Reasons why you might want to support a large number of users.
WWW / FTP Hosting, you'll want a separate user account and user area for each customer.
shell accounts (yes, people still use these / like these), especially for setting up their own services (such as IRC servers and bots, MUDs, etc. etc.) I could only imagine the sheer chaos of trying to setup something with equivalent capabilites (especially allowing users to run their own apps) using Windows.
use / control of specialized resources. For example, say you have important equipment X, which is accessed / controlled by computer system H. To restrict access to X, to monitor usage of X, and to (probably) retain security between different users of X, you probably want to allow multiple accounts on H (perhaps a very large number). Perhaps you might want to allow many people to use X at the same time (i.e. login to H). Consider the case of X=H=very high performance computer system (perhaps with special hardware of some sort, let's say a quad processor system for use in testing parallel processing code), everyplace I've ever heard of that has a system like this available for many people doesn't parcel it out in a "one user at a time" fashion and lets people log in and use it simultaneously (which is a much more effecient use of resources).
There are many other examples of why you might want to have multiple simultaneous-users on a system. The fact is that multi-user functionality in an OS is still important for many tasks. Unix does this very well (since it has about 3 decades of experience) whereas windows does not, which is why you don't see Windows being used in situations where you need multi-user capabilities.
In my experience, Linux is still a better server OS and Windows is still a better workstation OS.
Using Linux as my main workstation OS is not an option. There are too many applications and features that I can't (or can't get with the quality I like). Windows is very polished in this regard and I enjoy not having to hack (much) the OS to get every little thing done. I imagine this is the case for a lot of people.
Using Windows (2000 frex) as a server (which I just so happen to do also:P ) is very "non optimal" especially compared to Linux / unix. It's not too difficult to get some pretty spiffy servers running (for example, WarFTP, Apache + ActivePerl +PHP...), but the same thing that favors Windows as a desktop favors linux as a server, namely software support. Most server-ish programs are optimized for a unixoid environment (database apps, scripting apps etc.) and sometimes contain very little help (or software support) for the Windows platform. Additionally, Linux / unixes have many excellent features that facilitate serving (for example, easy / consistent user account creation and usage, straightforward file permissions, low OS overhead, etc.)
When configuring a windows box as a server you can setup a lot of services but you quickly start running into problems / high levels of complexity and difficulties of administration when you get a lot of things running (especially if you want to use free software). However, configuring a linux box, you can easily pile on new services and not even flinch. It's a simple matter (for a semi-trained semi-expert) to setup DNS, FTP, IRC, WWW, Routing, Telnet and/or SSH, a Database (or three), PHP, Perl, Python, SMTP (and just about whatever else you want to throw in) running on linux / unix without too much trouble in either setup or continued operation. And, of course, you can do all of this on linux with free apps quite easily. It's also a lot easier to use different configurations (for example, for security purposes) under linux than it is on windows. Plus, all the information on setting up linux services is readily available in fairly easy to follow howto's / tutorials. To attempt to setup a server of the same functional complexity of a moderately tweaked / filled out linux system using Windows requires a lot more effort (read pain).
Simply because it's not possible to create perfect security does not mean that we should give up the ghost and go home. Quite the contrary, it is simply an indication that computers are indeed a part of the real world. Are real world banks 100% secure? Do the never get robbed? Obviously not, but we still have trust in them. Simply because "you cannot build a robbery proof bank" does not mean that we should give up banks (and their like) alltogether. And, while the Fort Knox gold repository isn't precisely invulnerable, it is sufficiently close to being so for the purposes necessary.
Computer security will necessarily ebb and flow as people recognize the issues and concerns and understand how to deal with them, etc., etc. Currently, there are many examples of poor and lax security because A) the favored model for computing has many security problems, B) unix is not a very secure operating system (face it guys, I love unix to death, but in many ways it is fundamentally broken when it comes to security [luckily, unix is so flexible that you can patch up the huge gigantic rents enough to make it pretty a box pretty damn secure]), C) everyone and their mother has some sort of semi-important server, which when combined with D) very few people actually understand even the basics of making a network / server / system secure can only cause problems.
In the semi near term, one of two things will most likely happen. Either 1) people will in general become more security concious, or 2) programs and systems will be made more inherently secure. I think 2 is much more likely, though a combination of 2 and a little bit of 1 would go a very long way.
Hey, wait a second, where have I heard somtehing like that before?
Every body and their cousin who thinks they're a fantsy-pants computer pundit seem to go in for things like this one time or another. "The PC is dead", "PC gaming is dead", "The web browser is dead", yadda yadda yadda, it's all a bunch of crap. These people barely know what they're talking about when it comes to today's technology, let alone what technology will predominate in the future.
When it comes to lame predictions like these I tend to say "I believe it when I'll see it". So far I've seen lots of claims over the years, and yet nothing of this sort has actually happened.
Earth to dumbass, 2600 is a news magazine. Part of the press. Essentially the whole of their defense in posting and linking to the DeCSS code was freedom of the press.
If Time-Warner's subsidiary CNN has the freedom to link to DeCSS, then 2600 should be able to as well.
Wireless broadband will no doubt be "the next big thing". I'm sure fibreless optical links will be great but I'm not convinced (yet) that they will be as big as some people are claiming. However, wireless radio broadband will certainly be huge.
Wireless networks have several advantages over traditional land lines, especially in areas of rapid expansion. For one, the right of way issues are greatly reduced. It is a severe pain in the ass just filling out the forms to try to drag a cable across town, or across the state, or across several states. And it's not cheap either. The expense of actually laying the cable is also quite substantial. However, with wireless networks, you only need to setup a few base stations and boom, you've got a network.
Pretty soon, everyone and their mother (literally!) will be wanting / needing broadband access, and right now a lot of people (and businesses!) just don't live where it's possible to get broadband any time soon. DSL is great, but the limited range means a lot of people are left out, and the limited speeds makes it unsuitable for a lot of uses. The best hope for most locations is a cable modem or getting their own line laid, cable connections are not particularly suited for high bandwidth serving or businesses, and paying for your own line to be laid is just murderous. On the other hand, if someone could just install a wireless connection with T1 -> OC1 (or faster) speeds with little delay they would make a lot of people very happy.
Additionally, wireless networks are well suited to developing countries. There are lots of places on this Earth that lack even basic telephone service. By bringing wireless networks to these places, they can not only get phone service at much less the cost than they would be able to through more traditional setups, but they can actually get not too shabby connections to the wonderful world wide internet. In fact, many countries are deploying wireless telephone networks for precisely these reasons.
Tabbed widgets have been around nearly forever, Adobe certainly didn't invent them. And tabbed dialog boxes have been integrated into Microsft Windows since Windows 98 (or thereabouts), though they were (obviously) used before then.
All this patent crap and legal wrangling is really pissing me off, if you want to defeat your competitors, build a better product.
Currently, the majority of US movie goers still consider animation to be for kids. Unfortunately, most Americans think that animation = cartoon, and thus expect animated movies and tv shows to be cartoonish productions all the way from the quality of the animation to the content of the story. In many places however, animation is seen as simply another way to tell a story. In Japan, animated movies and television or "anime" are very popular and most people understand that just because something is anime does not mean that it is meant for children. There are many adult oriented anime movies and TV shows.
Anime currently has something of a cult following in the US but the support is currently not big enough to make a major motion profitable when released in theaters. Add to this the fact that Titan A.E. (despite its attempts) was not significantly more apealing to a grown up audience even though it was target to them, and you have a recipe for disaster. Basically, what you end up with is a movie that is not really appealing to kids but which is not substantive enought to interest grown up audiences and which additionally doesn't do a particularly good job of interesting the "anime cult" followers.
I guess we will see in 2001 if the US adult audience is prepared for adult animation on the big screen when the Final Fantasy movie comes out.
If you can't count on your data being dead even after you performed a multi-pass wipe of the hard drive and then burned it, then where do you seek protection?
Obviously, encryption.
Big brother is watching, if you want to keep anything secret you better use something that will at least be hard for "them" to penetrate. Encryption is the only known last defense.
Hmmm, let's see if I can get Echelon to take notice of this post. Nuclear weapons grade plutonium uranium kryptonite terrorism attack make the infidels pay bomb blood killing death www.terrorists.org DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVERS! allah'u akbar muhammad purple monkey dishwasher.
The US is providing launch and crew tranfer services for most of the non-Russian partners in ISS, and will be building many of the key components of the ISS (including the main solar panel / truss structure, the main Laboratory and Habitation modules, the crew return vehicle, lots more stuff).
Italy is building (/has built) the MPLM "cargo transfer containers" modules that will be used for transfering large amounts of equipment to and from the station.
The ESA (European Space Agency) will be building / funding it's own lab module. In exchange for the US providing launch services for the module, the ESA will build and fund a node (Node-3) for the ISS.
NASDA (The Japanese space agency) will also be building / funding a quite sophisticated lab module. I believe they're trading a significant amount of lab usage for launch services on the Shuttle.
Russia will be responsible for several key components of the ISS (most notably the Zvezda "Service Module") including regular resuply with their unmanned Progress cargo vehicles. Additionally, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft will serve as the ISS's "lifeboat(s)" until the CRV (X-38) is ready for service.
Canada will be building the advanced robot arm for the ISS (actually, it's really one of many robot arms, though it is the main one).
Several other nations (notably Brazil) will also be participating in ISS, though as minor partners.
I don't think it's a good idea to leap headlong into futzing our voting system until the technology has really matured (i.e. it is second nature to every citizen). Computer's are only about 5 decades old (and the big boom in mainstream computer usage is only a decade old at most!), put good old fashioned "write your vote on paper" (et al) type systems are based on very much simpler, very much more common, very much more easy to understand/use, and very much older technology.
Also, considering that there is currently a "digital devide" where the poor and minorities are less likely to have access to computers, I think that some could claim (including myself, but not so strenously) that making it easier for the people who do have computers to weild their political power is a type of descrimination.
Come on/. get your act together. Try not announcing a new milepost build until one is actually available for download and you put the link direct to the download in the news post.
You are in a maze of twisty little daily builds, all different.
Agreed, especially considering that 1) the people that overthrew the Shaw in Iran are now in power there and 2) there are probably quite a few family members (sons, daughters, etc.) of people who would now be considered "traiters to Iran" or even worse "infidels".
Also, this points out an interesting issue. Who is responsible for the "security breach" of the PDF document? Personally, I believe it is the NY Times fault for not making the pdf document secure.
Yep, the fact that the music industry has not yet embraced digital distribution let alone reasonable prices for songs, is why people flock to Napster and it's cousins.
P.S. Why do cassette tapes cost less than CD's? They cost more to manufacture!
Computing power isn't an issue with tracking asteroids. In fact, usually one moderately powered computer is way more than enough for any dedicated asteroid tracking station.
What's needed are more dedicated telescopes (luckily, for tracking asteroids, these don't have to be the huge mega-telescopes, small ones (in comparison) work just fine), more funding, and more staff.
Currently, automated dedicated asteroid finding telescopes are responsible for the largest amount of newly discovered asteroids and comets (as opposed to Amateur astronomers, who tend to discover these things). However, there are just so many huge rocks flying around our Solar System that pass near the Earth from time to time that these automated searches would have to be only the major catcher of asteroids, but they would have to totally dominate the discoveries (in other words, they would have to be responsible for many times the current total rate of asteroid discoveries).
Definitely high on the list would be an explanation of taxes.
Right now, buying over the internet is essentially considered the same thing as mail orders through a catalog. If you buy something from a biz in another state, you don't have to pay sales tax. If you buy something from a biz in your state, local sales tax is applicable.
I guess some people don't understand this, leading to confusion and added expense/frustration.
I think we see now who the real threat to music artists is. It's not Napster or mp3s (they've been heavily popular for a year now and CD sales are still high and getting higher). It's the record labels. This new law is just another link in the chain of the collar of obedience around the necks of the public AND the artists.
I think the result of these newer developments will be either a growth in the dominance and power of the major record labels, or a gigantic backlash against the current record label system. At the moment things do not look good in averting such a confrontation. Additionally, if I would have to bet which side would win in the end, I would not bet on the record labels.
Hopefully they don't mean "regulate" (as in restrict content) but in fact mean that various filtering/tracking software will become better / more sophisticated and will actually WORK.
Slashdot Mirror
Reasons why you might want to support a large number of users.
There are many other examples of why you might want to have multiple simultaneous-users on a system. The fact is that multi-user functionality in an OS is still important for many tasks. Unix does this very well (since it has about 3 decades of experience) whereas windows does not, which is why you don't see Windows being used in situations where you need multi-user capabilities.
AOL: I'll get you and your little dog too! (oh yeah and it's so easy no wonder yadda yadda)
Using Linux as my main workstation OS is not an option. There are too many applications and features that I can't (or can't get with the quality I like). Windows is very polished in this regard and I enjoy not having to hack (much) the OS to get every little thing done. I imagine this is the case for a lot of people.
Using Windows (2000 frex) as a server (which I just so happen to do also :P ) is very "non optimal" especially compared to Linux / unix. It's not too difficult to get some pretty spiffy servers running (for example, WarFTP, Apache + ActivePerl +PHP...), but the same thing that favors Windows as a desktop favors linux as a server, namely software support. Most server-ish programs are optimized for a unixoid environment (database apps, scripting apps etc.) and sometimes contain very little help (or software support) for the Windows platform. Additionally, Linux / unixes have many excellent features that facilitate serving (for example, easy / consistent user account creation and usage, straightforward file permissions, low OS overhead, etc.)
When configuring a windows box as a server you can setup a lot of services but you quickly start running into problems / high levels of complexity and difficulties of administration when you get a lot of things running (especially if you want to use free software). However, configuring a linux box, you can easily pile on new services and not even flinch. It's a simple matter (for a semi-trained semi-expert) to setup DNS, FTP, IRC, WWW, Routing, Telnet and/or SSH, a Database (or three), PHP, Perl, Python, SMTP (and just about whatever else you want to throw in) running on linux / unix without too much trouble in either setup or continued operation. And, of course, you can do all of this on linux with free apps quite easily. It's also a lot easier to use different configurations (for example, for security purposes) under linux than it is on windows. Plus, all the information on setting up linux services is readily available in fairly easy to follow howto's / tutorials. To attempt to setup a server of the same functional complexity of a moderately tweaked / filled out linux system using Windows requires a lot more effort (read pain).
Though it shows it as dom%e4n.nu in IE's address bar.
Simply because it's not possible to create perfect security does not mean that we should give up the ghost and go home. Quite the contrary, it is simply an indication that computers are indeed a part of the real world. Are real world banks 100% secure? Do the never get robbed? Obviously not, but we still have trust in them. Simply because "you cannot build a robbery proof bank" does not mean that we should give up banks (and their like) alltogether. And, while the Fort Knox gold repository isn't precisely invulnerable, it is sufficiently close to being so for the purposes necessary.
Computer security will necessarily ebb and flow as people recognize the issues and concerns and understand how to deal with them, etc., etc. Currently, there are many examples of poor and lax security because A) the favored model for computing has many security problems, B) unix is not a very secure operating system (face it guys, I love unix to death, but in many ways it is fundamentally broken when it comes to security [luckily, unix is so flexible that you can patch up the huge gigantic rents enough to make it pretty a box pretty damn secure]), C) everyone and their mother has some sort of semi-important server, which when combined with D) very few people actually understand even the basics of making a network / server / system secure can only cause problems.
In the semi near term, one of two things will most likely happen. Either 1) people will in general become more security concious, or 2) programs and systems will be made more inherently secure. I think 2 is much more likely, though a combination of 2 and a little bit of 1 would go a very long way.
Every body and their cousin who thinks they're a fantsy-pants computer pundit seem to go in for things like this one time or another. "The PC is dead", "PC gaming is dead", "The web browser is dead", yadda yadda yadda, it's all a bunch of crap. These people barely know what they're talking about when it comes to today's technology, let alone what technology will predominate in the future.
When it comes to lame predictions like these I tend to say "I believe it when I'll see it". So far I've seen lots of claims over the years, and yet nothing of this sort has actually happened.
If Time-Warner's subsidiary CNN has the freedom to link to DeCSS, then 2600 should be able to as well.
Wireless networks have several advantages over traditional land lines, especially in areas of rapid expansion. For one, the right of way issues are greatly reduced. It is a severe pain in the ass just filling out the forms to try to drag a cable across town, or across the state, or across several states. And it's not cheap either. The expense of actually laying the cable is also quite substantial. However, with wireless networks, you only need to setup a few base stations and boom, you've got a network.
Pretty soon, everyone and their mother (literally!) will be wanting / needing broadband access, and right now a lot of people (and businesses!) just don't live where it's possible to get broadband any time soon. DSL is great, but the limited range means a lot of people are left out, and the limited speeds makes it unsuitable for a lot of uses. The best hope for most locations is a cable modem or getting their own line laid, cable connections are not particularly suited for high bandwidth serving or businesses, and paying for your own line to be laid is just murderous. On the other hand, if someone could just install a wireless connection with T1 -> OC1 (or faster) speeds with little delay they would make a lot of people very happy.
Additionally, wireless networks are well suited to developing countries. There are lots of places on this Earth that lack even basic telephone service. By bringing wireless networks to these places, they can not only get phone service at much less the cost than they would be able to through more traditional setups, but they can actually get not too shabby connections to the wonderful world wide internet. In fact, many countries are deploying wireless telephone networks for precisely these reasons.
P.S. You can also get the scoop over at sharky extreme.
Re: Patented! (Score:0 Flamebait)
by Adobe on Thursday August 10, @11:35PM EDT (#1001)
(User #10546 Info)
Furst Pat3nt!
Sux it Macromedia!
Tabbed widgets have been around nearly forever, Adobe certainly didn't invent them. And tabbed dialog boxes have been integrated into Microsft Windows since Windows 98 (or thereabouts), though they were (obviously) used before then.
All this patent crap and legal wrangling is really pissing me off, if you want to defeat your competitors, build a better product.
Currently, the majority of US movie goers still consider animation to be for kids. Unfortunately, most Americans think that animation = cartoon, and thus expect animated movies and tv shows to be cartoonish productions all the way from the quality of the animation to the content of the story. In many places however, animation is seen as simply another way to tell a story. In Japan, animated movies and television or "anime" are very popular and most people understand that just because something is anime does not mean that it is meant for children. There are many adult oriented anime movies and TV shows.
Anime currently has something of a cult following in the US but the support is currently not big enough to make a major motion profitable when released in theaters. Add to this the fact that Titan A.E. (despite its attempts) was not significantly more apealing to a grown up audience even though it was target to them, and you have a recipe for disaster. Basically, what you end up with is a movie that is not really appealing to kids but which is not substantive enought to interest grown up audiences and which additionally doesn't do a particularly good job of interesting the "anime cult" followers.
I guess we will see in 2001 if the US adult audience is prepared for adult animation on the big screen when the Final Fantasy movie comes out.
If you can't count on your data being dead even after you performed a multi-pass wipe of the hard drive and then burned it, then where do you seek protection?
Obviously, encryption.
Big brother is watching, if you want to keep anything secret you better use something that will at least be hard for "them" to penetrate. Encryption is the only known last defense.
Hmmm, let's see if I can get Echelon to take notice of this post. Nuclear weapons grade plutonium uranium kryptonite terrorism attack make the infidels pay bomb blood killing death www.terrorists.org DEATH TO THE UNBELIEVERS! allah'u akbar muhammad purple monkey dishwasher.
You have a trailing 'u' in the title.
I don't think it's a good idea to leap headlong into futzing our voting system until the technology has really matured (i.e. it is second nature to every citizen). Computer's are only about 5 decades old (and the big boom in mainstream computer usage is only a decade old at most!), put good old fashioned "write your vote on paper" (et al) type systems are based on very much simpler, very much more common, very much more easy to understand/use, and very much older technology.
Also, considering that there is currently a "digital devide" where the poor and minorities are less likely to have access to computers, I think that some could claim (including myself, but not so strenously) that making it easier for the people who do have computers to weild their political power is a type of descrimination.
You are in a maze of twisty little daily builds, all different.
Also, this points out an interesting issue. Who is responsible for the "security breach" of the PDF document? Personally, I believe it is the NY Times fault for not making the pdf document secure.
P.S. Why do cassette tapes cost less than CD's? They cost more to manufacture!
I prefer this chart since it's slightly more detailed. Plus, it's not in a damn frame, ugh.
What's needed are more dedicated telescopes (luckily, for tracking asteroids, these don't have to be the huge mega-telescopes, small ones (in comparison) work just fine), more funding, and more staff.
Currently, automated dedicated asteroid finding telescopes are responsible for the largest amount of newly discovered asteroids and comets (as opposed to Amateur astronomers, who tend to discover these things). However, there are just so many huge rocks flying around our Solar System that pass near the Earth from time to time that these automated searches would have to be only the major catcher of asteroids, but they would have to totally dominate the discoveries (in other words, they would have to be responsible for many times the current total rate of asteroid discoveries).
Right now, buying over the internet is essentially considered the same thing as mail orders through a catalog. If you buy something from a biz in another state, you don't have to pay sales tax. If you buy something from a biz in your state, local sales tax is applicable.
I guess some people don't understand this, leading to confusion and added expense/frustration.
I think the result of these newer developments will be either a growth in the dominance and power of the major record labels, or a gigantic backlash against the current record label system. At the moment things do not look good in averting such a confrontation. Additionally, if I would have to bet which side would win in the end, I would not bet on the record labels.
dude, WTF is wrong with you? get a hobby.
Hopefully they don't mean "regulate" (as in restrict content) but in fact mean that various filtering/tracking software will become better / more sophisticated and will actually WORK.