I don't see why open source software must be cheaper than Microsoft software Methinks IBM would agree with you. I can't imagine IBM supported Linux as cheaper than Microsoft. Open Source software can be had on the cheap, even with good-to-excellent support if you're willing to play on the bleeding edge, but that does not make it cheap. If you look behind the glitz and hype, it's Microsoft that's cheap.
Microsoft, where mediocrity is an aspiration. Regarding the security of J2EE, why do you think Sun keeps as heavy a hand on it as they do? There's lots of ways to add "neat stuff" that doesn't quite keep the security intact. Personally I do not "like" java. Smells too much like gaggles of mainframes. But it's probably the only feasible way to bring massive COBOL systems into the current millenium.
When it comes from the Economist, of course. It may be restating what has been obvious, but the writers are competent enough that the exact phrasing does matter. (Not as much as with Greenspan, but the idea is the same;)
An interesting quote at the end. "The main attraction of open source, as he says, is the fact that it is "great for innovation", not its questionable claim to be free." You can solve yesterday's problems on tomorrow's computers quite cheaply. You can run yourself out of business that way too. The new stuff allows you to tackle problems you couldn't before. If your competitors do and you don't, bye bye. Sun's value lies in places where the cheap stuff doesn't have places. And it's not as simple as hardware/software prices/support. There's some critical stuff that cannot and does not show up in the specs, and it's not cheap.
Like the OK button, when it's most definitely NOT OK?
Re:Information at your fingertips is good
on
Information Obesity
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If nobody deletes anything, how are we supposed to keep track of which information is still correct? Date it. If it's known to be wrong, just place a dated notice, or better a (dated) link to the superceding page. Of course you can keep the URL and update the content.
If you think about it, deleting stuff cannot give any real assistance in keeping track of which information is still correct.
Any salient bits in the article will be repeated in the commentary. Lots of salient bits that are not in the article will show up in the commentary. The New York Times does not present its readers with information overload. You do not have to finish something to figure out you don't want to start reading it. Ever notice how a reporter's story always seems to fit the allocated space? It doesn't, really. Only what fits sees print. The remainder is just left out. The readers will read until they have read enough. At which point they will stop and go onto something else. Probably a less there for a lot of other things.
To paraphrase an IBM ad from some time back. You're both right.
There are large and fundamental differences between: 1) making thousands of them which need to all work reliably without any fuss and feathers, and 2) hacking one out of whatever is lying around which might work and which probably has some ifs, ands and buts.
The comment about working with possibly broken parts is referring to the difficulty in debugging a system in which you aren't sure if the components work. (Think programming and using a half broken API - you won't know if the problem is in your code or the code you're calling).
He made a cool hack. Literally. With a hacksaw, yet.
EE's maybe do this stuff in their sleep, but I for one found it interesting and entertaining. (Not that I really understand all that he's talking about:-(
Wise. Methinks SCO has put themselves into a position from which they cannot support you. Anything major and they will be unable to round up the required help. A lot of old unix hands have been insulted. I doubt that they'll be responding very favorably.
The part about the delays in the sendmail security patch was not at all favorable. What about the delays in the next sendmail security patch?
Re:considered the father of Linux?
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 1
possibly more vulnerable to sabotage given malicious third parties. Now you see the real reason for the religious flame wars. The "enemy" would love to slip in something harmless but very embarassing. Any patches from unreliable sources will tend to be heavily scrutinized. You can offer your patches, but that doen't mean they will even look at them, let alone accept them. They have no obligation to be reasonable, for almost all definitions of reasonable.
Christ, if that's simple, I'd hate to hear you describe complicated. Reality. It's reality that's complicated. Algebraic topology is simple. As simple as it can be. It's the real world that's complicated. Doesn't mean I'm capable of understanding it though:-(
Doesn't SCO have a tactical nightmare supporting their existing Caldera Linux customer base? The mind boggles at the implications if they actually have to do something.
Methinks the real threat in this mess boomarangs back on SCO. How does SCO manage to support their existing customers? Short term, stuff pretty well runs on inertia, but if I were running SCO or Caldera I'd be starting to get very nervous. Despite (because of?) various flame wars between various flavors of unix-like systems, there is a large amount of fundamental cross-system support that SCO has cut itself out of. (Methinks FUD started with PHBs being deathly afraid of doing anything to annoy IBM because IBM could, while honoring the letter of all agreements, effectively grind their operation to a halt.)
Right. Methinks hacking is a matter of persistence rather than training. The media gets it wrong because of their limited idea of what anyone would want to do with a strange computer system. (The media doesn't get any other field "right" either;)
C Hacker? Right. Unix Hacker? Right. Kernel Hacker? Right. PL/I Hacker? Never heard of it. MVS Hacker? Never heard of it. COBOL Hacker? You gotta be kidding.
the perceived "skill" required to write a virus is blown way out of proportion.
But how do we protect ourselves when people with skills start writing malware? Methinks the main advantage would be a quarantined lab environment where the dynamics of propagation could be studied.
IEFBR14 is, conceptually at least, a 2-byte program consisting of just BR 14. It is called and then just returns. It's like Hello World, but without the IO. 6 APARs on IEFBR14 does lend a lot of credence to "No such thing as a completely debugged program."
The Taliban wanted to make it a war of Muslim against the USA. Personally, I do NOT want to support the Taliban or their ideas of what is right. Figure that the enemy is the lunatic fringe. Of ANY persuasion.
Re:a good explanation from....
on
OSI vs SCO
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· Score: 2, Informative
This is not a matter of religous zealotry, it a matter of plain theft!
But whose theft? "The exact terms of final settlement, and much of the judicial record, were sealed at Novell's insistence."
"The University of California then threatened to countersue over license violations by AT&T and USL. It seems that from as far back as before 1985, the historical Bell Labs codebase had been incorporating large amounts of software from the BSD sources. The University's cause of action lay in the fact that AT&T, USL and Novell had routinely violated the terms of the BSD license by removing license attributions and copyrights."
Methinks it gets very interesting if that stuff gets unsealed.
Doesn't have that ring about it, but it's far more likely. The only plausible protection is diversity and in general making things so that people are aware of what's happening rather than having everything hidden. The Unix Honor Virus would be extremely effective, if only the victims would actualy fall for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why open source software must be cheaper than Microsoft software
Methinks IBM would agree with you. I can't imagine IBM supported Linux as cheaper than Microsoft. Open Source software can be had on the cheap, even with good-to-excellent support if you're willing to play on the bleeding edge, but that does not make it cheap. If you look behind the glitz and hype, it's Microsoft that's cheap.
Microsoft, where mediocrity is an aspiration.
Regarding the security of J2EE, why do you think Sun keeps as heavy a hand on it as they do? There's lots of ways to add "neat stuff" that doesn't quite keep the security intact.
Personally I do not "like" java. Smells too much like gaggles of mainframes. But it's probably the only feasible way to bring massive COBOL systems into the current millenium.
I'm curious where Nintendo would be today if they had won. How many current owners would not be owners if it hadn't been available as a cheap rental?
When it comes from the Economist, of course.
It may be restating what has been obvious, but the writers are competent enough that the exact phrasing does matter. (Not as much as with Greenspan, but the idea is the same;)
An interesting quote at the end.
"The main attraction of open source, as he says, is the fact that it is "great for innovation", not its questionable claim to be free."
You can solve yesterday's problems on tomorrow's computers quite cheaply. You can run yourself out of business that way too. The new stuff allows you to tackle problems you couldn't before. If your competitors do and you don't, bye bye. Sun's value lies in places where the cheap stuff doesn't have places. And it's not as simple as hardware/software prices/support. There's some critical stuff that cannot and does not show up in the specs, and it's not cheap.
Like the OK button, when it's most definitely NOT OK?
If nobody deletes anything, how are we supposed to keep track of which information is still correct?
Date it.
If it's known to be wrong, just place a dated notice, or better a (dated) link to the superceding page.
Of course you can keep the URL and update the content.
If you think about it, deleting stuff cannot give any real assistance in keeping track of which information is still correct.
Any salient bits in the article will be repeated in the commentary. Lots of salient bits that are not in the article will show up in the commentary.
The New York Times does not present its readers with information overload. You do not have to finish something to figure out you don't want to start reading it. Ever notice how a reporter's story always seems to fit the allocated space? It doesn't, really. Only what fits sees print. The remainder is just left out. The readers will read until they have read enough. At which point they will stop and go onto something else. Probably a less there for a lot of other things.
To paraphrase an IBM ad from some time back.
You're both right.
There are large and fundamental differences between:
1) making thousands of them which need to all work reliably without any fuss and feathers, and
2) hacking one out of whatever is lying around which might work and which probably has some ifs, ands and buts.
Progress actually requires both.
The comment about working with possibly broken parts is referring to the difficulty in debugging a system in which you aren't sure if the components work. (Think programming and using a half broken API - you won't know if the problem is in your code or the code you're calling).
Kinda like the real world, isn't it?
But really - what did he do?
:-(
He made a cool hack. Literally. With a hacksaw, yet.
EE's maybe do this stuff in their sleep, but I for one found it interesting and entertaining. (Not that I really understand all that he's talking about
I didn't. I meant the one next year or so that nobody knows anything about yet.
Wise. Methinks SCO has put themselves into a position from which they cannot support you. Anything major and they will be unable to round up the required help. A lot of old unix hands have been insulted. I doubt that they'll be responding very favorably.
The part about the delays in the sendmail security patch was not at all favorable.
What about the delays in the next sendmail security patch?
possibly more vulnerable to sabotage given malicious third parties.
Now you see the real reason for the religious flame wars. The "enemy" would love to slip in something harmless but very embarassing. Any patches from unreliable sources will tend to be heavily scrutinized. You can offer your patches, but that doen't mean they will even look at them, let alone accept them. They have no obligation to be reasonable, for almost all definitions of reasonable.
Christ, if that's simple, I'd hate to hear you describe complicated. :-(
Reality. It's reality that's complicated. Algebraic topology is simple. As simple as it can be. It's the real world that's complicated. Doesn't mean I'm capable of understanding it though
Doesn't SCO have a tactical nightmare supporting their existing Caldera Linux customer base? The mind boggles at the implications if they actually have to do something.
Methinks the real threat in this mess boomarangs back on SCO. How does SCO manage to support their existing customers? Short term, stuff pretty well runs on inertia, but if I were running SCO or Caldera I'd be starting to get very nervous. Despite (because of?) various flame wars between various flavors of unix-like systems, there is a large amount of fundamental cross-system support that SCO has cut itself out of. (Methinks FUD started with PHBs being deathly afraid of doing anything to annoy IBM because IBM could, while honoring the letter of all agreements, effectively grind their operation to a halt.)
U-turn on a narrow 2-lane highway at highway speeds. Your persuers have to slow down. Stop. Turn around. And then get back up to speed.
Right. Methinks hacking is a matter of persistence rather than training. ;)
The media gets it wrong because of their limited idea of what anyone would want to do with a strange computer system. (The media doesn't get any other field "right" either
C Hacker? Right.
Unix Hacker? Right.
Kernel Hacker? Right.
PL/I Hacker? Never heard of it.
MVS Hacker? Never heard of it.
COBOL Hacker? You gotta be kidding.
the perceived "skill" required to write a virus is blown way out of proportion.
But how do we protect ourselves when people with skills start writing malware? Methinks the main advantage would be a quarantined lab environment where the dynamics of propagation could be studied.
training hackers is an oxymoron
So is "trained reflexes", but I doubt you'd survive landing a plane on carrier without them.
No one is entirely self-educated or entirely other-educated.
IEFBR14 is, conceptually at least, a 2-byte program consisting of just BR 14. It is called and then just returns. It's like Hello World, but without the IO.
6 APARs on IEFBR14 does lend a lot of credence to "No such thing as a completely debugged program."
The Taliban wanted to make it a war of Muslim against the USA.
Personally, I do NOT want to support the Taliban or their ideas of what is right. Figure that the enemy is the lunatic fringe. Of ANY persuasion.
This is not a matter of religous zealotry, it a matter of plain theft!
But whose theft?
"The exact terms of final settlement, and much of the judicial record, were sealed at Novell's insistence."
"The University of California then threatened to countersue over license violations by AT&T and USL. It seems that from as far back as before 1985, the historical Bell Labs codebase had been incorporating large amounts of software from the BSD sources. The University's cause of action lay in the fact that AT&T, USL and Novell had routinely violated the terms of the BSD license by removing license attributions and copyrights."
Methinks it gets very interesting if that stuff gets unsealed.
Doesn't have that ring about it, but it's far more likely.
The only plausible protection is diversity and in general making things so that people are aware of what's happening rather than having everything hidden.
The Unix Honor Virus would be extremely effective, if only the victims would actualy fall for it.