If you're building an appliance, you control all the code and OSes that go on it, what possible reason would you have for running VMWare? If you need windows code, you just run windows. If you need to run windows and linux code on the same box you're probably doing your development wrong!
I mean, maybe you want a windows GUI to run a config program for a unix based system... why not just port your unix stuff to windows? Why not make your GUI web-based?
Seriously, I can't think of a single reason to ever do something like this.
I can't believe it, it seems like these people have designed the contest without ever defining what it is they're looking for!! What the hell? I know what an "appliance" generally is, a computer pre-loaded with software for doing a specific task. But what the hell is a "virtual" appliance?
An appliance with a virtual machine loaded on? Or a piece of software that pretends to be an appliance?
It just doesn't make any sense, practically a non-sequiter. An appliance is something you sell as a physical device, and "virtual" means not having physical form... so WTF are they looking for?
I can't imagine they* (the LA county DAs) would prosecute him just for leaking the fact that the machines were uncertified. They listed the charges, but what actions did he take to get those charges?
Is he being prosecuted for taking part in the use of illegal voting machines? Is he being prosecuted for leaking diebold source? It couldn't just be for telling people about the illegal voting machines.
Something doesn't quite add up here, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to defend him. Why does the
I've no choice about what I use at work - no, correction: I refused a new PC because it had Windows XP on it. I simply would rather have a simple PII with Win98 on it to do my work (simple Office docs, terminal software, web surfing) than the monsters on everyone else's desk that are constantly crashing with viruses let in by the dimwits who keep playing arcade games on websites.
The only dimwit here is you. You can't get a virus from playing a game on a website, unless you let install an active-X control or something. Either way it seems like no one at your work (including you) know how to use a computer.
Try doing some real research. It's not uncommon for me to have several Firefox sessions with 10+ tabs in each session. Not to mention having PuTTY up and listening to MP3s. On top of that, I'm running Word to type up my report. You could do the same; have fun watching your disk thrash as your pagefile fills up.
Hmm. I've got a 600Mhz Duron chip and I do stuff like that. Of course I've got 1.5 gigs of ram.
Actually, the real reason I have so much ram is that I wrote a java program to post stuff to autopr0n.com that would need to hold 10-30 uncompressed JPGs in ram, which took a shitload of ram. Heh. Most people were still at 512mb at the time.
By the way, I've noticed CPU speeds havn't seemed to be going up much lately, is the same true of ram? I remember when I started AP about 512 megs was average, and people are still using about that much memory. It's so strange too, since ram is so cheap.
Yeah, I'm sure your box can do anything, but how do you stand sitting around waiting for it to page for ages? Even back when windows 98 came out 128 megs of ram was pushing it.
And ram is so cheap these days Are you still using EDO-DRAM? 512mb DDR-SDRAM is $30 on price watch.
Actualy, your box is probably pretty close in spec to my home PC, still running the same 600mhz AMD Duron chip that I put in in 2000. I have 1.5 gig of ram though.
(tried upgrading twice, once buying a 900mhz duron that I burned out trying to overclock, another time to a 2500+ Athlon, which was one speed grade higher then the motherboard could handle. I ended up buying another case and motherboard (the total cost for a whole new system was like $150 for what was reasonably high end at the time). But, um, something happened to that machine.
Actualy, I used to run '98 on this machine, before I installed 2000. In theory I could still boot into it, but it's been years since I tried that, and obviously not all my drivers are up to date. Heh.
I got my mom a university surplus box a couple months ago for $64 with that would have been about half as fast as this (900mhz + 512mb ram). Why the hell would you pay so much more for such a small boost?
Computer stuff is so cheap these days, it's almost like garbage. The case and power supply were more valuable then the computer parts! (probably more then $64 separately)
I mean, you only have to burn the CD once, and then you can just duplicate as often as you want. What is the point of this restriction other then to annoy people?
Whatever, the music industry sucks and I'll just continue to pirate stuff out of moral duity
Um, yeah. Look up Internet Explorer's "Save as mail archive."
If you're on windows right now, you already have this functionality. The mail archives, "MHT" files can be viewed in IE or saved again as "HTML complete" and viewed in firefox, or any other browser if you want. Just MEME encoding of all the content (not flash, though).
I think all police officers should be required to have a running camera (like a helmet cam or one on their uniform) at all times they are on duity. If they're not doing anything wrong, there's no reason not to do it.
The RDBM provides a standard function in a standard way. It only makes sense that it would become commoditized, and in the software world commoditized = free. Sure oracle offers some pretty impressive features, but at some point the cost of implementing those features yourself or the cost of not using those features is exceeded by the cost of buying oracle.
Remember, MySQL has a closed-source business model trying to sell non-GPL'd versions of their source code - and oracle, now owning the original source Innodb and BerkleyDB can prevent them from doing that. MySQL can still use the GPL'd versions in their GPL'd products, but their closed source products go away, or at least they could. And Oracle isn't a company known for playing softball.
I've actually gotten real letters that seemed more like phishing then anything legitimate, particularly dealing with student loans. Shady stuff like sending me something that looks like an invoice with the words "contact us immediately".
I also got an invoice looking letter from domain name type thing, something they've obviously sent out to tons of registration addresses. I could tell it was a small-time operation because they used a 'real' lick-on stamp.
(Ironically, I never use real, lick-on stamps anymore, not because I mail so much, but because I mail so rarely if I ever do it I make a trip to the post office)
I'm sorry to say this, but the Phishing problem would only a problem for idiots if companies stopped using email as an official means of communication.
What we really need is a method other then a simple password to authenticate. We need real a real bidirectional authentication method that's easy to use.
Here's one idea: Give the user something like a USB thumbdrive, you could even make it Bluetooth, it doesn't matter because a user would need to type in a password, and all sessions with it would be encrypted. This device stores all your 'official' passwords, and encrypts them with the other parties public key. so if you go to a fake website, you'd type in your basic password, the encrypted along with a salt sent by the sever.
Unless the receiving end has your organizations' private key, they'll never get any useful information.
(you wouldn't actually need a separate device, a computer program could do this, but the device method gets around the problem of Spyware or hackers getting the data. The system could be totally user-controlled, since it only serves to protect the user and no one else, there is no reason to prevent them from modifying its contents manualy. No DRM needed)
None of these really seem much like "hacks". More like cheap, obvious things.
A hack, IMO, would involve doing something funky with the software, like running MAME, doing effects on the image by altering the way its recorded, or something.
MySQL sells closed-source licensed version of MySQL which are pretty expensive. If you have the GPL'd MySQL, you have to use the GPL'd client libraries, and you have to GPL all your code that links to them. If you don't want to do that, you pay a license fee. In order to do that, MySQL has to buy closed source licenses to Innobase and Sleepycat. Now that money is going right into Oracle's pockets, and Oracle can jack up prices whenever they want.
So MySQL is kinda screwed, but they wern't very smart about keeping their codebases secure. They should have bought these companies when they had the cash.
MySQL AB gets their money by licensing MySQL for commercial use. If Oracle went GPL only, it would kill their Non-GPL version, and without that money, a lot of the development would dry up.
Releasing a driver under an OSS license would be nice, but you already have one. Doing one under a BSD or LGPL license would also kill MySQL because now no one would need to buy the licensed version from MySQL AB.
I don't think this is a problem for us, in the worst case MySQL stops advancing and people start paying more attention to database interoperability, which they should be doing anyway.
And lets not forget all the OSS software that requires MySQL and won't work with Postgres. How short sighted can you get?
Just try finding good free blogging software that works with Postgres. It ain't there. Moveable type works with Postgres, but you have to pay for it. The other big ones are MySQL only.
Hopefully this causes some people to take database independence a little more seriously.
MySQL's GPL'd stuff is fine, but remember, they also have a closed fork with closed versions of these other engines. If Oracle goes pure GPL only with Berkly and InnoDB it'll seriously harm MySQL's ability raise money, without pissing off the OSS crowd too much.
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If you're building an appliance, you control all the code and OSes that go on it, what possible reason would you have for running VMWare? If you need windows code, you just run windows. If you need to run windows and linux code on the same box you're probably doing your development wrong! I mean, maybe you want a windows GUI to run a config program for a unix based system... why not just port your unix stuff to windows? Why not make your GUI web-based? Seriously, I can't think of a single reason to ever do something like this.
I can't believe it, it seems like these people have designed the contest without ever defining what it is they're looking for!! What the hell? I know what an "appliance" generally is, a computer pre-loaded with software for doing a specific task. But what the hell is a "virtual" appliance? An appliance with a virtual machine loaded on? Or a piece of software that pretends to be an appliance? It just doesn't make any sense, practically a non-sequiter. An appliance is something you sell as a physical device, and "virtual" means not having physical form... so WTF are they looking for?
You never know who's on the payoff in this government thing. I wonder how he got caught.
I can't imagine they* (the LA county DAs) would prosecute him just for leaking the fact that the machines were uncertified. They listed the charges, but what actions did he take to get those charges?
Is he being prosecuted for taking part in the use of illegal voting machines? Is he being prosecuted for leaking diebold source? It couldn't just be for telling people about the illegal voting machines.
Something doesn't quite add up here, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to defend him. Why does the
What's wrong with having a "crap" computer? as long as you don't skimp on the hard drive, you should be fine.
I've no choice about what I use at work - no, correction: I refused a new PC because it had Windows XP on it. I simply would rather have a simple PII with Win98 on it to do my work (simple Office docs, terminal software, web surfing) than the monsters on everyone else's desk that are constantly crashing with viruses let in by the dimwits who keep playing arcade games on websites. The only dimwit here is you. You can't get a virus from playing a game on a website, unless you let install an active-X control or something. Either way it seems like no one at your work (including you) know how to use a computer.
Try doing some real research. It's not uncommon for me to have several Firefox sessions with 10+ tabs in each session. Not to mention having PuTTY up and listening to MP3s. On top of that, I'm running Word to type up my report. You could do the same; have fun watching your disk thrash as your pagefile fills up.
Hmm. I've got a 600Mhz Duron chip and I do stuff like that. Of course I've got 1.5 gigs of ram.
Actually, the real reason I have so much ram is that I wrote a java program to post stuff to autopr0n.com that would need to hold 10-30 uncompressed JPGs in ram, which took a shitload of ram. Heh. Most people were still at 512mb at the time.
By the way, I've noticed CPU speeds havn't seemed to be going up much lately, is the same true of ram? I remember when I started AP about 512 megs was average, and people are still using about that much memory. It's so strange too, since ram is so cheap.
Yeah, I'm sure your box can do anything, but how do you stand sitting around waiting for it to page for ages? Even back when windows 98 came out 128 megs of ram was pushing it.
And ram is so cheap these days Are you still using EDO-DRAM? 512mb DDR-SDRAM is $30 on price watch.
Actualy, your box is probably pretty close in spec to my home PC, still running the same 600mhz AMD Duron chip that I put in in 2000. I have 1.5 gig of ram though.
(tried upgrading twice, once buying a 900mhz duron that I burned out trying to overclock, another time to a 2500+ Athlon, which was one speed grade higher then the motherboard could handle. I ended up buying another case and motherboard (the total cost for a whole new system was like $150 for what was reasonably high end at the time). But, um, something happened to that machine.
Actualy, I used to run '98 on this machine, before I installed 2000. In theory I could still boot into it, but it's been years since I tried that, and obviously not all my drivers are up to date. Heh.
I got my mom a university surplus box a couple months ago for $64 with that would have been about half as fast as this (900mhz + 512mb ram). Why the hell would you pay so much more for such a small boost?
Computer stuff is so cheap these days, it's almost like garbage. The case and power supply were more valuable then the computer parts! (probably more then $64 separately)
I mean, you only have to burn the CD once, and then you can just duplicate as often as you want. What is the point of this restriction other then to annoy people? Whatever, the music industry sucks and I'll just continue to pirate stuff out of moral duity
Not by license agreements.
Actually Slashdot's traffic trippled just a couple months ago. At least among IE uses with the alexa toolbar installed.
Kind of weird, and annoying given how crappy this place has become. No one with any authority cares about the site at all. It's pretty lame.
Um, yeah. Look up Internet Explorer's "Save as mail archive."
If you're on windows right now, you already have this functionality. The mail archives, "MHT" files can be viewed in IE or saved again as "HTML complete" and viewed in firefox, or any other browser if you want. Just MEME encoding of all the content (not flash, though).
I think all police officers should be required to have a running camera (like a helmet cam or one on their uniform) at all times they are on duity. If they're not doing anything wrong, there's no reason not to do it.
Why does slashdot run these rediculous psudoscience stories?
I mean really, don't you guys have any self respect? Every week it some bs claim. Jesus.
I mean, couldn't someone find a flaw, get together with 10 of his friends, and everyone reports it independantly? What happens then?
The RDBM provides a standard function in a standard way. It only makes sense that it would become commoditized, and in the software world commoditized = free. Sure oracle offers some pretty impressive features, but at some point the cost of implementing those features yourself or the cost of not using those features is exceeded by the cost of buying oracle.
Remember, MySQL has a closed-source business model trying to sell non-GPL'd versions of their source code - and oracle, now owning the original source Innodb and BerkleyDB can prevent them from doing that. MySQL can still use the GPL'd versions in their GPL'd products, but their closed source products go away, or at least they could. And Oracle isn't a company known for playing softball.
I've actually gotten real letters that seemed more like phishing then anything legitimate, particularly dealing with student loans. Shady stuff like sending me something that looks like an invoice with the words "contact us immediately".
I also got an invoice looking letter from domain name type thing, something they've obviously sent out to tons of registration addresses. I could tell it was a small-time operation because they used a 'real' lick-on stamp.
(Ironically, I never use real, lick-on stamps anymore, not because I mail so much, but because I mail so rarely if I ever do it I make a trip to the post office)
I would tell you, but my corporate firewall won't allow access to that website.
What does that have to do with anything, your company will probably block myfriend.com soon, but they havn't because it's new.
I'm sorry to say this, but the Phishing problem would only a problem for idiots if companies stopped using email as an official means of communication.
What we really need is a method other then a simple password to authenticate. We need real a real bidirectional authentication method that's easy to use.
Here's one idea: Give the user something like a USB thumbdrive, you could even make it Bluetooth, it doesn't matter because a user would need to type in a password, and all sessions with it would be encrypted. This device stores all your 'official' passwords, and encrypts them with the other parties public key. so if you go to a fake website, you'd type in your basic password, the encrypted along with a salt sent by the sever.
Unless the receiving end has your organizations' private key, they'll never get any useful information.
(you wouldn't actually need a separate device, a computer program could do this, but the device method gets around the problem of Spyware or hackers getting the data. The system could be totally user-controlled, since it only serves to protect the user and no one else, there is no reason to prevent them from modifying its contents manualy. No DRM needed)
None of these really seem much like "hacks". More like cheap, obvious things.
A hack, IMO, would involve doing something funky with the software, like running MAME, doing effects on the image by altering the way its recorded, or something.
MySQL sells closed-source licensed version of MySQL which are pretty expensive. If you have the GPL'd MySQL, you have to use the GPL'd client libraries, and you have to GPL all your code that links to them. If you don't want to do that, you pay a license fee. In order to do that, MySQL has to buy closed source licenses to Innobase and Sleepycat. Now that money is going right into Oracle's pockets, and Oracle can jack up prices whenever they want.
So MySQL is kinda screwed, but they wern't very smart about keeping their codebases secure. They should have bought these companies when they had the cash.
MySQL AB gets their money by licensing MySQL for commercial use. If Oracle went GPL only, it would kill their Non-GPL version, and without that money, a lot of the development would dry up.
Releasing a driver under an OSS license would be nice, but you already have one. Doing one under a BSD or LGPL license would also kill MySQL because now no one would need to buy the licensed version from MySQL AB.
I don't think this is a problem for us, in the worst case MySQL stops advancing and people start paying more attention to database interoperability, which they should be doing anyway.
And lets not forget all the OSS software that requires MySQL and won't work with Postgres. How short sighted can you get?
Just try finding good free blogging software that works with Postgres. It ain't there. Moveable type works with Postgres, but you have to pay for it. The other big ones are MySQL only.
Hopefully this causes some people to take database independence a little more seriously.
MySQL's GPL'd stuff is fine, but remember, they also have a closed fork with closed versions of these other engines. If Oracle goes pure GPL only with Berkly and InnoDB it'll seriously harm MySQL's ability raise money, without pissing off the OSS crowd too much.