Some of the sister organizations have already moved this way. The international body has dropped the requirement, and Switzerland has dropped the requirement and I think England might soon. http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/07/22/1/
I'm not disagreeing with your most of your post, but I would point out that while "music" generically isn't scarce, the specific music a listener might be looking for is. Some CD's I'd like to purchase are actually kind of scarce or non-existant. I'm constantly surprized at the inability to find replacement CDs for about 50% of the vinyl I purchased in the 70s and 80s. I still go through used record stores looking for jazz that has not found its way to being re-engineered for CD.
Re:Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its e
on
Big Company on Campus
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· Score: 1
you cannot beat MS's developer tools.
Unless, of course, you're developing for other operating systems;-)
Back in the old days when I was in school, IBM completely dominated the computer business. Yet, in four years of an engineering degree I never saw IBM hardware until the original PC came out. I used DEC PDPs, DEC VAX, CDC Cyber, HP 3000s, DG something or others, under a variety of operating systems and different development tools. Some of the classes required different things because they were optimized for the course topic at hand, structured programming, scientific programming, graphics, etc. The point at my school (and probably many other schools) was that the tool wasn't important, the process was. And, no one expected us to buy these things, we used University equipment.
As "studying computers" has shifted from computer science to the somewhat vocational training we see a lot today, I think some of us hoped that Universities (especially the elite like MIT) would abstain from the corporate handouts. At least when those handouts came with an influence on actual class content. After all, its the art of the hack we love, not necessarily the money the hack brings us. Whether Microsoft is great or not, it is increasingly using its war chest of Windows and Office monopoly money to win the war of attrition regardless of Microsoft functionality or appropriateness for the job at hand.
So, the increasing concern is all those young minds at VT enter the work force without a broad base of experience. And, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like MFC.
All of this is discounting the huge amount of "pirated" software, particularly new versions of Microsoft operating systems and office suites, that are installed on students computers in college.
Another perk is you can hang outside a University book store and slip some kid beer money to get a full install disk with documentation!
You'd think it would at least be difficult or require specific action to write to the registry, since this is probably only something that needs to happen when installing software.
I know I've worked on machines where you couldn't write to system areas of memory until you physically moved a key or switch on the processor. You'd think the registry would at least give some signal that it was being modified.
For that matter, how come there's no process monitoring tools in the "task manager" in Windows. I hate when I see those cryptic EXEs running out there without an ability to examine what they're doing...
I don't think I'd be in favor of "governments of the world" coming down on bugs in software. I certainly can't say that I've never written a bug in my life.... I do wish people would spend more time looking at all the possible products, and not just what Best Buy has a pile of.
While not a fan of Microsoft, I don't think non-Microsoft products can claim 100% security either.
I think the problem comes from two directions:
1) A large majority of nodes on the Internet running the same software. And, 2) The (generally) lower understanding of security issues on the part of the Microsoft users.
I think "1" is a bigger issue. With 90% or so of all desktops running Microsoft, any security issue has the potential to exploit explosively. I would argue that things would be better if no single operating system had this kind of market penetration, regardless of the manufacturer. Then, if a security exploit is running around it has less of an impact on the Internet as a whole.
"2" is a contributing factor. Given that more Microsoft users are (in general) non-IT professionals or non-sysadmin-aware (not a crack against Microsoft as much as an acknowledgement that most Microsoft users are end-users and not developer/server types), they are less likely to set up their systems correctly or to quickly apply patches when holes are found.
So, I'd like to see larger penetration of alternative OS's just to dilute the strength of any Microsoft based security exploit.
Link to AP Wire Story from August 12
on
TAM 5 Has landed
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· Score: 1
More Info: For every minute I've ever flown on an RC Heli, I've spent at least 5 fixing/repairing it on the ground.
I think this might jive with full-size helicopters. I think they also spend several times the hours with the mechanic than the pilot.
I don't personally have RC stuff, but I'm terribly tempted to try it (my brother-in-law flies gliders). I've heard the same comments on the helicopters, but watching telented people fly them really gets the geeky juices flowing...
The only thing is I gotta wonder how long the Treo will last after finalizing the merger with Palm.
As a bitter Handspring Visor owner, I would guess not too long since Handspring doesn't even really support the Visor anymore. The whole PDA and cell phone market has become nothing but thrashing through product and technology changes so fast that it's impossible to use any device more than 2 years. No wonder people aren't buying -- it's a market for $300-$500 disposable electronic devices.
The only consolation is that when my Visor Pro batteries will no longer hold a charge I can probably by replace my Visor (and modem/GPS/compactFlash/folding keyboard modules and assorted cables) with something for around $125.
Since a large percentage of the regulars here are software developers, including those that have been doing this since before Microsoft, there is a certain attitude about the eligance of solutions and the art of software. No reason to be alarmed -- it's completely analogous to asking a master chef about McDonald's food or a sports car enthusiast about mini-vans.
That being said -- I agree there should be no surprize about the latest army of federal drones ordering the same machines they sell to junior high school kids.
I can't see the original article (requires subscription), so I can't comment on the details. However, this was my thought also -- that what is being worked on is a new type of access point that uses it's diversity antenna (2 or more) to get a direction on the signal. You would also need to tell the access points their location, at least in relation to each other, to be able to interpret the location on an actual floor plan.
While only one access point "works" the card at a time, I think multiple can "see" it. When you have multiple access points on the same LAN, I believe you set the specific channel of the points so that they don't interfere with each other. Advanced features than allow you to pass control of specific clients from access point to access point as they roam around the WLAN (at least this was how it worked with Cisco Aironet equipment) much like a cell phne network. As the client signal got weak on one point, another point might say it has a stronger signal and take control of the client, with the client switching broadcast frequencies to match the new card.
If I'm right about this, its probably a "6 of 1" issue as to whether the client does the calculation or the network (access points) does the calculation.
There is a whole market niche in medicine for location tracking, which includes beds, patients, and equipment. If seen products based on RF, and the RFID things are just starting to influence these products.
I've also seen products based on IR, where there are sensors along the ceilings and the IR transmitters are on the tops of devices to be tracked.
1) knowing the strength of the transmitter. While 802.11b transmitters are allowed to be up to 100 mW in power. Not all work at the highest levels, and they can be set less than this to limit propagation of the signal (and a very good way to limit exposure of warchalking).
2) knowing the propagation characteristics of the signal wavelength. Different wavelengths are absorbed or bounced by different materials. The short wavelengths used by 802.11 don't penetrate or bounce much (and don't really go through reinforced concrete at all...). Lower frequencies (10 Meter and lower) travel around the world by bouncing off the atmosphere.
I think because of this, using signal strength for location is extremely difficult unless the transmitters are well known, and directional triangulation is probably the only reliable way of getting an accurate reading for this application.
I think this is a good point. As someone who needs to purchase software for his team, I have been shocked at the $2000 cost for Visual Studio for each developer. Combine this with the hit for MS Office, MS Project, and MS Visio, and you have a $3500 tax from Microsoft for every person and workstation.
We're very aggresively looking at alternatives to this development platform to try and have access to lower cost development tools, especially since the end users don't care what the back end systems are.
I believe (and a real design person can correct me) that analog displays are more easily interpreted by people than digital displays. This is the same reasons guages in planes and sports cars are analog and not just numbers.
Even in cars with numbers there is usually a bar graph or some other picture representation of the amount.
This is a good point. It's probably smarter to come up with a cell phone the size of a watch, instead of a new service that adds little over existing devices. Last I looked, cell phones displayed time anyway.
Maybe the lesson is to just play dumb about the whole thing. When questioned, couldn't you just say "I thought it was our network"? Seems that especially with so many laptops starting to come WiFi enabled, turning your computer on and surfing the web could be easily done without spending a whole lot of time thinking about where the connection is coming from.
Your weblog theory seems to make a lot of sense. Probably the moral of the story is to not use specific addresses and company names when taking about security holes!
There are certainly some purchased products that could be developed or reverse engineered in a year. But, when you scope up past a department solution, or into more complex transactions, this is simply not true. As others have pointed out, you only have to look at the amount of time other projects have taken to see there are limits to this.
Enterprise products are purchased because:
1) It takes man years just to produce requirements for complex applications that developers can use. 2) It can take 2 FTEs just to do the DBA work on a relatively complex enteprise app, let alone all the developers, testers, documentation people, and trainers it takes for the rest of the app. 3) Most companies are not in the business of producing software and can't manage projects like this. They are in some other business and need to focus their energies in those directions. 4) With enterprise apps you pay for things other than the app. You pay for the time of not having to develop, of course. You also pay for something that is secure, audits its transactions, allows flexible reporting, maybe works across multiple time zones, maybe with multiple languages, maybe allows different database technology, and maybe integrates with other stuff you have. You want training. You want support. You want the ability to upgrade into new versions or onto new OS/HW platforms. And you want to yell at something when your expensive app doesn't work, as opposed to someone yelling at you for all the money they've sunk into their home-grown solution.
I think your point is valid for a lot of projects. And I think a lot of companies overspend on solutions because they don't understand their needs or overinflate their risk. But there are a lot of complicated systems that 2 people could never pull off without so much time that the technology moves before you get the app out the door.
The review stuff for Word is pretty good IMO, except for this weird switching of context when someone edits your document and sends it back. We use the document compare features frequently, as the employees are scattered all other the place and it allows us to mark up documents for review. However, I agree that the version stuff is pretty useless, since it bloats the file sizes into the stratosphere pretty quickly. Even modest documents become 5M attachments after a few versions.
The real question is whether these features are worth the money, or the number of years it takes to get produced. I know Microsoft has an army of developers working for them, but I can't help wonder what they do given how little these programs change from version to version.
Are there any substantial features (or visual slickness) to Microsoft PowerPoint since 1996? Does anyone actually use the "ER Diagrammer" and "AutoCAD Import" of Visio (given how buggy they are, I can't imagine any serious work with them). Has anything changed in Microsoft Project since 1998? I know you still can't export "reports", since they only exist as a Print Preview image. Frankly, Microsoft product version upgrades are relatively "feature change free" in retrospect.
Of course, Microsoft products are off-the-shelf, and not really "enterprise" products.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the sister organizations have already moved this way. The international body has dropped the requirement, and Switzerland has dropped the requirement and I think England might soon. http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/07/22/1/
I'm not disagreeing with your most of your post, but I would point out that while "music" generically isn't scarce, the specific music a listener might be looking for is. Some CD's I'd like to purchase are actually kind of scarce or non-existant. I'm constantly surprized at the inability to find replacement CDs for about 50% of the vinyl I purchased in the 70s and 80s. I still go through used record stores looking for jazz that has not found its way to being re-engineered for CD.
Unless, of course, you're developing for other operating systems ;-)
Back in the old days when I was in school, IBM completely dominated the computer business. Yet, in four years of an engineering degree I never saw IBM hardware until the original PC came out. I used DEC PDPs, DEC VAX, CDC Cyber, HP 3000s, DG something or others, under a variety of operating systems and different development tools. Some of the classes required different things because they were optimized for the course topic at hand, structured programming, scientific programming, graphics, etc. The point at my school (and probably many other schools) was that the tool wasn't important, the process was. And, no one expected us to buy these things, we used University equipment.
As "studying computers" has shifted from computer science to the somewhat vocational training we see a lot today, I think some of us hoped that Universities (especially the elite like MIT) would abstain from the corporate handouts. At least when those handouts came with an influence on actual class content. After all, its the art of the hack we love, not necessarily the money the hack brings us. Whether Microsoft is great or not, it is increasingly using its war chest of Windows and Office monopoly money to win the war of attrition regardless of Microsoft functionality or appropriateness for the job at hand.
So, the increasing concern is all those young minds at VT enter the work force without a broad base of experience. And, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like MFC.
Another perk is you can hang outside a University book store and slip some kid beer money to get a full install disk with documentation!
You'd think it would at least be difficult or require specific action to write to the registry, since this is probably only something that needs to happen when installing software.
I know I've worked on machines where you couldn't write to system areas of memory until you physically moved a key or switch on the processor. You'd think the registry would at least give some signal that it was being modified.
For that matter, how come there's no process monitoring tools in the "task manager" in Windows. I hate when I see those cryptic EXEs running out there without an ability to examine what they're doing...
Another thought ---
I don't think I'd be in favor of "governments of the world" coming down on bugs in software. I certainly can't say that I've never written a bug in my life.... I do wish people would spend more time looking at all the possible products, and not just what Best Buy has a pile of.
While not a fan of Microsoft, I don't think non-Microsoft products can claim 100% security either.
I think the problem comes from two directions:
1) A large majority of nodes on the Internet running the same software. And,
2) The (generally) lower understanding of security issues on the part of the Microsoft users.
I think "1" is a bigger issue. With 90% or so of all desktops running Microsoft, any security issue has the potential to exploit explosively. I would argue that things would be better if no single operating system had this kind of market penetration, regardless of the manufacturer. Then, if a security exploit is running around it has less of an impact on the Internet as a whole.
"2" is a contributing factor. Given that more Microsoft users are (in general) non-IT professionals or non-sysadmin-aware (not a crack against Microsoft as much as an acknowledgement that most Microsoft users are end-users and not developer/server types), they are less likely to set up their systems correctly or to quickly apply patches when holes are found.
So, I'd like to see larger penetration of alternative OS's just to dilute the strength of any Microsoft based security exploit.
I think the "editors" might be coders more than journalists..."
And which brand? The "Manzeire" or the "Bro"?
I think this might jive with full-size helicopters. I think they also spend several times the hours with the mechanic than the pilot.
I don't personally have RC stuff, but I'm terribly tempted to try it (my brother-in-law flies gliders). I've heard the same comments on the helicopters, but watching telented people fly them really gets the geeky juices flowing...
As a bitter Handspring Visor owner, I would guess not too long since Handspring doesn't even really support the Visor anymore. The whole PDA and cell phone market has become nothing but thrashing through product and technology changes so fast that it's impossible to use any device more than 2 years. No wonder people aren't buying -- it's a market for $300-$500 disposable electronic devices.
The only consolation is that when my Visor Pro batteries will no longer hold a charge I can probably by replace my Visor (and modem/GPS/compactFlash/folding keyboard modules and assorted cables) with something for around $125.
McDonald's is safe -- they don't put "meat" in their nuggets.
Wow. And most in the US see the UN as a large barrier to US policy.
Since a large percentage of the regulars here are software developers, including those that have been doing this since before Microsoft, there is a certain attitude about the eligance of solutions and the art of software. No reason to be alarmed -- it's completely analogous to asking a master chef about McDonald's food or a sports car enthusiast about mini-vans.
That being said -- I agree there should be no surprize about the latest army of federal drones ordering the same machines they sell to junior high school kids.
I can't see the original article (requires subscription), so I can't comment on the details. However, this was my thought also -- that what is being worked on is a new type of access point that uses it's diversity antenna (2 or more) to get a direction on the signal. You would also need to tell the access points their location, at least in relation to each other, to be able to interpret the location on an actual floor plan.
While only one access point "works" the card at a time, I think multiple can "see" it. When you have multiple access points on the same LAN, I believe you set the specific channel of the points so that they don't interfere with each other. Advanced features than allow you to pass control of specific clients from access point to access point as they roam around the WLAN (at least this was how it worked with Cisco Aironet equipment) much like a cell phne network. As the client signal got weak on one point, another point might say it has a stronger signal and take control of the client, with the client switching broadcast frequencies to match the new card.
If I'm right about this, its probably a "6 of 1" issue as to whether the client does the calculation or the network (access points) does the calculation.
Benjamin Franklin: http://www.houseofquotes.com/quotes/quote_1185.htm
There is a whole market niche in medicine for location tracking, which includes beds, patients, and equipment. If seen products based on RF, and the RFID things are just starting to influence these products.
I've also seen products based on IR, where there are sensors along the ceilings and the IR transmitters are on the tops of devices to be tracked.
FDA Guidlines
A Vendor group here
One vendor's explanation here
The requirements for this are:
1) knowing the strength of the transmitter. While 802.11b transmitters are allowed to be up to 100 mW in power. Not all work at the highest levels, and they can be set less than this to limit propagation of the signal (and a very good way to limit exposure of warchalking).
2) knowing the propagation characteristics of the signal wavelength. Different wavelengths are absorbed or bounced by different materials. The short wavelengths used by 802.11 don't penetrate or bounce much (and don't really go through reinforced concrete at all...). Lower frequencies (10 Meter and lower) travel around the world by bouncing off the atmosphere.
I think because of this, using signal strength for location is extremely difficult unless the transmitters are well known, and directional triangulation is probably the only reliable way of getting an accurate reading for this application.
I think this is a good point. As someone who needs to purchase software for his team, I have been shocked at the $2000 cost for Visual Studio for each developer. Combine this with the hit for MS Office, MS Project, and MS Visio, and you have a $3500 tax from Microsoft for every person and workstation.
We're very aggresively looking at alternatives to this development platform to try and have access to lower cost development tools, especially since the end users don't care what the back end systems are.
I believe (and a real design person can correct me) that analog displays are more easily interpreted by people than digital displays. This is the same reasons guages in planes and sports cars are analog and not just numbers.
Even in cars with numbers there is usually a bar graph or some other picture representation of the amount.
Wow, real stylish. Looks like they're reviving styles from 1G electronic watches.
This is a good point. It's probably smarter to come up with a cell phone the size of a watch, instead of a new service that adds little over existing devices. Last I looked, cell phones displayed time anyway.
Maybe the lesson is to just play dumb about the whole thing. When questioned, couldn't you just say "I thought it was our network"? Seems that especially with so many laptops starting to come WiFi enabled, turning your computer on and surfing the web could be easily done without spending a whole lot of time thinking about where the connection is coming from.
Your weblog theory seems to make a lot of sense. Probably the moral of the story is to not use specific addresses and company names when taking about security holes!
There are certainly some purchased products that could be developed or reverse engineered in a year. But, when you scope up past a department solution, or into more complex transactions, this is simply not true. As others have pointed out, you only have to look at the amount of time other projects have taken to see there are limits to this.
Enterprise products are purchased because:
1) It takes man years just to produce requirements for complex applications that developers can use.
2) It can take 2 FTEs just to do the DBA work on a relatively complex enteprise app, let alone all the developers, testers, documentation people, and trainers it takes for the rest of the app.
3) Most companies are not in the business of producing software and can't manage projects like this. They are in some other business and need to focus their energies in those directions.
4) With enterprise apps you pay for things other than the app. You pay for the time of not having to develop, of course. You also pay for something that is secure, audits its transactions, allows flexible reporting, maybe works across multiple time zones, maybe with multiple languages, maybe allows different database technology, and maybe integrates with other stuff you have. You want training. You want support. You want the ability to upgrade into new versions or onto new OS/HW platforms. And you want to yell at something when your expensive app doesn't work, as opposed to someone yelling at you for all the money they've sunk into their home-grown solution.
I think your point is valid for a lot of projects. And I think a lot of companies overspend on solutions because they don't understand their needs or overinflate their risk. But there are a lot of complicated systems that 2 people could never pull off without so much time that the technology moves before you get the app out the door.
The review stuff for Word is pretty good IMO, except for this weird switching of context when someone edits your document and sends it back. We use the document compare features frequently, as the employees are scattered all other the place and it allows us to mark up documents for review. However, I agree that the version stuff is pretty useless, since it bloats the file sizes into the stratosphere pretty quickly. Even modest documents become 5M attachments after a few versions.
The real question is whether these features are worth the money, or the number of years it takes to get produced. I know Microsoft has an army of developers working for them, but I can't help wonder what they do given how little these programs change from version to version.
Are there any substantial features (or visual slickness) to Microsoft PowerPoint since 1996? Does anyone actually use the "ER Diagrammer" and "AutoCAD Import" of Visio (given how buggy they are, I can't imagine any serious work with them). Has anything changed in Microsoft Project since 1998? I know you still can't export "reports", since they only exist as a Print Preview image. Frankly, Microsoft product version upgrades are relatively "feature change free" in retrospect.
Of course, Microsoft products are off-the-shelf, and not really "enterprise" products.