This month's issue of Wired Magazine has artificial diamonds as its cover story. Just finished reading it a few hours ago. Very interesting as to where this is going to take the diamond jewelry business (DeBeer's is in trouble) as well as the semiconductor industry.
The thing you're doing wrong is being smart enough to know what things are wrong. You know to keep your system up-to-date. You know not to trust random email attachments. You know to avoid weird downloads off weird web sites. You know the value of antivirus software. You also know that it's relatively easy to take care of two systems but it would be more difficult if you were in charge of thirty.
Basically, you know enough about computers and the Internet to take care of your system. The same way most people know not to drive over potholes, to change their oil regularly, and to bring their car into the shop when it makes funny noises. People want to use a computer like they use their microwave or TV, but they need to realize it's more like a small prop-plane.
I suspect much of the 95% of PCs you speak of are safely walled up in institutions, schools and corporations private networks, which are generally out of scope for a worm like blaster to target.
Maybe you should take a look at how many schools and corporations were hit by MSBlast. You might be surprised at how easy it is to get past one of those safe walls once you include VPNs and wireless. Once you're in, you're good, because you don't have to worry about difficulty getting back out or spreading around inside.
The VAST majority of these big viruses exploit who's products? All togerther now: MICROSOFT.
Choose a random small business running Microsoft Windows. Inventory the software installed on that machine. Separate into vendor categories: Microsoft and Other. Further separate those two categories into those applications that communicate or otherwise read/open information from an external source (e.g. email, Word documents) and those that don't (e.g. Microsoft Money).
I think you'll shortly understand why the majority of security issues we have to deal with are in Microsoft products. Does it really make sense to try and exploit a machine through the CD burning software?
It's reprehensible that Microsoft apparently didn't have security (a broad term, but the literature to define it is out there) as a guiding design principle when they designed Windows
At the same time, UNIX workstation terminals were not originally "designed" with better security than this to begin with either. e.g. Telnet. The UNIX server operating systems, however, were designed with many of the same security issues in mind as Windows NT. And vice-versa.
Of course, there are vulnerabilities similar to this recent RPC problem present on UNIX servers as well. The portmap service is a good example of that. But people in charge of UNIX systems tend to patch their systems because they are sysadmins. People in charge of the majority of Windows installations are your typical end-user.
Typical end-users running Linux as their desktop OS suffer from this same problem. Those machines are the ones that you are likely to see acting as Sendmail relays, running insecure CGI scripts, or still containing local root exploits.
Windows desktop systems are also set up with what is essentially user-as-root permissions, simply because things are easier that way. Mac OS X does this as well, although it's a little safer because it's more of a user-as-sudo setup. Mac OS Classic had very few problems simply because the system architecture was so closed, in the sense that there was very little communication going on between machines that used non-Apple protocols.
Another thing of importance is how people respond to insecure software. When people discovered Telnet is insecure, they switched over to SSH. However, when people discover Outlook or Word is insecure, they don't switch because a patch becomes available. SSH was a write-from-scratch of Telnet. SSH2 did that again, because SSH was not "good enough". In those cases, patching was not seen as the best solution. Microsoft does not do from-scratch re-implementations of Outlook or Word, in part because so much has already been invested in those large, complex programs. UNIX is lots of small programs. Windows is a few large programs.
All of this, however, doesn't mitigate the issue which is that Microsoft, as an OS and applications vendor, has a poor track record. I personally think many of the problems are due to legacy and complexity coupled with non-proactive users. Given that, Microsoft has done a horrible job of addressing this root problem, while doing a decent job of patching holes that have been found.
When you write code to create a dialog box in Cocoa, you don't specify the order of the buttons. Instead, the arguments to the dialog box API call include the default choice, alternative choice, and third choice (I think there are specific names for the choices, but that's irrelevant). Then the dialog box created for you places the default choice right-most with the Return key bound to it. The other buttons go to the left in order.
Now, when you create your own dialog box NIB, you need to make sure to follow this convention.
But regardless, if Cancel is the default action, it will show up right-most. If OK (and it is OK and not Ok) is the default, it will show up right-most instead. Of course, you're supposed to use a verb instead of OK, but your choice.
There are over 500,000 words in the english language. she recognizes slightly over.1% of them. I give her about 5 minutes reading any book with a decent vocabulary before she craps out.
This is a children's doll. Those books are going to have a very limited vocabulary. Think Sesame Street. If you need this doll to read books with you, something is seriously messed up in your head.
Besides, I'm guessing those 600 words probably cover most of what I just wrote. Maybe leaving out seriously, probably, guessing, and sesame. (But I would think it includes serious and guess.)
A friend of mine play-tested the GameGrid but found that it didn't play very well. Instead of mapping sections of a larger map onto servers, it seemed to map sections of individual rooms onto servers. This meant you hopped servers fairly often, instead of just when moving from one large area to the next (probably the right thing to do overall, to avoid massive load during huge combat). But the problem was an extremely noticeable lag when crossing those boundaries, making the game all but unplayable.
Anyway, this is the feedback he gave me after he tried it. I didn't have time to try it myself during the short play-testing phase they had.
My customers likewise know that I am prone to pick a random email address from their list and ask them for more information about that person. Real name, company name, and telephone number. And I occassionally call them to verify.
Don't your customers find this a bit annoying? Or a bit intrusive that you are watching their email? Or maybe this is just for those customers who are sending out mass emails, in which case I can easily see that being something you've talked about with them ahead of time that specifically applies to mass email only. I'm mostly curious. I would be fairly annoyed if my ISP was doing this to my regular email.
What interest would SCO, a puny company who once distrubuted a Linux kernel in the GPL, have in invalidating the GPL?
Well, since just about every third/.er has posted that SCO is distributing under the GPL a version of the kernel that includes their alleged stolen code, and another/.er has posted that they are distributing a recent kernel without source, seems to me that unless the GPL is deemed invalid or unenforceable, or some other such, their case is more difficult.
So, if someone was to steal someone else's character or "loot", would that provide for a real assessment of damages? Would stealing the dragon's diamond be a felony? I'd have to say yes...interesting repercussions for the company running the MMOG and the players as well.
"...what right does anybody else have to tell them what they can and cannot say, do, smoke, eat, drink when it does affect other people."
When it does affect other people?? I think the government has quite a bit of right when damaging acts such as smoking, rape, and murder adversly affect the surrounding public.
Um, yes, but he meant when it _doesn't_ affect other people. Typo. If it wasn't a typo, then we all know someone who we should feel free to kick in the head whenever you feel like it.
Sure it can. Try shining a flashlight through a pair of thin vertical slits from a fair distance (so that incoming light is relatively straight at that point). You might be surprised by the light distribution you see on the other side.
This isn't exactly like a street corner, which I'm guessing you meant in your original post, but the light is still "turning" even though there doesn't appear to be any good reason for it at first thought.
Does anyone know if the government agencies have access to the source code, and are using internally compiled and configured versions of the software and hardware? This software has been donated for free to the state of Florida, and it seems as though this guy has also donated software to other government agencies. This would be a great way for someone to get backdoors into some of the most sensitive information systems in the U.S.
...and I will make pseudo-insightful comments based on the headline text without reading any of the source articles, until my karma is excellent?
And you'll also look like a fool because all your posts will match the bad grammar and spelling of all the other "antries". (And I know it's often considered bad form to start a sentence with 'and'.)
Certainly this inclination toward the web over TV is one reason that advertising will have to drastically change. As spam filters, and pop-up killers, and page-based context filters develop, it will get harder and harder to put the "sell" on younger people.
And this is not necessarily a bad thing for companies. Instead, they'll push into niche products like in Japan where selling 10,000 units nationwide is okay, or advertise in the other direction, i.e. grassroots campaigns. For example, there's a relatively new company that sells sodas with superhero and cartoon busts on the top of the can. (Or something like that; I just read about it in Fast Company.) They market through children-based campaigns and organized events, and are very successful at it. They do not advertise on TV. The reason I say this is not necessarily bad is because such "inverse-advertising" can be much cheaper in terms of ROI than traditional advertising. Think Magic: The Gathering as a good example.
And we should all dress up like grandmas so that when people see the pictures and film, or ask witnesses, they will all say the grandmas did it. Then see what happens.
Sounds like these rovers are going to do some "damage" to the habitat of those Martians. Is that such a good idea? Grinding into so-called "rocks". Trampling around on big wheels. All going, "Show me the water!" and "Take that, dust-particle sized life-form!" I think we're in for some heavy retaliation. Me, under the bed sounds like a good place right now.
The reason of such a profound change in Estonia is because of one main reason- change of guard. Young people control the majority of Estonia's power. Be it politics, architecture, medicine..you name it. The older generation has handed over a lot of the responsibilities.
So, perhaps we should amend the Constitution so it says the President must be younger than 35-years of age, instead of the other way around?
A better question to ask would be if the government is actually in a healthy state as a result of these rapid advancements to meet the desires of the younger generation. Or if they've delivered what the people want, but in a way that is not good for the government or the Estonian people. Is this a popularity contest?
With age comes experience, knowledge, and a network of people who you know and also have experience and knowledge. The problem with politics is that a politician has incentive to do what will get him/her re-elected more than what is best for the people (e.g. promises of lower taxes, catering to lobbyists). Is Estonia any more free of these problems?
The only benchmarks that matter is my impression of the system while using the apps I use. Everything else is opinion.
The only benchmarks that matter to NASA are those that show whether or not a computation involving gigabytes of data spread over a cluster of machines will take three months instead of twelve because floating point computations are twice as fast and move over 8Gbps buses with support for 8GB of RAM and a 64-bit address space.
About as many as are optimised for "OS X SMP". IOW, not many.
Mac OS X automatically splits execution threads among multiple CPUs. Even something as basic as a progress bar or a network service daemon will run in separate threads. The Mach microkernel makes heavy use of threads so the basic OS itself will experience noticeable improvements in message passing between tasks (e.g. crossing the kernel boundary), especially given the dedicated CPU buses.
Also, there are a whole bunch of tasks running at any given time. I've got 64 right now on my Beige G3. Each of those tasks is running one or more threads (most only one). But if iTunes can run on one CPU while my compiler runs on the other, that's going to be a big performance gain. Not to mention how the new XCode is going to benefit from SMP.
Windows is probably in the same boat as far as distributing threads, but Mac OS X makes heavier use of threads/tasks (at least, we think so because Windows is too proprietary for us to know for sure). Plus there are a bunch of very important applications where SMP really matters, e.g. Adobe products, scientific research.
While I worked at the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, one of the graduate students there Matt Delco worked on RTPtv, which is basically TV-quality Motion-JPEG between two machines.
1. You needed a special encoder and decoder card to decode 30fps (60 fields per second) Motion-JPEG sent over RTP. This card costs $400.
2. You needed 20Mbps for a excellent video transmission, plus 1.4Mbps for excellent audio transmission.
3. This enabled you to receive TV-quality video and audio over the Internet. (That's what excellent refers to up there.)
4. You can buy two cheap Linux boxes (mini-ATX?micro-ATX) including the $400 card for a total of about $1500 each. $3000 total.
But you need to have that 21.4Mbps sustained data transfer. We used Internet2 and internal 100Mbps switched networks. That's the kicker.
3. Names of religious, occult, or significant historic origin (e.g. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Stalin, Angel, Devil, Demon).
5. Non-fantasy or non-science fiction oriented names from popular fiction or non-fiction media either fictional or non-fictional (e.g. Bill Clinton, Austin Powers, Britneyspears, Harrypotter)
So, Bill Clinton and Britney Spears cannot play with their real name. And neither can a whole lot of people. Like people actually named Jesus. Or the entire Bin Laden family.
Slashdot Mirror
This month's issue of Wired Magazine has artificial diamonds as its cover story. Just finished reading it a few hours ago. Very interesting as to where this is going to take the diamond jewelry business (DeBeer's is in trouble) as well as the semiconductor industry.
The thing you're doing wrong is being smart enough to know what things are wrong. You know to keep your system up-to-date. You know not to trust random email attachments. You know to avoid weird downloads off weird web sites. You know the value of antivirus software. You also know that it's relatively easy to take care of two systems but it would be more difficult if you were in charge of thirty.
Basically, you know enough about computers and the Internet to take care of your system. The same way most people know not to drive over potholes, to change their oil regularly, and to bring their car into the shop when it makes funny noises. People want to use a computer like they use their microwave or TV, but they need to realize it's more like a small prop-plane.
I suspect much of the 95% of PCs you speak of are safely walled up in institutions, schools and corporations private networks, which are generally out of scope for a worm like blaster to target.
Maybe you should take a look at how many schools and corporations were hit by MSBlast. You might be surprised at how easy it is to get past one of those safe walls once you include VPNs and wireless. Once you're in, you're good, because you don't have to worry about difficulty getting back out or spreading around inside.
The VAST majority of these big viruses exploit who's products? All togerther now: MICROSOFT.
Choose a random small business running Microsoft Windows. Inventory the software installed on that machine. Separate into vendor categories: Microsoft and Other. Further separate those two categories into those applications that communicate or otherwise read/open information from an external source (e.g. email, Word documents) and those that don't (e.g. Microsoft Money).
I think you'll shortly understand why the majority of security issues we have to deal with are in Microsoft products. Does it really make sense to try and exploit a machine through the CD burning software?
It's reprehensible that Microsoft apparently didn't have security (a broad term, but the literature to define it is out there) as a guiding design principle when they designed Windows
At the same time, UNIX workstation terminals were not originally "designed" with better security than this to begin with either. e.g. Telnet. The UNIX server operating systems, however, were designed with many of the same security issues in mind as Windows NT. And vice-versa.
Of course, there are vulnerabilities similar to this recent RPC problem present on UNIX servers as well. The portmap service is a good example of that. But people in charge of UNIX systems tend to patch their systems because they are sysadmins. People in charge of the majority of Windows installations are your typical end-user.
Typical end-users running Linux as their desktop OS suffer from this same problem. Those machines are the ones that you are likely to see acting as Sendmail relays, running insecure CGI scripts, or still containing local root exploits.
Windows desktop systems are also set up with what is essentially user-as-root permissions, simply because things are easier that way. Mac OS X does this as well, although it's a little safer because it's more of a user-as-sudo setup. Mac OS Classic had very few problems simply because the system architecture was so closed, in the sense that there was very little communication going on between machines that used non-Apple protocols.
Another thing of importance is how people respond to insecure software. When people discovered Telnet is insecure, they switched over to SSH. However, when people discover Outlook or Word is insecure, they don't switch because a patch becomes available. SSH was a write-from-scratch of Telnet. SSH2 did that again, because SSH was not "good enough". In those cases, patching was not seen as the best solution. Microsoft does not do from-scratch re-implementations of Outlook or Word, in part because so much has already been invested in those large, complex programs. UNIX is lots of small programs. Windows is a few large programs.
All of this, however, doesn't mitigate the issue which is that Microsoft, as an OS and applications vendor, has a poor track record. I personally think many of the problems are due to legacy and complexity coupled with non-proactive users. Given that, Microsoft has done a horrible job of addressing this root problem, while doing a decent job of patching holes that have been found.
When you write code to create a dialog box in Cocoa, you don't specify the order of the buttons. Instead, the arguments to the dialog box API call include the default choice, alternative choice, and third choice (I think there are specific names for the choices, but that's irrelevant). Then the dialog box created for you places the default choice right-most with the Return key bound to it. The other buttons go to the left in order.
Now, when you create your own dialog box NIB, you need to make sure to follow this convention.
But regardless, if Cancel is the default action, it will show up right-most. If OK (and it is OK and not Ok) is the default, it will show up right-most instead. Of course, you're supposed to use a verb instead of OK, but your choice.
There are over 500,000 words in the english language. she recognizes slightly over .1% of them. I give her about 5 minutes reading any book with a decent vocabulary before she craps out.
This is a children's doll. Those books are going to have a very limited vocabulary. Think Sesame Street. If you need this doll to read books with you, something is seriously messed up in your head.
Besides, I'm guessing those 600 words probably cover most of what I just wrote. Maybe leaving out seriously, probably, guessing, and sesame. (But I would think it includes serious and guess.)
A friend of mine play-tested the GameGrid but found that it didn't play very well. Instead of mapping sections of a larger map onto servers, it seemed to map sections of individual rooms onto servers. This meant you hopped servers fairly often, instead of just when moving from one large area to the next (probably the right thing to do overall, to avoid massive load during huge combat). But the problem was an extremely noticeable lag when crossing those boundaries, making the game all but unplayable.
Anyway, this is the feedback he gave me after he tried it. I didn't have time to try it myself during the short play-testing phase they had.
My customers likewise know that I am prone to pick a random email address from their list and ask them for more information about that person. Real name, company name, and telephone number. And I occassionally call them to verify.
Don't your customers find this a bit annoying? Or a bit intrusive that you are watching their email? Or maybe this is just for those customers who are sending out mass emails, in which case I can easily see that being something you've talked about with them ahead of time that specifically applies to mass email only. I'm mostly curious. I would be fairly annoyed if my ISP was doing this to my regular email.
What interest would SCO, a puny company who once distrubuted a Linux kernel in the GPL, have in invalidating the GPL?
/.er has posted that SCO is distributing under the GPL a version of the kernel that includes their alleged stolen code, and another /.er has posted that they are distributing a recent kernel without source, seems to me that unless the GPL is deemed invalid or unenforceable, or some other such, their case is more difficult.
Well, since just about every third
So, if someone was to steal someone else's character or "loot", would that provide for a real assessment of damages? Would stealing the dragon's diamond be a felony? I'd have to say yes...interesting repercussions for the company running the MMOG and the players as well.
"...what right does anybody else have to tell them what they can and cannot say, do, smoke, eat, drink when it does affect other people."
When it does affect other people?? I think the government has quite a bit of right when damaging acts such as smoking, rape, and murder adversly affect the surrounding public.
Um, yes, but he meant when it _doesn't_ affect other people. Typo. If it wasn't a typo, then we all know someone who we should feel free to kick in the head whenever you feel like it.
Light still can't travel around corners.
Sure it can. Try shining a flashlight through a pair of thin vertical slits from a fair distance (so that incoming light is relatively straight at that point). You might be surprised by the light distribution you see on the other side.
This isn't exactly like a street corner, which I'm guessing you meant in your original post, but the light is still "turning" even though there doesn't appear to be any good reason for it at first thought.
Does anyone know if the government agencies have access to the source code, and are using internally compiled and configured versions of the software and hardware? This software has been donated for free to the state of Florida, and it seems as though this guy has also donated software to other government agencies. This would be a great way for someone to get backdoors into some of the most sensitive information systems in the U.S.
And you'll also look like a fool because all your posts will match the bad grammar and spelling of all the other "antries". (And I know it's often considered bad form to start a sentence with 'and'.)
Certainly this inclination toward the web over TV is one reason that advertising will have to drastically change. As spam filters, and pop-up killers, and page-based context filters develop, it will get harder and harder to put the "sell" on younger people.
And this is not necessarily a bad thing for companies. Instead, they'll push into niche products like in Japan where selling 10,000 units nationwide is okay, or advertise in the other direction, i.e. grassroots campaigns. For example, there's a relatively new company that sells sodas with superhero and cartoon busts on the top of the can. (Or something like that; I just read about it in Fast Company.) They market through children-based campaigns and organized events, and are very successful at it. They do not advertise on TV. The reason I say this is not necessarily bad is because such "inverse-advertising" can be much cheaper in terms of ROI than traditional advertising. Think Magic: The Gathering as a good example.
We can throw our CDs into the habor!
And we should all dress up like grandmas so that when people see the pictures and film, or ask witnesses, they will all say the grandmas did it. Then see what happens.
Well, if they're going to go after people sharing that kind of crap [e.g. Avril Lavigne], they can do it all they want for all I care. :-)
::walks away::
Hey, I like Avril Lavigne!
But I also don't steal music, so whatever.
Sounds like these rovers are going to do some "damage" to the habitat of those Martians. Is that such a good idea? Grinding into so-called "rocks". Trampling around on big wheels. All going, "Show me the water!" and "Take that, dust-particle sized life-form!" I think we're in for some heavy retaliation. Me, under the bed sounds like a good place right now.
The reason of such a profound change in Estonia is because of one main reason- change of guard. Young people control the majority of Estonia's power. Be it politics, architecture, medicine..you name it. The older generation has handed over a lot of the responsibilities.
So, perhaps we should amend the Constitution so it says the President must be younger than 35-years of age, instead of the other way around?
A better question to ask would be if the government is actually in a healthy state as a result of these rapid advancements to meet the desires of the younger generation. Or if they've delivered what the people want, but in a way that is not good for the government or the Estonian people. Is this a popularity contest?
With age comes experience, knowledge, and a network of people who you know and also have experience and knowledge. The problem with politics is that a politician has incentive to do what will get him/her re-elected more than what is best for the people (e.g. promises of lower taxes, catering to lobbyists). Is Estonia any more free of these problems?
The only benchmarks that matter is my impression of the system while using the apps I use. Everything else is opinion.
The only benchmarks that matter to NASA are those that show whether or not a computation involving gigabytes of data spread over a cluster of machines will take three months instead of twelve because floating point computations are twice as fast and move over 8Gbps buses with support for 8GB of RAM and a 64-bit address space.
About as many as are optimised for "OS X SMP". IOW, not many.
Mac OS X automatically splits execution threads among multiple CPUs. Even something as basic as a progress bar or a network service daemon will run in separate threads. The Mach microkernel makes heavy use of threads so the basic OS itself will experience noticeable improvements in message passing between tasks (e.g. crossing the kernel boundary), especially given the dedicated CPU buses.
Also, there are a whole bunch of tasks running at any given time. I've got 64 right now on my Beige G3. Each of those tasks is running one or more threads (most only one). But if iTunes can run on one CPU while my compiler runs on the other, that's going to be a big performance gain. Not to mention how the new XCode is going to benefit from SMP.
Windows is probably in the same boat as far as distributing threads, but Mac OS X makes heavier use of threads/tasks (at least, we think so because Windows is too proprietary for us to know for sure). Plus there are a bunch of very important applications where SMP really matters, e.g. Adobe products, scientific research.
While I worked at the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, one of the graduate students there Matt Delco worked on RTPtv, which is basically TV-quality Motion-JPEG between two machines.
1. You needed a special encoder and decoder card to decode 30fps (60 fields per second) Motion-JPEG sent over RTP. This card costs $400.
2. You needed 20Mbps for a excellent video transmission, plus 1.4Mbps for excellent audio transmission.
3. This enabled you to receive TV-quality video and audio over the Internet. (That's what excellent refers to up there.)
4. You can buy two cheap Linux boxes (mini-ATX?micro-ATX) including the $400 card for a total of about $1500 each. $3000 total.
But you need to have that 21.4Mbps sustained data transfer. We used Internet2 and internal 100Mbps switched networks. That's the kicker.
3. Names of religious, occult, or significant historic origin (e.g. Jesus, Allah, Satan, Stalin, Angel, Devil, Demon).
5. Non-fantasy or non-science fiction oriented names from popular fiction or non-fiction media either fictional or non-fictional (e.g. Bill Clinton, Austin Powers, Britneyspears, Harrypotter)
So, Bill Clinton and Britney Spears cannot play with their real name. And neither can a whole lot of people. Like people actually named Jesus. Or the entire Bin Laden family.
Mislead people ??? $2999 IS cheaper than $3000
Yeah, and a buck gets you 20 minutes with 1010-321.