Porting all from BlackBerry OS 6/7 to QNX will not happen overnight, so it will take time to go from BBOS 5/6/7 in the phones, and QNX in the playbook to a unified stack in phones and tablets...
Let's just hope that RIM does not go bankrupt before they finish the port.
No matter if your OS is Windows 5.x, 6.x, Mac OS X 10.x or GNU/Linux Kernel 2.4.x or 2.6.x. If your machine is a desktop run an antivirus.
You owe it to the rest of the world to extermitate viruses, both the many (or few) that your machine is susceptible to, as well as those that, even though will not infect your machine, will be passed on to someone else...
.;-)...because YOU, saavy and enlightened slashdot user, did not catch and exterminated it. Do it for the unwashed mases, that are clogging the pipes with port scans and attempts to infect, do it to have a tad fewer cheap viagra/penis enlargement offers in your spam folder, do it for the children!!!!:-)
If you "feel confident" (note the quotes) that your OS is "safe", that you use "safe practices", and the AV is a "Waste of resources", then fine, get an AV with a small footprint, both in system resorurces, and in $£¥€.
I am writing this fom Firefox 4.1 in a Mac with 10.6.7, and I am not scared at all about these developments, but, as safe practice, run ClamAV. I scan my machine every day, and scan removable media every time it is inserted.;-) So, please my Linux and Mac OS X brothers and sisters, stop being a bunch of snobs, get on with the program, and run an antivirus.:-)
Number 4 is not possible on SCADA machines like struxnet targets, or even on machines like an OSS system in a telco.
You see, these application makers do not regard the machines as an HP-UX box (or Solaris box, or Sinix box or Windows box) running some software, but as, let's say, an NMS-2000, which, by pure random luck, "happens" to be implemented on HP-UX.
Therefore, you are not allowed to install the latest patches from HP until the application provider (Nokia, in the Case of the NMS-2000, Siemens, in the case of Swtich Commander and Radio Comander, SCADA, or IN) tested said patches, otherwise, you would not get any software support whatsoever...
At some times we had delays of between 6 months to 1 year on the security patches. We (and I mean we opperators all over the planet) had to push to get em security patches tested and delivered...
The situation has improved A LOT lately, but still, the application provider will have a gap while testing the OS patches for compatibility with the application...
How do I know? , I was sysadmin to NMS-2000, NMS10, Nokia IN, Siemens IN, OMC-S, OMC-B, Netviwer, and Siemens IN, way back at the turn of the milenium (99-02), and still have enogh contacts to know how things are going nowadays.
Either in amplitude or PCM. Neutrinos interact with matter even less than Electromagnetic waves.
They are a bitch to generate (take an awfull LOT of energy), but that is the problem of the alien civilization trying to comunicate, not ours, at least for the time being.
I have a MBP 13" Unibody. The HW is pretty much ok, but the configured options of the era show their age. The battery has swollen, 2GB of RAM is little nowadays, and a 5400rpm HDD is slow.
Do as the Parent sugests, install Windows Seven (not Vista, and certainly not XP) in the laptop, but upgrade Memory (check the manual to see the max ammount of ram supported, and check the forums to see if it can take a tad more ), change the HDD (here faster RPM or SDD is the name of the game), and buy a new (non Apple, thank you) battery. This can be done by pretty much anyone.
If you do not upgrade those options, the laptop will feel slow compared to what is in the market nowadays, and will likely fail early (HDD or battery), making your wife feel shortcharged.
Last, but not least, be smart about the windows install, and do not self-crappify your computer, Microsoft Security essentials is a nice Antivirus solution, and Windows live has a bunch of nice uttilities, which are updated from the same place as the rest of the OS, making life much simpler.
If you are competent inside the machine, a little cleanup of the fans and termal pipes with a can of compressed air is recomended too. If you are REALLY competent inside a laptop, you can re-apply the termal paste...
With the money you save, buy HER (not you) some nifty accesories, like an enclosure for the old HDD, so she has an external disk, or a usb hub, or something nice, non computer related.
PS: In windows, for many laptops, one can SW overclock the machine, I've done it, asnd as long as you do not get too greedy, works OK.
If anyone recalls, a while ago Microsoft anounced an "H.264 plugin for Firefox" (http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/223237/Microsoft-Is-Releasing-an-H264-Plugin-For-Firefox) on Windows 7 that would add support for H.264 using Win7's H.264 built in services. Duplication by the comunity of said plugin in MacOS X, as well as in Linux should not be that dificult.
At some point in the near future, every single browser will have both codecs, one as a plugin, one native. (WebM will be native in Opera, Firefox and chrome, while H.264 will be supported via a plugin, the reverse situation for IE and Safari).
At that point, all this hoppla becomes moot. All content providers can concentrate in using the codec that is best for them in terms of quality, bandwidth, optinos, tools available and cost.
Nah, if the slow (Glacial anyone?) migration of IE6 corporate apps is any indication, this will work great £€$¥ wise for Oracle.
A free Java VM, no mater if it is performance or feature crippled means that anyone with a quick and dirty need, and the java skills (prevalent nowadays) can solve it with a quick java fix, instead of, say, learn another language, or risk it with a comunity derived JVM (You know, and I know and mabe our hypotetical programer know that the comunity derived JVM is technically top notch, but most likely his PHB and the C?O people do not).
When the application gets ingrained in the internal business process, and you need something (performance or feature wise) found only in the paid for VM, the corporate sweet daddy will be strong pressed to pay for it, rather than write the app from scratch in a more open language.
The only way this would backfire is if one big player like IBM, HP, or SAP adopts one of the comunity derived forks and starts offering paid support (and the associated credibility) for it...
Sad but true.
Of course, this only applies to corporate internal use sw. The shrink wraped SW ((F)OSS or not), and the movile/mobile sw have different dynamics...
Still a dual stack solution. Wouldn't have been much of a difference. They tried to roll the CLNS crap into ipv6 because they liked the dumbass OSI model.
Except that the routing algorithms, client stacks, server stacks, et cetera were already implemented and in place on the wole network before 1996 (for either IPX or CLNP). Probably in the mid 80s. So it would have been SUBSTANTIALY CHEAPER as well as LESS PRONE TO IMPLEMENTATION ERRORS.
IPv6 did not exist as an spec before 94~95, and the fist implementations were made circa 96.
You do not like the dumbass OSI model, well cool, neither do I, so go with TCP/UDP on top of IPX for tour TUBA needs. IPX's model is more similar to IP's than to OSI's.
Just for the record, I prefer a 6 layer model, where presentation and session are fused, and unlike TCP/IP the layered aproach is not violated. And by the way, with planes too (ATM thesis influence can be seen there).
Just divide 20% of the total number of IPv6 Addresses (this is both to account for wasted addresses, as well as to point how silly the notion of running out of IPv6 Addresses is), and divide it by the number of Sq metes (or foots, as you preffer) of the surface of the earth (dry, humid, wet, or iced) and tell me how many devices for each tile of surface can have a unique address.
Pro Tip: Use a scientific calculator, a normal one, or the one on a cellphone will not do.
For the lazy: 1,33*1023 addresses per square meter, if my calculations are correct. This is more than the Avogadro #... just in case, check my calculation.
In 1996, when IPv6 (back then called IPng) was declared the "fix", there were two proposals that could have extended the address space.
* Use TCP/UDP on top of IPX (RFC1791). This, IIRC was implemented in reality, for example, in Netware server 4.11.
* Use TCP/UDP on top of CLNS/CLNP (RFC1347).
Now think about it for a second. Both IPX and CLNP are closer to IPv4 than IPv6 will ever be. Both were already proven, well understood, and the implementations were solid...
In 1996 EVERY router on the planet had the algorithms necesary to route IPX AND CLNP (for different reasons, at the time IPX was VERY popular and CLNP was govt and Telco mandated) so the relevant patents and IP were already licensed. You also saved most of the training and implementation (meaning algorithm programming and testing) costs.
Same for the hosts. Most workstations (desktops) had an IPX client, from MS-DOS 5.0 onwards (but also in the *NIX and MAC worlds), while on servers it got better, you had your choice betwen IPX or CLNP (sometimes native, sometimes as an ad-on). So again you saved the training costs for your admins, the implementation (programming/testing) costs.
But nooooo, the guys of the IETF at the time had an acute case of NIH (or, as Eric Cartman would say, "Sand in Their Vaginas"), and came up with IPv6. Sure, it has al lot of advantages other than a larger address space, but was unproven, unimplemented, subjected to Intelectual property problems (the fact that intellectual property in its current form is flawed [I agree with that idea] is not relevant to this discussion), and had mistakes of it's own.
(my favorite pet peeve about IPv6, they removed the header checksum... come on!, I agree that recalculating the checksum in every router because of the TTL is stupid, but it was rather easy to keep the checksum, not include the hop count field in it, and make the Hop Count field a hamming code instead of a direct integer value!. And no, a half assed check on TCP of the Pseudoheader with a weaklish algorithm will not do. BTW, the guys doing realtime multimedia using UDP must also be jumping of joy that the checksum in UDP/IPv6 is mandatory now..:-P I discussed this with my students last tuesday, but is not going to be in the exam).
At the time (1996), I was an undergrad student, in a backwater country, and had high hopes that ATM would solve everything (I did my thesis in ATM flow control)... Silly me... I did not speak...
Let's not blame Cerf, nor Khan of our current woes. Let's blame the people who gave us a crappy solution out of pride, and pitty those of us who have to implement it....
The WAP service had three posible bearers, GPRS (the best for it), a circuit switched dedicated 9600bps link (later upgraded to 14.4kbps, or even 56kbps), or SMS.
Well yes, in WAP times there was a full spec on how to transport data on lowly SMS. As other posters have said, using SMS as a bearer for other data services is painfull, slow, ackward, and not such a good idea.
Just consider that one of the BIG targets, namely Windows XP was a sitting duck for something like 6 years (XP Released in 2001, Vista released in 2007 to the general public)... And WINE was not able to get there...
Also, remember the metafile fiasco?.
WINE had excatly the same error. And I will take none of that "they are replicating the functions" crap.
If the WINE team had recognized this metafile crap as a security vuln themselves, they would have boasted about it from here to mars and back, and then added a line in the config files of the form:
WinMetaFileFlaw=x; [X=0 -> Vuln allowed; X=1 -> WINE team Fix; X=2 -> Reserved to emulate Microsoft fix if and when they release it].
So yes, They had the target sitting still for 6 years and could not catch it. Long live wine!!!!
PS: Now that the folks at ReactOs saw the light and did the changes, maybe we can expect more of both ReactOs AND WINE. First ordder of the day, find a big corporate sweet daddy (like Symian, Eclipse, Xen, et al)!
PS2: Well, I have some good karma I can burn today.
PS3: I am not beein a troll, is my long standing opinion, so if you want to mod me down do it, but not with troll.
If we went forth and put TCP on top of CLNS/CLNP.... But Nooooooo... The "Not Invented Here Syndrome" struckthe IETF, and here we are, with a messy migration to IPv6.
HFS+ Can be read by both Linux and Mac. Preserves permisisons and such, and in SnowLeopard, Apple gently provided bootcamp drivers so that XP/Vista/7 can read HFS+ too. No hacks requiered, no big risk involved. There, solved that for ya!
Slashdot Mirror
Porting all from BlackBerry OS 6/7 to QNX will not happen overnight, so it will take time to go from BBOS 5/6/7 in the phones, and QNX in the playbook to a unified stack in phones and tablets...
Let's just hope that RIM does not go bankrupt before they finish the port.
No matter if your OS is Windows 5.x, 6.x, Mac OS X 10.x or GNU/Linux Kernel 2.4.x or 2.6.x. If your machine is a desktop run an antivirus.
You owe it to the rest of the world to extermitate viruses, both the many (or few) that your machine is susceptible to, as well as those that, even though will not infect your machine, will be passed on to someone else...
. ;-) ...because YOU, saavy and enlightened slashdot user, did not catch and exterminated it. Do it for the unwashed mases, that are clogging the pipes with port scans and attempts to infect, do it to have a tad fewer cheap viagra/penis enlargement offers in your spam folder, do it for the children!!!! :-)
If you "feel confident" (note the quotes) that your OS is "safe", that you use "safe practices", and the AV is a "Waste of resources", then fine, get an AV with a small footprint, both in system resorurces, and in $£¥€.
I am writing this fom Firefox 4.1 in a Mac with 10.6.7, and I am not scared at all about these developments, but, as safe practice, run ClamAV. I scan my machine every day, and scan removable media every time it is inserted. ;-) :-)
So, please my Linux and Mac OS X brothers and sisters, stop being a bunch of snobs, get on with the program, and run an antivirus.
Number 4 is not possible on SCADA machines like struxnet targets, or even on machines like an OSS system in a telco.
You see, these application makers do not regard the machines as an HP-UX box (or Solaris box, or Sinix box or Windows box) running some software, but as, let's say, an NMS-2000, which, by pure random luck, "happens" to be implemented on HP-UX.
Therefore, you are not allowed to install the latest patches from HP until the application provider (Nokia, in the Case of the NMS-2000, Siemens, in the case of Swtich Commander and Radio Comander, SCADA, or IN) tested said patches, otherwise, you would not get any software support whatsoever...
At some times we had delays of between 6 months to 1 year on the security patches. We (and I mean we opperators all over the planet) had to push to get em security patches tested and delivered...
The situation has improved A LOT lately, but still, the application provider will have a gap while testing the OS patches for compatibility with the application...
How do I know? , I was sysadmin to NMS-2000, NMS10, Nokia IN, Siemens IN, OMC-S, OMC-B, Netviwer, and Siemens IN, way back at the turn of the milenium (99-02), and still have enogh contacts to know how things are going nowadays.
Either in amplitude or PCM. Neutrinos interact with matter even less than Electromagnetic waves.
They are a bitch to generate (take an awfull LOT of energy), but that is the problem of the alien civilization trying to comunicate, not ours, at least for the time being.
Just install windows on the mac?
I have a MBP 13" Unibody. The HW is pretty much ok, but the configured options of the era show their age. The battery has swollen, 2GB of RAM is little nowadays, and a 5400rpm HDD is slow.
Do as the Parent sugests, install Windows Seven (not Vista, and certainly not XP) in the laptop, but upgrade Memory (check the manual to see the max ammount of ram supported, and check the forums to see if it can take a tad more ), change the HDD (here faster RPM or SDD is the name of the game), and buy a new (non Apple, thank you) battery. This can be done by pretty much anyone.
If you do not upgrade those options, the laptop will feel slow compared to what is in the market nowadays, and will likely fail early (HDD or battery), making your wife feel shortcharged.
Last, but not least, be smart about the windows install, and do not self-crappify your computer, Microsoft Security essentials is a nice Antivirus solution, and Windows live has a bunch of nice uttilities, which are updated from the same place as the rest of the OS, making life much simpler.
If you are competent inside the machine, a little cleanup of the fans and termal pipes with a can of compressed air is recomended too. If you are REALLY competent inside a laptop, you can re-apply the termal paste...
With the money you save, buy HER (not you) some nifty accesories, like an enclosure for the old HDD, so she has an external disk, or a usb hub, or something nice, non computer related.
PS: In windows, for many laptops, one can SW overclock the machine, I've done it, asnd as long as you do not get too greedy, works OK.
One of the editors at maximum PC tried something like this a while ago (Oct 2007). Here is the link:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_500_pc_build_off?page=0,2
Seems like an interesting way to test the machine before commiting to a case.
To vote againsta motion to publicly disclose succession plans....
Let's hope the guy recovers, but, at the end, we know that one can not evade death forever.
If anyone recalls, a while ago Microsoft anounced an "H.264 plugin for Firefox" (http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/223237/Microsoft-Is-Releasing-an-H264-Plugin-For-Firefox) on Windows 7 that would add support for H.264 using Win7's H.264 built in services. Duplication by the comunity of said plugin in MacOS X, as well as in Linux should not be that dificult.
At some point in the near future, every single browser will have both codecs, one as a plugin, one native. (WebM will be native in Opera, Firefox and chrome, while H.264 will be supported via a plugin, the reverse situation for IE and Safari).
At that point, all this hoppla becomes moot. All content providers can concentrate in using the codec that is best for them in terms of quality, bandwidth, optinos, tools available and cost.
so, let the better codec win!
Nah, if the slow (Glacial anyone?) migration of IE6 corporate apps is any indication, this will work great £€$¥ wise for Oracle.
A free Java VM, no mater if it is performance or feature crippled means that anyone with a quick and dirty need, and the java skills (prevalent nowadays) can solve it with a quick java fix, instead of, say, learn another language, or risk it with a comunity derived JVM (You know, and I know and mabe our hypotetical programer know that the comunity derived JVM is technically top notch, but most likely his PHB and the C?O people do not).
When the application gets ingrained in the internal business process, and you need something (performance or feature wise) found only in the paid for VM, the corporate sweet daddy will be strong pressed to pay for it, rather than write the app from scratch in a more open language.
The only way this would backfire is if one big player like IBM, HP, or SAP adopts one of the comunity derived forks and starts offering paid support (and the associated credibility) for it...
Sad but true.
Of course, this only applies to corporate internal use sw. The shrink wraped SW ((F)OSS or not), and the movile/mobile sw have different dynamics...
Nope, Hammer and Champy (Reengineering the Corporation. ISBN 0-88730-687-X Chapter 11 "One Company's Example: Taco Bell") showed us the way.
Salud!
Beat ya, I programmed in 40K, that's what's left to the programmer in a Verifone OMNI 390 credidcard POS. --- Offtopic Bragging
We need a -1 Brag Mod. ---- Insightful Part
Salud!
... we will take any generation, except 5G
Still a dual stack solution. Wouldn't have been much of a difference. They tried to roll the CLNS crap into ipv6 because they liked the dumbass OSI model.
Except that the routing algorithms, client stacks, server stacks, et cetera were already implemented and in place on the wole network before 1996 (for either IPX or CLNP). Probably in the mid 80s. So it would have been SUBSTANTIALY CHEAPER as well as LESS PRONE TO IMPLEMENTATION ERRORS.
IPv6 did not exist as an spec before 94~95, and the fist implementations were made circa 96.
You do not like the dumbass OSI model, well cool, neither do I, so go with TCP/UDP on top of IPX for tour TUBA needs. IPX's model is more similar to IP's than to OSI's.
Just for the record, I prefer a 6 layer model, where presentation and session are fused, and unlike TCP/IP the layered aproach is not violated. And by the way, with planes too (ATM thesis influence can be seen there).
Just divide 20% of the total number of IPv6 Addresses (this is both to account for wasted addresses, as well as to point how silly the notion of running out of IPv6 Addresses is), and divide it by the number of Sq metes (or foots, as you preffer) of the surface of the earth (dry, humid, wet, or iced) and tell me how many devices for each tile of surface can have a unique address.
Pro Tip: Use a scientific calculator, a normal one, or the one on a cellphone will not do.
For the lazy: 1,33*1023 addresses per square meter, if my calculations are correct. This is more than the Avogadro #... just in case, check my calculation.
In 1996, when IPv6 (back then called IPng) was declared the "fix", there were two proposals that could have extended the address space.
* Use TCP/UDP on top of IPX (RFC1791). This, IIRC was implemented in reality, for example, in Netware server 4.11.
* Use TCP/UDP on top of CLNS/CLNP (RFC1347).
Now think about it for a second. Both IPX and CLNP are closer to IPv4 than IPv6 will ever be. Both were already proven, well understood, and the implementations were solid...
In 1996 EVERY router on the planet had the algorithms necesary to route IPX AND CLNP (for different reasons, at the time IPX was VERY popular and CLNP was govt and Telco mandated) so the relevant patents and IP were already licensed. You also saved most of the training and implementation (meaning algorithm programming and testing) costs.
Same for the hosts. Most workstations (desktops) had an IPX client, from MS-DOS 5.0 onwards (but also in the *NIX and MAC worlds), while on servers it got better, you had your choice betwen IPX or CLNP (sometimes native, sometimes as an ad-on). So again you saved the training costs for your admins, the implementation (programming/testing) costs.
But nooooo, the guys of the IETF at the time had an acute case of NIH (or, as Eric Cartman would say, "Sand in Their Vaginas"), and came up with IPv6. Sure, it has al lot of advantages other than a larger address space, but was unproven, unimplemented, subjected to Intelectual property problems (the fact that intellectual property in its current form is flawed [I agree with that idea] is not relevant to this discussion), and had mistakes of it's own.
(my favorite pet peeve about IPv6, they removed the header checksum... come on!, I agree that recalculating the checksum in every router because of the TTL is stupid, but it was rather easy to keep the checksum, not include the hop count field in it, and make the Hop Count field a hamming code instead of a direct integer value!. And no, a half assed check on TCP of the Pseudoheader with a weaklish algorithm will not do. BTW, the guys doing realtime multimedia using UDP must also be jumping of joy that the checksum in UDP/IPv6 is mandatory now.. :-P I discussed this with my students last tuesday, but is not going to be in the exam).
At the time (1996), I was an undergrad student, in a backwater country, and had high hopes that ATM would solve everything (I did my thesis in ATM flow control)... Silly me... I did not speak...
Let's not blame Cerf, nor Khan of our current woes. Let's blame the people who gave us a crappy solution out of pride, and pitty those of us who have to implement it....
Salud!
A "the Golden Apples of the sun" type of mision?
Or a "ice missile delivery system" type of mission?
Please. Mod funny. please? (or offtopic)
Nigger in a box!
Please mod funny or Offtopic as you wish.
'nuff said!
Por favor, moderenme como gracioso ;-)
Remember WAP?
The WAP service had three posible bearers, GPRS (the best for it), a circuit switched dedicated 9600bps link (later upgraded to 14.4kbps, or even 56kbps), or SMS.
Well yes, in WAP times there was a full spec on how to transport data on lowly SMS. As other posters have said, using SMS as a bearer for other data services is painfull, slow, ackward, and not such a good idea.
Ah, this brings memories!
http://www.m-indya.com/wap/wap_bearers.htm
Just consider that one of the BIG targets, namely Windows XP was a sitting duck for something like 6 years (XP Released in 2001, Vista released in 2007 to the general public)... And WINE was not able to get there...
Also, remember the metafile fiasco?.
WINE had excatly the same error. And I will take none of that "they are replicating the functions" crap.
If the WINE team had recognized this metafile crap as a security vuln themselves, they would have boasted about it from here to mars and back, and then added a line in the config files of the form:
WinMetaFileFlaw=x;
[X=0 -> Vuln allowed; X=1 -> WINE team Fix; X=2 -> Reserved to emulate Microsoft fix if and when they release it].
So yes, They had the target sitting still for 6 years and could not catch it. Long live wine!!!!
PS: Now that the folks at ReactOs saw the light and did the changes, maybe we can expect more of both ReactOs AND WINE. First ordder of the day, find a big corporate sweet daddy (like Symian, Eclipse, Xen, et al)!
PS2: Well, I have some good karma I can burn today.
PS3: I am not beein a troll, is my long standing opinion, so if you want to mod me down do it, but not with troll.
I mean, all those people were using WPA, WPA-2, or at the very least WEP.
What I am really curious about is if this comment will be modded funny, or some other thing....
sig added for the convenience of the slashdot preview filter
Back when I was doing my master's in Spain, there was an MVNO tailoring students:
http://studentsphone.com/spanishIndex.php3
(the page is in english)
These guys offered cheap calls among their network (as usual) as well as reduced rates in intl' calls and Intl' Roaming.
Find out if there is some similar MVNO either in the US or Canada and enjoy
If we went forth and put TCP on top of CLNS/CLNP.... But Nooooooo... The "Not Invented Here Syndrome" struckthe IETF, and here we are, with a messy migration to IPv6.
Have fun!
Suerte a todos y feliz dia.
HFS+ Can be read by both Linux and Mac. Preserves permisisons and such, and in SnowLeopard, Apple gently provided bootcamp drivers so that XP/Vista/7 can read HFS+ too. No hacks requiered, no big risk involved. There, solved that for ya!