Ah, my bad - thanks for the info. This explains why I had to do something weird to 2K to make it accept connections from nix. Is the entire session encrypted or just authentication? I don't know how many times I've gone from Machine A to B and then from B to C. Would the B to C login information be encrypted from A to B?
I use Apache on Debian and I like some of the stuff you can do editting the config files but...
The config process is overly complicated. When I first started using Apache there was srm.conf, httpd.conf, access.conf. It was sometimes difficult to determine which directives were supposed to go where and what all the files were for. Sometimes I would find myself putting something in one file that got over ridden in another file. Another annoying thing about Text file configuration is the syntatical complexity. If I am setting the server name, and I make a typo, well that is my own stupid fault... but I shouldn't have to worry about making a typo in the syntax for the ServerName directive.
There should be a level of abstraction between a user and whatever files a program accesses to determine its configuration. If properly implemented, a layer of abstraction can protect the user from himself, protect the software from the user, and make configuration easier by including some context to the config options (Eg help). What does UseCanonicalNames mean? Hover the mouse over it to find out.
I have read hundreds of posts by people having config problems with Apache and a good number from IIS/PWS as well. In Apache, it's usually typos or not understanding directives, with IIS/PWS it's often some weird registry hack causing the problem (how do I enable cgi). Both of these issues could be greatly reduced by a good graphical configuration utility with cross referenced help.
While I think the post you replied to had pretty stupid biased suggestions, I just have to say a few things...
But I can do the same thing with Windows telnet
Aahhhhhh!!! Passwords in plaintext. Telnet is the devil. SSH is encrypted. These are not equivalent services.
For server only installations, we just don't hook a monitor up.
Running a GUI takes memory and system resources, monitor attached or not. Also, if you don't have a monitor attached, people are a lot less likely to walk up and start fiddling with your server.
You really should conserve some network bandwidth and just go sit down at the machine though.
In an internal network with 100+ MBit network this is not an issue. Guaranteed, your employer would rather have you utilizing instant connections to whatever machines you needed than have you waste five minutes walking over to the server farm, spending another five minutes locating the correct terminal for the machine, and then another 5 minutes walking back to your desk.
Realism has its place in video games. It all depends on what you are going for. If your game involves a simulated world of any kind (FPS, Role Playing, Simulations, etc) then you want enough realism to keep the player in tune with the game. At the same time you want to keep the game fun. Deciding how much realism to include in a video game is a design decision. You want the appropriate amount for the game you are making and the audience you are targetting. The question, "Is Realism Destroying Video Games," is like asking, "Is Salt Destroying Dinner" or "Is Little Debbie Killing People". With all things there is an appropriate amount.
If you're a small, local store - why do you *care* that people thousands of miles away see your TV ad? They're not your target customer anyway. The ad still reaches the audience it was created for, and everything else is just "spillover" that doesn't typically benefit the person buying the advertising.
People in a local viewing area could be tuning out to far away affiliates. So if your local commercial reaches 1000 local people before deregulation and 800 local + 200 far away that is bad for you as an advertiser. Of course, why the government should care about this is beyond me.
Maybe its not that big an issue, but I know that myself and everyone else who has suffered through 2 hour long essay tests finds that their writing hand is in a great deal of pain. I don't have this problem with a decent keyboard.
Also there's another issue I hav't seen mentioned. Unless the pen functions as a mouse as well, you will either have to learn to use a mouse with your off hand or switch back and forth.
If it doubles as a mouse, would that mean you'd be tapping the pen against something non stop while playing quake? That would require a lot more muscle movement than a mouse finger click. It kind of reminds me of when everyone thought touch screens would be a great idea until they discovered Gorilla Arm.
How do you tell the difference between characters like this:
", ', |, l, 1, `, \ :,;,.,,
-, _,
(, [
You could probably get some of the above using context but that will only get you so far.
Clearly, the world is waiting for the SnapFlat Screen: a detachable, interchangeable flat panel that you can move from gadget to gadget. After all, you use only one of these expensive machines at a time. At the end of the day, you can snap the screen onto your Web appliance to see how much money you've saved by buying one universal screen instead of six proprietary ones.
Windows 98/Me/Ce/XP/AutoPC has detected a new monitor. Please wait while we search for drivers for this device. Now reboot.
Honestly, most people who can afford the luxory of flat screens and multiple snazzy electronic gadgets can afford more than one flat screen.
To: Mike Memo: Design Revisions We want corporate statue to have the head of a St Bernard and the torso of a gopher. Can you throw in a couple of extra arms while your at? 4 or 5 should be enough. Need to move the schedule up while we're at, investors will be visiting in two weeks and we need something to show them. Thanks, Management
I feel like some intrinsic part of programmer productivity has been overlooked here. A lot of development is done in teams, working with groups of people. Sometimes a person can be of immense support to a team by providing insight, direction, explaining an existing system, etc... without writing a single line of code. I've known some programmers who never wanted to be bothered and others who became so swamped with people asking them questions that they sometimes had trouble getting their own work done. If Bill asks Rick a question, and Bill's answer takes an hour to explain, but saves Rick a day in wasted implementation, how does that affect the perceived productivity of Bill and Rick? Furthermore, how does this make you look at the productivity of someone who never wants to be bothered or someone who rarely asks questions even when they should?
Fred now writes comments and he completes his program by writing 1000 lines of well-documented, correct code per day for five days. Danny also completes his assignment in five days, but he writes only 500 lines of code per day
Unfortunately, Danny's code was written in perl and looked like this:
s''$/=\2048;while(){G=29;R=142;if((@a=unqT="C*",_) [20]&48){D=89;_=unqb24,qT,@
b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$&/;Q=unqV,qb2 5,_;H=73;O=$b[4]>8^(P=(E=255)&(Q>>12^Q>>4^Q/8^Q))>8^(E&(F=(S=O>>14&7^O)
^S*8^S>=8
)+=P+(~F&E))for@a[128..$#a]}print+qT,@a}';s/[D-HO- U_]/\$$&/g;s/q/pack+/g;eval
Because I've forgotten so many passwords that I'm cynical about the reality of password changing best practices...
Heh, at one pace I worked we had to change our NT passwords every month, I knew some people that'd just kill 30 minutes entering *new* passwords until NT finally let them go back to the original.
Because AOL isn't abusing a monopoly position to destroy potential competition?
Not *exactly* a monopoly, but they are most definitely stifling competition in the IM market by breaking anything and everything compatible with AIM. Similarly, when they packaged AIM with AOL, they used their dominant market share to more or less force non AOL users to use AIM in order to IM with a sizeable portion of IM users. It doesn't seem that different to the bundling of IE with Windows.
One of the companies I used to work for gave us secureid keychains with 7 or 8 digit numbers on them that changed every 60 seconds. Whenever we logged in to our company account, we had to supply the code in addition to our username and password. A very popular scam was to email people a message with a link to a fake login page. Sometimes they would fake an internal memo: Eg. New company policy regarding X, log in here and read it. Your order for $120 sunglasses has been processed, to view your order login here. A virus is propagating through the company network, login here to download the patch, etc. Some of these messegaes would be very convincing. Often the only way to tell them apart from real company mail was to examine the link's url which was usually obsficated. I'm sure many people, especially new hires, periodicly fell for this stuff. What I'm trying to say is, social engineering can be very effective. It only takes a couple of uninformed folks to make a mistake and when you are more or less constantly under attack, a few slip ups are bound to happen.
Then again, in a facility with 4000+ machines, its a good bet that you have a standard configuration for every type of machine. More often than not a repurposed machine would get wiped and reformatted anyway.
The procedure you describe above for relocating desktop pcs does sound silly... but the tradeoff is that people will have trouble figuring out whose machine belongs to who. It's easy to grab that excel document of Jim's machine, hard to grab it off of JX10B19-1. Of course maybe if we discouraged them from sharing files they'd stop accidently leaving directories open with full permissions while a few infected machines troll the network looking for open shares with executables to infect.
Give each machine a functional name with letter codes that break them down by OS/Function|Service/Location. By looking at a name you ought to be able to figure out what a machine does, what os it runs, and where it is at a glance.
On the other hand you need to be able to communicate these names to other people. Something Like NT-PDC-L1R5 can be rather cumbersome. To avoid this you can give the machine a memorable name as well. Like have all the mail servers named after composers. In addition to being easy to remember, you get to say things like, "Mozart needed a tuneup, so we pulled him out of the foundry and threw Bach in." Try to say that with a a coded name.
Think of the television. The number of tech support jobs currently generated as a result of television dwarfs the original market. VCRs, DVDs, TV tuner cards, Cable TV, Satelite TV, PVRs like Tivo.... All this stuff generates support calls... and TVs/related tech is amazingly simple compared to what is possible with computers.
Though fewer than half of Americans with computers say they fully understand how to operate them and all their features,
Heh, I don't know how to operate all the features of my computer. Hell, considering the things can do virtually anything, I'd be surprised if anyone did. Can't even get sound working on my potato box - grumble (I'm a software developer/CS grad)
More than 80 percent of respondents across the country understood how to work a TV better than a computer, something for the computer industry to ponder long and hard.
Well jeez man, a pair of sneakers are easier to operate than a 747 but you don't see anyone complaining about that. A more powerful device usually has a more complicated interface especially in the case of computers. A tv is like a single program with a specialized user interface, most functional computers consist of thousands of programs making use of a semi-variable multipurpose interface.
For most computer related professions, there really isn't too much a threat of people getting more tech savy. I mean it takes so much knowledge to be able to write or design a software system or securely administer a network. Anyone competent to perform these tasks will most likely have learned the stuff they need to know in much the same way as I did over a period of several years. Most Tech people aren't going to lose jobs because Grandma leanred how to operate her VCR.
When you think about it, a more tech savy consumer base may even increase the number of tech jobs. Think of it this way, ten years ago I knew relatively little about Unix, the Internet, etc... but now that I know what I know, a vast array of stuff is now available to me that never existed before. I buy all sorts of stuff: software, hardware, networking equipment, etc because now I know how to use them. As consumer savyness increases, so will demand for more tech stuff and more in depth tech knowledge.
If AOL starts using RedHat exclusively for their Linux servers/desktops it would make sense to buy that particular distribution (if they were to buy one at all).
Fork off of a Red Hat distribution, and start developing it...
The problem with that is you need the people to develop it. Buying RedHat would give you many of the people you'd need to continue development.
I interned at CompuServe a year ago, and I can say there are still many customers out there using some of the old Windows 3.1 clients. Migration is indeed difficult.
Re:Too many predictions focused on AI that is far
on
A Timeline of the Future
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Look at how far technology has come since 1975 or 1950.
AI is not being limitted primarily by a lack of technology. The main difficulty is a lack of understanding of intelligence. How does it work? How do we create it? What is it? What is required to have it? These are theoretical issues, not technological ones. While we may have lots of technological advances over 25 years, we won't have nearly as many theoretical ones.
Hell, just look at the AI built into some games, even that was beyond technology in 1975
Sure it was beyond the technology of 1975, but in the same way Quake's graphics engine was beyond 1975's graphic's hardware. The theories were more or less there in 1975, but just weren't implementable. Technology helps but it doesn't alter the underlying problem of understanding. Right now we don't have a clue how to build a real human-like intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, my bad - thanks for the info. This explains why I had to do something weird to 2K to make it accept connections from nix. Is the entire session encrypted or just authentication? I don't know how many times I've gone from Machine A to B and then from B to C. Would the B to C login information be encrypted from A to B?
I use Apache on Debian and I like some of the stuff you can do editting the config files but ...
The config process is overly complicated. When I first started using Apache there was srm.conf, httpd.conf, access.conf. It was sometimes difficult to determine which directives were supposed to go where and what all the files were for. Sometimes I would find myself putting something in one file that got over ridden in another file. Another annoying thing about Text file configuration is the syntatical complexity. If I am setting the server name, and I make a typo, well that is my own stupid fault... but I shouldn't have to worry about making a typo in the syntax for the ServerName directive.
There should be a level of abstraction between a user and whatever files a program accesses to determine its configuration. If properly implemented, a layer of abstraction can protect the user from himself, protect the software from the user, and make configuration easier by including some context to the config options (Eg help). What does UseCanonicalNames mean? Hover the mouse over it to find out.
I have read hundreds of posts by people having config problems with Apache and a good number from IIS/PWS as well. In Apache, it's usually typos or not understanding directives, with IIS/PWS it's often some weird registry hack causing the problem (how do I enable cgi). Both of these issues could be greatly reduced by a good graphical configuration utility with cross referenced help.
While I think the post you replied to had pretty stupid biased suggestions, I just have to say a few things...
But I can do the same thing with Windows telnet
Aahhhhhh!!! Passwords in plaintext. Telnet is the devil. SSH is encrypted. These are not equivalent services.
For server only installations, we just don't hook a monitor up.
Running a GUI takes memory and system resources, monitor attached or not. Also, if you don't have a monitor attached, people are a lot less likely to walk up and start fiddling with your server.
You really should conserve some network bandwidth and just go sit down at the machine though.
In an internal network with 100+ MBit network this is not an issue. Guaranteed, your employer would rather have you utilizing instant connections to whatever machines you needed than have you waste five minutes walking over to the server farm, spending another five minutes locating the correct terminal for the machine, and then another 5 minutes walking back to your desk.
an actual device that could send something or someone from the future to the past, or vice versa
That'd be about useless. The trick is to get someone from the present to the future or from the present to the past.
Realism has its place in video games. It all depends on what you are going for. If your game involves a simulated world of any kind (FPS, Role Playing, Simulations, etc) then you want enough realism to keep the player in tune with the game. At the same time you want to keep the game fun. Deciding how much realism to include in a video game is a design decision. You want the appropriate amount for the game you are making and the audience you are targetting. The question, "Is Realism Destroying Video Games," is like asking, "Is Salt Destroying Dinner" or "Is Little Debbie Killing People". With all things there is an appropriate amount.
If you're a small, local store - why do you *care* that people thousands of miles away see your TV ad? They're not your target customer anyway. The ad still reaches the audience it was created for, and everything else is just "spillover" that doesn't typically benefit the person buying the advertising.
People in a local viewing area could be tuning out to far away affiliates. So if your local commercial reaches 1000 local people before deregulation and 800 local + 200 far away that is bad for you as an advertiser. Of course, why the government should care about this is beyond me.
Maybe its not that big an issue, but I know that myself and everyone else who has suffered through 2 hour long essay tests finds that their writing hand is in a great deal of pain. I don't have this problem with a decent keyboard.
:,;,.,,
Also there's another issue I hav't seen mentioned. Unless the pen functions as a mouse as well, you will either have to learn to use a mouse with your off hand or switch back and forth.
If it doubles as a mouse, would that mean you'd be tapping the pen against something non stop while playing quake? That would require a lot more muscle movement than a mouse finger click. It kind of reminds me of when everyone thought touch screens would be a great idea until they discovered Gorilla Arm.
How do you tell the difference between characters like this:
", ', |, l, 1, `, \
-, _,
(, [
You could probably get some of the above using context but that will only get you so far.
Clearly, the world is waiting for the SnapFlat Screen: a detachable, interchangeable flat panel that you can move from gadget to gadget. After all, you use only one of these expensive machines at a time. At the end of the day, you can snap the screen onto your Web appliance to see how much money you've saved by buying one universal screen instead of six proprietary ones.
Windows 98/Me/Ce/XP/AutoPC has detected a new monitor. Please wait while we search for drivers for this device. Now reboot.
Honestly, most people who can afford the luxory of flat screens and multiple snazzy electronic gadgets can afford more than one flat screen.
dont forget 90 percent of the USA is religious and could worship them
All Hail Stephalococcus-Europacus
Moon, slingshot around jupiter, corner pocket.
To: Mike
Memo: Design Revisions
We want corporate statue to have the head of a St Bernard and the torso of a gopher. Can you throw in a couple of extra arms while your at? 4 or 5 should be enough. Need to move the schedule up while we're at, investors will be visiting in two weeks and we need something to show them.
Thanks,
Management
I feel like some intrinsic part of programmer productivity has been overlooked here. A lot of development is done in teams, working with groups of people. Sometimes a person can be of immense support to a team by providing insight, direction, explaining an existing system, etc... without writing a single line of code. I've known some programmers who never wanted to be bothered and others who became so swamped with people asking them questions that they sometimes had trouble getting their own work done. If Bill asks Rick a question, and Bill's answer takes an hour to explain, but saves Rick a day in wasted implementation, how does that affect the perceived productivity of Bill and Rick? Furthermore, how does this make you look at the productivity of someone who never wants to be bothered or someone who rarely asks questions even when they should?
Fred now writes comments and he completes his program by writing 1000 lines of well-documented, correct code per day for five days. Danny also completes his assignment in five days, but he writes only 500 lines of code per day
) [20]&48){D=89;_=unqb24,qT,@
b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$&/;Q=unqV,qb2 5,_;H=73;O=$b[4]>8^(P=(E=255)&(Q>>12^Q> ;>4^Q/8^Q))>8^(E&(F=(S=O>>14&7^O)
^S*8^S>=8
)+=P+(~F&E))for@a[128..$#a]}print+qT,@a}';s/[D-HO- U_]/\$$&/g;s/q/pack+/g;eval
Unfortunately, Danny's code was written in perl and looked like this:
s''$/=\2048;while(){G=29;R=142;if((@a=unqT="C*",_
Because I've forgotten so many passwords that I'm cynical about the reality of password changing best practices...
Heh, at one pace I worked we had to change our NT passwords every month, I knew some people that'd just kill 30 minutes entering *new* passwords until NT finally let them go back to the original.
Because AOL isn't abusing a monopoly position to destroy potential competition?
Not *exactly* a monopoly, but they are most definitely stifling competition in the IM market by breaking anything and everything compatible with AIM. Similarly, when they packaged AIM with AOL, they used their dominant market share to more or less force non AOL users to use AIM in order to IM with a sizeable portion of IM users. It doesn't seem that different to the bundling of IE with Windows.
whew, I'm just glad the ttl isn't counting down as well.
One of the companies I used to work for gave us secureid keychains with 7 or 8 digit numbers on them that changed every 60 seconds. Whenever we logged in to our company account, we had to supply the code in addition to our username and password. A very popular scam was to email people a message with a link to a fake login page. Sometimes they would fake an internal memo: Eg. New company policy regarding X, log in here and read it. Your order for $120 sunglasses has been processed, to view your order login here. A virus is propagating through the company network, login here to download the patch, etc. Some of these messegaes would be very convincing. Often the only way to tell them apart from real company mail was to examine the link's url which was usually obsficated. I'm sure many people, especially new hires, periodicly fell for this stuff. What I'm trying to say is, social engineering can be very effective. It only takes a couple of uninformed folks to make a mistake and when you are more or less constantly under attack, a few slip ups are bound to happen.
Then again, in a facility with 4000+ machines, its a good bet that you have a standard configuration for every type of machine. More often than not a repurposed machine would get wiped and reformatted anyway.
The procedure you describe above for relocating desktop pcs does sound silly... but the tradeoff is that people will have trouble figuring out whose machine belongs to who. It's easy to grab that excel document of Jim's machine, hard to grab it off of JX10B19-1. Of course maybe if we discouraged them from sharing files they'd stop accidently leaving directories open with full permissions while a few infected machines troll the network looking for open shares with executables to infect.
Give each machine a functional name with letter codes that break them down by OS/Function|Service/Location. By looking at a name you ought to be able to figure out what a machine does, what os it runs, and where it is at a glance.
On the other hand you need to be able to communicate these names to other people. Something Like NT-PDC-L1R5 can be rather cumbersome. To avoid this you can give the machine a memorable name as well. Like have all the mail servers named after composers. In addition to being easy to remember, you get to say things like, "Mozart needed a tuneup, so we pulled him out of the foundry and threw Bach in." Try to say that with a a coded name.
Think of the television. The number of tech support jobs currently generated as a result of television dwarfs the original market. VCRs, DVDs, TV tuner cards, Cable TV, Satelite TV, PVRs like Tivo.... All this stuff generates support calls... and TVs/related tech is amazingly simple compared to what is possible with computers.
Though fewer than half of Americans with computers say they fully understand how to operate them and all their features,
Heh, I don't know how to operate all the features of my computer. Hell, considering the things can do virtually anything, I'd be surprised if anyone did. Can't even get sound working on my potato box - grumble (I'm a software developer/CS grad)
More than 80 percent of respondents across the country understood how to work a TV better than a computer, something for the computer industry to ponder long and hard.
Well jeez man, a pair of sneakers are easier to operate than a 747 but you don't see anyone complaining about that. A more powerful device usually has a more complicated interface especially in the case of computers. A tv is like a single program with a specialized user interface, most functional computers consist of thousands of programs making use of a semi-variable multipurpose interface.
For most computer related professions, there really isn't too much a threat of people getting more tech savy. I mean it takes so much knowledge to be able to write or design a software system or securely administer a network. Anyone competent to perform these tasks will most likely have learned the stuff they need to know in much the same way as I did over a period of several years. Most Tech people aren't going to lose jobs because Grandma leanred how to operate her VCR.
... but now that I know what I know, a vast array of stuff is now available to me that never existed before. I buy all sorts of stuff: software, hardware, networking equipment, etc because now I know how to use them. As consumer savyness increases, so will demand for more tech stuff and more in depth tech knowledge.
When you think about it, a more tech savy consumer base may even increase the number of tech jobs. Think of it this way, ten years ago I knew relatively little about Unix, the Internet, etc
Why Red Hat?
If AOL starts using RedHat exclusively for their Linux servers/desktops it would make sense to buy that particular distribution (if they were to buy one at all).
Fork off of a Red Hat distribution, and start developing it...
The problem with that is you need the people to develop it. Buying RedHat would give you many of the people you'd need to continue development.
I interned at CompuServe a year ago, and I can say there are still many customers out there using some of the old Windows 3.1 clients. Migration is indeed difficult.
Look at how far technology has come since 1975 or 1950.
AI is not being limitted primarily by a lack of technology. The main difficulty is a lack of understanding of intelligence. How does it work? How do we create it? What is it? What is required to have it? These are theoretical issues, not technological ones. While we may have lots of technological advances over 25 years, we won't have nearly as many theoretical ones.
Hell, just look at the AI built into some games, even that was beyond technology in 1975
Sure it was beyond the technology of 1975, but in the same way Quake's graphics engine was beyond 1975's graphic's hardware. The theories were more or less there in 1975, but just weren't implementable. Technology helps but it doesn't alter the underlying problem of understanding. Right now we don't have a clue how to build a real human-like intelligence.