Why is it users vs. experts? Couldn't some of the users also be experts? It is my understanding that this is generally how things like Slashdot and Wikipedia work. There are a large number of users using these sites, each of which have their own area of expertise (or none). When you come across something you know to be incorrect, you amend it. On Slashdot, by posting a reply. On Wikipedia, by editing the text.
I think the users _vs._ experts is based on a false dichotomy. There isn't a group of experts that is distinct from the group of users. The users are potentially all people, including the experts. If anything, a system that uses a select number of "experts" is _limiting_ the total expertise they have, compared to an open-to-all system. And I think it shows. I find Wikipedia a lot more informative than any traditional encyclopedia I remember using, and Slashdot to give much more accurate information than, say, computer magazines sold in stores here.
Sure, Slashdot gives you a lot of misguided and downright wrong posts, but at least you get many people's input on the issue, and, often, a correct post, as well. By contrast, something written by a single "expert" is, in my experience, just as often wrong or misguided, but you don't get the benefit of seeing other people's input, let alone corrections. It annoys me no end when I read ignorant or factually false statements in computer magazines or news papers. These folks are misinforming the masses, under the guise of being experts!
In the end, of course, it depends on how good your "experts" and your "users" are. But it is certainly not a given that "experts" will do better than "users". In fact, many user-driven sites are built in such a way that wrong statements can be pointed out and corrected, which, in my experience, makes them do _better_ than a system where you trust the experts.
``However, sadly, there are lots.net jobs. Microsoft's clone of Java.''
It wasn't a Java clone, it was Java, but better. Only after Microsoft released.NET did Sun get off their asses and added things like a decent type system to Java. Java is a whole lot less horrible now than before.NET, and I think the competition from Microsoft is an important reason for that. I thank Microsoft for that, even though I hate to program in either Java or C# (and yes, I've done that and more).
``If it was breaking down immediately, hell yes get another brand, and consider spending more than $15 bucks next time.''
Eh? In my experience, the more expensive software (and shoes, too) is not necessarily better, let alone more reliable.
Also remember that, with software platforms (unlike with shoes, I hope), most of the cost doesn't usually go to the purchase price (licensing, etc.), but rather to the wages of the poeple who use and maintain the software. The less time you spend on the software, the better. Software that is slow, has downtime, has an inefficient user interface, requires lots of updates, etc. is more expensive than software that has fewer of those drawbacks.
Of course, there is software and software. The above applies to software _platforms_, with the assumption that people will actually spend a lot of time working with that software. If the software is custom-developed (and thus has a very high upfront cost) and quietly does its job in the background, the picture will be wholly different.
That's just dumb. Introducing vulnerabilities in newly developed software is unfortunate, but it happens. Using software with known vulnerabilities when these vulnerabilities have been patched is just dumb. Any clues as to why they did this?
``If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.''
Maybe not. Maybe the standards-compliance will go exactly so far that code developed against the standard (as far as it is supported by the competition) will also work in MSIE8, thus obviating the need to install an alternative browser if you have MSIE8 already. This would be a Good Thing for web developers, because they would no longer have to work around MSIE's non-compliance, and a Good Thing for Microsoft, because it could stop the decline in market share of MSIE. And, of course, adding some compelling extensions to MSIE8, they could actually make MSIE8 the _preferred_ browser for users and developers. Perhaps XAML and Silverlight already have that covered...
``Meanwhile, the world moves on and a generation of programming pioneers trades their vision for early admission to Future Fossil Fuels university.''
More like, new people make it big in life using the same ideas that somebody else already came up with.
See Java with a bunch of good, old ideas thrown together to make a mediocre language. It caught on majorly and many people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
See Skype, a proprietary voice (and now video) chat system. It's been done before and using open standards, yet those people didn't become millionaires like Skype's founders did.
There are plenty of examples, but these are the two that I am most bitter about.
- Relational databases
- Journaling (relatively new in filesystems, but been done for a long time in databases)
- Parallel programming (using multiple simultaneous threads for a single task)
- Distributed computing (spreading computation over multiple locations)
- Functional programming (whatever that really means)
- Object-oriented programming (whatever _that_ actually means)
-...
Can't be bothered to continue the list. There surely has been progress, lately. We now have reiserfs, which is faster and doesn't require fsck as often as traditional filesystems. We've had BeOS, with interesting metadata capabilities. We have a whole lot of interesting cryptographic algorithms, protocols, and methods. Peer to peer filesharing. Blogs.
But really, none of that is actually new. It's just old wine in new bottles.
On the other hand, patents aren't about things that are fundamentally new, but about new ways of doing things, whereas the things themselves are actually new or not. But I am interseted in things that are fundamentally new. What fundamentally new things have been invented around computers and when?
I was reading this thread hoping to find links to existing real-time ray-tracers, but found none. Does anyone know of any real-time ray-tracers? Open source, please...
I've recently done some work on a list of games that do not propagate vendor lock-in. I suppose that, in normal English, that means "games you can run on YOUR system, whatever that system is", although it's not quite _that_ good. The listed games are games I've played and enjoyed myself, but there are links to many games. They can all (I think) be played on Linux/x86, and many of them work on other platforms, too. I don't know if it will satisfy your wishes, but it's a start. Comments welcome.
What I've always found funny about Vista is that it had poor compatibility with existing Windows applications, and abysmal hardware support. You know, the two things that (rightly) prevent people from using another OS instead of Windows...
``I'm not big on the idea of predicting corporate downfalls but you really have to wonder whether a company that makes such incredibly bad decisions is long for this world.''
Has there been a massive shift towards non-Microsoft software yet?
I like the dollar figure ohloh attaches to projects. "This is what it would have cost an enterprise to develop this software." It really gives you an appreciation for how much the open source community is giving to the world.
Yes. Inasmuch as there are open standards available, they should be prefered. In that respect, perhaps the EU is doing more harm than good, by making the interoperability problem with using Microsoft's proprietary technology less obvious.
On the other hand, the problem is less obvious because it is actually less there. There being actual documentation and a pledge that you won't be sued for implementing what is in that documentation is a great step forward for interoperability. So there is definitely something good here. Especially where the documentation covers functionality for which there aren't any standards yet.
``If the attacker has physical access to your system, it's not your system.''
Which is why you encrypt the data you put into that system, so that whomever wants to read the data has to enter the passphrase that only you know, first.
Except that they don't, because they can read it from RAM. But that, to me at least, is new information. It's certainly not obvious like "they can boot from a rescue CD and become root on your system without knowing your password".
Exactly! That is why this news item is actually big news. The idea of encrypting your disk is _exactly_ that someone without the key will not be able to access the data (within a reasonable amount of time - any encryption can be broken), even if they have physical access. And encrypting your disk does indeed prevent someone without the key from reading the data. What TFA tells us is that there is a way to get the key that we may not have considered, and I'm willing to bet many of us indeed hadn't. But now that we know of this attack vector, we can work against it.
As long as we can keep the key hidden, the encryption will protect our data.
``But apparently we (the dutch) are completely wrong.''
On the contrary. I think the saying is there exactly _because_ we naturally tend to do things the other way around. We believe something, and then we try to fit the evidence to our beliefs. The saying tells us to regard the evidence, and base our beliefs on that.
Frankly, I've always thought that our brain completes visual information with what it expects to see, and that different people will have different (and often contradictory!) recollections of the same event are both well established in psychology/neuroscience/etc.
``His first workaround is to use Microsoft Office to open the document and then save that document in a non-binary format. Well that assumes that I already have Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, etc. Do you see the problem here?''
See the end of my post.
``The second "workaround" is the same as the first, only a little more proactive. Instead of saving my documents as binary files and then converting them to another format, I should save them as a non-binary format from the start! Mission accomplished! Oh wait - how do I get the rest of the world to do the same? That could be a problem. ''
This, actually, would be the ideal solution. We need to somehow get it into people's heads that locking themselves and the rest of the world into proprietary solutions is never a good idea. If open alternatives are available, it is even downright wrong. This applies not only to file formats but really everything.
Now, I realize that I can't force the whole world to use open standards. Actually, I don't even want to. I want to leave everybody free to use what they want as much as possible. But the most important part of that is leaving each other free to choose. That means not exchanging information using formats or protocols for which there is only a single application. I am fine with it if you use Microsoft Office for your own documents, and if you want to save them in some proprietary format, I'm fine with that (as long as you don't come whining to me when you can't access your data anymore). But as soon as you send files to someone else, _please_ use open standards. Just because _you_ want to use Microsoft Office doesn't mean everyone else does. And just like I don't force you to use my software of choice, you should not force me to use yours.
Fortunately, more and more people and organizations realize this. Years ago, a request to send a document in a non-proprietary format was often met with surprise or (for some reason I can't fathom) hostility. Nowadays, you will usually be sent a PDF shortly, if you didn't get sent a PDF in the first place. The fact that Microsoft submitted OOXML (oh, the confusion that name has caused...) for adoption as an ISO standard, and this has been broadly covered on the net and even in print, is telltale.
``I fail to see the problem with using the specification Microsoft released to write a program that can read and write this binary format.''
Have you tried it? I think it boils down to something like:
- Cost of Windows and Office licenses, maybe about $ 700.
- Cost of developing a script that converts Office files to less horrible formats, maybe another couple hundred dollars.
- Cost of implementing the specs released by Microsoft: millions of dollars.
Much as I detest paying Microsoft extra money for having locked the world into their proprietary formats, I think it may be the most realistic option here.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it users vs. experts? Couldn't some of the users also be experts? It is my understanding that this is generally how things like Slashdot and Wikipedia work. There are a large number of users using these sites, each of which have their own area of expertise (or none). When you come across something you know to be incorrect, you amend it. On Slashdot, by posting a reply. On Wikipedia, by editing the text.
I think the users _vs._ experts is based on a false dichotomy. There isn't a group of experts that is distinct from the group of users. The users are potentially all people, including the experts. If anything, a system that uses a select number of "experts" is _limiting_ the total expertise they have, compared to an open-to-all system. And I think it shows. I find Wikipedia a lot more informative than any traditional encyclopedia I remember using, and Slashdot to give much more accurate information than, say, computer magazines sold in stores here.
Sure, Slashdot gives you a lot of misguided and downright wrong posts, but at least you get many people's input on the issue, and, often, a correct post, as well. By contrast, something written by a single "expert" is, in my experience, just as often wrong or misguided, but you don't get the benefit of seeing other people's input, let alone corrections. It annoys me no end when I read ignorant or factually false statements in computer magazines or news papers. These folks are misinforming the masses, under the guise of being experts!
In the end, of course, it depends on how good your "experts" and your "users" are. But it is certainly not a given that "experts" will do better than "users". In fact, many user-driven sites are built in such a way that wrong statements can be pointed out and corrected, which, in my experience, makes them do _better_ than a system where you trust the experts.
``However, sadly, there are lots .net jobs.
.NET did Sun get off their asses and added things like a decent type system to Java. Java is a whole lot less horrible now than before .NET, and I think the competition from Microsoft is an important reason for that. I thank Microsoft for that, even though I hate to program in either Java or C# (and yes, I've done that and more).
Microsoft's clone of Java.''
It wasn't a Java clone, it was Java, but better. Only after Microsoft released
``ala Java Applets, only without the hideous UI and slow performance''
Is it "without the slow performance" or is it just that computers are 100 times faster nowadays?
``If it was breaking down immediately, hell yes get another brand, and consider spending more than $15 bucks next time.''
Eh? In my experience, the more expensive software (and shoes, too) is not necessarily better, let alone more reliable.
Also remember that, with software platforms (unlike with shoes, I hope), most of the cost doesn't usually go to the purchase price (licensing, etc.), but rather to the wages of the poeple who use and maintain the software. The less time you spend on the software, the better. Software that is slow, has downtime, has an inefficient user interface, requires lots of updates, etc. is more expensive than software that has fewer of those drawbacks.
Of course, there is software and software. The above applies to software _platforms_, with the assumption that people will actually spend a lot of time working with that software. If the software is custom-developed (and thus has a very high upfront cost) and quietly does its job in the background, the picture will be wholly different.
That's just dumb. Introducing vulnerabilities in newly developed software is unfortunate, but it happens. Using software with known vulnerabilities when these vulnerabilities have been patched is just dumb. Any clues as to why they did this?
``If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.''
Maybe not. Maybe the standards-compliance will go exactly so far that code developed against the standard (as far as it is supported by the competition) will also work in MSIE8, thus obviating the need to install an alternative browser if you have MSIE8 already. This would be a Good Thing for web developers, because they would no longer have to work around MSIE's non-compliance, and a Good Thing for Microsoft, because it could stop the decline in market share of MSIE. And, of course, adding some compelling extensions to MSIE8, they could actually make MSIE8 the _preferred_ browser for users and developers. Perhaps XAML and Silverlight already have that covered...
``Meanwhile, the world moves on and a generation of programming pioneers trades their vision for early admission to Future Fossil Fuels university.''
More like, new people make it big in life using the same ideas that somebody else already came up with.
See Java with a bunch of good, old ideas thrown together to make a mediocre language. It caught on majorly and many people think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
See Skype, a proprietary voice (and now video) chat system. It's been done before and using open standards, yet those people didn't become millionaires like Skype's founders did.
There are plenty of examples, but these are the two that I am most bitter about.
Hmm. What about:
...
- Relational databases
- Journaling (relatively new in filesystems, but been done for a long time in databases)
- Parallel programming (using multiple simultaneous threads for a single task)
- Distributed computing (spreading computation over multiple locations)
- Functional programming (whatever that really means)
- Object-oriented programming (whatever _that_ actually means)
-
Can't be bothered to continue the list. There surely has been progress, lately. We now have reiserfs, which is faster and doesn't require fsck as often as traditional filesystems. We've had BeOS, with interesting metadata capabilities. We have a whole lot of interesting cryptographic algorithms, protocols, and methods. Peer to peer filesharing. Blogs.
But really, none of that is actually new. It's just old wine in new bottles.
On the other hand, patents aren't about things that are fundamentally new, but about new ways of doing things, whereas the things themselves are actually new or not. But I am interseted in things that are fundamentally new. What fundamentally new things have been invented around computers and when?
I was reading this thread hoping to find links to existing real-time ray-tracers, but found none. Does anyone know of any real-time ray-tracers? Open source, please...
I've recently done some work on a list of games that do not propagate vendor lock-in. I suppose that, in normal English, that means "games you can run on YOUR system, whatever that system is", although it's not quite _that_ good. The listed games are games I've played and enjoyed myself, but there are links to many games. They can all (I think) be played on Linux/x86, and many of them work on other platforms, too. I don't know if it will satisfy your wishes, but it's a start. Comments welcome.
So...do we pounce on VMWare for being closed source and therefore _obviously_ insecure, now?
What I've always found funny about Vista is that it had poor compatibility with existing Windows applications, and abysmal hardware support. You know, the two things that (rightly) prevent people from using another OS instead of Windows...
``and dont feed me the 'but those are games' bullshit''
Is there any good reason to run Windows besides games?
``I'm not big on the idea of predicting corporate downfalls but you really have to wonder whether a company that makes such incredibly bad decisions is long for this world.''
Has there been a massive shift towards non-Microsoft software yet?
``Vista has a security advantage over XP, all other things being equal. Linux cannot make the "all other things being equal" claim.''
Neither can Vista.
``I have to use Windows''
No, you don't. You just don't.
I like the dollar figure ohloh attaches to projects. "This is what it would have cost an enterprise to develop this software." It really gives you an appreciation for how much the open source community is giving to the world.
``Shouldn't *they* adhere to open standards?''
Yes. Inasmuch as there are open standards available, they should be prefered. In that respect, perhaps the EU is doing more harm than good, by making the interoperability problem with using Microsoft's proprietary technology less obvious.
On the other hand, the problem is less obvious because it is actually less there. There being actual documentation and a pledge that you won't be sued for implementing what is in that documentation is a great step forward for interoperability. So there is definitely something good here. Especially where the documentation covers functionality for which there aren't any standards yet.
``If the attacker has physical access to your system, it's not your system.''
Which is why you encrypt the data you put into that system, so that whomever wants to read the data has to enter the passphrase that only you know, first.
Except that they don't, because they can read it from RAM. But that, to me at least, is new information. It's certainly not obvious like "they can boot from a rescue CD and become root on your system without knowing your password".
Exactly! That is why this news item is actually big news. The idea of encrypting your disk is _exactly_ that someone without the key will not be able to access the data (within a reasonable amount of time - any encryption can be broken), even if they have physical access. And encrypting your disk does indeed prevent someone without the key from reading the data. What TFA tells us is that there is a way to get the key that we may not have considered, and I'm willing to bet many of us indeed hadn't. But now that we know of this attack vector, we can work against it.
As long as we can keep the key hidden, the encryption will protect our data.
``4 Files - All truecrypt same size. All named very similar. Only one is the real file all the rest are block dumps of /dev/random
the NSA now has to choose what safe to attempt to crack. if they try and crack them all it significantly increases their time taken to do so''
By about a factor 4, I estimate. I don't think _that_ is such a big deal. Perhaps you would do better to double the encryption key size...
``But apparently we (the dutch) are completely wrong.''
On the contrary. I think the saying is there exactly _because_ we naturally tend to do things the other way around. We believe something, and then we try to fit the evidence to our beliefs. The saying tells us to regard the evidence, and base our beliefs on that.
Frankly, I've always thought that our brain completes visual information with what it expects to see, and that different people will have different (and often contradictory!) recollections of the same event are both well established in psychology/neuroscience/etc.
But then, I could be wrong. That's why I asked.
Is this actually news?
``His first workaround is to use Microsoft Office to open the document and then save that document in a non-binary format. Well that assumes that I already have Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, etc. Do you see the problem here?''
See the end of my post.
``The second "workaround" is the same as the first, only a little more proactive. Instead of saving my documents as binary files and then converting them to another format, I should save them as a non-binary format from the start! Mission accomplished! Oh wait - how do I get the rest of the world to do the same? That could be a problem. ''
This, actually, would be the ideal solution. We need to somehow get it into people's heads that locking themselves and the rest of the world into proprietary solutions is never a good idea. If open alternatives are available, it is even downright wrong. This applies not only to file formats but really everything.
Now, I realize that I can't force the whole world to use open standards. Actually, I don't even want to. I want to leave everybody free to use what they want as much as possible. But the most important part of that is leaving each other free to choose. That means not exchanging information using formats or protocols for which there is only a single application. I am fine with it if you use Microsoft Office for your own documents, and if you want to save them in some proprietary format, I'm fine with that (as long as you don't come whining to me when you can't access your data anymore). But as soon as you send files to someone else, _please_ use open standards. Just because _you_ want to use Microsoft Office doesn't mean everyone else does. And just like I don't force you to use my software of choice, you should not force me to use yours.
Fortunately, more and more people and organizations realize this. Years ago, a request to send a document in a non-proprietary format was often met with surprise or (for some reason I can't fathom) hostility. Nowadays, you will usually be sent a PDF shortly, if you didn't get sent a PDF in the first place. The fact that Microsoft submitted OOXML (oh, the confusion that name has caused...) for adoption as an ISO standard, and this has been broadly covered on the net and even in print, is telltale.
``I fail to see the problem with using the specification Microsoft released to write a program that can read and write this binary format.''
Have you tried it? I think it boils down to something like:
- Cost of Windows and Office licenses, maybe about $ 700.
- Cost of developing a script that converts Office files to less horrible formats, maybe another couple hundred dollars.
- Cost of implementing the specs released by Microsoft: millions of dollars.
Much as I detest paying Microsoft extra money for having locked the world into their proprietary formats, I think it may be the most realistic option here.