It puts emphasis on a common problem with closed-source : if you have a very buggy documentation you can't use the old trick of hand waving and say "read the source, Luke"
"What will be my personal phone line ?"
"This guy who got arrested with a scope rifle yesterday, was he released ?"
"When can we say that Abbas will be the first leader to be contacted ?"
"Is the meeting date with Putin official yet ?"
"I got blackmail from xxx@xxx.cn, probably nothing but I just wanted to tell Secret Service about it."
"So, will Tesla Motors be part of the bailout or not ?"
I'm so sure that Google would be totally unable to use such information for their own profit...
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
IANAL, but:
Even a few hours before inauguration, using a whitehouse.org email address could be considered impersonating or forgery. I suspect most of these people had email address ending with @democrats.org (or even @rnc.org) which could be considered bad taste to use in an official use out of a campaign. Yeah, the best solution would have been a @change.org. Gmail comes second.
Anyway, it is disturbing that Google could potentially spy this.
It is modded funny but the insightful part is that many of such projects are probably students projects that were begun while they were learning the language of choice of their uni (usually java or C/C++/C#) I would like to see how much projects reached the "stable" state. That would be fairly interesting. Languages like python are said to make for easy prototyping. Are there a lot of finished python products ? C/C++ is considered to be clumsy, does this really translate in terms of abandoned projects ?
Or solar power from orbit micro-waved to Mars. While impractical on Earth, this solution could work well on Mars.
I remember "Red Mars" suggesting to use wind power. The atmosphere may be thin there but the winds are strong. Don't forget also that solar power does not always mean solar cells : one can imagine using a Stirling engine or a regular turbine generator that would use temperature gradients.
My personal opinion is that Microsoft management suffered so much from the Vista debacle that the stream of evil orders that flowed to developer teams temporary stopped. Microsoft developers being normal human beings (as opposed to those of the marketing department) started to act with more autonomy and acted like they wanted : by making good software that interoperates nicely with the world. The theory would be that if Windows 7 is successful, managers will reclaim the Power That Once Was Their and will resume the flow of evilness.
Exactly. On one hand I am grateful to BSG for showing the general public that science fiction is not just about lightsabers and klingons, on the other hand, I would do the same observation as for the Matrix movie(s) : the questions, the ideas that seem so new to people who discover them on video-screens have been there in SF books for many, many years. BSG is deeper than most SF shows out there but it is still incredibly shallow when compared to the books that inspired its ideas more than 30 years ago.
SF literature is a field where some philosophical questions are asked that can not be asked in any other context. And compared to recent books, the moral dilemmas of BSG are quite laughably easy to solve.
People believe what anonymous strangers say on internet about some products. Why does this surprise anyone that companies would put reviews of their own products ? It is not illegal and has the same morality as a regular advertisement IMHO. Read reviews from Ars Technica, from Joe's hardware, reputable sites, but how in heaven does this surprise people that companies do that ? Do you honestly think that Belkin is alone ? What do you think that people in marketing department spend their time on, while idling ?
I discovered recently that the grudges I hold against Javascript (I used it when CSS was still science fiction) are no longer valid and that a lot of the features I like very much about python exist as well in Javascript:
a={} a["this"]="is a hash table" l=[] l.push(a)
this is both a valid python or javascript code. Both languages are very similar. Javascript's image suffer from its earlier implementations. It is now a much more convenient language than it used to be. Python is fine for a lot of things and is still my language of choice but Javascript has been promoted from "over my dead body" to "preferable to many other alternatives"
Doc : Look Marty ! The Time Machine ! It works thanks to plutonium and gasoline !
Marty : Plutonium ? And this little sparky thingie behid my head ? is that radioactive ?
Doc : Absolutely not ! It is the core of the machine itself !
Marty : Really ? because I don't see how plutonium or gasoline can have an effect on...
Doc : In fact this convector is an artefact of pure science that transforms gamma rays into a field of plotholes that will surround you during your whole trip ! It will allow you to go back in time, meet your parents, mess their love stories, come dangerously close to a time paradox yet survive this unchanged.
Marty : Wow, another marvel of science and physics !
Doc : Science ? Where we are going, there is no need for science...
Because at the highest levels it is more important to understand how to mange your technical people to get the job done that it is to know exactly what they are doing.
Well, I disagree here. In this particular department, I feel it is important for the decision maker to know how nuclear waste decays, for example, and what are the reasonable expectation one can have in a 5 years horizon about nuclear recycling. He will have to make decisions based on this particular knowledge. Such decisions could endanger whole regions for several centuries if done badly. I'd rather have him use ten times the resources a good manager would need to make his administration work than having him make a single bad decision regarding a long-term energy strategy.
Catastrophic failures are possible both by lack of technological knowledge and by lack of managerial skill. I just fail to see why the latter are more serious in most people's opinion.
I continue to find it strange that so many people think that competence in the core field of a department is second to management skills. What makes management so special that you can rely on a collaborator to have the core competency but not the management skills ?
Of course, I'd rather have one with both but, well, is it really preferable to have a good manager with poor scientific skills at the head of what is mainly a technology department rather than a scientist with poor managerial skills (which, some clues indicate, Chu is not) ?
I also begin to think that management has become more and more incompetent these years at Microsoft. That means a lot of teams having rogue behaviors like this one which are aligned with what most team members want and that ignore any secret-strategic-world-domination order they could receive from higher management.
It is quite possible that I am wrong, but I have the opinion that I am more secure with the install of an OS that I know (linux) than with one of an OS that I never used (BSD) and am not really willing to do.
Yep. What is called lobbying in US is called bribery in most parts of the world. While I tend to agree with Google's position, it should not be able to interfere with the legislative process (note that here, they are doing a judicial action, not a legislative initiative). But if you want to forbid corporations influence on congress, support the campaign to change congress and stop voting for candidates according to their party, vote for those who commit at not using private funds for campaigning.
The study is a bit old, that is true. I would be interested in a more recent one, but this one is consistent with results that appeared in 2004 (during MS's get the fact campaign that claimed Windows superior security)
Note that no up to date versions show vulnerabilities known by Nessus, which is something that one would expect from any decent software developer (including Microsoft). That means they patch within less than a few months their flaws. What is more interesting is looking at default installs, older than the Nessus version, how much the system was resilient to future threats.
Running fewer services from a default install is a desirable feature, IMHO, but that is another debate. I think that one of the main problems of windows and one of its main infection vector was (I heard they made progress) its tendency to open ports and services that less than 1% of users will use or are even aware of.
There is a single fact as well worthy of consideration (I was not sure that there was no exception but wikipedia seems to confirm it). There has never been a single virus for linux that could gain root control from a user's action. All the worms/virus that can hit linux boxes and spread are cross-platform (most of the time that means they target an application, like Apache, not an OS). We have yet to see a single virus epidemia that would target only linux boxes.
Oh, I know, it is a blog, not a reputed tech journalist, so you need a grain of salt. Well, here is the methodology:
1. Install the OS as default-ly as possible. Scan it with nmap and Nessus during the installation. (for the chart, he ignored this)
2. At completion of installation, scan again.
3. Install relatively common listening services and scan again.
4. Install the latest 'major patch', and scan again.
5. Finally install all 'minor patches' published prior to Jan 1 2007, and scan again.
The chart is quite interesting. FreeBSD, as the popular wisdom says, shows 0 vulnerabilities. All Linux default installs show zero vulns as well. When some services are activated, they tend to show less vulnerabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's be fair, the virus only works on 30% of the machines. Still impressive for a windows app though...
In a tyranny, some people undergo humiliation, some other people resist. Both path are valid. Do not expect success or happiness in either one.
It puts emphasis on a common problem with closed-source : if you have a very buggy documentation you can't use the old trick of hand waving and say "read the source, Luke"
"What will be my personal phone line ?"
"This guy who got arrested with a scope rifle yesterday, was he released ?"
"When can we say that Abbas will be the first leader to be contacted ?"
"Is the meeting date with Putin official yet ?"
"I got blackmail from xxx@xxx.cn, probably nothing but I just wanted to tell Secret Service about it."
"So, will Tesla Motors be part of the bailout or not ?"
I'm so sure that Google would be totally unable to use such information for their own profit...
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
IANAL, but:
Even a few hours before inauguration, using a whitehouse.org email address could be considered impersonating or forgery. I suspect most of these people had email address ending with @democrats.org (or even @rnc.org) which could be considered bad taste to use in an official use out of a campaign. Yeah, the best solution would have been a @change.org. Gmail comes second.
Anyway, it is disturbing that Google could potentially spy this.
It is modded funny but the insightful part is that many of such projects are probably students projects that were begun while they were learning the language of choice of their uni (usually java or C/C++/C#) I would like to see how much projects reached the "stable" state. That would be fairly interesting. Languages like python are said to make for easy prototyping. Are there a lot of finished python products ? C/C++ is considered to be clumsy, does this really translate in terms of abandoned projects ?
The fact that Windows still does not manage to copy files efficiently says something about their development priorities...
If I were the CEO of Britannica, I would be ashamed to have a website full of ads and nag screen
I, for one, welcome the first instance of grey goo !
Tell me, these things will run some software, right ?
Or solar power from orbit micro-waved to Mars. While impractical on Earth, this solution could work well on Mars.
I remember "Red Mars" suggesting to use wind power. The atmosphere may be thin there but the winds are strong. Don't forget also that solar power does not always mean solar cells : one can imagine using a Stirling engine or a regular turbine generator that would use temperature gradients.
My personal opinion is that Microsoft management suffered so much from the Vista debacle that the stream of evil orders that flowed to developer teams temporary stopped. Microsoft developers being normal human beings (as opposed to those of the marketing department) started to act with more autonomy and acted like they wanted : by making good software that interoperates nicely with the world. The theory would be that if Windows 7 is successful, managers will reclaim the Power That Once Was Their and will resume the flow of evilness.
That, or I'm in denial.
Exactly. On one hand I am grateful to BSG for showing the general public that science fiction is not just about lightsabers and klingons, on the other hand, I would do the same observation as for the Matrix movie(s) : the questions, the ideas that seem so new to people who discover them on video-screens have been there in SF books for many, many years. BSG is deeper than most SF shows out there but it is still incredibly shallow when compared to the books that inspired its ideas more than 30 years ago.
SF literature is a field where some philosophical questions are asked that can not be asked in any other context. And compared to recent books, the moral dilemmas of BSG are quite laughably easy to solve.
Well a one-hour trip to 4chan should be mandatory to anyone willing to trust an anonymous internet user the same way he trusts a journalist.
People believe what anonymous strangers say on internet about some products. Why does this surprise anyone that companies would put reviews of their own products ? It is not illegal and has the same morality as a regular advertisement IMHO. Read reviews from Ars Technica, from Joe's hardware, reputable sites, but how in heaven does this surprise people that companies do that ? Do you honestly think that Belkin is alone ? What do you think that people in marketing department spend their time on, while idling ?
For once, I agree with this opinion...
Still not Ghost In The Shell :
this is both a valid python or javascript code. Both languages are very similar. Javascript's image suffer from its earlier implementations. It is now a much more convenient language than it used to be. Python is fine for a lot of things and is still my language of choice but Javascript has been promoted from "over my dead body" to "preferable to many other alternatives"
Doc : Look Marty ! The Time Machine ! It works thanks to plutonium and gasoline !
Marty : Plutonium ? And this little sparky thingie behid my head ? is that radioactive ?
Doc : Absolutely not ! It is the core of the machine itself !
Marty : Really ? because I don't see how plutonium or gasoline can have an effect on...
Doc : In fact this convector is an artefact of pure science that transforms gamma rays into a field of plotholes that will surround you during your whole trip ! It will allow you to go back in time, meet your parents, mess their love stories, come dangerously close to a time paradox yet survive this unchanged.
Marty : Wow, another marvel of science and physics !
Doc : Science ? Where we are going, there is no need for science...
Because at the highest levels it is more important to understand how to mange your technical people to get the job done that it is to know exactly what they are doing.
Well, I disagree here. In this particular department, I feel it is important for the decision maker to know how nuclear waste decays, for example, and what are the reasonable expectation one can have in a 5 years horizon about nuclear recycling. He will have to make decisions based on this particular knowledge. Such decisions could endanger whole regions for several centuries if done badly. I'd rather have him use ten times the resources a good manager would need to make his administration work than having him make a single bad decision regarding a long-term energy strategy.
Catastrophic failures are possible both by lack of technological knowledge and by lack of managerial skill. I just fail to see why the latter are more serious in most people's opinion.
I continue to find it strange that so many people think that competence in the core field of a department is second to management skills. What makes management so special that you can rely on a collaborator to have the core competency but not the management skills ?
Of course, I'd rather have one with both but, well, is it really preferable to have a good manager with poor scientific skills at the head of what is mainly a technology department rather than a scientist with poor managerial skills (which, some clues indicate, Chu is not) ?
I also begin to think that management has become more and more incompetent these years at Microsoft. That means a lot of teams having rogue behaviors like this one which are aligned with what most team members want and that ignore any secret-strategic-world-domination order they could receive from higher management.
It is quite possible that I am wrong, but I have the opinion that I am more secure with the install of an OS that I know (linux) than with one of an OS that I never used (BSD) and am not really willing to do.
Yep. What is called lobbying in US is called bribery in most parts of the world. While I tend to agree with Google's position, it should not be able to interfere with the legislative process (note that here, they are doing a judicial action, not a legislative initiative). But if you want to forbid corporations influence on congress, support the campaign to change congress and stop voting for candidates according to their party, vote for those who commit at not using private funds for campaigning.
I use the latest Ubuntu on my desktop, stable Debian on my server. I expect my desktop to just work, I expect my server to be secure.
The study is a bit old, that is true. I would be interested in a more recent one, but this one is consistent with results that appeared in 2004 (during MS's get the fact campaign that claimed Windows superior security)
Note that no up to date versions show vulnerabilities known by Nessus, which is something that one would expect from any decent software developer (including Microsoft). That means they patch within less than a few months their flaws. What is more interesting is looking at default installs, older than the Nessus version, how much the system was resilient to future threats.
Running fewer services from a default install is a desirable feature, IMHO, but that is another debate. I think that one of the main problems of windows and one of its main infection vector was (I heard they made progress) its tendency to open ports and services that less than 1% of users will use or are even aware of.
There is a single fact as well worthy of consideration (I was not sure that there was no exception but wikipedia seems to confirm it). There has never been a single virus for linux that could gain root control from a user's action. All the worms/virus that can hit linux boxes and spread are cross-platform (most of the time that means they target an application, like Apache, not an OS). We have yet to see a single virus epidemia that would target only linux boxes.
Oh, I know, it is a blog, not a reputed tech journalist, so you need a grain of salt. Well, here is the methodology
1. Install the OS as default-ly as possible. Scan it with nmap and Nessus during the installation. (for the chart, he ignored this) 2. At completion of installation, scan again. 3. Install relatively common listening services and scan again. 4. Install the latest 'major patch', and scan again. 5. Finally install all 'minor patches' published prior to Jan 1 2007, and scan again.
The chart is quite interesting. FreeBSD, as the popular wisdom says, shows 0 vulnerabilities. All Linux default installs show zero vulns as well. When some services are activated, they tend to show less vulnerabilities.