Actually, the failure rate of the manned missions NASA did --- Mercury, Gemini, Apollo --- was incredibly low. No one was killed in flight. Very few missions were total failures --- even 13 managed a manned orbit of the moon, which is hardly a common occurrance. The programme went from sub-orbital hops to a manned moon mission in ten years. These days NASA has a far higher death rate, can't organise coffee for a meeting in less than ten years and has achieved nothing in terms of manned flight since Skylab.
I have played with the idea of running my MUA setuid igbmail. You then have a place to save attachments (and the like) which is writable (but not readable) by igbmail and read/write to igb. For sending attachments you either have igbmail having read-only access to igb's files, or provide an area read/write to igb but read-only to igbmail to stage attachments through (depending on your level of paranoia). That way the worst a mail-borne virus can do is delete things on their way to becoming attachments. On an X-Windows environment there's some slight malarky to be engaged in on the.xauth file, but it's hardly difficult. For tty mail clients (elm, pine, mutt) it's trivial.
But then I started using Mail.app on a Mac, and I can't see quite so easily how to do it.
However, messages can be implemented in other ways. For example, you could make a message be more like a procedure call - you create a new stack, swap your address table around, and then jump into the function in the "server".
I _think_ this is how Andy Tucker's `doors' work in Solaris. They're used by, inter alia, syslogd and nscd to provide a fast, MT-safe message passing mechanism.
``I don't think Bridgestone can ask Ferrari to slow its F1 cars down because Bridgestone tyres cannot perform at high speed.''
Indeed. Which explains the full grid at the US Grand Prix.
[[ For those Americans who don't do F1, the US Grand Prix last year was a six-car farce, because Michelin didn't build tyres which could take the fast corners. ]]
Exactly. My father-in-law moved himself to a Mac Mini, but I moved my mother from a Linux laptop to an iBook, and my father then moved himself from Windows to an iBook. Since then the number of support calls has dropped to zero (essentially). I get long-term queries (``I want to write a book, should I do it with word or should I publish it as a web page?'') but that's a whole other, and more pleasant, ballgame.
``But you could pick up a copy of solaris or linux and it would be relatively easy to figure out what to secure and how to secure.''
How? By using my special powers to detect which of the daemons I think I need have latent buffer overrun problems that will be discovered next year, and which don't? By using my special powers to detect which daemons have insufficient privilege isolation and will overwrite files that they shouldn't, when someone spots the race condition in 2008?
If you genuinely believe that it's ``relatively easy'' to secure a production web or mail server, based on an inspection of a copy of the operating system by a reasonably skilled engineer with some security-fu, I think you're hopelessly naive.
It's tempting for people who work in fields where performance matters to assume it matters for everyone, all the time. Do I need my big-iron Oracle boxes to be quick? Yes, I do, which is why they are Solaris boxes with all mod cons. Do I need the GUI on my desk to be pleasant to use? Yes, which is why it's increasingly a Mac that I turn to first. Sure, a G4 Mac Mini isn't quick. But there's a room full of Niagaras, Galaxies and 16-way Sparc machines to do `quick' for me.
All I ask is that the GUI is reasonably slick, the screen design doesn't actively give me hives and the mail application is pleasant. Performance? Within reason, I really couldn't care less.
I find the `advanced users' claim rather hollow. I know one end of a computer from another --- I've been using Unix boxes since 6th edition, and I was running TCP in a wide-area environment in the mid eighties. And I know one end of computer security from another --- I've managed a BS7799 certification programme, and I handle security evaluation for telecoms products in major networks. But I wouldn't trust myself to pick up a random release of Solaris (hey, I've _used_ Sun 2s) or Windows or OSX or Linux and guess at the security requirements for fiddling with it. I'd like a default-block firewall, a non-admin user account and as much of the filesystem read-only as possible, please. If I have specific requirements, and have time to do a full evaluation and risk assessment, maybe I want to turn things off. But by default, lots of security, please. And I'd argue that I'm as `advanced' a user as they come.
To use a phrase often used in our office, ``anyone clever enough to turn the security settings down on Linux is clever enough _not_ to turn the security settings down''.
I got my laptop bag wiped down at SFO a few years ago, and the little tissue popped into the machine to test for explosives. Either it's incredibly selective, or it's bullshit. My bag had been under the counter at the late lamented National Shooting Club on Duane while I shot ~200 rounds of 9mm and a box of.38 S&W. It had had spent cartridges falling on it. I'd been handling both live and spent ammunition. When I arrived at the airport I stank of firing ranges.
And yet the little wipe said all was well. Either it's sufficiently selective to spot the difference between propellant and explosives. Or it's nonsense.
I just wandered down to the machine room to look at the SAS drives on a X4200 Opteron and a T2000 Niagara. The disks are in use, but I popped out the fillers on the spare slots and they're only 16mm deep. So how deep are the drives themselves? Standard laptop these days is 9.5mm.
If it's because they play several instruments and sing, and record their performances in several passes, then that would be a shame.
But they will adapt their music if they're any good, and small use of tape or sequencer is acceptible. I saw Jane Siberry a few weeks ago, and she mostly adapted her wide-screen multi-track style to a single guitar, but used a tape for a couple of songs. Ditto Laurie Anderson. Browne is of course touring either solo or with Dave Lindley these days. Etc.
Something I've not seen pointed out is the huge rise in the amount of touring by `established' acts. Take, as a random example, Jackson Browne. I think I've seen most of his European tours since the early 80s, and they were pretty thin on the ground. But I've seen him play pretty well annually for the last three or four years. Emmylou is touring with Mark Knopfler in June, but she's playing Cambridge Folk Festival in July as well. Every artist I'm interested in, from pub to arenas, is touring far more than they were in the 90s. My conclusion? No longer do album sales underwrite touring, but touring is the main source of income. Impossible to pirate, solid income. Probably good for music fans, probably fun for the artists, who loses?
And it means that artists who can't cut the mustard on stage go to the wall. Which is a bad thing because...
When I got myself in difficulty (not enough cash) in Germany in the late 80s, someone explained to me that it was a holdover from the Weimar hyper-inflation.
For various reasons I spent 45 minutes in San Jose Tech museum the morning of the Solaris 10 launch having a one-on-one with Schwartz. I'm not a judge of management, it wasn't an interview (either way) and 45 minutes would be long enought o judge anyway. But my track record over the years says I am a good judge of (a) honest and (b) frighteningly bright. He's honest and frighteningly bright. I also know a bunch of the Solaris developers and I've not heard a bad word said about him.
There's a whole discourse about what Sun do in the face of commodity Opteron boxes and Linux starting to be scalable. Five years ago you just pointed out that Solaris scaled to 128-way and Linux barely made 4-, but today (a) processors are faster so you don't need as many for a given workload and (b) horizontal scaling is more on the agenda. But anyone who thinks that Schwartz isn't well-equipped to have that debate, reach good conclusions and execute on it is a loon.
More to the point, any branding whose pronunciation is ambiguous is doomed, because buyers won't like walking in to a shop and being sneered at by the help for asking for the wronmg thing. ``Vi-iv? I think you mean Vive''.
My parents once went to buy (and I mean _buy_ --- they wanted one, they had the money in their pocket) a Toyota Hi-Ace. You know, High-Ace. The salesman looked at them indulgently and said, ``I think you mean a Hee-Ah-Che''. They like their Nissan van very much.
Look at what's happened in the UK to telephone advertising. We have the TPS now implementing the EU privacy directive, which is like the US `do not call' registry but with teeth. No exemptions for politics, charities, pre-existing relationships, and real sanctions against transgressors. Combined with XD I get about one junk call a year, and the same's true for the >60% of the population who have signed up. So the call centres are left chasing those that haven't, and as their call volumes rise, people become motivated to also sign up. It's a death spiral for outbound telemarketing.
Now TV has a similar problem. There just aren't the channels that will deliver 20m. Dr Who got 8.5m on Saturday night, and ~10m is about the maximum anything will get. The young middle classes, to whom you want to advertise, are off watching BBC3 and BBC4 (no adverts) or surfing the web or down the pub. The more you try to lock such people as _are_ watching TV into seeing your adverts, the more you will encourage them to do something else. And people with money, or with technological chops, or with alternatives (ie the very people you want to see your adverts) will flee first. You're left with a desperate weight of adverts pressing down on one poor sod in a long-term ward in Scunthorpe.
I'm always amused by empty shops with pounding music, who assume that as they have X customers at 90dB they'll get 2X customers at 100dB. Er, no: the people who have the money can't stand the noise, so turning it up loses you business. Same principal: you need to think outside the box, not just turn up the volume.
Quite so. I'm struggling to imagine a part of Europe where.eu would be desirable. Either the population are patriotic and don't like Europe (here in.uk), or are patriotic and _do_ like Europe (like over in.fr or.de). In neither case can I see why.eu would be attractive over iso 3166 tlds or.com. Yes, there have been loads of initial registrations, but it'll be interesting to see how many really get used. Are existing.com/.fr/.de/.uk companies going to shift domain?
Creating a complete fantasy world is not an act of literature, it's an act of creating a fantasy world. Were LotR well-written, it wouldn't need the constant excuse of ``ah well, if you'd read this other book (published posthumously three or more decades later) you'd see how great it is''.
What bothers me is that people will look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy without examining the world of Middle Earth He had over a thousand pages to explain what he was doing. If he still couldn't make himself clear in that space, blame incompetence, no more.
``Literary Masterpiece''? If you think that portraits of Elvis on black velvet are artistic masterpieces, perhaps. It's a competent potboiler, worth spending a day re-reading (I re-read it this New Year on a slack day) and real hacks like Stephen Donaldson make it look like Proust. But literature? Where's the quality of writing, the depth of characterisation, the ambiguity, the plotting...? The Hobbit is a much better book, but LotR exemplifies the old saw about ``I apologise for writing such a long letter, I did not have time to make it shorter''. If you want a fantasy author who can write, Le Guin (especially her first three Earthsea books, after which it too jumps the shark).
Yes, Tolkein liberally borrowed the themes of a lot of English literature (ie that written in English). Which is hilarious, given that it was his oft-expressed opinion that nothing of value had been written in English or England since 1066. Since the tone and style is of a (bad) classic realist text, and he has a tin ear for prose, his claims to be inspired mostly by the Icelandic and Saxon sagas can only play well with people of limited clue. The worst stuff is the songs whose words he uses in his writing, which evidences a sort of bogus volk / rural style beloved of inter-war urban folk. Look on the bright side: he might have been a morris dancer instead.
And bang goes most virtual hosting. For a lot (the majority?) of websites, the reverse DNS on their IP number will be some random director in their ISP. Mind you, I'm not sure that HTTP 1.1 virtual hosting works correctly if you type an IP number anyway...
Why can I be sure the advertisiing will be good? Look at the `dinosaur' campaign. It insults 40% of the customer base, tells them that the product MS sold them a few years ago is shit, is incomprehensiblem frightens children and achieves nothing. Have you met _anyone_ who's done a 97->2003 migration in the wake of it? I can see MS trying something similar for Vista: attempting to hide the lack of worthwhile new features behind a welter of abuse against its own products. ``Buy the 2006 BMW because the 2005 model will eat your children'' is bad advertising.
Slashdot Mirror
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But then I started using Mail.app on a Mac, and I can't see quite so easily how to do it.
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But I'm willing to be corrected.
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[[ For those Americans who don't do F1, the US Grand Prix last year was a six-car farce, because Michelin didn't build tyres which could take the fast corners. ]]
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If you genuinely believe that it's ``relatively easy'' to secure a production web or mail server, based on an inspection of a copy of the operating system by a reasonably skilled engineer with some security-fu, I think you're hopelessly naive.
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All I ask is that the GUI is reasonably slick, the screen design doesn't actively give me hives and the mail application is pleasant. Performance? Within reason, I really couldn't care less.
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To use a phrase often used in our office, ``anyone clever enough to turn the security settings down on Linux is clever enough _not_ to turn the security settings down''.
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And yet the little wipe said all was well. Either it's sufficiently selective to spot the difference between propellant and explosives. Or it's nonsense.
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And it means that artists who can't cut the mustard on stage go to the wall. Which is a bad thing because...
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Just like Mondex failed. ian
There's a whole discourse about what Sun do in the face of commodity Opteron boxes and Linux starting to be scalable. Five years ago you just pointed out that Solaris scaled to 128-way and Linux barely made 4-, but today (a) processors are faster so you don't need as many for a given workload and (b) horizontal scaling is more on the agenda. But anyone who thinks that Schwartz isn't well-equipped to have that debate, reach good conclusions and execute on it is a loon.
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More to the point, any branding whose pronunciation is ambiguous is doomed, because buyers won't like walking in to a shop and being sneered at by the help for asking for the wronmg thing. ``Vi-iv? I think you mean Vive''.
My parents once went to buy (and I mean _buy_ --- they wanted one, they had the money in their pocket) a Toyota Hi-Ace. You know, High-Ace. The salesman looked at them indulgently and said, ``I think you mean a Hee-Ah-Che''. They like their Nissan van very much.
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Look at what's happened in the UK to telephone advertising. We have the TPS now implementing the EU privacy directive, which is like the US `do not call' registry but with teeth. No exemptions for politics, charities, pre-existing relationships, and real sanctions against transgressors. Combined with XD I get about one junk call a year, and the same's true for the >60% of the population who have signed up. So the call centres are left chasing those that haven't, and as their call volumes rise, people become motivated to also sign up. It's a death spiral for outbound telemarketing.
Now TV has a similar problem. There just aren't the channels that will deliver 20m. Dr Who got 8.5m on Saturday night, and ~10m is about the maximum anything will get. The young middle classes, to whom you want to advertise, are off watching BBC3 and BBC4 (no adverts) or surfing the web or down the pub. The more you try to lock such people as _are_ watching TV into seeing your adverts, the more you will encourage them to do something else. And people with money, or with technological chops, or with alternatives (ie the very people you want to see your adverts) will flee first. You're left with a desperate weight of adverts pressing down on one poor sod in a long-term ward in Scunthorpe.
I'm always amused by empty shops with pounding music, who assume that as they have X customers at 90dB they'll get 2X customers at 100dB. Er, no: the people who have the money can't stand the noise, so turning it up loses you business. Same principal: you need to think outside the box, not just turn up the volume.
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What bothers me is that people will look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy without examining the world of Middle Earth He had over a thousand pages to explain what he was doing. If he still couldn't make himself clear in that space, blame incompetence, no more.
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Sat a couple of miles from Sarehole Mill
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