I'm not a security expert, but this looks like an American government security certification. Why does the submitter link to Australian Computerworld? Why not the American version, which also carried the newswire story? Because Australians are insensitive clods?
And what exactly IS the point of validating Ubuntu or whatever as genuine windows anyway??? The point is that it's a very nerdy thing to do. Whether it actually makes sense to do it is a secondary concern. Besides, Linux being validated as 'Genuine Windows' is pretty damn funny so the humor value alone is another good reason to do it.
I expect most actually-Beta (as opposed to "Beta") software doesn't have a shiny link on the front of the company's website to an equally shiny page boasting about how great it is (and with a notable lack of warning that it may crash your computer or help script kiddies hack you - in fact, it boasts about great its security is). Sure, the warnings are in the EULA, but how may people actually read that? Most Beta software also doesn't get the sort of publiclity that this did... ... if the software doesn't come from Google: 'Beta software'=='Unstable, bug ridden and insecure''
The term Beta software used to be a synonym for 'Unstable, bug ridden and insecure'. Unfortunately Google has devalued the meaning of the term to the point where you and others seem to think it is normal for 'Beta software' to be stable, bug-less and secure. Not everybody has followed Google's lead in never taking products out of Beta state even after they are long since mature so you will have to get used to what that means.
And when it crashes every time on startup, how does it accomplish any of that? I have the same problem; crashes every time I try to launch it. It gets only as far as displaying the menu and address bars. I've uninstalled/reinstalled it, to no avail. It crashes sometimes on my iMac as well. Safari definately has some issues that Apple should address. .... If you want stability don't download Beta software.
President Bill Clinton refused to forward the protocol to Congress for ratification. Vice President Al Gore wanted language including developing nations in the accords, and when the language was not added he withdrew his support for the treaty. Only after President Bush was elected did Mr. Gore call for total adoption of the Kyoto treaty as it is. Before we lob accusations about what "Shrub" has or has not done, we should consider why we are in this situation. In the 90's, Vice President Al Gore knew that the most risky source of an increase in emissions came from developing nations, not "USians." That and the crippling restrictions on US business were all the justification he needed to kill the treaty in the United States. He was right. That's right, let's not think any further than the next fiscal quarter. It's not as if suffering the economic consequences of doing something to fix the problem now would be preferable (and cheaper) than dealing with it in half a century from now when things have gotten _really_ bad. I honestly don't care who is personally responsible for the backward attitude of the last few US administrations towards environmental issues in general. The fact remains that as a dominant world power the US, as well as the EU, Russia and China as the other leading world powers and major polluters have an obligation _to_be_seen_ to be making an effort to clean up their act before expecting the third world countries to do so and the only one who has shown _any_ willingness to do this so far is the EU. Not that EU politicians are any less weasely than their US colleagues, they have become environmentally conscious largely because in Europe, it is about as bad a career move for a politician to be indifferent towards the issue of greenhouse gas emission and environmental issues in general, as it is for one of his US counterparts to be in favor gun control laws and abortions. If the USA honestly expects developing nations to build up their infrastructure in an environmentally responsible way while USA it self is allowed to chuck along on purchased pollution credits without making any real effort to reduce emissions nobody will take it seriously and least of all the scientific community.
And troll tribes tend to kill each other on sight, so I'd advise the patent trolls to stay clear of the Darkspear trolls;) Troll #1: So.. What sort critter be this? Troll #2: Dunno... It wave this paper and shrieks "Patant violitor!" and no want to shut up, so I just spear him. Troll #1: Mmmm... Ya think it be fit for eatin? Troll #2: Dunno, it looking scrawny. Troll #1: (Cuts off an arm and takes a bite.) Ptui!...(Spits out chunk of flesh). Troll #2: No good.. huh? Troll #1: It spoiled methinks....
Some senators were skeptical, especially Ted Stevens of Alaska Creating a new pipe would nullify his "clogged tubes" argument against net neutrality! So? Put some weed in his pipe and light it, he'll soon change his mind.
They need to hire some Perl and 60's-style-COBOL programmers who know how to read tangled code;-) My experience with Perl developers is that writing tangled code isn't a problem for them. It's reading, even their own, tangled code that they find difficult. I sat down with a Perl guru where I worked some years ago trying to debug a particularly nasty piece of Perl code. The whole time he kept going on about "Who writes code like this!?!" until we looked it up in the CVS repository and it turned out it was he himself who wrote that particular block a few years earlier. Syntactic flexibility is nice but it has a downside.
What does it take to start writing programs for Linux? That depends on what you want to do. If you are wanting to develop in Java, PHP, Perl, Python or (dare I say it).NET you are best of setting up some super user friendly distribution like SLED or Ubuntu and using a GUI tool like Eclipse or NetBeans.
If you want to move into the murky world of C/C++ development these are IMHO the basic tools:
vim/emacs: Popular command line text editors, deciding which one to choose is like choosing a religion. There are also a few excellent GUI suites.
make: Automate compiling.
gdb: The GNU debugger.
gcc: GNU project C complier.
g++: GNU project C++ compiler.
cscope: Search and navigate through huge code trees.
man: Linux manual pages, the cause of much head scratching.
grep: Limited substitute for some of the stuff cscope does. I love the '-r' option failing that use: find/directory -exec grep "pattern" {} \; -print
doxygen: Like javadoc but less language specific.
goolge code search: Indispensable if you are stuck or need hints on which is the best way to proceed. It allows you to compare different solutions other people have used.
There are many more tools but those are good start. It also helps to have a thick skin, getting to know which library does what, being persistent and making heavy use of search engines rather than posting every problem to mailing lists and newsgroups. Also remember that a lot of enterprise grade software can be had for free under various conditions. Just to name two examples... OS X actually ships with the Xcode development suite and Oracle offers various developer suites as well as many of it's products for download under a development license if you sign up for an Oracle account.
Both Firefox and Opera are available on OS X as well yet most people use Safari. Personally, I don't have any use for any of the extra features in Opera of Firefox extensions. I can only second that. With all due respect to the people at Ars, it seems to me that more often than not, whenever a bunch of nerds get together to evaluate a product, they tend to rate it chiefly by how many bells and whistles it has. Myself, I may be a nerd, but I prefer simplicity. Firefox has some features I like, most of the rest I have no use for. However, even the one Firefox feature that was at the top of my cool features list, the 'Find/Search' bar, didn't manage to make me give up Safari 2. The only gripe I have with Safari 3 Beta now that Apple has shamelessly copied the Find/Search bar (although they did put it at the top of the page which IMHO is more convenient) is the fact that the Find/Search bar conks out on some pages that are heavy on frames and the fact that Safari does not seem to have support for displaying raw XML with syntax highlighting. For a Beta this thing is also surprisingly stable.
You mean like people with electric cars? Should we tax batteries too? How about putting a black box in cars that works like an aircraft's flight recorder based on the gear they use in race cars? It would be possible to calculate the road use quite accurately and into the bargain it would considerably help the fair assessment of insurance claims in the event of an accident if the device also recorded statistics like speed, acceleration and metrics on changes of direction. In the event of tampering there would be fines and if data was lost through malfunction one could use an assessment process based on the drivers prior history. Personally I wouldn't mind a bit if there was a CCTV camera in my car as well that buffered, say the last 5 minutes of my trip and stored them in the event of an impact as well as metrics on how I was driving. I rarely drive aggressively and never like an idiot zig-zagging between lanes, way over the speed limit, cutting people off left right and center in a fit of permanent road rage. Thus, I have nothing to lose but I suspect that even the mere suggestion of getting tax breaks and lower insurance rates if you install a simplified version of a race-car type black-box trip recorder (sans camera) in your car would cause outrage and popular rebellion among some of the other people I meet in traffic while driving to work:-D
The U.N. Security Council, along with pretty much everyone with half a brain living in most of the civilized world, used their own mental heuristics to correctly predict the outcome of the disaster in Iraq. The neo-conservatives in the U.S. and, inexplicably, Great Britain, were the only ones talking about a "cakewalk". Ever since Suez the UK has been very careful to sail in the wake of the USA and this time they simply did the same they have always done. The problem is that they have never spent any time on thinking whether it would be a good idea to do so, the UK never had to since the USA has never had a regime before that is quite as clumsy as this one when it comes to threat assessment and strategic planning.
The problems with these systems have nothing to do with the consumer-experience-enhancing DRM software installed in Vista. We will sue anybody who says otherwise. ... otherwise.... otherwise....
There! That's thrice I've said it... Now sue me! Or at least throw some chairs in my direction. I could use some firewood, I just ran out of Microsoft® marketing pamphlets.
No one would ever use MS Office, or Visual Studio, or Windows, if there wasn't sufficient quality therein to justify the expense of staying. There are huge flaws and gaping shortcomings, to be sure, but somehow MS still manages to have enough quality over the free alerternatives that they stay in business. According to Sun's CEO, pretty much the same seems to be happening with Office suites as happened with Linux on the server OS market. More and more students are using OOo and many of them will be making decisions about which software to deploy in corporations in years to come and MS Office won't always be the neurologically hard-wired default choice like it is today. Whether this will lead to OOo becoming the threat to MS Office, that Linux is to Windows 2003/Vista Server is another story but the presence of OOo isn't helping Microsoft to sell their Office Suite and it certainly is among the only real competitors MS Office has had in the Office Suite market for years. The mere fact that OOo is being ported to Aqua with support from Sun has me (a Mac user) breathing a sigh of relief since OOo will finally become practically usable on the Mac (The X11 port is nice but really annoying to use) which gives me an alternative to MS Office plus it means there will finally be a real incentive for Microsoft's Mac Division to improve their product..
Whilst people will buy it as a fashion statement, it's going to struggle as it's previous generation in some ways. It's biggest problem is it doesn't support 3G which for many people is a must have feature. I really don't see what all the hullabaloo about 3G is all about. Yes it's faster than EDGE and yes it's being hyped^W marketed quite furiously. However, when I think about it, I know very few people who use their GSM phone for more than occasional surfing. Surfing generally sucks on GSM phones. Firstly because of screen size restrictions, even on PDA phones with large screens web browsers are of limited use. Secondly many websites simply become useless when accessed from mobile browsers because they use features these browsers don't support. Admittedly this would be less of a problem if providers of material and services that appeal to the mobile browsing public such as ticket-resellers, news papers, TV stations, various information directories, companies that offer online street-map services, etc... were more aggressive at creating versions of their sites and services optimized for mobile customers. Hell, even the public transport company where I live doesn't offer a website where I can access bus and subway schedules in a format easily readable and searchable from a Mobile browser. Yes, I know that some players in the industries I named do offer mobile optimized sites and services but they are far to few and not everybody lives in major cities like San Francisco or New York which are the markets to which these companies often limit their attention. Basically I think that the iPhone won't really take off until the price drops or the 'iPhone Nano' hits the streets which ever happens first. When that happens I fail to see why it shouldn't enjoy at least a modest amount of popularity especially with Mac zealots such as myself. The iPhone will be fully integrated into OS X and up to and including the ability to update the firmware which is something no other GSM phone to my knowledge can offer at the moment. As for 3G I can't really see how anybody would really __need__ it unless they are planning to watch TV on their phone. For the needs of most mobile internet users EDGE is pretty adequate and will remain adequate for the likely 3-4 year lifetime of a first generation iPhone.
It is important to note, that in the EU, you have a right to make your products compatible, even if it takes reverse engineering. This right you can not in any way give up in any contract (according to EU law). So if he makes the product in the EU, then he is bound by EU law and can publish the product and even sell it, all he want. This is a fairly complicated issue. According to a legal lecture on the subject which I attended recently it seems that in much of Europe reverse engineering is permitted under extraordinary circumstances which surprised me since I always thought (or assumed to be honest) that reverse engineering was completely forbidden by law. These laws vary by country and the laws permitting this aren't unrestricted in the degree of reverse engineering they allow although a lot of people seem to assume they are. If, for example, you want to create a mail client capable of communicating with a Microsoft Exchange server and Microsoft is (hypothetically) flat-out refusing to furnish you with technological documentation at all (I have never written an Exchange enabled mail client so I don't know how difficult they make the process) there are countries whose laws will give you a case for reverse engineering the protocols involved etc. other countries are more conservative in this. However, even if you think you have a legal case, if Microsoft lawyers up locally and sues you in your home country, you still have to show that they were being totally unreasonable towards you in your attempts to obtain documentation in order for your claim of forced reverse engineering to stand up in court. I don't claim to be a legal weasel, and there is probably a lot more to be said about this issue than I have done here, but I think we can conclude that reverse engineering the products of a major software giant is risky business that can become very expensive even if you have the law on your side.
....just like any proto-dictator, Putin needs an enemy for their country to hate and the US with its utterly terrible foreign policy seems to be perfect for it. And GWB needs a new flashpoint to distract the US electorate from the mess he is making of everything else so in effect this is mutually beneficial situation.
One good way to deal with it is to cooperate on the technology with the Russians, so they can build the defensive systems themselves. If anything the Russians are just as good at making air defense systems as the west. Their SAM systems in particular were considerably more effective throughout the cold war than western equivalents. The USAF and the Israelis learned that the really painful way and Russia still manages to produce pretty lethal SAM systems today even if one only judges by the shrieks the Israelis let out every time they sell some to countries to an Arab country. I don't think the Russians particularly need technological help to create their own missile defense system. At the moment it's more of a question of them not having enough money to build a star-wars project. The Russian economy may have recovered to the point where Russia can afford to build new strategic bombers and commit to much needed upgrades of it's air, ground and naval forces but it's still far away from being able to build a star-wars program.
I don't think it has anything to do with any of this. This anti-missile system (which probably doesn't work anyway) is supposed to protect against a threat which doesn't even exist. The main problem Putin and others have with it is the perceived loss of face. In other words the Russian and probably the Chinese leadership as well is just as delusional as that of the USA. Why am I not surprised?:-D
This might be exacerbated by the fact that some factions in Russia haven't gotten over the dismemberment of the USSR and still view the former satellite states as their playground even though a lot of them are now part of the EU (which for some obscure reason still seems to allow the deployment of the US toys on its territory). That's what they used to call 'spheres of influence'. The US seems to think that the Russian and Chinese spheres of influence end at their national borders and that everything else is in the US sphere of influence. Mind you, this isn't as silly as it sounds. For a long time after the end of the cold war this was a de facto reality; the USA became the dominant world power. However, now that the economy of Russia is beginning to recover and that of China is booming, their power will grow correspondingly and as it does they are slowly beginning to redefine their spheres of influence and friction with the USA will increasingly ensue.
Mac Arthur was an egomaniac and no one other than Mac Arthur got credit for anything, regardless of whether they were American or Australian. The size of MacArthur's ego is legendary. I once saw a film about President Truman. In one scene they were discussing MA being put in charge of the occupation forces in Japan and somebody mentioned that the Emperor of Japan had to regularly report to MA whereupon one of president's people made a really good sarcastic comment that went something like:
"I'd sure like to be a fly on that wall... It isn't every day you get to see one divinity talking to another.
I don't know whether that conversation ever happened in reality but that quote sure sums up what many people who knew him seem to have thought of MacArthur.
Todo List: [x] Eliminate SPAM From Internet [ ] Bring peace to Middle East [ ] Make $1,000,000,000 I can help you with that last one. You see, my uncle died recently and he was really rich, but I'm having some trouble getting the money out of the country.............. ...hold your breath. He won't be getting past item #2 on his list any time soon.
It's like Bruce Schneier has said many times, if you're spending time and effort in trying to prevent hollywood movie-style terrorist attacks instead of the routine, more effective (and much more likely) types of attacks, then you're probably wasting your time and resources. We're far more likely to end up with car bombs blowing up bridges or suicide bombers blowing themselves up at shopping malls than we are to end up with some exotic antrhax-infected mutant sharks with laserbeams. Hell, a handful of Beslan-style school attacks executed simultaneously across the US would probably have as big of an impact as 9/11 (look what happened with the relatively minor Virginia Tech incident), and it would probably be easier to implement too. I agree, and the scary part is that all you need for such attacks is readily available in the US. Military grade automatic weapons can be bought on the black market or if you are handy enough to convert them to full automatic you can buy them over the counter in some states with minimal effort. As long as they are smart enough to cover their tracks, not make bulk purchases and pick frontmen who don't have "islamic fundamentalist" written all over them terrorists can easily build up a considerable arsenal in the USA. Just imagine to what new hights a group of armor wearing and combat trained Al Quaeda activists carrying AK-47's with 100 round snail drum magazines (anybody remember the North Hollywood shootout?) and some satchel charges and nail bombs thrown in for good measure could take highschool massacres. Even if Al Quaeda only let loose, say..... 8-10 sniper teams in various cities in the USA, judging by how difficult it was to apprehend Beltway Snipers, the terror effect should be considerable. Al Quaeda doesn't need to raid super secret laboratories in Russia or the USA for high tech biological weapons of futuristic fusion bombs to terrorize the US population. They are, as you pointed out, far more likely to do what they did with 9/11 which was to combine and/or improve previously successful conventional tactics to achieve even greater effect.
Yeah, but the single-button still sucks. Apple is usually very good at ergonomics but the control click was one of the things they got colossally wrong. Fortunately they finally fixed this shortcoming with one of he 10.4.x updates IIRC. To get right-click functionality on a MacBook (this also works for some PowerBooks it seems), put two fingers on the trackpad and press the single trackpad-button. If anything this is better than having two buttons on the trackpad since one can keep one's thumb resting in the same place on that much maligned single pad button and all one has to do to get right-click is to move the middle finger 1cm downward onto the trackpad. So in effect Apple's designers have, by means of a simple modification, turned the single trackpad button which previously sucked ass into something that is actually quite comfortable and clever. Incidentally one can also scroll if one places two fingers anywhere on the trackpad which IMHO beats the concept seen on many PC laptops of putting 'scroll zones' at the edges of the pad. Of course your milage may and probably does vary... I'm sure this trivial topic is food for many long and bitter flame-wars.
They phrased it very badly. C isn't going anywhere. But if all you know is C, then you are very rare.
Most programmers who know C also know at least one other language. I agree. Basically any programmer who only knows one language is in trouble and I don't care what the language is or how fashionable it is at the moment. Excessive specialization is professonal death, you have to keep learning all the time and soak up new technologies and languages as they appear. C developers are almost guaranteed to be proficient at C++ at the very least and they shouldn't have any real trouble moving on to programming in Java as long as they have done some Object Oriented C++ development. People who have avoided OOP and used C++ only for procedural programming will find the transition to Java or C# harder. I also agree that C programming (and programming in Assembly for that matter) isn't going to die out any time soon. It may be getting less common but C is still the language of choice for anybody who wants to write lean and fast code that can't afford any bloat.
Slashdot Mirror
ZFS On Linux - It's Alive!! IT IS ALIVE!!! MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
The manic laughter is especially important!
The term Beta software used to be a synonym for 'Unstable, bug ridden and insecure'. Unfortunately Google has devalued the meaning of the term to the point where you and others seem to think it is normal for 'Beta software' to be stable, bug-less and secure. Not everybody has followed Google's lead in never taking products out of Beta state even after they are long since mature so you will have to get used to what that means.
Troll #2: Dunno... It wave this paper and shrieks "Patant violitor!" and no want to shut up, so I just spear him.
Troll #1: Mmmm... Ya think it be fit for eatin?
Troll #2: Dunno, it looking scrawny.
Troll #1: (Cuts off an arm and takes a bite.) Ptui!...(Spits out chunk of flesh).
Troll #2: No good.. huh?
Troll #1: It spoiled methinks....
If you want to move into the murky world of C/C++ development these are IMHO the basic tools:
There are many more tools but those are good start. It also helps to have a thick skin, getting to know which library does what, being persistent and making heavy use of search engines rather than posting every problem to mailing lists and newsgroups. Also remember that a lot of enterprise grade software can be had for free under various conditions. Just to name two examples... OS X actually ships with the Xcode development suite and Oracle offers various developer suites as well as many of it's products for download under a development license if you sign up for an Oracle account.
There! That's thrice I've said it... Now sue me! Or at least throw some chairs in my direction. I could use some firewood, I just ran out of Microsoft® marketing pamphlets.
....just like any proto-dictator, Putin needs an enemy for their country to hate and the US with its utterly terrible foreign policy seems to be perfect for it. And GWB needs a new flashpoint to distract the US electorate from the mess he is making of everything else so in effect this is mutually beneficial situation. One good way to deal with it is to cooperate on the technology with the Russians, so they can build the defensive systems themselves. If anything the Russians are just as good at making air defense systems as the west. Their SAM systems in particular were considerably more effective throughout the cold war than western equivalents. The USAF and the Israelis learned that the really painful way and Russia still manages to produce pretty lethal SAM systems today even if one only judges by the shrieks the Israelis let out every time they sell some to countries to an Arab country. I don't think the Russians particularly need technological help to create their own missile defense system. At the moment it's more of a question of them not having enough money to build a star-wars project. The Russian economy may have recovered to the point where Russia can afford to build new strategic bombers and commit to much needed upgrades of it's air, ground and naval forces but it's still far away from being able to build a star-wars program."I'd sure like to be a fly on that wall... It isn't every day you get to see one divinity talking to another.
I don't know whether that conversation ever happened in reality but that quote sure sums up what many people who knew him seem to have thought of MacArthur.
[x] Eliminate SPAM From Internet
[ ] Bring peace to Middle East
[ ] Make $1,000,000,000 I can help you with that last one. You see, my uncle died recently and he was really rich, but I'm having some trouble getting the money out of the country.............. ...hold your breath. He won't be getting past item #2 on his list any time soon.
Most programmers who know C also know at least one other language. I agree. Basically any programmer who only knows one language is in trouble and I don't care what the language is or how fashionable it is at the moment. Excessive specialization is professonal death, you have to keep learning all the time and soak up new technologies and languages as they appear. C developers are almost guaranteed to be proficient at C++ at the very least and they shouldn't have any real trouble moving on to programming in Java as long as they have done some Object Oriented C++ development. People who have avoided OOP and used C++ only for procedural programming will find the transition to Java or C# harder. I also agree that C programming (and programming in Assembly for that matter) isn't going to die out any time soon. It may be getting less common but C is still the language of choice for anybody who wants to write lean and fast code that can't afford any bloat.