I was pleasantly surprised by the New Yorker's coverage of the shift from "free software" to "open source", which while less detailed (unsurprisingly) than other sources such as Free as in Freedom 2.0 also presented it simply as a thing that has happened, rather than either of the extremes that are usually applied: it's the worst affront ever to software freedom, or as the liberation of programmers from the crazy extreme ideology of RMS.
Personally I'm more interested in free software than in open source: the source code is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But it's good to see that view handled as a view and the events (and responses to them) presented, without turning the story into a justification or rationalisation of the view.
BTW, still waiting for that planned Chaosnet support...
While we're in a thread called "Pedantic, but..." I feel safe with posting that OS X actually _is_ a UNIX, with SUS03 compliance. They did that after being sued by The Open Group for claiming to OS X be a UNIX when they weren't in compliance.
I switched from Debian to OS X in 2004, then from OS X to Ubuntu in 2014. The story of the switch back is told in full here. That meant that the cheapest route for me was to install a distro on my MacBook, because I already owned it:). And it really is good hardware, so I'm happy with the amount I paid for a high-quality laptop that fulfils my needs.
The interesting part of the switch for me is the question "why not use OS X"? There are all sorts of bugs in OS X and its applications, just as there are in Linux, GNU and their applications. The difference is that I'm allowed to fix the bugs in GNU, and other people can take advantage of those fixes. So I've been learning about GTK+ and Vala, as well as getting back up to speed with GNUstep, so that when I find a bug I can contribute a fix back.
Plenty of other posters have discussed that there are cheaper GNU/Linux-compatible laptop choices, and indeed had I not already owned a MacBook I probably would've considered some of those. But "cheapest" is a non-goal for me, or at least far down the chain below reliable wifi, good battery, solid construction and (to the extent that this is at all an option on any laptop) decent keys.
I was doing this with SunRays sharing a Solaris CDE desktop back in 2002. Apparently the past is here, but it isn't evenly distributed.
Unfortunately it's not likely to be. With the exception of VNC, most of the remote desktop systems are proprietary so you can't pick up for example a Sunray session on an Android phone. And the proprietary platforms don't uniformly support VNC. It'd be great to see a general cross-platform approach to this, but the vendors are all going for supplying their platforms "as a service" instead.
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Or, to put it another way, no they don't.
Ethics and social implications are an important part of the discipline of computer science, just as they're an important part of other science disciplines like biology and neurology.
Earth "is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
Then, at some point in the future, Mozilla will run a campaign explaining that 10% of the interwebs is on Firefox 11 ESR, but there have been loads of new features and enhancements since then so we should all tell people to upgrade to Firefox 17. Friends don't let friends use IE 6^W^WFF 11.
Two years in jail. Given that RIPA requests for encryption keys are usually related to terrorism, espionage or paedophilia investigations, that's a href="a lot "cheaper" than going down for the suspected crime.
It's also possible that the malware was actually dropped from a *nix or Windows system that wasn't itself infected, but where the user wanted to drag Dell through the muck. Doesn't need to be any of these Advanced Persistent Threats you keep reading about, just a terminated employee on his last day. I doubt that embedded hardware is connected to the internet while it's being assembled, so it seems unlikely that they got a chance infection - someone had to subvert their production process. That's most likely to be an insider.
But where did you find out what its mission is, if "Its mission is largely opaque"? Oh, that's right, it's written on the wikipedia entry and the department of defense factsheet:).
I think that shows how bad Michael Dell is at running businesses. He correctly identified that Apple couldn't go on the way it had been run, but didn't suggest running the company a different way as a potential solution. If Dell is in trouble now, they will stay in trouble unless the market changes to require a company just like Dell.
Firstly, the kind of encryption they're talking about in the article, as implemented by BitLocker on Windows and third-party products on many operating systems, is transparent to operating system processes.
Erm:). Secondly, active directory domain controllers are typically run on servers rather than laptops, and full-disk encryption is typically run on laptops rather than servers.
Taking those point by point (and staying on topic by discussing hard drive encryption, the subject of TFA):
* you must provide a meaningful key management
Depending on the size of the organisation and the purposes for using encryption, key management may not be necessary, though you still need a capable and reliable lost-passphrase-recovery helpdesk which is going to cost.
* you lose speed of your machines for number crunching
I think you need to review just how much time you think computers spend reading and preparing data from the hard drive. If you're in the middle of a number-crunching job, it's pretty much negligible. And besides that, most business laptop users (the target users of full-disk encryption) are trying to read e-mail and write Powerpoint slides, they aren't trying to simulate protein folding.
* you can easily lose data in the event of hardware corruption
* access to data is a bit harder even for legitimate purposes
Yes, that's the whole point. It's usually only a bit harder (you have to authenticate before the operating system will boot) but in return for that, the confidentiality of your data is protected. Security is about risk management and if the risk of publicising your company's secrets is more significant than the risk of users losing time by forgetting their passwords, then the trade-off is worth making.
* many systems (for example Active Directory domain controller.vs. ipsec) doesn't work well with encryption
Firstly, the kind of encryption they're talking about in the article, as implemented by BitLocker on Windows and third-party products on many operating systems, is transparent to operating system processes.
skills of your systems management must be higher
Oh noes! I pay my systems managers to manage my systems but don't want to pay people who know what they're doing!
It is impossible, IMO, to do many functions without these privileges.
I currently work in an environment where I don't usually need admin. I'm a self-employed Mac developer, and do all of my dev work in an unprivileged account. However that account is a member of the _developer group, which gives the debugger the right to attach to processes. That's frequently all I need. When I've worked in $bigcorp networks where developers do need admin or root, IT have typically created a sandbox network for developer machines to sit in which have access to SCM, the bug tracker, build environment front-end and so on but limited access to business systems and internet facilities.
Yes, the 'trouble ticket' metric is similar to the KLOC metric in development - in one case you learn how to get loads of tickets created, in the other case you learn how to write the longest code solution to any problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks like a TIE fighter. [yes, thank you, I know it's the HUD that looks like a TIE fighter]
I was pleasantly surprised by the New Yorker's coverage of the shift from "free software" to "open source", which while less detailed (unsurprisingly) than other sources such as Free as in Freedom 2.0 also presented it simply as a thing that has happened, rather than either of the extremes that are usually applied: it's the worst affront ever to software freedom, or as the liberation of programmers from the crazy extreme ideology of RMS. Personally I'm more interested in free software than in open source: the source code is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But it's good to see that view handled as a view and the events (and responses to them) presented, without turning the story into a justification or rationalisation of the view. BTW, still waiting for that planned Chaosnet support...
While we're in a thread called "Pedantic, but..." I feel safe with posting that OS X actually _is_ a UNIX, with SUS03 compliance. They did that after being sued by The Open Group for claiming to OS X be a UNIX when they weren't in compliance.
I switched from Debian to OS X in 2004, then from OS X to Ubuntu in 2014. The story of the switch back is told in full here. That meant that the cheapest route for me was to install a distro on my MacBook, because I already owned it :). And it really is good hardware, so I'm happy with the amount I paid for a high-quality laptop that fulfils my needs.
The interesting part of the switch for me is the question "why not use OS X"? There are all sorts of bugs in OS X and its applications, just as there are in Linux, GNU and their applications. The difference is that I'm allowed to fix the bugs in GNU, and other people can take advantage of those fixes. So I've been learning about GTK+ and Vala, as well as getting back up to speed with GNUstep, so that when I find a bug I can contribute a fix back.
Plenty of other posters have discussed that there are cheaper GNU/Linux-compatible laptop choices, and indeed had I not already owned a MacBook I probably would've considered some of those. But "cheapest" is a non-goal for me, or at least far down the chain below reliable wifi, good battery, solid construction and (to the extent that this is at all an option on any laptop) decent keys.
I was doing this with SunRays sharing a Solaris CDE desktop back in 2002. Apparently the past is here, but it isn't evenly distributed. Unfortunately it's not likely to be. With the exception of VNC, most of the remote desktop systems are proprietary so you can't pick up for example a Sunray session on an Android phone. And the proprietary platforms don't uniformly support VNC. It'd be great to see a general cross-platform approach to this, but the vendors are all going for supplying their platforms "as a service" instead.
"You agree to indemnify and hold Yahoo! and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, co-branders and other partners, and employees, harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of Content you submit, post to or transmit through the Services, your use of the Services, your connection to the Services, your violation of the TOS, or your violation of any rights of another." - http://info.yahoo.com/legal/uk/yahoo/utos/en-gb/details.html Or, to put it another way, no they don't.
Ethics and social implications are an important part of the discipline of computer science, just as they're an important part of other science disciplines like biology and neurology.
...but do not, apparently, see text encoding in the same light.
Earth "is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."
On the "bizarre system" (or perhaps "bazaar system") called GNU. http://www.bigsmoke.us/readline/shortcuts
Then, at some point in the future, Mozilla will run a campaign explaining that 10% of the interwebs is on Firefox 11 ESR, but there have been loads of new features and enhancements since then so we should all tell people to upgrade to Firefox 17. Friends don't let friends use IE 6^W^WFF 11.
Two years in jail. Given that RIPA requests for encryption keys are usually related to terrorism, espionage or paedophilia investigations, that's a href="a lot "cheaper" than going down for the suspected crime.
It's also possible that the malware was actually dropped from a *nix or Windows system that wasn't itself infected, but where the user wanted to drag Dell through the muck. Doesn't need to be any of these Advanced Persistent Threats you keep reading about, just a terminated employee on his last day. I doubt that embedded hardware is connected to the internet while it's being assembled, so it seems unlikely that they got a chance infection - someone had to subvert their production process. That's most likely to be an insider.
But where did you find out what its mission is, if "Its mission is largely opaque"? Oh, that's right, it's written on the wikipedia entry and the department of defense factsheet :).
I think that shows how bad Michael Dell is at running businesses. He correctly identified that Apple couldn't go on the way it had been run, but didn't suggest running the company a different way as a potential solution. If Dell is in trouble now, they will stay in trouble unless the market changes to require a company just like Dell.
How about Agnes Cleaners' contact database, containing all their customer records?
Erm :). Secondly, active directory domain controllers are typically run on servers rather than laptops, and full-disk encryption is typically run on laptops rather than servers.
Depending on the size of the organisation and the purposes for using encryption, key management may not be necessary, though you still need a capable and reliable lost-passphrase-recovery helpdesk which is going to cost.
I think you need to review just how much time you think computers spend reading and preparing data from the hard drive. If you're in the middle of a number-crunching job, it's pretty much negligible. And besides that, most business laptop users (the target users of full-disk encryption) are trying to read e-mail and write Powerpoint slides, they aren't trying to simulate protein folding.
* access to data is a bit harder even for legitimate purposes
Yes, that's the whole point. It's usually only a bit harder (you have to authenticate before the operating system will boot) but in return for that, the confidentiality of your data is protected. Security is about risk management and if the risk of publicising your company's secrets is more significant than the risk of users losing time by forgetting their passwords, then the trade-off is worth making.
Firstly, the kind of encryption they're talking about in the article, as implemented by BitLocker on Windows and third-party products on many operating systems, is transparent to operating system processes.
Oh noes! I pay my systems managers to manage my systems but don't want to pay people who know what they're doing!
I currently work in an environment where I don't usually need admin. I'm a self-employed Mac developer, and do all of my dev work in an unprivileged account. However that account is a member of the _developer group, which gives the debugger the right to attach to processes. That's frequently all I need. When I've worked in $bigcorp networks where developers do need admin or root, IT have typically created a sandbox network for developer machines to sit in which have access to SCM, the bug tracker, build environment front-end and so on but limited access to business systems and internet facilities.
Ever hear of Title IX?
No. But having just searched for it, I discover it's a shorthand name for a law enacted in the US. I'm not from the US.
Just let everybody race everybody else. No more worrying whether people truly class as male, female, able-bodied or whatever.
Yes, the 'trouble ticket' metric is similar to the KLOC metric in development - in one case you learn how to get loads of tickets created, in the other case you learn how to write the longest code solution to any problem.
That's irrelevant. No-one buys SUNWut, they buy SunRay Server Software.
There certainly was a Solaris 1, which was simply a re-branding of SunOS 4.1.x.
I agree, Mac OS X is not just another UNIX. It's SUS2003 certified, so Mac OS X is another UNIX in ways that wannabes like Linux aren't ;-)