There's an important point in here. Electron microscopes will never become popular enough that you'll find them stacked on the shelves at Wal*Mart. But there is a profitable market for electron microscopes nonetheless. There are people who quite reasonably want to do things that I not only do not want to do but may be unequipped even to imagine. Assuming that everything must either serve the needs I can imagine, or inevitably die, is a great way to set myself up for astonished disappointment.
The fuss is at least in part that Apple used to be a supplier of not-too-outrageously-expensive PPC systems, and you could rip off the OS and install something else if you wanted something-else-on-PPC.
And I don't use KDE *or* Gnome, but as long as I have the toolkit libraries I can run all the GTK and QT app.s I want. And Motif app.s, and FLTK app.s, and....
One Toolkit To Rule Them All is for me not a solution but a problem to be avoided.
Aw, come on. The "x86 Mac" is hardware. Someone will have Linux booting on it a month after it ships. And then I can have one without all the desktop-environment candy coating if it gives me something other hardware platforms don't.
Exactly the sort of problem I have with systems that try to be helpful instead of useful. If a computer is to anticipate my needs, it will have to possess an understanding of me which is far deeper than anyone today knows how to impart.
I was only this morning explaining to someone how MS Windows' artificial sort-of-intelligence can bite when you want to do something that the designers never expected. Apparently OS X is infected with the same narrow view of the user.
All of which goes to show why I prefer a hammer that can be used to nail together any sort of structure over a fancy gadget with a single "build doghouse" button. The only worry I have over the "Linux desktop" is that some well-meaning miscreant will achieve it.
Well, they should do *something*. Meet annually to cook up one-time pads. Read numbers to each other over the phone to implement DH key agreement, like those mysterious voices reading out code groups over shortwave. Swap keys on diskettes carried in briefcases chained to the wrists of armed couriers.
This is not like diamond merchants carrying around a million dollars' worth of stones in paper packets. Insurance cannot really compensate for this sort of loss. Obscurity is not enough; these data must be actively protected.
There's nothing whatever wrong with sending the data via UPS, or just dropping them in a mailbox for that matter, so long as they are only recoverable by the addressees.
Other than encryption, one could split the feed, sending each personally-identifying column in a separate shipment. An attacker would have to intercept at least two shipments to learn anything useful. The cost is still vanishingly small to an outfit the size of Citigroup.
Why do people keep saying, "backup"? It wasn't a backup going to an offsite vault; it was a data feed to a business partner. A very different situation and a very different amount of data.
And, $3000? Go take a look at Citigroup's financials. Would $3000 even be visible on the annual report? Now erase a lot of the trust that all that money represents. Think *that* transaction would be visible? I do.
But standards with teeth *can* make it awfully hard for anyone who finds a lost tape (or "finds" a "lost" tape) to misuse its content.
Apparently it never occurred to a number of financial institutions that they should protect customers' information. Fine -- we can tell them how they shall do it.
Let's see. A tape holding data the compromise of which could cost us millions, costs about $100. Of course we must compress, otherwise we might have to spend $200.
Besides, if you care about your old data, you have someone reread every single piece of medium periodically, check the error rates, and make fresh copies when the rates are unacceptable or after (say) five years regardless. If there's an occasional unreadable block, the mirror copy should be okay.
If you're now asking, "mirror copy?" you had better hope your historical data are without value.
To read badly needed data off a 5-year-old encrypted medium, simply go to the safe and get the key used in the interval in which the tape was generated. Duuh.
IIRC this has nothing to do with backup. They were sending data to a credit-reporting company. This means that two organizations had to negotiate a common exchange format. Which means that two organizations both goofed, because either of them *should* have thought to encrypt sensitive data which are destined to traverse the proverbial "cloud", by whatever medium.
This is a much bigger screwup than not encrypting backup tapes that only go downstairs to the vault.
Actually we're talking about sending information on tape. It's hard to say, from the announcement, whether Citi is planning to abandon tape, or to just do what they should have done years ago and encrypt the data before they go onto the tape. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a [courier truck] full of magtapes."
To those saying, "it's not that simple": please explain.
Think for a minute about what would happen as you assembled a bomb based on calculations that it would require ten times as much material as it actually would.
The question seems to be: has *Microsoft* heard of stylesheets, and will they shape new versions of the tools to promote consistent styling over "if I pick a bigger font then this becomes a heading".
So the problem will be just like the corresponding problem with HTML: people *can* use the proper markup, but most won't and won't even know they're doing it wrong.:-(
ZIP encompasses many different compression algorithms. The latest was designed to be patent-free. You're probably thinking of LZW compression, which was patented. The patent expired last year IIRC.
ZIP and gzip don't do the same thing anyway. ZIP is an archive format, while gzip is pure compression. A ZIP archive is more like a gzipped version of a tar archive. (Although one is the other inside-out: a ZIP archive is an uncompressed container filled with compressed file images, while a.tar.gz is a compressed container filled with uncompressed file images.)
Isn't the MS Office team worrying about PDF kind of like Ferrari worrying about competition from Boeing?.DOC and.PDF are very different formats for very different purposes at different points in the life cycle of a document.
I'd rather have office tools with about 1/10 the functionality of MS Office. The only reason I ever need most of those features is to decipher MS Office documents that people send me when they should have sent rendered final-form documents instead.
(_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, in case anyone's wondering what we're going on about.)
Don't forget "unearth superconducting intelligence-detector monolith near Tycho". Or "bring Terran diseases to the Selenites". Or "find 50,000-year-old deceased soldier from what became the asteroid belt". "Set up lunar dust-cruiser line"...somebody stop me!
You don't have to imagine it. David Weber has already written it up. The RMN spends almost as much effort against pirates as it does on the Peeps.
The STS makes some sense for science and the first baby-steps of orbital construction. It is nothing like the needs of commerce. First imagine what commercial uses of space (beyond commo and surveillance) will be like, and then you'll be able to see how to rob it and how to defend it. The shuttle's only defenses are its big engines, and it's not always practical to skim pirates off the hull by immediately deorbiting.
Anyway the present-day shuttle is probably worth more (in terms of how much money you could get for it) than anything it's likely to carry. The best way to make illicit money from it would be to disable it and hold it for ransom. Boarding's not required. The crew will come out when they don't have any more oxygen and you do.
I was watching. I remember a bit. I still have the books. The details are all in files somewhere. Much of what was developed is hideously out-of-date today, but we still know in detail what must be done.
That is, we know what must be done to get to the moon, collect rocks for a few hours, and come home. We still need to develop the stuff we didn't do back then:
stay for a long while, eventually a lifetime if we choose.
supply our needs from local resources.
build a community, much of which will not be pilots or scientists.
get along with neighbors from elsewhere.
The challenge is not what (little) has been forgotten, but how much more there is to learn.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an important point in here. Electron microscopes will never become popular enough that you'll find them stacked on the shelves at Wal*Mart. But there is a profitable market for electron microscopes nonetheless. There are people who quite reasonably want to do things that I not only do not want to do but may be unequipped even to imagine. Assuming that everything must either serve the needs I can imagine, or inevitably die, is a great way to set myself up for astonished disappointment.
The fuss is at least in part that Apple used to be a supplier of not-too-outrageously-expensive PPC systems, and you could rip off the OS and install something else if you wanted something-else-on-PPC.
And I don't use KDE *or* Gnome, but as long as I have the toolkit libraries I can run all the GTK and QT app.s I want. And Motif app.s, and FLTK app.s, and....
One Toolkit To Rule Them All is for me not a solution but a problem to be avoided.
Aw, come on. The "x86 Mac" is hardware. Someone will have Linux booting on it a month after it ships. And then I can have one without all the desktop-environment candy coating if it gives me something other hardware platforms don't.
Exactly the sort of problem I have with systems that try to be helpful instead of useful. If a computer is to anticipate my needs, it will have to possess an understanding of me which is far deeper than anyone today knows how to impart.
I was only this morning explaining to someone how MS Windows' artificial sort-of-intelligence can bite when you want to do something that the designers never expected. Apparently OS X is infected with the same narrow view of the user.
All of which goes to show why I prefer a hammer that can be used to nail together any sort of structure over a fancy gadget with a single "build doghouse" button. The only worry I have over the "Linux desktop" is that some well-meaning miscreant will achieve it.
Well, they should do *something*. Meet annually to cook up one-time pads. Read numbers to each other over the phone to implement DH key agreement, like those mysterious voices reading out code groups over shortwave. Swap keys on diskettes carried in briefcases chained to the wrists of armed couriers.
This is not like diamond merchants carrying around a million dollars' worth of stones in paper packets. Insurance cannot really compensate for this sort of loss. Obscurity is not enough; these data must be actively protected.
There's nothing whatever wrong with sending the data via UPS, or just dropping them in a mailbox for that matter, so long as they are only recoverable by the addressees.
Other than encryption, one could split the feed, sending each personally-identifying column in a separate shipment. An attacker would have to intercept at least two shipments to learn anything useful. The cost is still vanishingly small to an outfit the size of Citigroup.
Why do people keep saying, "backup"? It wasn't a backup going to an offsite vault; it was a data feed to a business partner. A very different situation and a very different amount of data.
And, $3000? Go take a look at Citigroup's financials. Would $3000 even be visible on the annual report? Now erase a lot of the trust that all that money represents. Think *that* transaction would be visible? I do.
[more legislation won't prevent packages going missing]
But standards with teeth *can* make it awfully hard for anyone who finds a lost tape (or "finds" a "lost" tape) to misuse its content.
Apparently it never occurred to a number of financial institutions that they should protect customers' information. Fine -- we can tell them how they shall do it.
Let's see. A tape holding data the compromise of which could cost us millions, costs about $100. Of course we must compress, otherwise we might have to spend $200.
Besides, if you care about your old data, you have someone reread every single piece of medium periodically, check the error rates, and make fresh copies when the rates are unacceptable or after (say) five years regardless. If there's an occasional unreadable block, the mirror copy should be okay.
If you're now asking, "mirror copy?" you had better hope your historical data are without value.
To read badly needed data off a 5-year-old encrypted medium, simply go to the safe and get the key used in the interval in which the tape was generated. Duuh.
Well, what sort of penalty clauses did your company negotiate with Iron Mountain? None? You asked for it.
IIRC this has nothing to do with backup. They were sending data to a credit-reporting company. This means that two organizations had to negotiate a common exchange format. Which means that two organizations both goofed, because either of them *should* have thought to encrypt sensitive data which are destined to traverse the proverbial "cloud", by whatever medium.
This is a much bigger screwup than not encrypting backup tapes that only go downstairs to the vault.
Or, stated more succinctly: when the victims' lawsuits become painful enough.
Actually we're talking about sending information on tape. It's hard to say, from the announcement, whether Citi is planning to abandon tape, or to just do what they should have done years ago and encrypt the data before they go onto the tape. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a [courier truck] full of magtapes."
To those saying, "it's not that simple": please explain.
Think for a minute about what would happen as you assembled a bomb based on calculations that it would require ten times as much material as it actually would.
"KABOOM!!!" -- Edgar Montrose
The question seems to be: has *Microsoft* heard of stylesheets, and will they shape new versions of the tools to promote consistent styling over "if I pick a bigger font then this becomes a heading".
So the problem will be just like the corresponding problem with HTML: people *can* use the proper markup, but most won't and won't even know they're doing it wrong. :-(
ZIP encompasses many different compression algorithms. The latest was designed to be patent-free. You're probably thinking of LZW compression, which was patented. The patent expired last year IIRC.
.tar.gz is a compressed container filled with uncompressed file images.)
ZIP and gzip don't do the same thing anyway. ZIP is an archive format, while gzip is pure compression. A ZIP archive is more like a gzipped version of a tar archive. (Although one is the other inside-out: a ZIP archive is an uncompressed container filled with compressed file images, while a
They *do* have a choice: they could compete on quality and usefulness. Power is not the only option.
Isn't the MS Office team worrying about PDF kind of like Ferrari worrying about competition from Boeing? .DOC and .PDF are very different formats for very different purposes at different points in the life cycle of a document.
I'd rather have office tools with about 1/10 the functionality of MS Office. The only reason I ever need most of those features is to decipher MS Office documents that people send me when they should have sent rendered final-form documents instead.
I thought the computer developed itself.
(_The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, in case anyone's wondering what we're going on about.)
Don't forget "unearth superconducting intelligence-detector monolith near Tycho". Or "bring Terran diseases to the Selenites". Or "find 50,000-year-old deceased soldier from what became the asteroid belt". "Set up lunar dust-cruiser line"...somebody stop me!
You don't have to imagine it. David Weber has already written it up. The RMN spends almost as much effort against pirates as it does on the Peeps.
The STS makes some sense for science and the first baby-steps of orbital construction. It is nothing like the needs of commerce. First imagine what commercial uses of space (beyond commo and surveillance) will be like, and then you'll be able to see how to rob it and how to defend it. The shuttle's only defenses are its big engines, and it's not always practical to skim pirates off the hull by immediately deorbiting.
Anyway the present-day shuttle is probably worth more (in terms of how much money you could get for it) than anything it's likely to carry. The best way to make illicit money from it would be to disable it and hold it for ransom. Boarding's not required. The crew will come out when they don't have any more oxygen and you do.
I was watching. I remember a bit. I still have the books. The details are all in files somewhere. Much of what was developed is hideously out-of-date today, but we still know in detail what must be done.
That is, we know what must be done to get to the moon, collect rocks for a few hours, and come home. We still need to develop the stuff we didn't do back then:
The challenge is not what (little) has been forgotten, but how much more there is to learn.