name one story broken by any media organization that precipitated a terrorist attack.
While I don't think anything you're suggesting has ever happened, we did find out from Al Qaeda records that they had never seriously considered using chemical & biological weapons in terrorist strikes until the American press detailed how easy they are to obtain and how devestating the effect would be.
Now, that wasn't classified information; but it does show, at least, that when the American media publishes information useful to terrorists, it doesn't go unnoticied.
There seems to be a pattern. Of the cases like this that I am aware of (there have been quite a few), those whose case is decided by a jury seem to always be acquitted. Those tried by a judge don't always fare so well.
The issue here, I think, is that the security researcher is working for the benefit of the common person at the expense of the company. The members of the jury see themselves as that common person, and don't relate so well to the company. The judge, on the other hand, tries to be more "impartial" and is more likely to rule in favor of the company at the people's expense.
And am not exactly a fan of the Us Government, but you've got to be a bit of an idiot to 'test weaknesses'/hack the Us government's property. they're not gonna take it lying down are they?
While I agree, I do also think this is a bit extreme. Here's some background:
He was interested in finding proof that the US was hiding evidence of UFOs and government involvement with extraterrestrials. He wasn't anti-American, he wasn't interested in breaking anything or exposing their weaknesses. According to reports, he didn't directly cause any damage to any systems.
His extradition request is based on the premise that he indirectly caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage (or more) to government systems, which elevates the severity of his crime. However, they count, as part of the damages attributed to him, all the money spent securing their computers once they found out that they were vulnerable. After all, if he hadn't come along, they wouldn't have had to fix anything.
Furthermore, if his own reports are to be trusted, the government computers were absolutely teeming with intruders from various parts of the globe--not just one or two, but hundreds. They've now managed to catch ONE, which means that even though he meant no harm, he's the scapegoat for the actions of any of these hundreds of other individuals.
Finally, this is not a realm where a fair trial is possible; they intend to try him as a terrorist in a secret court as far away from public scrutany as possible. His behavior was irresponsible, but the government's response is inexcusable.
Note that VMWare is also giving away their Server product for free.
And note that Microsoft is also giving away their SQL server for free, and their developer studio (caveat: restricted versions of each). Same story with Oracle, and a long list of others.
Open source is really putting the crunch on software vendors. Xen vs. VMWare vs. VirtualPC is just one more in a long string of areas where free software is starting to eat proprietary vendors' lunch. If you want to see why they're doing it, just look at where the business is going. This trend in the proprietary world of giving away product is the only option these vendors have left if they want to continue to make money. Here's why. We'll take Oracle vs. MySQL as our example, just to pick a pair. Though the same principles apply everywhere.
Peter the programmer starts his job at a medium-sized business with 8 years of programming/sysadmin experience in school and in the workforce. All his work has been with small organizations with small budgets, so he's gotten used to working with free tools. His job is to build a high-performance, high-reliablity, high-availablity customer management solution. They need a database, he knows MySQL, he's heard of Oracle. He picks MySQL because he knows it best. They need reliablity that MySQL can't provide, so they build it into the application layer and modify some of the MySQL code to fit their needs. They need speed and transaction management beyond MySQL's capabilities, so they build it into the application layer. With 6 developers and 18 months, they finally come up with a perfectly working solution, and pay nothing in licensing fees.
Perhaps if they had gone with Oracle they could have finished in 8 months instead with only 5 developers, but they would have to pay X amount in licensing fees. Perhaps it would have even been worth it to the business, considering how much they spent for their in-house solution in salaries and lost revenue. But Oracle was never in the running--in a situation that might have fit Oracle's target audience perfectly, where they could have added substantial value and made tens or hundreds of thousands or dollars, Oracle gets nothing because Peter was unfamiliar with their product.
This isn't a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This is a true story. It's what's been going on for years, and what's going on right now. This is how open source is stealing customers from software vendors. The tools are too expensive for developers to "play around" with, especially considering all the free alternatives. As a result, these vendors' products are losing relevance and losing market share.
Their solution: give it away for free. They're not giving away their top product; that's where they intend to make their money. They'd prefer to give away nothing and make $60 off the student version, but that option has become too costly in the long run.
So expect to see more of this. These companies aren't trying to be nice or support the community or anything so noble. They're trying to stay relevant, they're trying to survive.
Re:Hurray for Movie Technology!
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ILM's Datacenter
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· Score: 1
Did you pick your sig for this post? If not, it's interesting that it sorta applies, if you know what I mean.:)
Same sig for years. It often applies, I've found.
Re:Hurray for Movie Technology!
on
ILM's Datacenter
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Unfortunately, all that storage can't provide decent acting, quality humor or plot lines without holes for their movies.
This statement is more true than you think. One of my high-school friends who went to work for ILM lamented that, as the most expensive special effects house in the business, they attract particulary the films that have nothing going for them but a high budget. No engaging plot, no spectacular acting, just a dumptruck full of money.
What they end up with, and why he was so upset, is that all of the films he's worked on (like Hulk, for example) were over-hyped under-performers. With such a huge advertising budget, the movie gets so much public attention that everybody has seen his handiwork. But nobody is terribly impressed because the movie itself was awful.
...but VB.NET to C# translators are a bit more problematic
[links to broken tools snipped]
Just three to get you started!
Riight... I never said that conversion tools don't exist--they certainly do. But they don't work. Run the following (perfectly valid) code snippet through your favorite VB.NET to C# translator--perhaps one of the sites you linked to.
Function foo() As Integer Dim a() As Integer = New Integer(3) {1,2,3} Return a(2) End Function
What you almost invariably end up with is this broken code (I used one of your recommended translators to produce it):
int foo() { int[] a = new int[3]; return a(2); }
Note the produced return a(2) instead of the correct return a[2]. It did this because without extra context, there was no way to tell whether a(2) in the VB code was a function call or an array index. On the surface, you might think that the translator was poorly written (after all, it's output is wrong). However, at the moment, all of the VB.NET to C# translators produce incorrect output under certain circumstances. There are plenty of ways to get bad results out of a VB to C# translator, this is one of the easier ones. On the other hand, it's easy to create a C# to VB translator that produces correct results.
The problem isn't that all programmers interested in VB are dumb; the problem is that this is a hard problem in the sense that VB.NET's actual syntax is context-dependant. A translator from VB to another language can't just directly translate symbols and keywords as previously suggested. Instead, the translator has to fully parse the whole program, keeping track contextual nuances, then output an equivalent program in C#. This is the same basic problem (though to a much lesser scale) as in any other natural language translation project, like giving your computer commands in plain English: the language is inherently ambiguous.
The end result, and here's the important part, is that VB code is more difficult for a program to work with, which disqualifies you from using nifty tools like code transators, which would have been possible had you used a better-designed language like, well, anything else. So, if you or your organization is interested in jumping into.NET development, make sure you understand the full implications of your decision as to which language to use. C# is a very well designed language created specifically to take advantage of.NET's features. VB.NET, on the other hand, was an afterthough comprimise to try to get old VB developers to use.NET. Besides the common and well-documented shortcomings of the language itself, there are also a number of hidden pitfalls like the one I just discussed that you will be subjecting yourself to if you choose to use VB for.NET. In short, it's not worth it.
The only substantial differences from VB.Net to C# is syntax
I guess the only difference between any two languages is syntax--that's what a language is. The rest is just API.
However, if you're going to program for.NET and you're not an old VB programmer, don't learn VB.NET, learn C# instead. VB is a syntactically ambiguous language, which is why C# to VB.NET translators are easy to come by, but VB.NET to C# translators are a bit more problematic. For example X=A(5) could refer to a function call, an array index, or a number of other possibilities, depending on what "A" is, which you may not know based on just that one.vb file.
Add to that the classic "bad habits" problems associated with BASIC, and you've got yourself a crappy starting point. For example, BASIC uses a single equal sign for both assignment and testing equality. BASIC uses 1-based arrays, and horror or horrors, allows you to change that behavior. I could go on, but other people will probably cover this subject adequately.
If you're doing.NET programming, which is a perfectly valid place to start, use anything other than VB.NET. E.g., C#, J#, Python, or one of about 20 other.NET languages. Don't bother with VB 6, it's going away.
if ORACLE's TCO is 48% lower than SAP, just how many small countries' budgets does SAP charge for a small installation?
Costs vary (particularly installation and configuration costs), but as a rule of thumb, if your business's income isn't enough to make your state government envious, then SAP is not for you. If all you need is a "small" installation, then you really don't need SAP.
Though I am interested in hearing what Oracle has to offer; I had thought that SAP was the only player in this field, which is why they can charge so much for such a horrible product.
This is cobblers, and even it it wasn't the correct answer is to shield the cockpit, not rely on everyone obeying the stewardess.
As a pilot myself, I can say with complete confidence that you have no idea what you're talking about.
First of all, I'd like to point out that the use of all electronic devices (with a few odd exeptions like electric razors) is up to the pilot's discretion, which in most cases means up to the airline. Cellphone use anywhere but on the ground is prohibited by the FCC, not FAA, because of fear of overloading the cell towers. Interference with cockpit instruments doesn't even fit into the restriction.
Now the FCC isn't as worried about protecting cell towers, partly, at least, because technology has improved dramatically and there isn't as much to worry about. However, the ultimate decision of whether to allow cell phones still rests on the pilot (airline).
I can say that using a cell phone in my plane (on the ground, honest!) has never noticably affected my GPS system. However, I know of at least one instance where using a PDA has interfered with the lightning strike finder system--it's an ultra-sensitive receiver that picks up the signal created by lightning strikes--every time the user tapped on his PDA screen, a new lightning strike showed up 10 miles to the south-west.
Of course, the information presented by the instruments can be ignored; but then what's the point to having them? A strikefinder isn't very useful if you can't trust what it tells you.
The general comprimise that the airlines agree to is that they're willing to put up with a few false readings in the name of passenger comfort when the plane is above 10,000 ft. But below that level, all focus is on safety; the pilots quit talking about anything unrelated to the task at hand (the "sterile cockpit" rule), the stewardesses quit serving drinks, and the passengers quit screwing up the instruments with their little electronic toys.
So can cell phones screw up GPS readings? Probably. You're not going to see the difference in your hand-held GPS device, because consumer GPS (unlike the aviation counterparts) blithely ignore anomolies and just give you their "best guess" on your position. Avaition GPS receivers can't afford to be that cavalier.
Now that GPS is starting to be approved for approaches, the stakes are a lot higher. If the plane is on a GPS approach in a snowstorm down to Cat-3 minimums (e.g. O'Hare in zero visibility), and you decide to call your mom to tell her how scared you are, your phone call might interfere with the GPS receiver's readings. Best case scenario, the receiver's internal monitoring (see RAIM) will catch the anomoly and alert the pilot, who will terminate the approach and go land somewhere else. Worst case scenario? The error means that the calculated position is of by 20 feet at some critical moment and everyone gets dead.
So do the airlines take this sort of thing seriously? You bet they do. They're going to want the results of every study ever conducted on the matter. You'll probably see cell phones made legal in planes, but you'll never be allowed to use them below 10,000 ft, which means that you'll never be allowed to use them with ground receivers. Instead, cell phones might be usable through some in-plane cell receiver.
As for your absurd statement about shielding the cockpit--RF signals don't interfere with electronics by invading the instruments themselves; the signals sent by your phone are picked up by the instrument's antenna, which can create false readings, garble real readings, or both, all depending on the type of instrument in question. You obviously can't sheild the antenna, and you can't practically sheild the passenger cabin. So please turn of you cell phone.
There are a couple differnces between Apple and MS bundling software. The biggest being that Apple is an OEM who is bundling software with a computer, thus needs to provide a "complete" experience.
No, the biggest, (and only) difference is that MS has been classified as a monopoly, which means that they have to follow different laws than everyone else.
That's surviellence of an enemy, and given the Presidents power to wage war, it's not any stretch of the imagination that this sort of activity is within his authority.
Congress determines that authority.
That's up to interpretation. While I don't disagree with you, there are certain constitutional clauses that seem to imply an extension of authority (without congress) under certain circumstances
A significant majority of the US population approves of this activity
Apparently you have read any polls lately.
No, I'm afraid he's right. The majority of the population doesn't give a damn about civil liberties, they just don't want to be safe. It's a sad state affairs.
I am sure that Linux will be switched over to GPLv3 less then 6 months after GPLv3 is actually released in its final form.
The cost of converting to GPL v3 in time and effort (which is fairly high) when compared with the benefit (which is little, if any), are so enormously out of balance that it makes any change highly unlikely.
Linus's motivation and goals are very, very different than RMS's. Stallman will be satisfied with nothing short of a revolution; Torvalds just wants to create a really cool kernel. Linus will not even entertain notions of rewriting his kernel license because, and this is the important part, there's nothing wrong with his current license. Since it ain't broke, there's no reason to fix it.
RMS was, undoubtably, very disappointed over Linus's wholesale rejection of the new GPL version. It sounds like Linus didn't even bother reading it all the way through because he wasn't interested in change to begin with. It's extremely likely that others will take Linus's word on the subject as gospel (Linus being a god, and all) without bothering to read the license themselves, spelling disaster for GPL v3. What you're currently witnessing is RMS's "it's not dead yet!" effort at salvaging the GPL3.
First of all, Photoshop -- on either Mac OS X or Windows -- is the default photographic and prepress program for serious graphics firms.... Photoshop is simply "The" application that professionals use.
This really is the key. GIMP will never have more than a marginal user base because they don't understand their users. Their users--nearly all of them--are Photoshop users (or potentially ex-Photoshop users).
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does. Not because that way is better or makes more sense, but because that's what the user expects you to do, and any deviation from those expections means your app is "broken" in their eyes.
Competing on features in this sort of market is futile. Your program may be able to give me the moon on a stick; but if I can't easily make it work, it might as well do nothing at all. The success stories--those projects that have managed to supplant a deeply-entrenched competitive offering--have always acknowledged this fact and have modified the behavior of their own product to compensate. The failures in this arena (GIMP being the most famous) always refuse to acknowledge the effect on their users' expectations caused by their competitor's dominance. For projects like the GIMP, it seems a matter of pride to not be influenced by such an unworthy competitor.
Believing in evolution is something of a vague concept. If I believe in the concept of natural selection (which is readily observable), do I have to believe that life came from a chance encounter of amino acids in some primordial soup a gazillion years ago? How much am I agreeing to?
As the head of the Security Technology Unit, you no doubt have some vision of exactly how Microsoft products should behave. And since security and convenience are nearly always mutually exclusive, this hope and vision must, most likely, be "watered down" with compromises for the consumption of the rest of the company.
So the question is threefold:
What is your pie-in-the-sky vision for how Microsoft product security would be achieved?
What do you wish you could have that has to be sacrificed to gain or retain usability?
What do you feel are the internal barriers (e.g. company culture, development methodology, and the like) that you must overcome in order to achieve your vision?
I suppose the point I'm making, is that it seems there is a bit of 'security by obscurity' in place, that is falsly assumed to be actual security.
Let's keep in mind that virtually all security is "security by obscurity". That is, passwords, private keys, cryptographic hashes, etc., all rely on the principle of you being able to keep a secret from the attacker. Don't discount a working security method just because it's nontechnical.
Security is costly. Any principles of security that don't increase cost or cause inconvenience really are never part of the discussion. Complete and absolute security is impossible, so the question is, how much are you willing to sacrifice to stay secure X% of the time?
For OS X users, malware represents only a negligable threat. Investing large amounts of resources (not just money) in a malware-protection system for OS X is a poor investment because the potential for return is so low. You can expect a greater return on investment by securing yourself against hardware failure, user error, and physical break-ins. Your security budget is only so large; use it wisely.
You are going to get a bunch of responses. most of them from people that will say something like.. "NO." "NOBODY GETS ROOT, PERIOD".
And, of course, "Shame on you for even asking!"
Even the "innocent" looking commands like chown and chmod can have profound effects when run by root (setuid anyone?). Logging behavior is no solution--you'll have the logs, but the damage will be done. And as with any other r00ted system, the extent of the damage is never really certain. Even the integrity and completeness of the logs would be suspect.
Giving users sudo access is giving them the ability to execute any attack you haven't specifically guarded against. If there's any priviledged operation that users need to perform, it should be properly wrapped in a tightly controlled setuid binary.
Where I'm from, the Java market is nearly nil. The only reason I bothered to learn it was for development of cellphone games with J2ME. On the other hand, I didn't at all like the idea of learning.NET; I had thought that it was all a gimmick that would pass. But I had to learn because of the market demand.
Now the.NET adoption hasn't gone quite as quick as Msft would have liked, but the fact remains that they're throwing their full weight behind this platform. They're not letting up like I had originally thought, but are rather pushing it even more furiously than before. The next generation of all of Msft's major (non-server) products are going to be.NET based; office already is, as is visual studio. Whether we like it or not,.NET experience is going to eventually become as in-demand as Win32 experience. Certainly not this year, not next year, but it's coming.
Microsoft isn't giving up on this one, and it's been independantly argued that moving to this type of architecture is actually going to be better for the rest of us anyway. I don't know if I agree with all the hype, but it's pretty clear that.NET is here to stay.
All of that aside, it's worth pointing out that C# is a very well designed language. This isn't something that was cobbled together by a couple of guys in a garage. The creators of this language did some fairly extensive research of the existing languages (including Java), and brought in the help of some of the foremost minds on the subject.
So, is it as good as they claim it is? Probably not. However, after only half a year of C# programming, I've gone back on my original stance and decided to use it as my primary rapid-application-development platform under Windows (with Python being used for all other OSes).
If you've got to learn one or the other, I'd go with.NET in the classroom. With it you can learn all the important concepts that you need to learn. Then, if you're any good at all as a programmer, you should be able to make the jump from C# to Java in just a few weeks at the most.
Summary: Erik Marcus (the Vegan in question) is a jackass.
George Lambert put up a free Podcast indexing service which Erik subscribed to. Then Erik forgot he'd done it, complained to George and told him to remove the entry. George did so. Then Erik got mad again and told George to put the entry back up, but modified to fit some absurd demands. George said "no". George however also said that if Erik wanted to pay him for his time to to program in the exception, he'd follow Erik's demands. Erik got mad again and cried extortion.
There is no such thing as Podjacking. Erik is a jackass.
FTA:
Marcus contacted Lambert to ask that his listing be removed. Lambert did so. This, however, caused Marcus' listenership to crash by some 75 percent, he claimed. Marcus then asked that his listing temporarily be reinstated on Podkeyword while he worked to fix things with Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes.
Lambert responded that it would be reinstated only if Marcus provided an unspecified payment or agreed permanently to his terms--a description that sounds like hijacking and extortion and that has resulted in Lambert's being harassed around the clock by profane e-mail and phone calls.
However, as Lambert told Ziff Davis Internet News and also explained on a Podcast by David Lawrence, the request for reimbursement was simply to compensate him for the custom coding that Marcus reportedly demanded.
Specifically, Marcus reportedly requested that Lambert allow individuals to find his feed via keyword but not to allow OPML directories to have the feed any longer.
"He wanted me to make sure no other directory services got the information from me, but I can't tell who are directory services, because we're not submitting anything," Lambert said. "People are coming to look at our list. I have a choice: I remove it from anywhere or I [don't] remove it. You can't restrict who comes to look at your Podcast. So his request wasn't technically practical.
Lambert has posted on his Weblog what he claims is the complete, unedited e-mail conversation between himself and Marcus.
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't think anything you're suggesting has ever happened, we did find out from Al Qaeda records that they had never seriously considered using chemical & biological weapons in terrorist strikes until the American press detailed how easy they are to obtain and how devestating the effect would be.
Now, that wasn't classified information; but it does show, at least, that when the American media publishes information useful to terrorists, it doesn't go unnoticied.
There seems to be a pattern. Of the cases like this that I am aware of (there have been quite a few), those whose case is decided by a jury seem to always be acquitted. Those tried by a judge don't always fare so well.
The issue here, I think, is that the security researcher is working for the benefit of the common person at the expense of the company. The members of the jury see themselves as that common person, and don't relate so well to the company. The judge, on the other hand, tries to be more "impartial" and is more likely to rule in favor of the company at the people's expense.
..not a surprise that they'd move to Linux, given their recent bad experience with Windows.
While I agree, I do also think this is a bit extreme. Here's some background:
He was interested in finding proof that the US was hiding evidence of UFOs and government involvement with extraterrestrials. He wasn't anti-American, he wasn't interested in breaking anything or exposing their weaknesses. According to reports, he didn't directly cause any damage to any systems.
His extradition request is based on the premise that he indirectly caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage (or more) to government systems, which elevates the severity of his crime. However, they count, as part of the damages attributed to him, all the money spent securing their computers once they found out that they were vulnerable. After all, if he hadn't come along, they wouldn't have had to fix anything.
Furthermore, if his own reports are to be trusted, the government computers were absolutely teeming with intruders from various parts of the globe--not just one or two, but hundreds. They've now managed to catch ONE, which means that even though he meant no harm, he's the scapegoat for the actions of any of these hundreds of other individuals.
Finally, this is not a realm where a fair trial is possible; they intend to try him as a terrorist in a secret court as far away from public scrutany as possible. His behavior was irresponsible, but the government's response is inexcusable.
And note that Microsoft is also giving away their SQL server for free, and their developer studio (caveat: restricted versions of each). Same story with Oracle, and a long list of others.
Open source is really putting the crunch on software vendors. Xen vs. VMWare vs. VirtualPC is just one more in a long string of areas where free software is starting to eat proprietary vendors' lunch. If you want to see why they're doing it, just look at where the business is going. This trend in the proprietary world of giving away product is the only option these vendors have left if they want to continue to make money. Here's why. We'll take Oracle vs. MySQL as our example, just to pick a pair. Though the same principles apply everywhere.
Peter the programmer starts his job at a medium-sized business with 8 years of programming/sysadmin experience in school and in the workforce. All his work has been with small organizations with small budgets, so he's gotten used to working with free tools. His job is to build a high-performance, high-reliablity, high-availablity customer management solution. They need a database, he knows MySQL, he's heard of Oracle. He picks MySQL because he knows it best. They need reliablity that MySQL can't provide, so they build it into the application layer and modify some of the MySQL code to fit their needs. They need speed and transaction management beyond MySQL's capabilities, so they build it into the application layer. With 6 developers and 18 months, they finally come up with a perfectly working solution, and pay nothing in licensing fees.
Perhaps if they had gone with Oracle they could have finished in 8 months instead with only 5 developers, but they would have to pay X amount in licensing fees. Perhaps it would have even been worth it to the business, considering how much they spent for their in-house solution in salaries and lost revenue. But Oracle was never in the running--in a situation that might have fit Oracle's target audience perfectly, where they could have added substantial value and made tens or hundreds of thousands or dollars, Oracle gets nothing because Peter was unfamiliar with their product.
This isn't a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This is a true story. It's what's been going on for years, and what's going on right now. This is how open source is stealing customers from software vendors. The tools are too expensive for developers to "play around" with, especially considering all the free alternatives. As a result, these vendors' products are losing relevance and losing market share.
Their solution: give it away for free. They're not giving away their top product; that's where they intend to make their money. They'd prefer to give away nothing and make $60 off the student version, but that option has become too costly in the long run.
So expect to see more of this. These companies aren't trying to be nice or support the community or anything so noble. They're trying to stay relevant, they're trying to survive.
Same sig for years. It often applies, I've found.
This statement is more true than you think. One of my high-school friends who went to work for ILM lamented that, as the most expensive special effects house in the business, they attract particulary the films that have nothing going for them but a high budget. No engaging plot, no spectacular acting, just a dumptruck full of money.
What they end up with, and why he was so upset, is that all of the films he's worked on (like Hulk, for example) were over-hyped under-performers. With such a huge advertising budget, the movie gets so much public attention that everybody has seen his handiwork. But nobody is terribly impressed because the movie itself was awful.
[links to broken tools snipped]
Just three to get you started!
Riight... I never said that conversion tools don't exist--they certainly do. But they don't work. Run the following (perfectly valid) code snippet through your favorite VB.NET to C# translator--perhaps one of the sites you linked to.
What you almost invariably end up with is this broken code (I used one of your recommended translators to produce it):
Note the produced return a(2) instead of the correct return a[2]. It did this because without extra context, there was no way to tell whether a(2) in the VB code was a function call or an array index. On the surface, you might think that the translator was poorly written (after all, it's output is wrong). However, at the moment, all of the VB.NET to C# translators produce incorrect output under certain circumstances. There are plenty of ways to get bad results out of a VB to C# translator, this is one of the easier ones. On the other hand, it's easy to create a C# to VB translator that produces correct results.
The problem isn't that all programmers interested in VB are dumb; the problem is that this is a hard problem in the sense that VB.NET's actual syntax is context-dependant. A translator from VB to another language can't just directly translate symbols and keywords as previously suggested. Instead, the translator has to fully parse the whole program, keeping track contextual nuances, then output an equivalent program in C#. This is the same basic problem (though to a much lesser scale) as in any other natural language translation project, like giving your computer commands in plain English: the language is inherently ambiguous.
The end result, and here's the important part, is that VB code is more difficult for a program to work with, which disqualifies you from using nifty tools like code transators, which would have been possible had you used a better-designed language like, well, anything else. So, if you or your organization is interested in jumping into .NET development, make sure you understand the full implications of your decision as to which language to use. C# is a very well designed language created specifically to take advantage of .NET's features. VB.NET, on the other hand, was an afterthough comprimise to try to get old VB developers to use .NET. Besides the common and well-documented shortcomings of the language itself, there are also a number of hidden pitfalls like the one I just discussed that you will be subjecting yourself to if you choose to use VB for .NET. In short, it's not worth it.
I guess the only difference between any two languages is syntax--that's what a language is. The rest is just API.
However, if you're going to program for .NET and you're not an old VB programmer, don't learn VB.NET, learn C# instead. VB is a syntactically ambiguous language, which is why C# to VB.NET translators are easy to come by, but VB.NET to C# translators are a bit more problematic. For example X=A(5) could refer to a function call, an array index, or a number of other possibilities, depending on what "A" is, which you may not know based on just that one .vb file.
Add to that the classic "bad habits" problems associated with BASIC, and you've got yourself a crappy starting point. For example, BASIC uses a single equal sign for both assignment and testing equality. BASIC uses 1-based arrays, and horror or horrors, allows you to change that behavior. I could go on, but other people will probably cover this subject adequately.
If you're doing .NET programming, which is a perfectly valid place to start, use anything other than VB.NET. E.g., C#, J#, Python, or one of about 20 other .NET languages. Don't bother with VB 6, it's going away.
Costs vary (particularly installation and configuration costs), but as a rule of thumb, if your business's income isn't enough to make your state government envious, then SAP is not for you. If all you need is a "small" installation, then you really don't need SAP.
Though I am interested in hearing what Oracle has to offer; I had thought that SAP was the only player in this field, which is why they can charge so much for such a horrible product.
There's more than just wiring to deal with. You can't shield the receiver antenna.
As a pilot myself, I can say with complete confidence that you have no idea what you're talking about.
First of all, I'd like to point out that the use of all electronic devices (with a few odd exeptions like electric razors) is up to the pilot's discretion, which in most cases means up to the airline. Cellphone use anywhere but on the ground is prohibited by the FCC, not FAA, because of fear of overloading the cell towers. Interference with cockpit instruments doesn't even fit into the restriction.
Now the FCC isn't as worried about protecting cell towers, partly, at least, because technology has improved dramatically and there isn't as much to worry about. However, the ultimate decision of whether to allow cell phones still rests on the pilot (airline).
I can say that using a cell phone in my plane (on the ground, honest!) has never noticably affected my GPS system. However, I know of at least one instance where using a PDA has interfered with the lightning strike finder system--it's an ultra-sensitive receiver that picks up the signal created by lightning strikes--every time the user tapped on his PDA screen, a new lightning strike showed up 10 miles to the south-west.
Of course, the information presented by the instruments can be ignored; but then what's the point to having them? A strikefinder isn't very useful if you can't trust what it tells you.
The general comprimise that the airlines agree to is that they're willing to put up with a few false readings in the name of passenger comfort when the plane is above 10,000 ft. But below that level, all focus is on safety; the pilots quit talking about anything unrelated to the task at hand (the "sterile cockpit" rule), the stewardesses quit serving drinks, and the passengers quit screwing up the instruments with their little electronic toys.
So can cell phones screw up GPS readings? Probably. You're not going to see the difference in your hand-held GPS device, because consumer GPS (unlike the aviation counterparts) blithely ignore anomolies and just give you their "best guess" on your position. Avaition GPS receivers can't afford to be that cavalier.
Now that GPS is starting to be approved for approaches, the stakes are a lot higher. If the plane is on a GPS approach in a snowstorm down to Cat-3 minimums (e.g. O'Hare in zero visibility), and you decide to call your mom to tell her how scared you are, your phone call might interfere with the GPS receiver's readings. Best case scenario, the receiver's internal monitoring (see RAIM) will catch the anomoly and alert the pilot, who will terminate the approach and go land somewhere else. Worst case scenario? The error means that the calculated position is of by 20 feet at some critical moment and everyone gets dead.
So do the airlines take this sort of thing seriously? You bet they do. They're going to want the results of every study ever conducted on the matter. You'll probably see cell phones made legal in planes, but you'll never be allowed to use them below 10,000 ft, which means that you'll never be allowed to use them with ground receivers. Instead, cell phones might be usable through some in-plane cell receiver.
As for your absurd statement about shielding the cockpit--RF signals don't interfere with electronics by invading the instruments themselves; the signals sent by your phone are picked up by the instrument's antenna, which can create false readings, garble real readings, or both, all depending on the type of instrument in question. You obviously can't sheild the antenna, and you can't practically sheild the passenger cabin. So please turn of you cell phone.
No, the biggest, (and only) difference is that MS has been classified as a monopoly, which means that they have to follow different laws than everyone else.
That's up to interpretation. While I don't disagree with you, there are certain constitutional clauses that seem to imply an extension of authority (without congress) under certain circumstances
No, I'm afraid he's right. The majority of the population doesn't give a damn about civil liberties, they just don't want to be safe. It's a sad state affairs.
The cost of converting to GPL v3 in time and effort (which is fairly high) when compared with the benefit (which is little, if any), are so enormously out of balance that it makes any change highly unlikely.
Linus's motivation and goals are very, very different than RMS's. Stallman will be satisfied with nothing short of a revolution; Torvalds just wants to create a really cool kernel. Linus will not even entertain notions of rewriting his kernel license because, and this is the important part, there's nothing wrong with his current license. Since it ain't broke, there's no reason to fix it.
RMS was, undoubtably, very disappointed over Linus's wholesale rejection of the new GPL version. It sounds like Linus didn't even bother reading it all the way through because he wasn't interested in change to begin with. It's extremely likely that others will take Linus's word on the subject as gospel (Linus being a god, and all) without bothering to read the license themselves, spelling disaster for GPL v3. What you're currently witnessing is RMS's "it's not dead yet!" effort at salvaging the GPL3.
This really is the key. GIMP will never have more than a marginal user base because they don't understand their users. Their users--nearly all of them--are Photoshop users (or potentially ex-Photoshop users).
Good user interface design means not just creating an inteface that "makes sense," it's also creating an interface that works the way the user expects it to work. If over 90% of your users are used to the way Photoshop does function X, then you sure as hell better implement function X the way Photoshop does. Not because that way is better or makes more sense, but because that's what the user expects you to do, and any deviation from those expections means your app is "broken" in their eyes.
Competing on features in this sort of market is futile. Your program may be able to give me the moon on a stick; but if I can't easily make it work, it might as well do nothing at all. The success stories--those projects that have managed to supplant a deeply-entrenched competitive offering--have always acknowledged this fact and have modified the behavior of their own product to compensate. The failures in this arena (GIMP being the most famous) always refuse to acknowledge the effect on their users' expectations caused by their competitor's dominance. For projects like the GIMP, it seems a matter of pride to not be influenced by such an unworthy competitor.
Believing in evolution is something of a vague concept. If I believe in the concept of natural selection (which is readily observable), do I have to believe that life came from a chance encounter of amino acids in some primordial soup a gazillion years ago? How much am I agreeing to?
As the head of the Security Technology Unit, you no doubt have some vision of exactly how Microsoft products should behave. And since security and convenience are nearly always mutually exclusive, this hope and vision must, most likely, be "watered down" with compromises for the consumption of the rest of the company.
So the question is threefold:
Let's keep in mind that virtually all security is "security by obscurity". That is, passwords, private keys, cryptographic hashes, etc., all rely on the principle of you being able to keep a secret from the attacker. Don't discount a working security method just because it's nontechnical.
Security is costly. Any principles of security that don't increase cost or cause inconvenience really are never part of the discussion. Complete and absolute security is impossible, so the question is, how much are you willing to sacrifice to stay secure X% of the time?
For OS X users, malware represents only a negligable threat. Investing large amounts of resources (not just money) in a malware-protection system for OS X is a poor investment because the potential for return is so low. You can expect a greater return on investment by securing yourself against hardware failure, user error, and physical break-ins. Your security budget is only so large; use it wisely.
And, of course, "Shame on you for even asking!"
Even the "innocent" looking commands like chown and chmod can have profound effects when run by root (setuid anyone?). Logging behavior is no solution--you'll have the logs, but the damage will be done. And as with any other r00ted system, the extent of the damage is never really certain. Even the integrity and completeness of the logs would be suspect.
Giving users sudo access is giving them the ability to execute any attack you haven't specifically guarded against. If there's any priviledged operation that users need to perform, it should be properly wrapped in a tightly controlled setuid binary.
Now the .NET adoption hasn't gone quite as quick as Msft would have liked, but the fact remains that they're throwing their full weight behind this platform. They're not letting up like I had originally thought, but are rather pushing it even more furiously than before. The next generation of all of Msft's major (non-server) products are going to be .NET based; office already is, as is visual studio. Whether we like it or not, .NET experience is going to eventually become as in-demand as Win32 experience. Certainly not this year, not next year, but it's coming.
Microsoft isn't giving up on this one, and it's been independantly argued that moving to this type of architecture is actually going to be better for the rest of us anyway. I don't know if I agree with all the hype, but it's pretty clear that .NET is here to stay.
All of that aside, it's worth pointing out that C# is a very well designed language. This isn't something that was cobbled together by a couple of guys in a garage. The creators of this language did some fairly extensive research of the existing languages (including Java), and brought in the help of some of the foremost minds on the subject.
So, is it as good as they claim it is? Probably not. However, after only half a year of C# programming, I've gone back on my original stance and decided to use it as my primary rapid-application-development platform under Windows (with Python being used for all other OSes).
If you've got to learn one or the other, I'd go with .NET in the classroom. With it you can learn all the important concepts that you need to learn. Then, if you're any good at all as a programmer, you should be able to make the jump from C# to Java in just a few weeks at the most.
They're using Qemu.
... Me! Me! Me! Pay attention to ME!
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1896434,00.a
Summary: Erik Marcus (the Vegan in question) is a jackass.
George Lambert put up a free Podcast indexing service which Erik subscribed to. Then Erik forgot he'd done it, complained to George and told him to remove the entry. George did so. Then Erik got mad again and told George to put the entry back up, but modified to fit some absurd demands. George said "no". George however also said that if Erik wanted to pay him for his time to to program in the exception, he'd follow Erik's demands. Erik got mad again and cried extortion.
There is no such thing as Podjacking. Erik is a jackass.
FTA:
Marcus contacted Lambert to ask that his listing be removed. Lambert did so. This, however, caused Marcus' listenership to crash by some 75 percent, he claimed. Marcus then asked that his listing temporarily be reinstated on Podkeyword while he worked to fix things with Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes.
Lambert responded that it would be reinstated only if Marcus provided an unspecified payment or agreed permanently to his terms--a description that sounds like hijacking and extortion and that has resulted in Lambert's being harassed around the clock by profane e-mail and phone calls.
However, as Lambert told Ziff Davis Internet News and also explained on a Podcast by David Lawrence, the request for reimbursement was simply to compensate him for the custom coding that Marcus reportedly demanded.
Specifically, Marcus reportedly requested that Lambert allow individuals to find his feed via keyword but not to allow OPML directories to have the feed any longer.
"He wanted me to make sure no other directory services got the information from me, but I can't tell who are directory services, because we're not submitting anything," Lambert said. "People are coming to look at our list. I have a choice: I remove it from anywhere or I [don't] remove it. You can't restrict who comes to look at your Podcast. So his request wasn't technically practical.
Lambert has posted on his Weblog what he claims is the complete, unedited e-mail conversation between himself and Marcus.
No, the browser does not crash. It just takes longer to start up because it has 10 megs of history to parse instead of a few K.
It really is no big deal.