Actually, I'm a VB guy myself, and I'm well aware that many VB programmers are very talented. My point is that since VB (and Windows, for that matter) abstracts away so much of the underlying system, people who only know VB have a very high barrier to surmount in order to enter the world of *nix programming. Conversely, a developer using, say, Perl on Linux need only learn the Windows GUI and basic language syntax in order to get started in VB. Now, the barrier is of similar height for these two hypothetical developers to achieve expertise on a new platform, but to pick up a working knowledge, the barrier is lower going Unix->Windows than Windows->Unix. This being the case, I think anything that lowers the barrier for Windows folks to explore Unix is a good thing.
If the open source community implements the.Net CLR/IL and C#, it opens the doors for currently MS-exclusive developers to cross over much more easily than they currently can. Think of a VB developer considering Unix/Apache/Perl/Java - pretty damn intimidating, no? Now think of that same VB developer looking at Unix/Apache/C#/.GNU - still intimidating, but now he can leverage his current knowledge to ease the transition.
Remember, these are all ECMA standards now; it's not like.GNU is porting the Win32 API or VB.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the term "Web Services" also. Most people, including the.GNU folks, focus in on the My Services model of Application Service Providers as the sole meaning of Web Services. In fact, a.Net Web Service is a remote component that is accessed through SOAP or HTTP.
There's a world of difference between a blatant attempt to corner another market (.Net My Services), and a platform interoperability mechanism (Web Services/SOAP).
Databases are in common use on internet-facing applications, that need to deliver stateful behavior.
Yes, but a security-conscious organization will ensure that the webservers and the database/application servers are on separate machines, separated by a firewall (in addition to the border firewalls at the edges of the DMZ). If you run everything on the same box, it only takes a single hole in any part of it to compromise the whole shebang.
I disagree. Advertisers understand that the media is credible only so long as it reports objectively news that damages their reputation alongside news that enhances it. Media outlets that subjectively filter their content to please their advertisers run the risk of alienating their subscribers, which ultimately results in a smaller subscriber base, lower advertising rates, and defection of key accounts to media with higher circulation. What the media will do is present the response of the vendor alongside the main story, which is not contrary to standard media practice. By way of example, note thesestories about the XP hole on MSNBC. Interestingly, I don't see any coverage of the Oracle exploit in the mainstream media, but then most people don't run 9i on their eMachines, so maybe it's not as relevant to them.
It doesn't appear that this case addresses the rights of General Motors, which would be the precedent you're looking for. A better analogy would be the redirection of fuckslashdot.org to microsoft.com, but even there you can't rely on this decision to protect you (from Microsoft), because this case has only been decided at the lowest Federal level, and only decisions by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (or higher) set binding national precedent. In the absence of such precedent, the Federal District Court for Western Washington would be free to ignore this decision in deciding related cases.
I have eddresses in about 13 other places, including some of the free services like hotmail, altavista and yahoo. None of them get that much spam.
I have a 2-year-old Hotmail account that gets at least as much spam as my 6-year-old regular address. But then, it's a matter of usage - I've pretty free with my Hotmail address (I originally created it to use as a decoy address for forms and whatnot that require an email); OTOH I have several other webmail addresses I rarely give out, and I hardly ever see spam there.
people will only see the Microsoft lies and not the rebuttals
I'm not so sure. Since both sides have an economic interest, the controversy is what makes the story newsworthy to the mass media, not either side's opinion taken in a vacuum. As a result, the average Joe hearing about this is likely to remember "Microsoft and the linux community are going at it again", but would be hard pressed to leave with the impression that "the MS paper must be true because I haven't heard of a dissenting opinion".
He probably meant Ultima Online 2. I realize that UO/UO2 don't really belong in the same class with the single-player series, but UO2 was highly anticipated, much hyped, and then quietly taken out back and shot by its masters. Not a good way to build customer confidence.
Well, look at their 2000 10-k (it's a PDF). I haven't read through most of it, but the financials are pretty disturbing. $1 billion in debt; negative cash flow 2 years running (-$125.9 million in 2000); $9 billion accumulated deficit; $7.4 billion net loss in 2000 ($18.73/share). Even the auditors report mentions a "substantial need for additional funding" and "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."
I don't want to see them shut down any more than you do, but given the financials, I don't blame the creditors one bit.
I've been noticing a fair number of what appear to be router resets on my cable modem (the cable modem is fine, but no traffic makes it in or out and all of my existing connections time out).
I'm on Comcast in Rockville, and I've noticed the same thing for the last month or two. They seem to have been having problems in general lately - there were a couple of weeks when they were having serious problems with a router that was consistently introducing 1000ms+ latency. I'm on my work's T1 now so I can't check, but the router was named something like washdc11.home.net; I'd imagine Reston goes that route too. The latency issue got fixed while I was at Comdex, but was replaced with packet loss (~10% on avg.). However, since last week's upgrade, things seem to be much better.
The only thing I'm really worried about right now is losing my e-mail account and having friends get their messages bounced before I can tell them my new address (whatever that may be).
Do what I do - use an email forwarding service. I use iName, but Bigfoot also has free forwarding. Bigfoot limits you to 25 messages/day on their free accounts; iName has no limit AFAIK. I've been using iName for several years now, and the only problems I've had have been the occasional slow delivery. Nothing more than an hour or two though, and it's usually very fast.
I'm on DHCP and I'm still up with nary a sign of trouble. Except for that outbound email, that is - it's been about an hour now, and still no sign of it. Inbound is still going fine though.
I'm on Comcast in the DC area (suburban MD), and everything appears to be up still, including inbound email. Not sure about outbound email though. A test message to a web email account has been neither delivered nor bounced, but it's only been about 5 minutes so nothing conclusive there.
Is it just me, or does this feel like the climax of WarGames where everybody's waiting to see if the missles are real?
It's funny, but I got an email from @Home Monday or Tuesday saying the network was going down at midnight for hardware upgrades. I can just picture the meeting:
Lawyer: I have some bad news. We may be forced to take our network offline Friday.
PHB: Uh oh. We'd better deploy that new hardware tonight instead of next week then.
Lawyer: Ummmmm...
PHB: You see, this way we show our customers that we're commited to serving them.
Lawyer: Errrrmmmmmm...
PHB: You have to take public opinion into consideration. If we upgrade the network, maybe our customers won't ditch us for DSL.
Lawyer: But...
PHB: It's settled then. I'll have my secretary send out a memo.
Good points. I'd forgotten that the decryption vulnerability is based on the assumptions of weak IV generation and a fixed keystream. My apologies - it's been a while since July;)
If you use the right hardware and configure it correctly 802.11 is as secure as a wired LAN
I think this is what you meant, but "correct configuration" in this context generally means walling off wireless portions of the network in the same manner as you wall off the internet. By treating the 802.11 segment(s) as potentially insecure, you can maintain your overall security posture.
Yeah, you just have to worry about the haX0r sitting in the park across the street. I have enough faith in Disney's renowned paranoia to believe that they took measures to protect their network; I have no faith that the average restaurant owner will do anything more than plug in a Linksys access point and call it done.
However, the Yahoo story helpfully informs us that Not only would any hypothetical human traveler to this planet die but the planet's intense heat would quickly melt any coins in the person's pockets, while NASA merely states This close proximity heats the planet's atmosphere to a torrid 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius). It's a good thing we have mass media to explain things to us in terms we can understand.
The problem is determining when and in what manner we question what the computers tell us. IMHO, a properly determined and resourceful identity theft has a significant advantage over his victim. When every computer says George W. Bush is some guy in West Virginia who has credit cards, birth certificate, driver's license and passport, how does the guy in the White House prove that the computers are wrong? IOW, when two people provide the same set of physical credentials, and the computers unanimously support person A, who's going to believe person B? Given enough time, presumably one could produce a combination of paper documents and living relatives to sow doubt in the identity thief's story, but what if the physical documents have been lost? What if the person is an orphan? And what happens once all official documentation exists only in electronic format?
Well, they made a big show of security - they ran mirrors under the shuttle buses coming in, they had explosive-sniffing dogs at the metal detectors, and did not allow bags inside.
However, a few minutes of observation revealed a lot of holes. Taxis were not subjected to the mirror treatment, and were directed to pull up to the curb right next to the North Hall to disgorge passengers. People could bring vendor bags in from the outside, and bag checks on these were spotty at best, especially at the main entrance. I also watched people in wheelchairs and self-propelled carts being permitted to bypass all of the security at the gates - no bag checks, no wanding, no dog sniffing. And on Monday morning there was a crowd of thousands waiting to go through the metal detectors, presenting as good a target as anything inside the security perimiter.
Overall, I got the impression that they were much more concerned with presenting the appearance of high security than they were with actually preventing incidents.
It wasn't just the exposition that was lacking Linux representation - I talked to a guy who bought a FlexPass only to find that almost all of the Linux sessions were cancelled. Boy was he pissed...
Too late. Lest we forget, in this context MS is a provider of technology, not of content (Windows/IE is the equivalent of the TV; Slashdot is the equivalent of the network). Unfortunately, a number of internet content providers have already implemented the floating watermark. Geocities anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
Try this one.
Actually, I'm a VB guy myself, and I'm well aware that many VB programmers are very talented. My point is that since VB (and Windows, for that matter) abstracts away so much of the underlying system, people who only know VB have a very high barrier to surmount in order to enter the world of *nix programming. Conversely, a developer using, say, Perl on Linux need only learn the Windows GUI and basic language syntax in order to get started in VB. Now, the barrier is of similar height for these two hypothetical developers to achieve expertise on a new platform, but to pick up a working knowledge, the barrier is lower going Unix->Windows than Windows->Unix. This being the case, I think anything that lowers the barrier for Windows folks to explore Unix is a good thing.
If the open source community implements the .Net CLR/IL and C#, it opens the doors for currently MS-exclusive developers to cross over much more easily than they currently can. Think of a VB developer considering Unix/Apache/Perl/Java - pretty damn intimidating, no? Now think of that same VB developer looking at Unix/Apache/C#/.GNU - still intimidating, but now he can leverage his current knowledge to ease the transition.
.GNU is porting the Win32 API or VB.
Remember, these are all ECMA standards now; it's not like
There seems to be a lot of confusion about the term "Web Services" also. Most people, including the .GNU folks, focus in on the My Services model of Application Service Providers as the sole meaning of Web Services. In fact, a .Net Web Service is a remote component that is accessed through SOAP or HTTP.
There's a world of difference between a blatant attempt to corner another market (.Net My Services), and a platform interoperability mechanism (Web Services/SOAP).
Databases are in common use on internet-facing applications, that need to deliver stateful behavior.
Yes, but a security-conscious organization will ensure that the webservers and the database/application servers are on separate machines, separated by a firewall (in addition to the border firewalls at the edges of the DMZ). If you run everything on the same box, it only takes a single hole in any part of it to compromise the whole shebang.
I disagree. Advertisers understand that the media is credible only so long as it reports objectively news that damages their reputation alongside news that enhances it. Media outlets that subjectively filter their content to please their advertisers run the risk of alienating their subscribers, which ultimately results in a smaller subscriber base, lower advertising rates, and defection of key accounts to media with higher circulation. What the media will do is present the response of the vendor alongside the main story, which is not contrary to standard media practice. By way of example, note these stories about the XP hole on MSNBC. Interestingly, I don't see any coverage of the Oracle exploit in the mainstream media, but then most people don't run 9i on their eMachines, so maybe it's not as relevant to them.
It doesn't appear that this case addresses the rights of General Motors, which would be the precedent you're looking for. A better analogy would be the redirection of fuckslashdot.org to microsoft.com, but even there you can't rely on this decision to protect you (from Microsoft), because this case has only been decided at the lowest Federal level, and only decisions by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals (or higher) set binding national precedent. In the absence of such precedent, the Federal District Court for Western Washington would be free to ignore this decision in deciding related cases.
I have eddresses in about 13 other places, including some of the free services like hotmail, altavista and yahoo. None of them get that much spam.
I have a 2-year-old Hotmail account that gets at least as much spam as my 6-year-old regular address. But then, it's a matter of usage - I've pretty free with my Hotmail address (I originally created it to use as a decoy address for forms and whatnot that require an email); OTOH I have several other webmail addresses I rarely give out, and I hardly ever see spam there.
people will only see the Microsoft lies and not the rebuttals
I'm not so sure. Since both sides have an economic interest, the controversy is what makes the story newsworthy to the mass media, not either side's opinion taken in a vacuum. As a result, the average Joe hearing about this is likely to remember "Microsoft and the linux community are going at it again", but would be hard pressed to leave with the impression that "the MS paper must be true because I haven't heard of a dissenting opinion".
First off - theres no 10.
He probably meant Ultima Online 2. I realize that UO/UO2 don't really belong in the same class with the single-player series, but UO2 was highly anticipated, much hyped, and then quietly taken out back and shot by its masters. Not a good way to build customer confidence.
AT&T controlled ~74% of @Home's voting power as of 12/31/2000, as reported on page 28 of @Home's 10k (PDF). They must really be fuming over this.
Well, look at their 2000 10-k (it's a PDF). I haven't read through most of it, but the financials are pretty disturbing. $1 billion in debt; negative cash flow 2 years running (-$125.9 million in 2000); $9 billion accumulated deficit; $7.4 billion net loss in 2000 ($18.73/share). Even the auditors report mentions a "substantial need for additional funding" and "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."
I don't want to see them shut down any more than you do, but given the financials, I don't blame the creditors one bit.
I've been noticing a fair number of what appear to be router resets on my cable modem (the cable modem is fine, but no traffic makes it in or out and all of my existing connections time out).
I'm on Comcast in Rockville, and I've noticed the same thing for the last month or two. They seem to have been having problems in general lately - there were a couple of weeks when they were having serious problems with a router that was consistently introducing 1000ms+ latency. I'm on my work's T1 now so I can't check, but the router was named something like washdc11.home.net; I'd imagine Reston goes that route too. The latency issue got fixed while I was at Comdex, but was replaced with packet loss (~10% on avg.). However, since last week's upgrade, things seem to be much better.
The only thing I'm really worried about right now is losing my e-mail account and having friends get their messages bounced before I can tell them my new address (whatever that may be).
Do what I do - use an email forwarding service. I use iName, but Bigfoot also has free forwarding. Bigfoot limits you to 25 messages/day on their free accounts; iName has no limit AFAIK. I've been using iName for several years now, and the only problems I've had have been the occasional slow delivery. Nothing more than an hour or two though, and it's usually very fast.
I'm on DHCP and I'm still up with nary a sign of trouble. Except for that outbound email, that is - it's been about an hour now, and still no sign of it. Inbound is still going fine though.
I'm on Comcast in the DC area (suburban MD), and everything appears to be up still, including inbound email. Not sure about outbound email though. A test message to a web email account has been neither delivered nor bounced, but it's only been about 5 minutes so nothing conclusive there.
Is it just me, or does this feel like the climax of WarGames where everybody's waiting to see if the missles are real?
It's funny, but I got an email from @Home Monday or Tuesday saying the network was going down at midnight for hardware upgrades. I can just picture the meeting:
Lawyer: I have some bad news. We may be forced to take our network offline Friday.
PHB: Uh oh. We'd better deploy that new hardware tonight instead of next week then.
Lawyer: Ummmmm...
PHB: You see, this way we show our customers that we're commited to serving them.
Lawyer: Errrrmmmmmm...
PHB: You have to take public opinion into consideration. If we upgrade the network, maybe our customers won't ditch us for DSL.
Lawyer: But...
PHB: It's settled then. I'll have my secretary send out a memo.
Good points. I'd forgotten that the decryption vulnerability is based on the assumptions of weak IV generation and a fixed keystream. My apologies - it's been a while since July ;)
If you use the right hardware and configure it correctly 802.11 is as secure as a wired LAN
I think this is what you meant, but "correct configuration" in this context generally means walling off wireless portions of the network in the same manner as you wall off the internet. By treating the 802.11 segment(s) as potentially insecure, you can maintain your overall security posture.
Yeah, you just have to worry about the haX0r sitting in the park across the street. I have enough faith in Disney's renowned paranoia to believe that they took measures to protect their network; I have no faith that the average restaurant owner will do anything more than plug in a Linksys access point and call it done.
Yup. Ian Goldberg gave a very interesting presentation on cracking WEP at BlackHat Vegas this year. None for me, thanks.
I'm inclined to agree with you that Disney couldn't possibly be dumb enough to rely on WEP alone, but then I wouldn't have thought ETrade was stupid enough to put their login credentials in a cookie vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks either.
However, the Yahoo story helpfully informs us that Not only would any hypothetical human traveler to this planet die but the planet's intense heat would quickly melt any coins in the person's pockets, while NASA merely states This close proximity heats the planet's atmosphere to a torrid 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius). It's a good thing we have mass media to explain things to us in terms we can understand.
*sigh*
The problem is determining when and in what manner we question what the computers tell us. IMHO, a properly determined and resourceful identity theft has a significant advantage over his victim. When every computer says George W. Bush is some guy in West Virginia who has credit cards, birth certificate, driver's license and passport, how does the guy in the White House prove that the computers are wrong? IOW, when two people provide the same set of physical credentials, and the computers unanimously support person A, who's going to believe person B? Given enough time, presumably one could produce a combination of paper documents and living relatives to sow doubt in the identity thief's story, but what if the physical documents have been lost? What if the person is an orphan? And what happens once all official documentation exists only in electronic format?
Well, they made a big show of security - they ran mirrors under the shuttle buses coming in, they had explosive-sniffing dogs at the metal detectors, and did not allow bags inside.
However, a few minutes of observation revealed a lot of holes. Taxis were not subjected to the mirror treatment, and were directed to pull up to the curb right next to the North Hall to disgorge passengers. People could bring vendor bags in from the outside, and bag checks on these were spotty at best, especially at the main entrance. I also watched people in wheelchairs and self-propelled carts being permitted to bypass all of the security at the gates - no bag checks, no wanding, no dog sniffing. And on Monday morning there was a crowd of thousands waiting to go through the metal detectors, presenting as good a target as anything inside the security perimiter.
Overall, I got the impression that they were much more concerned with presenting the appearance of high security than they were with actually preventing incidents.
It wasn't just the exposition that was lacking Linux representation - I talked to a guy who bought a FlexPass only to find that almost all of the Linux sessions were cancelled. Boy was he pissed...
Too late. Lest we forget, in this context MS is a provider of technology, not of content (Windows/IE is the equivalent of the TV; Slashdot is the equivalent of the network). Unfortunately, a number of internet content providers have already implemented the floating watermark. Geocities anyone?