Did anyone else catch the last line of the article?
"The Common Name standard could eventually be integrated with e-mail standards to allow end users to send messages without knowing the recipient's e-mail address."
Are you kidding? So, if I write an email message for my friend, then just type "Jason Smith" in the Common Name address field, it'll automatically figure out which Jason Smith will receive it? This sounds like just one more namespace that will quickly fill up and become even more confusing than http's for the regular public.
Why don't they fast-track IPv6 so I can get my own friggin IP addresses??
Yep -- they're on the downswing. But that's what happens when you get bought by the same holding company that publishes "Cosmopolitian". And me stuck with another year on my subscription....
I can see it coming now: "Top 10 Ways to Know Your Computer is Processing for Someone Else"
I was having one of those "you want me to be responsible for WHAT??" type of days when I read this... if nothing else it put me into a better mood. So I might turn out to be elite -- OK. That I can handle.
But I have a problem with the whole basis of it: people that understand the Internet are suddenly idolized in society because of their knowledge of its inter-workings? That's a bit of a stretch. Like most other things, the Internet will "dumb down" its interfaces to expose itself to the masses.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but how many people understand the details of cable television? Does anyone care that I can rig together a descrambler box & get all the channels for free? OK, I guess my friends do (cheapo's that they are), but that doesn't make me elite.
I wonder how they plan on making $$ on this system.... The signup is free, the software's free, the transactions are free... what does that leave them?
We're all worried about Micros~1 & AOL taking over the world; who's watching the credit card people?
When I first read this, I was waiting for the humorous, I'm-so-cynical-I-crack-myself-up line. Then I thought "Well, maybe it was just a slow computer-news week". Then, I saw it for what it was: a full-blown idiot rant.
Take an under-age kid to a movie because we, as a geek society, believe they should see it? Who the hell gave you the power to make this decision? Every parent in the nation? Don't you realize the reason we have these content ratings (on movies, now on TV shows, video games, etc...) is that our society is attempting to take over roles that should be filled by responsible parents?
If you want to write a useful piece, try analyzing the breakdown of the traditional family structure, and it's affects (both good and bad) on our society as a whole.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but such a poorly thought out piece as this just makes me sick.
idiot \Id"i*ot\, n. [F. idiot, L. idiota] an uneducated, ignorant, ill-informed person.
When I was speaking of end users, I was looking at them from the sys admin's perspective. For instance, a typical complaint from users when there are network problems is "But I just want to send email...", as if this is a simple task that shouldn't be interrupted if the router is down, the DHCP server is unplugged, and some backhoe 200 miles away just cut through a fiber line. The point, even the point of this entire/. thread, is that the majority of people don't understand what a sys admin goes through to keep "the network" running.
In the same way, your dental department chair would take a pale view of me if I said "But I just want to remove two lateral incisors, without anesthesia, sterile tools, or even a well-lit room...". I'd be an idiot.
Your point about not treating everyone who doesn't write code as inferior is well taken, and quite true. But it is out of place. We're talking about a network technician who had to deal with unjust job-related pressure from ill-informed people.
I admit, jobs like this are usually thankless. You're expected to keep the network running, regardless of the changes that are thrown your way or the IEU (Idiot End User, pronounced "eeww") that can't send email. I worked for a budding regional ISP for a while doing the exact same work, usually way out of my league experience-wise, and I wasn't making multiples of the national average.
But you have to ask yourself why you still do it. It isn't the pay, even though that's nice. Chances are you still do it because you actually like your job, the people you work with, and the status it provides you. No problem there, but the "suffering sysadmin" profile is a bit lost on me. Personally, I think some people who perpetuate this portrait of themselves simply like the image it portrays: the intelligent, suffering problem-solver who is knee-deep in the throes of yet another networking disaster.
Like another post mentioned: if you don't like your job, get out now. Your time is far too valuable to spend it doing something you don't find fulfilling. And there are so many other opportunities out there. Hang up your sysadmin hat, start up a consulting company, and set your own hours. Chances are you'll still be able to make ends meet.
I can't comment on the iMac/iBook keyboards (I've heard varying opinions, more negative than positive), but I've had a G3 Powerbook for about 6 months (last year's model). Now there's a keyboard where they got it right.
I can sit in my La-Z-Boy recliner, typing with the thing on my lap. The keyboard still feels perfectly weighted, my wrists never ache, and I'm actually suprised whenever I hit a wrong key.
Apple has always put almost as much thought into the outer design as the hardware underneath it -- I guess it's a hit-or-miss proposition.
So, the highest priced (not included) battery will last 3 hours, take 12 hours to recharge? I guess that's enough time for my Ft. Lauderdale/Boston trips, but I'd like more.... Gimme gimme gimme!
Seriously, I can see myself sitting on a plane playing Playstation games on my G3 laptop with a simulated 30" screen. Mmmm.
The people behind IETF & W3C amaze me. Seriously, can you imagine how hard it is to get a world-wide collection of people, some of which don't even speak the same language, to actually agree on technical issues? It has to be damn difficult. Thus the slow painful process of getting the standards passed through.
I wonder if those organizations are built using the same ideas of the original routing protocols:) Route around trouble, with no built-in solution to thrashing.
Seriously, can such an organization keep up with the explosive growth of the Internet? Will IPv6 get out before I need my toaster to have an IP address? And does anyone know where IPv5 went?
This stuff seems to be a little extreme, but it does illustrate a part of the society we live in (albeit by hyperbole). Your job goes a *long* way to describing who you are.
If someone walks up to you and asks "So what do you do?", you don't say "Well, I work about 9 hours a day, then I go home and be the most sensitive, caring father I can be." Instead you say "I'm a computer engineer." Even if that isn't the image of yourself you would prefer to give, the pieces of exactly who you are tend to fall into place *behind* your job.
One of the most interesting things the article mentioned (I thought) was that the thing that "galvanized" research into quantum computing was a report that showed a quantum computer could break virtually any digital security system.
Keeping that statement in mind, is it any wonder why people get excited about breaking into a secure computer system? Most mainstream people are appalled at crackers attempting to gain access to a secure system, yet here the same impulse is driving research that could fundamentally change our lives.
I just always find it interesting when human nature morally cris-crosses itself....
Ford Expedition: Sure, it's too damn big, guzzles gas, and has annoyingly high headlights that bother other drivers at night. BUT I can still jump in the driver's seat, start it up, and go pick up a 6-pack without so much as an extra thought.
MS 2000: Similarly, too damn big (200 MB), guzzles CPU time, and has the famous dancing paper clip. BUT to write a letter, I have to fumble through the menus, uncheck every box that has the word "auto" in it, kill the paperclip, and do an ungodly amount of work before I can just type text.
The point is, Micros~1 does not understand the far-out concept of ease-of-use. They prefer to TELL me the easiest way to type a letter (anyone else had that f@#king paperclip say "It looks like you're writing a letter...". He's worse than Jar Jar for chrissake), and tell me which 'features' to use, instead of just letting me get my work done.
Sure, but the vast majority of applications are still run locally, not over the network. Although it's easy to envision sometime soon when applications are just as likely to run across a network than from your local storage, we're not there yet.
So, although network speeds definately up to snuff yet, they're rarely the bottleneck for your typical computer application.
If you're talking transfer speeds, sure there has definately been a good amount of improvement. But how many typical applications do you use that normally need a stream of data from the hard drive at 15Mb's a second? I'd guess zero.
Keep in mind the difference between transfer speeds (which are always a little bloated by the manufacturer's testing processes), and access latency -- the average time between when the processor requests data from the processor, and that data actually gets used by the processor. More info in my post below on the main thread...
Sure got a bunch of responses to this question, which makes me feel all warm-n-fuzzy. But it seems like a lot of people are focusing on transfer speeds, which have gotten faster, as opposed to disk access latency, which has barely improved on a comparative scale with processor, memory, and network speeds. Sure, if you have a program that demands your hard drive spew out 40 MB/second, you can get disk arrays that offer excellent performance, but that's not the way an operating system typically uses the hard drive.
If you've ever spent much time studying network traffic, it's a comparable situation. Like network traffic, hard drive traffic is very bursty in nature. And for each separate burst of requests, we have to wait for the hard drive arm to position itself, then wait for the platters to rotate half way around (on average). As some of the above posts pointed out, this is an eternity of time for the processor to wait. And this occurs for every burst of I/O requests.
Several strategies attempt to mask this access latency (process/disk caches, read-ahead requests, etc), but none of these can make up the difference to get us to the "next level" of disk I/O performance.
Still, overall a great response from everyone... one of the reasons I love/. so much is that it re-affirms my belief that not *everyone* is an idiot!
The article seems to imply that any advertisement would be retrieved via Internet at boot-time.... Am I reading that wrong? They wouldn't just burn the ad into the chip, and have it be the same thing for the lifetime of the motherboard; that's too limiting.
So now my BIOS chip is going to implement TCP/IP? Great. I'm sure that'll be a nice, clean implementation too.
The US Congress is one of those institutions that may have good intentions, but almost always implements bad solutions because of the lobbying groups that are camped out in their offices. This is just one more example of how our predominately rich-white-male-upperclass "Representatives" are completely out of touch with American society.
{Slightly off-topic rant following... my appologies}
Here's another one: A senator from Georgia suggested that the Columbine High School shootings would not have happened if the 10 Commandments were posted in the school. So, the Congress passes a law allowing schools to do so, thinking this is a solution to violent behavior in children. On the same day, they pass a National Rifle Association-backed bill that weakens the background checks on firearms purchased at gun shows. Hello?? Are you kidding me?
Teenager #1: "Hey, want me to get my friend to buy us some guns down at the gun show so we can bring them to school tomorrow and wade through the blood executioner-style?"
Teenager #2: "Nah, we'd have to wait a whole 24 hours to get the guns, plus don't you see that poster over there? It says 'Thou shalt not kill'. We wouldn't want to go against that, would we?"
OK, I may have drifted slightly off-topic here, and I don't mean to make a joke about the Columbine shootings, but the point is the same. Congress shouldn't attempt to solve the morality problems of America until they come to terms with their own morality issues, and until they can manage to stay in touch with the people they are supposed to represent.
As the article mentions (about 3/4 the way down... gee, is this a biased article?), the AOL-Sun Internet Anywhere concept isn't a direct threat on Microsoft's operating system monopoly. So you can use your Java-based cell phone to check your AOL email by sometime next year -- is that going to replace the Windoze box you have on your desk at work? Nope. Not by a long shot.
The focus of the anti-trust trial (which gets very little fanfare in this article) is whether Microsoft currently has a monopoly over operating systems, and whether they use that monopoly maliciously. Frankly, this is just smoke up the public's ass, trying to cloud the issue.
Those of you who are thinking Java on the PalmOS is a silly idea don't really get the whole thrust of what Java is going to do. Like a few people here have already posted, writing Java networking code is simple, but that's not the main reason to get Java on the Palm. Other people have complained that the KVM won't let them port applications to the PalmPilot -- they're completely missing the point.
The reason to get Java onto the PalmOS is that 3Com and Sun are looking to push the "Network Appliances" theme. They're not looking to port existing applications onto a PalmPilot (do you really want to run a spreadsheet on that thing?), they're looking to make it networked out the wahzoo. Java (and Jini) provide easy ways to get machines sharing code and objects, which makes writing client/server applications a no-brainer.
Looks to me like AOL wants to bore their way even deeper into people's homes. In the short term they'll give their customers all sorts of propriatary streaming content (probably a bunch of crap, but that's what all their content is), then later on try to push their way into the software side of handheld computers & home networks.
It's interesting to think back just a few years ago. One of AOL's new features was an Internet Mail gateway, so you could send & receive mail with non-AOL members. I pretty much thought they'd fade into the background when the WWW took off, and now look at them -- they're riding the wave better than M$ is.
Not that I'd ever use their service, but they've got their business plan churning.
The Hacker _vs_ Cracker debate is a dead horse. Someone please bury the damn thing.
The real problem here is how woefully unprepared most governments are when it comes to computer security. They just don't get it. When a few kids can make the federal government look stupid, what do you think some professionals could do?
As a/. story from a few weeks ago mentioned, the CIA is considered taking action against Yugoslavia by taking down their networks. I'm not talking about futuristic cyber-wars where we all plug into a computer and do battle Tron-style, I just think it's *the* weakest link in most nation's security schemes.
And considering pretty soon everything from your TV to your toaster will have an IP address, it's going to get worse. Forget about a security system to guard the doors and windows, what if someone just gains access to your home network, turns off the alarm, and unlocks the door from his laptop while he's sitting in your driveway with a moving van?
One of my previous jobs was working with a quantum physics group that had a program to simulate quantum interaction... sort-of a chemistry lab simulator that does the reactions atom by atom.
They started writing the code back in the late 60's, and are still writing it today. Of course, it's written entirely in FORTRAN. They still have a copy of the first version of the program... stored on punch cards. The original programmer (who's still working with the project) once gave me this prophetic quote:
"I don't know what computers will look like 20 years from now, but I know they will run FORTRAN."
Slashdot Mirror
Remember Win95? They almost didn't get it out that year... :)
--Mid
Did anyone else catch the last line of the article?
"The Common Name standard could eventually be integrated with e-mail standards to allow end users to send messages without knowing the recipient's e-mail address."
Are you kidding? So, if I write an email message for my friend, then just type "Jason Smith" in the Common Name address field, it'll automatically figure out which Jason Smith will receive it? This sounds like just one more namespace that will quickly fill up and become even more confusing than http's for the regular public.
Why don't they fast-track IPv6 so I can get my own friggin IP addresses??
--Mid
Yep -- they're on the downswing. But that's what happens when you get bought by the same holding company that publishes "Cosmopolitian". And me stuck with another year on my subscription....
I can see it coming now: "Top 10 Ways to Know Your Computer is Processing for Someone Else"
--Mid
I was having one of those "you want me to be responsible for WHAT??" type of days when I read this... if nothing else it put me into a better mood. So I might turn out to be elite -- OK. That I can handle.
But I have a problem with the whole basis of it: people that understand the Internet are suddenly idolized in society because of their knowledge of its inter-workings? That's a bit of a stretch. Like most other things, the Internet will "dumb down" its interfaces to expose itself to the masses.
This isn't a perfect analogy, but how many people understand the details of cable television? Does anyone care that I can rig together a descrambler box & get all the channels for free? OK, I guess my friends do (cheapo's that they are), but that doesn't make me elite.
--Mid
I wonder how they plan on making $$ on this system.... The signup is free, the software's free, the transactions are free... what does that leave them?
We're all worried about Micros~1 & AOL taking over the world; who's watching the credit card people?
--Mid
When I first read this, I was waiting for the humorous, I'm-so-cynical-I-crack-myself-up line. Then I thought "Well, maybe it was just a slow computer-news week". Then, I saw it for what it was: a full-blown idiot rant.
Take an under-age kid to a movie because we, as a geek society, believe they should see it? Who the hell gave you the power to make this decision? Every parent in the nation? Don't you realize the reason we have these content ratings (on movies, now on TV shows, video games, etc...) is that our society is attempting to take over roles that should be filled by responsible parents?
If you want to write a useful piece, try analyzing the breakdown of the traditional family structure, and it's affects (both good and bad) on our society as a whole.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but such a poorly thought out piece as this just makes me sick.
--Mid
idiot \Id"i*ot\, n. [F. idiot, L. idiota] an uneducated, ignorant, ill-informed person.
When I was speaking of end users, I was looking at them from the sys admin's perspective. For instance, a typical complaint from users when there are network problems is "But I just want to send email...", as if this is a simple task that shouldn't be interrupted if the router is down, the DHCP server is unplugged, and some backhoe 200 miles away just cut through a fiber line. The point, even the point of this entire
In the same way, your dental department chair would take a pale view of me if I said "But I just want to remove two lateral incisors, without anesthesia, sterile tools, or even a well-lit room...". I'd be an idiot.
Your point about not treating everyone who doesn't write code as inferior is well taken, and quite true. But it is out of place. We're talking about a network technician who had to deal with unjust job-related pressure from ill-informed people.
--Mid
I admit, jobs like this are usually thankless. You're expected to keep the network running, regardless of the changes that are thrown your way or the IEU (Idiot End User, pronounced "eeww") that can't send email. I worked for a budding regional ISP for a while doing the exact same work, usually way out of my league experience-wise, and I wasn't making multiples of the national average.
But you have to ask yourself why you still do it. It isn't the pay, even though that's nice. Chances are you still do it because you actually like your job, the people you work with, and the status it provides you. No problem there, but the "suffering sysadmin" profile is a bit lost on me. Personally, I think some people who perpetuate this portrait of themselves simply like the image it portrays: the intelligent, suffering problem-solver who is knee-deep in the throes of yet another networking disaster.
Like another post mentioned: if you don't like your job, get out now. Your time is far too valuable to spend it doing something you don't find fulfilling. And there are so many other opportunities out there. Hang up your sysadmin hat, start up a consulting company, and set your own hours. Chances are you'll still be able to make ends meet.
--Mid
I can't comment on the iMac/iBook keyboards (I've heard varying opinions, more negative than positive), but I've had a G3 Powerbook for about 6 months (last year's model). Now there's a keyboard where they got it right.
I can sit in my La-Z-Boy recliner, typing with the thing on my lap. The keyboard still feels perfectly weighted, my wrists never ache, and I'm actually suprised whenever I hit a wrong key.
Apple has always put almost as much thought into the outer design as the hardware underneath it -- I guess it's a hit-or-miss proposition.
--Mid
If you delve into the specs:
Battery Life/Charging Time (battery not included):
NP-F550 - Approx. 1H/Approx. 4H;
NP-F750 - Approx. 2H/Approx. 8H;
NP-F950 - Approx. 3H/Approx. 12H;
So, the highest priced (not included) battery will last 3 hours, take 12 hours to recharge? I guess that's enough time for my Ft. Lauderdale/Boston trips, but I'd like more.... Gimme gimme gimme!
Seriously, I can see myself sitting on a plane playing Playstation games on my G3 laptop with a simulated 30" screen. Mmmm.
--Mid
I wonder if those organizations are built using the same ideas of the original routing protocols
Seriously, can such an organization keep up with the explosive growth of the Internet? Will IPv6 get out before I need my toaster to have an IP address? And does anyone know where IPv5 went?
So many questions.... --Mid
This stuff seems to be a little extreme, but it does illustrate a part of the society we live in (albeit by hyperbole). Your job goes a *long* way to describing who you are.
If someone walks up to you and asks "So what do you do?", you don't say "Well, I work about 9 hours a day, then I go home and be the most sensitive, caring father I can be." Instead you say "I'm a computer engineer." Even if that isn't the image of yourself you would prefer to give, the pieces of exactly who you are tend to fall into place *behind* your job.
--Mid
One of the most interesting things the article mentioned (I thought) was that the thing that "galvanized" research into quantum computing was a report that showed a quantum computer could break virtually any digital security system.
Keeping that statement in mind, is it any wonder why people get excited about breaking into a secure computer system? Most mainstream people are appalled at crackers attempting to gain access to a secure system, yet here the same impulse is driving research that could fundamentally change our lives.
I just always find it interesting when human nature morally cris-crosses itself....
--Mid
Ford Expedition -vs- MS 2000 ?? yeah right.
Ford Expedition: Sure, it's too damn big, guzzles gas, and has annoyingly high headlights that bother other drivers at night. BUT I can still jump in the driver's seat, start it up, and go pick up a 6-pack without so much as an extra thought.
MS 2000: Similarly, too damn big (200 MB), guzzles CPU time, and has the famous dancing paper clip. BUT to write a letter, I have to fumble through the menus, uncheck every box that has the word "auto" in it, kill the paperclip, and do an ungodly amount of work before I can just type text.
The point is, Micros~1 does not understand the far-out concept of ease-of-use. They prefer to TELL me the easiest way to type a letter (anyone else had that f@#king paperclip say "It looks like you're writing a letter...". He's worse than Jar Jar for chrissake), and tell me which 'features' to use, instead of just letting me get my work done.
--Mid
Sure, but the vast majority of applications are still run locally, not over the network. Although it's easy to envision sometime soon when applications are just as likely to run across a network than from your local storage, we're not there yet.
So, although network speeds definately up to snuff yet, they're rarely the bottleneck for your typical computer application.
-- Mid
Hey Roger,
If you're talking transfer speeds, sure there has definately been a good amount of improvement. But how many typical applications do you use that normally need a stream of data from the hard drive at 15Mb's a second? I'd guess zero.
Keep in mind the difference between transfer speeds (which are always a little bloated by the manufacturer's testing processes), and access latency -- the average time between when the processor requests data from the processor, and that data actually gets used by the processor. More info in my post below on the main thread...
-- Mid
Sure got a bunch of responses to this question, which makes me feel all warm-n-fuzzy. But it seems like a lot of people are focusing on transfer speeds, which have gotten faster, as opposed to disk access latency, which has barely improved on a comparative scale with processor, memory, and network speeds. Sure, if you have a program that demands your hard drive spew out 40 MB/second, you can get disk arrays that offer excellent performance, but that's not the way an operating system typically uses the hard drive.
/. so much is that it re-affirms my belief that not *everyone* is an idiot!
If you've ever spent much time studying network traffic, it's a comparable situation. Like network traffic, hard drive traffic is very bursty in nature. And for each separate burst of requests, we have to wait for the hard drive arm to position itself, then wait for the platters to rotate half way around (on average). As some of the above posts pointed out, this is an eternity of time for the processor to wait. And this occurs for every burst of I/O requests.
Several strategies attempt to mask this access latency (process/disk caches, read-ahead requests, etc), but none of these can make up the difference to get us to the "next level" of disk I/O performance.
Still, overall a great response from everyone... one of the reasons I love
-- Mid
The article seems to imply that any advertisement would be retrieved via Internet at boot-time.... Am I reading that wrong? They wouldn't just burn the ad into the chip, and have it be the same thing for the lifetime of the motherboard; that's too limiting.
So now my BIOS chip is going to implement TCP/IP? Great. I'm sure that'll be a nice, clean implementation too.
Maybe I'll just go back to watching TV....
-- Mid
{Slightly off-topic rant following... my appologies}
Here's another one: A senator from Georgia suggested that the Columbine High School shootings would not have happened if the 10 Commandments were posted in the school. So, the Congress passes a law allowing schools to do so, thinking this is a solution to violent behavior in children. On the same day, they pass a National Rifle Association-backed bill that weakens the background checks on firearms purchased at gun shows. Hello?? Are you kidding me?
Teenager #1: "Hey, want me to get my friend to buy us some guns down at the gun show so we can bring them to school tomorrow and wade through the blood executioner-style?"
Teenager #2: "Nah, we'd have to wait a whole 24 hours to get the guns, plus don't you see that poster over there? It says 'Thou shalt not kill'. We wouldn't want to go against that, would we?"
OK, I may have drifted slightly off-topic here, and I don't mean to make a joke about the Columbine shootings, but the point is the same. Congress shouldn't attempt to solve the morality problems of America until they come to terms with their own morality issues, and until they can manage to stay in touch with the people they are supposed to represent.
-- Mid
Guess again.... You can get software free that is fully compatible with MSOffice (yep, even file extensions) that is even written in Java:
Go look @ StarOffice
Sure, it isn't fast (yet), but it works... and is completely compatible.
-- Mid
As the article mentions (about 3/4 the way down... gee, is this a biased article?), the AOL-Sun Internet Anywhere concept isn't a direct threat on Microsoft's operating system monopoly. So you can use your Java-based cell phone to check your AOL email by sometime next year -- is that going to replace the Windoze box you have on your desk at work? Nope. Not by a long shot.
The focus of the anti-trust trial (which gets very little fanfare in this article) is whether Microsoft currently has a monopoly over operating systems, and whether they use that monopoly maliciously. Frankly, this is just smoke up the public's ass, trying to cloud the issue.
-- Mid
Those of you who are thinking Java on the PalmOS is a silly idea don't really get the whole thrust of what Java is going to do. Like a few people here have already posted, writing Java networking code is simple, but that's not the main reason to get Java on the Palm. Other people have complained that the KVM won't let them port applications to the PalmPilot -- they're completely missing the point.
The reason to get Java onto the PalmOS is that 3Com and Sun are looking to push the "Network Appliances" theme. They're not looking to port existing applications onto a PalmPilot (do you really want to run a spreadsheet on that thing?), they're looking to make it networked out the wahzoo. Java (and Jini) provide easy ways to get machines sharing code and objects, which makes writing client/server applications a no-brainer.
That's the focus of this whole thing.
--Mid
Looks to me like AOL wants to bore their way even deeper into people's homes. In the short term they'll give their customers all sorts of propriatary streaming content (probably a bunch of crap, but that's what all their content is), then later on try to push their way into the software side of handheld computers & home networks.
It's interesting to think back just a few years ago. One of AOL's new features was an Internet Mail gateway, so you could send & receive mail with non-AOL members. I pretty much thought they'd fade into the background when the WWW took off, and now look at them -- they're riding the wave better than M$ is.
Not that I'd ever use their service, but they've got their business plan churning.
--Mid
The Hacker _vs_ Cracker debate is a dead horse. Someone please bury the damn thing.
/. story from a few weeks ago mentioned, the CIA is considered taking action against Yugoslavia by taking down their networks. I'm not talking about futuristic cyber-wars where we all plug into a computer and do battle Tron-style, I just think it's *the* weakest link in most nation's security schemes.
The real problem here is how woefully unprepared most governments are when it comes to computer security. They just don't get it. When a few kids can make the federal government look stupid, what do you think some professionals could do?
As a
And considering pretty soon everything from your TV to your toaster will have an IP address, it's going to get worse. Forget about a security system to guard the doors and windows, what if someone just gains access to your home network, turns off the alarm, and unlocks the door from his laptop while he's sitting in your driveway with a moving van?
--Mid
One of my previous jobs was working with a quantum physics group that had a program to simulate quantum interaction... sort-of a chemistry lab simulator that does the reactions atom by atom.
They started writing the code back in the late 60's, and are still writing it today. Of course, it's written entirely in FORTRAN. They still have a copy of the first version of the program... stored on punch cards. The original programmer (who's still working with the project) once gave me this prophetic quote:
"I don't know what computers will look like 20 years from now, but I know they will run FORTRAN."
I think he's probably right.
--Mid