Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 1
You're right. Computer technology hasn't changed at all, really. Infact, one of my favorite languages, Lisp, is something like the 2nd oldest computer language. The only thing that changes is the hardware technology, and that only grows in capability and not fundamental differences. This is much easier to see when looking at the IBM-PC. The difference between an XT (8088) and the latest generation of Pentiums and Athlons is nothing, in terms of computing concepts.
I can almost guarantee that the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs will be valid for the next 10 years, and most likely 25, 50 and possibly 100 years. In the end, you are still talking to the computer in whichever symbolic way you choose to get a certain job done. You might have to learn about XML, Java, C++, or whatever other buzzword of the day is, of course.
I find it a bit hard to believe you went to CMU. From your web page:
And BTW: Copyright dibs on idea: Take cable or RCA cable from VCR/DVD/TV, plug it into this computer card, and then stream video onto the internet using software. Too bad I don't know hardware or I'd make it.
First, you don't have the slightest clue about the difference between copyrights and patents. This is important in the software industry. Next, you don't seem to realize that what you "invented" is probably a decade or two old. I have all that is needed for this "invention" of yours with Linux and my brooktree-based capture card. And this was last year.
I have a friend who is much like you. He talks plenty, but in the end he gets nothing done. Every time I meet with him he talks about his new "inventions." Some days I just want to stick him in front of Google or NEC SiteCeer and say "Look here pal, you didn't invent shit!"
You desperately need focus. Find a goal you can work towards and accomplish and focus on that. Learn everything you know about job placement. Learn about networking (not the computer kind). Find a company you are interested in and then meet someone who works there. Resumes aren't the only way to get a job (and probably the most difficult, at that).
The little things called "goals" that those strange high school teachers talked about all the time truely do come in handy for getting anywhere in life. Just don't make every little thing you think about a goal.
The developments leading to the Intel Architecture can be traced back through the 8085 and 8080 microprocessors to the 4004 microprocessor (the first microprocessor, designed by Intel in 1969). However, the first actual processor in the Intel Architecture family is the 8086, quickly followed by a more cost effective version for smaller systems, the 8088.
I do believe they are counting from the first 8086, rather than from the 4004. And if you read the article is does mention X86 specifically at the end.
should not be considered a Denial of Service. If anything, call it what it truely is: shoddy programming. There is nothing being denied when it is the client that has the problem.
Another thing.. this is nothing new. A number of DoS attacks require the server to do more than the client requests. The attacker's complexity would be O(n) whereas the server would be O(n^2) or some such, where n is any given method of communication. The only "new" thing would perhaps be looking at individual programs and algorithms, which is probably applying a very liberal definition of "new." They even admit it themselves by claiming ping-of-death and stack smashing have much in common with what they describe in the article.
Probably more fair to compare Reloaded/Revolutions to Return of Jedi and Empire Strikes Back, than Phantom Menace/Attack of Clones. It was the time between making the next Starwars that really killed the later ones, IMO. One thing you can be sure of though, is if Reloaded turns out good then Revolutions should be just as good since both were shot during the same time period and have the same standards of quality.
Not quite. I have both AdLib and the "original" SoundBlaster (the old 8-bit). Still have both today. AdLib was a nice card, but it only had FM synth. SoundBlaster had 11khz audio record and 44khz audio playback, at 8-bit mono for both. Infact, my SB 8-bit could play module files (.MOD) at 44khz. It is quite a sight seeing an 8088 producing a near-CD quality sound. Much like when MP3 first came about. This is not to say that using digitized sound was easy or cheap as it is today. Unless game programmers went the.MOD route, games rarely had digitized sounds. Which is probably why SB didn't amount to much early on. The power was there, but it was very expensive to use that power back then. I'd say AdLib probably had the _better_ FM chip, but this is only because they were around a little longer and SoundBlaster was doing the digital thing as well as FM.
I'd say because marketing requires excitement (_about the product_). Boredom is what kills any marketing plan. Though I'm sure marketing is a somewhat boring job in itself which probably doesn't generate the excitement you need/want.
How is that a good statistic which represents what the majority of _businesses_ are switching to? I'd wager more businesses are switching from MS-DOS or MacOS to Windows than from any platform to Linux (or perhaps even from Windows to MacOS X). Police, fire, etc. have different needs and economic situations than businesses too. And citing a number such as 60,000 is completely meaningless because it is only _one_ organization. Sounds impressive, but means nothing at all in terms of the overall picture.
For every business which switches to Linux, how many new businesses arrive which use Windows? Probably many more..
Of course. Put those same people in front of an *ix machine and the problem will become much worse I suspect. But there are quite a few who _can_ do administrative tasks on Windows. Just try changing something like mouse clicking speed on Linux and compare that to Windows. Overall, it takes less knowledge to operate Windows.
Where are your sources for this "fact?" My guess is just a very very very small percentage of businesses are switching to Linux for desktop tasks. Why do I think this? Because from my daily use, Linux has been very slow gaining productivity apps. We finally have an office application with word processing, etc. But this is NOT enough. Printer support is severely lacking. Sure you might be able to get just about any common postscript printer up and running, but it is somewhat difficult to do so. Then there are font issues and file system issues. Desktop systems do _not_ need multiuser capabilities. The hassle of system management is still there (opposed to "user" management.. which should be treated in a completely different way).
The more "bang for buck" is true, but only if the user is a programmer or very *ix-knowledgable. Otherwise, the "bang" drops quickly to zero and the "buck" increases dramatically in terms of cost of maintenance and support. Slapping a fancy GUI onto a _system_ does not make a _new_ system. It just makes an incoherent hodgepodge of metaphors. The user will see a very Windows-like desktop, but the file system and nearly everything about the system is different.
I suppose nowadays it is entirely possible to install a "working" Linux desktop "system" that is usable out-of-the-box. BUT, once something goes wrong (and something WILL go wrong, Linux is not invincible to everyday things going awry) the system will be completely useless without a system administrator. One of the benefits of Windows is that everyday users can do most system administration tasks. Installing drivers is as simple as installing software. All _system_ and _user_ configuration is done via the control panel, unlike Linux which has most system configuration in/etc and most user configuration in $HOME/.* files with as many different formats as there are programs which use the configuration data.
Funny you mention 5.25" disks. I just started a huge backup of 5.25" disks from as early as 1984 or so. Know how easy it was? Just plug the 5.25" drive into the standard floppy connector on my K7 motherboard and the standard power plug on the power supply. You probably wonder how much data was lost due to bit rot. A _very_ slight percentage. Out of perhaps 500 floppies, only 5-8 would be unreadable. And I'd say that those which are unreadable were because the disks were bad to begin with (infact, I remember having trouble reading the same disks 7+ years ago). With today's technology digital backup is a reality. My entire archive of 5.25" and 3.5" (old 720k) disks will fit on 1-3 CD-Rs easily. And later I will purchase a DVD writer, as everyone will, and toss those CD-Rs onto a backup DVD. The process continues and as long as someone is _caring_ for the material, then it will survive.
Archiving is a constant job. If you let paper photographs sit in a damp, dusty, etc. area then you WILL have problems. Same thing would be leaving 5.25" floppies sit around by magnets, etc. Improper care and treatment is the ONLY reason digital, or otherwise, archiving fails.
I'm thinking these aren't the complete, fully polished models and environments. Take a look at some of the Quake3 Team Arena shots and compare to these. The doom3 shots are quite bad compared to q3. I'd expect a huge improvement by the time Doom3 is released. Like others have said too, the big thing with Doom3 will be the real-time shadows and nothing to do with static screenshots.
Erm. I'm curious.. what can PS2 games do that games using Quake3 engine can't? Nearly a year after Q3 was out, games continued to use Q2 engine. I know Q3 isn't much more than Q1 with shaders and lightmaps, etc. But a low-res PS2? Certain things engines are good at and certain things they are not. Q3 is still very good for indoor environments. For outdoor environments it sucks ass. It probably wouldn't be good for a Mario or Sonic type game. I don't doubt there is a better indoor engine. Infact, I know it's name: Doom 3.
um. nearly every Scheme/Lisp/_Python_ is not related to AI: Why? Perhaps because AI is still very much a research project, and not some real world application. Which is why you don't need CORBA, etc. support built into the language. And if you do, you can always add it to just about any language (Lisp-like languages especially). I think you're just looking for reasons to bash Lisp-like languages..
BTW, Python and Perl are pretty much tied to a _program_ as of right now. They aren't cross-platform until you port the Python application (the "system"). CL/R5RS you can grab the specification and implement it. The cross-platform issue is completely moot.
I'm not exactly sure what these have to do with _AI_. And if you don't know, there is also Common Lisp. Scheme is also not Common Lisp. Take any language out today and none of them meets all of the criteria you listed fully. And if they do or did.. how would that help AI?
As for guile "failing".. well I'm still using it and there was talk of The GIMP using it rather than Scheme in one defun (siod). IMO, the only set-back or problem with guile was them developing on top of SCM and not starting from scratch. Now their code base is completely incoherent and unmaintainable (IMO, of course).
Re:That old Double standard
on
Triangle Boy Lives
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, I would _love_ to see you go down to your public library and walk away with _your_ computer. Paying taxes does not mean ownership in any way shape or form. This is a myth. What you _can_ do is vote on certain issues and get involved. Beyond that, you own that computer just as much as the air your breathe. You can play with it and use it, but it sure isn't _yours_. You can't go and destroy street signs, just because you paid taxes to have them placed there. Nor can you go and drive on the opposite side of the highway. That is a restriction just like filters are a restriction. Don't like it? Too bad. You didn't vote on the issue or get involved when the decision was made.
speak for yourself.. I bloody hated configuring fvwm.. and using it. Don't even think about looking at the source for fvwm2. Horror of horrors. Today I use WindowMaker and KDE, but don't get me wrong--I can't stand either still. WindowMaker has gotten much better at configuration, but it's navigation sucks total ass still. And configuration is still very iffy. The _only_ reason I used fvwm is because.. well, um, do you REALLY want to use twm? I thought so. IIRC, there was also openwin and a number of minimalist window managers, but none had the features of fvwm. Then I believe E came out and took X by storm. But before E, I think the major turning point was that spoofed transparent xterm screenshot which really got the ball rolling. I remember everyone asking "where do I get that xterm?"
hrm. I'm using Slack 7.0 currently and IIRC, it came installed w/ xfstt. All I had to do was set a link to my Windows font directory and reset X/xfstt. I've been using xfstt since probably '98 myself.. which is why I keep wondering what all this talk about ugly fonts is. But X11 font handling _is_ a mess. Truely horrid. While xfstt is nice, for the most part it is a cheap hack. Which is basically why I'm skeptical about GNOME/KDE with respect to printers and fonts. They seem more concerned with placing a fancy front-end on what amounts to an underlying technical problem. They might make it much easier to use fonts, etc.,.. but at a significant cost in elegancy.
There is nothing preventing Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Debian, et. al. from creating their own RPM/deb wrapper utility that will take a binary tarball and install it onto their respective distribution, perhaps even parsing the list of required libraries and versions and mapping it to their dependency resolution mechanisms anyway.
From a technical standpoint _and_ a business standpoint, there is everything standing in the way of "package once, use everywhere." Those "tarballs" you speak of have no guarantee of information contained within them. The only information is basic directory structure and files contained within. You cannot simply wrap around a tar file and install it correctly. Some applications have very different needs and install very differently. You can't assume you can always do "./configure; make install" or similar. Perhaps the binary lives 2-3 directories deep. How would the tar wrapper get to it? So how would you get this perfect tar system? You would force _vendors_ to adhere to certain standards. The problem here is, Red Hat is in need of depedency control. They want to play the guy in the middle much like MS does. They are using RPM as a de facto standard for Linux. You can't simply make them give that up. Doesn't make good business sense. Even if there was this system, you would have to get Red Hat and other vendors to support it before application vendors would use it. Application vendors follow the lead of the controlling system(s). It makes good business sense to them.
Admin or not: security can only be measured _now_. Not tomorrow. Not 5 minutes from now. In 3 seconds your box could be compromised from an unseen source.
That is the only thing admins can do: look after their systems. The most important knowledge an admin has is the knowledge of how to detect a security breach and how to cut the system off from the rest of the world _immediately_. After that he must check the system all over, because any number of things could be different and it should not be thought of as the same system.
I agree, but only slightly. Physically, the exploit was always there. But there is this big dark cloud known as "security knowledge." In this "security knowledge" cloud, the exploit was _not_ there.
This "security knowledge" cloud represents everything the "Securers" know about security and also everything the "Exploiters" know about security. Occasionally the Exploiters learn a new technique. This technique can be a whole new exploit paradigm, such as distributed denial-of-service, or it can be a simple software bug exploit. Securers _always_ learn about security from Exploiters. When Securers learn that Exploiters know of a new tactic, only _then_ does it change from a bug or misdesign to a security issue.
So, in conclusion: the _vulnerability_ only existed when a person with an Exploiter-like mind discovered the bug/misdesign and linked it together with an _exploit_. The bug/misdesign was always there, though. Just not the knowledge of how to use it as an exploit. From this you can infer that no system is truely 100% safe at any given time. Security can only be judged or measured by how many _known_ security issues a system currently prevents.
I have a ThinkPad 380D (150Mhz). IBM never supported Linux on this system, but I managed to install Slack 7 on it. I even got my very old PCMCIA card to work (a true miracle, since the driver was found on a very old web site and the state of the driver was very beta). X also works great as does my CD-ROM. I can't imagine IBM designing laptops to _be_ incompatible. Taco is quite the cynical guy...
well.. Netscape 4.x to Mozilla. That's what I upgraded from, anyhow. Mozilla is quite different from the older, closed browser. But I do remember Mozilla having its own GUI-independent widgets. I remember having a blue outline w/ circular buttons and it was horribly slow. This was quite some time ago... perhaps I'm thinking of Netscape 6, though.
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You're right. Computer technology hasn't changed at all, really. Infact, one of my favorite languages, Lisp, is something like the 2nd oldest computer language. The only thing that changes is the hardware technology, and that only grows in capability and not fundamental differences. This is much easier to see when looking at the IBM-PC. The difference between an XT (8088) and the latest generation of Pentiums and Athlons is nothing, in terms of computing concepts.
I can almost guarantee that the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs will be valid for the next 10 years, and most likely 25, 50 and possibly 100 years. In the end, you are still talking to the computer in whichever symbolic way you choose to get a certain job done. You might have to learn about XML, Java, C++, or whatever other buzzword of the day is, of course.
I have a friend who is much like you. He talks plenty, but in the end he gets nothing done. Every time I meet with him he talks about his new "inventions." Some days I just want to stick him in front of Google or NEC SiteCeer and say "Look here pal, you didn't invent shit!"
You desperately need focus. Find a goal you can work towards and accomplish and focus on that. Learn everything you know about job placement. Learn about networking (not the computer kind). Find a company you are interested in and then meet someone who works there. Resumes aren't the only way to get a job (and probably the most difficult, at that).
The little things called "goals" that those strange high school teachers talked about all the time truely do come in handy for getting anywhere in life. Just don't make every little thing you think about a goal.
From x86 manual:
The developments leading to the Intel Architecture can be traced back through the 8085 and 8080 microprocessors to the 4004 microprocessor (the first microprocessor, designed by Intel in 1969). However, the first actual processor in the Intel Architecture family is the 8086, quickly followed by a more cost effective version for smaller systems, the 8088.
I do believe they are counting from the first 8086, rather than from the 4004. And if you read the article is does mention X86 specifically at the end.
should not be considered a Denial of Service. If anything, call it what it truely is: shoddy programming. There is nothing being denied when it is the client that has the problem.
Another thing.. this is nothing new. A number of DoS attacks require the server to do more than the client requests. The attacker's complexity would be O(n) whereas the server would be O(n^2) or some such, where n is any given method of communication. The only "new" thing would perhaps be looking at individual programs and algorithms, which is probably applying a very liberal definition of "new." They even admit it themselves by claiming ping-of-death and stack smashing have much in common with what they describe in the article.
Probably more fair to compare Reloaded/Revolutions to Return of Jedi and Empire Strikes Back, than Phantom Menace/Attack of Clones. It was the time between making the next Starwars that really killed the later ones, IMO. One thing you can be sure of though, is if Reloaded turns out good then Revolutions should be just as good since both were shot during the same time period and have the same standards of quality.
Not quite. I have both AdLib and the "original" SoundBlaster (the old 8-bit). Still have both today. AdLib was a nice card, but it only had FM synth. SoundBlaster had 11khz audio record and 44khz audio playback, at 8-bit mono for both. Infact, my SB 8-bit could play module files (.MOD) at 44khz. It is quite a sight seeing an 8088 producing a near-CD quality sound. Much like when MP3 first came about. This is not to say that using digitized sound was easy or cheap as it is today. Unless game programmers went the .MOD route, games rarely had digitized sounds. Which is probably why SB didn't amount to much early on. The power was there, but it was very expensive to use that power back then. I'd say AdLib probably had the _better_ FM chip, but this is only because they were around a little longer and SoundBlaster was doing the digital thing as well as FM.
I'd say because marketing requires excitement (_about the product_). Boredom is what kills any marketing plan. Though I'm sure marketing is a somewhat boring job in itself which probably doesn't generate the excitement you need/want.
That's cute, but this user has KDE. Ahh now we have distinctions. There is KDE Linux and Gnome Linux. Such a confusing thing, this "Linux."
How is that a good statistic which represents what the majority of _businesses_ are switching to? I'd wager more businesses are switching from MS-DOS or MacOS to Windows than from any platform to Linux (or perhaps even from Windows to MacOS X). Police, fire, etc. have different needs and economic situations than businesses too. And citing a number such as 60,000 is completely meaningless because it is only _one_ organization. Sounds impressive, but means nothing at all in terms of the overall picture.
For every business which switches to Linux, how many new businesses arrive which use Windows? Probably many more..
Of course. Put those same people in front of an *ix machine and the problem will become much worse I suspect. But there are quite a few who _can_ do administrative tasks on Windows. Just try changing something like mouse clicking speed on Linux and compare that to Windows. Overall, it takes less knowledge to operate Windows.
Where are your sources for this "fact?" My guess is just a very very very small percentage of businesses are switching to Linux for desktop tasks. Why do I think this? Because from my daily use, Linux has been very slow gaining productivity apps. We finally have an office application with word processing, etc. But this is NOT enough. Printer support is severely lacking. Sure you might be able to get just about any common postscript printer up and running, but it is somewhat difficult to do so. Then there are font issues and file system issues. Desktop systems do _not_ need multiuser capabilities. The hassle of system management is still there (opposed to "user" management.. which should be treated in a completely different way).
/etc and most user configuration in $HOME/.* files with as many different formats as there are programs which use the configuration data.
The more "bang for buck" is true, but only if the user is a programmer or very *ix-knowledgable. Otherwise, the "bang" drops quickly to zero and the "buck" increases dramatically in terms of cost of maintenance and support. Slapping a fancy GUI onto a _system_ does not make a _new_ system. It just makes an incoherent hodgepodge of metaphors. The user will see a very Windows-like desktop, but the file system and nearly everything about the system is different.
I suppose nowadays it is entirely possible to install a "working" Linux desktop "system" that is usable out-of-the-box. BUT, once something goes wrong (and something WILL go wrong, Linux is not invincible to everyday things going awry) the system will be completely useless without a system administrator. One of the benefits of Windows is that everyday users can do most system administration tasks. Installing drivers is as simple as installing software. All _system_ and _user_ configuration is done via the control panel, unlike Linux which has most system configuration in
Scooby Doo. What a _horrible_ CGI dog. Looks awful compared to the actual cartoon.
Funny you mention 5.25" disks. I just started a huge backup of 5.25" disks from as early as 1984 or so. Know how easy it was? Just plug the 5.25" drive into the standard floppy connector on my K7 motherboard and the standard power plug on the power supply. You probably wonder how much data was lost due to bit rot. A _very_ slight percentage. Out of perhaps 500 floppies, only 5-8 would be unreadable. And I'd say that those which are unreadable were because the disks were bad to begin with (infact, I remember having trouble reading the same disks 7+ years ago). With today's technology digital backup is a reality. My entire archive of 5.25" and 3.5" (old 720k) disks will fit on 1-3 CD-Rs easily. And later I will purchase a DVD writer, as everyone will, and toss those CD-Rs onto a backup DVD. The process continues and as long as someone is _caring_ for the material, then it will survive.
Archiving is a constant job. If you let paper photographs sit in a damp, dusty, etc. area then you WILL have problems. Same thing would be leaving 5.25" floppies sit around by magnets, etc. Improper care and treatment is the ONLY reason digital, or otherwise, archiving fails.
I'm thinking these aren't the complete, fully polished models and environments. Take a look at some of the Quake3 Team Arena shots and compare to these. The doom3 shots are quite bad compared to q3. I'd expect a huge improvement by the time Doom3 is released. Like others have said too, the big thing with Doom3 will be the real-time shadows and nothing to do with static screenshots.
Erm. I'm curious.. what can PS2 games do that games using Quake3 engine can't? Nearly a year after Q3 was out, games continued to use Q2 engine. I know Q3 isn't much more than Q1 with shaders and lightmaps, etc. But a low-res PS2? Certain things engines are good at and certain things they are not. Q3 is still very good for indoor environments. For outdoor environments it sucks ass. It probably wouldn't be good for a Mario or Sonic type game. I don't doubt there is a better indoor engine. Infact, I know it's name: Doom 3.
um. nearly every Scheme/Lisp/_Python_ is not related to AI: Why? Perhaps because AI is still very much a research project, and not some real world application. Which is why you don't need CORBA, etc. support built into the language. And if you do, you can always add it to just about any language (Lisp-like languages especially). I think you're just looking for reasons to bash Lisp-like languages..
BTW, Python and Perl are pretty much tied to a _program_ as of right now. They aren't cross-platform until you port the Python application (the "system"). CL/R5RS you can grab the specification and implement it. The cross-platform issue is completely moot.
I'm not exactly sure what these have to do with _AI_. And if you don't know, there is also Common Lisp. Scheme is also not Common Lisp. Take any language out today and none of them meets all of the criteria you listed fully. And if they do or did.. how would that help AI?
As for guile "failing".. well I'm still using it and there was talk of The GIMP using it rather than Scheme in one defun (siod). IMO, the only set-back or problem with guile was them developing on top of SCM and not starting from scratch. Now their code base is completely incoherent and unmaintainable (IMO, of course).
Yes, I would _love_ to see you go down to your public library and walk away with _your_ computer. Paying taxes does not mean ownership in any way shape or form. This is a myth. What you _can_ do is vote on certain issues and get involved. Beyond that, you own that computer just as much as the air your breathe. You can play with it and use it, but it sure isn't _yours_. You can't go and destroy street signs, just because you paid taxes to have them placed there. Nor can you go and drive on the opposite side of the highway. That is a restriction just like filters are a restriction. Don't like it? Too bad. You didn't vote on the issue or get involved when the decision was made.
speak for yourself.. I bloody hated configuring fvwm.. and using it. Don't even think about looking at the source for fvwm2. Horror of horrors. Today I use WindowMaker and KDE, but don't get me wrong--I can't stand either still. WindowMaker has gotten much better at configuration, but it's navigation sucks total ass still. And configuration is still very iffy. The _only_ reason I used fvwm is because.. well, um, do you REALLY want to use twm? I thought so. IIRC, there was also openwin and a number of minimalist window managers, but none had the features of fvwm. Then I believe E came out and took X by storm. But before E, I think the major turning point was that spoofed transparent xterm screenshot which really got the ball rolling. I remember everyone asking "where do I get that xterm?"
hrm. I'm using Slack 7.0 currently and IIRC, it came installed w/ xfstt. All I had to do was set a link to my Windows font directory and reset X/xfstt. I've been using xfstt since probably '98 myself.. which is why I keep wondering what all this talk about ugly fonts is. But X11 font handling _is_ a mess. Truely horrid. While xfstt is nice, for the most part it is a cheap hack. Which is basically why I'm skeptical about GNOME/KDE with respect to printers and fonts. They seem more concerned with placing a fancy front-end on what amounts to an underlying technical problem. They might make it much easier to use fonts, etc.,.. but at a significant cost in elegancy.
Admin or not: security can only be measured _now_. Not tomorrow. Not 5 minutes from now. In 3 seconds your box could be compromised from an unseen source.
That is the only thing admins can do: look after their systems. The most important knowledge an admin has is the knowledge of how to detect a security breach and how to cut the system off from the rest of the world _immediately_. After that he must check the system all over, because any number of things could be different and it should not be thought of as the same system.
I agree, but only slightly. Physically, the exploit was always there. But there is this big dark cloud known as "security knowledge." In this "security knowledge" cloud, the exploit was _not_ there.
This "security knowledge" cloud represents everything the "Securers" know about security and also everything the "Exploiters" know about security. Occasionally the Exploiters learn a new technique. This technique can be a whole new exploit paradigm, such as distributed denial-of-service, or it can be a simple software bug exploit. Securers _always_ learn about security from Exploiters. When Securers learn that Exploiters know of a new tactic, only _then_ does it change from a bug or misdesign to a security issue.
So, in conclusion: the _vulnerability_ only existed when a person with an Exploiter-like mind discovered the bug/misdesign and linked it together with an _exploit_. The bug/misdesign was always there, though. Just not the knowledge of how to use it as an exploit. From this you can infer that no system is truely 100% safe at any given time. Security can only be judged or measured by how many _known_ security issues a system currently prevents.
I have a ThinkPad 380D (150Mhz). IBM never supported Linux on this system, but I managed to install Slack 7 on it. I even got my very old PCMCIA card to work (a true miracle, since the driver was found on a very old web site and the state of the driver was very beta). X also works great as does my CD-ROM. I can't imagine IBM designing laptops to _be_ incompatible. Taco is quite the cynical guy...
well.. Netscape 4.x to Mozilla. That's what I upgraded from, anyhow. Mozilla is quite different from the older, closed browser. But I do remember Mozilla having its own GUI-independent widgets. I remember having a blue outline w/ circular buttons and it was horribly slow. This was quite some time ago... perhaps I'm thinking of Netscape 6, though.