Web administrators too often conclude that since Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is exceptionally prone to compromise (see W1. Internet Information Server), the open-source Apache web server is completely secure. While the comparison with IIS may be true, and although Apache has a well-deserved reputation for security, it has not proved invulnerable under scrutiny.
It amazes me how often these vulnerabilities are caused by things that they teach in beginning programming classes, like bulletproofing your code.
Here is a much simpler solution, which I put
into the public domain:
cd/; chmod -R 444 *
Seriously, why does anyone need a trash bin?
Disk capacity is so ridiculously large that there is no need to ever delete anything. If you need to reorganize, make directories like oldjob, oldstuff, etc and just move the stuff into there and forget about it. It works just like a trash bin, except that you don't need to worry that the
stupid machine will empty it.
When it ships, it will work perfectly and completely without any bugs, and will run without any human intervention.
Within three months, there will be a hardware upgrade of little robots that install new servers automatically and wire them into the network.
It will include a speech interface, because the article said that you could tell it what to do.
Microsoft will quickly make this product obsolete, because their version will not only do all of this, but it will search all of the machines for stolen digital content, reformat all Linux drives and install Windows, and detect any licensing problems and report them back to Redmond. If it does find any unlicensed software, the little robots will go and beat the crap out of management until they pay up. There will be a credit card reader on their shiny metal asses.
Great. They use a laser to convert the 3D arrangement of glass spheres in an epoxy matrix to a 2D 'light/dark' pattern. A crummy piece of film exposed at the sensor plane, then developed, could be used to get around this. Lay the film on the 2D sensor, and voila - the 2D pattern is duplicated!
The MSNBC article seemed to have the most details. They said that the outputs did not have to be reused. It sounds like a challenge-response system, where the server sends input patterns, and the reader sends back the output patterns. If they really don't have to be reused, then the above criticism is not valid.
Presumably, the server stores some finite number of input-output patterns, and then can send some subset of input patterns to be checked. By using different combinations of input patterns, even if some output patterns were intercepted, it would not be enough information to compromise this.
For example, if the server stored 100 different input-output patterns, and sent 5 input patterns to be verified for a transaction, then the total number of unique checks would be 100!/(95! * 5!),
or about 75 million.
Of course, if different crooked merchants stole output patterns and pooled their knowledge, or if a customer made repeated purchases from the same crooked merchant, then it could possibly be broken. More information is needed about the system to understand its vulnerability to this type of threat.
How about a fat software engineer who keeps building products for a succession of companies, and his company goes bankrupt each time the product
is about to be released?
They could get Jon Lovitz to play me (I mean the software engineer).
I have to admit that there are only so many unique plots out there, and most of them have been well used by HG Well's time.
The same is true for any branch of literature.
Science fiction has a much wider range of possible
plots than mainstream fiction. The point is that they don't develop these plots in any interesting way.
Look at Johnny Mnemonic. They took a pretty good short story, and made a pretty boring movie out of it. There is lots of good science fiction to make movies out of. Hollywood does not want to make movies that require people to think, which is the whole point of science fiction, not blowing stuff up.
I am sure that M@crosoft will continue to support
this trend with outrageous licensing schemes,
building more DRM hacks into the operating system, etc. After Linus, they are the biggest supporters of Linux.
In my thirteen years of working full-time as a software developer, I have been sent to exactly one training class. I am usually pretty happy if my employer will reimburse me for books.
The question that I usually ask (and am asked)
on interviews is to describe the project that I
am currently working on. This can lead in all sorts of directions depending on the interests of the interviewers, but the main advantage is that the applicant better understand what they are currently working on, so you don't have to worry about a bad selection of questions. If they are not working on something close to the position that you are trying to fill, you can ask followup questions as you go along.
I also like to ask problem solving questions, which can be design questions, find the bug in the code questions, describe a problem and ask you they would debug questions, etc.
O'Reilly was right on. The law should push for open file formats, communications standards, etc. It should state that open source software is the preferred solution when available, and when it is competitive on other grounds. There is not a good open source solution for every problem for which there is a commercial solution, nor should there be.
The US as a government cant control the internet, but the large corperations who own 95% of the internet traffic's eyeballs can certainly push a, for example, free-market WTO-approved political mindset and sell it to people inside the borders of another country via their slant on world issues and news.
Of course, you could actually provide your own content, and try to compete based on providing a service. There are many newspapers in Europe, and almost all have web sites. Why is it that Europeans are constantly overwhelmed by Americans providing information? People can view whatever they want. That is the whole point. I often read news sites from the UK, in addition to the US ones.
Perhaps a more effective way to promote European values would be to present them online, rather than building a wall, or prosecuting any web site that violates any law in your numerous little countries.
The poster wasn't concerned with speed as much as with having the right tools in which to program his application. He does not specify how long these mathematical operations take, but if we assume that they are complex and take at least 10 seconds, or maybe minutes or hours to complete, then the overhead of making a CORBA call isn't going to be a big deal. If his calculations take only a second or two, then the language that he uses is hardly going to matter for speed. He can just get a faster box.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anyone want to dam the beavers? Shouldn't they be allowed to run freely?
Good, maybe now the movie theatres will start showing movies with decent scripts.
Web administrators too often conclude that since Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is exceptionally prone to compromise (see W1. Internet Information Server), the open-source Apache web server is completely secure. While the comparison with IIS may be true, and although Apache has a well-deserved reputation for security, it has not proved invulnerable under scrutiny.
It amazes me how often these vulnerabilities are caused by things that they teach in beginning programming classes, like bulletproofing your code.
cd /; chmod -R 444 *
Seriously, why does anyone need a trash bin? Disk capacity is so ridiculously large that there is no need to ever delete anything. If you need to reorganize, make directories like oldjob, oldstuff, etc and just move the stuff into there and forget about it. It works just like a trash bin, except that you don't need to worry that the stupid machine will empty it.
M@cr$s&ft must be getting pretty desperate if they are going to start adding value to their products.
Any idiot can write a kernel; the hard part is adding the games.
What about Futurama?
The MSNBC article seemed to have the most details. They said that the outputs did not have to be reused. It sounds like a challenge-response system, where the server sends input patterns, and the reader sends back the output patterns. If they really don't have to be reused, then the above criticism is not valid.
Presumably, the server stores some finite number of input-output patterns, and then can send some subset of input patterns to be checked. By using different combinations of input patterns, even if some output patterns were intercepted, it would not be enough information to compromise this.
For example, if the server stored 100 different input-output patterns, and sent 5 input patterns to be verified for a transaction, then the total number of unique checks would be 100!/(95! * 5!), or about 75 million.
Of course, if different crooked merchants stole output patterns and pooled their knowledge, or if a customer made repeated purchases from the same crooked merchant, then it could possibly be broken. More information is needed about the system to understand its vulnerability to this type of threat.
Did they not want to tell us what systems these were, because they are afraid that we will travel there first?
This is the way to attract writers about science and technology, require that the script be sent through physical mail.
They could get Jon Lovitz to play me (I mean the software engineer).
The same is true for any branch of literature. Science fiction has a much wider range of possible plots than mainstream fiction. The point is that they don't develop these plots in any interesting way.
Look at Johnny Mnemonic. They took a pretty good short story, and made a pretty boring movie out of it. There is lots of good science fiction to make movies out of. Hollywood does not want to make movies that require people to think, which is the whole point of science fiction, not blowing stuff up.
The estimate that I have heard thrown around is 10^120.
That might take 54 or even 55 hours.
Well, they are!!!
Is not flamebait!!
This would be great for all of those fat, donut eating programmers in the US who sorely need some exercise while they work (I am one of them.)
Why couldn't they fit it all into one class? It simplifies the UML, and you don't have to look in two different places for the code.
In my thirteen years of working full-time as a software developer, I have been sent to exactly one training class. I am usually pretty happy if my employer will reimburse me for books.
Forget about ants, I want to cook chicken. Do you think that those guys were practicing on dead chicken breasts, and not eating the results?
I also like to ask problem solving questions, which can be design questions, find the bug in the code questions, describe a problem and ask you they would debug questions, etc.
O'Reilly was right on. The law should push for open file formats, communications standards, etc. It should state that open source software is the preferred solution when available, and when it is competitive on other grounds. There is not a good open source solution for every problem for which there is a commercial solution, nor should there be.
I have to disagree; it should be flamebaited by Slashdot again.
Of course, you could actually provide your own content, and try to compete based on providing a service. There are many newspapers in Europe, and almost all have web sites. Why is it that Europeans are constantly overwhelmed by Americans providing information? People can view whatever they want. That is the whole point. I often read news sites from the UK, in addition to the US ones.
Perhaps a more effective way to promote European values would be to present them online, rather than building a wall, or prosecuting any web site that violates any law in your numerous little countries.
The poster wasn't concerned with speed as much as with having the right tools in which to program his application. He does not specify how long these mathematical operations take, but if we assume that they are complex and take at least 10 seconds, or maybe minutes or hours to complete, then the overhead of making a CORBA call isn't going to be a big deal. If his calculations take only a second or two, then the language that he uses is hardly going to matter for speed. He can just get a faster box.