You raised a valid point, but I have just one problem with the artsy folks - they wear their non-technical fronts as something of an identity.
I play in a band, and I'm the only technical person in it. However, the rest of them take PRIDE in the fact that they cannot, or rather, will not - do math or science.
On the other hand, almost all the technical people I've seen make a conscious effort at *something* artsy or the other (languages, music, painting, dramatics, martial arts, etc) - something or the other, at the very least. And they are seldom proud of the fact that they cannot do artsy stuff - I've always wished that I could paint or do dramatics.
That is a kind of defeatist attitude, especially since communiation has to be two way - it does not help if only the geeks made an effort to get into arts, there has to be cooperation from the other side, too.
Usually, I leave the paranoid stuff to the tin-foil hat wearers, but this is something I'm beginning to get worried about.
Hmm, lets see now - Search Engine, (they can control what you see), Blogs and Pyra (they know what you blog about), Gmail (they have your e-mails). And not to mention Google groups.
And with Google toolbar Picasa, they have slowly but steadily entered the application software market. Now, if they get a browser too, it would be time to become a little wary.
It's all nice assuming that Google is benign, but you are the weakest when you think the enemy your friend. I love Google as much as the next person, but makes one wonder where they are headed with this.
Ofcourse, on the other hand, it is a good thing to be having someone compete against Microsoft atlast. But the lesson in that is the fact that Microsoft was once seen as fighting the THEN behemoth - IBM. Enemy's enemy and things like that. I guess people look at Google the same way, today (ofcourse, the quality of their work helps for sure).
In Snowcrash he saves the world and gets the girl, what more? In Cryptonomicon, he gets to be a big man and gets the girl. In Diamond Age, he resolves the central plot, and that's all that's needed.
See, what makes Stephenson awesome, as you rightly said, is that his books are a journey. He never goes in for the cliched, "... and they lived happily ever after" kinda ending - his endings leave room for anything to happen, a bunch of open possibilities. And that is why I really like him.
Re:I might one day read the Baroque cycle...
on
The System of the World
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmm, personally I think Cryptonomicon ended where it had to.
The ending is just like the endings of all other great works -- Asimov's Foundation, Herbet's Dune, Scott Card's Ender's Game and what not.
The ending is left at a point with infinite possibilities, and most of them good. And I sincerely hope he leaves it that way, especially since my mind has come up with some pretty nice scenarios of what happened next;-)
That's funny, because Cryptonomicon was my favourite work among all his books:)
Snowcrash was good, but it read more like a Hollywood Action movie. Ditto for Diamond Age, lots of cool tech stuff, some nice action and the like.
But Cryptonomicon - it was his first piece of work that was deep - so many different things, and they all come together in the end. His analogies to various things (deities, science, tech) and his narrative that aptly fit in with the times they were set in, was simply beautiful.
And although Quicksilver and Confusion were not quite as good, they followed a similar pattern.
That's what I like about those three works of Stephenson - it's not the destination, it's the journey. And these three remain my most favourite works of his. Hopefully, System of the World will be just as good.
The funniest thing of all -- I just started a new technology company, and I tell my employees to read Cryptonomicon, for the inspiring piece of work that it is.
The point is that what this person is doing is wrong. Taking another's property (no matter where you found it) is simply illegal. And using it in any way that the person would not approve of is definitely wrong (and now you would be telling me that the person who posted this stuff would not mind his pics being posted?).
It's not being greedy - for having done something like this, I'd like to see the other person suffer. The idea of sending a man to prison is not to make others feel happy - it's to make HIM feel bad and pay for his crime. Whether or not it works is a different issue, the idea is that you are punished for your actions.
Duh, I can't help it if you have an idea that taking a person to court is merely for my monetary benefit. That's YOUR flawed thinking, nowhere in my post did I suggest so. I merely said I'd sue this person for his wrongful act.
Is there anything in wanting to take a person to court because s/he posted my pics? And ofcourse, the brilliant Slashdot mods will moderate it down because nobody ever stops to think for a moment what the post really meant.
I'll leave the legal issues for the lawyers to handle - but more importantly, is it ethical?
If you found someone's driver's wallet with their driver's license and credit cards, would you go ahead and impersonate them or steal their identity? It would be an identity theft - in some ways, I think that is exactly what this guy is doing.
I shudder to think what will happen if the real guy finds out. I for one know that if my pics were put up on the net - I would certainly get very mad, very pissed and would sue this guy to kingdom come.
Leave the fun and coolness part of it - it's just not quite right, it's unethical and wrong. I do not know about anybody else, but in my book what this guy is doing is simply wrong.
Ofcourse, I do understand that there is a lot of sections within the caucasian community in itself that has been homogenized. But what I meant was that despite being a free nation for so long, a Hispanic or a Black or a Mongoloid has not been elected President. Nor a Jew, surprisingly since the US laws are largely founded upon Judo-Christian beliefs (atleast AFAIK). And not a single woman - that is even scarier.
This homogenity is a little scary for outsiders, who look at the US as a democratic singularity. Your point about Christianity is well taken, however with the current administration's take on Christians Vs. Rest of THEM, it's a little scary, since it looks like Bush (and the media) speaks for the whole of the nation, despite having other religions.
The truth is that the homogeniety is more scary to the outside world than it seems within the US, I know several people who think US and think up a mid-west Caucasian Christian male-chauvunist picture, and Bush isn't helping that, either. Ofcourse, it is not so (well, not always atleast) but that's a perception, and I was merely attempting to point that out.
The fact that the media does nothing to point this out just worsens it.
Maybe it's a question of security -- security of life. In other countries, life isn't as secure as it is, in say, the US.
Security tends to bring in stagnation, because people are afraid that if their security is affected, their life will enter a state of turmoil. Therefore, everyone (the society as a whole) chooses a safe path -- and as we all know, a safe path will always lead down stagnation.
Whereas, if you consider Srilanka or India or Bangladesh, there is security, but it's gotten at a price. And people realize that in order to hold on to that security, freedom of speech should be upheld -- remember, these places were colonies that were supressed until about 50 years ago. And so, the complacency that's seen in the US is not quite seen there, particularly since they cannot expect safety, they have to earn it.
While here in the US, security is largely taken for granted and expected.
(I've lived in Jammu & Kashmir, so I do know what is it that I'm talking about).
It's impossible for the governments to BUY out the media in these countries simply because of the diversity -- I'll paraphrase from an old Times of India article --
"...India will now have a (caucasian) Christian Prime Minister to go with a Muslim President (a widow and a bachelor to boot). The bastion of democracy, religious freedom and human rights -- the mostly white Christian United States, to paraphrase the description of India by western correspondents -- is set to elect its 44th President -- another Christian white male."
(ofcourse, the Prime Minister ended up being a Pakistan born Sikh Prime Minister from a province that 20 years ago wanted to segregate away from India, but that only strengthens the argument).
With that kind of diversity, it is hard for any set of corporations or the government to control the media, and any attempts at doing so will only add fuel to the fire and start a chain reaction that will backfire. Which is why, media in the US is so screwed up with almost no sense of ethics or morals, while the media in the third world has a more reliable (albeit sometimes prejudiced) and true freedom-ish slant.
Actually, the reason it appeared on Slashdot (am guessing) is because it just showed up on Boingboing. You can see the BoingBoing article.
Lately, a lot of Slashdot submissions seem to be those that appear in Boingboing, and then on Slashdot a while later. And since I've Slashdot customized to show Boingboing and Memepool on the right panels, it becomes really redundant.
I wonder why, news is slow I suppose. Or maybe the editors figured that Boingboing gets better and more geeky news than Slashdot;-) Eitherway, I wish Slashdot would cover more current technical geeky stuff, there is so much out there.
I miss the days when Slash used to have all those stories about a kid in the garage hacking up a little something cool. Oh well.
Anyone who knows his/her quality of work will seldom undersell. If I charge more, it's probably because my quality of work speaks for it.
By making people bid, they are literally making them demean themselves - and those that offer their services low are probably not going to be the better ones.
Ofcourse, this will make others bring down their rates too, and everyone loses -- well, everyone except the top management who make a shitload of money at the expense of their employees.
This is just wrong and absolutely disgusting. I'm a PERSON - not a thing. My services will be charged what I feel are appropriate, and not being forced to BID like a slave. Sheesh.
You are right in saying that MS comes from the same Cowboy C Coder Culture (CCCC, ha!), however MS has had a significant amount of time to grow out of it. If twenty five years later they are still doing the same mistakes they did back then (maybe fewer in number, but equally dangerous), there is something wrong.
Fundamentally, yes, you are right in saying that complexity brings such mistakes. However, that's not an excuse to use it as a crutch to release buggy software.
I was not trying to flame MS for their past actions - however Microsoft started out with a fairly clean codebase for both Win2k and WinXP. Given that, it seems bad that such vulnerabilities keep coming up.
I do agree that both Win2k and WinXP are a lot more stable than their predecessors. However, you would think that when you are doing something the second time, you would double-check to make sure that you do not make the same mistakes as you did the first time.
I just feel that this is not happening - and any number of factors could be contributing to it (market, economics, manpower, complexity what not) - but that does not mean you do not take the pains to not do it well. I'm sure Microsoft's trying to take as much care as they can to ensure that this does not happen.
However, despite that, these still seem to be happening. Which is what I find quite baffling - there seems to be a fundamental flaw somewhere in there, and that needs to be taken care of. Which is what I mentioned in my initial posting, too.
Enough and more (512 MB) - but what I meant was to point out that my system *has* been visibly slower after SP2. For example, when you've multiple instances of Word open, it becomes exponentially slower.
I just meant that slowing down of office applications by 9% is not something insignificant, and it sure as hell hurts some of us.
Uh hmm, your argument is flawed for the simple reason that just because Linux has buggy code, does not excuse Microsoft from writing good code.
And comparing Dennis Ritchie's code with today's code is again flawed - hell, why, given my today's knowledge of Physics and Mathematics that I learn by my twelfth grade, I would have been the most intelligent man alive 400 years ago.
You do not compare with what Dennis did or might have done, you make a reality check with how things are today - there is a fair section of crackers who want to exploit systems, and if you are in the business of writing commercial code, you'd better be darned good at making sure your code is good because customers are *paying* you for it.
I have another issue with MS - they concentrate more on releasing things early than checking the code full before releasing. If this were an isolated issue, I would not have a problem - it is not. And MS has had so many years in the market, so many top-notch programmers AND the resources. If you want to compare, look at OpenBSD - that's an example of OpenSource code done right - with one remote exploit in 8 years.
Linux is still in it's infancy, and for all that it's capable of it, it's quite unfair to compare it with the products of a 20 year old behemoth. If you ask me, Linux is doing a fantastic job of being a top notch enterprise systems in such a short time, when compared to Microsoft. And very few of the people behind it actually make any money of it. Does that not say a lot?
Although I agree with most of you said, I have a bone to pick with this statement -
OTOH, is an average 9% drop in performance even an issue? I mean, 9% in office apps is nothing....Who needs high performance when typing, making spreadsheets, or even a PowerPoint presentation?
Hmmm, I guess you've never been in a corporate business office, where excel sheets running into hundreds of pages are opened. Or business plans and product specs that run into hundreds of pages are opened.
Why go that far, you've apparently not tried writing a paper in MS Word - I've been trying to get a couple of papers done for a conference deadline coming up on Monday - and my system is so terribly slow that it's unbelievable.
Sure, you can compromise on speed - but why? Why should I, when I don't need to? Had MS done this right from the beginning, the performance hit could have atleast reduced (to say 5%). That is still a significant gain when compared to 10%, which in my opinion is QUITE slow. If you had a latency of 10% in all your networks, you would know what am talking about.
So would they be recompiling all their stuff that shows up an exploit with the new compiler, to ensure that BOs don't happen?:)
Given the frequency of exploits that turn up, if MS kept releasing such patches ever so often, that would quite terribly slow down the whole system. On the other hand, like you rightly pointed out, better a slower running program that terminates by popping an explanation than an exploit.
I merely meant that patching up buffer checks into code later on makes the application a lot slower than having checked those in the very beginning - I know this because I've written code for which patches have had to be released (hey, we all learn).
(this may not always be the case, but it is often the case)
So, all that I meant was that while I do want Windows to run faster, it should not be at the expense of security - if it had been taken care of in the beginning, it would have been faster than taking care of it later by releasing a patch which is slower (did that make sense?).
Usability is what made MS a success - in the home desktop market. But when they have entered the enterprise arena, I think a tad bit of responsible coding would be nice.
Mind you, I'm not even anti-MS, I'm merely pointing out what I perceive to be callousness in Microsoft's attitude.
The reason I brought that up was because I was interview by Microsoft last summer at Seattle, and one of the groups that interviewed me was the systems group.
(Funnily, systems wasn't even my area, but still they interviewed me, but that's another story...)
They were of the opinion that since MS is a favourite target of hackers and the like, any MS programmer ought to go to extraordinary lengths to patch any and all buffer checks and foo bar. I was asked to write some piece of code for compiler design and memory management, and the guy kept harping on buffer checks.
I would imagine that with ALL those checks, such things would not be common - but lo! and behold, there they are.
Either they are not doing a good job of doing the whole buffer check thing that the guy harped to me about and it was all hogwash to impress upon you how "important" and "hard" coding in MS is, or there is something seriously wrong with the codebase that SO many exploits turn out everyday.
...but I'm pretty sure the reason SP2 isn't vulnerable to that GDI+ JPEG exploit is that they recompiled GDI+ with buffer checks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this have been done right in the beginning itself?
If I were writing any commercial grade code, especially stuff that I know that people would take advantage of, I would sure as hell make sure that I had all my buffer checks in place.
I've heard so much about the programming practices at Microsoft and what not - and yet, ironically, these things keep cropping up so damn bloody often while some operating systems coded by a bunch of loosely connected hackers are way more robust and stable. Hmm, makes one wonder.
(Heh, funnily OpenBSD site says - Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years! - I guess it does say a lot).
I do not understand, I would have thought that despite all the shit that MS gets for writing bad code, they would make sure that their code is largely buffer checked. Now, when you have to release stuff from outside to patch up for those, you would obviously be wasting a lot more cycles than if you had done so in the beginning, and well.
Sheesh. They do not do a good job of making software and cause you inconvenience, then they release something to make up for it, and that causes you even more inconvenience.
Wow, thanks! I've been looking for something similar too, and their net4801 seems really nice and compact - and $250 isn't all that too much, either.
Do you know of anything similar for a webserver, something like a compact off the shelf thing running either *BSD/Linux? I guess I could always solder in a hard-drive onto the 4801 (since the website says that they do have both CompactFlash Type I/II socket and UltraDMA 33 int.) - but one that comes built in with something like that would be cool.
Most of the solutions out there kinda seem really complex and expensive, I just need something to serve a few static pages, and something I can just ssh into remotely to do stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
You raised a valid point, but I have just one problem with the artsy folks - they wear their non-technical fronts as something of an identity.
I play in a band, and I'm the only technical person in it. However, the rest of them take PRIDE in the fact that they cannot, or rather, will not - do math or science.
On the other hand, almost all the technical people I've seen make a conscious effort at *something* artsy or the other (languages, music, painting, dramatics, martial arts, etc) - something or the other, at the very least. And they are seldom proud of the fact that they cannot do artsy stuff - I've always wished that I could paint or do dramatics.
That is a kind of defeatist attitude, especially since communiation has to be two way - it does not help if only the geeks made an effort to get into arts, there has to be cooperation from the other side, too.
Am guessing all the telephone sanitizers are busy with their rubber err... ducks? No, just rubber, I suppose
Usually, I leave the paranoid stuff to the tin-foil hat wearers, but this is something I'm beginning to get worried about.
Hmm, lets see now - Search Engine, (they can control what you see), Blogs and Pyra (they know what you blog about), Gmail (they have your e-mails). And not to mention Google groups.
And with Google toolbar Picasa, they have slowly but steadily entered the application software market. Now, if they get a browser too, it would be time to become a little wary.
It's all nice assuming that Google is benign, but you are the weakest when you think the enemy your friend. I love Google as much as the next person, but makes one wonder where they are headed with this.
Ofcourse, on the other hand, it is a good thing to be having someone compete against Microsoft atlast. But the lesson in that is the fact that Microsoft was once seen as fighting the THEN behemoth - IBM. Enemy's enemy and things like that. I guess people look at Google the same way, today (ofcourse, the quality of their work helps for sure).
Hmm, interesting trend there.
Well, I thought all his endings were good.
In Snowcrash he saves the world and gets the girl, what more? In Cryptonomicon, he gets to be a big man and gets the girl. In Diamond Age, he resolves the central plot, and that's all that's needed.
See, what makes Stephenson awesome, as you rightly said, is that his books are a journey. He never goes in for the cliched, "... and they lived happily ever after" kinda ending - his endings leave room for anything to happen, a bunch of open possibilities. And that is why I really like him.
Hmm, personally I think Cryptonomicon ended where it had to.
;-)
The ending is just like the endings of all other great works -- Asimov's Foundation, Herbet's Dune, Scott Card's Ender's Game and what not.
The ending is left at a point with infinite possibilities, and most of them good. And I sincerely hope he leaves it that way, especially since my mind has come up with some pretty nice scenarios of what happened next
That's funny, because Cryptonomicon was my favourite work among all his books :)
Snowcrash was good, but it read more like a Hollywood Action movie. Ditto for Diamond Age, lots of cool tech stuff, some nice action and the like.
But Cryptonomicon - it was his first piece of work that was deep - so many different things, and they all come together in the end. His analogies to various things (deities, science, tech) and his narrative that aptly fit in with the times they were set in, was simply beautiful.
And although Quicksilver and Confusion were not quite as good, they followed a similar pattern.
That's what I like about those three works of Stephenson - it's not the destination, it's the journey. And these three remain my most favourite works of his. Hopefully, System of the World will be just as good.
The funniest thing of all -- I just started a new technology company, and I tell my employees to read Cryptonomicon, for the inspiring piece of work that it is.
Oh well, to each his own I suppose.
The point is that what this person is doing is wrong. Taking another's property (no matter where you found it) is simply illegal. And using it in any way that the person would not approve of is definitely wrong (and now you would be telling me that the person who posted this stuff would not mind his pics being posted?).
It's not being greedy - for having done something like this, I'd like to see the other person suffer. The idea of sending a man to prison is not to make others feel happy - it's to make HIM feel bad and pay for his crime. Whether or not it works is a different issue, the idea is that you are punished for your actions.
Duh, I can't help it if you have an idea that taking a person to court is merely for my monetary benefit. That's YOUR flawed thinking, nowhere in my post did I suggest so. I merely said I'd sue this person for his wrongful act.
Is there anything in wanting to take a person to court because s/he posted my pics? And ofcourse, the brilliant Slashdot mods will moderate it down because nobody ever stops to think for a moment what the post really meant.
Sheesh.
I'll leave the legal issues for the lawyers to handle - but more importantly, is it ethical?
If you found someone's driver's wallet with their driver's license and credit cards, would you go ahead and impersonate them or steal their identity? It would be an identity theft - in some ways, I think that is exactly what this guy is doing.
I shudder to think what will happen if the real guy finds out. I for one know that if my pics were put up on the net - I would certainly get very mad, very pissed and would sue this guy to kingdom come.
Leave the fun and coolness part of it - it's just not quite right, it's unethical and wrong. I do not know about anybody else, but in my book what this guy is doing is simply wrong.
Ofcourse, I do understand that there is a lot of sections within the caucasian community in itself that has been homogenized. But what I meant was that despite being a free nation for so long, a Hispanic or a Black or a Mongoloid has not been elected President. Nor a Jew, surprisingly since the US laws are largely founded upon Judo-Christian beliefs (atleast AFAIK). And not a single woman - that is even scarier.
This homogenity is a little scary for outsiders, who look at the US as a democratic singularity. Your point about Christianity is well taken, however with the current administration's take on Christians Vs. Rest of THEM, it's a little scary, since it looks like Bush (and the media) speaks for the whole of the nation, despite having other religions.
The truth is that the homogeniety is more scary to the outside world than it seems within the US, I know several people who think US and think up a mid-west Caucasian Christian male-chauvunist picture, and Bush isn't helping that, either. Ofcourse, it is not so (well, not always atleast) but that's a perception, and I was merely attempting to point that out.
The fact that the media does nothing to point this out just worsens it.
Maybe it's a question of security -- security of life. In other countries, life isn't as secure as it is, in say, the US.
Security tends to bring in stagnation, because people are afraid that if their security is affected, their life will enter a state of turmoil. Therefore, everyone (the society as a whole) chooses a safe path -- and as we all know, a safe path will always lead down stagnation.
Whereas, if you consider Srilanka or India or Bangladesh, there is security, but it's gotten at a price. And people realize that in order to hold on to that security, freedom of speech should be upheld -- remember, these places were colonies that were supressed until about 50 years ago. And so, the complacency that's seen in the US is not quite seen there, particularly since they cannot expect safety, they have to earn it.
While here in the US, security is largely taken for granted and expected.
(I've lived in Jammu & Kashmir, so I do know what is it that I'm talking about).
It's impossible for the governments to BUY out the media in these countries simply because of the diversity -- I'll paraphrase from an old Times of India article --
"...India will now have a (caucasian) Christian Prime Minister to go with a Muslim President (a widow and a bachelor to boot). The bastion of democracy, religious freedom and human rights -- the mostly white Christian United States, to paraphrase the description of India by western correspondents -- is set to elect its 44th President -- another Christian white male."
(ofcourse, the Prime Minister ended up being a Pakistan born Sikh Prime Minister from a province that 20 years ago wanted to segregate away from India, but that only strengthens the argument).
With that kind of diversity, it is hard for any set of corporations or the government to control the media, and any attempts at doing so will only add fuel to the fire and start a chain reaction that will backfire. Which is why, media in the US is so screwed up with almost no sense of ethics or morals, while the media in the third world has a more reliable (albeit sometimes prejudiced) and true freedom-ish slant.
Oh well, just my two cents!
Reminds me of an old quote -
;-)
"Save the Whales, collect the entire set"
Actually, the reason it appeared on Slashdot (am guessing) is because it just showed up on Boingboing. You can see the BoingBoing article.
;-) Eitherway, I wish Slashdot would cover more current technical geeky stuff, there is so much out there.
Lately, a lot of Slashdot submissions seem to be those that appear in Boingboing, and then on Slashdot a while later. And since I've Slashdot customized to show Boingboing and Memepool on the right panels, it becomes really redundant.
I wonder why, news is slow I suppose. Or maybe the editors figured that Boingboing gets better and more geeky news than Slashdot
I miss the days when Slash used to have all those stories about a kid in the garage hacking up a little something cool. Oh well.
BoingBoing had it covered a long time ago.
Here're a couple of movies, too, with different locks - movie 1 and movie 2.
Anyone who knows his/her quality of work will seldom undersell. If I charge more, it's probably because my quality of work speaks for it.
By making people bid, they are literally making them demean themselves - and those that offer their services low are probably not going to be the better ones.
Ofcourse, this will make others bring down their rates too, and everyone loses -- well, everyone except the top management who make a shitload of money at the expense of their employees.
This is just wrong and absolutely disgusting. I'm a PERSON - not a thing. My services will be charged what I feel are appropriate, and not being forced to BID like a slave. Sheesh.
You are right in saying that MS comes from the same Cowboy C Coder Culture (CCCC, ha!), however MS has had a significant amount of time to grow out of it. If twenty five years later they are still doing the same mistakes they did back then (maybe fewer in number, but equally dangerous), there is something wrong.
Fundamentally, yes, you are right in saying that complexity brings such mistakes. However, that's not an excuse to use it as a crutch to release buggy software.
I was not trying to flame MS for their past actions - however Microsoft started out with a fairly clean codebase for both Win2k and WinXP. Given that, it seems bad that such vulnerabilities keep coming up.
I do agree that both Win2k and WinXP are a lot more stable than their predecessors. However, you would think that when you are doing something the second time, you would double-check to make sure that you do not make the same mistakes as you did the first time.
I just feel that this is not happening - and any number of factors could be contributing to it (market, economics, manpower, complexity what not) - but that does not mean you do not take the pains to not do it well. I'm sure Microsoft's trying to take as much care as they can to ensure that this does not happen.
However, despite that, these still seem to be happening. Which is what I find quite baffling - there seems to be a fundamental flaw somewhere in there, and that needs to be taken care of. Which is what I mentioned in my initial posting, too.
Enough and more (512 MB) - but what I meant was to point out that my system *has* been visibly slower after SP2. For example, when you've multiple instances of Word open, it becomes exponentially slower.
I just meant that slowing down of office applications by 9% is not something insignificant, and it sure as hell hurts some of us.
Uh hmm, your argument is flawed for the simple reason that just because Linux has buggy code, does not excuse Microsoft from writing good code.
And comparing Dennis Ritchie's code with today's code is again flawed - hell, why, given my today's knowledge of Physics and Mathematics that I learn by my twelfth grade, I would have been the most intelligent man alive 400 years ago.
You do not compare with what Dennis did or might have done, you make a reality check with how things are today - there is a fair section of crackers who want to exploit systems, and if you are in the business of writing commercial code, you'd better be darned good at making sure your code is good because customers are *paying* you for it.
I have another issue with MS - they concentrate more on releasing things early than checking the code full before releasing. If this were an isolated issue, I would not have a problem - it is not. And MS has had so many years in the market, so many top-notch programmers AND the resources. If you want to compare, look at OpenBSD - that's an example of OpenSource code done right - with one remote exploit in 8 years.
Linux is still in it's infancy, and for all that it's capable of it, it's quite unfair to compare it with the products of a 20 year old behemoth. If you ask me, Linux is doing a fantastic job of being a top notch enterprise systems in such a short time, when compared to Microsoft. And very few of the people behind it actually make any money of it. Does that not say a lot?
Although I agree with most of you said, I have a bone to pick with this statement -
OTOH, is an average 9% drop in performance even an issue? I mean, 9% in office apps is nothing....Who needs high performance when typing, making spreadsheets, or even a PowerPoint presentation?
Hmmm, I guess you've never been in a corporate business office, where excel sheets running into hundreds of pages are opened. Or business plans and product specs that run into hundreds of pages are opened.
Why go that far, you've apparently not tried writing a paper in MS Word - I've been trying to get a couple of papers done for a conference deadline coming up on Monday - and my system is so terribly slow that it's unbelievable.
Sure, you can compromise on speed - but why? Why should I, when I don't need to? Had MS done this right from the beginning, the performance hit could have atleast reduced (to say 5%). That is still a significant gain when compared to 10%, which in my opinion is QUITE slow. If you had a latency of 10% in all your networks, you would know what am talking about.
Ah! I wasn't aware of that.
:)
;)
So would they be recompiling all their stuff that shows up an exploit with the new compiler, to ensure that BOs don't happen?
Given the frequency of exploits that turn up, if MS kept releasing such patches ever so often, that would quite terribly slow down the whole system. On the other hand, like you rightly pointed out, better a slower running program that terminates by popping an explanation than an exploit.
Oh well, the price of slavery
I merely meant that patching up buffer checks into code later on makes the application a lot slower than having checked those in the very beginning - I know this because I've written code for which patches have had to be released (hey, we all learn).
(this may not always be the case, but it is often the case)
So, all that I meant was that while I do want Windows to run faster, it should not be at the expense of security - if it had been taken care of in the beginning, it would have been faster than taking care of it later by releasing a patch which is slower (did that make sense?).
Usability is what made MS a success - in the home desktop market. But when they have entered the enterprise arena, I think a tad bit of responsible coding would be nice.
Mind you, I'm not even anti-MS, I'm merely pointing out what I perceive to be callousness in Microsoft's attitude.
The reason I brought that up was because I was interview by Microsoft last summer at Seattle, and one of the groups that interviewed me was the systems group.
(Funnily, systems wasn't even my area, but still they interviewed me, but that's another story...)
They were of the opinion that since MS is a favourite target of hackers and the like, any MS programmer ought to go to extraordinary lengths to patch any and all buffer checks and foo bar. I was asked to write some piece of code for compiler design and memory management, and the guy kept harping on buffer checks.
I would imagine that with ALL those checks, such things would not be common - but lo! and behold, there they are.
Either they are not doing a good job of doing the whole buffer check thing that the guy harped to me about and it was all hogwash to impress upon you how "important" and "hard" coding in MS is, or there is something seriously wrong with the codebase that SO many exploits turn out everyday.
I can only guess which one it is.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't this have been done right in the beginning itself?
If I were writing any commercial grade code, especially stuff that I know that people would take advantage of, I would sure as hell make sure that I had all my buffer checks in place.
I've heard so much about the programming practices at Microsoft and what not - and yet, ironically, these things keep cropping up so damn bloody often while some operating systems coded by a bunch of loosely connected hackers are way more robust and stable.
Hmm, makes one wonder.
(Heh, funnily OpenBSD site says - Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years! - I guess it does say a lot).
I do not understand, I would have thought that despite all the shit that MS gets for writing bad code, they would make sure that their code is largely buffer checked. Now, when you have to release stuff from outside to patch up for those, you would obviously be wasting a lot more cycles than if you had done so in the beginning, and well.
Sheesh. They do not do a good job of making software and cause you inconvenience, then they release something to make up for it, and that causes you even more inconvenience.
Hah.
Wow, thanks! I've been looking for something similar too, and their net4801 seems really nice and compact - and $250 isn't all that too much, either.
Do you know of anything similar for a webserver, something like a compact off the shelf thing running either *BSD/Linux? I guess I could always solder in a hard-drive onto the 4801 (since the website says that they do have both CompactFlash Type I/II socket and UltraDMA 33 int.) - but one that comes built in with something like that would be cool.
Most of the solutions out there kinda seem really complex and expensive, I just need something to serve a few static pages, and something I can just ssh into remotely to do stuff.
Any suggestions?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
;-)
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Perhaps you do have a point