The more big companies feel the pain
caused by over-reaching IP claims, the
faster the day will come that our
"representatives" will be forced to
rationalize these laws.
Big companies will only change the law so
that their interests are protected. Among
these interests is a strong motive to keep
a small company with a bright idea out of
the game. I doubt that the end result will
be to your liking.
And now you can all laugh at the sick
guy (I have a head cold) for describing
how a rotating cypher attack can be used
against an OTP, thus rendering a century
of research moot.
At least Slashdot's timestamps can prove
that you realized your error in just two
minutes.:)
The disadvantage is carrying around a very
large digital key (which could easily fit
on one of those USB memory key fobs).
I doubt the inventor understands how big a
problem this is:
A real OTP is kept in a physically-secure
location. This invention talks about a USB
gadget, which is easily stolen or accidentally
lost.
A USB memory keychain cannot tell you if
it has been compromised if you've already
used it once. An OTP can be sealed.
A real OTP is, well, used once. If
compromised, it compromises one message.
The loss of this invention compromises many
messages.
A real OTP is immediately destroyed after
use. Keeping the key around for multiple
uses greatly increases the risk of
compromise over time.
All of the above - without even examining
the theory - make the invention less secure
in practice than the OTP. A huge disadvantage
of the OTP is of course its expense and
inconvenience, but that's exactly where it
draws its strength.
Nor are the chemicals in them a significant
danger.
There are many things we do or do not do that are
not significant in of themselves. We turn off
the faucet when it's not in use, even though
the water bill is negligibly cheap. We turn
off the light when we leave the room. We
keep the "packing peanuts" that Amazon sends
us, so we can reuse them when we have to ship
something.
Why should we not do something because it only
helps a little?
you can easily disable a personal firewall
(which resides on the same computer as the
actual user does - not a safe practice!)
Where the firewall resides is irrelevant. A
virus that gains superuser access to the
firewall machine - whether it's a dedicated
device, a Linux box, or a personal firewall,
wins.
The security problem here is reading email
as the superuser, etc, not running the
firewall on the same box.
The only way to reflash the chip is by
taking it out and putting it in another
motherboard while that motherboard is running
Have you actually tried this? How is the
second motherboard "running" if its BIOS
socket is empty? How can you plug another
flash chip in if the socket is already
occupied?
No longer do you need to develop a roll,
look at them on a lighttable, scan a picture
in, and then edit it to be used on the page.
In fact, with proper integration of things we
already have today, the newspaper can be
printed before the photographer even returns
to the office. The difference can be between
covering an event today or tomorrow.
I still love to be able to burn a cd,
listen to music and play counter-stike all
at the same time.
This has little to do with the number of
processors, but with the scheduler.
Burning a CD is what we call a "real time
task", in the sense that any gap in the
data stream going to the CD writer will
destroy the disc. You might call it "hard
real time" if the discs are expensive.
Listening to music is similarly a real time
task. The audio hardware must be fed a
constant stream of data, or it'll run out
of things to play and skip. However, since
it only means that you get a bit annoyed
(compared to burning a coaster), we might
call that a "soft real time" task.
Your game is also important, because it's an
"interactive" task. This means a user is
sitting there waiting for something to
happen.
Finally, your OS has a number of "background
tasks" that it must run from time to time.
Schedulers have different design goals.
So-called Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) are
designed to respect the real time tasks, and
they give CPU time to the highest priority
task that wants it. The real time tasks
that they handle may trigger emergency cooling
for a runaway nuclear reactor, so no CD
burning or MP3 playback better get in its
way. PC operating systems don't tend to be
designed with this strictness, but instead
optimize the interactive experience.
Basically, any OS that doesn't explicitly
take good care of real time tasks can be
overloaded into burning coasters. Having
two CPUs or a faster CPU merely makes it
harder to overload.
The biggest problem in software engineering
is the age-old practice of using the algorithm
as the basis of programming. This is the
primary reason that software is so unreliable
and so hard to develop.
I am skeptical of the broad brush you are
painting with. There are many kinds of
software, many different ways they fail, and
many different ways to do better.
Parallel code, just like OOP code and
structured code and garbage-collected code
and extreme programming code, come with their
own failure modes. Specifically, parallel
code can contain deadlocks, which can be
hellishly difficult to reproduce and therefore
debug. They can have synchronization bugs
that are dependent on processor load and
other temporary phenomena. The most common
debugging tools are also generally poor at
debugging parallel programs.
I'm not saying that it's a bad solution, just
that it's entirely possible that there's no
magic bullet for the software engineering crisis
we face.
You've managed to miss the point of my list
quite completely, so I'll explain.
The first step is to provide replacements
for these applications I list that are
featureful and easy to use.
The next step is to gain mindshare.
What you want, ideally, is for people to
ask for your multimedia OS because
Gimp runs better on it. Failing that, then
the comfort that Gimp will still run just
as well.
What you have right now is "go ahead and
switch, nevermind that you know Photoshop
really well, and it'll all be okay." That's
not enough, and that's why Mac OS X needs
Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, not
OpenOffice and Gimp whatever the relative
technical merits are.
This doesnt really give any hard percentages,
but Adobe Photoshop (full version) isn't even
listed in the top 25 sellers of graphics
software on Amazon.com
You will also note that Photoshop 7 the Mac
upgrade comes in at number 12. Since many
Mac users probably already own Photoshop,
they will naturally be upgrading, rather than
buying the full version.
Incidentally, Adobe can also cut development
costs by reusing PC and Mac code, as well as
reusing the code in simplified products like
Photoshop Elements, which is incidentally at
the top of the list. (Elements ships both
Mac and PC versions in the same box, IIRC.)
The mac upgrade version sells less than
the full PC version
Look, at 5% market share, even if every Mac
user upgraded and only 6% of PC users bought
a new box, your statement will be true.
Obviously, if you cater to the PC, you can
make more (total amount) money. However, if
you know how to cater to the minority Mac,
you can make even more money.
It'd be idiotic for Adobe to stop shipping
PC versions of Photoshop. But why shouldn't
they ship Mac versions also if they can make
additional profit off the Mac version?
its doubtfull that it would be profitable
to make and support software wanted in this
article.
Uh, I wasn't using Photoshop to prove that.
Different demographic (rural Mac user?!),
different business model (subscription versus
software sale). What I was talking about is
that many businesses dismiss the niche market
without seriously examining it, which can be
a disservice to their company.
I really think Apple would be missing a
major opportunity if they did not start
advertising their lack of DRM.
I wouldn't be so sure.
The public is largely unaware of Palladium
right now. When it is ready to be unleashed
on them, you can bet that it will be coated
in sugary goodness. For example:
You won't get a virus, because the
untrusted executable won't run.
You'll be able to access enhanced and
more interesting content on your new CD.
Your email will be sent securely.
Your armpits will smell better.
In other words, Palladium will be a
feature. Like you said, Apple
computers will lack DRM. And we
all know that lacking something must be
bad.
The only chance I can see is if rip-mix-burn
(even under Windows) becomes so popular that
people really notice that it's missing. Even
then, I can imagine a compromise CD writer
program that allows you to rip the same track
only once every two months or whatever.
Yes, but you can also unofficially support
the Mac (or Linux) by releasing documentation
so that third party drivers can be written.
If it's an attractive service (adds value to
the Mac platform), it's not unthinkable that
Apple would fund the development.
More likely, the marketing department did
what you did (pulling number out of rear),
and decided not to bother. You must admit
that it is the simplest explanation.
It's the same for Linux and Mac, it's just
not economically viable to develop software
for something used by less than 5%
One way to make money is to build a product
that 95% of the people use. Another way
to make money is to build a product that
5% of the people use. Microsoft certainly
made a boatload of money, but Apple is not
exactly bankrupt. In fact, I'd expect that
Mac sales of Adobe Photoshop account for
significantly more than 5%.
In practice, a lot of times you'll
find that the reason a minority OS is not
supported is not because somebody determined
that it was not viable, but that nobody ever
bothered to see if it was viable or not.
Only the former is a good business decision.
No, they are not. Their market share is
estimated to be around 4%. Choose your
words more appropriately if what you really
want to say is that they manufacture closed
proprietary systems.
Apple will do anything to protect that
monopoly.
Anything? What proof do you have that Apple
will engage in illegal actions to protect
whatever it is you think they are protecting?
Apple is over priced
So are the fastest Pentium IVs. Most high
end niche players are off the price/
performance curve, and they charge those
who are willing to pay extra. Similarly,
a BMW may be "overpriced" to a lot of
people, but not to you. People's priorities
differ.
Folks: 1.2mhz != 2.8ghz *EVER*
Well, 1.2 MHz is about what the Apple ]['s
6502 was able to achieve, and 2.8 GHz is what
a new Pentium IV could do. I'm afraid you
got us here.;)
Seriously, processor clock speed is a very
poor indicator of actual performance. This
does not mean, however, that a
1 GHz G4 must then be faster than a 2 GHz P4.
It depends on the memory subsystem, I/O
subsystem, and the actual task in question.
In fact, if you remember the original
Celeron (the one with the crippled cache),
it performed significantly more poorly than
a Pentium III of equal clock rate.
It doesnt "Just Work". I use a G4 at my
job and I could list a thing as long as the
first page of slashdot that don't work.
So do it. If you do, then maybe somebody can
fix some of those problems for you in some
way.
It always kills me how many people who use
Apple cos they hate MS, then turn around and
browse using IE for the Mac
I don't know the people you speak of, so
obviously I don't know their reasons. However,
maybe they dislike some products and practices
of Microsoft, rather than blindly hate
everything Microsoft.
Always frustrated me how a textbook can explain
an algorithm so that a college freshman can
understand it, but how a patent can explain the
same algorithm so that college professors cannot.
How come a couple thousand of us/.ers can find prior art, but the USPTO can't even use Google?????
Google finds web pages with key words, it
doesn't validate the information on those
pages. How do you know that the prior art
page you found is truthful about the all-important date of invention?
Instructions for "media distro":
Step 1: Install Red Hat
Step 2: Install mplayer and xmms
A few things you'll also need:
Professional audio editing application (Pro Tools clone)
Professional video editing application (Avid, Final Cut Pro clone)
One word: Photoshop
Professional 3-D graphics modeller and
renderer (Maya, Lightwave clone)
Professional DVD authoring software
Painless hardware support - access to Firewire devices such as video cameras, tape decks, and external drives; multi-monitor
support; hell, even IDE CD writers
Please don't cite Linux "equivalents" unless
you really know the stature, sophistication,
and polish of the professional versions you
are comparing them to. I like Linux. I use
Linux, but don't underestimate the amount of
work needed to match Windows or Mac OS is this
arena.
In other news, The Department of Defense awarded
a billion dollar contract to Intel Corporation
to work on dissipating the tremendous heat
generated by the lasers. "No big deal", said
an unnamed engineer close to the Pentium IV
project, "it's just a matter of using a bigger
fan."
The System always works. If naughty people are caught, the System works because it caught naughtiness. If nobody is caught, then the System is working because it must be effectively preventing naughtiness.
Slashdot Mirror
Big companies will only change the law so that their interests are protected. Among these interests is a strong motive to keep a small company with a bright idea out of the game. I doubt that the end result will be to your liking.
Boy, I can't wait for these folks to get into the graphics card business.
At least Slashdot's timestamps can prove that you realized your error in just two minutes. :)
I doubt the inventor understands how big a problem this is:
- A real OTP is kept in a physically-secure
location. This invention talks about a USB
gadget, which is easily stolen or accidentally
lost.
- A USB memory keychain cannot tell you if
it has been compromised if you've already
used it once. An OTP can be sealed.
- A real OTP is, well, used once. If
compromised, it compromises one message.
The loss of this invention compromises many
messages.
- A real OTP is immediately destroyed after
use. Keeping the key around for multiple
uses greatly increases the risk of
compromise over time.
All of the above - without even examining the theory - make the invention less secure in practice than the OTP. A huge disadvantage of the OTP is of course its expense and inconvenience, but that's exactly where it draws its strength.That is true. If you had not plugged in that extra stick of RAM, the overflow would not have overwritten any data.
I hope you're right, but one main marketing slogan that promoted Windows 2000 was that it was 3 times more stable than Windows 98.
There are many things we do or do not do that are not significant in of themselves. We turn off the faucet when it's not in use, even though the water bill is negligibly cheap. We turn off the light when we leave the room. We keep the "packing peanuts" that Amazon sends us, so we can reuse them when we have to ship something.
Why should we not do something because it only helps a little?
Where the firewall resides is irrelevant. A virus that gains superuser access to the firewall machine - whether it's a dedicated device, a Linux box, or a personal firewall, wins.
The security problem here is reading email as the superuser, etc, not running the firewall on the same box.
The only way to reflash the chip is by taking it out and putting it in another motherboard while that motherboard is running
Have you actually tried this? How is the second motherboard "running" if its BIOS socket is empty? How can you plug another flash chip in if the socket is already occupied?
In fact, with proper integration of things we already have today, the newspaper can be printed before the photographer even returns to the office. The difference can be between covering an event today or tomorrow.
This has little to do with the number of processors, but with the scheduler.
Burning a CD is what we call a "real time task", in the sense that any gap in the data stream going to the CD writer will destroy the disc. You might call it "hard real time" if the discs are expensive.
Listening to music is similarly a real time task. The audio hardware must be fed a constant stream of data, or it'll run out of things to play and skip. However, since it only means that you get a bit annoyed (compared to burning a coaster), we might call that a "soft real time" task.
Your game is also important, because it's an "interactive" task. This means a user is sitting there waiting for something to happen.
Finally, your OS has a number of "background tasks" that it must run from time to time.
Schedulers have different design goals. So-called Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) are designed to respect the real time tasks, and they give CPU time to the highest priority task that wants it. The real time tasks that they handle may trigger emergency cooling for a runaway nuclear reactor, so no CD burning or MP3 playback better get in its way. PC operating systems don't tend to be designed with this strictness, but instead optimize the interactive experience. Basically, any OS that doesn't explicitly take good care of real time tasks can be overloaded into burning coasters. Having two CPUs or a faster CPU merely makes it harder to overload.
I am skeptical of the broad brush you are painting with. There are many kinds of software, many different ways they fail, and many different ways to do better.
Parallel code, just like OOP code and structured code and garbage-collected code and extreme programming code, come with their own failure modes. Specifically, parallel code can contain deadlocks, which can be hellishly difficult to reproduce and therefore debug. They can have synchronization bugs that are dependent on processor load and other temporary phenomena. The most common debugging tools are also generally poor at debugging parallel programs.
I'm not saying that it's a bad solution, just that it's entirely possible that there's no magic bullet for the software engineering crisis we face.
According to their website, StuffIt 6.5 was first shipped in September 2001. Office 97 was shipped, well, around 1997. Big difference.
You've managed to miss the point of my list quite completely, so I'll explain.
The first step is to provide replacements for these applications I list that are featureful and easy to use.
The next step is to gain mindshare.
What you want, ideally, is for people to ask for your multimedia OS because Gimp runs better on it. Failing that, then the comfort that Gimp will still run just as well.
What you have right now is "go ahead and switch, nevermind that you know Photoshop really well, and it'll all be okay." That's not enough, and that's why Mac OS X needs Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, not OpenOffice and Gimp whatever the relative technical merits are.
You will also note that Photoshop 7 the Mac upgrade comes in at number 12. Since many Mac users probably already own Photoshop, they will naturally be upgrading, rather than buying the full version.
Incidentally, Adobe can also cut development costs by reusing PC and Mac code, as well as reusing the code in simplified products like Photoshop Elements, which is incidentally at the top of the list. (Elements ships both Mac and PC versions in the same box, IIRC.)
The mac upgrade version sells less than the full PC version
Look, at 5% market share, even if every Mac user upgraded and only 6% of PC users bought a new box, your statement will be true. Obviously, if you cater to the PC, you can make more (total amount) money. However, if you know how to cater to the minority Mac, you can make even more money.
It'd be idiotic for Adobe to stop shipping PC versions of Photoshop. But why shouldn't they ship Mac versions also if they can make additional profit off the Mac version?
its doubtfull that it would be profitable to make and support software wanted in this article.
Uh, I wasn't using Photoshop to prove that. Different demographic (rural Mac user?!), different business model (subscription versus software sale). What I was talking about is that many businesses dismiss the niche market without seriously examining it, which can be a disservice to their company.
But will Linux love me in the end?
I wouldn't be so sure.
The public is largely unaware of Palladium right now. When it is ready to be unleashed on them, you can bet that it will be coated in sugary goodness. For example:
- You won't get a virus, because the
untrusted executable won't run.
- You'll be able to access enhanced and
more interesting content on your new CD.
- Your email will be sent securely.
- Your armpits will smell better.
In other words, Palladium will be a feature. Like you said, Apple computers will lack DRM. And we all know that lacking something must be bad.The only chance I can see is if rip-mix-burn (even under Windows) becomes so popular that people really notice that it's missing. Even then, I can imagine a compromise CD writer program that allows you to rip the same track only once every two months or whatever.
Yes, but you can also unofficially support the Mac (or Linux) by releasing documentation so that third party drivers can be written. If it's an attractive service (adds value to the Mac platform), it's not unthinkable that Apple would fund the development.
More likely, the marketing department did what you did (pulling number out of rear), and decided not to bother. You must admit that it is the simplest explanation.
One way to make money is to build a product that 95% of the people use. Another way to make money is to build a product that 5% of the people use. Microsoft certainly made a boatload of money, but Apple is not exactly bankrupt. In fact, I'd expect that Mac sales of Adobe Photoshop account for significantly more than 5%.
In practice, a lot of times you'll find that the reason a minority OS is not supported is not because somebody determined that it was not viable, but that nobody ever bothered to see if it was viable or not. Only the former is a good business decision.
No, they are not. Their market share is estimated to be around 4%. Choose your words more appropriately if what you really want to say is that they manufacture closed proprietary systems.
Apple will do anything to protect that monopoly.
Anything? What proof do you have that Apple will engage in illegal actions to protect whatever it is you think they are protecting?
Apple is over priced
So are the fastest Pentium IVs. Most high end niche players are off the price/ performance curve, and they charge those who are willing to pay extra. Similarly, a BMW may be "overpriced" to a lot of people, but not to you. People's priorities differ.
Folks: 1.2mhz != 2.8ghz *EVER*
Well, 1.2 MHz is about what the Apple ]['s 6502 was able to achieve, and 2.8 GHz is what a new Pentium IV could do. I'm afraid you got us here. ;)
Seriously, processor clock speed is a very poor indicator of actual performance. This does not mean, however, that a 1 GHz G4 must then be faster than a 2 GHz P4. It depends on the memory subsystem, I/O subsystem, and the actual task in question.
In fact, if you remember the original Celeron (the one with the crippled cache), it performed significantly more poorly than a Pentium III of equal clock rate.
It doesnt "Just Work". I use a G4 at my job and I could list a thing as long as the first page of slashdot that don't work.
So do it. If you do, then maybe somebody can fix some of those problems for you in some way.
It always kills me how many people who use Apple cos they hate MS, then turn around and browse using IE for the Mac
I don't know the people you speak of, so obviously I don't know their reasons. However, maybe they dislike some products and practices of Microsoft, rather than blindly hate everything Microsoft.
Doesn't that just mean that he's due for a failure soon? You know, like getting a 100,000 hour MTBF drive that's been running for 100,000 hours now.
Just kidding.
Always frustrated me how a textbook can explain an algorithm so that a college freshman can understand it, but how a patent can explain the same algorithm so that college professors cannot.
Google finds web pages with key words, it doesn't validate the information on those pages. How do you know that the prior art page you found is truthful about the all-important date of invention?
Step 1: Install Red Hat
Step 2: Install mplayer and xmms
A few things you'll also need:
Please don't cite Linux "equivalents" unless you really know the stature, sophistication, and polish of the professional versions you are comparing them to. I like Linux. I use Linux, but don't underestimate the amount of work needed to match Windows or Mac OS is this arena.
In other news, The Department of Defense awarded a billion dollar contract to Intel Corporation to work on dissipating the tremendous heat generated by the lasers. "No big deal", said an unnamed engineer close to the Pentium IV project, "it's just a matter of using a bigger fan."
The System always works. If naughty people are caught, the System works because it caught naughtiness. If nobody is caught, then the System is working because it must be effectively preventing naughtiness.