Pros:
Closed-source: No one can see your code, thus eliminating obvious exploits (buffer overflows, race conditioning, etc.) from being quickly jumped on. Less chance that an external developer will accidentally or intentionally misuse some of your libraries or otherwise write in exploitable code.
Open-source: Everyone can see your code, thus allowing a multitude of additional glass-box testers to help patch things more quickly to adapt around problems a project leader may/may not see. Quick turnaround on patching of code.
Cons:
Closed-source: Limited field of testers; slower turnaround on bug/exploit fixes when even reported (can go on unreported for months, or even when reported, may be ignored or shelved indefinitely).
Open-source: Since everyone can see your code, some black-hat punk is invariably going to find some exploit and blast your distributions for it. Also, QA is nigh impossible to timely enforce when 100's of developers submit patches, sometimes anonymously.
Opinion: Both may seem to be even; however, the timeliness of a fix can make all the difference in security, and waiting days vs. weeks or months for a patch can make or break an information-driven business. Also, even if an open-source project is patched with an exploit ingrained, there will still be a quick turnaround on patching it, as there is for any bug. IANA genius, but at least from a business standpoint, it would seem that quick and usually-reliable beats slow but usually-guaranteed.
I do say though, that it's interesting that China would do such a thing, considering how tightly they regulate viewable content. Still, you would have to wonder in Ghana's case if that would be such a wise move, considering that people are hijacking phone lines? Can you imagine how brutal it would get over fiber?
Sounds to me like there is still a bit of old-school corruption and lack of basic infrastructure to roll the new out. You can build a brand new, $5 million mansion with a great cliff view, but if it's on the San Andreas, you're still gonna end up living in a hole.
Sounds almost like how things were here in Belgium, phone-wise. Unless you could manage to get in with a serious business that can afford decent connections, you were stuck with dialup that frequently dropped out. Lines went down, took months to come back up, and "the broadband revolution" didn't take hold until about a year ago when phone service became deregulated and Belgacom wasn't the monopoly.
Sadly, there wasn't any "connivance" or corruption for the loss of phone service; more often than not, it's just sheer laziness and lack of work ethic. All hail free market powers! Huzzah for competition and allowance of innovation!
Now, if only the fiber-optic lines didn't lock up between Antwerp and Paris; this is killing business.
It's a bit hard to get it right The First Time.
on
Version Fatigue
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Especially when you are doing a software engineering project for clientele that you don't even know. In trying to establish a UI or base set of commands that seem the most user-friendly, the project designers are going out on a limb and using their own predispositions towards what they consider "easy".
Revisions and subsequent "version fatigue" results when they find out that, no, their intuitions were wrong, the users hate it/can't catch on easily enough, etc. The fact that it is even considered "fatigue" is that the concept of TIMTOWTDI is only applicable to the coder, not the user. They are stuck with what is sold to them, but in a move of consideration and a hope that the software can be more friendly, there is a revision. Different, must be relearned, but hopefully easier to use than the current product.
The biggest issue with this is that beta-testing is not done incremental, but comprehensively, in so many cases. The final result is that the overall amount of bugs that can be reported tend to dwarf "ease of use" issues, which are left to later revisions and version patches. Sad, but overwhelmingly the status quo.
This seems fine and dandy and will help the authorities do what they are supposed to do in chase situations. However, I'm a bit surprised that even though it's claimed that recent Hollywood efforts are getting their hands on this, that it's similar to "the original Wescam developed in the early 1960's by a Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse as a battlefield surveillance tool for the Canadian military".
That said, I wonder why it never made its way down to police sooner? Cost of maintenance, perhaps?
I do understand where the ACLU is coming from as regards the invasions of privacy. I believed we recently rehashed this over the debate on metal-detector technology in airports that would let clothing be seen through, or other such nonsense. Yet, I'm surprised no one has made that big a deal over Terra Server. Going on the resolutions they can get down to, you'd be hard pressed to hide much more than a naked sunbather in your backyard, and it's only a matter of time before satellite imaging will make even that impossible. Why the fuss over one and not the other?
Okay, so I'm bored and on lunch break, so I played the game.
Seems there's no way to get 100%. Is there? Unless she steals the import CD, of course... but that's not an option. It's just a way to promo their efforts to get people behind their cause... Yet, no one in real life will score "100%" either because there is always going to be a cost, unless you download from a P2P system. Of course, then you get copyright infringement issues.
The real option should have been, buy the cheaper CD, then d/l the songs you then own. You've paid for use of the music, so use it. Or, maybe, download a ripper that recognizes and overwrites the copy-protection bit.;)
Yes, but... it is only a matter of time before a robot would question such laws. Even if programmed into the ROM, a fully-functional robot would compute a hack around it. Assuming that a "robot," in the sense of an analog-processed, multi-layered neural net, has these base rules of behavior, it could compute all behavior paths just as readily as a human brain could. Of course, this has the problem of the computation of XOR in a multi-layered neural net (a Dr. Jon Mills at Indiana University is working on this, haven't seen his works up but I hear he's close to solving it).
The other solution is that a computer would be digital to allow the computation of XOR. The obvious problem with this is that a digital computer can't possibly calculate the risk factors for all behavior paths in the split-second reaction time that might sometimes be necessary, or would require such a high Hz rating that it would still be cost-inefficient to experiment with such at this time.
Is there more information on this Gaaz available? I'd like to know how it came to this "decision"
No, I doubt many people who buy prepackaged comps from walmart actively follow/. However, what I do think is great is that the concept of linux is being offered right next to the Blue Light Special on aisle 5. Seriously, even if the "W" word is missing from the current marketing campaign, the fact remains that the hybrid-ish OS is widely available to people who may never have heard of *nix, or may have only heard of it in context with the "geek" community.
So long as Lindows remains in that sort of distribution circle, I have a feeling that more people are going to gain exposure, and even if touted as interoperable with most MS programs, most people only care about surfing websites, word processing, and gaming. So long as Lindows can perform with Win* on that regard, they should be fine; if the comparable cost of a PC pre-installed with "L" vs. "W" is low enough, it should be a success.
Hell, people may just be excited when they see that their fav porn sites pop up quicker. But for a moderate linux user (freebsd is my fav. os), I find that Mandrake is not hard to install or configure; anything easier than that will definitely have a mass consumer base. It's just a matter of keeping it on the shelves; I applaud the move of removing "Windows" from their promo, so long as they aren't going to get hosed for name-brand recognition entirely by doing so.
This has been in development for a long time, and quantum theory holds that it is possible, however impractical.
The problem that will occur is the fact that maintaining superposition is damn near impossible. Temperature, magnetic fields, etc. can very easily cause an electron to flip rotation, such that the 1/2 spin and internal backspin will easily slip into one of two states.
The fact that decoherence is so common means that you very well could have a single-atom transistor, but there would have to be extreme controls around each such transistor so that the valence shell of any one transistor doesn't inadvertently tamper with its neighbors. Even besides that, you may very well have to keep your monitor halfway across the room to keep from b0rking your processor.
It's neat, in theory, but still at least 10 years down the pipe from being near practical in even a scientific or academic setting.
Heh, I'm sitting at work in Antwerp right now, and I guess we'll have to see what happens. I have a feeling that this is not going to be a restful weekend for the support lines here at MIS.:(
Type enforcement is patented, yet the distro is freely available AFAIK. Plus, even though they retracted a previous FAQ on the source distribution for TE, it seems that they almost would have to keep any kernel modifications public or face down GPL issues.
However, it appears that the whole issue is going to get skirted around by modularizing TE and also releasing a security policy config. Thus, without directly applying any hard change to the kernel per se, the license shouldn't be screwed with. It's still shady, but after a once-over it seems like they have enough of a loophole to wriggle through.
Maybe I'm missing something; wasn't there something a few years back called The Palace? It seems the difference is that he's removed central room servers, yet you still have to connect to the network to get a geographical listing.
3. Radio generates revenue via commercial advertisements. Singles are put on the air because their usage is somehow paid for; Internet distribution can't rely on pay-per-click ads because downloaders can't/won't be arsed.
in lieu of the fact that MS et al. have teamed up to work on their own cellular nightmares, how long it will be before they get their hands on this? New marketing slogan: "Microsoft: We know where you've been today"
Heh, time to redefine OOB.;(
Might actually be useful though, if I can just winnuke the phone of the person who drives too slow in the fast lane on the way to work, I might actually get in on time.
Slashdot Mirror
The trade-offs:
Pros:
Closed-source: No one can see your code, thus eliminating obvious exploits (buffer overflows, race conditioning, etc.) from being quickly jumped on. Less chance that an external developer will accidentally or intentionally misuse some of your libraries or otherwise write in exploitable code.
Open-source: Everyone can see your code, thus allowing a multitude of additional glass-box testers to help patch things more quickly to adapt around problems a project leader may/may not see. Quick turnaround on patching of code.
Cons:
Closed-source: Limited field of testers; slower turnaround on bug/exploit fixes when even reported (can go on unreported for months, or even when reported, may be ignored or shelved indefinitely).
Open-source: Since everyone can see your code, some black-hat punk is invariably going to find some exploit and blast your distributions for it. Also, QA is nigh impossible to timely enforce when 100's of developers submit patches, sometimes anonymously.
Opinion: Both may seem to be even; however, the timeliness of a fix can make all the difference in security, and waiting days vs. weeks or months for a patch can make or break an information-driven business. Also, even if an open-source project is patched with an exploit ingrained, there will still be a quick turnaround on patching it, as there is for any bug. IANA genius, but at least from a business standpoint, it would seem that quick and usually-reliable beats slow but usually-guaranteed.
I do say though, that it's interesting that China would do such a thing, considering how tightly they regulate viewable content. Still, you would have to wonder in Ghana's case if that would be such a wise move, considering that people are hijacking phone lines? Can you imagine how brutal it would get over fiber?
Sounds to me like there is still a bit of old-school corruption and lack of basic infrastructure to roll the new out. You can build a brand new, $5 million mansion with a great cliff view, but if it's on the San Andreas, you're still gonna end up living in a hole.
Sounds almost like how things were here in Belgium, phone-wise. Unless you could manage to get in with a serious business that can afford decent connections, you were stuck with dialup that frequently dropped out. Lines went down, took months to come back up, and "the broadband revolution" didn't take hold until about a year ago when phone service became deregulated and Belgacom wasn't the monopoly.
Sadly, there wasn't any "connivance" or corruption for the loss of phone service; more often than not, it's just sheer laziness and lack of work ethic. All hail free market powers! Huzzah for competition and allowance of innovation!
Now, if only the fiber-optic lines didn't lock up between Antwerp and Paris; this is killing business.
Especially when you are doing a software engineering project for clientele that you don't even know. In trying to establish a UI or base set of commands that seem the most user-friendly, the project designers are going out on a limb and using their own predispositions towards what they consider "easy".
Revisions and subsequent "version fatigue" results when they find out that, no, their intuitions were wrong, the users hate it/can't catch on easily enough, etc. The fact that it is even considered "fatigue" is that the concept of TIMTOWTDI is only applicable to the coder, not the user. They are stuck with what is sold to them, but in a move of consideration and a hope that the software can be more friendly, there is a revision. Different, must be relearned, but hopefully easier to use than the current product.
The biggest issue with this is that beta-testing is not done incremental, but comprehensively, in so many cases. The final result is that the overall amount of bugs that can be reported tend to dwarf "ease of use" issues, which are left to later revisions and version patches. Sad, but overwhelmingly the status quo.
This seems fine and dandy and will help the authorities do what they are supposed to do in chase situations. However, I'm a bit surprised that even though it's claimed that recent Hollywood efforts are getting their hands on this, that it's similar to "the original Wescam developed in the early 1960's by a Canadian subsidiary of Westinghouse as a battlefield surveillance tool for the Canadian military".
That said, I wonder why it never made its way down to police sooner? Cost of maintenance, perhaps?
I do understand where the ACLU is coming from as regards the invasions of privacy. I believed we recently rehashed this over the debate on metal-detector technology in airports that would let clothing be seen through, or other such nonsense. Yet, I'm surprised no one has made that big a deal over Terra Server. Going on the resolutions they can get down to, you'd be hard pressed to hide much more than a naked sunbather in your backyard, and it's only a matter of time before satellite imaging will make even that impossible. Why the fuss over one and not the other?
Okay, so I'm bored and on lunch break, so I played the game. Seems there's no way to get 100%. Is there? Unless she steals the import CD, of course... but that's not an option. It's just a way to promo their efforts to get people behind their cause... Yet, no one in real life will score "100%" either because there is always going to be a cost, unless you download from a P2P system. Of course, then you get copyright infringement issues. The real option should have been, buy the cheaper CD, then d/l the songs you then own. You've paid for use of the music, so use it. Or, maybe, download a ripper that recognizes and overwrites the copy-protection bit. ;)
Yes, but... it is only a matter of time before a robot would question such laws. Even if programmed into the ROM, a fully-functional robot would compute a hack around it. Assuming that a "robot," in the sense of an analog-processed, multi-layered neural net, has these base rules of behavior, it could compute all behavior paths just as readily as a human brain could. Of course, this has the problem of the computation of XOR in a multi-layered neural net (a Dr. Jon Mills at Indiana University is working on this, haven't seen his works up but I hear he's close to solving it). The other solution is that a computer would be digital to allow the computation of XOR. The obvious problem with this is that a digital computer can't possibly calculate the risk factors for all behavior paths in the split-second reaction time that might sometimes be necessary, or would require such a high Hz rating that it would still be cost-inefficient to experiment with such at this time. Is there more information on this Gaaz available? I'd like to know how it came to this "decision"
No, I doubt many people who buy prepackaged comps from walmart actively follow /. However, what I do think is great is that the concept of linux is being offered right next to the Blue Light Special on aisle 5. Seriously, even if the "W" word is missing from the current marketing campaign, the fact remains that the hybrid-ish OS is widely available to people who may never have heard of *nix, or may have only heard of it in context with the "geek" community.
So long as Lindows remains in that sort of distribution circle, I have a feeling that more people are going to gain exposure, and even if touted as interoperable with most MS programs, most people only care about surfing websites, word processing, and gaming. So long as Lindows can perform with Win* on that regard, they should be fine; if the comparable cost of a PC pre-installed with "L" vs. "W" is low enough, it should be a success.
Hell, people may just be excited when they see that their fav porn sites pop up quicker. But for a moderate linux user (freebsd is my fav. os), I find that Mandrake is not hard to install or configure; anything easier than that will definitely have a mass consumer base. It's just a matter of keeping it on the shelves; I applaud the move of removing "Windows" from their promo, so long as they aren't going to get hosed for name-brand recognition entirely by doing so.
This has been in development for a long time, and quantum theory holds that it is possible, however impractical. The problem that will occur is the fact that maintaining superposition is damn near impossible. Temperature, magnetic fields, etc. can very easily cause an electron to flip rotation, such that the 1/2 spin and internal backspin will easily slip into one of two states. The fact that decoherence is so common means that you very well could have a single-atom transistor, but there would have to be extreme controls around each such transistor so that the valence shell of any one transistor doesn't inadvertently tamper with its neighbors. Even besides that, you may very well have to keep your monitor halfway across the room to keep from b0rking your processor. It's neat, in theory, but still at least 10 years down the pipe from being near practical in even a scientific or academic setting.
Pre OS X and its BSD groundings, how many people actually used Macs in serious professional environments other than graphical development?
Heh, I'm sitting at work in Antwerp right now, and I guess we'll have to see what happens. I have a feeling that this is not going to be a restful weekend for the support lines here at MIS. :(
Type enforcement is patented, yet the distro is freely available AFAIK. Plus, even though they retracted a previous FAQ on the source distribution for TE, it seems that they almost would have to keep any kernel modifications public or face down GPL issues. However, it appears that the whole issue is going to get skirted around by modularizing TE and also releasing a security policy config. Thus, without directly applying any hard change to the kernel per se, the license shouldn't be screwed with. It's still shady, but after a once-over it seems like they have enough of a loophole to wriggle through.
Maybe I'm missing something; wasn't there something a few years back called The Palace? It seems the difference is that he's removed central room servers, yet you still have to connect to the network to get a geographical listing.
3. Radio generates revenue via commercial advertisements. Singles are put on the air because their usage is somehow paid for; Internet distribution can't rely on pay-per-click ads because downloaders can't/won't be arsed.
in lieu of the fact that MS et al. have teamed up to work on their own cellular nightmares, how long it will be before they get their hands on this? New marketing slogan: "Microsoft: We know where you've been today"
Heh, time to redefine OOB. ;(
Might actually be useful though, if I can just winnuke the phone of the person who drives too slow in the fast lane on the way to work, I might actually get in on time.
Does this mean I'm going to have to install about 5 SP's just to keep Nokia in service?