..most people find websites using existing search engines - therefore the vast majority of bookmarks will be from sites already ordered high up in conventional ranking systems.
Why not write the core in C (which is, face it, just as portable as Java if done correctly) and then a UI in Java?
Its probably since the project leader, Ian Clarke, recently graduated from University. At the moment, certainly in my course, Java is being taught as the primary language - hence most students are more familiar with it than any other language. I've done a variety of programming in various languages outside of University, but most people I know there haven't.
I wouldn't be surprised to find this the case at Edinburgh University too - and since Freenet started life as a final year project, the choice was probably limited to Java only.
As a side point - this trend in teaching Java may be its "saviour" in becoming very widely accepted. If its all that graduates know, it will become the standard language of choice very quickly.
meaning that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster
This is all very good in theory - but I've found that Gnutella (another non-centralized peer-to-peer system, albeit without the encryption layers) suffers as a result of this - with no central servers your packets may be routed through potentially hundreds of systems.
FreeNet must overcome this (although I am glad to see that intelligent routing is being worked on and improved!) if it is going to be viable.
If I were [theoretically of course!] to crack into a database and obtain e-mail address data, it wouldn't take much effort to then mail out everyone whose addresses I had obtained saying "We're sorry - our database got cracked. Send us your credit card details and we'll give you a $10 refund straight to your card for the inconvience!". =)
Put in a genuine looking "From:" address, and a temporarily set-up "Reply-to:" address, and wait for those CCs to come rolling in =) I'm sure there are enough people out their who would happily fall for such a scam!
Companies change their license agreements all the time, if a new product comes out then it stands to reason that the lawyers are going to want to see it included in the EULA.
What would have been more relevant would have been a if DC (or any other company for that matter!) had made a change to the EULA, not notified their users and then tried to enforce the changes.
I don't know if this is the case, but to be honest, DC would probably have been much better off having two completely seperate EULAs. This way there is no confusion - and again no possibility of falling into the "no notification" trap.
Mind you, it is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, so I guess that you'll be on the chair before you have a chance to pipe up your disent of any part of the agreement;)
Personally, I believe that any business which doesn't implement security deserves everything it gets.
I worked for a company for almost a year which was in the business of website hosting/design. As I was fairly close to the servers, I knew that we were getting regularly port-scanned, our NetBios was wide open and had had a number of attempts to break in [obviously script-kiddies, since it wouldn't have been particularly hard, yet to my knowledge they never got anywhere!]
The boss was fully aware of these problems - and yet consistently refused to accept that at a very minimum we needed a firewall - even when we finally got it into his head that this was a necessity he allowed so little time for our linux guru to work on it that it was still not operational when I finally resigned.
This is the sort of attitude that seems to be prevalent in industry - the people in charge just do not seem to understand that basic security is a must. Had anyone penetrated the system, they could easily have put this company out of business - and I'm sure this is also the case for many others!
Unless businesses wake up, they will find themselves digging their own graves - and all for want of devoting a little time to something which, with all the media hype, is staring them in the face.
Once, people were scared to go onto trains - they believed that travelling at that speed would suck the air out of their lungs, thereby killing them. Of course, this is nonsense and wasn't backed up by any scientific evidence!
I wonder if one day we'll look back at the mobile-phones-kill furore, and laugh! I'm not saying there aren't problems - but until it is backed up with solid scientific evidence I'm happy to keep using my Nokia...
The question is - why on earth did Western Union keep an/online/ database of transactions. I can understand that companies need to keep records, but why this has to be kept online, and not simply downloaded and burnt onto CD or some other storage mechanism.
Having your security broken is one thing, but having databases like this easily available is another!
Slashdot Mirror
it seems sort of important that one of the co-creators of Unix appears to be retiring
Er yes. People retire. This is not unusual - its what they do when they get old, whether they created Unix, Windows or Novelty Mugs...
..most people find websites using existing search engines - therefore the vast majority of bookmarks will be from sites already ordered high up in conventional ranking systems.
Why not write the core in C (which is, face it, just as portable as Java if done correctly) and then a UI in Java?
Its probably since the project leader, Ian Clarke, recently graduated from University. At the moment, certainly in my course, Java is being taught as the primary language - hence most students are more familiar with it than any other language. I've done a variety of programming in various languages outside of University, but most people I know there haven't.
I wouldn't be surprised to find this the case at Edinburgh University too - and since Freenet started life as a final year project, the choice was probably limited to Java only.
As a side point - this trend in teaching Java may be its "saviour" in becoming very widely accepted. If its all that graduates know, it will become the standard language of choice very quickly.
meaning that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster
This is all very good in theory - but I've found that Gnutella (another non-centralized peer-to-peer system, albeit without the encryption layers) suffers as a result of this - with no central servers your packets may be routed through potentially hundreds of systems.
FreeNet must overcome this (although I am glad to see that intelligent routing is being worked on and improved!) if it is going to be viable.
Hmm, this gives me an evil idea!
If I were [theoretically of course!] to crack into a database and obtain e-mail address data, it wouldn't take much effort to then mail out everyone whose addresses I had obtained saying "We're sorry - our database got cracked. Send us your credit card details and we'll give you a $10 refund straight to your card for the inconvience!". =)
Put in a genuine looking "From:" address, and a temporarily set-up "Reply-to:" address, and wait for those CCs to come rolling in =) I'm sure there are enough people out their who would happily fall for such a scam!
Companies change their license agreements all the time, if a new product comes out then it stands to reason that the lawyers are going to want to see it included in the EULA.
;)
What would have been more relevant would have been a if DC (or any other company for that matter!) had made a change to the EULA, not notified their users and then tried to enforce the changes.
I don't know if this is the case, but to be honest, DC would probably have been much better off having two completely seperate EULAs. This way there is no confusion - and again no possibility of falling into the "no notification" trap.
Mind you, it is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, so I guess that you'll be on the chair before you have a chance to pipe up your disent of any part of the agreement
Personally, I believe that any business which doesn't implement security deserves everything it gets.
I worked for a company for almost a year which was in the business of website hosting/design. As I was fairly close to the servers, I knew that we were getting regularly port-scanned, our NetBios was wide open and had had a number of attempts to break in [obviously script-kiddies, since it wouldn't have been particularly hard, yet to my knowledge they never got anywhere!]
The boss was fully aware of these problems - and yet consistently refused to accept that at a very minimum we needed a firewall - even when we finally got it into his head that this was a necessity he allowed so little time for our linux guru to work on it that it was still not operational when I finally resigned.
This is the sort of attitude that seems to be prevalent in industry - the people in charge just do not seem to understand that basic security is a must. Had anyone penetrated the system, they could easily have put this company out of business - and I'm sure this is also the case for many others!
Unless businesses wake up, they will find themselves digging their own graves - and all for want of devoting a little time to something which, with all the media hype, is staring them in the face.
Once, people were scared to go onto trains - they believed that travelling at that speed would suck the air out of their lungs, thereby killing them. Of course, this is nonsense and wasn't backed up by any scientific evidence! I wonder if one day we'll look back at the mobile-phones-kill furore, and laugh! I'm not saying there aren't problems - but until it is backed up with solid scientific evidence I'm happy to keep using my Nokia...
The question is - why on earth did Western Union keep an /online/ database of transactions. I can understand that companies need to keep records, but why this has to be kept online, and not simply downloaded and burnt onto CD or some other storage mechanism.
Having your security broken is one thing, but having databases like this easily available is another!