It's shifting the temporary power that has been achieved by the individual programmer (low cost of investment, high rate of return) back to the corporation.
Think about it. Where once a whole slew of programmers might have been hired to work on an inventory or billing system, for example, now a fraction can be hired to tweak what the rest have been producing for free.
One could hardly call this anything other than neocapitalism. Under the guise of not reinventing the wheel (a process which actually contributes innovation by demonstrating multiple ways of reaching the same goal, some better than others) businesses are able to make their programming dollar go further at the expense of the programmer.
While it is indeed possible for programmers to wait tables in their spare time, I would like to suggest that waiters do not need to invest 4+ years of schooling in their vocation. At some point this must be recouped or the quality and availability of programmers will decline.
Unfortunately, both the hacker mindset and the CEO mindset are currently geared towards the concept of free software -- the hacker for the love of the code and the CEO for the love of free code -- and damned be the concepts of effective software engineering, security principles, or a day's pay for a day's work.
You play to the strengths of the manufacturing of each country, take out the middleman, and we no longer have to pay inflated costs for everything.
Kind of wierd to think that it's cheaper to get something made and shipped halfway around the world than it is next door, but if it makes a dollar go farther in this economy I'm all for it.
Graphics processing speed no longer seems to be the primary limiting factor in games.
I.E. I noticed a bigger jump in performance by upgrading my mainboard, cpu, and memory while retaining my relatively mediocre (but fully DirectX 9 compliant) graphics card, whereas my friend who had a similar configuration spent his cash on the latest Nvidia and didn't seem to come out significantly ahead.
If you can afford all of the above, I suppose this is the card for you (hell get two and run them together). But too often gamers focus on the graphics to the overall detriment of their performance.
Its biggest perceived flaw (slow execution speed) is largely a thing of a past. Properly engineered Java applications run smoothly, especially when they take advantage of native display rendering speedups as Eclipse does.
In an entire environment based on and tailored toward Java, such as Sun's Java Desktop System, the language really shines. Rapid setup and deployment benefits system administrators, while developer productivity is enhanced by the optimization of the develop, execute, debug and deploy cycle.
This type of setup just makes sense when you're dealing with a network of disparate hardware and software. The more that can be made common and interoperable, the easier it is to get things done. And it looks like Sun Java Desktop System has only gotten more affordable and easy to use.
For one thing, you can add network storage without having to dismantle a fileserver or purchase a new one. Also, setup is a breeze, and it looks seamless to the end user.
Being able to swap it out is also helpful should problems arise.
The points are avoiding vendor lock-in, remaining within a comfortable framework, and having the potential to extend things in your direction instead of Microsoft's.
Although their time might be better spent in designing a true alternative to Java and C# instead of a copy that allows you to write a GNU application that runs everywhere, it's hard to fault Mono for recognizing a market niche and running with it. For example, maybe they'll make C# work on Linux embedded devices where Microsoft wouldn't go?
I like people who are willing to offer some opposition, frequently there is a actualy working brain behind.:-)
Hopefully you won't consider this a case of jumping to conclusions.:)
I probably wouldn't have reacted the way I did if not for the fact that I have, on more than one occasion, interacted with Americans that *genuinely* believed for example that Norway is a district in Sweden, that polar-bears roaming the streets in general prevents norwegians from letting their kids play outside and that the average scandinavian has 20 reindeer, drives a snow-mobile and hunts whale in the season.
Please forgive me if I happen to use some of these little-known facts in a future post. These individuals weren't in management by chance? But yes, I confess to knowing a few particularly dense individuals myself... the type that don't know and just don't want to know.
It's also surprising to hear how many Americans where never in other countries than USA and at most Canada. Yes, we understand that USA is a huge country, and that you can travel 1000 miles and still be in your own country. (that's also true for Norway by the way) But to me that's still enormously strange. It's not like you can't afford it, the average American has more money than the average.
The concept of American (U.S.) prosperity is somewhat overestimated. If I told somebody how much the VAT and income and property taxes would work out to for them based on what they earn and consume here, he'd think you were all insane. If I then explained what you get for what you put in, both in taxes and on the job, he'd decide he's getting screwed. To get an idea of what the average citizen is left with, using the best statistics I could put together in three minutes (sorry), Norway's wealthiest 10% grossed 27% of Norway's total income in 2000. On the other hand, America's wealthiest 10% controlled 73% of America's wealth in 1997 (this was originally a Wall Street Journal source and I believe was regarding net income). Life insurance, medical insurance, dental insurance, car insurance, medical procedures not covered by medical insurance, medicine not covered by medical insurance, schooling, and sometimes lawyers combine to take a pretty large chunk out of paychecks. Some of these may be provided by an employer with varying degrees of coverage, but the expense is becoming such that employers are cutting back.
We consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources in relation to our population, which along with our reputation for knowing how to party may give the impression of having lots of disposable income and free time, but the average worker gets a vacation allotment of two weeks a year. Among those who can leave a job that long without things going to hell, and those who don't have kids or whose kids are grown up, and those who have a couple of thousand dollars saved (depending on vacation location of course), the plan is usually to take a week to visit a beach in our hemisphere and try to forget everything for a bit. The other week is generally used to get more time off around two major holidays (Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/? and Thanksgiving), either to visit distant relatives or prepare for them to visit you. Extra money also tends to go into vehicles or electronics or gadgets instead of vacations, I think.
Still, I guess when it comes to languages the US is not *that* multi-cultural. Maybe there's also some french along the Quebec-border ? And quite likely you've got some "ghettos" of immigrants that speak their only language. But still.
As far as language is considered, for most people they've got the option to tak
No, trolling mode is off. I'm not offended, either, because that'd be a bit silly. I was just a bit surprised by your post, and trying to get a handle on whether you were anti-American on principle or simply making a point. See, I'd expect the ignorant American stereotype to state that Norwegians speak Norwegian, just as Sweden's citizens speak Sweden and Finland's citizens speak Finlander... but I wouldn't instantly jump to the "ignorant American" conclusion if I read something like my post because it's a stretch to think Swedish when you've just seen Norway and Norwegian in the article. So I was trying to figure out where you were coming from.
Actually, I agree that Americans are, on average, pathetically informed about foreign affairs and political matters in general. I hadn't realized exactly how bad things had gotten until a couple of years ago, but clearly elected officials are aware that they can say one thing and do another without the sort of accountability that might have existed fifty years ago.
Generally, people that have some motivation to be informed (and there are more than outside appearances would indicate) obtain their information from five basic sources: television, radio, newspapers, the Internet, and friends. The quality of American news, which is almost entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, is abysmal.
TV news wasn't viewed as a profit-making venture until maybe the end of the 1990s. Today, it is filled with things the producers think will entertain rather than inform as a means of getting more viewers. It isn't uncommon when a "big story" happens for all news channels to spend the entire day (and a large part of their broadcast on following days) on the same thing, as if nothing else is going on.
Newspapers obtain the bulk of their national/international news stories from central sources called "wire services": usually the Associated Press and Reuters. From what I'm told, a large quantity of the rest of the content is press releases, which are news stories written for publication by organizations or corporations not related to the newspaper. The amount of actual local quality journalistic content varies from paper to paper, but I haven't read one that's consistently satisfied me.
Radio is a joke. Usually, the closest thing to news available in a given location is so-called "talk radio", which isn't news so much as a biased discussion of certain news stories (usually politics). There aren't a lot of shortwave listeners, but it's quite possible to pick up BBC World Band.
Our slice of the Internet is being pushed to act as an extension of our other sources of information. If one thinks to wander outside of the box, it's easily possible to visit other news venues than the ones we already get through TV, newspapers, and the radio, but then it becomes a matter of attempting to asertain what is most likely the truth from a number of biased sources rather than our simply relying on our own. It may please you to know that Aftenposten is one of the sites I recommend, as well as Google's own news browser which does a very good job of pulling together news from sites people wouldn't think to visit on their own.
Friends are as good to rely on as the sources of information they've got. Minus a bit of credibility because we're usually a couple of drinks in before we start to complain about the world around us. Most people I know are quite interested in foreign cultures and viewpoints when our discussions head in that direction, but aside from the ones that use the Internet they simply don't have access to this sort of information. We also have no respect for the "We're proud of our ignorance and arrogance" attitudes of some that unfortunately seem to be exported via our movies and music.
The point that I'm getting to is don't be like us. Resist the consolidation and degradation of your media into a source of entertainment provided by a few corporations, strive to keep the people around you (and especially on the Internet) in
To be frank, I've actually done enough reading on your region -- not to mention conversing with people from Scandinavian countries -- to be well aware of not only the geographical difference between Sweden and Norway but also the shared linguistic roots. I was informed that it is actually quite possible for a reader of Swedish to comprehend Norwegian and vice versa, at least to the point of being able to tell what is going on in general. I've also been informed that it is not uncommon for Swedes and Norwegians to be conversant in the languages the countries share, particularly those on the border or whose jobs make it feasible.
Quite honestly, I figured it'd be an American or a European that decided to 'correct' me, and that an actual resident of one of the two countries would roll his eyes but understand the reference and have a good chuckle over the folks leaping to their defense. But the venom you as a Norwegian express towards the intellect and knowledge of approximately 275,000,000 people in response to one post of unknown origin comes as a bit of a shock, and hints at more in common with your (somewhat skewed) perception of the average American citizen than you'd probably be comfortable to admit.
I think Norway's a great place, better yet as I begin to understand the court system, so don't get the wrong impression. I'm also trying to work out how Scandinavians are able to comprehend and speak English as well or better than many native speakers -- it doesn't seem to work the other way.
I'm not backing Microsoft, because how much is it worth being comparatively secure to another product (they've got three remote-roots and we've only got two!).
I'm still convinced that a closed-source competently-designed operating system will be, on the whole, less vulnerable than an open-source competently-designed operating system. The theoretical million eyes on the source isn't worth as much as it (used to be) hyped, because you're not talking about a million security professionals and you're really talking about maybe a thousand eyes on different parts of the code.
I'm still more comfortable with Linux than Windows, and not just because of security concerns, but I'd be much more convinced of the security benefit if there were more eyes looking proactively for things like this.
Before the contributions of Stallman, and those designing software under the GNU banner, who would have noticed the horrid direction proprietary software and hardware have us headed in?
They've demonstrated not only that it is possible to roll your own system (GNU/Herd, GNU/Linux, EMACS, and the myriad utilities), but also why it is necessary. What must come next in this new era of DRM are those who can create their own hardware, free of the oppression and lock-in that tomorrow's systems will have. But we will not ask ourselves what we can run on our homebrew hardware, because an answer is ready thanks to the efforts of the Free Software Foundation.
I'm kind of surprised they were able to try him twice. What about double-jeopardy? Doesn't this system run the risk of financially ruining a defendant with lawsuits?
Can anybody who speaks Swedish translate the article for us?
Perhaps I should have said that the prevailing mentality in many corporations appears to be to maximize short-term stockholder returns with more casual regard to the long-term viability or growth of the company.
But what I really mean is that they've sussed which formulas sell in today's market and they're content to have cash trickle in on the same idea rehashed a dozen different ways rather than make any great innovation or niche product once in a while.
You need only look at the competing industries (radio, TV, music, movies) and realize that the mentality of the individuals at the top has a common element: maximize stockholder return. Creativity, once integral to the game industry, today has little or no bearing on the decision of which projects to approve and which to ax -- instead, it's all about repackaging what was hot yesterday and marketing the hell out of it.
In a way, this signals the maturity of the game industry. The others have been doing this for decades, but none to the extent that it's been going on over the last 5-10 years, and the solution for those that are tired of the sameness of what's popular in the game industry is probably the same as that for the other industries: give your patronage to the independent developers, and sweep the bargain bins whenever you can.
There's very little about ATMs nowadays to inspire confidence. It used to be that you'd stop by a trusted location to use one (like the bank) but now they're virtually everywhere and aren't always set up by trustworthy entities.
If they integrated some other forms of identification that couldn't be forged, such as biometrics or retinal scans, perhaps I'd be a bit less worried. But as things stand now credit cards are a better way to go if you're worried about recovering losses from fraud.
I see too many packages out there that have no meaningful way to verify their contents. I've felt for a long time that this was something that was going to come back to haunt us.
I hope that this will provide more incentive for Open Source programmers and Linux distributors to properly secure their releases. This entails ensuring that from the time a package leaves a maintainer to the time it reaches a user there should be no possibility of tampering.
Authors/maintainers need to generate PGP keypairs and start signing their archives. MD5 checksum distributed alongside the package does not cut it -- how are we to know the package wasn't tampered with and a fresh checksum generated? No, the only way we can really feel secure is to have authors use PGP on a regular basis to verify their work, and to integrate public key/private key into CVS in order to have submitters automatically sign their changes to the source.
Then things like the Savannah hack and the various mirror compromises will only be a black eye instead of a serious threat to the Open Source methodology.
I haven't felt like either site's been very useful at giving the full story on video games for a while now. I don't know if it's advertiser influence or if it's just because my tastes differ, but all of the popular game review sites I've visited lately seem to be missing something.
Tiny review sites or even fan pages seem to do a better job on actually reviewing a game. I only really hit the big sites to get a preview of an upcoming title and perhaps some eyecandy.
I wish Debian would do something like the following:
For each new release of a package, the maintainer must submit a PGP-signed checksum of the package to a central Debian authority.
The authority creates a MD5 list from all verified packages, and signs it with the authority's PGP key.
Upon issuing an 'emerge -u world', Debian grabs the MD5 list, verifies the authority's signature on the list, and then uses the MD5 checksums to verify the integrity of the downloaded packages before installing.
I thought a similar sort of mechanism was at least discussed, if not mostly implemented at some point. This model would at least secure the distribution chain, although it of course still leaves users at the mercy of the developer and anybody who's in the developer's system. I think it's been demonstrated that it's time to make this happen.
I'm starting to wonder if we should be sending all these probes out without any chance of recovery or destruction. While it's probable there isn't any other sentient life out there, it's also probable that our efforts to explore our surroundings are affecting or destroying living and non-living celestial evidence.
I keep thinking about those fish that live in caves that we believed were blind from birth, but were actually blinded by our observations, which required orders of magnitude of light more than they were ever accustomed to. Who knows how much Earth biology survives in these probes when they crash land?
Maybe we should put a halt to sending out any more of these things for now and work more on passive observation techniques.
I'd say the problem is not sinking the bulk of the cash into advertising. I played some pretty horrendous games and missed out on some great ones simply because of the degree of advertising and availability.
Nowadays, the Internet theoretically creates a more diverse information channel, but it just seems like there are 1000 recommendations for the same game instead of 50. Most of the sites that promote a low-visibility game are themselves not all that easy to find unless you're looking for them.
I'd rather play the good games, but nobody's making demos these days that you don't have to wait in line for an hour to start downloading. There's something wierd going on when pirated games are more available on the Internet than the demo. I miss the high-quality demo archives at ftp.cdrom.com.
At $129, it's probably one of the most effective updates you can get for your Mac. It's faster than the previous version, slightly more reliable in many circumstances (not that there's much room for improvement), and they've fixed my least favorite interface flaws.
It's backward compatible with everything, I think. It also seems to boot slightly faster. But you might find the memory management to be the most noticable aspect.
I wonder if that'll be the step that gets the project cease-and-desisted. Creep too closely into Apple's look and feel, and you're threatening 95% of their product.
Not that I have a problem with encroachers being warned off, of course, as nearly as much research and effort goes into designing an effective user interface as goes into the rest of a successful product. But I'd hate to see NetBSD embroiled in difficulties similar to those that faced themes.org regarding the copyright of the Aqua theme.
Develop better posture. Never look like you're not doing anything. Become indisposable. Clean. Tan. Learn to like golf and kissing ass. Be seen with the right people. Try to get into a lodge. Find religion again.
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Think about it. Where once a whole slew of programmers might have been hired to work on an inventory or billing system, for example, now a fraction can be hired to tweak what the rest have been producing for free.
One could hardly call this anything other than neocapitalism. Under the guise of not reinventing the wheel (a process which actually contributes innovation by demonstrating multiple ways of reaching the same goal, some better than others) businesses are able to make their programming dollar go further at the expense of the programmer.
While it is indeed possible for programmers to wait tables in their spare time, I would like to suggest that waiters do not need to invest 4+ years of schooling in their vocation. At some point this must be recouped or the quality and availability of programmers will decline.
Unfortunately, both the hacker mindset and the CEO mindset are currently geared towards the concept of free software -- the hacker for the love of the code and the CEO for the love of free code -- and damned be the concepts of effective software engineering, security principles, or a day's pay for a day's work.
You play to the strengths of the manufacturing of each country, take out the middleman, and we no longer have to pay inflated costs for everything.
Kind of wierd to think that it's cheaper to get something made and shipped halfway around the world than it is next door, but if it makes a dollar go farther in this economy I'm all for it.
I.E. I noticed a bigger jump in performance by upgrading my mainboard, cpu, and memory while retaining my relatively mediocre (but fully DirectX 9 compliant) graphics card, whereas my friend who had a similar configuration spent his cash on the latest Nvidia and didn't seem to come out significantly ahead.
If you can afford all of the above, I suppose this is the card for you (hell get two and run them together). But too often gamers focus on the graphics to the overall detriment of their performance.
In an entire environment based on and tailored toward Java, such as Sun's Java Desktop System, the language really shines. Rapid setup and deployment benefits system administrators, while developer productivity is enhanced by the optimization of the develop, execute, debug and deploy cycle.
This type of setup just makes sense when you're dealing with a network of disparate hardware and software. The more that can be made common and interoperable, the easier it is to get things done. And it looks like Sun Java Desktop System has only gotten more affordable and easy to use.
Being able to swap it out is also helpful should problems arise.
Although their time might be better spent in designing a true alternative to Java and C# instead of a copy that allows you to write a GNU application that runs everywhere, it's hard to fault Mono for recognizing a market niche and running with it. For example, maybe they'll make C# work on Linux embedded devices where Microsoft wouldn't go?
Hopefully you won't consider this a case of jumping to conclusions. :)
Please forgive me if I happen to use some of these little-known facts in a future post. These individuals weren't in management by chance? But yes, I confess to knowing a few particularly dense individuals myself... the type that don't know and just don't want to know.
The concept of American (U.S.) prosperity is somewhat overestimated. If I told somebody how much the VAT and income and property taxes would work out to for them based on what they earn and consume here, he'd think you were all insane. If I then explained what you get for what you put in, both in taxes and on the job, he'd decide he's getting screwed. To get an idea of what the average citizen is left with, using the best statistics I could put together in three minutes (sorry), Norway's wealthiest 10% grossed 27% of Norway's total income in 2000. On the other hand, America's wealthiest 10% controlled 73% of America's wealth in 1997 (this was originally a Wall Street Journal source and I believe was regarding net income). Life insurance, medical insurance, dental insurance, car insurance, medical procedures not covered by medical insurance, medicine not covered by medical insurance, schooling, and sometimes lawyers combine to take a pretty large chunk out of paychecks. Some of these may be provided by an employer with varying degrees of coverage, but the expense is becoming such that employers are cutting back.
We consume a disproportionate amount of the world's resources in relation to our population, which along with our reputation for knowing how to party may give the impression of having lots of disposable income and free time, but the average worker gets a vacation allotment of two weeks a year. Among those who can leave a job that long without things going to hell, and those who don't have kids or whose kids are grown up, and those who have a couple of thousand dollars saved (depending on vacation location of course), the plan is usually to take a week to visit a beach in our hemisphere and try to forget everything for a bit. The other week is generally used to get more time off around two major holidays (Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/? and Thanksgiving), either to visit distant relatives or prepare for them to visit you. Extra money also tends to go into vehicles or electronics or gadgets instead of vacations, I think.
As far as language is considered, for most people they've got the option to tak
Actually, I agree that Americans are, on average, pathetically informed about foreign affairs and political matters in general. I hadn't realized exactly how bad things had gotten until a couple of years ago, but clearly elected officials are aware that they can say one thing and do another without the sort of accountability that might have existed fifty years ago.
Generally, people that have some motivation to be informed (and there are more than outside appearances would indicate) obtain their information from five basic sources: television, radio, newspapers, the Internet, and friends. The quality of American news, which is almost entirely controlled by a handful of corporations, is abysmal.
TV news wasn't viewed as a profit-making venture until maybe the end of the 1990s. Today, it is filled with things the producers think will entertain rather than inform as a means of getting more viewers. It isn't uncommon when a "big story" happens for all news channels to spend the entire day (and a large part of their broadcast on following days) on the same thing, as if nothing else is going on.
Newspapers obtain the bulk of their national/international news stories from central sources called "wire services": usually the Associated Press and Reuters. From what I'm told, a large quantity of the rest of the content is press releases, which are news stories written for publication by organizations or corporations not related to the newspaper. The amount of actual local quality journalistic content varies from paper to paper, but I haven't read one that's consistently satisfied me.
Radio is a joke. Usually, the closest thing to news available in a given location is so-called "talk radio", which isn't news so much as a biased discussion of certain news stories (usually politics). There aren't a lot of shortwave listeners, but it's quite possible to pick up BBC World Band.
Our slice of the Internet is being pushed to act as an extension of our other sources of information. If one thinks to wander outside of the box, it's easily possible to visit other news venues than the ones we already get through TV, newspapers, and the radio, but then it becomes a matter of attempting to asertain what is most likely the truth from a number of biased sources rather than our simply relying on our own. It may please you to know that Aftenposten is one of the sites I recommend, as well as Google's own news browser which does a very good job of pulling together news from sites people wouldn't think to visit on their own.
Friends are as good to rely on as the sources of information they've got. Minus a bit of credibility because we're usually a couple of drinks in before we start to complain about the world around us. Most people I know are quite interested in foreign cultures and viewpoints when our discussions head in that direction, but aside from the ones that use the Internet they simply don't have access to this sort of information. We also have no respect for the "We're proud of our ignorance and arrogance" attitudes of some that unfortunately seem to be exported via our movies and music.
The point that I'm getting to is don't be like us. Resist the consolidation and degradation of your media into a source of entertainment provided by a few corporations, strive to keep the people around you (and especially on the Internet) in
To be frank, I've actually done enough reading on your region -- not to mention conversing with people from Scandinavian countries -- to be well aware of not only the geographical difference between Sweden and Norway but also the shared linguistic roots. I was informed that it is actually quite possible for a reader of Swedish to comprehend Norwegian and vice versa, at least to the point of being able to tell what is going on in general. I've also been informed that it is not uncommon for Swedes and Norwegians to be conversant in the languages the countries share, particularly those on the border or whose jobs make it feasible.
Quite honestly, I figured it'd be an American or a European that decided to 'correct' me, and that an actual resident of one of the two countries would roll his eyes but understand the reference and have a good chuckle over the folks leaping to their defense. But the venom you as a Norwegian express towards the intellect and knowledge of approximately 275,000,000 people in response to one post of unknown origin comes as a bit of a shock, and hints at more in common with your (somewhat skewed) perception of the average American citizen than you'd probably be comfortable to admit.
I think Norway's a great place, better yet as I begin to understand the court system, so don't get the wrong impression. I'm also trying to work out how Scandinavians are able to comprehend and speak English as well or better than many native speakers -- it doesn't seem to work the other way.
I'm still convinced that a closed-source competently-designed operating system will be, on the whole, less vulnerable than an open-source competently-designed operating system. The theoretical million eyes on the source isn't worth as much as it (used to be) hyped, because you're not talking about a million security professionals and you're really talking about maybe a thousand eyes on different parts of the code.
I'm still more comfortable with Linux than Windows, and not just because of security concerns, but I'd be much more convinced of the security benefit if there were more eyes looking proactively for things like this.
They've demonstrated not only that it is possible to roll your own system (GNU/Herd, GNU/Linux, EMACS, and the myriad utilities), but also why it is necessary. What must come next in this new era of DRM are those who can create their own hardware, free of the oppression and lock-in that tomorrow's systems will have. But we will not ask ourselves what we can run on our homebrew hardware, because an answer is ready thanks to the efforts of the Free Software Foundation.
Can anybody who speaks Swedish translate the article for us?
I was pretty sure we banned that stuff too, but apparently the enforcement of that ban has left something to be desired.
But what I really mean is that they've sussed which formulas sell in today's market and they're content to have cash trickle in on the same idea rehashed a dozen different ways rather than make any great innovation or niche product once in a while.
In a way, this signals the maturity of the game industry. The others have been doing this for decades, but none to the extent that it's been going on over the last 5-10 years, and the solution for those that are tired of the sameness of what's popular in the game industry is probably the same as that for the other industries: give your patronage to the independent developers, and sweep the bargain bins whenever you can.
If they integrated some other forms of identification that couldn't be forged, such as biometrics or retinal scans, perhaps I'd be a bit less worried. But as things stand now credit cards are a better way to go if you're worried about recovering losses from fraud.
I hope that this will provide more incentive for Open Source programmers and Linux distributors to properly secure their releases. This entails ensuring that from the time a package leaves a maintainer to the time it reaches a user there should be no possibility of tampering.
Authors/maintainers need to generate PGP keypairs and start signing their archives. MD5 checksum distributed alongside the package does not cut it -- how are we to know the package wasn't tampered with and a fresh checksum generated? No, the only way we can really feel secure is to have authors use PGP on a regular basis to verify their work, and to integrate public key/private key into CVS in order to have submitters automatically sign their changes to the source.
Then things like the Savannah hack and the various mirror compromises will only be a black eye instead of a serious threat to the Open Source methodology.
Tiny review sites or even fan pages seem to do a better job on actually reviewing a game. I only really hit the big sites to get a preview of an upcoming title and perhaps some eyecandy.
- For each new release of a package, the maintainer must submit a PGP-signed checksum of the package to a central Debian authority.
- The authority creates a MD5 list from all verified packages, and signs it with the authority's PGP key.
- Upon issuing an 'emerge -u world', Debian grabs the MD5 list, verifies the authority's signature on the list, and then uses the MD5 checksums to verify the integrity of the downloaded packages before installing.
I thought a similar sort of mechanism was at least discussed, if not mostly implemented at some point. This model would at least secure the distribution chain, although it of course still leaves users at the mercy of the developer and anybody who's in the developer's system. I think it's been demonstrated that it's time to make this happen.I keep thinking about those fish that live in caves that we believed were blind from birth, but were actually blinded by our observations, which required orders of magnitude of light more than they were ever accustomed to. Who knows how much Earth biology survives in these probes when they crash land?
Maybe we should put a halt to sending out any more of these things for now and work more on passive observation techniques.
Nowadays, the Internet theoretically creates a more diverse information channel, but it just seems like there are 1000 recommendations for the same game instead of 50. Most of the sites that promote a low-visibility game are themselves not all that easy to find unless you're looking for them.
I'd rather play the good games, but nobody's making demos these days that you don't have to wait in line for an hour to start downloading. There's something wierd going on when pirated games are more available on the Internet than the demo. I miss the high-quality demo archives at ftp.cdrom.com.
Well, that's about it.
It's backward compatible with everything, I think. It also seems to boot slightly faster. But you might find the memory management to be the most noticable aspect.
Basically, lots of little updates that add up.
Not that I have a problem with encroachers being warned off, of course, as nearly as much research and effort goes into designing an effective user interface as goes into the rest of a successful product. But I'd hate to see NetBSD embroiled in difficulties similar to those that faced themes.org regarding the copyright of the Aqua theme.
Develop better posture. Never look like you're not doing anything. Become indisposable. Clean. Tan. Learn to like golf and kissing ass. Be seen with the right people. Try to get into a lodge. Find religion again.