Speaking as a Mac user and security researcher, your post is completely retarded.
Actually, it sounds like a practical solution to me. Who cares if OS X is theoretically insecure? The fact is that there are no wild exploits. I love cruising the web on my Mac and getting dialogs asking WTF to do with a WMF. I feel like Neo effortlessy deflecting the bullets fired at me.
And what do you mean by it being 10X more profitable for you to discover a flaw in Windows than OS X? If you mean it's better for the exploiter, than that's a good reason to go Mac (or Linux). If you mean it's better for the antivirus publisher, then I'm glad to say I haven't spent a penny on antivirus software.
That's an interesting question. All of us habitually read Slashdot while we're avoiding our own work. But if Slashdot is your work, what do you read between tasks? All these dupes are evidence that they don't actually read this site, so where do they go?
It's a traffic jam when you're already late
It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic... don't you think
Quoth Mo Rocca:
Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen, and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle, and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called Ironic that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty.
For example, in the city of Vallejo, CA we are the only facilities based DSL provider and we even own vallejodsl.com, but up until today (which is the first time I've done this search in 2 months) we weren't even on the first 5 pages.
I'm a little unclear on your statement -- do you mean that your company didn't show up on Google until recently or that it still doesn't? When I searched for "vallejo dsl" just now, one of your sites was the 4th down on the 1st page. What changed?
And to be perfectly honest, google is a noun not a verb and it drives me insane when langauge gets twisted for marketing purposes and it should bother everyone else too.
And one of my pet peeves is people complaining about nouns used as verbs. Don't you realize that hundreds of English words function as both nouns and verbs? I don't think these were all created for marketing.
A flock of birds : birds of a feather flock together
Heavy rain : it rained
A computer program : she programs computers
I searched for DSL with Google : I Googled for DSL
Languages change and if verbing a noun makes sense we'll do it.
Yes,
Aspyr Media is porting Civ IV to Mac. It's due in early 2006 and I can hardly wait. Strangely, they also just released Civilization III: Complete for Mac that includes the Conquests and Play the World expansions. I'd like the expansions for the gameplay improvements (especially smarter workers), but it hardly seems worth $50 when I already have the standard Civ III and all the PC gamers are playing Civ IV.
While the article is great overall, you're right that this is an odd explanation. I can think of a couple of more logical arguments against black text on a white screen:
How white is paper? We usually think of the blank paper we feed into a printer as being pure white. But have you ever bought a pack of "bright white" paper and found that it hurts to read black text on it? Most printed material is not white as white can be, so on screen it might be appropriate to put dark grey on white or black on off-white.
Screen brightness is uncorrelated with room brightness. If you use a computer in a darkened room, then the white on screen can be far brighter than on a sheet of paper. This time the difference in brightness between the text and background hurts because the eyes are adjusted for a dimmer environment. One nice feature of my Powerbook is that it automatically dims the screen in dark conditions.
This reminds me of the current talk of a la carte cable pricing. Some consumer groups are arguing that cable bills would be lower if subscribers could buy specific channels rather than entire packages. I think there's a flaw in that logic:
Right now, the channel producers charge the cable operators $0.50 per package subscriber for each channel (for example). I receive both Comedy Central and SciFi, but I only ever watch Comedy Central. So could I save $0.50 on my cable bill by subscribing specifically to that and cutting SciFi? Well all the people who watch SciFi but not Comedy Central would try to do the same thing. Then Comedy Central would say to the cable operator: "You're claiming that you have half as many subscribers as a year ago so we should charge you half the total. But that $0.50 rate was based on the knowledge that only half of your subscribers were watching our channel. Now we know that *all* of the subscribers want our channel, so we're raising the price to $1.00." Since extra channels cost nothing to deliver, an a la carte model just creates overhead that can only add expense.
I agree that cable prices are high and I'd like to see some downward pressure through competition. My Comcast bill is $80/month whereas my DSL (which provides comparable entertainment and utility) is $20/month. I live in an apartment building, so satellite TV is not an option. But if I could get TV through my phone line (like shows on iTunes) then maybe there'd be hope.
If you think you'll get music for less than $0.99 per song, you're dreaming. And if your scheme makes some of the songs I want cost more than $0.99 than you're giving me nightmares.
An interesting movie on this subject is
The Corporation
(trailer).
It argues that businesses exhibit many of the characteristics that define a psychopath:
Gold is also a naturally occuring substance. Does that mean that the earth is constantly producing more gold? No, the gold was created by fusion in a star; what's there is all we get (without mining asteroids).
Petroleum is produced on earth, not a star, so there can be more produced. But what is the rate of production relative to our rate of consumption? Most people agree that our supply of oil was produced over many millions of years and will be consumed in mere centuries. So at some point in the future our current rate of consumption will become impossible.
Nice analysis of iTunes. I'm somewhat surprised at the small difference in play frequency between 3, 4, and 5 stars; and disappointed that unrated songs are almost never played. In my collection, unrated means that the music is new to my collection. I think 1 star should be the kiss of death, not a blessing upon a previously unrated song.
But all this talk of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 has me thinking of another rating system. Would anybody care to do an analysis of the ratings in Slashdot comments? What are the relative populations (I expect a ton of 2's but how about the rest)? Do comments made in the first hour after a story is posted stand a better chance of reaching +5 than comments made later in the day?
One of my gripes about the Slashdot comment system is that it discourages contemplation and discussion. Comments made more than 24 hours after a story is posted are rarely read and almost never moderated. This is in contrast with comments system like Usenet or other bulletin boards, where threads can remain lively for weeks.
I'm sure you can still find small, lightweight laptops even if larger, heavier models are offered. I think laptops are actually evolving into two species: small, thin, long battery life ones to be used on the go and larger, more powerful ones to be used mainly as desktop replacements. I have an Apple 15" Powerbook. It mostly sits on my desk (taking up far less space than a desktop) so I don't mind that it's a bit heavy and the battery lasts less than three hours. But when I travel it can come along (to be used as a plugged-in desktop replacement somewhere else) and it can go to work when I need to make a presentation.
Anyway, isn't the point of any business to make money, whether they are publically traded or not?
Well, yes, almost by definition the point of a business is to make money. A public endeavor that doesn't intend to make money is called a charity. I think the implied question is: Is the point of a business to make the most money?
I have an idea for a new kind of jigsaw puzzle that I'd like to sell someday. I've spent time developing it, mainly because it interests me. But it's certainly not the most profitable use of my time. The same thing happens in a private business. I know of a great little shop on Lake Michigan that sells deep fried fish. I bet the owners could make better money doing something else (the shop is in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from any town), but they like cooking fish by the lake.
Google says
"You can make money without doing evil". But the people buying stock don't necessarily share that sentiment. Or, they wouldn't mind doing evil to make more money (see Enron). So I think it's legitimate to worry that a publically held company can lose the vision of its founders.
Both imaginary products actually have exactly the same 5% trouble rate. It's only the disparity in the size of the user base that makes them seem different.
A "trouble rate" doesn't apply to software in the same way as to hardware. A trouble rate of 5% for Acme light bulbs could mean that due to manufacturing variations a few bad apples will burn out too soon. But copies of software are identical -- if one person has trouble, everybody has trouble. The trouble rate is either 0% or 100%.
What could a fractional trouble rate mean for software? Maybe it's what fraction of the offered features actually function correctly. But that measurement doesn't depend on the number of people with copies of the software. Or, for browsers, it could be what fraction of web pages render correctly. But the test pages should be standards compliant, not "Optimized for IE". And that definition is pretty useless for gauging security.
The author either fails to understand that computers are deterministic or is willfully misinforming with this analogy.
> That's why humans need to take risks and explore. Not sit behind a joystick. Life is too precious to waste playing it safe.
Oh, I actually agree with you that risk is often worthwhile. Risk is necessary to achieve great things, and some baseline risk is unavoidable. We're each going to die eventually, so constantly trying to avoid death is a waste of life.
You're welcome to take personal risks to do fun things like climb a mountain, sail a boat, or even simply drive a car. But it would be stupid to do something risky like operating a bandsaw without safety glasses or crossing a busy road against the walk sign. And our society as a whole is much more risk-adverse than many of us are individually. My point is that when humans die on publically funded missions, the public stops the funding or halts the missions and demands lower risk.
Good things can be risky, but not everything risky is good. If we can explore space more cheaply and in greater detail with robots than humans, then we should use humans. If you want to risk your life personally to vacation on Mars, go right ahead and have a nice trip. I might even join you. But it's not the best way to conduct science.
In rebuttal, here are a few reasons to send robots rather than humans on most space missions:
Humans are expensive. Humans need food, water, air, protection from solar radiation, exercise, and a healthy social environment. Robots just need batteries. A manned mission to Mars would cost many billions of dollars. For that money, we could send multiple robotic probes to every planet in the solar system and learn far more.
Human life is precious. Spaceflight is dangerous, and some missions will fail. When this happens to robots it's unfortunate, but when it happens to humans it's tragic. One space shuttle full of astronauts is lost and we stop our main space missions for more than two years. Even successful missions can be one-way tickets to a cold grave. Could we have done the Voyager missions with humans aboard? I'm sure some citizens would volunteer for one-way trips, but our society would not allow it.
Sending humans to space is unnecessary for preservation of the species. One frequently cited reason for manned spaceflight is preservation of the species in case something bad (war, disease, or asteroid strike) happens on Earth. But we could preserve seeds of humanity without space travel. Build self-sufficient colonies on the bottom of the ocean or in a deep mine. Sustain them with geothermal or nuclear power. Such colonies could survive any of these disasters. Living below the surface might be hard, but it's still far more hospitable and cheaper than space.
Sending humans to space is ineffective for avoiding overpopulation. The number of humans on Earth has increased by one billion in the past ten years. To maintain a constant population on Earth, we would need to send away 100 million people per year. That is a spacecraft carrying 200 passengers launched every minute of every day.
Robots are tools of the human spirit. Some might complain that robots can't think or feel, so they can never really explore. But that argument is similar to saying that I should walk rather than drive on my summer vacation since cars can't appreciate vacations anyway. Robots are our tools, and it is humans that decide how they should explore and it is humans that reap the knowledge and it is humans that enjoy the wealth and comfort of robotic labor.
I hope that our nations' space programs will spend resources wisely and make good use of robotic exploration.
Would you give me your CC details in the street if I asked nicely? No? You Sure?
Nobody would give their credit card number to a scraggly guy on the street, but that's not what phishing is. Phishing is more like stopping by your bank on the way to work. Or at least it looks like your bank, is in the same place as your bank, and acts like your bank. But actually some scammers bulldozed your bank, built an exact replica, and are collecting all of the private info that bank customers routinely give.
Or, more realistically, phishing is like building a phony BP gas station along an interstate highway. Drivers recognize the brand and swipe their credit cards to pay for gas without hesitation. But the operators are actually collecting credit card numbers to rip off later. This scam has actually happened with phony ATM's (bank machines).
The guy on the street is more like an email from bum@hobo.com saying "Hey, could you spare some money? I accept credit cards."
You know a lot of things that other people don't. I know a lot of things that you don't. If ignorance is stupidity, then there is not one smart man in the world.
Phishing is a bad name -- I heard the term several times before I realized that it was slang for phony Web sites. The general public should be warned about phony Web sites; they don't need to know the definition of phish.
A couple Christmases ago my sister and I paid to get our family 8mm films transferred to DVD. We used a local, small video studio rather than sending them out (and possibly losing them) to a mail-order processor. The technique they used was basically to run the films through a projector and direct the light onto a CCD.
The results were passable but not great. The apparent resolution is below broadcast TV, not nearly as sharp as a DVD of a commercial film. Your grandfather might have used a similar method, projecting into the lense of a digitial video camera, or even projecting onto a screen and just recording the image from there. I couldn't say whether the fuzziness is due to the film or the transfer method since our old projector is in poor shape and might eat anything it played.
I've heard of mail-order processors who will digitize more directly from the film itself. Ideally they would scan each frame individually (and at staggeringly high resolution) like Warner Brothers is doing. But I doubt that any processor catering to home movies is nearly that advanced.
Also, home 8mm films are in color, so they wouldn't have the advantages of Technicolor movies that were recorded onto three black & white negatives. Plus, the average basement or attic is a far worse place for film than a climate-controlled professional storage facility. Still, it's probably wise to digitize your home movies now before they get any worse.
The chart shows that the fraction of email volume that is spam is increasing, but is that really the measurement that matters? The worst thing about spam is that it wastes a reader's time and makes it harder to find personal emails in one's inbox. But if spam filters stop the reader from seeing that spam traffic then why would he care that it was sent? I've found that in the past year the amount of spam that appears in my inbox has decreased since my provider's filters have improved. If all spam were marked unsolicited, as required by CAN-SPAM, then I'd have a happy inbox containing only personal emails.
All the chart shows is an increase in spam traffic, not in spam impact. I suppose spam traffic is a bother to ISP's and carriers, but I suspect that the bandwidth consumed by spam emails is small in comparison to other traffic such as html and images.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it sounds like a practical solution to me. Who cares if OS X is theoretically insecure? The fact is that there are no wild exploits. I love cruising the web on my Mac and getting dialogs asking WTF to do with a WMF. I feel like Neo effortlessy deflecting the bullets fired at me.
And what do you mean by it being 10X more profitable for you to discover a flaw in Windows than OS X? If you mean it's better for the exploiter, than that's a good reason to go Mac (or Linux). If you mean it's better for the antivirus publisher, then I'm glad to say I haven't spent a penny on antivirus software.
AlpineR
Grab your +5 comments here for some instant karma. Well, the editors tripe the articles, we might as well tripe the comments...
That's an interesting question. All of us habitually read Slashdot while we're avoiding our own work. But if Slashdot is your work, what do you read between tasks? All these dupes are evidence that they don't actually read this site, so where do they go?
I'm a little unclear on your statement -- do you mean that your company didn't show up on Google until recently or that it still doesn't? When I searched for "vallejo dsl" just now, one of your sites was the 4th down on the 1st page. What changed?
And one of my pet peeves is people complaining about nouns used as verbs. Don't you realize that hundreds of English words function as both nouns and verbs? I don't think these were all created for marketing.Languages change and if verbing a noun makes sense we'll do it.
AlpineR
AlpineR
How white is paper? We usually think of the blank paper we feed into a printer as being pure white. But have you ever bought a pack of "bright white" paper and found that it hurts to read black text on it? Most printed material is not white as white can be, so on screen it might be appropriate to put dark grey on white or black on off-white.
Screen brightness is uncorrelated with room brightness. If you use a computer in a darkened room, then the white on screen can be far brighter than on a sheet of paper. This time the difference in brightness between the text and background hurts because the eyes are adjusted for a dimmer environment. One nice feature of my Powerbook is that it automatically dims the screen in dark conditions.
AlpineR
Right now, the channel producers charge the cable operators $0.50 per package subscriber for each channel (for example). I receive both Comedy Central and SciFi, but I only ever watch Comedy Central. So could I save $0.50 on my cable bill by subscribing specifically to that and cutting SciFi? Well all the people who watch SciFi but not Comedy Central would try to do the same thing. Then Comedy Central would say to the cable operator: "You're claiming that you have half as many subscribers as a year ago so we should charge you half the total. But that $0.50 rate was based on the knowledge that only half of your subscribers were watching our channel. Now we know that *all* of the subscribers want our channel, so we're raising the price to $1.00." Since extra channels cost nothing to deliver, an a la carte model just creates overhead that can only add expense.
I agree that cable prices are high and I'd like to see some downward pressure through competition. My Comcast bill is $80/month whereas my DSL (which provides comparable entertainment and utility) is $20/month. I live in an apartment building, so satellite TV is not an option. But if I could get TV through my phone line (like shows on iTunes) then maybe there'd be hope.
If you think you'll get music for less than $0.99 per song, you're dreaming. And if your scheme makes some of the songs I want cost more than $0.99 than you're giving me nightmares.
AlpineR
Petroleum is produced on earth, not a star, so there can be more produced. But what is the rate of production relative to our rate of consumption? Most people agree that our supply of oil was produced over many millions of years and will be consumed in mere centuries. So at some point in the future our current rate of consumption will become impossible.
But all this talk of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 has me thinking of another rating system. Would anybody care to do an analysis of the ratings in Slashdot comments? What are the relative populations (I expect a ton of 2's but how about the rest)? Do comments made in the first hour after a story is posted stand a better chance of reaching +5 than comments made later in the day?
One of my gripes about the Slashdot comment system is that it discourages contemplation and discussion. Comments made more than 24 hours after a story is posted are rarely read and almost never moderated. This is in contrast with comments system like Usenet or other bulletin boards, where threads can remain lively for weeks.
AlpineR
AlpineR
Well, yes, almost by definition the point of a business is to make money. A public endeavor that doesn't intend to make money is called a charity. I think the implied question is: Is the point of a business to make the most money?
I have an idea for a new kind of jigsaw puzzle that I'd like to sell someday. I've spent time developing it, mainly because it interests me. But it's certainly not the most profitable use of my time. The same thing happens in a private business. I know of a great little shop on Lake Michigan that sells deep fried fish. I bet the owners could make better money doing something else (the shop is in the middle of nowhere, ten miles from any town), but they like cooking fish by the lake.
Google says "You can make money without doing evil". But the people buying stock don't necessarily share that sentiment. Or, they wouldn't mind doing evil to make more money (see Enron). So I think it's legitimate to worry that a publically held company can lose the vision of its founders.
AlpineR
A "trouble rate" doesn't apply to software in the same way as to hardware. A trouble rate of 5% for Acme light bulbs could mean that due to manufacturing variations a few bad apples will burn out too soon. But copies of software are identical -- if one person has trouble, everybody has trouble. The trouble rate is either 0% or 100%.
What could a fractional trouble rate mean for software? Maybe it's what fraction of the offered features actually function correctly. But that measurement doesn't depend on the number of people with copies of the software. Or, for browsers, it could be what fraction of web pages render correctly. But the test pages should be standards compliant, not "Optimized for IE". And that definition is pretty useless for gauging security.
The author either fails to understand that computers are deterministic or is willfully misinforming with this analogy.
AlpineR
> That's why humans need to take risks and explore. Not sit behind a joystick. Life is too precious to waste playing it safe.
Oh, I actually agree with you that risk is often worthwhile. Risk is necessary to achieve great things, and some baseline risk is unavoidable. We're each going to die eventually, so constantly trying to avoid death is a waste of life.
You're welcome to take personal risks to do fun things like climb a mountain, sail a boat, or even simply drive a car. But it would be stupid to do something risky like operating a bandsaw without safety glasses or crossing a busy road against the walk sign. And our society as a whole is much more risk-adverse than many of us are individually. My point is that when humans die on publically funded missions, the public stops the funding or halts the missions and demands lower risk.
Good things can be risky, but not everything risky is good. If we can explore space more cheaply and in greater detail with robots than humans, then we should use humans. If you want to risk your life personally to vacation on Mars, go right ahead and have a nice trip. I might even join you. But it's not the best way to conduct science.
AlpineR
Humans are expensive. Humans need food, water, air, protection from solar radiation, exercise, and a healthy social environment. Robots just need batteries. A manned mission to Mars would cost many billions of dollars. For that money, we could send multiple robotic probes to every planet in the solar system and learn far more.
Human life is precious. Spaceflight is dangerous, and some missions will fail. When this happens to robots it's unfortunate, but when it happens to humans it's tragic. One space shuttle full of astronauts is lost and we stop our main space missions for more than two years. Even successful missions can be one-way tickets to a cold grave. Could we have done the Voyager missions with humans aboard? I'm sure some citizens would volunteer for one-way trips, but our society would not allow it.
Sending humans to space is unnecessary for preservation of the species. One frequently cited reason for manned spaceflight is preservation of the species in case something bad (war, disease, or asteroid strike) happens on Earth. But we could preserve seeds of humanity without space travel. Build self-sufficient colonies on the bottom of the ocean or in a deep mine. Sustain them with geothermal or nuclear power. Such colonies could survive any of these disasters. Living below the surface might be hard, but it's still far more hospitable and cheaper than space.
Sending humans to space is ineffective for avoiding overpopulation. The number of humans on Earth has increased by one billion in the past ten years. To maintain a constant population on Earth, we would need to send away 100 million people per year. That is a spacecraft carrying 200 passengers launched every minute of every day.
Robots are tools of the human spirit. Some might complain that robots can't think or feel, so they can never really explore. But that argument is similar to saying that I should walk rather than drive on my summer vacation since cars can't appreciate vacations anyway. Robots are our tools, and it is humans that decide how they should explore and it is humans that reap the knowledge and it is humans that enjoy the wealth and comfort of robotic labor.
I hope that our nations' space programs will spend resources wisely and make good use of robotic exploration.
AlpineR
Nobody would give their credit card number to a scraggly guy on the street, but that's not what phishing is. Phishing is more like stopping by your bank on the way to work. Or at least it looks like your bank, is in the same place as your bank, and acts like your bank. But actually some scammers bulldozed your bank, built an exact replica, and are collecting all of the private info that bank customers routinely give.
Or, more realistically, phishing is like building a phony BP gas station along an interstate highway. Drivers recognize the brand and swipe their credit cards to pay for gas without hesitation. But the operators are actually collecting credit card numbers to rip off later. This scam has actually happened with phony ATM's (bank machines).
The guy on the street is more like an email from bum@hobo.com saying "Hey, could you spare some money? I accept credit cards."
You know a lot of things that other people don't. I know a lot of things that you don't. If ignorance is stupidity, then there is not one smart man in the world.
Phishing is a bad name -- I heard the term several times before I realized that it was slang for phony Web sites. The general public should be warned about phony Web sites; they don't need to know the definition of phish.
AlpineR
Methionylal-
anylthreonyl... oh just
call me enaptin.
The results were passable but not great. The apparent resolution is below broadcast TV, not nearly as sharp as a DVD of a commercial film. Your grandfather might have used a similar method, projecting into the lense of a digitial video camera, or even projecting onto a screen and just recording the image from there. I couldn't say whether the fuzziness is due to the film or the transfer method since our old projector is in poor shape and might eat anything it played.
I've heard of mail-order processors who will digitize more directly from the film itself. Ideally they would scan each frame individually (and at staggeringly high resolution) like Warner Brothers is doing. But I doubt that any processor catering to home movies is nearly that advanced.
Also, home 8mm films are in color, so they wouldn't have the advantages of Technicolor movies that were recorded onto three black & white negatives. Plus, the average basement or attic is a far worse place for film than a climate-controlled professional storage facility. Still, it's probably wise to digitize your home movies now before they get any worse.
AlpineR
Our blue home planet
MUST SEE TO APPRECIATE
this is in/near Sol
Childhood of Web
No pop-ups, spam, or adware
I'll have vanilla
Jigsaw robot is
Genius solver of puzzles
Only with barcodes
Taking a random spam email from the bulk folder of my rarely-used Yahoo account:
4 kB html
28 kB image (via http, not attached; so it's only transmitted if I read it, which I don't)
Versus the front page of Slashdot:
14 kB html
40 kB images
Or my comments page for this article at a threshold of 3:
23 kB html
So reloading Slashdot ten times a day (or playing World of Warcraft for an hour) swamps out the spam traffic I receive.
AlpineR
All the chart shows is an increase in spam traffic, not in spam impact. I suppose spam traffic is a bother to ISP's and carriers, but I suspect that the bandwidth consumed by spam emails is small in comparison to other traffic such as html and images.
AlpineR