Re:Be made a lot of good choices and still they're
on
Be Buyout Looms Closer
·
· Score: 1
Just have a look at BeOS. It's neat, it's slick, it's fast and full of good. Basically every geek out there who tried it had to buy a new keyboard because they drooled over it. In is book, "At the beginning was the command-line", Stephenson compare it to a Batmobile (while Windows is a station-wagon, Mac OS a convertible and Linux a tank).
Basically, they would have attracted a huge piece of all the geeks out there, all theses people who switched to Linux during theses last two years, because it's cooler and funnier and Windows.
More marketshare == more money, just ask Microsoft.
Re:Be made a lot of good choices and still they're
on
Be Buyout Looms Closer
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sure, BeOS is great, but the VPs just made a huge numbers of mistakes:
1) The BeBox: a completly new architecture. Neat for sure, but look at Apple...
2) They were planning to be "the Apple of multimedia production". Neat but maybe you should support more than 1 sound card (SB AWE32), humm?
3) For 6 month, BeOS didn't have an architecture to run on, while switching from the Apple architecture to the PC...
4) They just didn't listen to developers...
5) It was a single-user system...
6) Open Source would have been a good idea, two years ago, when they begun to run into serious troubles.
They didn't fail because of Microsoft, stupid users, the dot-com bubble burst or anything. They failed because they made stupid strategic decisions.
I believe that this is a dangerous precedent, because after this event, it will be a lot harder to get bright people to work in the US. Sure the money over here is pretty good (I should say fantastically good compared to some other parts of the world), but the risk of going to jail because you'd like to confront snake oil salesmen is just getting too large.
A large part of the IT infrastructure of this country is built and maintained by foreign nationals. Not only the bright people won't come, but they will create companies at home and employ the others IT workers. The way I see it, soon theses people will just say home, work for US companies, make good money, and free to hack . All that will be left here will be "product managers".
Just have a look at the nationalities of CS graduates students in US universities: mainly India and China. A friend of mine was telling me that he didn't had an American math teacher since high school!
All the distributions makers allows you to download their products from their website. Sometimes they give you.iso files to burn cds, sometimes you only have the packages. You don't have to buy a new distro to upgrade!
I'm a Debian user. A while ago I bought a SuSE 7.2 for a customer. The manuals you got with the cds are wonderful. If you compare it with the Windows manual (how to move the mouse, how to close a window...), SuSE is a steal!
Would nanoweapons be treated as chemical or biological weapons, or do they need a new treaty?
Who cares? They are weapons and that's it.
If you can use nanotechnology to copy anything and then share the "plans" with friends who can use nanotechnology to make copies of their own, is it like Napster for the material world?
Well yes. Do you really need to ask/. to figure it out? This is just like: If I use this new pen I designed and built myself, is it still copyright infringement if I use it to copy your book? Etc...
Internet isn't above any law, nanomachines won't either.
I just started to backup my DVDs on Divxes (A K6-300 is really not enough for that) and I'm just amazed by the amount and the quality of tools available to, well, slap the Hollywood barons. Most of them are open source, and they kick ass!
I recommends "Sexe for Dummies" and "Food for Dummies". I'm not kidding. Both are really good and I guess that geeks like us could make a good use of them. And they are in a the familiar format we all love!
Just buy all the books of the O'Reilly collection. With the exception of one or two black sheeps, they are all very good.
But O'Reilly lacks on the theory side. I would recommend going to your local university bookstore and have a look around. (Here's a tip: if the bookcover is flashy, the book is already outdated. And here's another: avoid everything from Microsoft Press or written by Microsoft employees. They suck more than you can imagine.)
Interesting. Redhat is trying to make everyone believe that their eCos thingy is actually some kind of Linux.
On the other, managers are known to swallow things like: "You just don't get it, don't you? All the Linux programs run on Solaris, that is our implementation of Linux." Scott McNealy Chairman and CEO Sun Microsystems Inc. 100% authentic.
Sorry this VBS-Telefonica worm is not a GSM virus. It is a standard computer virus with a twist: it uses Internet-SMS gateways to spam random GSM users. It can't spread from phone to phone and it can't harm the phone.
Phone-based viruses are a possibility. Just use a Java-enabled and you will be (almost) safe.
That's great as long as someone doesn't get the laptop and re-install right away... which I would assume any intelligent theif would do. Except in this case.
That's why a hardware solution is better. Check the story on Phoenix Bioses phoning home.
If you stole someone's computer, wouldn't it be somewhat wise to trash the data on it as soon as possible? That way it'd be harder to prove its not yours. Furthermore, why on earth would you start connecting to the internet with someone else's computer? That isn't very smart.
To begin with, thieves are usually not smart, because if they were, they wouldn't be thieves in the first place.
Remember that we are talking about laptops. Usually the manufacturer of a laptop has a much greater controller over the hardware than with common desktops. I'm pretty sure that we will see more of this in the future.
One day I was sitting and thinking about ways to recover a stolen laptop. One idea would be that each time the laptop connects to the internet, it would check a global database of stolen laptops (preferably in hardware).
If so, it will just silently alert someone. It is pretty easy to trace an IP to a location, if you've got the cops with you.
Well if you consider that everything with a CPU and some memory is a computer, so be it, but so is my washing machine and the remote control of my TV.
The architecture of the PS2 (or any other console) is different from the architecture of a PC. You might compare it to a very special and 'I do only one task but I do it well' embedded system, while PC are generic devices.
I should also remind you that a computer is also defined by the presence or absence of an operating system. The stock PS2 doesn't have one. Developers get development kits, not an OS. On the other hand PS2+Linux, well, I don't see the interest of the thing but I guess that it qualify as a computer.
There are two kinds of "Security through obscurity", and it confused some people. (Insert funny joke about clueless managers and Microsoft-heads here)
First there is the bad kind: you're a software vendor and you hope that nobody will notice that your "secure" software uses ROT-13 instead of RSA. You are protected by the DMCA anyway (remember: crack ROT-13, go to jail).
Then there is the second, good kind: if I'm an admin, there is not reason I shouldn't strip outgoing email of any headers that my reveal the structure of my internat network (some people ARE arguing that you shouldn't do that.)
I don't really like this "security through obscurity" thingie. Let's make the difference between full specs release and not telling anyone more than they should know. This is the way to built a really secure network.
For legal reasons, the information contained in this site is exclusively aimed at, on the one hand, interested persons residing in France and, on the other hand, at interested non-US, Japanese, Australian and Canadian based institutional investors, nor at any institutional investors head quartered in any of the territories, possessions, protectorates under these countries' jurisdiction. If you do not reside in France, or if you are a "US Person" (as defined under Regulation S of the Securities Act 1933 of the USA, as modified) wherever you reside, you should not access this site's content. This Web site as well as all information contained therein must not be published nor distributed in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, nor distributed to any "US Person".
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I can't really see why OSDN hasn't don't it already. It doesn't seems that complex: a large database somewhere, a simple API with Perl or Java and a secure connection between each web site and voila!
I must say I don't know how it will scale.
Microsoft problems come from the fact that they want to to everything for everyone. But I don't see the problem with sharing my Sourforge account and my Slashdot account, at soon as it is just that and well secured. I insist: well secured.
Well, you just have to do what my school do: stick 500 student's rooms and 300 teacher's offices behind a single T1 pipe. Yeah and it's an engineering school.
>In LEO you're moving at a pretty good clip, and typically traverse the full span of the sky in a minute or two.
Not so fast!
LEO's sattelites (along with the space shuttle and ISS) revolves around the Earth about 16 times a day. That gives you around half an hour of usable time for one satellite.
Actually there are several plans of LEOs "constellations" of satellites, Globalstar for example, with between 200 and 800 birds. This systems can actually give you a good wireless T1.
Slashdot Mirror
Just have a look at BeOS. It's neat, it's slick, it's fast and full of good. Basically every geek out there who tried it had to buy a new keyboard because they drooled over it. In is book, "At the beginning was the command-line", Stephenson compare it to a Batmobile (while Windows is a station-wagon, Mac OS a convertible and Linux a tank).
Basically, they would have attracted a huge piece of all the geeks out there, all theses people who switched to Linux during theses last two years, because it's cooler and funnier and Windows.
More marketshare == more money, just ask Microsoft.
Sure, BeOS is great, but the VPs just made a huge numbers of mistakes:
1) The BeBox: a completly new architecture. Neat for sure, but look at Apple...
2) They were planning to be "the Apple of multimedia production". Neat but maybe you should support more than 1 sound card (SB AWE32), humm?
3) For 6 month, BeOS didn't have an architecture to run on, while switching from the Apple architecture to the PC...
4) They just didn't listen to developers...
5) It was a single-user system...
6) Open Source would have been a good idea, two years ago, when they begun to run into serious troubles.
They didn't fail because of Microsoft, stupid users, the dot-com bubble burst or anything. They failed because they made stupid strategic decisions.
So long Be...
Now it's an attraction in a theme park near Moscow. Sorry, no link.
Slashdot is Slashdotted by Slash-users from Slashdot...
I believe that this is a dangerous precedent, because after this event, it will be a lot harder to get bright people to work in the US. Sure the money over here is pretty good (I should say fantastically good compared to some other parts of the world), but the risk of going to jail because you'd like to confront snake oil salesmen is just getting too large.
A large part of the IT infrastructure of this country is built and maintained by foreign nationals. Not only the bright people won't come, but they will create companies at home and employ the others IT workers. The way I see it, soon theses people will just say home, work for US companies, make good money, and free to hack . All that will be left here will be "product managers".
Just have a look at the nationalities of CS graduates students in US universities: mainly India and China. A friend of mine was telling me that he didn't had an American math teacher since high school!
All the distributions makers allows you to download their products from their website. Sometimes they give you .iso files to burn cds, sometimes you only have the packages. You don't have to buy a new distro to upgrade!
I'm a Debian user. A while ago I bought a SuSE 7.2 for a customer. The manuals you got with the cds are wonderful. If you compare it with the Windows manual (how to move the mouse, how to close a window...), SuSE is a steal!
Would nanoweapons be treated as chemical or biological weapons, or do they need a new treaty?
/. to figure it out? This is just like: If I use this new pen I designed and built myself, is it still copyright infringement if I use it to copy your book? Etc...
Who cares? They are weapons and that's it.
If you can use nanotechnology to copy anything and then share the "plans" with friends who can use nanotechnology to make copies of their own, is it like Napster for the material world?
Well yes. Do you really need to ask
Internet isn't above any law, nanomachines won't either.
Well, sure. I understand that the best site is http://www.doom9.org.
It covers everything from basic Flask-based encoding to "professional" Divx encoding.
I just started to backup my DVDs on Divxes (A K6-300 is really not enough for that) and I'm just amazed by the amount and the quality of tools available to, well, slap the Hollywood barons. Most of them are open source, and they kick ass!
Earth to Hollywood: You will never get us!
I recommends "Sexe for Dummies" and "Food for Dummies". I'm not kidding. Both are really good and I guess that geeks like us could make a good use of them. And they are in a the familiar format we all love!
Sure, but remember the preface of "Secrets and Lies", his second book:
"The world is full of insecure system because the people who implemented them red Applied Cryptography."
Just buy all the books of the O'Reilly collection. With the exception of one or two black sheeps, they are all very good.
But O'Reilly lacks on the theory side. I would recommend going to your local university bookstore and have a look around. (Here's a tip: if the bookcover is flashy, the book is already outdated. And here's another: avoid everything from Microsoft Press or written by Microsoft employees. They suck more than you can imagine.)
Interesting. Redhat is trying to make everyone believe that their eCos thingy is actually some kind of Linux.
On the other, managers are known to swallow things like: "You just don't get it, don't you? All the Linux programs run on Solaris, that is our implementation of Linux." Scott McNealy Chairman and CEO Sun Microsystems Inc. 100% authentic.
Sorry this VBS-Telefonica worm is not a GSM virus. It is a standard computer virus with a twist: it uses Internet-SMS gateways to spam random GSM users. It can't spread from phone to phone and it can't harm the phone.
Phone-based viruses are a possibility. Just use a Java-enabled and you will be (almost) safe.
That's great as long as someone doesn't get the laptop and re-install right away... which I would assume any intelligent theif would do. Except in this case.
That's why a hardware solution is better. Check the story on Phoenix Bioses phoning home.
If you stole someone's computer, wouldn't it be somewhat wise to trash the data on it as soon as possible? That way it'd be harder to prove its not yours. Furthermore, why on earth would you start connecting to the internet with someone else's computer? That isn't very smart.
To begin with, thieves are usually not smart, because if they were, they wouldn't be thieves in the first place.
Remember that we are talking about laptops. Usually the manufacturer of a laptop has a much greater controller over the hardware than with common desktops. I'm pretty sure that we will see more of this in the future.
Actually I was quite sure that I've seen some company actually doint that. Here is a story on The Register:6 .html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/2002
And a link to the company doing it: http://www.ztrace.com/
One day I was sitting and thinking about ways to recover a stolen laptop. One idea would be that each time the laptop connects to the internet, it would check a global database of stolen laptops (preferably in hardware).
If so, it will just silently alert someone. It is pretty easy to trace an IP to a location, if you've got the cops with you.
You remind me this guy thinking about using XBoxes to create a server farm. Here is what a suit will think about it:
"Dammit, this guy is a stupid weirdo, let's take my business out of here".
Here is what a geek like me will think about it:
"Neat, this guy is a smart weirdo, let's take my business out of here".
Actually... Not at all.
Well if you consider that everything with a CPU and some memory is a computer, so be it, but so is my washing machine and the remote control of my TV.
The architecture of the PS2 (or any other console) is different from the architecture of a PC. You might compare it to a very special and 'I do only one task but I do it well' embedded system, while PC are generic devices.
I should also remind you that a computer is also defined by the presence or absence of an operating system. The stock PS2 doesn't have one. Developers get development kits, not an OS. On the other hand PS2+Linux, well, I don't see the interest of the thing but I guess that it qualify as a computer.
There are two kinds of "Security through obscurity", and it confused some people. (Insert funny joke about clueless managers and Microsoft-heads here)
First there is the bad kind: you're a software vendor and you hope that nobody will notice that your "secure" software uses ROT-13 instead of RSA. You are protected by the DMCA anyway (remember: crack ROT-13, go to jail).
Then there is the second, good kind: if I'm an admin, there is not reason I shouldn't strip outgoing email of any headers that my reveal the structure of my internat network (some people ARE arguing that you shouldn't do that.)
I don't really like this "security through obscurity" thingie. Let's make the difference between full specs release and not telling anyone more than they should know. This is the way to built a really secure network.
Please read
For legal reasons, the information contained in this site is exclusively aimed at, on the one hand, interested persons residing in France and, on the other hand, at interested non-US, Japanese, Australian and Canadian based institutional investors, nor at any institutional investors head quartered in any of the territories, possessions, protectorates under these countries' jurisdiction. If you do not reside in France, or if you are a "US Person" (as defined under Regulation S of the Securities Act 1933 of the USA, as modified) wherever you reside, you should not access this site's content. This Web site as well as all information contained therein must not be published nor distributed in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, nor distributed to any "US Person".
Thank you for your understanding.
It says it all:5 89/1/
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3
I can't really see why OSDN hasn't don't it already. It doesn't seems that complex: a large database somewhere, a simple API with Perl or Java and a secure connection between each web site and voila!
I must say I don't know how it will scale.
Microsoft problems come from the fact that they want to to everything for everyone. But I don't see the problem with sharing my Sourforge account and my Slashdot account, at soon as it is just that and well secured. I insist: well secured.
Well, you just have to do what my school do: stick 500 student's rooms and 300 teacher's offices behind a single T1 pipe. Yeah and it's an engineering school.
>In LEO you're moving at a pretty good clip, and typically traverse the full span of the sky in a minute or two.
Not so fast!
LEO's sattelites (along with the space shuttle and ISS) revolves around the Earth about 16 times a day. That gives you around half an hour of usable time for one satellite.
Actually there are several plans of LEOs "constellations" of satellites, Globalstar for example, with between 200 and 800 birds. This systems can actually give you a good wireless T1.
BTW Iridium was a GEO system.