This article has seen a large number of subjective posts. Let's stick to the facts.
JINI does not depend on a specific hardware platform, it only depends on the existence of a stable Java implementation. Now, many of us know that Java's AWT and Swing libraries have significant flaws and really can't be called stable by slashdot standards. But JINI does not require the AWT. As others have said, why would you want to surf the Web on your toaster? Even if you did, Win CE would take care of that for you. Win CE still uses WinMain(), I believe, which requires you to create a "window" before your application can be considered "behaved". JINI != Win CE.
Now what does JINI do, then? Well, start with the fundamentals of Java: multithreading, garbage collection, dynamic code loading, platform independence, decent speed, and stability (as long as you don't use AWT). Null pointers and buffer overflows are hardly an issue when Java is implemented properly. Now add to that the benefit of JINI: automatic and reliable networking. It sounds just right for an environment where you don't have time to make sure your targeting computer has downloaded the coordinates from your high-security digital messenger device. It has to work perfectly every time.
Now, let's look at where Java and JINI may fail. How big can a JINI network be before the devices start running out of RAM? Since any device can connect to any other device, each device on a "subnet" must know that each other device exists. If we went past the limit, would the whole network shut down? Would single devices mysteriously disappear? The military must consider this VERY CAREFULLY, because if the devices communicate via RF then it might be trivial for an enemy to shut down the network on a nearby ship just by broadcasting a few signals.
Encryption is very important in this application. Every device would have to have its own public-key encryption implementation. But in reality, that's probably a plus for the military since any device of this kind, JINI or not, would have to support strong encryption, and there are already plenty of pretty good Java encryption implementations.
(BTW--slightly related--I got that free FireCracker kit from x10.com and it's neat for controlling one light but if I used it for the whole house, anyone else who happened to have their own "clicker" could shut down all the lights in my house from 100 feet away. I hope most/.'ers realized this.)
I have to believe Linux wouldn't quite fit the bill. By the time the kernel and the required supporting utilities were slimmed down to fit into 128K or so, it would no longer be Linux.
Even if Sun succeeds in making Java the most stable platform of all, they will not remove that disclaimer. It doesn't mean it's unstable, it just means Sun is not responsible for life and death situations. Nor should they be.
In reading through the survey it became very apparent there are two specific (and somewhat overlapping) groups that responded: 40% are slashdotters (question 33) and at least 76% are already strong Borland/Inprise customers (question 29, Delphi & C++ Builder users). Thus we can't draw any conclusions about whether Delphi is as popular as it would appear on this survey. And there was a non-negligible number of respondents who either weren't answering seriously or did not understand it. (question 20, "what on earth are you talking about?")
I don't know how to account for the number of open source developers (questions 8 and 17). I would count myself among them, but I don't think there were so many. Probably mostly slashdotters again. The most puzzling result was "Object Pascal" in question 12, which did not appear elsewhere on the survey.
The meaningful, relatively unbiased results are: 1) It looks as though everyone wants a RAD solution these days (questions 4 and 2) and 2) most developers who say they want to develop RAD on Linux (most of the respondents) are still using Windows (questions 22-26). This is a clear message to Borland/Inprise to simply continue to improve their Windows tools while making a Linux port.
Apple believes Darwin the advantage Darwin has over other OS OS's (wow, another overloaded acronym) is that a single company will be responsible for it. Not only does that make the issue of maintenance easier, but it also ensures they can continue to force their customers to use Apple hardware.
We are seeing an outpouring of operating system choices lately. The differences between the operating systems are becoming very blurry. Where will this lead? Taking hints from Darwin's theory of evolution, the operating system(s) that survive will be the ones that adapt best in a changing environment. Apple is definitely going to have a competitor.
Why not just convert TrueType fonts to a format similar to TrueType, but which is not TrueType? To do the conversion, render the fonts into a memory buffer at 1000 points with no anti-aliasing, trace around the edges, record the key points, and save them as "vector" graphics. Then use the anti-aliasing feature of FreeType to render the fonts. The font binaries would come out much larger, but since the patented portion (the TrueType rendering engine) would be almost eliminated, there would be no more problem with Apple.
Of course, we're all jumping to conclusions here and maybe, just maybe, Apple will give FreeType their blessing. It seems to me that Apple would benefit the most just by requiring a small notice to be displayed whenever the FreeType engine is used. It would be healthy for the religious movement they have built.
Can a television station detect electronically the number of viewers they have at any given time? Every standard television set and radio in the world is just like a dedicated packet sniffer. If I could connect a specialized box to your internal network, I could grab anything I want and it is not possible that you would be able to detect it unless you saw the box with your own eyes. I could come in and get it a week later and have a large number of passwords to mess with. The best sniffers have no need of a MAC or IP address.
However, most crackers have to get into your network remotely. They usually find their way into a general-purpose machine. For practical reasons, it may not be possible for him/her to put the NIC into 100% receive-only mode. That is the kind of situation that AntiSniffer detects.
As others have said, a switch can make sniffing more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. Remember that no computer can be 100% secure, unless of course it finds itself in the middle of a nuclear explosion.:)
This/. article has been mildly irritating. We need more moderators.
Obviously that's what many programmers are going to do, too. Y2K will not cause a state of emergency and the months leading up to the last year of this millennium will be remembered as a time of unfounded fears. Many will assume it's safe again to use two-digit years because the programs will be good for another 90+ years. (Previously they were good for only 20 years. 90 is greater than 20.)
However, because data capacity is now cheap enough that the difference of space taken up by 4 bytes rather than 2 bytes is very insignificant, there is no longer an excuse to use 2 digits. It's just lazy.
I installed Caldera recently on a small server intended to serve a small business. We needed Samba, PPP, masquerading, fetchmail, and a special Web server installed.
- I installed everything on the $2 CD from LinuxMall. (I assume Caldera only adds PartitionMagic to the commercial version.) Tried to boot from the CD, had to fix an IDE cable, tried again, and it eventually installed perfectly. Had this been a "normal" box, it probably would have gone right the first time.
- Wanted to set up Samba using SWAT. SWAT is the excellent web-based configuration tool that's *supposed* to come with Samba 2. It was nowhere to be found. Mildly irritated, I edited smb.conf by hand. Samba worked but not flawlessly.
- I set up PPP then started to work on IP masquerading. Guess what--masquerading had not been enabled when the kernel was compiled. So I decided it was time to learn how to compile a new kernel for myself. OpenLinux 2.2 comes with kernel version 2.2.5 and I downloaded kernel version 2.2.10. I thought there would be nothing wrong with an upgrade.
- Read HOWTO's until I finally got the kernel configured and compiled. After reboot, everything seemed okay except for Samba. Went to the Samba Web site and downloaded 2.05a. I didn't mind doing this anyway since I would finally get SWAT with it.
- Compiled Samba and got it running but discovered that it would not accept *any* passwords. Searched around a lot and discovered that PAM had not been enabled in the compile. I figured PAM was standard enough that all distro's would use it by now.
- Even with everything installed correctly, could not get PAM to work with Samba because of something different about the way PAM works on Caldera. Tried to revert to the usage of the Unix crypt() call. Had to grab libcrypt from the RadHat 6 installation on my laptop, and by sheer luck it worked.
- Had to install a second network card. Spent an entire day playing with "make xconfig" only to discover that for some reason, if you compile two types of network interfaces into the kernel (rather than make at least one modular), the kernel will detect only one of them. Or so it would seem. Admittedly, this problem had nothing to do with Caldera.
- Tried to install the linuxconf package from the RedHat 6.0 distribution. Wanted to be able to point and drool to configure the machine since I'd already spent more than a week on it. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Linuxconf is very, very nice IMHO. It should be integrated into KDE and GNOME. But after installing it, the machine would barely boot. Fortunately, rpm --erase restored my rc.d files.:)
Only two days ago I had to install a new server that would serve similar functions. I used Mandrake 6.0. No major problems, no need to recompile the kernel, NO MISSING LIBRARIES... and in fact, I got Netatalk working on Linux 2.2. According to the Netatalk FAQ, it doesn't compile on 2.2. But it did! I spent only a few hours too.
Conclusion: if all you intend to do with the Linux box is already on the Caldera CD, you've got a winner. Otherwise, use something else!!
See how an open-sourced base platform can adapt to changing needs? Even such a fundamental part of the operating system can quickly be replaced with something better. Go SGI & Linux!
Religion and anything that can be interpreted as in opposition to most common religions have always been very difficult subjects to teach because so many parents have objections to whatever might be said. It is on these grounds that religion has been eliminated from public schools. It sounds as if Kansas is removing evolution from the curriculum on the very same grounds--not based on whether evolution is correct or not. If this is their platform, they should be able to defeat the Americans United for Separation of Church and State... that is if they actually go to court.
Obviously they do not intend to teach religion either. Thus they are leaving the teaching of our origins entirely to the parents. In places where evolution vs. Christianity is a hot topic, this may be a good solution.
Thank you for providing that information. Reading "between the lines", it sounds like the computers you're receiving from the rehabilitation program are of higher quality than those which are sometimes donated by businesses. Because of the rapid pace of computer technology, I can see how that might be the case.
I will begin to think along the lines of teaching how to use computers rather than administrate them. Thanks again!
I'm glad you pointed this out. As has been said before, there is no success that can compensate for failure in the home. Parents must not try to defer their responsibility to anyone or anything.
Now, I do tend to believe that computers improve reading and reasonings skills dramatically. And they can even be good for spelling. As evidence, I will draw from personal experience. (If this were an essay, I would provide more evidence.:)
I was introduced to the Commodore 64 at age 8. My parents did not buy any software nor even a magnetic storage device, and told us that if we wanted to use the computer we had to write programs for it. Lo and behold, after great struggles I learned BASIC. I was very, very happy when I figured out how to make a Christmas tree with blinking lights on the screen. For years, successfully writing a new program on a C-64 or Atari was an extremely rewarding experience. For the first two years, my Dad helped me write some of the programs, but it did not take long before I was doing things that were beyond what he'd learned in college.
I think my parents' decision to not buy any software, although it actually stemmed from a financial need, was probably the best decision in my case. Had they bought games, I would have simply played them. Programming at that early age forced me to think, toil, ponder, be creative, and solve problems. I had to learn to read quickly, understand higher math, and type words with perfect accuracy.
The results? Well, I won the spelling bee and I rarely if every use spell checkers (of course, this may be my unlucky day and someone may find a spelling mistake. Yes, I know there are gramatical errors.) I won a state math competition and went to the national level. My SAT scores are in the 99th percentile.
But not everything turned out right. Because I surpassed all of the educators at my school in computer skills, they very often called on me to fix the computers. In time I came to the conclusion that the teachers aren't as smart as they seem and I came to doubt that they were qualified to teach me. It was a very prideful conclusion and it caused my grades to suffer. I continually sought any excuse to go to the library where the computers were. In short, I rebelled against the whole school system.
But I continued to wear nice clothes and teachers continued to ask me for help, so no one knew I needed to be humbled but my parents. My parents worked hard with me, so my grades never fell too far. My social life was good because of my religion.
Glad you've read this far because this was turning into a lonnnggg life story. Back to the point: computer technology that forces the child to think can be very beneficial. However, a limit has to be placed on everything!
You're right--it's easy for technology buyers to forget Microsoft's failure incidents. The best example IMHO is the security breach discovered a month or two ago that lets anyone, anywhere break into any NT server. Notice how the news sites don't give this bug the attention it deserves. Reporters need to say that such a breach left open is probably the worst thing that's ever happened to an "enterprise class" OS. Yes, other OS's have had incidents, but the bugs were fixed expeditiously. Microsoft, like the software they produce, keeps getting bigger and slower.
However, general attitudes appear to be shifting toward alternative operating systems because they are becoming viable. (To some degree, they always were viable, it's just that people weren't aware of them.) Hopefully the attitude shift is not temporary.
This thread cracked me up, you guys/girls. The best part is that it's all public and you can't retract ANYTHING!!:)
I noticed your sig includes the name "Skywalker" and I'm curious if you've heard of the Mark Hamill Entertainment Site maintained by my sister. Probably not--I know there are lots of MH fan sites, but who knows?!
As to the automatic virus detection, that's obviously just marketing hype. Bioligical immune systems work because virii only take a limited set of forms. They are not engineered. They evolve through natural processes. Until very recently, man did not have the power to engineer a biological virus.
A computer virus is much more insidious because it can take a greater variety of forms. It can be engineered to circumvent any "immune system" as described in the article.
Of course, as man gains the power to manipulate a biological virus, a new threat arises. Man may create a virus that kills and spreads as well as a computer virus.
Now, the central database idea sounds very good and would solve a lot of problems. For once there would actually be a use for "push content"!:) The databases would have to broadcast to the computers every time a virus alert goes out. The broadcasting system would have to be more efficient than most Internet protocols. It would be really cool (and very, very fast) if the alerts could be broadcast through radio waves. Have a periodic "test of the emergency broadcast system"...
That's correct. What it does, however, is pretty slick: msgto.com has to authorize each sender->receiver combination. That authorization will generally occur when a sender attempts to send a message to a msgto.com receiver. msgto.com will send back a message asking that person to pass a test that's extremely simple for humans but difficult for computers. Once authorized, the sender will always be allowed to send to the same receiver. Mass spamming is very near impossible.
I really wish CmdrTaco, Hemos, Roblimo, CowboyNeal, JonKatz, or someone else would pay more attention to this service. It really looks like a complete solution to spam. If it's as good as it seems, it would be worth someone's time to create a simplified daemon that would act only as a mail filter. But since this article is a day old, I can expect at most 2 people to read this!
There is a new spam filtering service available at MsgTo.com that filters e-mail based on a Turing Test. It looks very promising. The service doesn't use SSL/HTTPS yet, but the author would like to release the whole system under an open-source license if there is enough developer demand. And demand is one thing that/. is good at. The site appears to be very fast, but I'd really like to know if it can survive the slashdot effect!
(BTW I tried to get this posted as a main/. story but it seems to have been ignored.)
Actually I am a happy Linux user, but as most of us around here know, Linux isn't for everyone--yet. That's why there needs to be a debate, and you can't very well have a debate if no one contradicts your point. Linux will achieve "world domination" only after the developers scratch every itch.
Here, here! Although the technical aspects of the Internet are interesting and important, what's even more significant is the social aspects. If we can grasp the past and the reasons why things have developed as they have, we can determine the future. But without good records that are easy to find, the past is as blurry as the future.
Where the Internet excels is its ability to publish information. Where it often fails miserably is the ability to collect relevant information into a single trusted place. Slashdot captures the essence of that disparity by putting relevant information right along with the irrelevant, allowing chaos to generate useful information. The result as surprising as the beauty of fractals, which are based on amazingly simple mathematics.
So although a collection of documents and biographies would be very useful, it would be difficult for any single entity to assume the trusted role of guardian, unless of course an entity that already has the trust of the community were to accept the undertaking. The IETF may have that status, but with "engineering" in their name the last thing they want to do is write MORE DOCUMENTATION!;-)
I'm interested in your comment but my otherwise healthy mind cannot figure out what "EU" stands for. The problem stems from the fact that in Portuguese, "Estados Unidos", abbreviated "EU", means "United States".:)
Ahem, someone moderated the above post down (while someone else moderated it up). It is not appropriate to call it flamebait. It is a question worth exploring.
Media corruption has existed for a long time but now with the shift in the news delivery medium, as pioneered right here on/., misreporting may be transforming into something much more subtle.
If there's anything I learned from taking history classes, it's that communications mediums have shaped history more than any other identifiable shift. (That point is debatable, of course.) At any other time or place has it been so easy for common people to instantly benefit from hundreds of others' views on breaking news in their own fields of interest? The result on/. is usually that the news is refined or thrashed enough that the real truth breaks through. Assuming the modified approach scales up so that the masses can use the/. model for non-technology-related topics, we are in the middle of an evolution in communication. Obviously the Internet itself is an evolution in communication, but sites like/. are what make it so!
Thus even though/. is relatively small, it could be very significant. Therefore if subtle rumors may be a by-product of/., it is important for us to discover that truth also.
Slashdot Mirror
This article has seen a large number of subjective posts. Let's stick to the facts.
/.'ers realized this.)
JINI does not depend on a specific hardware platform, it only depends on the existence of a stable Java implementation. Now, many of us know that Java's AWT and Swing libraries have significant flaws and really can't be called stable by slashdot standards. But JINI does not require the AWT. As others have said, why would you want to surf the Web on your toaster? Even if you did, Win CE would take care of that for you. Win CE still uses WinMain(), I believe, which requires you to create a "window" before your application can be considered "behaved". JINI != Win CE.
Now what does JINI do, then? Well, start with the fundamentals of Java: multithreading, garbage collection, dynamic code loading, platform independence, decent speed, and stability (as long as you don't use AWT). Null pointers and buffer overflows are hardly an issue when Java is implemented properly. Now add to that the benefit of JINI: automatic and reliable networking. It sounds just right for an environment where you don't have time to make sure your targeting computer has downloaded the coordinates from your high-security digital messenger device. It has to work perfectly every time.
Now, let's look at where Java and JINI may fail. How big can a JINI network be before the devices start running out of RAM? Since any device can connect to any other device, each device on a "subnet" must know that each other device exists. If we went past the limit, would the whole network shut down? Would single devices mysteriously disappear? The military must consider this VERY CAREFULLY, because if the devices communicate via RF then it might be trivial for an enemy to shut down the network on a nearby ship just by broadcasting a few signals.
Encryption is very important in this application. Every device would have to have its own public-key encryption implementation. But in reality, that's probably a plus for the military since any device of this kind, JINI or not, would have to support strong encryption, and there are already plenty of pretty good Java encryption implementations.
(BTW--slightly related--I got that free FireCracker kit from x10.com and it's neat for controlling one light but if I used it for the whole house, anyone else who happened to have their own "clicker" could shut down all the lights in my house from 100 feet away. I hope most
I have to believe Linux wouldn't quite fit the bill. By the time the kernel and the required supporting utilities were slimmed down to fit into 128K or so, it would no longer be Linux.
Even if Sun succeeds in making Java the most stable platform of all, they will not remove that disclaimer. It doesn't mean it's unstable, it just means Sun is not responsible for life and death situations. Nor should they be.
In reading through the survey it became very apparent there are two specific (and somewhat overlapping) groups that responded: 40% are slashdotters (question 33) and at least 76% are already strong Borland/Inprise customers (question 29, Delphi & C++ Builder users). Thus we can't draw any conclusions about whether Delphi is as popular as it would appear on this survey. And there was a non-negligible number of respondents who either weren't answering seriously or did not understand it. (question 20, "what on earth are you talking about?")
I don't know how to account for the number of open source developers (questions 8 and 17). I would count myself among them, but I don't think there were so many. Probably mostly slashdotters again. The most puzzling result was "Object Pascal" in question 12, which did not appear elsewhere on the survey.
The meaningful, relatively unbiased results are: 1) It looks as though everyone wants a RAD solution these days (questions 4 and 2) and 2) most developers who say they want to develop RAD on Linux (most of the respondents) are still using Windows (questions 22-26). This is a clear message to Borland/Inprise to simply continue to improve their Windows tools while making a Linux port.
Apple believes Darwin the advantage Darwin has over other OS OS's (wow, another overloaded acronym) is that a single company will be responsible for it. Not only does that make the issue of maintenance easier, but it also ensures they can continue to force their customers to use Apple hardware.
We are seeing an outpouring of operating system choices lately. The differences between the operating systems are becoming very blurry. Where will this lead? Taking hints from Darwin's theory of evolution, the operating system(s) that survive will be the ones that adapt best in a changing environment. Apple is definitely going to have a competitor.
Get yer TrueType converters here...
Why not just convert TrueType fonts to a format similar to TrueType, but which is not TrueType? To do the conversion, render the fonts into a memory buffer at 1000 points with no anti-aliasing, trace around the edges, record the key points, and save them as "vector" graphics. Then use the anti-aliasing feature of FreeType to render the fonts. The font binaries would come out much larger, but since the patented portion (the TrueType rendering engine) would be almost eliminated, there would be no more problem with Apple.
Of course, we're all jumping to conclusions here and maybe, just maybe, Apple will give FreeType their blessing. It seems to me that Apple would benefit the most just by requiring a small notice to be displayed whenever the FreeType engine is used. It would be healthy for the religious movement they have built.
Can a television station detect electronically the number of viewers they have at any given time? Every standard television set and radio in the world is just like a dedicated packet sniffer. If I could connect a specialized box to your internal network, I could grab anything I want and it is not possible that you would be able to detect it unless you saw the box with your own eyes. I could come in and get it a week later and have a large number of passwords to mess with. The best sniffers have no need of a MAC or IP address.
:)
/. article has been mildly irritating. We need more moderators.
However, most crackers have to get into your network remotely. They usually find their way into a general-purpose machine. For practical reasons, it may not be possible for him/her to put the NIC into 100% receive-only mode. That is the kind of situation that AntiSniffer detects.
As others have said, a switch can make sniffing more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult. Remember that no computer can be 100% secure, unless of course it finds itself in the middle of a nuclear explosion.
This
Obviously that's what many programmers are going to do, too. Y2K will not cause a state of emergency and the months leading up to the last year of this millennium will be remembered as a time of unfounded fears. Many will assume it's safe again to use two-digit years because the programs will be good for another 90+ years. (Previously they were good for only 20 years. 90 is greater than 20.)
However, because data capacity is now cheap enough that the difference of space taken up by 4 bytes rather than 2 bytes is very insignificant, there is no longer an excuse to use 2 digits. It's just lazy.
I installed Caldera recently on a small server intended to serve a small business. We needed Samba, PPP, masquerading, fetchmail, and a special Web server installed.
:)
- I installed everything on the $2 CD from LinuxMall. (I assume Caldera only adds PartitionMagic to the commercial version.) Tried to boot from the CD, had to fix an IDE cable, tried again, and it eventually installed perfectly. Had this been a "normal" box, it probably would have gone right the first time.
- Wanted to set up Samba using SWAT. SWAT is the excellent web-based configuration tool that's *supposed* to come with Samba 2. It was nowhere to be found. Mildly irritated, I edited smb.conf by hand. Samba worked but not flawlessly.
- I set up PPP then started to work on IP masquerading. Guess what--masquerading had not been enabled when the kernel was compiled. So I decided it was time to learn how to compile a new kernel for myself. OpenLinux 2.2 comes with kernel version 2.2.5 and I downloaded kernel version 2.2.10. I thought there would be nothing wrong with an upgrade.
- Read HOWTO's until I finally got the kernel configured and compiled. After reboot, everything seemed okay except for Samba. Went to the Samba Web site and downloaded 2.05a. I didn't mind doing this anyway since I would finally get SWAT with it.
- Compiled Samba and got it running but discovered that it would not accept *any* passwords. Searched around a lot and discovered that PAM had not been enabled in the compile. I figured PAM was standard enough that all distro's would use it by now.
- Even with everything installed correctly, could not get PAM to work with Samba because of something different about the way PAM works on Caldera. Tried to revert to the usage of the Unix crypt() call. Had to grab libcrypt from the RadHat 6 installation on my laptop, and by sheer luck it worked.
- Had to install a second network card. Spent an entire day playing with "make xconfig" only to discover that for some reason, if you compile two types of network interfaces into the kernel (rather than make at least one modular), the kernel will detect only one of them. Or so it would seem. Admittedly, this problem had nothing to do with Caldera.
- Tried to install the linuxconf package from the RedHat 6.0 distribution. Wanted to be able to point and drool to configure the machine since I'd already spent more than a week on it. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Linuxconf is very, very nice IMHO. It should be integrated into KDE and GNOME. But after installing it, the machine would barely boot. Fortunately, rpm --erase restored my rc.d files.
Only two days ago I had to install a new server that would serve similar functions. I used Mandrake 6.0. No major problems, no need to recompile the kernel, NO MISSING LIBRARIES... and in fact, I got Netatalk working on Linux 2.2. According to the Netatalk FAQ, it doesn't compile on 2.2. But it did! I spent only a few hours too.
Conclusion: if all you intend to do with the Linux box is already on the Caldera CD, you've got a winner. Otherwise, use something else!!
See how an open-sourced base platform can adapt to changing needs? Even such a fundamental part of the operating system can quickly be replaced with something better. Go SGI & Linux!
See The Kansas City Star for a better report.
Religion and anything that can be interpreted as in opposition to most common religions have always been very difficult subjects to teach because so many parents have objections to whatever might be said. It is on these grounds that religion has been eliminated from public schools. It sounds as if Kansas is removing evolution from the curriculum on the very same grounds--not based on whether evolution is correct or not. If this is their platform, they should be able to defeat the Americans United for Separation of Church and State... that is if they actually go to court.
Obviously they do not intend to teach religion either. Thus they are leaving the teaching of our origins entirely to the parents. In places where evolution vs. Christianity is a hot topic, this may be a good solution.
Thank you for providing that information. Reading "between the lines", it sounds like the computers you're receiving from the rehabilitation program are of higher quality than those which are sometimes donated by businesses. Because of the rapid pace of computer technology, I can see how that might be the case.
I will begin to think along the lines of teaching how to use computers rather than administrate them. Thanks again!
Oh boy, that's a hoot! :) I was more tired when I wrote that than I thought, I guess.
We need the moderation points to work like they used to so this post can receive a score of 4 or 5! C'mon, guys!!
I'm also in Salt Lake City and I want to join the party!! E-mail me.
I'm glad you pointed this out. As has been said before, there is no success that can compensate for failure in the home. Parents must not try to defer their responsibility to anyone or anything.
:)
Now, I do tend to believe that computers improve reading and reasonings skills dramatically. And they can even be good for spelling. As evidence, I will draw from personal experience. (If this were an essay, I would provide more evidence.
I was introduced to the Commodore 64 at age 8. My parents did not buy any software nor even a magnetic storage device, and told us that if we wanted to use the computer we had to write programs for it. Lo and behold, after great struggles I learned BASIC. I was very, very happy when I figured out how to make a Christmas tree with blinking lights on the screen. For years, successfully writing a new program on a C-64 or Atari was an extremely rewarding experience. For the first two years, my Dad helped me write some of the programs, but it did not take long before I was doing things that were beyond what he'd learned in college.
I think my parents' decision to not buy any software, although it actually stemmed from a financial need, was probably the best decision in my case. Had they bought games, I would have simply played them. Programming at that early age forced me to think, toil, ponder, be creative, and solve problems. I had to learn to read quickly, understand higher math, and type words with perfect accuracy.
The results? Well, I won the spelling bee and I rarely if every use spell checkers (of course, this may be my unlucky day and someone may find a spelling mistake. Yes, I know there are gramatical errors.) I won a state math competition and went to the national level. My SAT scores are in the 99th percentile.
But not everything turned out right. Because I surpassed all of the educators at my school in computer skills, they very often called on me to fix the computers. In time I came to the conclusion that the teachers aren't as smart as they seem and I came to doubt that they were qualified to teach me. It was a very prideful conclusion and it caused my grades to suffer. I continually sought any excuse to go to the library where the computers were. In short, I rebelled against the whole school system.
But I continued to wear nice clothes and teachers continued to ask me for help, so no one knew I needed to be humbled but my parents. My parents worked hard with me, so my grades never fell too far. My social life was good because of my religion.
Glad you've read this far because this was turning into a lonnnggg life story. Back to the point: computer technology that forces the child to think can be very beneficial. However, a limit has to be placed on everything!
You're right--it's easy for technology buyers to forget Microsoft's failure incidents. The best example IMHO is the security breach discovered a month or two ago that lets anyone, anywhere break into any NT server. Notice how the news sites don't give this bug the attention it deserves. Reporters need to say that such a breach left open is probably the worst thing that's ever happened to an "enterprise class" OS. Yes, other OS's have had incidents, but the bugs were fixed expeditiously. Microsoft, like the software they produce, keeps getting bigger and slower.
However, general attitudes appear to be shifting toward alternative operating systems because they are becoming viable. (To some degree, they always were viable, it's just that people weren't aware of them.) Hopefully the attitude shift is not temporary.
This thread cracked me up, you guys/girls. The best part is that it's all public and you can't retract ANYTHING!! :)
I noticed your sig includes the name "Skywalker" and I'm curious if you've heard of the Mark Hamill Entertainment Site maintained by my sister. Probably not--I know there are lots of MH fan sites, but who knows?!
As to the automatic virus detection, that's obviously just marketing hype. Bioligical immune systems work because virii only take a limited set of forms. They are not engineered. They evolve through natural processes. Until very recently, man did not have the power to engineer a biological virus.
:) The databases would have to broadcast to the computers every time a virus alert goes out. The broadcasting system would have to be more efficient than most Internet protocols. It would be really cool (and very, very fast) if the alerts could be broadcast through radio waves. Have a periodic "test of the emergency broadcast system"...
A computer virus is much more insidious because it can take a greater variety of forms. It can be engineered to circumvent any "immune system" as described in the article.
Of course, as man gains the power to manipulate a biological virus, a new threat arises. Man may create a virus that kills and spreads as well as a computer virus.
Now, the central database idea sounds very good and would solve a lot of problems. For once there would actually be a use for "push content"!
That's correct. What it does, however, is pretty slick: msgto.com has to authorize each sender->receiver combination. That authorization will generally occur when a sender attempts to send a message to a msgto.com receiver. msgto.com will send back a message asking that person to pass a test that's extremely simple for humans but difficult for computers. Once authorized, the sender will always be allowed to send to the same receiver. Mass spamming is very near impossible.
I really wish CmdrTaco, Hemos, Roblimo, CowboyNeal, JonKatz, or someone else would pay more attention to this service. It really looks like a complete solution to spam. If it's as good as it seems, it would be worth someone's time to create a simplified daemon that would act only as a mail filter. But since this article is a day old, I can expect at most 2 people to read this!
There is a new spam filtering service available at MsgTo.com that filters e-mail based on a Turing Test. It looks very promising. The service doesn't use SSL/HTTPS yet, but the author would like to release the whole system under an open-source license if there is enough developer demand. And demand is one thing that /. is good at. The site appears to be very fast, but I'd really like to know if it can survive the slashdot effect!
/. story but it seems to have been ignored.)
(BTW I tried to get this posted as a main
Actually I am a happy Linux user, but as most of us around here know, Linux isn't for everyone--yet. That's why there needs to be a debate, and you can't very well have a debate if no one contradicts your point. Linux will achieve "world domination" only after the developers scratch every itch.
Here, here! Although the technical aspects of the Internet are interesting and important, what's even more significant is the social aspects. If we can grasp the past and the reasons why things have developed as they have, we can determine the future. But without good records that are easy to find, the past is as blurry as the future.
;-)
Where the Internet excels is its ability to publish information. Where it often fails miserably is the ability to collect relevant information into a single trusted place. Slashdot captures the essence of that disparity by putting relevant information right along with the irrelevant, allowing chaos to generate useful information. The result as surprising as the beauty of fractals, which are based on amazingly simple mathematics.
So although a collection of documents and biographies would be very useful, it would be difficult for any single entity to assume the trusted role of guardian, unless of course an entity that already has the trust of the community were to accept the undertaking. The IETF may have that status, but with "engineering" in their name the last thing they want to do is write MORE DOCUMENTATION!
I'm interested in your comment but my otherwise healthy mind cannot figure out what "EU" stands for. The problem stems from the fact that in Portuguese, "Estados Unidos", abbreviated "EU", means "United States". :)
Ahem, someone moderated the above post down (while someone else moderated it up). It is not appropriate to call it flamebait. It is a question worth exploring.
/., misreporting may be transforming into something much more subtle.
/. is usually that the news is refined or thrashed enough that the real truth breaks through. Assuming the modified approach scales up so that the masses can use the /. model for non-technology-related topics, we are in the middle of an evolution in communication. Obviously the Internet itself is an evolution in communication, but sites like /. are what make it so!
/. is relatively small, it could be very significant. Therefore if subtle rumors may be a by-product of /., it is important for us to discover that truth also.
Media corruption has existed for a long time but now with the shift in the news delivery medium, as pioneered right here on
If there's anything I learned from taking history classes, it's that communications mediums have shaped history more than any other identifiable shift. (That point is debatable, of course.) At any other time or place has it been so easy for common people to instantly benefit from hundreds of others' views on breaking news in their own fields of interest? The result on
Thus even though