be less reliable, but there have always been facilities in place to provide extremely reliable delivery and notice if something wasn't delivered.
Anyone running relay blacklists (IPlists, spamcop, spamhaus, etc.) has been running a "spam firewall" for years. It's a very effective way to stop spam, but it's nothing new nor revolutionary.
For someone who appears to be a flaming right-winger, you sure sound like a "liberal hippie douchebag" with your hyper icon sensitivity. Lighten up. Take your mind of such trivial frustrations with a nice, relaxing abortion clinic protest.
It occurred to me the other day, that the upper-level institutions, be it government or corporate America or whatnot, are becoming so progressively more-removed from the mainstream that they've lost the ability to objectively qualify the needs of their constitutients/market. These entities are so heavily surrounded with "yes-men" they can no longer get accurate information, whether we're talking about a corporate audit or the Cabinet. Polls and research are conducted and if the results aren't what they want, the results are dismissed.
The Nielsen method of rating media is a great example of a check-and-balance system that has become corrupt. The same thing with pollsters, or CPA firms.
At some point, some new system will rise from the ashes of these corrupt institutions to shed some light on reality. Attendance at the Olympics is 30% below what was anticipated; corporations overstate their profits; networks cancel TV shows the public loves and introduce stuff that nobody watches; Clear Channel shoves crappy music down the populace's throat. All these companies seem to have lost touch. Even the media - which of course, have come up with a new word to describe the process, called "group think", which is a nice way of saying "We're all collectively sticking our heads up our asses and patting each other on the back."
It makes you wonder, if, for example, polls say Bush is going to get ~50% of the popular vote, and he ends up with 30%, how will the media react? Will they acknowledge that they have lost touch or will their pride force them to seek out some scandalous explanation for why they were so off base?
An open-source document-verification/moderation-type system could offer a lot of value in these scenarios. Some in government and corporate America seem to realize this, with their interest in things like current event markets, epinions, etc.
In-a-nutshell, the last 10-15 years has shown a trend in advertisers and corporate interests to be more and more bold about asserting hyperbole as fact.
This is most obvious when you watch tv commercials. Ten or more years ago, a "dramatization" would more accurately reflect reality: a cleaning solution or drug visually-demonstrated to eradicate dirt or infection would always leave a few traces behind in the animation. Now, every demonstration of every product shows 100% success. Just yesterday I saw a commercial during the Olympics showing an American pickup truck towing a tractor trailer loaded with a half-dozen vehicles. Completely ludicrous and impossible, but they get away with it with a fleeing "dramatization" tag, knowing full well most peoples' attention spans skip over the fine print. And speaking of fine print, they slap the tiniest disclaimers on advertisements for the shortest periods of time - virtually impossible to read. Who enforces this stuff and why aren't they doing their job?
Nobody seems to care so corporations become more and more cavalier and bold about misrepresenting reality and misleading the populace.
Advertising has always been the art of lying, but in this new dawn of consumerism, corporate interests have the mantra that they don't have to spew anything that's accurate, factual or close to reality if they have the power and resources to repeat their misleading message in perpetuity - that act in itself, according to them, affirms the integrity of their claims. See: GW Bush, MPAA, RIA, SCO, etc.
Now maybe at some point we'll reach critical mass with this BS, and the public will begin to trust nobody? Perhaps in another ten years substance and truth will be popular again? Who knows.
I suggest rather than spit into the wind of corporate america by trying to refute the never-ending stream of inaccurate propaganda, we jump on the bandwagon and hasten the eventual flashpoint of total media & corporate cynacism.
Everyone here should come up with at least one completely ridiculous "fact" or "figure" and do their best to propagate it. Maybe if enough of us pee into the already polluted river of corporate communication we can get the public to begin to seek more pure sources?
.. There will be one big mall in each city. It will be owned by a single mega-corporation. The stores will all be the same; the products will all be the same.
.. This same company will control your telephone, internet, credit cards, public utilities, cable/sat tv, and insurance. If you are late paying your credit card, your cable, tv, water, electricity, telephone, and insurance are cancelled (and vice-versa)
.. The credit reporting agency (singular - owned by the same mega-corporation) will introduce a new feature using computer technology. A perverse combination of MBTI geared towards identifying your lifestyle, level of complacency and value as a "consumer", based on the company's analysis of your actions and purchases, utility consumption, media watched, etc. Your new "life report" will not only gauge your ability to meet your financial obligations, but will reveal your sexual preference, substance addictions, political proclivity, psychological stability, attractiveness, work ethic, and more. Every time you deal with any sizeable entity, your "life report" will be pulled and examined. This will be the beginning of a new era where people are put into castes based on the value of this report and you will choose a spouse primarily based on their stats.
Slashdot Mirror
The lame theme song for Enterprise alone is worthy of burying the entire franchise.
/yawn
The biggest problem with the series is that they've pretty much exhausted their ever-redundant plot devices: time travel, super-superior uber hostile aliens that all conveniently have simple secret weaknesses, crew members going bad, intra-crew sexual tension, emotion as an asset/liability, etc. I'm so tired of watching a new episode only to see an old theme played out with different actors.
Wow, look, the Enterprise season finale has them tossed back in time to where? Of course, WWII and Nazi Germany.
Give it a rest Paramount.
We think we can do a good job since the Slashdot editors represent a diverse spectrum of political ideologies.
Left, More-Left, and Extreme-Left. There, is that an accurate representation of slashdot's "diverse spectrum of political ideologies"? Me thinks so.
A person's political slant is irrelevant except to those who have lost the ability to be reasoned with and engage in productive debate. Who cares about "left" or "right" if you really want to talk about issues. But if you don't want to talk about issues and you just want to create a smokescreen, you start labelling people as "liberal" as if that's an excuse to discount their wisdom and experience.
Luckily not everyone is so shallow. I look forward to some substantive debate, which is what's sorely lacking amongst all the pundit-inspired name-calling.
If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology.
- Noam Chomsky
A more apropos symbol would be a hand coming out of a $1000 suit collecting a big wad of cash from a defense contractor, pharmaceutical or healthcare corporation.
I believe the issue is that the media has its own agenda and if a story conflicts with that agenda, it's not likely to be given attention. It's arguable as to whether or not you could call this censorship.
In the realm of this area, there are tons of stories that have a snowball's chance in hell of getting much media attention, because they open up big cans of worms that upset very powerful corporations:
* Mad cow disease has been discovered in the US but isn't acknowledged -- that would upset the beef lobby - very powerful
* In the US there's virtually no dialogue about the concerns of genetically-modified food. Another issue of not pissing off the advertisers.
* The DU armament issue is another hot potato that the American media doesn't want to touch.
* There's a plethora of amazing stories about bills that have been mischaracterized or inaccurately reported on, from the Medicare bill to the various legislation involving the Iraqi invasion that has been bastardized in 30sec soundbytes as a perversion of the truth.
* Lots of stories about dangers of pharmaceuticals that would hurt big pharma.
* The SEC investigations and sanctions against almost every major financial corporation in America for illegal/unethical activity - which are also heavy advertisers and thus, won't be mentioned by name even if a story on the issue is reported.
* Shell's fraud in reporting oil reserves.
* Without a doubt, the administration's outing of a CIA agent, and how docile the media became is another prime example. Had a democrat/liberal done what Novak did, he'd be hanging from a tree.
You can't really say these stories have been "censored" - they've been "selectively dismissed" as a result of being in conflict with the media's agenda.
It's a foolish, idealistic notion these days, that any of the major media really have that much of a "responsibility" to their audience, at least in contrast to their responsibility to their management, shareholders and advertisers.
...how all of these 'censored' stories reflect a left-leaning viewpoint.
It's not that interesting. Power right now rests with the right; stories with a right-wing slant are promoted, left-leaning stories demoted or censored. The time to complain about a left-wing slant in when power rests with the left.
Good point. Another to consider is that the left are typically less supportive of corporate globalization. Left-leaning stories tend to take pot-shots at large commercial institutions (which IMO includes the Bush administration) and the media makes its money from advertising, much of it provided by entities that exploit their power to eliminate or downplay any legitimate criticism.
Perhaps one of the biggest glaring omissions in the media of late has been the controversy surrounding virtually all the major corporations and investment brokers engaging in illegal and unethical activity. In some cases the stories have been lightly covered and then quickly ignored, in others they've been outright removed from the public spotlight. The SEC has been fining investment companies like never before but it's almost impossible to see any major media call out the sanctioned corporations by name. Shell Oil seriously under-reported their oil reserves - it made international news and resulted in investigations and fines and I didn't see a smidgeon of it in the mainstream media - even though this is an issue that drives to the heart of the middle east situation and rising gas prices. But you cricize Shell, you risk losing a lot of advertising. Is this left-leaning? The problem is, a lot of conservatives basically consider criticizing any corporation to be leftist.
About two weeks ago, we had an issue with our SSHD server. I didn't have Kerberos enabled but someone sent a malformed handshake that crashed the ssh server. It turns out the version of OpenSSH we had installed by default had Kerberos enabled. The later versions do not, so if you're using OpenSSH, make sure you're using the latest version.
No, what he's saying has nothing to do with MS vs. Unix. He's saying that the effort/time/money required to create the code in the first place is less than the effort required to keep it running:
- for the next decade or three
- on hardware that wasn't even on the drawing boards when the program was written
- for uses that, while within the program's theoretical capability, were never comprehended by the original creators.
Ever maintain a code base for a decade? It's painful - more painful than writing new code. That's his point.
I have code that I've maintained for 15-20 years. I understand what he means. It doesn't have to be painful if the code is well designed and running on a solid platform. Having also run Unix and MS-based systems, in some cases side-by-side using almost identical applications, I can authoritatively state that based on my experience, Microsoft-platforms require exponentially more maintenance.
The modular nature of Unix makes it a lot easier to expand functionality. Microsoft's departure from these ideals makes attaining the same expansion flexibility more tedious and difficult.
I can't remember a time where a patch to my Unix box made me wonder whether all my apps would cease to function. This is a constant source of concern for every Microsoft admin. There's no way that maintenance costs are comparable.
I'm not meaning to bash Microsoft. If you get paid by the hour, that's the field to be in. You definitely have job security. If you get paid to get the job done, and want to not have to slave over servers and applications constantly, there are better alternatives that have dramatically less maintainence requirements.
If you don't believe me, try to find a 10+ year old application for Unix and Microsoft. Chances are the Unix application will run without a hitch on the latest OS versions. Roll the dice with Microsoft. Odds are it won't run.
Fact 1: The most important factor in software work is not the tools or techniques used by the programmers, but rather the quality of the programmers themselves.)
I don't necessarily agree with this statement. It's truthfulness is ultimately circumstantial. In theory, it's a fact, but in practice it's a lot more complicated.
Yes, the quality of the programmer is most important, but for the very reason that a seasoned programmer will select the best software and tools, which is equally as important. So the question is basically circular in nature.
Second, the goal of software engineering is to produce a viable product. The best programmer in the world may still be subject to the whims of management which may override his choice of approach or tools.
Fact 41: Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent) of software costs. Therefore, it is probably the most important life cycle phase of software.
I think this is once again, circumstantial. If you're running a Microsoft shop, it's a fact. If you're running a Unix shop, the maintainenace costs can be negligible depending upon the quality of the program design.
It seems to me that you're simply biased against Java. I dunno if you really have 5 different machines running applications of poor performance, but mind you, it is possible to write slow code in just about any language - even Java!
You sir, DO have a point, and quite a poignant and significant one at that.
Any developer foolish enough to choose a language because it's "cool" regardless of whether it's the most suitable language for the application at hand, is in all likelyhood going to be a lousy programmer. Therefore, that would back up my contention that I've never seen a stable Java application that performed worth a shit. It's not necessarily the language. It's the programmers.
Of course, this still doesn't explain what Java is good for, besides getting a job with a company that's a slave to tech-fashion.
I like the Treo, but let's hope the higher-megapixel camera is also higher-quality. More pixels of the world's WORST phone/pda-based camera ever created doesn't mean much.
Does this make any sense? I can see if your legitimate traffic is exceeding a bandwidth limit that you might get dropped/forced to pay more. But a denial of service attack? Wouldn't most service providers want to help their customer with this kind or problem?
In a perfect world, maybe not, but the smaller providers simply can't afford to fight for a little client who's inviting tons of hostile bandwidth (that they wouldn't pay for). The smaller ISPs also cannot get the feds or the uplink providers to do much to combat the attacks unless their pipes are 90+% saturated.
A few years back we were hit with a DOS when we were using Sprint as our primary backbone provider. They refused to get involved because our pipe wasn't non-functional yet.
RapidSatellite.com, which sells satellite TV receivers, was hit at the same time and with similar results. The company responded by quickly moving their electronic storefront to the distributed content delivery services of Speedera, only to be crippled three days later by an attack on that provider's DNS servers, which for an hour also blocked access to other Speedera-hosted sites, including Amazon.com and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the FBI affidavit. RapidSatellite then moved to Akamai, but were out again within a week when the attackers switched to an HTTP flood attack, running massive numbers of queries through RapidSatellite.com's search engine.
I'm not being cynical, but realistic. How much you want to bet the FBI didn't really get involved until either Amazon.com or the Department of Homeland Security's resources got peripherally hit?
Every day there are thousands of DDOS attacks going on, usually against small providers or companies that don't have enough political clout to get the authorities to care much. The perps biggest mistake was probably targetting a provider that had some more substantive clients.
I've been shopping around for some decent control software with C/C++ or Perl APIs (Not Java or X10). Does anyone have any recommendations?
There are lots of interesting applications for these things. Turning lights on if there are unauthorized probes or scans, or some kind of color-coded indicator of network/web traffic. Most of the systems I've seen aren't very Unix-friendly or they're very low level. Any suggestions?
Dude, saying "Java isn't slow" doesn't make it run any faster on the 5 different machines I have.
Keep saying that over and over if you wish. It doesn't change reality, but it may get you a job offer at Fox News.
I agree. Java is so slow and resource-intensive it's not a good choice for high-traffic environments, which blows me away when I see some popular sites using this technology. They're destined to fail unless they spend ten times the money in hardware resources they'd otherwise need.
"Java has been considered slow"
Perl and Python are also not considered fast, but
those who use them consider themselves cool.
No, the speed is not such a big factor.
True, but the use of Perl and Python in a real-time, interactive environment is bad design. Those languages were not meant for those types of applications. (despite Slashdot's use of Perl, which has been optimized, but I still contend if they used PHP, they'd be able to handle more traffic with less resources).
Good programmers don't select languages because they're "cool!"
And this epitomizes what is wrong with Java. It's a technology that accompanies a marketing campaign. Why? Because for the most part, unlike other computer languages, Java doesn't address a specific niche or application area in any superior way. Therefore there is no substantive need for Java which explains why it has to be heavily marketed to be "cool" so people will use it.
Having been programming for more than 20 years now, I've noticed a dramatic increase in misguided questions newer techs ask me, specifically, "What language should I program in?" as if there is one universal language that will do everything. I've always found this annoying. I'm asked, "Should I learn Perl or PHP?" as if it's merely a question of picking a single language to do everything. While that may be possible, it doesn't do justice to the application if you try to hack a less-suitable language to address a scenario where another choice would be superior.
Java has been dead for a long time. More marketing isn't going to revive it. No computer language will last if it isn't OBVIOUS to developers that it is the best choice for an application.
The bottom line is that C/C++ is more portable than Java, despite the myth of Java being marketed as more portable. Java has better garbage collection and string handling and some higher-level abilities, but none of those features couldn't be plugged into C/C++ with a few libraries. Most Java applications are interpreted or p-code and run hundreds of times slower than lower-level counterparts.
A good example is Puzzle Pirates. A pretty nifty online game written in Java. Unfortunately, the thing is so goddam slow it really detracts from the experience. This application and the company is suffering because they chose an inferior technology as the base of their service.
email is an unreliable system, so dont expect it to deliver every message flawlessly to begin with.
;) has forced ISPs to haphazardly append filtering systems which have caused the e-mail system to be less reliable, but there have always been facilities in place to provide extremely reliable delivery and notice if something wasn't delivered.
Sorry, but I completely disagree with you.
If you know little about the technology and what is possible, it would be reasonable to assume the e-mail system is "unreliable" but the system itself doesn't have to be -- that's mainly a symptom of badly configured networks and mail servers. The spamidemic(tm) (in the spirit of egotism expressed in today's story, I claim credit for inventing that word
Anyone running relay blacklists (IPlists, spamcop, spamhaus, etc.) has been running a "spam firewall" for years. It's a very effective way to stop spam, but it's nothing new nor revolutionary.
For someone who appears to be a flaming right-winger, you sure sound like a "liberal hippie douchebag" with your hyper icon sensitivity. Lighten up. Take your mind of such trivial frustrations with a nice, relaxing abortion clinic protest.
I think you've got a good point too.
It occurred to me the other day, that the upper-level institutions, be it government or corporate America or whatnot, are becoming so progressively more-removed from the mainstream that they've lost the ability to objectively qualify the needs of their constitutients/market. These entities are so heavily surrounded with "yes-men" they can no longer get accurate information, whether we're talking about a corporate audit or the Cabinet. Polls and research are conducted and if the results aren't what they want, the results are dismissed.
The Nielsen method of rating media is a great example of a check-and-balance system that has become corrupt. The same thing with pollsters, or CPA firms.
At some point, some new system will rise from the ashes of these corrupt institutions to shed some light on reality. Attendance at the Olympics is 30% below what was anticipated; corporations overstate their profits; networks cancel TV shows the public loves and introduce stuff that nobody watches; Clear Channel shoves crappy music down the populace's throat. All these companies seem to have lost touch. Even the media - which of course, have come up with a new word to describe the process, called "group think", which is a nice way of saying "We're all collectively sticking our heads up our asses and patting each other on the back."
It makes you wonder, if, for example, polls say Bush is going to get ~50% of the popular vote, and he ends up with 30%, how will the media react? Will they acknowledge that they have lost touch or will their pride force them to seek out some scandalous explanation for why they were so off base?
An open-source document-verification/moderation-type system could offer a lot of value in these scenarios. Some in government and corporate America seem to realize this, with their interest in things like current event markets, epinions, etc.
In-a-nutshell, the last 10-15 years has shown a trend in advertisers and corporate interests to be more and more bold about asserting hyperbole as fact.
This is most obvious when you watch tv commercials. Ten or more years ago, a "dramatization" would more accurately reflect reality: a cleaning solution or drug visually-demonstrated to eradicate dirt or infection would always leave a few traces behind in the animation. Now, every demonstration of every product shows 100% success. Just yesterday I saw a commercial during the Olympics showing an American pickup truck towing a tractor trailer loaded with a half-dozen vehicles. Completely ludicrous and impossible, but they get away with it with a fleeing "dramatization" tag, knowing full well most peoples' attention spans skip over the fine print. And speaking of fine print, they slap the tiniest disclaimers on advertisements for the shortest periods of time - virtually impossible to read. Who enforces this stuff and why aren't they doing their job?
Nobody seems to care so corporations become more and more cavalier and bold about misrepresenting reality and misleading the populace.
Advertising has always been the art of lying, but in this new dawn of consumerism, corporate interests have the mantra that they don't have to spew anything that's accurate, factual or close to reality if they have the power and resources to repeat their misleading message in perpetuity - that act in itself, according to them, affirms the integrity of their claims. See: GW Bush, MPAA, RIA, SCO, etc.
Now maybe at some point we'll reach critical mass with this BS, and the public will begin to trust nobody? Perhaps in another ten years substance and truth will be popular again? Who knows.
I suggest rather than spit into the wind of corporate america by trying to refute the never-ending stream of inaccurate propaganda, we jump on the bandwagon and hasten the eventual flashpoint of total media & corporate cynacism.
Everyone here should come up with at least one completely ridiculous "fact" or "figure" and do their best to propagate it. Maybe if enough of us pee into the already polluted river of corporate communication we can get the public to begin to seek more pure sources?
I think this is the bomb we need to be worrying about.