Same old argument and I'll give the same old rebuttal:
Then I'll add something new to it that is frequently ignored:
The art of painting did indeed suffer. Significantly. The commonly held misconception that classic painting changed beginning in the late 19th century due to new schoools of theory like Cubism is only half the story.
Yes, the development of "modern" art did significantly change how many viewed and approached painting, but what happened to all the portrait painters? Did they all suddenly decide that what they were doing was inferior to abstract expression and change? No, they became obsolete with the explosion of photography, their services called on with decreasing frequency until they were just a footnote. What they did could now be done quicker and easier with a camera.
So, as a result of this, painting became an art almost exclusively reduced to expression that could ONLY be done in that medium. The same will happen with photography. This is progress, and for the most part it is good.
BUT... have you ever seen a huge photgraph of someone prominently displayed in someone's house? No, because photos lack a quality that makes them enjoyable on such a large scale the way a painted portrait does. Photos are relegated to smaller displays, frequently jammed into books that no one ever looks at.
Now, with the advent of practical digital photography, I fear that pictures will lose even more holding power for us. Instead of a few small ones framed on walls and a pile jammed into albums, they will all be stored as bits, requiring more work to be viewed and becoming even less a part of our daily lives. Yes, like now, the alternative will still be available, but not as readily and not to as many. This ubiquity is what is being lost, and I don't think the replacement will posess everything it should.
I recognize the inevitability of this sort of technological development, but it does make me a bit sad. The hands-on process of real film is part of the appeal of the medium as an artistic form, and I, for one, will hate to see it relegated to the sidelines as an obsolete tool.
Cameras, books, typewriters, etc... Yes, they all are (or soon will be) inferior to their technology-based replacements, but are we losing something important here?
I'm not being a luddite and trying to stop progress. As I said, this is inevitable. But I wonder what it will all mean in the long run when some of our most cherished means of expression are no longer directly tactile. When we are a few steps further removed from our creations, will we also be a few steps removed from the qualities we appreciate in them?
During the years of the mass Italian emigration towards the States, thousands arrived at the Immigration centers without any documents. In order to distinguish them from the others, the Immigration Officers attached a sign to their back, WOP, meaning 'Without papers'.
This site is dedicated to them, and to the great Country that still gives us the opportunity of a new life.
Because of the high rate of illiteracy, many new immigrants arrived without the right documents. The derogatory term "wop," an acronym for "With Out Papers," would be stamped on the forms of these unfortunates and officials would call out, "We have another 'wop.' Send him home." I can only imagine how my grandparents felt, not knowing whether they might at any moment be rejected and sent back to Italy.
The problem here is that there really AREN'T any other options yet, and by supporting an inferior protocol instead of developing something better you make it that much harder for a decent one to get accepted once it IS developed.
This is like saying:
Write apps for Windows because it's already there
Support the RIAA because online models of distribution aren't fully realzed yet
etc.
Look at the mess this attitiude has created in the current implementation of TCP/IP. The entire net is run on a hideously patched together and crufty protocol because everyone just decided to support it because, hey, it was there.
Read the damn article! Here's one chunk of the many problems with WAP that they point out:
Security -- Firstly, even though the WAP protocol has a security mechanism via WTLS, it is not possible for the content provider, using HTTP or HTTPs, to know whether there was security over the air unless a proprietary header is placed in the HTTP header. Secondly, when a user connects with a WAP Gateway it authenticates with it, but never authenticates with the content provider. Thirdly, when the user has authenticated with the WAP Gateway, the gateway decrypts the secure content and might re-encrypt the message to be sent over HTTPs. This implies that the secure content that was intended for the content provider flows as clear text through the WAP Gateway. Fourthly, the WAP Gateway represents the browser and means that any cookies or security information is kept on the Gateway. Information such as credit cards, address, names and all sorts of other information usually kept in cookies by the browser are kept by the Gateway.
If you would read before posting you would appear much less stupid.
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that all Americans need to express some deep fear/hatred of the UN based on some deliberatly misinterpreted crap from Revelations...
Behold! human beings living in an underground den . . . Like ourselves . . . they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.
--Plato
Nah, I don't buy it. If you don't accept that an absolute objective reality exists, then the next logical step is Nihilism; to which I say, "I'll pass, thanks."
Sure, a somewhat-decent philosphical case can be made for it, but I reject it. Besides, even if it is true that reality is subjective, then my belief of "absolute truth" is logically valid anyway;)
I hereby proclaim that all jokes about fashion models have already been made. To ensure no more are permitted, I will assert that mentioning fashion models is equivalent to being a Nazi.
If you rely too much on metaphors and models to base your decisions on then you are going to get burned. The real world is never as clean and perfect as a modeled environment. Models should only be used for an initial inspection of how something should be approached. Prior to implementation, a more direct, hands-on method needs to be used in order to work out any bugs. This applies to any sort of project where modeling is used; software, hardware, geological exploration, architecture, sociology, etc.
Yes, many of us have long known about the large numbers of New Age crystal rubbers in computer circles. Please note that these are often the same people who take any and every opportunity to belittle Christianity whenever a believer of such dares to profess their beliefs in a public forum.
What's even more interesting is how so many of these people use so much precious breath claiming to be part of some ages-old tradition that apparently predates dinosaurs. Seems a bit odd that none of them have ever bothered with so much as cursory research into the subject.
I just have one question: Who's the most gullible, Christians or Wiccans?
Not trolling, not trying to start a flame war. Just expressing my honest opinions and views.
Depends on what you're looking at. Your/. experience (no coments on how nasty it looks, please. That's not my point here) is willingly invited onto your screen by you. They should not go for the LCD, as it is something that is actively desired.
Problem is, a lot of web design work is not of that nature. It is, to not put too fine a point on it, marketing, and marketing plays by very different rules.
True graphic design usually isn't about what you like or what makes you consciously pleased with something's appearence. Good designers realize that they are responsible for eliciting a desired reaction from you; buying stuff, believing a business is competent, voting no on a ballot item, etc. What you outwardly think of the presentation is irrelevant here, as long as it has the desired effect.
In light of this, not having complete control over the presentation can be lethal. If that strong, corporate blue suddenly becomes pastel aqua then you're not conveying the desired message anymore. And if the yellow (a color that suggests hunger) in that fast food ad starts looking like a washed-out orange then youy're doing the opposite of what you were supposed to.
Graphic design usually has very little to do with making pretty pictures.
Software like this gets put on servers either through social engineering (convincing the admin to install it) or even more commonly by finding systems with security holes that have been well documented, "rooting" the system, and installing anything the attacker deems neccessary. It is fairly simple to do this.
Y'know, whenever something like this happens you all (well, many of you) instantly start spouting about script kiddies, making it seem like these DDoS attacks:
a) Are pranks by kids who don't know any better
b) Require no real skills whatsoever.
What is being described here requires quite a bit of time and intelligence to create and deploy, and in using IRC to issue commands it's also one helluva nifty hack.
How many of you who say doing this stuff is "easy" could actually pull it off? "They just run root kits and install whatever they want." Oh really? And how does that work? Here's an IP. Go at it and impress me. The clock is ticking.
I'm sure quite a few readers could pull this off very quickly, but I'm also fairly sure that they aren't the ones yelling "script kiddie", either.
There is skill and dedication involved here, even if it's not to the level of those who author the tools. I think by trying to belittle the perpetrators, people are really just trying to make the problem seem much less severe than it actually is, and thereby make themselves feel better.
Well, I'm sorry, but I will NEVER be able to consider an interpreted language useful for writing "real" applications. If it won't compile then it's just a scripting tool.
forced coding styles are kinda slack, but do enforce a standard and might make debugging or maintaining someone else's code a LOT easier!
Yes, but Python and Perl aren't really languages that should be used for long-term stuff that requires maintenance anyway. Scripting tools are best for one-off things and web development. Web scripts never last more than 6-8 months anyway. CGI has a short shelf-life, and if your company needs to figure out what the programmer that got fired last year was thinking when he did the my.yogurt-recipes.com interface, you've got serious problems. You should be doing a wholesale rewrite of everything on your site every 12 to 18 months. This is the web cycle that the online world has come to use.
I don't normally play the silly Python -vs- Perl games, but the AC has a valid point.
Python is really just an academic toy. Real world scripting requires a fast, loose, flexible approach, which is totally absent in Python. Forcing people into using strict grammar and structure may be a good teaching tool, but it has little application in getting things done on schedule.
And this crap leads me to another thing. What the hell happened to the ASCII art filter? We never would have to put up with the Penis Bird Man or this shit if it was working properly!
Hello? Rob? Jeff? Kurt? Can we please get that part of the code working again?
I can not believe all you people defending this person and beating up on/.! I, for one, am totally in support of any legal actions by the owners of this site. I am completely fed up with these trolls, and the day they are all burning in hell will be a good one, IMO.
This is a private discussion board, and Rob has every right to dictate when his open posting policy has been pushed too far. There are limits to free speech. You can not yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, and you do not have the right to drown out serious discussion on a private messaging system.
The communications that take place on/. are of the utmost importance in how we develop our Open Source initiatives, and require an atmosphere of absolutely scholarly respect in order for us to be successful. Trolling detracts from this so much that we are left unable to continue our conversations.
I was a part of the group that was drowned out by the Natalie-thon" last month, and it completely wrecked the discussions my colleagues and I were having. We could not post so much as a single sentence w/out suffering the childish ridicule of these trolls.
ENOUGH I say! We have suffered for too long already. File your suit, Andover. The true community of slashdot is 100% behind you.
Source was available before this, too
on
Tripwire Going GPL
·
· Score: 2
Tripwire was originally released under what they referred to an Academic Source liscense. They have a history of providing source code to people using the products, so this isn't a suprising announcement.
Of course there have been a number of significant improvements since they started selling a closed source version, and I'm glad they ditched that path in favor of a true OS release. Probably the most welcome addition from the version I currently use is the ability to customize object blocks for directory recursion and improved email reporting
BTW, if you're interested in the Academic release it can still be downloaded here, but now that 2.2.1 is available for Linux (Intel only) I really don't see the point unless you're on one of those other platforms;)
Yes, I built a box a few years back and I was determined not to have Intel in it. AMD wasn't even considered due to performance issues. I was hesitant about the Cyrix, but cost won me over.
It worked more or less ok for about 6 months, but after that I started crashing left and right. By this time I had another primary box, so I threw a used Intel chip onto the board to see how it reacted. Up time increased by a factor of ten!
Slashdot Mirror
I guess a thoughtful response to a reasonable argument is a bit too much to ask from someone with an IQ that hovers just below room temperature.
Then I'll add something new to it that is frequently ignored:
The art of painting did indeed suffer. Significantly. The commonly held misconception that classic painting changed beginning in the late 19th century due to new schoools of theory like Cubism is only half the story.
Yes, the development of "modern" art did significantly change how many viewed and approached painting, but what happened to all the portrait painters? Did they all suddenly decide that what they were doing was inferior to abstract expression and change? No, they became obsolete with the explosion of photography, their services called on with decreasing frequency until they were just a footnote. What they did could now be done quicker and easier with a camera.
So, as a result of this, painting became an art almost exclusively reduced to expression that could ONLY be done in that medium. The same will happen with photography. This is progress, and for the most part it is good.
BUT... have you ever seen a huge photgraph of someone prominently displayed in someone's house? No, because photos lack a quality that makes them enjoyable on such a large scale the way a painted portrait does. Photos are relegated to smaller displays, frequently jammed into books that no one ever looks at.
Now, with the advent of practical digital photography, I fear that pictures will lose even more holding power for us. Instead of a few small ones framed on walls and a pile jammed into albums, they will all be stored as bits, requiring more work to be viewed and becoming even less a part of our daily lives. Yes, like now, the alternative will still be available, but not as readily and not to as many. This ubiquity is what is being lost, and I don't think the replacement will posess everything it should.
Cameras, books, typewriters, etc... Yes, they all are (or soon will be) inferior to their technology-based replacements, but are we losing something important here?
I'm not being a luddite and trying to stop progress. As I said, this is inevitable. But I wonder what it will all mean in the long run when some of our most cherished means of expression are no longer directly tactile. When we are a few steps further removed from our creations, will we also be a few steps removed from the qualities we appreciate in them?
http://www.wop98.com/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/book-excerpt/ 0671024698/qid%3D 927786919/sr%3D1-1/102-8749994-3425750
This is like saying:
Write apps for Windows because it's already there
Support the RIAA because online models of distribution aren't fully realzed yet
etc.
Look at the mess this attitiude has created in the current implementation of TCP/IP. The entire net is run on a hideously patched together and crufty protocol because everyone just decided to support it because, hey, it was there.
-
Security -- Firstly, even though the WAP protocol has a security mechanism via WTLS, it is not possible for the content provider, using HTTP or HTTPs, to know whether there was security over the air unless a proprietary header is placed in the HTTP header. Secondly, when a user connects with a WAP Gateway it authenticates with it, but never authenticates with the content provider. Thirdly, when the user has authenticated with the WAP Gateway, the gateway decrypts the secure content and might re-encrypt the message to be sent over HTTPs. This implies that the secure content that was intended for the content provider flows as clear text through the WAP Gateway. Fourthly, the WAP Gateway represents the browser and means that any cookies or security information is kept on the Gateway. Information such as credit cards, address, names and all sorts of other information usually kept in cookies by the browser are kept by the Gateway.
If you would read before posting you would appear much less stupid.Um, yeah, that was my point. The "I don't buy it" was in reference to the previous post, not the Plato quote. Sorry.
Africa Initiative
Ageing
Agriculture
Atomic Energy
Children
Climate Change
Culture
Decolonization
Demining
Development
Cooperation
Persons with
disabilities
Disarmament
Drug control
& Crime Prevention
Education
Elections
Energy
Environment
Family
Food
Governance
Habitat
Health
Human Rights
Humanitarian Affairs
Indigenous People
Intellectual Property
International
Finance
Labour
International Law
Law of the Sea
& Antartica
Least Developed
Countries
Question of
Palestine
Peace
& Security
Population
Refugees
Social Development
Outer Space
Statistics
Sustainable
Development
Trade &
Development
Volunteerism
Women
Youth
Africa Initiative
Ageing
Agriculture
Atomic Energy
Children
Climate Change
Culture
Decolonization
Demining
Development
Cooperation
Persons with
disabilities
Disarmament
Drug control
& Crime Prevention
Education
Elections
Energy
Environment
Family
Food
Governance
Habitat
Health
Human Rights
Humanitarian Affairs
Indigenous People
Intellectual Property
International
Finance
Labour
International Law
Law of the Sea
& Antartica
Least Developed
Countries
Question of
Palestine
Peace
& Security
Population
Refugees
Social Development
Outer Space
Statistics
Sustainable
Development
Trade &
Development
Volunteerism
Women
Youth
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that all Americans need to express some deep fear/hatred of the UN based on some deliberatly misinterpreted crap from Revelations...
--Plato
Nah, I don't buy it. If you don't accept that an absolute objective reality exists, then the next logical step is Nihilism; to which I say, "I'll pass, thanks."
Sure, a somewhat-decent philosphical case can be made for it, but I reject it. Besides, even if it is true that reality is subjective, then my belief of "absolute truth" is logically valid anyway ;)
I hereby proclaim that all jokes about fashion models have already been made. To ensure no more are permitted, I will assert that mentioning fashion models is equivalent to being a Nazi.
If you rely too much on metaphors and models to base your decisions on then you are going to get burned. The real world is never as clean and perfect as a modeled environment. Models should only be used for an initial inspection of how something should be approached. Prior to implementation, a more direct, hands-on method needs to be used in order to work out any bugs. This applies to any sort of project where modeling is used; software, hardware, geological exploration, architecture, sociology, etc.
What's even more interesting is how so many of these people use so much precious breath claiming to be part of some ages-old tradition that apparently predates dinosaurs. Seems a bit odd that none of them have ever bothered with so much as cursory research into the subject.
I just have one question: Who's the most gullible, Christians or Wiccans?
Not trolling, not trying to start a flame war. Just expressing my honest opinions and views.
Problem is, a lot of web design work is not of that nature. It is, to not put too fine a point on it, marketing, and marketing plays by very different rules.
True graphic design usually isn't about what you like or what makes you consciously pleased with something's appearence. Good designers realize that they are responsible for eliciting a desired reaction from you; buying stuff, believing a business is competent, voting no on a ballot item, etc. What you outwardly think of the presentation is irrelevant here, as long as it has the desired effect.
In light of this, not having complete control over the presentation can be lethal. If that strong, corporate blue suddenly becomes pastel aqua then you're not conveying the desired message anymore. And if the yellow (a color that suggests hunger) in that fast food ad starts looking like a washed-out orange then youy're doing the opposite of what you were supposed to.
Graphic design usually has very little to do with making pretty pictures.
Y'know, whenever something like this happens you all (well, many of you) instantly start spouting about script kiddies, making it seem like these DDoS attacks:
a) Are pranks by kids who don't know any better
b) Require no real skills whatsoever.
What is being described here requires quite a bit of time and intelligence to create and deploy, and in using IRC to issue commands it's also one helluva nifty hack.
How many of you who say doing this stuff is "easy" could actually pull it off? "They just run root kits and install whatever they want." Oh really? And how does that work? Here's an IP. Go at it and impress me. The clock is ticking.
I'm sure quite a few readers could pull this off very quickly, but I'm also fairly sure that they aren't the ones yelling "script kiddie", either.
There is skill and dedication involved here, even if it's not to the level of those who author the tools. I think by trying to belittle the perpetrators, people are really just trying to make the problem seem much less severe than it actually is, and thereby make themselves feel better.
Well, I'm sorry, but I will NEVER be able to consider an interpreted language useful for writing "real" applications. If it won't compile then it's just a scripting tool.
Yes, but Python and Perl aren't really languages that should be used for long-term stuff that requires maintenance anyway. Scripting tools are best for one-off things and web development. Web scripts never last more than 6-8 months anyway. CGI has a short shelf-life, and if your company needs to figure out what the programmer that got fired last year was thinking when he did the my.yogurt-recipes.com interface, you've got serious problems. You should be doing a wholesale rewrite of everything on your site every 12 to 18 months. This is the web cycle that the online world has come to use.
Python is really just an academic toy. Real world scripting requires a fast, loose, flexible approach, which is totally absent in Python. Forcing people into using strict grammar and structure may be a good teaching tool, but it has little application in getting things done on schedule.
Well I'm sorry for not getting the humor. These trolls really do piss me off. I don't take kindly to being lumped together with them.
I am from Minnesota, if you must know.
Hello? Rob? Jeff? Kurt? Can we please get that part of the code working again?
This is a private discussion board, and Rob has every right to dictate when his open posting policy has been pushed too far. There are limits to free speech. You can not yell "fire" in a crowded theatre, and you do not have the right to drown out serious discussion on a private messaging system.
The communications that take place on /. are of the utmost importance in how we develop our Open Source initiatives, and require an atmosphere of absolutely scholarly respect in order for us to be successful. Trolling detracts from this so much that we are left unable to continue our conversations.
I was a part of the group that was drowned out by the Natalie-thon" last month, and it completely wrecked the discussions my colleagues and I were having. We could not post so much as a single sentence w/out suffering the childish ridicule of these trolls.
ENOUGH I say! We have suffered for too long already. File your suit, Andover. The true community of slashdot is 100% behind you.
Of course there have been a number of significant improvements since they started selling a closed source version, and I'm glad they ditched that path in favor of a true OS release. Probably the most welcome addition from the version I currently use is the ability to customize object blocks for directory recursion and improved email reporting
BTW, if you're interested in the Academic release it can still be downloaded here, but now that 2.2.1 is available for Linux (Intel only) I really don't see the point unless you're on one of those other platforms ;)
This should be a great thing for those of us who are driven absolutely crazy by fan noise from computers.
There was an excellent Ask Slashdot on this very subject in November and another one (can't find the link) recently.
It worked more or less ok for about 6 months, but after that I started crashing left and right. By this time I had another primary box, so I threw a used Intel chip onto the board to see how it reacted. Up time increased by a factor of ten!