I saw no significant effect, from the standpoint of running my company. We are privately owned, and as such our stock is private. Many times I have been glad that my company is not on the rollercoaster of the stock market and it is a great relief to generally not have to work about the perceived health of the technology industry. The only real effect it may have relates to the amount of spending money that potential clients have, but most of our accounts are corporate so that doesn't really affect me greatly.
Good observation. I work with WebLogic and Tomcat on a regular basis and I think they should have at least given mention to commercial engines. I believe their intent was to showcase the most affordable option in each category, but they didn't explicitly say this. Also, benchmarking the free implementation (Tomcat) is a politically safe thing to do, but they might have been criticized for choosing to benchmark one commercial app server but not another.
Your premise is that this is good because supposedly the rightful owners of hacking tools will have them. This implies that someone must determine who is granted the priveledge to use hacking tools and who is denied. The consequence is that a beaurocrat decides if you or your business can be involved in the security business. This is called a racket, and it will inevitably lead to corruption.
This sort of treaty is asanine because every person should have the freedom to learn how things work. The mere ownership of hacking tools doesn't denote the misuse of the tool. A just society punishes individuals based on their activity and behavior with tools, not ownership. Anything else is presumption that the law always knows the best use and intent for a tool.
This is really about freedom when you get down to it. Do you have the liberty to run Nmap on your own network, or do you have to pay $200/hour to some monkey that is endorsed by a beaurocrat? Will the the knowledge of computer security be outlawed so that a priveledged class of individuals can do what anyone else could have done themselves? I certainly hope not.
This is a pretty ambitious statement, but the real cost in software is support, not the shrink wrapped box. IT departments spend a lot of money on training their staff and supporting their users. That said, they would rather stick with a bad solution that people can use without increased support costs than a better solution with more support costs. This is all about the short term versus long term issue. Sure, these other apps would be better after a few years of usage, but they don't want to pay the support cost now. Making the software free has nothing to do with this.
Besides, who really cares if Linux gets on the desktop or has more installations. It is scarcely different from AOL gaining market share. If you use it an enjoy it, great, but it adds nothing to your user experience if every Tom and Joe uses it as well.
Wildcard certs are great things because they let an ISP offer a shared certificate for a broad range of users. In many cases this is a great situation. My company purchased a wildcard cert only to be very upset though.
We are upset because MS IE 5.5 will not support wildcard certs. Flat out, there is no way around this and MS has made it clear that they are going to make everyone pay thawte or versign for every single domain you want to secure. It is pretty sick, but it is the truth. You will waste money on a wildcard cert unless you can figure out how to change Microsoft. Good luck. The CAs screw you from the top (CA authority) and MS screws you from the bottom (browser) and you are stuck in the middle trying to run a web server.
I was surprised to see this on slashdot as this initially struck me more as a bicycle geek thing. Titanium is a marvelous material for constructing bicycle frames, but it is very expensive. I'm eager to see this come to fruition in the bicycle industry.
Barring the obligitory reaction of paranoia and suspicion that slashdot encourages, why shouldn't this be good? Although Sun probably hasn't been as open as some would like, they have been a long time ally of for Open Source advocates. At the very least Sun has been a propenent of open standards, like NFS, even when some may argued that they could control a technology.
Some may dispute Sun's record, but from what I see, Sun is already very open with source code and standards. This is likely to continue. Consider Star Office as an example. They took a closed source system and opened it up. The first iteration was with the SCSL and they later revised their license to GPL. There is no guarantee that the Cobalt system will be more open, but if I had to take a guess I would think it to be likely.
Cobalt was already planning to go with Solaris for some of thier devices, according to a ZD Net article. I quote:
Last week, senior Sun executives said that although the firm's
strategy with Cobalt has not been decided, they were leaning
toward replacing Linux with a version of Solaris that is optimised
for appliances.
Although it is tempting to believe that Sun wants to go around and purchase every Linux company and force them to use Solaris, this simply isn't what is happening here.
This is very good news for the Sun community, and others who may come aboard. Sun has some other cool features coming with the new hardware line, like being able to remote boot and shutdown of the system (the former being the more accomplished task). It seems like they are earnestly trying to make the systems even more capable of remote control.
For anyone interested in reading some other news and viewpoints on the announcement, check out articles in VNU net, PC World and Cnet.
This article was a pleasure to read, and it is nice to see a well written argument in the midst of straw man arguments and yelling on the Internet. I have given a bit of thought to this very idea and I approached several professors and proposed a means of breaking the book store cartel, but it didn't work out. The problem we found was the same that the author found. If you distribute something electronically people print it.
I attribute some of this to a thinking problem that Xerox accidentally discovered years ago. The impetus for their research into the GUI was that they were concerned that electronic documents would render the copy machine and the press useless. It turns out that desktop publishing increased our paper usage ten fold and Xerox had nothing to fear. It isn't because we can't do this stuff... people simply don't want to think differently.
I'll give an example from a place where I do contract work. Frequently I'll send email to someone in the department with answers to questions or with proposals. They print out the email and walk the peice of paper over to my desk and talk about it. They could have just responded to the email, but they don't think like that. More accurately, they choose not to think like that. Sad, but true. I don't expect people to be cold and never to talk face to face, but at the least we should use the technology for what it is good at. It is good for communication.
Although I think this is mostly a thinking problem, much like the purchase of SUVs in America, I concede that there is a technical limitation with our displays. It is simply not pleasant to read a lot of material on a CRT. I find laptop and flatscreen LCD displays to be much better, but a book is still much easier on the eyes. I'm sure this will be resolved someday, but it really won't matter unless people start disconnecting from their printers.
Interesting move, but possibly confusing
on
Sun Buys Cobalt
·
· Score: 1
This is an interesting move for Sun, but I'm puzzled about how Sun will avoid market confusion. The Cobalt boxes run Linux, and Sun has a pretty clear strategy to put Solaris at the front of their offering. It isn't concievable that Sun would bother porting Solaris to MIPS (the processor in the Cobalts) and it also isn't concievable that Sun would want to support the systems in a high profile way.
My guess is that Sun will leave Cobalt to operate as a very separate entity and that their corporate image will reflect no difference. The move may have been an effort to keep other larger Linux players from doing the same thing, or it could have been just a move to get their stock to bump up a few points this month. You never really know.
I have personally worked with these boxes and I avoid them. They are rather finicky if you want to change very much, but they are great for datacenters and ISPs who do dedicated server hosting. Otherwise, I find them to be quirky little boxes that I would prefer not to touch.
This is typical./. posts about something with virtually no information about it. We all know that more facts will probably surface in 24 hours, probably contradicting much of what is known now, but/. will be first on the scene. Of course, you can also bet on hundreds of people flaming AOL and drawing conclusions. Being first isn't more important than having something to say.
Interesting point. I assume you are referring to the choice of an Aluminum frame? I actually found that the balance between the stiff aluminum and the suspension gives a really good ride. The rear suspension does absorb more pedal power than I would like, but this is a tradeoff for the money I could afford to invest.
Since getting into cycling (I try to do about 300 kilometers a week) I am finding that road biking is really my true passion. This spring I plan to get a road bike, but it definitely won't have a palm pilot mounted on it.;)
Thank you for the correction. You are correct. I meant to express this sentiment, but I worded it improperly. I didn't want to scare others into thinking that there were people who seriously go riding around with no means of slowing or stopping.;)
... and as a geek, I must say that this isn't appealing at all. I ride my bicycle in order to get away from the sensory overload of the work week and my computer hobbies.
One of the greatest things about cycling is that its simplicity. In fact, one of the things I've noticed in the sport is a resurgence of the track bike, which has only one gear and no brakes (you reverse your pedal direction to slow down). Those who ride these bikes (I'm not one of them yet) swear by its purity and ability to free your mind of the modern stresses.
If you are any brand of computer geek and you are thinking of getting a bike, do it. However, don't look for a bike like this. Get outside. Ride hard. Get away from the computer.
My company (pardon the plug, but I thought you might be curious) does a bit of development for other organizations. We specifically do web development where outsourcing is more common and it generally works well. We have had very successful projects and a few which didn't go well and we have learned a very simple truth:
The success of a project largely depends on the communication and committment from the client. Few of our projects have gone over budget or have been delivered late unless we were forced into a "garbage in, garbage out" situation. If you don't know clearly what you want, or you think the specification will change, don't hire an outside group to develop the wrong system for you.
If you are worried that the outside group won't understand what you want, developing a prototype in-house and giving this to the outside team can be very helpful. Be wary though, prototypes have the unfortunate habit of being used as a foundation for production code. This can be bad as prototypes are often developed in a loose manner. Insist on a prototype for improved communications, but also insist on a fresh write of the system in order to have a clean foundation.
If you have some rather complicated technologies, like LDAP, or you have some specific coding standards you should share samples with the team. This will help make the source for the project understandable by your group.
I've had this idea in my head for a while, and after reading the RMS article and the slashdot discussion I think I'll go license-free with any software I make public. I think a lassaiz-faire approach where the author makes no claims whatsoever seems a better route to go. I can deal with being criticized for a programming choice or any manner of technical issue with software, but I would hate to mediate arguments over a software license.
I won't dispute that some companies are going to use an NDA as a buffer to buy more time. I somewhat doubt that this is Sun's motivation. It is a natural feeling to assume that companies or the government sit around and think up ways in which they can frustrate the common person, but it rarely plays out this way.
One way to look at this is to think of it as a courtesy issue. Sun tells the customer that they are going to make fixing the bug a high priority, but they need some solitude in order to do it so they ask for some discretion. If their engineers are having to answer to middle and upper management about the issue instead of working on it (because of a media frenzy) then everyone is one step further from the solution. I think we can safely assume that Sun wants the problem resolved quickly. They just happen to also think that resolving it quietly is also quick.
I understand where you are coming from, and in the case of life threatening issues this is quite a different matter. The problem is that as a company you know that the press is lying in wait, like vultures, to jump on any issue and blow it out of proportion if they can claim that they are "on the scene".
There are many very reputable organizations which believe it is in the best interest to have a low profile until something positive can be done. Take CERT for example. When they find out about a new exploit, they don't broadcast it to everyone. In fact, they discourage this because it gives dim-witted crackers a window of opportunity and causes a big scare. They advise that parties involved remain cautious and low-key so that a solution can be announced in tandem with the problem. Sometimes this doesn't work out. Sometimes CERT isn't the first to be notified or a problem pops up in too many places for them to keep it under wraps.
I fully see your point about some benefits to people sharing knowledge, however there are occassions (which aren't life threatening) where it makes sense to encourage a low profile.
Please refer to following article I wrote a few months back to dispell some of the hype about the Ebay problems. The article that/. cites is speculating that these events are related, but to best of my research and feedback from many parties involved, the problem lies on ebay.
Also, do understand that these sort of NDA's are somewhat common when dealing with potentially explosive matters like this. Certainly Sun is interested in keeping tight lips, but they also would prefer to announce a solution along with the problem. It is an engineering problem where the "more eyes on the problem" approach doesn't necessarily bring about the greatest good.
It is rather cliche to criticize politicians and to cast Washington DC in a bad light. I happen to live in DC and I love this place. When you typefy this as a brood of corrupt politicians when 600,000 people live and work here, it is offensive and you make an ass of yourself.
The fact is that politicians generally work very hard. I know of several congresspersons who put in 12-16 hour days and their staff likewise puts in these long hours. From the outside it may look like they are living it up and spinning away their days with social events, but this simply isn't the case. Take a moment and imagine the type of stress they deal with. If you leave your house with your hair less than perfect or a stain on your shirt, will someone photograph you in your worst? If you are a politician, they will. They work hard, but they always have to look fresh because someone is waiting to for them to screw up.
This is the type of mentality which aggrivates me, and I see it in Katz' article. He presents the failure of politicians as a fact to be assumed by everyone. I have found that people have a much different viewpoint after they know a politician personally. Sure there are some bad apples, but generally they are simply people who are wanting to serve.
Politicians plead for people to get involved in the system, and when voters feel bored because voting doesn't resemeble a video game or a web site they blame the politician.
Some might think this is a predictable response from someone living in DC, but I encourage readers to get to know their representatives. Don't make the lazy mistake of lumping them together as a failed system.
I'm not entirely surprised by your experience. This isn't to say that VA is a bad company, because I'm sure they please a lot of people a lot of the time, but they are appealing to those who want to or need to spend less on a server. When price, not service, is the selling point expect to be dissatisfied with the service now and then. Contrast this with Sun who is trying to sell a service and you will see an entirely different model.
I can agree with you to a point. I believe that it actually helps people to think logically and orderly. For the most part, we don't do this with our language because we had bad teachers. Every one speaks poorly when it comes to strict logical correctness and parsability. I doubt if languages other than English are much better.
It probably won't help people to appeal to their lack of comfort with this new way of thinking. If a person refuses to learn the language of computing and understand cause-effect relationships, how can the computer magically detangle this laziness into productivity for them?
Bear in mind that some of the arguments against the graphical user interface years ago sound very much like what we say about natural language today. I imagine many of us are using a GUI, even though we are competent with a CLI. Let's keep in mind that we could be wrong about this, but I think it is safe to say that power users will always seek a way to think on the level of the machine.
No one here can make you care, but I suppose you derive a form of empowerment from telling us all that you don't care if someone were killed. Personally, I admire someone who risks his or her life for what they believe. I may not agree with what the person does, but I consider that a separate issue. I'm really sorry that you choose not to empathize with the person you offended.
My girlfriend is from China and she never met a christian untill she moved the United States. It is probably different in other parts, but even a casual notion of message of Jesus shouldn't be construed as being exposed to the gospel.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw no significant effect, from the standpoint of running my company. We are privately owned, and as such our stock is private. Many times I have been glad that my company is not on the rollercoaster of the stock market and it is a great relief to generally not have to work about the perceived health of the technology industry. The only real effect it may have relates to the amount of spending money that potential clients have, but most of our accounts are corporate so that doesn't really affect me greatly.
Good observation. I work with WebLogic and Tomcat on a regular basis and I think they should have at least given mention to commercial engines. I believe their intent was to showcase the most affordable option in each category, but they didn't explicitly say this. Also, benchmarking the free implementation (Tomcat) is a politically safe thing to do, but they might have been criticized for choosing to benchmark one commercial app server but not another.
This sort of treaty is asanine because every person should have the freedom to learn how things work. The mere ownership of hacking tools doesn't denote the misuse of the tool. A just society punishes individuals based on their activity and behavior with tools, not ownership. Anything else is presumption that the law always knows the best use and intent for a tool.
This is really about freedom when you get down to it. Do you have the liberty to run Nmap on your own network, or do you have to pay $200/hour to some monkey that is endorsed by a beaurocrat? Will the the knowledge of computer security be outlawed so that a priveledged class of individuals can do what anyone else could have done themselves? I certainly hope not.
This is a pretty ambitious statement, but the real cost in software is support, not the shrink wrapped box. IT departments spend a lot of money on training their staff and supporting their users. That said, they would rather stick with a bad solution that people can use without increased support costs than a better solution with more support costs. This is all about the short term versus long term issue. Sure, these other apps would be better after a few years of usage, but they don't want to pay the support cost now. Making the software free has nothing to do with this.
Besides, who really cares if Linux gets on the desktop or has more installations. It is scarcely different from AOL gaining market share. If you use it an enjoy it, great, but it adds nothing to your user experience if every Tom and Joe uses it as well.
We are upset because MS IE 5.5 will not support wildcard certs. Flat out, there is no way around this and MS has made it clear that they are going to make everyone pay thawte or versign for every single domain you want to secure. It is pretty sick, but it is the truth. You will waste money on a wildcard cert unless you can figure out how to change Microsoft. Good luck. The CAs screw you from the top (CA authority) and MS screws you from the bottom (browser) and you are stuck in the middle trying to run a web server.
I was surprised to see this on slashdot as this initially struck me more as a bicycle geek thing. Titanium is a marvelous material for constructing bicycle frames, but it is very expensive. I'm eager to see this come to fruition in the bicycle industry.
Some may dispute Sun's record, but from what I see, Sun is already very open with source code and standards. This is likely to continue. Consider Star Office as an example. They took a closed source system and opened it up. The first iteration was with the SCSL and they later revised their license to GPL. There is no guarantee that the Cobalt system will be more open, but if I had to take a guess I would think it to be likely.
Last week, senior Sun executives said that although the firm's strategy with Cobalt has not been decided, they were leaning toward replacing Linux with a version of Solaris that is optimised for appliances.
Although it is tempting to believe that Sun wants to go around and purchase every Linux company and force them to use Solaris, this simply isn't what is happening here.
For anyone interested in reading some other news and viewpoints on the announcement, check out articles in VNU net, PC World and Cnet.
I attribute some of this to a thinking problem that Xerox accidentally discovered years ago. The impetus for their research into the GUI was that they were concerned that electronic documents would render the copy machine and the press useless. It turns out that desktop publishing increased our paper usage ten fold and Xerox had nothing to fear. It isn't because we can't do this stuff... people simply don't want to think differently.
I'll give an example from a place where I do contract work. Frequently I'll send email to someone in the department with answers to questions or with proposals. They print out the email and walk the peice of paper over to my desk and talk about it. They could have just responded to the email, but they don't think like that. More accurately, they choose not to think like that. Sad, but true. I don't expect people to be cold and never to talk face to face, but at the least we should use the technology for what it is good at. It is good for communication.
Although I think this is mostly a thinking problem, much like the purchase of SUVs in America, I concede that there is a technical limitation with our displays. It is simply not pleasant to read a lot of material on a CRT. I find laptop and flatscreen LCD displays to be much better, but a book is still much easier on the eyes. I'm sure this will be resolved someday, but it really won't matter unless people start disconnecting from their printers.
My guess is that Sun will leave Cobalt to operate as a very separate entity and that their corporate image will reflect no difference. The move may have been an effort to keep other larger Linux players from doing the same thing, or it could have been just a move to get their stock to bump up a few points this month. You never really know.
I have personally worked with these boxes and I avoid them. They are rather finicky if you want to change very much, but they are great for datacenters and ISPs who do dedicated server hosting. Otherwise, I find them to be quirky little boxes that I would prefer not to touch.
This is typical. /. posts about something with virtually no information about it. We all know that more facts will probably surface in 24 hours, probably contradicting much of what is known now, but /. will be first on the scene. Of course, you can also bet on hundreds of people flaming AOL and drawing conclusions. Being first isn't more important than having something to say.
Since getting into cycling (I try to do about 300 kilometers a week) I am finding that road biking is really my true passion. This spring I plan to get a road bike, but it definitely won't have a palm pilot mounted on it. ;)
Thank you for the correction. You are correct. I meant to express this sentiment, but I worded it improperly. I didn't want to scare others into thinking that there were people who seriously go riding around with no means of slowing or stopping. ;)
One of the greatest things about cycling is that its simplicity. In fact, one of the things I've noticed in the sport is a resurgence of the track bike, which has only one gear and no brakes (you reverse your pedal direction to slow down). Those who ride these bikes (I'm not one of them yet) swear by its purity and ability to free your mind of the modern stresses.
If you are any brand of computer geek and you are thinking of getting a bike, do it. However, don't look for a bike like this. Get outside. Ride hard. Get away from the computer.
The success of a project largely depends on the communication and committment from the client. Few of our projects have gone over budget or have been delivered late unless we were forced into a "garbage in, garbage out" situation. If you don't know clearly what you want, or you think the specification will change, don't hire an outside group to develop the wrong system for you.
If you are worried that the outside group won't understand what you want, developing a prototype in-house and giving this to the outside team can be very helpful. Be wary though, prototypes have the unfortunate habit of being used as a foundation for production code. This can be bad as prototypes are often developed in a loose manner. Insist on a prototype for improved communications, but also insist on a fresh write of the system in order to have a clean foundation.
If you have some rather complicated technologies, like LDAP, or you have some specific coding standards you should share samples with the team. This will help make the source for the project understandable by your group.
I've had this idea in my head for a while, and after reading the RMS article and the slashdot discussion I think I'll go license-free with any software I make public. I think a lassaiz-faire approach where the author makes no claims whatsoever seems a better route to go. I can deal with being criticized for a programming choice or any manner of technical issue with software, but I would hate to mediate arguments over a software license.
One way to look at this is to think of it as a courtesy issue. Sun tells the customer that they are going to make fixing the bug a high priority, but they need some solitude in order to do it so they ask for some discretion. If their engineers are having to answer to middle and upper management about the issue instead of working on it (because of a media frenzy) then everyone is one step further from the solution. I think we can safely assume that Sun wants the problem resolved quickly. They just happen to also think that resolving it quietly is also quick.
There are many very reputable organizations which believe it is in the best interest to have a low profile until something positive can be done. Take CERT for example. When they find out about a new exploit, they don't broadcast it to everyone. In fact, they discourage this because it gives dim-witted crackers a window of opportunity and causes a big scare. They advise that parties involved remain cautious and low-key so that a solution can be announced in tandem with the problem. Sometimes this doesn't work out. Sometimes CERT isn't the first to be notified or a problem pops up in too many places for them to keep it under wraps.
I fully see your point about some benefits to people sharing knowledge, however there are occassions (which aren't life threatening) where it makes sense to encourage a low profile.
Also, do understand that these sort of NDA's are somewhat common when dealing with potentially explosive matters like this. Certainly Sun is interested in keeping tight lips, but they also would prefer to announce a solution along with the problem. It is an engineering problem where the "more eyes on the problem" approach doesn't necessarily bring about the greatest good.
The fact is that politicians generally work very hard. I know of several congresspersons who put in 12-16 hour days and their staff likewise puts in these long hours. From the outside it may look like they are living it up and spinning away their days with social events, but this simply isn't the case. Take a moment and imagine the type of stress they deal with. If you leave your house with your hair less than perfect or a stain on your shirt, will someone photograph you in your worst? If you are a politician, they will. They work hard, but they always have to look fresh because someone is waiting to for them to screw up.
This is the type of mentality which aggrivates me, and I see it in Katz' article. He presents the failure of politicians as a fact to be assumed by everyone. I have found that people have a much different viewpoint after they know a politician personally. Sure there are some bad apples, but generally they are simply people who are wanting to serve.
Politicians plead for people to get involved in the system, and when voters feel bored because voting doesn't resemeble a video game or a web site they blame the politician.
Some might think this is a predictable response from someone living in DC, but I encourage readers to get to know their representatives. Don't make the lazy mistake of lumping them together as a failed system.
I'm not entirely surprised by your experience. This isn't to say that VA is a bad company, because I'm sure they please a lot of people a lot of the time, but they are appealing to those who want to or need to spend less on a server. When price, not service, is the selling point expect to be dissatisfied with the service now and then. Contrast this with Sun who is trying to sell a service and you will see an entirely different model.
It probably won't help people to appeal to their lack of comfort with this new way of thinking. If a person refuses to learn the language of computing and understand cause-effect relationships, how can the computer magically detangle this laziness into productivity for them?
Bear in mind that some of the arguments against the graphical user interface years ago sound very much like what we say about natural language today. I imagine many of us are using a GUI, even though we are competent with a CLI. Let's keep in mind that we could be wrong about this, but I think it is safe to say that power users will always seek a way to think on the level of the machine.
No one here can make you care, but I suppose you derive a form of empowerment from telling us all that you don't care if someone were killed. Personally, I admire someone who risks his or her life for what they believe. I may not agree with what the person does, but I consider that a separate issue. I'm really sorry that you choose not to empathize with the person you offended.
My girlfriend is from China and she never met a christian untill she moved the United States. It is probably different in other parts, but even a casual notion of message of Jesus shouldn't be construed as being exposed to the gospel.