We have one of those at my company too. The company even went all-out and bought instant messaging appliances for everyone's desktop. Really quite slick.
It's got a 12-button keypad and a receiver on it. Sound familiar?
... the problem with using one password is that it provides a single point of failure for everything you use.
All it takes is one password-capturing trojan website, or one hacked login(1), or even someone setting up a small, useful website requiring registration with a password explicitly to capture just these kind of reused passwords.
Actually, strangely enough, I somehow managed to bugger my '98 install into acting something like that.
You couldn't type a URL into an Explorer window without it popping up Netscape. The crazier thing is that even from an IE-face window (browsing a webpage), typing in a URL would launch Netscape.
Isn't that where we were 15, 20 years ago? A small educated class of High Priests who maintained the altars of the Mainframe Gods and handled the supplication of the users?
I've always wanted a job where I got to wear a white robe and sacrifice things.
These days, most data is usable only if you can share it, or share the products of your analysis, or use other people's results/etc. As useful as it is for security, an air gap diminishes productivity something fierce. The trick is having a good security policy that keeps your internal network separate from your outside-accessible resources.
Even though some people may miss running BearShare or downloading the screensaver du jour, it's quite effective to make the internal network completely isolated from the Internet and enforce strict policy about what can move between the two systems.
I don't know... the arrows strike me as unnecessarily complex. Ever seen a Canadian federal ballot? It's got names (with party affiliations) down the right hand side, one per line, and a white circle corresponding to the names on the left hand side. You put an X in the circle corresponding to the candidate. That's all. Simple, elegant, and machine-readable.
Nah, actually... I think it was Holzmann. And... maybe Crypto was good, but I took 2620 with Seldin and he couldn't code his way out of a paper bag. The man just Didn't Know C++.
If that's your concern with Debian, and you want to give it another shot, in the past couple months (IIRC) Debian has added a third revision of sorts. Between stable (changed only for security fixes) and unstable (latest greatest - *BOOM*), there is now a "testing" distribution that accepts only new packages from unstable that have proven themselves to work fairly reliably. Just change your apt-sources from 'stable' to 'testing', and it should work on most mirrors.
Another thing is that if people want to do something different and he stands in the way, then there is more likely to be a split. I mean, I don't see other major commercial projects with one single man at the helm, do you? It should be a committee of interested parties, all the main organisations that use Linux, who decide what happens to it. Big companies like Red Hat and Debian would have a place, along with representatives from the LUGS.
Enh.
"[...] other major commercial projects [...]" That's where I think you went off track. This isn't a major commercial project. It's not a democracy. It's Linus's baby, plain and simple. Everyone's been throwing their help into it... Everyone's been benefiting. But in the end, the 'Linu' in 'GNU/Linux' comes from 'Linus'. Should RedHat fall off the planet and Caldera vanish, Linux will still be there.
At the end of the day, he was the right man with the right project at the right time, but just because he decided to give his project to the world doesn't mean everyone else automatically has a say in what's officially Linux.
Is there any useful, mainstream purpose to this or reason for taking the time to develop it? Or was it solely a "because we/I can" exercise?
Sure. I do believe the authors illustrated the use in their original posting.
The reason? Why do you need a reason to play around with stuff like this? It's their time, they can do what they want with it.
Is this really primary Slashdot story material? Like much of what is hacked out there, it strikes me as a minor (albiet clever), nearly useless end product with an extremely limited audience that might use it.
It's Cool Shit. I thought it was interesting. There's gotta be a couple hundred other people who thought the same.
I think that makes it postworthy.
Are there not a plethora of interesting, meaningful software projects out there that could use the talents of folks like this? Is it just a matter of hooking the two parties together somehow (clearly an entire Slashdot topic in and of itself, I realize)?
*shrug* There's nothing quite like programming for yourself to take the strain off your mind when you've been working for weeks on another project.
Will the developers' next accomplishment (making Slashot headlines?) include something similarly as earthshaking, novel, and absurd as "Enlightenment on a Palm III!"
I'm not sure how you'd get e's memory footprint small enough, but... It'd be cool.
Which brings us back to the original point. One of the questions that you asked was whether it would be technologically feasible to give everyone broadband. The answer is "probably not." However, when it is, I suggest you step the fuck out of the way and let anyone who wants it have it. You are no more 733+ than anyone else. You might be able to configure a router. Can you remove someone's spleen without killing them? Can you operate construction equipment safely? No? Then shut the hell up about "earning" broadband. Let's see how far you get without doctors or construction workers, even those that don't know thing one about how their computers work.
Do you give out morphine, demerol, or AZT to anyone who has the money to pay for it?
When was the last time you saw J. Random User operating a backhoe or a drilling rig?
The same logic should apply to broadband internet. It's one of the tools of the IT trade. It's powerful, and in unskilled or malicious hands, can be hazardous, just like the powerful drugs and heavy equipment that are tied to their respective jobs.
I'm going to university right now. The merits of liberal education and such aside (I'm doing a CompSci degree, but the college I'm studying at has a frighteningly huge breadth requirement), one of the biggest reasons I'm doing this is because of co-op. For those of you unfamiliar, co-op education (at least around here) lets you go out on a 4/8/12/16-month work term in industry and make a competitive (full-time) wage while retaining your fulltime student status (scholarships, student insurance, etc) and earning credit towards the co-op designation on your degree. It allows companies to look for potential employees on a trial basis, and gives students the opportunity to get those 1-2 years of experience that every employer wants. From what I've heard, the hiring rate after graduation of students who've done co-op is significantly higher than those with just a degree. If it were not for being able to go out and do co-op, my interest in staying in university would be far less.
I have to agree wholeheartedly. I'm a Computer Science major (guy) who's currently dating a Political Science major... and we're doing great. Really, though, think about it. Although the concept of finding someone who shares your major interest is appealing, what I'd see happening would be would be having nothing else to talk about. Too much concentration in one area...
Of course, this is just my hypothesizing. If you've managed to make a relationship like that work, good on ya.
Slashdot Mirror
We have one of those at my company too. The company even went all-out and bought instant messaging appliances for everyone's desktop. Really quite slick.
It's got a 12-button keypad and a receiver on it. Sound familiar?
... the problem with using one password is that it provides a single point of failure for everything you use.
All it takes is one password-capturing trojan website, or one hacked login(1), or even someone setting up a small, useful website requiring registration with a password explicitly to capture just these kind of reused passwords.
Actually, strangely enough, I somehow managed to bugger my '98 install into acting something like that.
You couldn't type a URL into an Explorer window without it popping up Netscape. The crazier thing is that even from an IE-face window (browsing a webpage), typing in a URL would launch Netscape.
It was weird, but cool in a way.
... and history repeats itsself...
Isn't that where we were 15, 20 years ago? A small educated class of High Priests who maintained the altars of the Mainframe Gods and handled the supplication of the users?
I've always wanted a job where I got to wear a white robe and sacrifice things.
s/NETWORK/INTERNET/;
These days, most data is usable only if you can share it, or share the products of your analysis, or use other people's results/etc. As useful as it is for security, an air gap diminishes productivity something fierce. The trick is having a good security policy that keeps your internal network separate from your outside-accessible resources.
Even though some people may miss running BearShare or downloading the screensaver du jour, it's quite effective to make the internal network completely isolated from the Internet and enforce strict policy about what can move between the two systems.
I don't know... the arrows strike me as unnecessarily complex. Ever seen a Canadian federal ballot? It's got names (with party affiliations) down the right hand side, one per line, and a white circle corresponding to the names on the left hand side. You put an X in the circle corresponding to the candidate. That's all. Simple, elegant, and machine-readable.
Nah, actually... I think it was Holzmann. And ... maybe Crypto was good, but I took 2620 with Seldin and he couldn't code his way out of a paper bag. The man just Didn't Know C++.
As for sending quick messages to co-workers, does your company not have an internal phone system?
I'm reminded of this strip...
If that's your concern with Debian, and you want to give it another shot, in the past couple months (IIRC) Debian has added a third revision of sorts. Between stable (changed only for security fixes) and unstable (latest greatest - *BOOM*), there is now a "testing" distribution that accepts only new packages from unstable that have proven themselves to work fairly reliably. Just change your apt-sources from 'stable' to 'testing', and it should work on most mirrors.
Enh.
"[...] other major commercial projects [...]" That's where I think you went off track. This isn't a major commercial project. It's not a democracy. It's Linus's baby, plain and simple. Everyone's been throwing their help into it... Everyone's been benefiting. But in the end, the 'Linu' in 'GNU/Linux' comes from 'Linus'. Should RedHat fall off the planet and Caldera vanish, Linux will still be there.
At the end of the day, he was the right man with the right project at the right time, but just because he decided to give his project to the world doesn't mean everyone else automatically has a say in what's officially Linux.
-kapella
The reason? Why do you need a reason to play around with stuff like this? It's their time, they can do what they want with it.
It's Cool Shit. I thought it was interesting. There's gotta be a couple hundred other people who thought the same.I think that makes it postworthy.
*shrug* There's nothing quite like programming for yourself to take the strain off your mind when you've been working for weeks on another project. I'm not sure how you'd get e's memory footprint small enough, but... It'd be cool.Do you give out morphine, demerol, or AZT to anyone who has the money to pay for it?
When was the last time you saw J. Random User operating a backhoe or a drilling rig?
The same logic should apply to broadband internet. It's one of the tools of the IT trade. It's powerful, and in unskilled or malicious hands, can be hazardous, just like the powerful drugs and heavy equipment that are tied to their respective jobs.
I'm going to university right now. The merits of liberal education and such aside (I'm doing a CompSci degree, but the college I'm studying at has a frighteningly huge breadth requirement), one of the biggest reasons I'm doing this is because of co-op. For those of you unfamiliar, co-op education (at least around here) lets you go out on a 4/8/12/16-month work term in industry and make a competitive (full-time) wage while retaining your fulltime student status (scholarships, student insurance, etc) and earning credit towards the co-op designation on your degree. It allows companies to look for potential employees on a trial basis, and gives students the opportunity to get those 1-2 years of experience that every employer wants. From what I've heard, the hiring rate after graduation of students who've done co-op is significantly higher than those with just a degree. If it were not for being able to go out and do co-op, my interest in staying in university would be far less.
The distro you're looking for is Debian. The APT tools provide automated upgrading and installing without downtime or rebooting.
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law.
... have a nice day.
I have to agree wholeheartedly. I'm a Computer Science major (guy) who's currently dating a Political Science major... and we're doing great. Really, though, think about it. Although the concept of finding someone who shares your major interest is appealing, what I'd see happening would be would be having nothing else to talk about. Too much concentration in one area...
Of course, this is just my hypothesizing. If you've managed to make a relationship like that work, good on ya.