In other words, as someone who likes money and lifestyle, who likes eating, who likes playing, who I choose to go where the money is.
My thanks to you (and every other programmer who uses greedy algorithms to optimize their career paths). By steering toward the money, you've left an enormous vacuum - ironically creating a huge, well-financed market demand for the rest of us to fill.
Seriously, thank you for making support for the "other" OS so darn profitable.
In 5 years Vista will be just as entrenched as XP and it's not interesting how fast it gets there.
Very true. I remember how everyone laughed at Windows ME, calling it a broken, incompatible system that ran like a dog. However, it replaced the popular Win98 release and went on to become their biggest seller.
The fact that MS shipped something doesn't automatically mean that everyone will buy it. They probably will, but that's not exactly a given.
I was worried that the/. community would go overboard in their artificial hate for a man they never met or knew.
I knew Jack. He was the fascist who helped steal the arts from the public. I don't need to have met the guy to know that the took something that belonged to me.
I'm glad we save our energy to tackle real problems like world hunger, war, government encroachment, etc...
I can't solve world hunger on Slashdot, but I can say that I'm glad that there's one less villain in the world.
IANAL, but doesn't a public announcement of your position kind of make it hard for you to sue someone who acts in accordance with it? Estoppel, or something like that? I mean, it would seem that he just gave explicit permission for citizens to use DeCSS and similar tools in order to format-shift their purchases.
You can say a lot about DJB and his software, but you have to grant him that his code is very, very well written, and very secure.
No, I really don't have to. Since he's never actually released a program that supports more than 10% of the functionality of what it claims to replace, we have no idea whether he's capable of designing a large, secure system.
My BIND-based dynamic DNS depends on BIND not having a hole in the code that looks at the authentication key used to decide which records it can update. The DJBDNS "equivalent" requires that (in the grandparent's setup) DJBDNS, SSH, console access to their DNS server, their update scripts, and the conversion-and-aggregation makefile are all configured and working perfectly. Your "solution" requires the same, but replaces SSH+console with a webserver on your DNS server.
Your contention seems to be that those entire sets of applications are at least as secure as just using BIND in the first place, and frankly, I dismiss that out of hand. Even if you're a security expert and your particular setup is bulletproof, I doubt that the majority of people trying to juggle such a fragile setup are that capable. Ergo, DJBDNS is much less secure for the average person trying to get the same functionality that BIND ships with.
I've done this on a small scale. It took me about five minutes to set everything up, client and server.
[snip Rube Goldberg replacement for RFC standards]
There's a reason people hate DJBDNS. Instead of just implementing the mechanism that everyone else in the entire world uses, Dan wanted to be Dan so he wrote an incompatible mess and called it "good". Of course DJBDNS has a decent security record - it doesn't actually do anything. I'd wager large amounts of money that more systems have been compromised due to all the half-assed hackery required to give it half the features of BIND than because of BIND itself.
BIND uses TSIG to let users update specific records that have been assigned to them. Your hack around DJBDNS's shortcomings lets you give out shell accounts to people so they can run shell scripts on your server that are hopefully so well written that they can't possible be fed bad data, then runs some stuff as root to glue it all together.
"Easy as pie," you say, "and all it needs is `ssh` and `cron`." I prefer "easy as pie: it's already included and known to work".
The security is also relatively coarse: the tools don't allow a particular security key to apply to a particular name -- the key applies to a whole zone.
BIND9 addresses this with update-policy which can map an individual TSIG key to a specific name (or subdomain or wildcard). You can say that "key 'laptop23.example.com.' can update an A record with the same name".
I won't disagree about the dynamic zone file ugliness. I usually put dynamic hosts in their own subdomain so that my main zone file can remain nicely human-friendly. For example, we'd use ".mobile.example.com" and put it in its own zone file. The file for ".example.com" will still be nice, and if every record in ".mobile.example.com" is dynamic, who cares if it's a machine-generated mess?
Compare the total cost of using any software, including Windows-based software, with the cost of rolling your own.
Don't forget to include the cost of getting escrowed access to the source code so that you're not totally screwed if they stop making MintDNS and it can't be made to run on the next version of Windows.
Honestly, F/OSS owns the network infrastructure category. I can see no reason whatsoever to use a proprietary solution when this is already a solved problem.
Vista will win in the long term. it might be longer than the short-termists who write magazine articles are used to, but in 3-4 years from now, it will seem funny to have written off vista.
Windows ME will win in the long term. it might be longer than the short-termists who write magazine articles are used to, but in 3-4 years from now, it will seem funny to have written off Windows ME.
Don't think MS can't screw up an OS release. There are a few precedents.
By "there", you mean the department at Sony responsible for explaining to the CEO why all of your products have been removed from the shelves of the largest retailer in the world? Yes, that would indeed suck.
We use stored procedures where multiple tables need to be updated at once, and where that series of updates will be called by more than one application.
Basically, we use most of the same logic you'd use when trying to decide whether to refactor a function. If a query, however complex, is only called from one place, then we leave it be. However, we don't want to have the same set of queries copied-and-pasted through 6 apps in 4 different languages if we can help it.
What would be Apple's motivation for making it open source?
Market penetration. OS X users would use it, Windows users could use it, and as a bonus they'd even get the Linux crowd on the bandwagon (probably doing much of the work). They've been pretty big lately on pushing open standards to compete, and this would dovetail nicely into it.
If their standard caught on, then they get to remain relevant as a desktop OS without praying that Microsoft cuts them out of the loop. Maybe they wouldn't make money off it, but it might very well keep them from losing money.
The best Linux/OSS could manage in an initial stage would be 10% and that is a WILDLY OPTIMISTIC estimate.
Know who I want to see enter the fray? Apple. I could easily imagine them releasing a slick little web plugin that's open source and well-hyped. After all, whether you like them or not, nobody makes mundane things seem sexy and must-have like Apple. I bet they could get much higher market penetration than 10%, especially if they talked the Firefox team into including it by default.
Too bad. CMU had been a well-respected university. Are there any other schools that are also likely to be dropping off the map in the near future because of similar schemes?
His family will sue and they will be awarded a large settlement because of this... Just you wait and see...
He should, and I hope he does.
I'm about as anti-lawsuit as you can get, but the kid was in jail for 12 days because someone screwed up royally. Jail. An innocent kid. For no reason whatsoever. I hope he gets so much money from them that the school is absolutely freaking paranoid about ever accusing someone again in the future.
I saw cruelty and injustice pretty much everywhere, and it pissed me off, but nobody I knew even cared.
I really don't mean to be a jerk about it, because it sounds like you went through some rough times, but have you considered that out of all the witnesses to the events around you, you were the only one who saw cruelty and injustice in them? Perhaps it was your interpretation of events that was flawed, and you weren't really surrounded by all the callous assholes you thought you were. Just something to think about.
OK, since you don't seem to know much about America:
1) We have hundreds of millions of firearms already. Illegalizing them won't make them disappear, except from a disproportionately high number of law-abiding citizens.
2) Our constitution says that we get to keep guns. Getting rid of them, even were it physically possible, would involve repealing one of the the amendments in our Bill of Rights, which is perhaps the most cherished legal document in our culture.
Basically, it can't happen, and it's not going to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
The average Slashdotter's brain has been stimulated via computer for years. Isn't that the whole point of Internet porn?
My thanks to you (and every other programmer who uses greedy algorithms to optimize their career paths). By steering toward the money, you've left an enormous vacuum - ironically creating a huge, well-financed market demand for the rest of us to fill.
Seriously, thank you for making support for the "other" OS so darn profitable.
I am JSG's sense of karmic irony, considering that Jack died of a stroke.
Very true. I remember how everyone laughed at Windows ME, calling it a broken, incompatible system that ran like a dog. However, it replaced the popular Win98 release and went on to become their biggest seller.
The fact that MS shipped something doesn't automatically mean that everyone will buy it. They probably will, but that's not exactly a given.
One thing I'm not clear on: if I put the songs on a USB keychain, will the RIAA sue me?
I knew Jack. He was the fascist who helped steal the arts from the public. I don't need to have met the guy to know that the took something that belonged to me.
I can't solve world hunger on Slashdot, but I can say that I'm glad that there's one less villain in the world.
IANAL, but doesn't a public announcement of your position kind of make it hard for you to sue someone who acts in accordance with it? Estoppel, or something like that? I mean, it would seem that he just gave explicit permission for citizens to use DeCSS and similar tools in order to format-shift their purchases.
No, I really don't have to. Since he's never actually released a program that supports more than 10% of the functionality of what it claims to replace, we have no idea whether he's capable of designing a large, secure system.
My BIND-based dynamic DNS depends on BIND not having a hole in the code that looks at the authentication key used to decide which records it can update. The DJBDNS "equivalent" requires that (in the grandparent's setup) DJBDNS, SSH, console access to their DNS server, their update scripts, and the conversion-and-aggregation makefile are all configured and working perfectly. Your "solution" requires the same, but replaces SSH+console with a webserver on your DNS server.
Your contention seems to be that those entire sets of applications are at least as secure as just using BIND in the first place, and frankly, I dismiss that out of hand. Even if you're a security expert and your particular setup is bulletproof, I doubt that the majority of people trying to juggle such a fragile setup are that capable. Ergo, DJBDNS is much less secure for the average person trying to get the same functionality that BIND ships with.
[snip Rube Goldberg replacement for RFC standards]
There's a reason people hate DJBDNS. Instead of just implementing the mechanism that everyone else in the entire world uses, Dan wanted to be Dan so he wrote an incompatible mess and called it "good". Of course DJBDNS has a decent security record - it doesn't actually do anything. I'd wager large amounts of money that more systems have been compromised due to all the half-assed hackery required to give it half the features of BIND than because of BIND itself.
BIND uses TSIG to let users update specific records that have been assigned to them. Your hack around DJBDNS's shortcomings lets you give out shell accounts to people so they can run shell scripts on your server that are hopefully so well written that they can't possible be fed bad data, then runs some stuff as root to glue it all together.
"Easy as pie," you say, "and all it needs is `ssh` and `cron`." I prefer "easy as pie: it's already included and known to work".
BIND9 addresses this with update-policy which can map an individual TSIG key to a specific name (or subdomain or wildcard). You can say that "key 'laptop23.example.com.' can update an A record with the same name".
I won't disagree about the dynamic zone file ugliness. I usually put dynamic hosts in their own subdomain so that my main zone file can remain nicely human-friendly. For example, we'd use ".mobile.example.com" and put it in its own zone file. The file for ".example.com" will still be nice, and if every record in ".mobile.example.com" is dynamic, who cares if it's a machine-generated mess?
Don't forget to include the cost of getting escrowed access to the source code so that you're not totally screwed if they stop making MintDNS and it can't be made to run on the next version of Windows.
Honestly, F/OSS owns the network infrastructure category. I can see no reason whatsoever to use a proprietary solution when this is already a solved problem.
Windows ME will win in the long term. it might be longer than the short-termists who write magazine articles are used to, but in 3-4 years from now, it will seem funny to have written off Windows ME.
Don't think MS can't screw up an OS release. There are a few precedents.
By "there", you mean the department at Sony responsible for explaining to the CEO why all of your products have been removed from the shelves of the largest retailer in the world? Yes, that would indeed suck.
We use stored procedures where multiple tables need to be updated at once, and where that series of updates will be called by more than one application.
Basically, we use most of the same logic you'd use when trying to decide whether to refactor a function. If a query, however complex, is only called from one place, then we leave it be. However, we don't want to have the same set of queries copied-and-pasted through 6 apps in 4 different languages if we can help it.
I can only think that was a poorly written sentence, and what they really meant was:
The way you interpreted it makes no sense at all, even though you parsed it correctly. I have to assume they didn't really mean it that way.
It's based on cyanide, so as long as it doesn't fry my enzymes...
Do you really think for a second that they'd let that slip?
Market penetration. OS X users would use it, Windows users could use it, and as a bonus they'd even get the Linux crowd on the bandwagon (probably doing much of the work). They've been pretty big lately on pushing open standards to compete, and this would dovetail nicely into it.
If their standard caught on, then they get to remain relevant as a desktop OS without praying that Microsoft cuts them out of the loop. Maybe they wouldn't make money off it, but it might very well keep them from losing money.
Know who I want to see enter the fray? Apple. I could easily imagine them releasing a slick little web plugin that's open source and well-hyped. After all, whether you like them or not, nobody makes mundane things seem sexy and must-have like Apple. I bet they could get much higher market penetration than 10%, especially if they talked the Firefox team into including it by default.
Shouldn't physics programs be changing to adapt to business needs?
Shouldn't astronomy programs be changing to adapt to business needs?
Shouldn't math programs be changing to adapt to business needs?
Shouldn't computer science programs be changing to adapt to business needs?
No. No. No. No.
Too bad. CMU had been a well-respected university. Are there any other schools that are also likely to be dropping off the map in the near future because of similar schemes?
He should, and I hope he does.
I'm about as anti-lawsuit as you can get, but the kid was in jail for 12 days because someone screwed up royally. Jail. An innocent kid. For no reason whatsoever. I hope he gets so much money from them that the school is absolutely freaking paranoid about ever accusing someone again in the future.
We gave my friend's Jaz the nickname of the "WORN drive": write once, read never.
I really don't mean to be a jerk about it, because it sounds like you went through some rough times, but have you considered that out of all the witnesses to the events around you, you were the only one who saw cruelty and injustice in them? Perhaps it was your interpretation of events that was flawed, and you weren't really surrounded by all the callous assholes you thought you were. Just something to think about.
Guns.
OK, since you don't seem to know much about America:
1) We have hundreds of millions of firearms already. Illegalizing them won't make them disappear, except from a disproportionately high number of law-abiding citizens.
2) Our constitution says that we get to keep guns. Getting rid of them, even were it physically possible, would involve repealing one of the the amendments in our Bill of Rights, which is perhaps the most cherished legal document in our culture.
Basically, it can't happen, and it's not going to happen.