Recently the web site for the Salt Lake Linux Users Group was defaced. The maintainer of the site didn't have a back up of the front page... so he headed off to Google and got a copy of the page from Google's cache. He said (paraphrased) "Well, Google is like a giant backup device, and they use Linux, so...."
As if I didn't have enough to worry about now I'm going to loose sleep because I have so many machines running various 2.4.x kernels. I realize that open source is better than anything else I could run considering my applications, but how do you explain this to a client? "Sorry Mr. BizOwner, the people that program the Linux kernel in their spare time are experimenting with various things, you'll just have to wait until they are done. No, I don't know who they are. And no, if I e-mailed them they probably wouldn't care." Yikes. It's already hard enough to keep clients due to the economic pressures they are facing. At least the author of this article was able to find a solution to the problem, unfortunatly I can't afford to roll my servers back to the 2.2 kernel. Most of the kernel problems described are way beyond my understanding. But one interesting thing about this is that we have no one to blame but ourselves. I don't have a clue how to program kernel code, but those that do here is a message for ya: PLEASE HELP US! There are guys out there smart enough to fix this I'm sure. Let's hope they do it quickly and accuratly. I'm sure there are going to be business owners out there that aren't going to understand this and are going to run out and install Windows 2000 as soon as they can. Bad Linux press is just so damaging, here is hoping that the powers behind Linux can turn this around and do one of those magical "we fixed it overnight" responses.
I think the USPTO should allow a time for public comments to be issued on pending patents before the research process begins. Perhaps via some easy to use Internet/Web interface. This would certainly reduce the work load of these guys, and pre-sort the bad/invalid patents out. Perhaps the ones with lots of comments would receive more attention by the USPTO as opposed to pending patents that recieve little or no comment. By essentially envolving industry in the process it is actually made more efficent. I suppose a possible draw back would be someone trying to slow down the approval of a good patent by making false claims, but a method could be devized to reduce or eliminate such behavior. Maybe the USPTO should install Slashcode and allow pending patents to be modded up or down depending on their worthiness. Regardless of how it is carried out, something needs to be done to change how the system works because it clearly doesn't work now. One idea I had would be to follow up on companies to see if they actually build/sell the patented product within a given time frame. If they don't then the patent would be lifted allowing anyone to use the information. Wouldn't that help a lot more mousetraps hit the street rather than being tied up forever in some government stack of paper work?
It's clear how networks will bring in advertising dollars in the future once this type of technology is common. They will place advertisments inside the programming (product placement, already in use). And they more than likley will start placing little box ads on the corner and side of the screen. These ads will more than likley get bigger and bigger. Eventually, commercials as we are used to may completly dissapear. If the networks don't find a way to generate advertising dollars then you can kiss all your favorite shows good bye. As far as I know advertising is the ONLY way a television show can make any money. I'm sure lawsuit's will be part of it though. Then we'll have to live with both on screen ads, product placement, AND regular commercials (and maybe a few other things as well).
With most of the tech sector off where did Intel come up with the $15 million or so to invest in SuSE? They aren't short of cash obviously. Earnings appear to be solid (after a search at yahoo to find related stories). Why?
According to AMD the reason Intel is "booming" is that they have "spoiled megahertz as a measure of processor performance." Read It Here
So Essentially using some "bad marketing techniques" (according to AMD) Intel has developed enough profit to invest in a Linux company. This combined with the earlier story about how AMD is dropping the MHGz rating on their chips is a little ironic. Who should we really be rooting for here? In the corporate world it's always hard to tell. I haven't heard of AMD stuffing money down linux people's throats. Do you guys know if they have? I guess I'm sounding a little pro Intel here - and I'm not trying to be - but I think it's cool that a company the size of Intel sees the business value in a Linux company. I get excited about IBM too. Just as long as they don't take it away from the people who built it.
So go SuSE! And use that $45.5 million to do something extra cool!
By the way. Is it really a bad marketing technique if it works to generate profit? Wouldn't a bad marketing technique produce failure? Would you say AOL uses bad marketing techniques? Sorry. Pet peeve use of that over used phrase. Had to ask some rehtorical questions.
I used to work for a studio that did high-speed film work for ejection seat testing. One day the film crew got a hold of a digital camera that was able to do high speed video. I didn't ever learn a lot about it but it couldn't produce a full frame of video (768x512??) because the chip and the processing unit couldn't store information fast enough. It was also in black and white. Even with it's limitations we had a blast with that thing. We dropped nails, lit a match, broke a light bulb. Just about anything that we thought would look cool in slo-mo we did. Doing it the old way (as this studio still does) requires film processing and then transfer to video. It's basically a pain in the butt. So there is a lot of intrest in the high-speed community for a digital camera that can produce full frame video in color. Does anyone know what kinds of technology would be requried to make something like that possible? What if the 'gigapixel' cameras in the future had a 'slow-mo' mode? Imagine all the fun we could have!
Recently a hotly debated topic in my community has been the idea the city should get involved in providing telecommunications services. The proposed plan would mean stringing up miles of fiber all over the city to provide high-speed Internet access to businesses and residential customers. It's this type of technology that makes me so opposed to the idea. If the city could use existing low voltage power lines to transmit data the costs of starting up such a venture would be significantly reduced.
Still, what would be the life expectancy of this technology? It seems cable and DSL have such a lead in the market it would be hard for power companies to really become competitive. With the emergence of new wireless technologies that have the potential to out perform DSL and cable it seems power line data transmission won't last long on the open market.
Additionally, how would a power failure effect service? I have a UPS on my system at home so when the power goes out I still have access via modem or even cable service to my servers at work. With power failures that last more than 20 minutes I'm able to log in and shutdown everything safely before the UPS's at work fail. If I were unable to log on because a power failure also effected my Internet access I wouldn't be very pleased. It seems like electrical storms could cause significant interference as well - as all power lines are unshielded (as far as I know). I'm sure there must be some electronic component that keeps power surges from frying your "power line modem" out (another potential problem). So it seems to me there are still some bugs to work out. Only time will tell.
For now I'm going to stick with cable and wait for high-speed wireless to hit the street.
These kinds of programs are short lived. So many people are against them, it's just a matter of time before lawyers suck the blood out of the software manufacturers. What would be really scary is if these programs simply over wrote regular hyperlinks on the web site - rather than just words in text. Or worse yet - make it appear that the changed page came directly from the main web site - not a third party. What's a shame about the whole technology is that people may actually enjoy this type of service if it were done in a more user-accepted way. I can't imagine what that would be - but someone out there must like it. Furthermore, this type of model could finally be the way to making Internet advertising really profitable for the advertiser, instead of just the web site owner. What I don't understand about everyone getting upset is that end users install the dang thing. It's not like it just suddenly appears on the user's computer and starts interjecting green links all over the place by itself. If users don't want it - then they won't install it (or software associated with it). But with hundreds of thousands of installations already taken place I really doubt that people are avoiding it. In fact, I would assume that most end users either don't care, or like it. Of course the individual web owners are upset, the on-line advertising market just became a little more competitive. Still, it's just a matter of time before the lawyers (or some idiot with a patent on this kinda stuff) sues the crap out of these little guys and put them out of business.
Wow. This gives whole new meaning to the term "go grow a brain." I can just imagine hearing a complaint in the future. "Yeah - my neutrient bath failed and my computer died... guess I'll have to start growing a new one." What's even better is that rat embryos are the source of it all! Who knew rats could be so smart? Would it go faster if I put some cheese in front of it? When it starts acting up I can threaten it with a mouse trap. Maybe it would freeze every time my cat walked by. And when you get a virus - it could mean a biological virus. I'm sure that transporting this stuff would be difficult after it is grown - so more than likely you would have to grow it on location. Hauling your box to your next LAN party would be a major pain in the ass!
It seems to me this is one step closer to understanding how our brains generate thoughts and actions. In the future this type of technology could be used to extend the capabilites of our own bodies through the insertion of a tiny titanium chip. Maybe it could control nerves - making it possible to filter what signles are sent to the brain. You could insert them into a bunch of soldiers and make them impervious to pain and have the body generate adrenaline on demand. That would be rad.
Durability of this thing and other issues.
on
Budget Satellite
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· Score: 1
I seriously doubt the durability of this thing. A year is a nice goal, but it just doesn't seem possible. With temperatures varying several hundred degrees in orbit will some cheap solar panels designed for the desert really hold up for a year? I think not. I give these guys about 5 minutes in orbit before the thing literally melts into a pile of goo. Then the NASA boys can say, "I told you so," and then go bug congress for more money. "See! Look what happens when you do it cheap!?"
Also, it might be really interesting to see Radio Shack get excited about this. If by some engineering feat it does actually work Radio Shack could become 'cool' again. Who wouldn't want to build their own satellite for $50,000? Of course everyone will want one, and that might be a BAD thing. I understand that there is a lot of space in orbit, but I remember a show on the Discovery Channel describing how difficult it is getting for the space shuttle to navigate in orbit due to the ever increasing space junk up there. NORAD is supposed to track all of it - do you think they will be sending these guys a bill to track their $50,000 satellite if it goes whacko? I would. Do we really want a whole bunch of Radio Shack satellites orbiting the earth? When was the last time you purchased something really durable and interesting at Radio Shack?
I was watching a documentry on the stealth bomber. EVERYTHING on that plan is controlled by computer. Infact - none of the control surfaces (including throttle) are physically linked to the cockpit. What do you do when the computer fails?? Eject! What a nice way to blow a billion dollars - software bugs can be expenisve huh? This type of flight design is becoming more and more common in aviation. As a pilot - it scares me to death. So all you hackers out there - DEBUG! A lot! If you don't - you could end up killing someone, like me.
I am a part owner in a hosting company in charge of technical operations. I can understand CommuniTech's position on this. In their contact I see an 'attempt' at covering themselve on this. In section 10 "Limitation of Liability" it says something like they aren't responsible for any loss of data - even in regards to maintainence (or lack of). Applying patches could be considered maintainence. Section 7.2 is also another attempt at dealing with this. They didn't come right out and say it, but to me it seems what they mean is "If you get cracked, don't come crying to us - and yes you will pay to have it fixed."
As an owner of a hosting company I can understand the challenge of keeping 100's of servers current with the latest patches. I might keep up with it on new installations - but trying to support older systems would be tough! I would make sure (and I do) that the service agreement is clear as to who is responsible if a server is cracked. But as a point of service I would apply patches if a client asked me specifically to do so. Personally, I try to keep up on all security patches, but I may miss one here and there. Perhaps this is the same issue with CommuniTech.
The report by former CommuniTech customers shows that they are not that concerned about customer service. Or that they have too many customers to provided good service. My company is a bit more concerned about service, and I think we take the precautions neccessary to prevent such problems. But if a dedicated host on our system gets cracked, and they want us to fix it for free - humm. Depends on the circumstance. I would be much more likley to do it if i was informed ahead of time that there was a problem. I think other hosting companies should provide the same service. If they don't - that's fine. It just means more business for us.
What would it take to create an "open" certificate authority? It could be run by the FSF, or some other non-profit organization. It's hard for me to imagine that all the geeks out there couldn't unite and create a system that issues low cost or free certificates. Heck, slashdot could get into the CA biz! Just about anybody could, yahoo, amazon, wal-mart. What's so hard about it anyway? The only challenge I can see is verifying that people are who they say they are - right now an almost monumental task to prove to the CA's. Seems they want everything but a DNA sample.
I think no one has really complained about the price of a cert much because businesses mostly use this type of service, and for a business $125/year isn't that much. But what about individuals buying certs to secure private information - seems reasonable if you can get the cost below $40/year. There is a market here. I bet it's only a matter of time before someone starts to offer a lower priced solution.
I run a discount web hosting and web design company, and I think a lot of our customers would be interested in having some type of secure cert if the price wasn't above $40/year. Right now we just resale the use of our cert because the price is too high for them to get thier own. Something to think about anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Recently the web site for the Salt Lake Linux Users Group was defaced. The maintainer of the site didn't have a back up of the front page... so he headed off to Google and got a copy of the page from Google's cache. He said (paraphrased) "Well, Google is like a giant backup device, and they use Linux, so...."
No doubt that ULTra will find itself in a lawsuit with Apple Computers because their car design too closley follows the old iMac design.
As if I didn't have enough to worry about now I'm going to loose sleep because I have so many machines running various 2.4.x kernels. I realize that open source is better than anything else I could run considering my applications, but how do you explain this to a client? "Sorry Mr. BizOwner, the people that program the Linux kernel in their spare time are experimenting with various things, you'll just have to wait until they are done. No, I don't know who they are. And no, if I e-mailed them they probably wouldn't care." Yikes. It's already hard enough to keep clients due to the economic pressures they are facing. At least the author of this article was able to find a solution to the problem, unfortunatly I can't afford to roll my servers back to the 2.2 kernel. Most of the kernel problems described are way beyond my understanding. But one interesting thing about this is that we have no one to blame but ourselves. I don't have a clue how to program kernel code, but those that do here is a message for ya: PLEASE HELP US! There are guys out there smart enough to fix this I'm sure. Let's hope they do it quickly and accuratly. I'm sure there are going to be business owners out there that aren't going to understand this and are going to run out and install Windows 2000 as soon as they can. Bad Linux press is just so damaging, here is hoping that the powers behind Linux can turn this around and do one of those magical "we fixed it overnight" responses.
I think the USPTO should allow a time for public comments to be issued on pending patents before the research process begins. Perhaps via some easy to use Internet/Web interface. This would certainly reduce the work load of these guys, and pre-sort the bad/invalid patents out. Perhaps the ones with lots of comments would receive more attention by the USPTO as opposed to pending patents that recieve little or no comment. By essentially envolving industry in the process it is actually made more efficent. I suppose a possible draw back would be someone trying to slow down the approval of a good patent by making false claims, but a method could be devized to reduce or eliminate such behavior. Maybe the USPTO should install Slashcode and allow pending patents to be modded up or down depending on their worthiness. Regardless of how it is carried out, something needs to be done to change how the system works because it clearly doesn't work now. One idea I had would be to follow up on companies to see if they actually build/sell the patented product within a given time frame. If they don't then the patent would be lifted allowing anyone to use the information. Wouldn't that help a lot more mousetraps hit the street rather than being tied up forever in some government stack of paper work?
It's clear how networks will bring in advertising dollars in the future once this type of technology is common. They will place advertisments inside the programming (product placement, already in use). And they more than likley will start placing little box ads on the corner and side of the screen. These ads will more than likley get bigger and bigger. Eventually, commercials as we are used to may completly dissapear. If the networks don't find a way to generate advertising dollars then you can kiss all your favorite shows good bye. As far as I know advertising is the ONLY way a television show can make any money. I'm sure lawsuit's will be part of it though. Then we'll have to live with both on screen ads, product placement, AND regular commercials (and maybe a few other things as well).
With most of the tech sector off where did Intel come up with the $15 million or so to invest in SuSE? They aren't short of cash obviously. Earnings appear to be solid (after a search at yahoo to find related stories). Why?
According to AMD the reason Intel is "booming" is that they have "spoiled megahertz as a measure of processor performance." Read It Here
So Essentially using some "bad marketing techniques" (according to AMD) Intel has developed enough profit to invest in a Linux company. This combined with the earlier story about how AMD is dropping the MHGz rating on their chips is a little ironic. Who should we really be rooting for here? In the corporate world it's always hard to tell. I haven't heard of AMD stuffing money down linux people's throats. Do you guys know if they have? I guess I'm sounding a little pro Intel here - and I'm not trying to be - but I think it's cool that a company the size of Intel sees the business value in a Linux company. I get excited about IBM too. Just as long as they don't take it away from the people who built it.
So go SuSE! And use that $45.5 million to do something extra cool!
By the way. Is it really a bad marketing technique if it works to generate profit? Wouldn't a bad marketing technique produce failure? Would you say AOL uses bad marketing techniques? Sorry. Pet peeve use of that over used phrase. Had to ask some rehtorical questions.
I used to work for a studio that did high-speed film work for ejection seat testing. One day the film crew got a hold of a digital camera that was able to do high speed video. I didn't ever learn a lot about it but it couldn't produce a full frame of video (768x512??) because the chip and the processing unit couldn't store information fast enough. It was also in black and white. Even with it's limitations we had a blast with that thing. We dropped nails, lit a match, broke a light bulb. Just about anything that we thought would look cool in slo-mo we did. Doing it the old way (as this studio still does) requires film processing and then transfer to video. It's basically a pain in the butt. So there is a lot of intrest in the high-speed community for a digital camera that can produce full frame video in color. Does anyone know what kinds of technology would be requried to make something like that possible? What if the 'gigapixel' cameras in the future had a 'slow-mo' mode? Imagine all the fun we could have!
Recently a hotly debated topic in my community has been the idea the city should get involved in providing telecommunications services. The proposed plan would mean stringing up miles of fiber all over the city to provide high-speed Internet access to businesses and residential customers. It's this type of technology that makes me so opposed to the idea. If the city could use existing low voltage power lines to transmit data the costs of starting up such a venture would be significantly reduced.
Still, what would be the life expectancy of this technology? It seems cable and DSL have such a lead in the market it would be hard for power companies to really become competitive. With the emergence of new wireless technologies that have the potential to out perform DSL and cable it seems power line data transmission won't last long on the open market.
Additionally, how would a power failure effect service? I have a UPS on my system at home so when the power goes out I still have access via modem or even cable service to my servers at work. With power failures that last more than 20 minutes I'm able to log in and shutdown everything safely before the UPS's at work fail. If I were unable to log on because a power failure also effected my Internet access I wouldn't be very pleased. It seems like electrical storms could cause significant interference as well - as all power lines are unshielded (as far as I know). I'm sure there must be some electronic component that keeps power surges from frying your "power line modem" out (another potential problem). So it seems to me there are still some bugs to work out. Only time will tell.
For now I'm going to stick with cable and wait for high-speed wireless to hit the street.
These kinds of programs are short lived. So many people are against them, it's just a matter of time before lawyers suck the blood out of the software manufacturers. What would be really scary is if these programs simply over wrote regular hyperlinks on the web site - rather than just words in text. Or worse yet - make it appear that the changed page came directly from the main web site - not a third party. What's a shame about the whole technology is that people may actually enjoy this type of service if it were done in a more user-accepted way. I can't imagine what that would be - but someone out there must like it. Furthermore, this type of model could finally be the way to making Internet advertising really profitable for the advertiser, instead of just the web site owner. What I don't understand about everyone getting upset is that end users install the dang thing. It's not like it just suddenly appears on the user's computer and starts interjecting green links all over the place by itself. If users don't want it - then they won't install it (or software associated with it). But with hundreds of thousands of installations already taken place I really doubt that people are avoiding it. In fact, I would assume that most end users either don't care, or like it. Of course the individual web owners are upset, the on-line advertising market just became a little more competitive. Still, it's just a matter of time before the lawyers (or some idiot with a patent on this kinda stuff) sues the crap out of these little guys and put them out of business.
Wow. This gives whole new meaning to the term "go grow a brain." I can just imagine hearing a complaint in the future. "Yeah - my neutrient bath failed and my computer died... guess I'll have to start growing a new one." What's even better is that rat embryos are the source of it all! Who knew rats could be so smart? Would it go faster if I put some cheese in front of it? When it starts acting up I can threaten it with a mouse trap. Maybe it would freeze every time my cat walked by. And when you get a virus - it could mean a biological virus. I'm sure that transporting this stuff would be difficult after it is grown - so more than likely you would have to grow it on location. Hauling your box to your next LAN party would be a major pain in the ass!
It seems to me this is one step closer to understanding how our brains generate thoughts and actions. In the future this type of technology could be used to extend the capabilites of our own bodies through the insertion of a tiny titanium chip. Maybe it could control nerves - making it possible to filter what signles are sent to the brain. You could insert them into a bunch of soldiers and make them impervious to pain and have the body generate adrenaline on demand. That would be rad.
I seriously doubt the durability of this thing. A year is a nice goal, but it just doesn't seem possible. With temperatures varying several hundred degrees in orbit will some cheap solar panels designed for the desert really hold up for a year? I think not. I give these guys about 5 minutes in orbit before the thing literally melts into a pile of goo. Then the NASA boys can say, "I told you so," and then go bug congress for more money. "See! Look what happens when you do it cheap!?"
Also, it might be really interesting to see Radio Shack get excited about this. If by some engineering feat it does actually work Radio Shack could become 'cool' again. Who wouldn't want to build their own satellite for $50,000? Of course everyone will want one, and that might be a BAD thing. I understand that there is a lot of space in orbit, but I remember a show on the Discovery Channel describing how difficult it is getting for the space shuttle to navigate in orbit due to the ever increasing space junk up there. NORAD is supposed to track all of it - do you think they will be sending these guys a bill to track their $50,000 satellite if it goes whacko? I would. Do we really want a whole bunch of Radio Shack satellites orbiting the earth? When was the last time you purchased something really durable and interesting at Radio Shack?
I was watching a documentry on the stealth bomber. EVERYTHING on that plan is controlled by computer. Infact - none of the control surfaces (including throttle) are physically linked to the cockpit. What do you do when the computer fails?? Eject! What a nice way to blow a billion dollars - software bugs can be expenisve huh? This type of flight design is becoming more and more common in aviation. As a pilot - it scares me to death. So all you hackers out there - DEBUG! A lot! If you don't - you could end up killing someone, like me.
I am a part owner in a hosting company in charge of technical operations. I can understand CommuniTech's position on this. In their contact I see an 'attempt' at covering themselve on this. In section 10 "Limitation of Liability" it says something like they aren't responsible for any loss of data - even in regards to maintainence (or lack of). Applying patches could be considered maintainence. Section 7.2 is also another attempt at dealing with this. They didn't come right out and say it, but to me it seems what they mean is "If you get cracked, don't come crying to us - and yes you will pay to have it fixed."
As an owner of a hosting company I can understand the challenge of keeping 100's of servers current with the latest patches. I might keep up with it on new installations - but trying to support older systems would be tough! I would make sure (and I do) that the service agreement is clear as to who is responsible if a server is cracked. But as a point of service I would apply patches if a client asked me specifically to do so. Personally, I try to keep up on all security patches, but I may miss one here and there. Perhaps this is the same issue with CommuniTech.
The report by former CommuniTech customers shows that they are not that concerned about customer service. Or that they have too many customers to provided good service. My company is a bit more concerned about service, and I think we take the precautions neccessary to prevent such problems. But if a dedicated host on our system gets cracked, and they want us to fix it for free - humm. Depends on the circumstance. I would be much more likley to do it if i was informed ahead of time that there was a problem. I think other hosting companies should provide the same service. If they don't - that's fine. It just means more business for us.
What would it take to create an "open" certificate authority? It could be run by the FSF, or some other non-profit organization. It's hard for me to imagine that all the geeks out there couldn't unite and create a system that issues low cost or free certificates. Heck, slashdot could get into the CA biz! Just about anybody could, yahoo, amazon, wal-mart. What's so hard about it anyway? The only challenge I can see is verifying that people are who they say they are - right now an almost monumental task to prove to the CA's. Seems they want everything but a DNA sample.
I think no one has really complained about the price of a cert much because businesses mostly use this type of service, and for a business $125/year isn't that much. But what about individuals buying certs to secure private information - seems reasonable if you can get the cost below $40/year. There is a market here. I bet it's only a matter of time before someone starts to offer a lower priced solution.
I run a discount web hosting and web design company, and I think a lot of our customers would be interested in having some type of secure cert if the price wasn't above $40/year. Right now we just resale the use of our cert because the price is too high for them to get thier own. Something to think about anyway.