Microsoft is like the Borg. They assimilate developers, leech what they can from their technology, and then destroy them. I think I could count the number of Microsoft products and technologies that were developed from scratch in-house on my fingers.
Google, on the other hand, has a track record of developing innovative and intelligently executed projects. I'm sure Google has some sort of motive in hiring the lead developer of Firefox, and I think I can safely say that whatever is brewing is going to be cool.
Hey, thanks, I'll take that advice and (try to) apply it. Besides the timed races being somewhat impossible to get through for me, I find it annoying in the head to head races how the crash penalty for the computer is practically zero. I never get more than one second ahead. But if I crash, the computer is automatically 10 seconds ahead...I swear the developer is a total masochist.
Except I went in the other direction. I'm an amateur programmer who's been doing a lot of stuff in ASP at work. Then I tried PHP, and I found it to be far more consistent, easier to use, and free of a lot of superfluous typing (echo() instead of response.write(), If{} instead of If, End If, etc. Don't even get me started on database access...) Yeah I know, it's not a big deal to a lot of you, but remember I have never done any C programming. PHP was just a breath of fresh air.
Please, give me some credit. To see the IP address you must either be running the tracker or be a member of the swarm yourself. In either of these scenarios, those that are prosecuting this guy had to be participating in the distribution of their own movies. So I ask again, how and why was this guy caught?
Too bad the article is so anemic on details. BitTorrent is a relatively decentralized network. Even if you are running the trackers and watching what everyone is doing, there's any number of people connected in various states of downloading. Why did they decide on this guy, and how did they catch him? Anyone?
Because the time of Disney as a creative center is over (well, more so now than in the past. How many movies based on original stories do they have again? Disney growing fat off of others' "IP" is for another post, however)
Disney's greatest animated successes lately has been stuff they've never touched short of distribution (Spirited Away, Incredibles, etc)
With stinkers like Mulan, Hercules, and the Emperor's New Groove, can we really expect that Disney would come up with a good story on their own for Tron 2? Of course not. So instead they will probably take Tron and totally bastardize it with a bunch of kiddie elements, Jar-Jar style. I have no high hopes for the remake.
I was at CES all day on Saturday, and lo and behold, what was in the nVidia booth? Well apparently Infinium Labs had a rep showing off the Phantom console there. I thought that was very interesting considering the fact that it won this year's Wired Vaporware Award.
So needless to say, a friend of mine and I started grilling the poor guy. Naturally the first thing we wanted to know was how much the subcription fee was. His answer: "I am a hardware guy". Ok, fine, so now we wanted to know if the game content was exclusive or if it was just (under)glorified PC. He said that the Phantom would run anything a PC would and is directly loaded over the 'Net. So basically that left us with the impression that the Phantom was basically a PC in a fancy box pre-packaged with a Steam-like delivery system. I starting asking about the guts, and found out that they are farming out the board design to BIOStar, but I didn't get any word on what the BIOS would be like. That is, if it was encrypted Xbox style or pretty left alone. However, the indication I got was that it would be pretty well locked down. I also asked how the system would handle a hard disk crash, and he said the hard disk could be replaced and the content would automatically load itself back on the drive. I commented "so it takes you what, a day and half to get to your stuff loaded again", to which he replied, "Well, how often does your hard disk crash?", to which I shot back "Well, if it's a Maxtor, once every two weeks."
Then he wanted to know what kind of hard disk I would recommend to put into it. I said Seagate and he seemed to agree with me. So if Seagate ends up in the Phantom, it's because of me!:)
Yes, but why reinvent the wheel? I don't think a program exists that is not written using common libraries or APIs made available by the host OS. A programmer trying to avoid using such things would have to be some sort of masochist.
Believe me, I've always done so when I could. But what is the best way to wipe out a drive that won't spin or has had an onboard controller failure?
Seems to me that if you don't want to risk giving up your data it's not a good idea to RMA the drive at all. I suppose you could put a bulk eraser on top of the drive and hope for the best...
I had a 60GXP that was giving me problems. Maybe the newer ones are more reliable, but you know how it goes...Once someone gets burned by a particular brand of drive they swear off of it for awhile. I personally am a Seagate whore, but I'm sure some people have had bad experiences with Seagates and won't touch them.
All hard disks have magnets in them - Incredibly powerful neodymium ones. They are shielded, of course, but their purpose is to move the disc heads by reacting with the magnetic field of the voice coil located at the back of the head arm. When HD's die I always pop them open and the magnets out. They make GREAT refrigerator magnets and disc erasers!
I won't touch Hitachis. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the last DeathStar I owned. That's nothing compared to a friend of mine though, who had to turn in his 75GXP 4 times under warranty before he finally figured it wasn't worth the trouble and scrapped the drive. The magnets that came out of it are more useful than that drive ever was.
Yes, I know I was burned by IBM rather than Hitachi, but when I was asking some techs who still work in the tranches about it, saying that they were not big fans of Hitachi drives would be putting it lightly.
What is with this happy pill culture we're getting into? Are you tired and depressed? Take this pill. Are you fat? Don't exercise, take this and lose weight while you sleep. Kids hyper because you plant them in front of the TV all day? Must have ADD, here's a pill. Jesus, the world is starting to look like an Isaac Asimov novel.
And now, we have "smart pills". I can't wait to see where THIS goes.
I wasn't under the impression that DJB had anything to do with the Slashdot article, actually. I was just pointing out that nobody will ever say "Students of DJB find security vulnerabilities" on the title of any article...And judging from the submission, not even the students will say as such.
Now since you're in the class, you obviously have a better feeling for what's going on here than I do. So, is it indeed true that DJB wanted each student to find 10 holes? And is not finding 10 an automatic failure? If so, and you have not fulfilled the requirement, how do you feel about failing the class even though you presumably have a solid grasp on the subject material, and have performed well on all other assignments?
Does it really matter that you found some software bugs if you take home a failing grade? You can flash the email that DJB sent to a prospective employer, but then right afterwards have to say "I failed the class"
I doubt the submitter had any reason to embellish his accomplishments in the article submission. If I were him, and I put in 300 of work and got an A on all exams, and I got a failing grade because I couldn't accomplish what is pretty much an impossible task, you can bet I would be beating down the doors of the administration building. I do not understand why anyone in your class is any less than outraged.
My apologies. You are not the only person who mentioned that. I simply was not clear enough. Please see my comment that I made to another user who brought up the same issue. I hope it clarifies what I was trying to get at in my original statement.
I know. I saw the emails DJB sent out. And yet, the title of the article says "DJB Announces 44 Security Holes In *nix Software". Press releases, if any, I'm sure will fail to mention any of the students, and DJB will be the point man they always quote.
In this fashion, as is typical with academia, the professors take the credit for their students' grunt work. That is what I was getting at. I should have been more clear.
All the students will get is something to attach to their resume. Or will they? After all, they failed the class.
The homework for the course was to find and exploit 10 previously undiscovered security holes in currently deployed Unix software.
10 for each student? I doubt DJB himself could find 10 on his own inside of a semester.
In a class of 25, 44 security holes seems a bit low. Most of the class failed. I was credited with bsb2ppm (actually libbsb) and jpegtoavi. After 300 hours of work and an A average on the exams, I expect to fail the course.
I guess the whispers I've been hearing about DJB being a complete asshole are true. It is always nice to have your academic future dictated by such people to your disadvantage, even though you may be a cut above the teacher himself. And in the meantime he will take credit for your work while simultaneously failing you. Thank you, sir, for reminding me why I dropped out of college.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is like the Borg. They assimilate developers, leech what they can from their technology, and then destroy them. I think I could count the number of Microsoft products and technologies that were developed from scratch in-house on my fingers.
Google, on the other hand, has a track record of developing innovative and intelligently executed projects. I'm sure Google has some sort of motive in hiring the lead developer of Firefox, and I think I can safely say that whatever is brewing is going to be cool.
Hey, thanks, I'll take that advice and (try to) apply it. Besides the timed races being somewhat impossible to get through for me, I find it annoying in the head to head races how the crash penalty for the computer is practically zero. I never get more than one second ahead. But if I crash, the computer is automatically 10 seconds ahead...I swear the developer is a total masochist.
Loved the crash mode, but is it just me or are the races freakin impossible?
Except I went in the other direction. I'm an amateur programmer who's been doing a lot of stuff in ASP at work. Then I tried PHP, and I found it to be far more consistent, easier to use, and free of a lot of superfluous typing (echo() instead of response.write(), If{} instead of If, End If, etc. Don't even get me started on database access...) Yeah I know, it's not a big deal to a lot of you, but remember I have never done any C programming. PHP was just a breath of fresh air.
Please, give me some credit. To see the IP address you must either be running the tracker or be a member of the swarm yourself. In either of these scenarios, those that are prosecuting this guy had to be participating in the distribution of their own movies. So I ask again, how and why was this guy caught?
Too bad the article is so anemic on details. BitTorrent is a relatively decentralized network. Even if you are running the trackers and watching what everyone is doing, there's any number of people connected in various states of downloading. Why did they decide on this guy, and how did they catch him? Anyone?
Because the time of Disney as a creative center is over (well, more so now than in the past. How many movies based on original stories do they have again? Disney growing fat off of others' "IP" is for another post, however)
Disney's greatest animated successes lately has been stuff they've never touched short of distribution (Spirited Away, Incredibles, etc)
With stinkers like Mulan, Hercules, and the Emperor's New Groove, can we really expect that Disney would come up with a good story on their own for Tron 2? Of course not. So instead they will probably take Tron and totally bastardize it with a bunch of kiddie elements, Jar-Jar style. I have no high hopes for the remake.
I was at CES all day on Saturday, and lo and behold, what was in the nVidia booth? Well apparently Infinium Labs had a rep showing off the Phantom console there. I thought that was very interesting considering the fact that it won this year's Wired Vaporware Award.
:)
So needless to say, a friend of mine and I started grilling the poor guy. Naturally the first thing we wanted to know was how much the subcription fee was. His answer: "I am a hardware guy". Ok, fine, so now we wanted to know if the game content was exclusive or if it was just (under)glorified PC. He said that the Phantom would run anything a PC would and is directly loaded over the 'Net. So basically that left us with the impression that the Phantom was basically a PC in a fancy box pre-packaged with a Steam-like delivery system. I starting asking about the guts, and found out that they are farming out the board design to BIOStar, but I didn't get any word on what the BIOS would be like. That is, if it was encrypted Xbox style or pretty left alone. However, the indication I got was that it would be pretty well locked down. I also asked how the system would handle a hard disk crash, and he said the hard disk could be replaced and the content would automatically load itself back on the drive. I commented "so it takes you what, a day and half to get to your stuff loaded again", to which he replied, "Well, how often does your hard disk crash?", to which I shot back "Well, if it's a Maxtor, once every two weeks."
Then he wanted to know what kind of hard disk I would recommend to put into it. I said Seagate and he seemed to agree with me. So if Seagate ends up in the Phantom, it's because of me!
Yes, but why reinvent the wheel? I don't think a program exists that is not written using common libraries or APIs made available by the host OS. A programmer trying to avoid using such things would have to be some sort of masochist.
Believe me, I've always done so when I could. But what is the best way to wipe out a drive that won't spin or has had an onboard controller failure?
Seems to me that if you don't want to risk giving up your data it's not a good idea to RMA the drive at all. I suppose you could put a bulk eraser on top of the drive and hope for the best...
I had a 60GXP that was giving me problems. Maybe the newer ones are more reliable, but you know how it goes...Once someone gets burned by a particular brand of drive they swear off of it for awhile. I personally am a Seagate whore, but I'm sure some people have had bad experiences with Seagates and won't touch them.
All hard disks have magnets in them - Incredibly powerful neodymium ones. They are shielded, of course, but their purpose is to move the disc heads by reacting with the magnetic field of the voice coil located at the back of the head arm. When HD's die I always pop them open and the magnets out. They make GREAT refrigerator magnets and disc erasers!
I won't touch Hitachis. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the last DeathStar I owned. That's nothing compared to a friend of mine though, who had to turn in his 75GXP 4 times under warranty before he finally figured it wasn't worth the trouble and scrapped the drive. The magnets that came out of it are more useful than that drive ever was.
Yes, I know I was burned by IBM rather than Hitachi, but when I was asking some techs who still work in the tranches about it, saying that they were not big fans of Hitachi drives would be putting it lightly.
Why yes...How did you guess? :)
I'd get into HAM radio...Except I hate talking to people.
NOW IM from Retro128:
[Retro128] Spd teh fuk up n00b, whr u lrn 2 drv?
What is with this happy pill culture we're getting into? Are you tired and depressed? Take this pill. Are you fat? Don't exercise, take this and lose weight while you sleep. Kids hyper because you plant them in front of the TV all day? Must have ADD, here's a pill. Jesus, the world is starting to look like an Isaac Asimov novel.
And now, we have "smart pills". I can't wait to see where THIS goes.
Well, it still seems rather unfair to me, but you seem to be fine with it, sooo...Who am I to argue?
You can die from alcohol and tobacco. You *cannot* die from abuse of video games... Explicit or otherwise.
:)
Ohhh, I don't know about that...
I wasn't under the impression that DJB had anything to do with the Slashdot article, actually. I was just pointing out that nobody will ever say "Students of DJB find security vulnerabilities" on the title of any article...And judging from the submission, not even the students will say as such.
Now since you're in the class, you obviously have a better feeling for what's going on here than I do. So, is it indeed true that DJB wanted each student to find 10 holes? And is not finding 10 an automatic failure? If so, and you have not fulfilled the requirement, how do you feel about failing the class even though you presumably have a solid grasp on the subject material, and have performed well on all other assignments?
Does it really matter that you found some software bugs if you take home a failing grade? You can flash the email that DJB sent to a prospective employer, but then right afterwards have to say "I failed the class"
I doubt the submitter had any reason to embellish his accomplishments in the article submission. If I were him, and I put in 300 of work and got an A on all exams, and I got a failing grade because I couldn't accomplish what is pretty much an impossible task, you can bet I would be beating down the doors of the administration building. I do not understand why anyone in your class is any less than outraged.
My apologies. You are not the only person who mentioned that. I simply was not clear enough. Please see my comment that I made to another user who brought up the same issue. I hope it clarifies what I was trying to get at in my original statement.
I know. I saw the emails DJB sent out. And yet, the title of the article says "DJB Announces 44 Security Holes In *nix Software". Press releases, if any, I'm sure will fail to mention any of the students, and DJB will be the point man they always quote.
In this fashion, as is typical with academia, the professors take the credit for their students' grunt work. That is what I was getting at. I should have been more clear.
All the students will get is something to attach to their resume. Or will they? After all, they failed the class.
The homework for the course was to find and exploit 10 previously undiscovered security holes in currently deployed Unix software.
10 for each student? I doubt DJB himself could find 10 on his own inside of a semester.
In a class of 25, 44 security holes seems a bit low. Most of the class failed. I was credited with bsb2ppm (actually libbsb) and jpegtoavi. After 300 hours of work and an A average on the exams, I expect to fail the course.
I guess the whispers I've been hearing about DJB being a complete asshole are true. It is always nice to have your academic future dictated by such people to your disadvantage, even though you may be a cut above the teacher himself. And in the meantime he will take credit for your work while simultaneously failing you. Thank you, sir, for reminding me why I dropped out of college.
Isn't Bluetooth making gains in that niche?
And if it is, what chance does your militia stand against the regular military, military reserve, national guard and various police forces..?
Ask the Iraqi insurgents. Or the Viet Cong.