The article pre-supposes that Linux is more "popular" than BSD. The real question should be for what group is it more popular -- the majority of both the Linux and BSD user communities are still programmers. For many reasons (as specified in other responses) Linux seems to be more popular among them.
However, because of the ability for a company to make a proprietary fork of BSD code, I would wager that there are more copies of software out there that owes their origins to BSD than there are for the GPL.
So, really, "popular" to whom? Developers or end users?
No, it's true. NBC had the interview with Broaddrick, and chose to air it one time, opposite the Grammy awards, and denied their MSNBC affiliates any use of the footage.
The charge was over 20 years old (I believe) and would have been impossible to substantiate, but the story was squashed for political reasons by NBC (the same network that faked footgae of a truck exploding to incite outrage against auto manufacturers).
The post above is very insightful -- open protocols and APIs are far more important than open sources (though the latter are still very useful). Porting PGPfone to Linux would be nice, but getting other programs to communicate with PGPfone is a more useful and general-purpose solution.
Since the source coude is still "owned" and not released under a friendly license (as of now, at least), this is an even better idea, because the source can be inspected to determine the protocols without ever having to use a single line of source code in the derived works. --
Yeah, US Mail is generally considered "safe". The safest way to do it would probably be to physically go to the bank and provide positive identification. The bank you're describing is just asking for a lawsuit for failing to protect its customers and itself from fraud here.
For a digital signute system, as I've said in another post, you'd want to use a notary system (and I'm sure banks would be a good place to do this) where you have to have your key signed by a certified agent, who then uploads your public key into a public, central repository. --
I don't trust the infrastructure enough to assure me that the document can't be modified after the fact.
A "digital signuture" in a PKI system is actually an encrypted hash of the message, along with timestamp info. With a good PKI system, such as PGP, it is improbable enough to be considered impossible to create a substitute message that will generate a duplicate hash result. Therefore, if the message is altered in any way (intentionally or not), the signature check will fail due to the modified hash result.
The PGP manuals are an excellent source of information not just on PGP, but on cryptography in general and PKI systems in particular. --
I've used electronic/online banking with two banks and they both did it the same (correct) way. After applying for access, I received a temporary PIN code via snail mail to use on first connection (along with account number, etc.).
Sure it's a bit slower, but it's a lot safer. I would imagine that to get a valid digital signature, one would have to go through a notary-type service where you show proof of ID to a licensed individual, who then signs the key you provide and submits the signed public key to the centralized registry.
Whatever Java's problems are on the client side, servlets are an entirely different manner. As the name implies, they are run on the server, not the client. The security issues basically go away (other than some of the typical CGI-related issues).
Additionally, server-side Java is extremely stable and portable. --
At my last job, the development machine (for a government project) were named after characters in the move The Dirty Dozen. The test lab machine were named after Peanuts characters.
My home network uses place names from The Lord of The Rings, such as Rivendell, Lorien, and Minas_Tirith.
The Clinton Administration is the Trial Lawyer's Association's best friend. Their reponse to this case is typical, regardless of whether or not it is the correct policy (honestly, I'm not sure one way or the other yet). Anything to increase the chance for lawyers to earn fees...
The (now cancelled, please bitch to Sierra -- it was 3-6 months from completeion, at most) Babylon 5 space combat simulator was supposed to have a dynamically created soundtrack. Not quite up to the level we're talking about here, but it would seamlessly blend in fragments written by series composer Chris Franke in such a way that it would fit the on-screen action. This of course would be based on a rule set as to which fragment(s) would be appropriate and how to make a smooth transition into it. Still, the obvious benefit to games should be readily apparent.
Moving this same type of system to a completely independent composition is obviously an order or two of magnitude more difficult, but essentially, it would require using style fragments instead of music fragments, a way to provide it's own "mood" (instead of being fed by an external source [the game]), and some more complex rules on music theory in general to make things cohesive.
All in all, pretty cool. It'll be unlikely that such a system produces anything particularly innovative or moving, but it will certainly help lower budget TV shows or movies build up better scoring -- it's a sad shame that music is one of the first things cut when budget gets tight. Looking back at B5, Franke's score adds so much to the on-screen scenes, often more than 20 minutes of original music for a 44 minute show...
Almost every newspaper and news magazine in this country endorses candidates for elections (at least via the editorial board) -- so should the total cost of the paper, ink, presses, delivery, salary, location, etc. count as campaign contributions to the endorsed candidates?
Should campaign volunteers' time be counted as contributions if the "fair market" value of the time exceeds the cap? (Sorry, Chris, but if you help us at this rally, it'll cost the campaign too much...)
Just another case where you add in the word "internet" and all of a sudden everyone thinks they have to get involved. Oh my God! Do you realize that with the INTERNET, anyone could be politically active without reporting to us?!?!?!
I really envy Americans their unmetered local calls.
Well, I'm an American and have lived in several parts of the US, and I don't get local calls for free -- never have. I've always had to choose between service plans; the most common is to pay a small flat fee for, say 30 or so unlimited length calls within a limited local area. Other "local" calls are metered per minute and by time of day. When the monthly purchased allowance is used up, normal per minute charges apply.
There are other plans, I'm sure, but it's a myth to believe that local calls are free, they're just usually paid for in a different manner than one might otherwise expect.
One point you forget to raise is that for most purposes, UI code doesn't have to be very fast.
Which is in line with what I said (a couple of posts above) about most prgrams being I/O bound more often than CPU bound -- most GUIs spend the majority of their time waiting for input. Of course, fast or no, I'd still like to see cleaner redrawing -- I often have windows that aren't redrawn because some action is being performed. (Yeah, I know I could start the action off in its own thread, but sometimes that's overkill...)
Just-in-time (JIT) compiling at run-time allows frequently called routines to run at the same speed as native code, after the initial performance hit. This has shown a huge positive impact on server side applications, where programs run for long stretches of time.
Java can also be natively compiled, though there are few available compilers (commercial or otherwise). As a compiled (or JIT-compiled) language, the major speed bottleneck is garbage collection -- performance is comprable to C/C++ with a garbage collection package.
Of course, the AWT package (for graphics) is not particularly impressive, either in speed or in basic window management such as redrawing.
Also, remeber that execution speed is not the only measure of a program. Java is easier to write and maintain than the C variants (from anecdotal evidence). From personal experience I tend to agree -- I know C++ better, but I'm still faster to develop and debug in Java. Most programs do not use the CPU 100% of the time anyway; there is often some I/O bottleneck.
Information on a fix should be available on Microsoft's Java Web site.
So, ZDNet Labs, this would be that central repository of patches you were looking for? Oh, wait, let me jump to the Office page to get those patches, then the IE 5 page...
Actually, capitalism's basis is the creation of capital, not the accumulation thereof. It's a subtle but important distinction. Capitalism is the only econmic model that does not address distribution of wealth. (There is a logical consequence of how the wealth is distributed, of course, but it is not part of the model per se.)
As another poster pointed out, it's not a zero-sum game. There is typically less of a divide between rich and poor in capitalistic systems because of the ability for upward mobility. Non-capitalist systems usually result in a system with very few elites with a wide gap between them and the "common man" -- capitalist systems tend to have a much more dynamic distribution of wealth.
I my previous job, I worked on a (non-classified) proposal for the US military to help develop a decision making system to determine how best to neutralize a given target. The big thing I remember is that they were willing to use any means necessary -- just whatever would effectively eliminate opposition. By "everything" I man the whole range from propaganda and information warfare (a/k/a cyberwarfare) to actually putting explosive down onn target.
The moral: use the approach that works best for the situation. In this case, the military decision was to disrupt communications and services. Not a real surprise, since the primary objective was political, not military.
Spreading the message "encrypted == insecure" reduces the sum total of enlightenment in the world. Please don't do it.
I wasn't trying to. I'm all in favor of more liberal use of encryption. I use encryption whenever feasable (the hard part is getting other people to realize why it's worth the hasle).
At the same time, it must be noted than any encrypted message is breakable by brute force, given enough resources. With a strong enough key and current mathematical knowledge, this can be as good as unbreakable, but what about in 10 years? Do you still want your message secure then? How can you be certain that the advances in mathematics and/or computer technology won't make your security obsolete.
In general, encryption is used to protect time-sensitive data. If the message is broken after X amount of time, it generally does the third party little to no good. The only way to prevent a message from ever being decrypted is to not have it laying around for anyone to get a hold of.
Simply using encryption is not enough of a solution -- the limitations of encryption as a security measue, from both the social and technical standpoints, should be understood. If you haven't done so already, read the manuals that come along with PGP -- Zimmerman (and/or others) goes into great detail on what the limitations of encryption technology are.
I wouldn't call it "self-destruct", since the message still exists, but in an encrypted form. You can't rely on this for absolute safety because with enough computing power, any message could eventually be broken.
On the other hand, for most uses, this would be more than enough protection for the people involved. I also like the fact that it promotes the idea of sending more email as encrypted documents. Keep making encryption more mainstream!
A MAC address is no different in terms of privacy than an IP address. Either can be changed (though people with dynamic IP addresses change their IP address many times more often than they change MAC addresses, if ever). There is no central registry of MAC addresses.
All this does is tie a number that is meaningless to the rest of the world to your IP address. Your IP address already exposes you far more than your MAC address would. The only exception I can see off the top of my head are people who trust a proxy/firewall to protect their identities.
Despite this being an obvious troll, I will answer it.
The external floppy was included. I had the option of having either the CD-ROM or the floppy built in. It's necessary for the laptop because that CD-ROM cannot be used as a boot device, unlike the SCSI/USB/Firewire devices on the iMac.
Considering how my floppy uses a special connector, it would only be of use to people with the same type of notebook, who should already have one. Most of the time, it sits (detached) in the travel bag in case I ever need to use a rescue disk.
Slashdot Mirror
However, because of the ability for a company to make a proprietary fork of BSD code, I would wager that there are more copies of software out there that owes their origins to BSD than there are for the GPL.
So, really, "popular" to whom? Developers or end users?
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My understanding is that "robot" is a Czech word that translates as "drone".
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The charge was over 20 years old (I believe) and would have been impossible to substantiate, but the story was squashed for political reasons by NBC (the same network that faked footgae of a truck exploding to incite outrage against auto manufacturers).
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Since the source coude is still "owned" and not released under a friendly license (as of now, at least), this is an even better idea, because the source can be inspected to determine the protocols without ever having to use a single line of source code in the derived works.
--
For a digital signute system, as I've said in another post, you'd want to use a notary system (and I'm sure banks would be a good place to do this) where you have to have your key signed by a certified agent, who then uploads your public key into a public, central repository.
--
A "digital signuture" in a PKI system is actually an encrypted hash of the message, along with timestamp info. With a good PKI system, such as PGP, it is improbable enough to be considered impossible to create a substitute message that will generate a duplicate hash result. Therefore, if the message is altered in any way (intentionally or not), the signature check will fail due to the modified hash result.
The PGP manuals are an excellent source of information not just on PGP, but on cryptography in general and PKI systems in particular.
--
Sure it's a bit slower, but it's a lot safer. I would imagine that to get a valid digital signature, one would have to go through a notary-type service where you show proof of ID to a licensed individual, who then signs the key you provide and submits the signed public key to the centralized registry.
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Additionally, server-side Java is extremely stable and portable.
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My home network uses place names from The Lord of The Rings, such as Rivendell, Lorien, and Minas_Tirith.
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Moving this same type of system to a completely independent composition is obviously an order or two of magnitude more difficult, but essentially, it would require using style fragments instead of music fragments, a way to provide it's own "mood" (instead of being fed by an external source [the game]), and some more complex rules on music theory in general to make things cohesive.
All in all, pretty cool. It'll be unlikely that such a system produces anything particularly innovative or moving, but it will certainly help lower budget TV shows or movies build up better scoring -- it's a sad shame that music is one of the first things cut when budget gets tight. Looking back at B5, Franke's score adds so much to the on-screen scenes, often more than 20 minutes of original music for a 44 minute show...
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Should campaign volunteers' time be counted as contributions if the "fair market" value of the time exceeds the cap? (Sorry, Chris, but if you help us at this rally, it'll cost the campaign too much...)
Just another case where you add in the word "internet" and all of a sudden everyone thinks they have to get involved. Oh my God! Do you realize that with the INTERNET, anyone could be politically active without reporting to us?!?!?!
Excuse me while I throw up...
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Well, I'm an American and have lived in several parts of the US, and I don't get local calls for free -- never have. I've always had to choose between service plans; the most common is to pay a small flat fee for, say 30 or so unlimited length calls within a limited local area. Other "local" calls are metered per minute and by time of day. When the monthly purchased allowance is used up, normal per minute charges apply.
There are other plans, I'm sure, but it's a myth to believe that local calls are free, they're just usually paid for in a different manner than one might otherwise expect.
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Which is in line with what I said (a couple of posts above) about most prgrams being I/O bound more often than CPU bound -- most GUIs spend the majority of their time waiting for input. Of course, fast or no, I'd still like to see cleaner redrawing -- I often have windows that aren't redrawn because some action is being performed. (Yeah, I know I could start the action off in its own thread, but sometimes that's overkill...)
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Java can also be natively compiled, though there are few available compilers (commercial or otherwise). As a compiled (or JIT-compiled) language, the major speed bottleneck is garbage collection -- performance is comprable to C/C++ with a garbage collection package.
Of course, the AWT package (for graphics) is not particularly impressive, either in speed or in basic window management such as redrawing.
Also, remeber that execution speed is not the only measure of a program. Java is easier to write and maintain than the C variants (from anecdotal evidence). From personal experience I tend to agree -- I know C++ better, but I'm still faster to develop and debug in Java. Most programs do not use the CPU 100% of the time anyway; there is often some I/O bottleneck.
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So, ZDNet Labs, this would be that central repository of patches you were looking for? Oh, wait, let me jump to the Office page to get those patches, then the IE 5 page...
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I miss my two-way broadband cable modem I had in Pittsburgh... 50 kilobytes per second on a busy night... *sigh*
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As another poster pointed out, it's not a zero-sum game. There is typically less of a divide between rich and poor in capitalistic systems because of the ability for upward mobility. Non-capitalist systems usually result in a system with very few elites with a wide gap between them and the "common man" -- capitalist systems tend to have a much more dynamic distribution of wealth.
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The moral: use the approach that works best for the situation. In this case, the military decision was to disrupt communications and services. Not a real surprise, since the primary objective was political, not military.
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I wasn't trying to. I'm all in favor of more liberal use of encryption. I use encryption whenever feasable (the hard part is getting other people to realize why it's worth the hasle).
At the same time, it must be noted than any encrypted message is breakable by brute force, given enough resources. With a strong enough key and current mathematical knowledge, this can be as good as unbreakable, but what about in 10 years? Do you still want your message secure then? How can you be certain that the advances in mathematics and/or computer technology won't make your security obsolete.
In general, encryption is used to protect time-sensitive data. If the message is broken after X amount of time, it generally does the third party little to no good. The only way to prevent a message from ever being decrypted is to not have it laying around for anyone to get a hold of.
Simply using encryption is not enough of a solution -- the limitations of encryption as a security measue, from both the social and technical standpoints, should be understood. If you haven't done so already, read the manuals that come along with PGP -- Zimmerman (and/or others) goes into great detail on what the limitations of encryption technology are.
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On the other hand, for most uses, this would be more than enough protection for the people involved. I also like the fact that it promotes the idea of sending more email as encrypted documents. Keep making encryption more mainstream!
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Not if you've already read it twice. In that case, since you've already reread it once, you can reread it again... :)
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BTW, is that .sig a reference to Gauntlet? I loved that game...
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All this does is tie a number that is meaningless to the rest of the world to your IP address. Your IP address already exposes you far more than your MAC address would. The only exception I can see off the top of my head are people who trust a proxy/firewall to protect their identities.
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The external floppy was included. I had the option of having either the CD-ROM or the floppy built in. It's necessary for the laptop because that CD-ROM cannot be used as a boot device, unlike the SCSI/USB/Firewire devices on the iMac.
Considering how my floppy uses a special connector, it would only be of use to people with the same type of notebook, who should already have one. Most of the time, it sits (detached) in the travel bag in case I ever need to use a rescue disk.
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