Equate this new development with WINE. WINE can run some windows software on unix, so that people don't have to switch. By this logic, WINE would have ushered in a new era in computing.
But it didn't, and this new binary compatibility scheme won't either. Bugs, incompatibilities, inconsistencies, etc on the ported platform will always give the native platform an advantage.
Besides, it is doubtful that software companies will provide support for other ported platforms, further reducing motivation to use this binary compatibility.
I would teach the underlying protocols of the internet and the web (i.e. routing protocols, IP, HTTP) before they touch any specific daemons. This would give the students a solid grounding in internet architecture, something that many sysadmins lack. They should learn from the ground up.
If you insist upon teaching specific daemons (say, in the interest of time), use them only to illustrate a purpose - that is, teach them what the daemon does, not just how to operate it.
Depending on the experience and skill of your students, I would traverse through the BSD source code (NetBSD has the cleanest base, in my opinion) - BSD sources are laid out excellently and intuitively. BSD's TCP/IP stack is *the standard* implementation.
In one sentence: DON'T JUST TEACH YOUR STUDENTS HOW TO OPERATE THEM. FOR ADVANCED USERS, IT'S NOT ENOUGH EVEN TO LEARN THE PROTOCOLS THEMSELVES. GO THROUGH THE PROTOCOLS, THEIR IMPLEMENTATIONS, AND HOW TO MANAGE THE PARTICULAR IMPLEMENTATION.
Portscanners have very PRACTICAL and good purposes you know, such as, me, as a sysadmin can use one to make sure the ports I wanted closed ARE closed... To ban portscans and portscanning means more systems will be left open and vulnerable!
My post advocated banning portscans from OTHER PEOPLE without your prior consent. By all means, portscan yourself 24 hours a day. You correctly cite a legitimate use of a portscanner.
To have any HOPE of effectiveness, you'd have to outlaw portscanning utilities. And give that law enough teeth to allow the stormtroopers (police) the ability to "find out who has them".
No, banning portscanning utilities themselves would be a violation of liberty because they have some legitimate purposes. It is the use of a legitimate object in an illegal context which needs to be banned (This is a *fundamental* tenet of legislation). Let's go back to the gun metaphor. If current legislation regarding portscanning applied to the use of guns, shooting things would be unregulated. People would legitimately use guns (hunting, testing bullet proof vests, etc), but many, many people would go around shooting others. Since law-abiding people should be able to walk around without the fear of being shot, there is a violation of liberty in this situation. In the internet world, there is a violation of the sysadmin's liberty because their security can be violated by the use of a portscanner. Because guns have legitimate as well as illegitimate uses, correct law will NOT simply ban guns. This would be a violation of the liberty for law-abiding people. The same thing applies to portscanning: sysadmins legitimately use portscans, so banning the utilities themselves is not the solution.
What is the solution? Banning illegitimate use, of course! The act of shooting another person (illegitimate use) is outlawed. The same thing should happen on the internet. Bad use of a (potentially) good thing should be banned, NOT THE GOOD THING ITSELF.
It is an extremely FALSE assumption that merly outlawing portscans will somehow reduce breaking into systems, DOS attacks, etc. Last time I checked, THOSE activities were already illegal.
Very untrue. Perhaps the gun metaphor is a bit inaccurate - rather, let us relate the use of a portscanner to the action of pointing a gun at an individual. The act of pointing a gun at somebody has NO positive effects whatsoever (Um...I wasn't about to shoot you mr president! I was just testing your bodyguards! Just doing my duty as a citizen to keep vigilant national security! Heh...). Thus, pointing a gun at somebody can be rightfully outlawed. Relate this logic to portscanning: If a 3rd party portscans you without your prior consent, no good can come of it. The white-hat argument is invalid here. Again, back to pointing the gun. The guy about to shoot the president I described above could have been a potential white hat - after all, he said he was just testing the bodyguards. There are two blatant misgivings in the white-hat's cause. If the guy wanted to test the bodyguards, he could have at least asked beforehand. But the much larger problem is the white hat's violation of liberty. IT IS NOT THE DUTY NOR THE RIGHT OF A 3RD PARTY TO "TEST" ANOTHER'S SECURITY BY VIOLATING IT. If somebody wants to walk around with no bodyguards, they should be able to! Back to portscanning: No sysadmin *has* to maintain good security. If his or her's system is compromised, so be it. Others don't need to "look out" for somebody's liberty, especially if it involves the compromise (no matter HOW friendly) of that liberty itself! Liberty is a right ensured by one thing: legislation.
Only in the status quo and in the "police state" scenario which you cited are there violations of privacy and liberty. My model of legislation PROTECTS liberty (rather than violating it) and ensures justice.
Many will condemn the thoughts put forth in the law journal as contradictory to the natural rights of liberty on the internet. In other words, all the 'slashbot' is trying to protect is some vague idealogical conception about how the internet should function.
This view of regulations on the internet is fundamentally WRONG. Idealogical concerns can only be catered to AFTER considering practicality! I feel that the law journal makes very correct insights regarding legislation on the internet. The law journal correctly puts practicality before ideology.
Say you are a sysadmin. You run a mission-critical webserver. In the status quo, you receive around 40 portscans a minute. Hackers have been successful 3 times on your site. If portscans are outlawed, then the overall security of your site receives additional protection.
Practical benefits like this one should be MUCH more important than simply protecting 'liberty.'
Robert Brown didn't discover the secret of life. He simply observed and identified what we now call Brownian motion; he did not go far in mathematically developing his discovery. Einstein and Desaulx were the ones who truly quantified and detailed Brownian motion, I think that they are the ones who truly deserve the credit for "discovering the essence of life", if any credit is due.
SLASHDOT (New Jersey): Recently, the website "Slashdot.org", dedicated to serving "News for nerds, stuff that matters", reported that a law was upheld earlier in the week.
"What could be more newsworthy than the law being enforced and protected?" said slashdot writer Rob Malda. "I mean, this sort of stuff is in the same league as proving evolution and releasing a new Kernel. The protection of the law doesn't happen every day, and that's why I put it on Slashdot.
When questioned about the court system and other legislative jurisdiction, Malda muttered some words under his breath and scurried away to a nearby terminal.
In other words how many Windows users (outside of M$ employees) are Windows developers? Exactly 0 (zip, nadda, NONE).
Ahem..YOU ARE WRONG. There are MANY, MANY Microsoft developers. (Umm, what is msdn.com, arguably the best developer network out there, for again?) Obviously there are many developers out there who only know how to program software in a windows environment. In some cases, this is due to ignorance. In other cases, it is due to wise decision making and preference. I know a guy who is a master (i.e. working on enterprise software, not sitting in a basement "contributing" code) of both ASP (In his experience, Microsoft oriented) and PHP (Mostly OSS). He has complete knowledge and mastery over both languages, but prefers Microsoft because it provides a consistent development environment and, in his opinion, a better language overall. The fact that you ignored the entire microsoft developer community while attempting to validate your previous statement is appalling.
How many Linux users (or other Free OS users) developers as well? With Linux I'd say at least half the people who use it have probably contributed something, probably more.
Linux's ratio of developers to endusers is becoming smaller and smaller due to its increasing popularity. Even more obscure OSs like OpenBSD have even better ratios simply due to their small total user base.
I am not a Microsoft apologist (I personally like Solaris and BeOS, although the latter is in serious financial trouble), but I feel it my duty to correct such an uninformed statement.
Actually, in the dark ages, the Church did NOT take an active role against scientific inquiry; rather, it was the stagnancy of general curiosity and the poor flow of ideas throughout Western Europe that kept the Church unchallenged. It was only later into the Scientific Revolution and Reformation that the Church would get touchy (see: Papal Inquisition).
Bruce Schneier (I hate spelling his last name), author of the acclaimed Applied Cryptography, recently wrote Secrets and Lies. He basically reflects on Applied Cryptography and relates his real-world experience with cryptography. "Real-world" means 'social engineering, writing down passwords, etc' when said in context with Secrets and Lies. Of course he doesn't condone the abandonment of cryptography, but he points out some serious misgivings about our notions of security in terms of crytographic systems.
We have something M$oft will never have: a world-wide loyal developer/user base.
Read this pro-oss statement one more time, and realize its fallacy. Assume that the pro-linux argument is completely correct: the loyalty that the Open source community fosters is based completely on the quality of the Open source product. Linux has a larger loyal (meaning that it will stick with linux) user base and it will continue to do so.
This notion is completely false. Microsoft certainly has the bigger market share numerically, and loyalty is 'synthesized' because of this numerical advantage. Don't respond with any "but, but, Microsoft chains us to their products" -- If many, if not most, people were given the choice to know Linux or know Microsoft, they'd choose the latter.
the GIMP still has a *Long* way to go. Photoshop has more features than the gimp. Pshop has a larger support base. Photoshop is very cross-platform (uhmm...solaris? irix?). This port is certainly a step in the right direction for the GIMP, but it will in no way challenge photoshop until it raises the bar technically.
recently there have been many articles on slashdot about how the TLD and domain system is (corporately) falling apart. Why the hell would something like this happen? Great, I get to control if.biz or.info are implemented or not. Unless you have a role like that of the InterNIC's (which directly leads to monopolistic profit), then there is no reason for stuff like this to occur.
this show is great. there's only one mystery - in the american version on the food network, at some interval some japanese person shouts "squizan!" (or something to that degree). Why isn't this translated?
if one is speaking from the "i host a web server on linux" viewpoint, then of course hardware encryption seems rather expensive and unnecessary. However, special interests call for specialized hardware. For example, web servers don't need great video cards. However, desktop and workstation users require excellent video cards, for their tasks are oriented in such a manner. Similarly, those with special needs require specialized hardware.
Hardware crypto, of course, takes the encryption burden off of the central CPU. Hardware crypto is more secure as well. General purpose operating systems are bad news for cryptography. In an environment of multithreading and shared memory, sensitive information can be held in insecure places (that is, unencrypted in memory or on disk). This is particularly an issue with virtual memory - sensitive data passing through memory could remain on disk for days, insecure. Hardware crypto alleviates this problem by bypassing the CPU and OS crypto software, and does all of it on board.
"Yay! more portable drives that are totally incompatible with everything else including all other Iomega drives! Yay!"
Not many removable media companies who develop their own storage solutions give away their work to other companies. If Iomega introduces an innovation to the market, it has every right to keep it. It's called a patent, people. We at slashdot always prefer open standards and technologies, but please remember that companies like Iomega do not violate god-given rights simply because they manufacture proprietary technology.
if FSF loses: Other companies will trample all over the GPL. They'll still maintain a certain discreetness, and any power that the FSF has in court will be severely limited. Possible repercussions on impending yro cases by association.
if FSF wins: not much. The GPL source will be liberated from the commercial DVD ripper. What else could the FSF et al ask for? Not money..
It's really not that bad. Sure, many posts say that this intrusion is inevitable. As long as the quality of the show I am watching does not go down, then in show advertisements would not matter to me. Advertisers will cross traditional boundaries. This doesn't bother me. If they are too lazy to think of creative ways of introducing their product inside the show, then there is a problem. If the plot and genuine nature of the show remains intact, who cares?
on a side note, this probably won't be happening for a while, don't treat it like impending doom.
Of course, seeing a company with good intentions (and, in my opinion, a good product) bite the dust is a sad thing -- not uncommon in our times. But maybe this is all for the better. To put it harshly, the bankruptcies of many companies - isps and linux distributions to name a couple - may be part of a "weeding" process, in the darwinistic sense of the word. Yes, it means adversity for actual people, but Linux may benefit. The consolidation of Linux distributions into a strong few, each commanding a sizable chunk of the linux market share, seems like a good future. I'd love to see a BSD-style distribution setup for linux - each distro targeted (and excelling at) a specific purpose. Of course, they'd all be based on the same kernel, so there would be more collaboration than between the BSDs. It would certainly make porting easier:)
Examples of "dumb" equipment working better than "smart" equipment:
1) Many SCSI Controllers under UNIX. Unices typically like to have low level control over the disk devices. Adding another "thinking" layer slows things down.
2) Pentium IV. Sure, the branch execution may help in some places, but in others the pipeline gets screwed over and you end up with *bad* performance.
Apply the same logic to routers. Sure, the current load on our routers is enormous, but making them "smart" isn't the end-all-be-all.
Well, usually I sleep at night time. It gets quite dark outside so there's not much to do. People need to sleep so I figure, hey, why not sleep at night.
in other news, the Government got tired of their lawsuit against Microsoft, and decided to buy them out. Federal Spokesperson Robert Hausley was quoted, "Well, frankly, we'd love to get into this whole monopoly thing too. We figure that we can consolidate the "establishment" of corporate values and government enforcement with this deal. Protestors were placated by $10 rebates on Microsoft XP.
Ways for corporations/big bad government/microsoft to defeat blackboard:
1) hire lackees to scribble all over blackboard, rendering the writings of others unintelligible.
2) hire "janitors" to "clean" the blackboard (from site: "regardless of what is on it, the slate will be cleaned by maintenance staff on a regularly scheduled basis. Thus, everything placed on the monument is temporary.")
3) do nothing. why the hell would i want to walk all the way to a towns square to scribble something in chalk when I can post something on the internet?
Individuals expressing themselves on the chalkboard are subject to the same legal restrictions that they would be if expressing themselves verbally in a public space.
History is repeating itself. Russia's industrial revolution came terribly late - nobility kept the serfs tied down to the land, perpetuating a low-tech agrarian market. When a progressive tsar took power, he opened up the country to foreign corporations, and encouraged them to build factories and get cheap labor in his country. Now, the Russians are doing the same thing. Maybe on a smaller scale, and maybe it is with astronomy, but its certainly a step in the right direction.
Slashdot Mirror
Renaissance in computing? I don't think so.
Equate this new development with WINE. WINE can run some windows software on unix, so that people don't have to switch. By this logic, WINE would have ushered in a new era in computing.
But it didn't, and this new binary compatibility scheme won't either. Bugs, incompatibilities, inconsistencies, etc on the ported platform will always give the native platform an advantage.
Besides, it is doubtful that software companies will provide support for other ported platforms, further reducing motivation to use this binary compatibility.
I would teach the underlying protocols of the internet and the web (i.e. routing protocols, IP, HTTP) before they touch any specific daemons. This would give the students a solid grounding in internet architecture, something that many sysadmins lack. They should learn from the ground up.
If you insist upon teaching specific daemons (say, in the interest of time), use them only to illustrate a purpose - that is, teach them what the daemon does, not just how to operate it.
Depending on the experience and skill of your students, I would traverse through the BSD source code (NetBSD has the cleanest base, in my opinion) - BSD sources are laid out excellently and intuitively. BSD's TCP/IP stack is *the standard* implementation.
In one sentence: DON'T JUST TEACH YOUR STUDENTS HOW TO OPERATE THEM. FOR ADVANCED USERS, IT'S NOT ENOUGH EVEN TO LEARN THE PROTOCOLS THEMSELVES. GO THROUGH THE PROTOCOLS, THEIR IMPLEMENTATIONS, AND HOW TO MANAGE THE PARTICULAR IMPLEMENTATION.
Portscanners have very PRACTICAL and good purposes you know, such as, me, as a sysadmin can use one to make sure the ports I wanted closed ARE closed... To ban portscans and portscanning means more systems will be left open and vulnerable!
My post advocated banning portscans from OTHER PEOPLE without your prior consent. By all means, portscan yourself 24 hours a day. You correctly cite a legitimate use of a portscanner.
To have any HOPE of effectiveness, you'd have to outlaw portscanning utilities. And give that law enough teeth to allow the stormtroopers (police) the ability to "find out who has them".
No, banning portscanning utilities themselves would be a violation of liberty because they have some legitimate purposes. It is the use of a legitimate object in an illegal context which needs to be banned (This is a *fundamental* tenet of legislation). Let's go back to the gun metaphor. If current legislation regarding portscanning applied to the use of guns, shooting things would be unregulated. People would legitimately use guns (hunting, testing bullet proof vests, etc), but many, many people would go around shooting others. Since law-abiding people should be able to walk around without the fear of being shot, there is a violation of liberty in this situation. In the internet world, there is a violation of the sysadmin's liberty because their security can be violated by the use of a portscanner. Because guns have legitimate as well as illegitimate uses, correct law will NOT simply ban guns. This would be a violation of the liberty for law-abiding people. The same thing applies to portscanning: sysadmins legitimately use portscans, so banning the utilities themselves is not the solution.
What is the solution? Banning illegitimate use, of course! The act of shooting another person (illegitimate use) is outlawed. The same thing should happen on the internet. Bad use of a (potentially) good thing should be banned, NOT THE GOOD THING ITSELF.
It is an extremely FALSE assumption that merly outlawing portscans will somehow reduce breaking into systems, DOS attacks, etc. Last time I checked, THOSE activities were already illegal.
Very untrue. Perhaps the gun metaphor is a bit inaccurate - rather, let us relate the use of a portscanner to the action of pointing a gun at an individual. The act of pointing a gun at somebody has NO positive effects whatsoever (Um...I wasn't about to shoot you mr president! I was just testing your bodyguards! Just doing my duty as a citizen to keep vigilant national security! Heh...). Thus, pointing a gun at somebody can be rightfully outlawed. Relate this logic to portscanning: If a 3rd party portscans you without your prior consent, no good can come of it. The white-hat argument is invalid here. Again, back to pointing the gun. The guy about to shoot the president I described above could have been a potential white hat - after all, he said he was just testing the bodyguards. There are two blatant misgivings in the white-hat's cause. If the guy wanted to test the bodyguards, he could have at least asked beforehand. But the much larger problem is the white hat's violation of liberty. IT IS NOT THE DUTY NOR THE RIGHT OF A 3RD PARTY TO "TEST" ANOTHER'S SECURITY BY VIOLATING IT. If somebody wants to walk around with no bodyguards, they should be able to! Back to portscanning: No sysadmin *has* to maintain good security. If his or her's system is compromised, so be it. Others don't need to "look out" for somebody's liberty, especially if it involves the compromise (no matter HOW friendly) of that liberty itself! Liberty is a right ensured by one thing: legislation.
Only in the status quo and in the "police state" scenario which you cited are there violations of privacy and liberty. My model of legislation PROTECTS liberty (rather than violating it) and ensures justice.
Many will condemn the thoughts put forth in the law journal as contradictory to the natural rights of liberty on the internet. In other words, all the 'slashbot' is trying to protect is some vague idealogical conception about how the internet should function.
This view of regulations on the internet is fundamentally WRONG. Idealogical concerns can only be catered to AFTER considering practicality! I feel that the law journal makes very correct insights regarding legislation on the internet. The law journal correctly puts practicality before ideology.
Say you are a sysadmin. You run a mission-critical webserver. In the status quo, you receive around 40 portscans a minute. Hackers have been successful 3 times on your site. If portscans are outlawed, then the overall security of your site receives additional protection.
Practical benefits like this one should be MUCH more important than simply protecting 'liberty.'
Robert Brown didn't discover the secret of life. He simply observed and identified what we now call Brownian motion; he did not go far in mathematically developing his discovery. Einstein and Desaulx were the ones who truly quantified and detailed Brownian motion, I think that they are the ones who truly deserve the credit for "discovering the essence of life", if any credit is due.
probably the power supply...
SLASHDOT (New Jersey): Recently, the website "Slashdot.org", dedicated to serving "News for nerds, stuff that matters", reported that a law was upheld earlier in the week.
"What could be more newsworthy than the law being enforced and protected?" said slashdot writer Rob Malda. "I mean, this sort of stuff is in the same league as proving evolution and releasing a new Kernel. The protection of the law doesn't happen every day, and that's why I put it on Slashdot.
When questioned about the court system and other legislative jurisdiction, Malda muttered some words under his breath and scurried away to a nearby terminal.
In other words how many Windows users (outside of M$ employees) are Windows developers? Exactly 0 (zip, nadda, NONE).
Ahem..YOU ARE WRONG. There are MANY, MANY Microsoft developers. (Umm, what is msdn.com, arguably the best developer network out there, for again?) Obviously there are many developers out there who only know how to program software in a windows environment. In some cases, this is due to ignorance. In other cases, it is due to wise decision making and preference. I know a guy who is a master (i.e. working on enterprise software, not sitting in a basement "contributing" code) of both ASP (In his experience, Microsoft oriented) and PHP (Mostly OSS). He has complete knowledge and mastery over both languages, but prefers Microsoft because it provides a consistent development environment and, in his opinion, a better language overall. The fact that you ignored the entire microsoft developer community while attempting to validate your previous statement is appalling.
How many Linux users (or other Free OS users) developers as well? With Linux I'd say at least half the people who use it have probably contributed something, probably more.
Linux's ratio of developers to endusers is becoming smaller and smaller due to its increasing popularity. Even more obscure OSs like OpenBSD have even better ratios simply due to their small total user base.
I am not a Microsoft apologist (I personally like Solaris and BeOS, although the latter is in serious financial trouble), but I feel it my duty to correct such an uninformed statement.
Actually, in the dark ages, the Church did NOT take an active role against scientific inquiry; rather, it was the stagnancy of general curiosity and the poor flow of ideas throughout Western Europe that kept the Church unchallenged. It was only later into the Scientific Revolution and Reformation that the Church would get touchy (see: Papal Inquisition).
Bruce Schneier (I hate spelling his last name), author of the acclaimed Applied Cryptography, recently wrote Secrets and Lies. He basically reflects on Applied Cryptography and relates his real-world experience with cryptography. "Real-world" means 'social engineering, writing down passwords, etc' when said in context with Secrets and Lies. Of course he doesn't condone the abandonment of cryptography, but he points out some serious misgivings about our notions of security in terms of crytographic systems.
We have something M$oft will never have: a world-wide loyal developer/user base.
Read this pro-oss statement one more time, and realize its fallacy. Assume that the pro-linux argument is completely correct: the loyalty that the Open source community fosters is based completely on the quality of the Open source product. Linux has a larger loyal (meaning that it will stick with linux) user base and it will continue to do so.
This notion is completely false. Microsoft certainly has the bigger market share numerically, and loyalty is 'synthesized' because of this numerical advantage. Don't respond with any "but, but, Microsoft chains us to their products" -- If many, if not most, people were given the choice to know Linux or know Microsoft, they'd choose the latter.
the GIMP still has a *Long* way to go. Photoshop has more features than the gimp. Pshop has a larger support base. Photoshop is very cross-platform (uhmm...solaris? irix?). This port is certainly a step in the right direction for the GIMP, but it will in no way challenge photoshop until it raises the bar technically.
recently there have been many articles on slashdot about how the TLD and domain system is (corporately) falling apart. Why the hell would something like this happen? Great, I get to control if .biz or .info are implemented or not. Unless you have a role like that of the InterNIC's (which directly leads to monopolistic profit), then there is no reason for stuff like this to occur.
this show is great. there's only one mystery - in the american version on the food network, at some interval some japanese person shouts "squizan!" (or something to that degree). Why isn't this translated?
if one is speaking from the "i host a web server on linux" viewpoint, then of course hardware encryption seems rather expensive and unnecessary. However, special interests call for specialized hardware. For example, web servers don't need great video cards. However, desktop and workstation users require excellent video cards, for their tasks are oriented in such a manner. Similarly, those with special needs require specialized hardware.
Hardware crypto, of course, takes the encryption burden off of the central CPU. Hardware crypto is more secure as well. General purpose operating systems are bad news for cryptography. In an environment of multithreading and shared memory, sensitive information can be held in insecure places (that is, unencrypted in memory or on disk). This is particularly an issue with virtual memory - sensitive data passing through memory could remain on disk for days, insecure. Hardware crypto alleviates this problem by bypassing the CPU and OS crypto software, and does all of it on board.
"Yay! more portable drives that are totally incompatible with everything else including all other Iomega drives! Yay!"
Not many removable media companies who develop their own storage solutions give away their work to other companies. If Iomega introduces an innovation to the market, it has every right to keep it. It's called a patent, people. We at slashdot always prefer open standards and technologies, but please remember that companies like Iomega do not violate god-given rights simply because they manufacture proprietary technology.
if FSF loses: Other companies will trample all over the GPL. They'll still maintain a certain discreetness, and any power that the FSF has in court will be severely limited. Possible repercussions on impending yro cases by association.
if FSF wins: not much. The GPL source will be liberated from the commercial DVD ripper. What else could the FSF et al ask for? Not money..
It's really not that bad. Sure, many posts say that this intrusion is inevitable. As long as the quality of the show I am watching does not go down, then in show advertisements would not matter to me. Advertisers will cross traditional boundaries. This doesn't bother me. If they are too lazy to think of creative ways of introducing their product inside the show, then there is a problem. If the plot and genuine nature of the show remains intact, who cares?
on a side note, this probably won't be happening for a while, don't treat it like impending doom.
Of course, seeing a company with good intentions (and, in my opinion, a good product) bite the dust is a sad thing -- not uncommon in our times. But maybe this is all for the better. To put it harshly, the bankruptcies of many companies - isps and linux distributions to name a couple - may be part of a "weeding" process, in the darwinistic sense of the word. Yes, it means adversity for actual people, but Linux may benefit. The consolidation of Linux distributions into a strong few, each commanding a sizable chunk of the linux market share, seems like a good future. I'd love to see a BSD-style distribution setup for linux - each distro targeted (and excelling at) a specific purpose. Of course, they'd all be based on the same kernel, so there would be more collaboration than between the BSDs. It would certainly make porting easier :)
Don't underestimate "dumb" routers. Don't underestimate "dumb", period.
Examples of "dumb" equipment working better than "smart" equipment:
1) Many SCSI Controllers under UNIX. Unices typically like to have low level control over the disk devices. Adding another "thinking" layer slows things down.
2) Pentium IV. Sure, the branch execution may help in some places, but in others the pipeline gets screwed over and you end up with *bad* performance.
Apply the same logic to routers. Sure, the current load on our routers is enormous, but making them "smart" isn't the end-all-be-all.
Well, usually I sleep at night time. It gets quite dark outside so there's not much to do. People need to sleep so I figure, hey, why not sleep at night.
in other news, the Government got tired of their lawsuit against Microsoft, and decided to buy them out. Federal Spokesperson Robert Hausley was quoted, "Well, frankly, we'd love to get into this whole monopoly thing too. We figure that we can consolidate the "establishment" of corporate values and government enforcement with this deal. Protestors were placated by $10 rebates on Microsoft XP.
Ways for corporations/big bad government/microsoft to defeat blackboard:
1) hire lackees to scribble all over blackboard, rendering the writings of others unintelligible.
2) hire "janitors" to "clean" the blackboard (from site: "regardless of what is on it, the slate will be cleaned by maintenance staff on a regularly scheduled basis. Thus, everything placed on the monument is temporary.")
3) do nothing. why the hell would i want to walk all the way to a towns square to scribble something in chalk when I can post something on the internet?
Individuals expressing themselves on the chalkboard are subject to the same legal restrictions that they would be if expressing themselves verbally in a public space.
Damn, guess that means no illegal mp3 trading...
History is repeating itself. Russia's industrial revolution came terribly late - nobility kept the serfs tied down to the land, perpetuating a low-tech agrarian market. When a progressive tsar took power, he opened up the country to foreign corporations, and encouraged them to build factories and get cheap labor in his country. Now, the Russians are doing the same thing. Maybe on a smaller scale, and maybe it is with astronomy, but its certainly a step in the right direction.