Funny, all I saw on the "site" was a donation link or something. Looked like a parked domain or something.
But radix sorting is cool. What is very relevant to it in 2007 is that it scales superlinearly with multiple cores/CPUs which is important since most computers today have hardware that execute multiple threads simultaniously.
From what I understand, the UAC thing comes up all the time (even copying and pasting?!?!), so people just will ignore it and say allow all the time. Also, I read here on slashdot that UAC didn't ask anything when installing software, so there is the best backdoor already put into the OS as a design decision.
Its really sad that people believe that Windows == computers. It will take a decade for people to get over the PTSD once another system becomes available to the general public.
The article is a total crock of @#$#. Just looking at the charts shows you that the audio "difference" is so incredibly tiny that the actual players probably have far more to do with it than the format.
I didn't read the article, but I knew it was a crock by the audio "difference" thing.
AFAIK, the audio on both formats is the exact same (and the same as standard DVD as well). DTS (the best) and DD. Now some content is encoded better into DD or DTS at the studio, but the delivery of the digital information is for all sake of argument the same 1s and 0s that were put on the disk at the studio.
Actually, I have heard that since the data capacity of the newer disks is so great that many of the soundtracks are uncompressed (raw PCM data), but still AfAIK there is no difference between the formats in the audio realm.
You know you might be a geek when you say things like :
I guess you haven't seen the 720p or 1080p x264 (H.264/AVC - same codec that many of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies are using) rips on private bittorrent trackers or Usenet. A standard two hour movie will fit on a DVD5 at 720p with 6 channel AC3 audio and a bitrate of 4.5-6 mbit/sec. While this wouldn't look great using xvid, H.264/AVC High profile can create great quality. x264 using Sharktooth's HQ-Slowest profile is very impressive. A 2 hour movie can fit on a DVD9 at 1080p at 7-8 mbit/sec, again with very good quality.
Hell, I've seen some 2 CD sized x264 rips from 1080p sources that blow DVD out of the water. Forget about the MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid and Divx. Now that we have H.264/AVC, we can achieve excellent results at 720p and 1080p down to DVD5/9 sizes.
Neither format will win. Who won the DVD-A vs. SACD war?
I disagree with the analogy here between HDDVD to Blu Ray:: DVD-A and SACD.
DVD-A and SACD had/have their issues due to a number of reasons. SACD is Sony, and that is enough of a reason for failure (even with a Sony receiver and a Sony SACD player it takes separate wires to play a SACD than a CD or DVD, dumbasses*).
Also HD CD formats are not backwards compatable (mostly) with existing technologies like MP3, regular stereos and car stereos.
Now, HD video is going to take off in some way. Why? DVDs and SD content don't look very good on your brand new HDTV. 1080[ip] and beyond content will blow you away compared to SD stuff. Even non-technical people can tell the difference between HD and SD, but most people are not that tuned towards audio. I guess it has to do with 1/2 of the human brain going towards vision or something like that.
Maaan! I was reading through that whole summary, excitedly awaiting my chance to welcome our new overlords..... and all they found was a laptop!?!??! What a crock!
I thought I heard somewhere that SETI did also find a satellite that was put into space by humans. From what I remember, it was a big deal because it confirmed that the analysis of the space noise was capable of picking out a real signal.
How, exactly, do you break into a personal folder? Is double-clicking it called "breaking" in these days?
Well, if the computer had a secure OS like Vista, it probably warned the thief that they were doing something wrong 10-20 times, including double-clicking on a personal folder.
Just like a EULA, clicking on buttons is a binding contract, so yes, the person did break into a personal folder if they double clicked on it.
His point is that using an air-brushed girl to advertise Avon skin care products is borderline fraudulent.
Most all of marketing is borderline fraudulent. Does using product X get you all the hotties? Do models actually look that good? Are the model's eyes dilated digitally to make them more appealing? Would this really make a great gift? Are the statistics they quote really valid? Are those the only statistics available? Is BMW the ultimate driving machine?
I could go on and on.
I mean, I just got in the mail a markting scam from a credit card company that was asking if I wanted to cash a check for $20 and automatically be enrolled in some kind of protection plan for my credit card. Well, credit cards are unsecured credit. I don't have to pay them back (it will hurt my future credit, but they will not take my property like a house or car loan). They were also going to do me the favor by automatically putting my new monthly bill on my credit card (so I would have to pay intererest on top of intererest).
It makes Visa and Mastercard more profitable, however, which is what they care about.
OK. A merchant does not have to accept credit card payments at all. Its a choice up to the merchant, and part of that choice involves the complexity of implementing a CC payment system, the cost of a percentage of profits on each transaction to the CC people, but I was under the assumption that the benefits to the merchant were:
1) more customers can buy things
and
2) they are guaranteed payment
Checks can bounce, cash can be stolen, or fake. I thought the lure of #2 was that the extra cost that they paid on each transaction was insurance that they would get paid.
I'm just a computer guy, but this is my understanding of the system. If there is no #2 benefit provided from the CC people, I don't see too much of a benefit to accepting CC payments.
Anybody who's been around kids with autism for any length of time would quickly realize that it definitely is a real disorder, and not a fad.
I have been around kids with autism, and I agree it is a real disorder. The fad is that many geeks here on slashdot that have jobs, language abilities, and can more or less function in society unlike 99% of those with autism is where I believe the fad comes into play.
Nothing properly called a "fad" lasts for 12 years
Homosexuality was listed as a disorder in the DSM for over 12 years. I believe that Autism/Aspergers is a fad today, and that that medical community is not helping with accurate information to debunk the fad.
Currently, the medical community recommends about 25 hours a week of "therapy" for Autism, yet there has been no evidence of this therapy to significantly change 1 Autistic's symptoms to date.
Oh, and the fad regarding the "War on Drugs" has lasted over 12 years as well. Also, fads get reinvented from time to time. See swing dancing, disco, 80s fashion, etc for examples.
I didn't read the Google paper (or the FA for that matter), but while we are on the subject, this is something that I don't understand.
Why do servers have AC to DC power supplies at all? I don't know about you, but I have my servers on UPSes. So the whole thing goes AC from wall to DC in the UPS to the batteries then from DC to AC to the computer where it converts it back to DC.
I'm not an EE, but why cant AC come from the wall into the UPS and then the UPS spits out DC to the computer?
Granted the UPS power supply needs to be redundant because they are the 2nd most likely thing to fail in servers after disks, but what am I missing here? I know there are telco grade computers that take DC, but these are not available in many options and are typically lower end boxes. But to me, none of these additional conversions to AC and DC an back again with the added likelihood of a failure anywhere in the chain seems a bit non-optimal.
But the deal wasnt two free box sets, the deal was BUY ONE (at regular price) and GET ONE free.
That is irrelevant. Actually, the deal was $X was to be charged to your credit card for items, Y & Z. A deal is very specific. Specific products at a certain price at a certain time under certain conditions.
Think about rebates. The price they advertise is not the price you pay at the register. That is the difference between what you pay at your register and what you get as a check from the rebate at a certain time later if you meet certain elegibility requirements.
Morally, the customer should either return the item or pay for it. Legally, the customer got a great deal, and has done nothing wrong. Legally, Amazon is commiting credit card fraud, and that is between the credit card company and Amazon, not the customer and Amazon.
I disagree. Fixing prices is not the answer. What? Admit that they are a monopoly of an unpublished API and standard and regulate them like electricity and water?
Look at what governments are pushing for. Things like the ODF. People want a word processor, and unfortunately Word is the only guy left on the block, but people don't want to be tied to the.doc format so that they are not tied to the MS upgrade lockin.
I say that governments and the people can demand the standards and APIs to be open, and then competition will naturally follow.
All cars are essentially the same, and they have to comply with emissions, take the available fuels out there, fit on the roads, and all of this. But all cars don't cost the same. Some are simply nicer, and that comes at a price, but we still have a choice to buy a cheaper car that will get the job done.
OK, I post a youtube video of the goatse guy in action.
I guess this dissapears? Haven't tried.
OK, I post simpsons video, and the copyright owner says, stop it, and the video stays up (or down??) and then the user who submitted gets turned over to be turned into the goatse guy?
My point, is why can come content just dissapear w/o a problem, but the other is then escalated into a problem?
Amdahl's law isn't really a problem, its just a thing. The law of gravity is not a problem, its just a thing.
Supercomputing is really cool with embarasingly parallel problems and things like superlinear speedup. Supercomputing is a mess because its basically a hack. Funding and support are always issues. Even though we buy thousands of CPUs at a time, they are still a blip on the radar compared to regular server sales, and vendors don't cater to supercomputing because ironically, its not much of a market for the systems.
Now, to actually read the article and see what we are talking about:)
Well duh.. even the losing side's laywers get paid well.
The problem is that MS is a little upset that it cost them some of their beloved cash, but they shake it off and think of this as the cost of doing business. They are like everyone else, they don't want to pay for utilities, taxes, or whatever, but its just the cost of doing what you do.
What I want is a real judgement or change from these cases, not a glorified parking ticket. What is going to change from this? Nada.
What is microsoft a monopoly on? A poorly implemented, poorly documented, closed source, closed API "standard" operating system where the only people who know the standard is MS.
From what I understand, cifs was opened up (don't know the details here, but that is what I understand), but that is only the tip of the iceburg of MS's embrace and extend vendor lockin thing.
UNIX/Linux has POSIX, IEEE specs, open source, rfcs, and all this. Heck, Microsoft had its own version of UNIX back in the day, and it was pretty decent. But the fact is that we don't want BSODs, we don't want viruses, we don't want to be yelled at by paperclips, we don't want to have the tray yell at us or telling us we have too many icons on our desktop, we don't want crappy browsers pushed on us, we don't want 99% of what MS gives us, we want something that runs our applications on our hardware, and something that "just works".
I say its time for MS to be forced to publish their "standards" and APIs.
In theory, I agree with the grandparent post. In theory, there are always bugs in software, services, or something somewhere.
My work got broken into via a silly code injection thing a few months ago, and we run a pretty tight ship, but we also allow many users to run unaudited code that is accessable via the web, and that is what happened.
The thing that saved us and that saves others that really care about security is the layering of security. This person effectivly got in as the httpd user, but that is as far as they got. We didn't have our payroll and other stuff on a database on the same machine that the user could just access w/o a password. Anyone worth a grain of salt in the biz knows what I'm talking about.
The sad thing is that still in 2007 there are internet applications that blindly take user information as is and combine that w/o any checks into a SQL statement or some other kind of interpreted language, and that is bad.
First rule of network programming, always either restrict your input by type (phone numbers should always be numbers, etc) and/or always quote the input into something that cannot be evaluated as code.
Other basic things are to put your database 1 or more layers from your application server. Don't store sensitive information in human readable format.
Blah blah. Most of this is common sense or just by paying attention to how breakins happen.
The sad thing is that I've seen Clippy like once or twice years ago, and that is what I thought this dialog reminded me of, but worse because from what I remember Clippy would start yelling at you when you did anything, and you could just tell him to go away, but now its worse because the operating system blocks and asks you to click a bozo box every time you do anything?
* smashes head on desk *
Let me be clear, I don't use MS software because it is not designed for a computer professional like myself. To be honest, I don't know who its designed for, or if its even designed at all.
The first time I heard Windows was having this UAC thing, I knew that it would suck as only Microsoft could make it suck. I knew it would annoy the hell out of the user so bad that it would do one of two things. 1) annoy them to the point that they just turn it off (I understand this is allowed in Vista) 2) annoy the user and they don't turn it off, they just bend over and take it, and the 1 out of a million clicks when your supposed to say No, you click Yes because that is what you ALWAYS HAVE TO DO TO GET ANYTHING DONE.
* smashes head on desk again *
Microsoft can't even rip off existing security models that work like the elevated priveledges in OS X. Microsoft embarasses me as a computer professional, and I don't even use their stuff, because people associate MS with computers.
Thanks for the grandparent post for sharing their experience, and thank you Apple, Linux, and Sun for making computers usable.
Oh, and I almost forgot.
Vista automatically assumes that all setup programs (application installers) should be run with administrator privileges -- and gives the user no option to let them run without elevated privileges.
Isn't this the case where 99.9% of the time YOU WANT TO BE ASKED? Didn't Microsoft invent the term "driveby install"?
Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu.
The 9/11/01 terrorist attack did hurt our economy for a period of time (one could argue that it was ultimately beneficial...). The economy is intrinsically connected to people being alive and stuff.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
So true. +1 insightful:) But it should be -10 wrong.
I'm not a PHB, but I have the strong opinion that NO, ZERO, ZIP, NADA data should be stored on ANY portable device. This includes CDs, floppys, USB sticks, laptops. Whatever.
Important data should reside on a backed up, physically secure place like a data server. Remote access to that should be through encryped and secure channels.
I'm not asking for instances of moronic behavior here, but would anybody in there right mind carry around a filing cabinet that has things like your mother's maden name, SSN, passwords, copies of keys to your house, car, safety deposit box, etc, etc, and then get concerned if you lose the thing or it gets stolen?
No sane person would do that. But apparently this is status quo with government agencies and businesses.
In a recent 44-month audit (ending in Sept. 2005), the FBI reported 160 lost or stolen machines. Of those, ten were confirmed to have sensitive info. A startling 51 of these machines had unknown information -- in other words the FBI never knew what they lost.
I just crumpled up my tinfoil hat and threw it away. I'm more scared of little sister kicking me in the balls than whatever "big brother" could do.
These guys remind me of a quote by a psychologist that said something like "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully".
indeed.. Vista is like a bad linux distro out of 98'..
I've heard its more like a PITA version of Apple's system 9 (the usual ~10 years behind apple theory) with some userland apps that are about 5 years behind.
I don't know or too much care, but I know a number of people that keep a windows box at home or even use windows exclusively at home for one thing. GAMES!
From what I understand, windows has 3 fronts. 1) a generic OS that comes with cheaper computers 2) a generic OS for office applications and 3) a game platform.
I don't fit into those demographics, and Windows is just not a viable option for me, but much of the computing population does fit into at least one of those targets.
My point, is that if Windows can't do games, then they are really going to get hit hard in the #3 demographic area which is not a good thing for MS. Those people pretty much drive the PC market in terms of cutting edge performance, and the users are more techical and vocal than the #1 and #2 populations.
Its a shame that the Windows API/framework/standards is not open so that there can be competition to accomodate backwards compatability and advance the market for a consumer level PC market. Although MS has put computers all over the planet and pretty much anybody can use them, I believe they have stagnated computer progress significantly in terms of UI and public perception of computers. Yuck.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, all I saw on the "site" was a donation link or something. Looked like a parked domain or something.
But radix sorting is cool. What is very relevant to it in 2007 is that it scales superlinearly with multiple cores/CPUs which is important since most computers today have hardware that execute multiple threads simultaniously.
From what I understand, the UAC thing comes up all the time (even copying and pasting?!?!), so people just will ignore it and say allow all the time. Also, I read here on slashdot that UAC didn't ask anything when installing software, so there is the best backdoor already put into the OS as a design decision.
Its really sad that people believe that Windows == computers. It will take a decade for people to get over the PTSD once another system becomes available to the general public.
The article is a total crock of @#$#. Just looking at the charts shows you that the audio "difference" is so incredibly tiny that the actual players probably have far more to do with it than the format.
I didn't read the article, but I knew it was a crock by the audio "difference" thing.
AFAIK, the audio on both formats is the exact same (and the same as standard DVD as well). DTS (the best) and DD. Now some content is encoded better into DD or DTS at the studio, but the delivery of the digital information is for all sake of argument the same 1s and 0s that were put on the disk at the studio.
Actually, I have heard that since the data capacity of the newer disks is so great that many of the soundtracks are uncompressed (raw PCM data), but still AfAIK there is no difference between the formats in the audio realm.
You know you might be a geek when you say things like :
I guess you haven't seen the 720p or 1080p x264 (H.264/AVC - same codec that many of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray movies are using) rips on private bittorrent trackers or Usenet. A standard two hour movie will fit on a DVD5 at 720p with 6 channel AC3 audio and a bitrate of 4.5-6 mbit/sec. While this wouldn't look great using xvid, H.264/AVC High profile can create great quality. x264 using Sharktooth's HQ-Slowest profile is very impressive. A 2 hour movie can fit on a DVD9 at 1080p at 7-8 mbit/sec, again with very good quality.
Hell, I've seen some 2 CD sized x264 rips from 1080p sources that blow DVD out of the water. Forget about the MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid and Divx. Now that we have H.264/AVC, we can achieve excellent results at 720p and 1080p down to DVD5/9 sizes.
Neither format will win. Who won the DVD-A vs. SACD war?
:: DVD-A and SACD.
I disagree with the analogy here between HDDVD to Blu Ray
DVD-A and SACD had/have their issues due to a number of reasons. SACD is Sony, and that is enough of a reason for failure (even with a Sony receiver and a Sony SACD player it takes separate wires to play a SACD than a CD or DVD, dumbasses*).
Also HD CD formats are not backwards compatable (mostly) with existing technologies like MP3, regular stereos and car stereos.
Now, HD video is going to take off in some way. Why? DVDs and SD content don't look very good on your brand new HDTV. 1080[ip] and beyond content will blow you away compared to SD stuff. Even non-technical people can tell the difference between HD and SD, but most people are not that tuned towards audio. I guess it has to do with 1/2 of the human brain going towards vision or something like that.
Maaan! I was reading through that whole summary, excitedly awaiting my chance to welcome our new overlords..... and all they found was a laptop!?!??! What a crock!
I thought I heard somewhere that SETI did also find a satellite that was put into space by humans. From what I remember, it was a big deal because it confirmed that the analysis of the space noise was capable of picking out a real signal.
How, exactly, do you break into a personal folder? Is double-clicking it called "breaking" in these days?
Well, if the computer had a secure OS like Vista, it probably warned the thief that they were doing something wrong 10-20 times, including double-clicking on a personal folder.
Just like a EULA, clicking on buttons is a binding contract, so yes, the person did break into a personal folder if they double clicked on it.
I can see the CDs being rips, but didn't she play publicly? Be kinda hard to fake that :)
:)
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Girl, you know it's
Ashlee Simpson can hodown too
In fact Australia has the highest carbon output per person in the world last time I checked.
I could be wrong, but I believe this is due to brush fires, and not from Australian society.
His point is that using an air-brushed girl to advertise Avon skin care products is borderline fraudulent.
Most all of marketing is borderline fraudulent. Does using product X get you all the hotties? Do models actually look that good? Are the model's eyes dilated digitally to make them more appealing? Would this really make a great gift? Are the statistics they quote really valid? Are those the only statistics available? Is BMW the ultimate driving machine?
I could go on and on.
I mean, I just got in the mail a markting scam from a credit card company that was asking if I wanted to cash a check for $20 and automatically be enrolled in some kind of protection plan for my credit card. Well, credit cards are unsecured credit. I don't have to pay them back (it will hurt my future credit, but they will not take my property like a house or car loan). They were also going to do me the favor by automatically putting my new monthly bill on my credit card (so I would have to pay intererest on top of intererest).
That is very borderline fraud.
It happens all the time.
It makes Visa and Mastercard more profitable, however, which is what they care about.
OK. A merchant does not have to accept credit card payments at all. Its a choice up to the merchant, and part of that choice involves the complexity of implementing a CC payment system, the cost of a percentage of profits on each transaction to the CC people, but I was under the assumption that the benefits to the merchant were:
1) more customers can buy things
and
2) they are guaranteed payment
Checks can bounce, cash can be stolen, or fake. I thought the lure of #2 was that the extra cost that they paid on each transaction was insurance that they would get paid.
I'm just a computer guy, but this is my understanding of the system. If there is no #2 benefit provided from the CC people, I don't see too much of a benefit to accepting CC payments.
Anybody who's been around kids with autism for any length of time would quickly realize that it definitely is a real disorder, and not a fad.
I have been around kids with autism, and I agree it is a real disorder. The fad is that many geeks here on slashdot that have jobs, language abilities, and can more or less function in society unlike 99% of those with autism is where I believe the fad comes into play.
Nothing properly called a "fad" lasts for 12 years
Homosexuality was listed as a disorder in the DSM for over 12 years. I believe that Autism/Aspergers is a fad today, and that that medical community is not helping with accurate information to debunk the fad.
Currently, the medical community recommends about 25 hours a week of "therapy" for Autism, yet there has been no evidence of this therapy to significantly change 1 Autistic's symptoms to date.
Oh, and the fad regarding the "War on Drugs" has lasted over 12 years as well. Also, fads get reinvented from time to time. See swing dancing, disco, 80s fashion, etc for examples.
I didn't read the Google paper (or the FA for that matter), but while we are on the subject, this is something that I don't understand.
Why do servers have AC to DC power supplies at all? I don't know about you, but I have my servers on UPSes. So the whole thing goes AC from wall to DC in the UPS to the batteries then from DC to AC to the computer where it converts it back to DC.
I'm not an EE, but why cant AC come from the wall into the UPS and then the UPS spits out DC to the computer?
Granted the UPS power supply needs to be redundant because they are the 2nd most likely thing to fail in servers after disks, but what am I missing here? I know there are telco grade computers that take DC, but these are not available in many options and are typically lower end boxes. But to me, none of these additional conversions to AC and DC an back again with the added likelihood of a failure anywhere in the chain seems a bit non-optimal.
But the deal wasnt two free box sets, the deal was BUY ONE (at regular price) and GET ONE free.
That is irrelevant. Actually, the deal was $X was to be charged to your credit card for items, Y & Z. A deal is very specific. Specific products at a certain price at a certain time under certain conditions.
Think about rebates. The price they advertise is not the price you pay at the register. That is the difference between what you pay at your register and what you get as a check from the rebate at a certain time later if you meet certain elegibility requirements.
Morally, the customer should either return the item or pay for it. Legally, the customer got a great deal, and has done nothing wrong. Legally, Amazon is commiting credit card fraud, and that is between the credit card company and Amazon, not the customer and Amazon.
I disagree. Fixing prices is not the answer. What? Admit that they are a monopoly of an unpublished API and standard and regulate them like electricity and water?
Look at what governments are pushing for. Things like the ODF. People want a word processor, and unfortunately Word is the only guy left on the block, but people don't want to be tied to the
I say that governments and the people can demand the standards and APIs to be open, and then competition will naturally follow.
All cars are essentially the same, and they have to comply with emissions, take the available fuels out there, fit on the roads, and all of this. But all cars don't cost the same. Some are simply nicer, and that comes at a price, but we still have a choice to buy a cheaper car that will get the job done.
The difference is the copyright.
And of course the remedy is different: deleting vs penalties for the unauthorized copies.
OK, now pretend goatse is copyrighted. I would bet that youtube would just burry it, and go on. Right?
OK, I post a youtube video of the goatse guy in action.
I guess this dissapears? Haven't tried.
OK, I post simpsons video, and the copyright owner says, stop it, and the video stays up (or down??) and then the user who submitted gets turned over to be turned into the goatse guy?
My point, is why can come content just dissapear w/o a problem, but the other is then escalated into a problem?
Amdahl's law isn't really a problem, its just a thing. The law of gravity is not a problem, its just a thing.
Supercomputing is really cool with embarasingly parallel problems and things like superlinear speedup. Supercomputing is a mess because its basically a hack. Funding and support are always issues. Even though we buy thousands of CPUs at a time, they are still a blip on the radar compared to regular server sales, and vendors don't cater to supercomputing because ironically, its not much of a market for the systems.
Now, to actually read the article and see what we are talking about
Well duh.. even the losing side's laywers get paid well.
The problem is that MS is a little upset that it cost them some of their beloved cash, but they shake it off and think of this as the cost of doing business. They are like everyone else, they don't want to pay for utilities, taxes, or whatever, but its just the cost of doing what you do.
What I want is a real judgement or change from these cases, not a glorified parking ticket. What is going to change from this? Nada.
What is microsoft a monopoly on? A poorly implemented, poorly documented, closed source, closed API "standard" operating system where the only people who know the standard is MS.
From what I understand, cifs was opened up (don't know the details here, but that is what I understand), but that is only the tip of the iceburg of MS's embrace and extend vendor lockin thing.
UNIX/Linux has POSIX, IEEE specs, open source, rfcs, and all this. Heck, Microsoft had its own version of UNIX back in the day, and it was pretty decent. But the fact is that we don't want BSODs, we don't want viruses, we don't want to be yelled at by paperclips, we don't want to have the tray yell at us or telling us we have too many icons on our desktop, we don't want crappy browsers pushed on us, we don't want 99% of what MS gives us, we want something that runs our applications on our hardware, and something that "just works".
I say its time for MS to be forced to publish their "standards" and APIs.
This is tosh.
In theory, I agree with the grandparent post. In theory, there are always bugs in software, services, or something somewhere.
My work got broken into via a silly code injection thing a few months ago, and we run a pretty tight ship, but we also allow many users to run unaudited code that is accessable via the web, and that is what happened.
The thing that saved us and that saves others that really care about security is the layering of security. This person effectivly got in as the httpd user, but that is as far as they got. We didn't have our payroll and other stuff on a database on the same machine that the user could just access w/o a password. Anyone worth a grain of salt in the biz knows what I'm talking about.
The sad thing is that still in 2007 there are internet applications that blindly take user information as is and combine that w/o any checks into a SQL statement or some other kind of interpreted language, and that is bad.
First rule of network programming, always either restrict your input by type (phone numbers should always be numbers, etc) and/or always quote the input into something that cannot be evaluated as code.
Other basic things are to put your database 1 or more layers from your application server. Don't store sensitive information in human readable format.
Blah blah. Most of this is common sense or just by paying attention to how breakins happen.
Sounds like Clippy has been re-incarnated.
The sad thing is that I've seen Clippy like once or twice years ago, and that is what I thought this dialog reminded me of, but worse because from what I remember Clippy would start yelling at you when you did anything, and you could just tell him to go away, but now its worse because the operating system blocks and asks you to click a bozo box every time you do anything?
* smashes head on desk *
Let me be clear, I don't use MS software because it is not designed for a computer professional like myself. To be honest, I don't know who its designed for, or if its even designed at all.
The first time I heard Windows was having this UAC thing, I knew that it would suck as only Microsoft could make it suck. I knew it would annoy the hell out of the user so bad that it would do one of two things. 1) annoy them to the point that they just turn it off (I understand this is allowed in Vista) 2) annoy the user and they don't turn it off, they just bend over and take it, and the 1 out of a million clicks when your supposed to say No, you click Yes because that is what you ALWAYS HAVE TO DO TO GET ANYTHING DONE.
* smashes head on desk again *
Microsoft can't even rip off existing security models that work like the elevated priveledges in OS X. Microsoft embarasses me as a computer professional, and I don't even use their stuff, because people associate MS with computers.
Thanks for the grandparent post for sharing their experience, and thank you Apple, Linux, and Sun for making computers usable.
Oh, and I almost forgot.
Vista automatically assumes that all setup programs (application installers) should be run with administrator privileges -- and gives the user no option to let them run without elevated privileges.
Isn't this the case where 99.9% of the time YOU WANT TO BE ASKED? Didn't Microsoft invent the term "driveby install"?
* smashes head on desk again *
Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu.
:) But it should be -10 wrong.
The 9/11/01 terrorist attack did hurt our economy for a period of time (one could argue that it was ultimately beneficial...). The economy is intrinsically connected to people being alive and stuff.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
So true. +1 insightful
Lost Laptops Scare Daylights Out Of My PHB's
I'm not a PHB, but I have the strong opinion that NO, ZERO, ZIP, NADA data should be stored on ANY portable device. This includes CDs, floppys, USB sticks, laptops. Whatever.
Important data should reside on a backed up, physically secure place like a data server. Remote access to that should be through encryped and secure channels.
I'm not asking for instances of moronic behavior here, but would anybody in there right mind carry around a filing cabinet that has things like your mother's maden name, SSN, passwords, copies of keys to your house, car, safety deposit box, etc, etc, and then get concerned if you lose the thing or it gets stolen?
No sane person would do that. But apparently this is status quo with government agencies and businesses.
In a recent 44-month audit (ending in Sept. 2005), the FBI reported 160 lost or stolen machines. Of those, ten were confirmed to have sensitive info. A startling 51 of these machines had unknown information -- in other words the FBI never knew what they lost.
I just crumpled up my tinfoil hat and threw it away. I'm more scared of little sister kicking me in the balls than whatever "big brother" could do.
These guys remind me of a quote by a psychologist that said something like "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully".
indeed .. Vista is like a bad linux distro out of 98' ..
I've heard its more like a PITA version of Apple's system 9 (the usual ~10 years behind apple theory) with some userland apps that are about 5 years behind.
I don't know or too much care, but I know a number of people that keep a windows box at home or even use windows exclusively at home for one thing. GAMES!
From what I understand, windows has 3 fronts. 1) a generic OS that comes with cheaper computers 2) a generic OS for office applications and 3) a game platform.
I don't fit into those demographics, and Windows is just not a viable option for me, but much of the computing population does fit into at least one of those targets.
My point, is that if Windows can't do games, then they are really going to get hit hard in the #3 demographic area which is not a good thing for MS. Those people pretty much drive the PC market in terms of cutting edge performance, and the users are more techical and vocal than the #1 and #2 populations.
Its a shame that the Windows API/framework/standards is not open so that there can be competition to accomodate backwards compatability and advance the market for a consumer level PC market. Although MS has put computers all over the planet and pretty much anybody can use them, I believe they have stagnated computer progress significantly in terms of UI and public perception of computers. Yuck.