I'm sorry you don't like my sig, but if you think being able to crash three major operating systems from an unprivileged account by using printf is "stupid" or equivalent to being able to take down Linux from a rooted box, you must not have much security clue. Anyone can crash any box in about 1 line from a privileged account, there's no fun in that. *nix hasn't had a security hole this bad, AFAIK, since the early 80's (I could be wrong on that though). So I think I'll keep it in my sig till I'm good and ready to take it out.
Thanks for the advice though, free friendly advice is always appreciated.:-)
It's true a lot of in-house corporate software uses VB, etc., but a lot of other software (including software produced by major corporations and sold for a LOT of money, e.g. engineering software) doesn't. Like I said originally, it depends on what part of the software development world you look at.
You're right, she was a bad example. I was just too lazy to google for someone else, and she was the first name that came to mind (from her talking about "napster storing music on their servers" back in the day), sorry.
The editor speaks of C++ significance as something of the past: 5-years ago.
Ah, but in the editor's world, it is. In the hype world, C++ is much less significant than it was 5 years ago. Remember, he's an editor; he doesn't actually do any development work, he just writes about it. Strange though, I don't see my company's 330,000 line C++ project going to VB.net anytime soon.:-)
I think this article is basically ZDNet trolling again. After all, the more "controversial" the article, the more hits they get = more ad revenue.
So today's developers will use one of three languages: Java, C# or VB.Net.
Strange, a lot of projectsI'mfamiliarwith don't use any one of those languages. I think it depends who you talk to.
I think the author believes in two common fallacies:
C++ has some plus signs after it, so it must be a replacement for C
All problems in systems programming are trivial and have already been solved, and will never need solved again, so there's no need for really low-level languages.
I'm sure the argument is a lot more valid for big corporations, but they've always been bastions of VB and "4GL's" (even when 4GL was just a marketing term). Basically,/. has been trolled again.
We'll all have to suffer listening to only amateurs or whatever no-talent boy band the industry decides is the "next big thing".
I agree with the sentiment, but are you implying that only musicians who get paid for their work are worth listening to? I mean, suppose your fears come true and you were out of a job, would that make you a worse musician? I know personally I would keep playing even if there were no gigs, I honestly don't think it would make a difference to the quality of my playing or lack of it. (Other than maybe getting rusty from not practicing as much.:-)
I wonder if these legal types are ever going to actually blame this on the actual people who are sharing...
In related news, teaching little children to share was made illegal last week, after prolonged legal pressure from the RIAA.
Seriously, the reason orgs like the RIAA are freaking out about file sharing is *not* individual people sharing. It's the aggregate effect. Multiple people sharing online is a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. I can share MP3's with 5 of my friends over the Internet, but it won't be useful, since I can probably just go to their house and listen to them anyway.
The RIAA is used to bludgeoning people with laws, but there are no laws (AFAIK) dealing with behavior of random large aggregates of people (yes, there are laws dealing with corporations, etc., but corps don't have the diffused nature of the groups of people involved in Internet file sharing), so they're left tearing their hair out wondering what to do. In the past, the RIAA could clearly identify who they were going after, from the days of the sheet music "pirates" to song-writing plagiarists. Hence their current "blame the messenger" mentality, since at least they're able to *identify* who the messengers are without spying on people.
I disagree with the whole premise that individuals sharing files is wrong, I mean aren't we taught to share from the time we're little? (at least in the US). I think we're dealing with something entirely new with these large-scale anonymous file sharing applications. Most people on/. will say "duh," but really, look at the outside world. (Judges, etc.) Can you really say this point has made it into their heads yet?
if their client's programs are illegal for sharing copyrighted content, then so are the networks of ISPs that allow users to connect to each other
I think this is supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum argument, where one side reduces the other side's argument to something patently ridiculous, to prove that it's wrong. With the general level of tech clue most judges seem to have nowadays (example: Marilyn Patel), people had better watch out, or the courts might actually end up outlawing (any useful form of) the Internet!
That sounds remarkably like a problem that is equivalent (by reduction) to the halting problem for Turing machines... Oh, did we mention that the halting problem is unsolvable??
No, no, don't let them on to that little secret. That way they'll come up with something stupid that they "think" works, but that is actually pointless (like CSS or Cactus Data Shield), and we'll get to keep copying things for at least 10 years until they get it figured out...:-)
When are the RIAA and MPAA going to get it into their skulls that they are not the main source of artistic creativity in the world?
I always hear these protectionist arguments along the lines of, "well, if you don't protect the RIAA/MPAA, society will decay because there won't be any music or art." Hogwash. These organizations didn't even exist a hundred and fifty years ago, and somehow we still had art and music. In fact, I seem to recall art and music going back to the dawn of human history? What, are they going to give out licenses to take piano lessons next? That'll be the day.
Jack Valenti is just a middleman, he has no talent on his own. I doubt he even knows that people build their own computers. What, is he going to lobby for that to be illegal next? I wouldn't doubt it. How schizophrenic can society get, people hating Microsoft, but being all right with the crap these control freak organizations put out? It really scares me most times I think of it.
Sure, but what with Dell's "we'll only sell Intel chips" license agreements, it'll probably be running a Pentium 7 with a 1000-instruction pipeline and "predictive stalling," it'll cost $10,000 just for the processor, and it'll be slower than my Duron 750.:-)
Does this really surprise anybody? Doubleclick has been a bunch of capricious, dishonest bastards for as long as I can remember. They were one of the first names associated with evil cookie tracking practices(tm) all the way back in 1995 (and even earlier?), IIRC.
direct email marketing "is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving"
As someone pointed out above, I wonder what they mean by "thriving." A 0.1% response rate is not particularly "thriving" -- I think it's more because there is no way to punish them for spamming.
Wasn't there some kind of paper published recently that showed that, in one of those game-theoretical situations with two equilibrium strategies (everyone cooperating, or everyone backstabbing each other -- I think it's called the "prisoner's dilemma"), people tended to pick a cooperative strategy if the group was allowed to punish backstabbers? Because IMO, the situation with spamming is very much like the prisoner's dilemma.
I did an experiment one time, I blocked doubleclick and a bunch of other ad sites at my firewall. The problem was, there were so many sites it was like trying to stop a firehose with a bathtub stopper. There have been efforts like the RBL, but they always seem to start charging money. IMHO, this is not just because they are "greedy," it's because their operational costs are too high. And why? Because there are too many spammers. I think the only way to really fight spam is with a distributed solution. Here we'd run into all the network poisoning problems people worried about with gnutella et al. in the early days. Is anyone working on anything like this? Is anyone even talking about it?
It seems like we're getting spammed with spam stories nowadays, not just from slashdot but on zdnet and others as well. Is spam getting worse, or is the spam lobby getting more aggressive, or what?:-)
If the "Clearinghouse" manages to stay up, it will certainly become very useful. One of the worst things about cease-and-desist letters is that the lawyers throw all kinds of threats at you, which you then have to spend time checking into. If you're a small operation, this means a big company can basically bludgeon you to death with cease and desist letters. In fact, we've seen this happening a lot more in the past year.
I'm glad to see this site go up, IMHO it's a victory for the little guy. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the cease and desist climate after word of the site gets around; maybe people will stop throwing cease & desist at everything they don't like. (Heh, that's probably a pipe dream.) Anyway, just my $0.02.
That's true, but I already admitted I was wrong about that completely irrelevant (to the original post) detail in this reply to this helpful comment. Thanks for pointing it out again though, it *was* stupid of me to post that and then bitch about someone else doing the exact same thing later in the thread.
Could you please be more specific? I'm not wrong about it bluescreening, that's for sure.:-)
OpenGL has no scene graph. I think you don't know what you're talking about.
You got me there. I'm not a graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination, I must have confused it with something else. This isn't relevant to my point about the drivers crashing though. I apologize for misusing a technical term, all I meant was that it tended to crash more when the scenes got more complex.
Perhaps something is wrong with your hardware.
Based on the number of comments in this thread insisting there must be something wrong with my hardware, I think I'll have to go with the majority opinion. There's probably something wrong with my hardware. Probably the power supply, actually, I just upgraded it, I'll have to try those nVidia OpenGL drivers again.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
What are they going to do with all the old computers that don't have DRM?
This is the same group of people that wants to make everyone buy a digital TV by 2006. I doubt they've even thought about this yet.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
I'm sorry you don't like my sig, but if you think being able to crash three major operating systems from an unprivileged account by using printf is "stupid" or equivalent to being able to take down Linux from a rooted box, you must not have much security clue. Anyone can crash any box in about 1 line from a privileged account, there's no fun in that. *nix hasn't had a security hole this bad, AFAIK, since the early 80's (I could be wrong on that though). So I think I'll keep it in my sig till I'm good and ready to take it out.
Thanks for the advice though, free friendly advice is always appreciated. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
And who teaches kids to share? Barney, the purple dinosaur.
Heh, good point... maybe we should make sharing illegal!
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Doh, should have looked at that. Thanks.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
There's a Pentium-compatible chip built into every Itanium. I guess that's one approach to "emulation." :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
...when will there be motherboards that support it?
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Sorry guys, Perl is not where the money is at.
Strange, my wallet disagrees with you.
It's true a lot of in-house corporate software uses VB, etc., but a lot of other software (including software produced by major corporations and sold for a LOT of money, e.g. engineering software) doesn't. Like I said originally, it depends on what part of the software development world you look at.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
You're right, she was a bad example. I was just too lazy to google for someone else, and she was the first name that came to mind (from her talking about "napster storing music on their servers" back in the day), sorry.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
The editor speaks of C++ significance as something of the past: 5-years ago.
Ah, but in the editor's world, it is. In the hype world, C++ is much less significant than it was 5 years ago. Remember, he's an editor; he doesn't actually do any development work, he just writes about it. Strange though, I don't see my company's 330,000 line C++ project going to VB.net anytime soon. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
I think this article is basically ZDNet trolling again. After all, the more "controversial" the article, the more hits they get = more ad revenue.
So today's developers will use one of three languages: Java, C# or VB.Net.
Strange, a lot of projects I'm familiar with don't use any one of those languages. I think it depends who you talk to.
I think the author believes in two common fallacies:
I'm sure the argument is a lot more valid for big corporations, but they've always been bastions of VB and "4GL's" (even when 4GL was just a marketing term). Basically, /. has been trolled again.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
We'll all have to suffer listening to only amateurs or whatever no-talent boy band the industry decides is the "next big thing".
I agree with the sentiment, but are you implying that only musicians who get paid for their work are worth listening to? I mean, suppose your fears come true and you were out of a job, would that make you a worse musician? I know personally I would keep playing even if there were no gigs, I honestly don't think it would make a difference to the quality of my playing or lack of it. (Other than maybe getting rusty from not practicing as much. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
I wonder if these legal types are ever going to actually blame this on the actual people who are sharing ...
In related news, teaching little children to share was made illegal last week, after prolonged legal pressure from the RIAA.
Seriously, the reason orgs like the RIAA are freaking out about file sharing is *not* individual people sharing. It's the aggregate effect. Multiple people sharing online is a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. I can share MP3's with 5 of my friends over the Internet, but it won't be useful, since I can probably just go to their house and listen to them anyway.
The RIAA is used to bludgeoning people with laws, but there are no laws (AFAIK) dealing with behavior of random large aggregates of people (yes, there are laws dealing with corporations, etc., but corps don't have the diffused nature of the groups of people involved in Internet file sharing), so they're left tearing their hair out wondering what to do. In the past, the RIAA could clearly identify who they were going after, from the days of the sheet music "pirates" to song-writing plagiarists. Hence their current "blame the messenger" mentality, since at least they're able to *identify* who the messengers are without spying on people.
I disagree with the whole premise that individuals sharing files is wrong, I mean aren't we taught to share from the time we're little? (at least in the US). I think we're dealing with something entirely new with these large-scale anonymous file sharing applications. Most people on /. will say "duh," but really, look at the outside world. (Judges, etc.) Can you really say this point has made it into their heads yet?
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
if their client's programs are illegal for sharing copyrighted content, then so are the networks of ISPs that allow users to connect to each other
I think this is supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum argument, where one side reduces the other side's argument to something patently ridiculous, to prove that it's wrong. With the general level of tech clue most judges seem to have nowadays (example: Marilyn Patel), people had better watch out, or the courts might actually end up outlawing (any useful form of) the Internet!
Just my $0.01
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
That sounds remarkably like a problem that is equivalent (by reduction) to the halting problem for Turing machines... Oh, did we mention that the halting problem is unsolvable??
No, no, don't let them on to that little secret. That way they'll come up with something stupid that they "think" works, but that is actually pointless (like CSS or Cactus Data Shield), and we'll get to keep copying things for at least 10 years until they get it figured out... :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
When are the RIAA and MPAA going to get it into their skulls that they are not the main source of artistic creativity in the world?
I always hear these protectionist arguments along the lines of, "well, if you don't protect the RIAA/MPAA, society will decay because there won't be any music or art." Hogwash. These organizations didn't even exist a hundred and fifty years ago, and somehow we still had art and music. In fact, I seem to recall art and music going back to the dawn of human history? What, are they going to give out licenses to take piano lessons next? That'll be the day.
Jack Valenti is just a middleman, he has no talent on his own. I doubt he even knows that people build their own computers. What, is he going to lobby for that to be illegal next? I wouldn't doubt it. How schizophrenic can society get, people hating Microsoft, but being all right with the crap these control freak organizations put out? It really scares me most times I think of it.
</rant mode>
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Lead all the heat it generates into a steam engine and it'll generate enough energy to power the whole comp.
You mean the whole house, right?. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
dude, you've got a 110GHz Dell!
Sure, but what with Dell's "we'll only sell Intel chips" license agreements, it'll probably be running a Pentium 7 with a 1000-instruction pipeline and "predictive stalling," it'll cost $10,000 just for the processor, and it'll be slower than my Duron 750. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Does this really surprise anybody? Doubleclick has been a bunch of capricious, dishonest bastards for as long as I can remember. They were one of the first names associated with evil cookie tracking practices(tm) all the way back in 1995 (and even earlier?), IIRC.
direct email marketing "is one of the few forms of Internet advertising that is thriving"
As someone pointed out above, I wonder what they mean by "thriving." A 0.1% response rate is not particularly "thriving" -- I think it's more because there is no way to punish them for spamming.
Wasn't there some kind of paper published recently that showed that, in one of those game-theoretical situations with two equilibrium strategies (everyone cooperating, or everyone backstabbing each other -- I think it's called the "prisoner's dilemma"), people tended to pick a cooperative strategy if the group was allowed to punish backstabbers? Because IMO, the situation with spamming is very much like the prisoner's dilemma.
I did an experiment one time, I blocked doubleclick and a bunch of other ad sites at my firewall. The problem was, there were so many sites it was like trying to stop a firehose with a bathtub stopper. There have been efforts like the RBL, but they always seem to start charging money. IMHO, this is not just because they are "greedy," it's because their operational costs are too high. And why? Because there are too many spammers. I think the only way to really fight spam is with a distributed solution. Here we'd run into all the network poisoning problems people worried about with gnutella et al. in the early days. Is anyone working on anything like this? Is anyone even talking about it?
It seems like we're getting spammed with spam stories nowadays, not just from slashdot but on zdnet and others as well. Is spam getting worse, or is the spam lobby getting more aggressive, or what? :-)
Just my $0.01
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
If the "Clearinghouse" manages to stay up, it will certainly become very useful. One of the worst things about cease-and-desist letters is that the lawyers throw all kinds of threats at you, which you then have to spend time checking into. If you're a small operation, this means a big company can basically bludgeon you to death with cease and desist letters. In fact, we've seen this happening a lot more in the past year.
I'm glad to see this site go up, IMHO it's a victory for the little guy. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the cease and desist climate after word of the site gets around; maybe people will stop throwing cease & desist at everything they don't like. (Heh, that's probably a pipe dream.) Anyway, just my $0.02.
---Crash Windows XP just by viewing a simple text file!
Try DA or EA I think.
Thanks for the tip.
You killed a KT7A-R!?!? Anything nonobvious (since I have one)?
Nothing "non-obvious," just don't try to put in DIMM's while drunk and talking on the phone. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
Q. To play devil's advocate, isn't Microsoft simply selling a product that millions of people are willing to purchase at their own will?
A. <snip> In fact, it's become totally diabolical.
Q. If Windows is so bad, why does Apple have a meager 4 percent market share?
A. Four? Really? Jesus.
Hmm... Who said religion and computer science don't mix? :-)
---Celebrate "crash Windows XP with printf" week here.
You would think they'd know OpenGL cold?
That seems to be the consensus here. Maybe it's a hardware problem, not a software problem. But then, why doesn't DirectX crash?
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
That's true, but I already admitted I was wrong about that completely irrelevant (to the original post) detail in this reply to this helpful comment. Thanks for pointing it out again though, it *was* stupid of me to post that and then bitch about someone else doing the exact same thing later in the thread.
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
However, putting it to use on the net without any ability to check the validity of CD-keys is wrong,
All right, I can agree with that. :-)
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
-
-
-
---Wrong.
Could you please be more specific? I'm not wrong about it bluescreening, that's for sure. :-)
OpenGL has no scene graph. I think you don't know what you're talking about.
You got me there. I'm not a graphics programmer by any stretch of the imagination, I must have confused it with something else. This isn't relevant to my point about the drivers crashing though. I apologize for misusing a technical term, all I meant was that it tended to crash more when the scenes got more complex.
Perhaps something is wrong with your hardware.
Based on the number of comments in this thread insisting there must be something wrong with my hardware, I think I'll have to go with the majority opinion. There's probably something wrong with my hardware. Probably the power supply, actually, I just upgraded it, I'll have to try those nVidia OpenGL drivers again. :-)
Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!