Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Please tell me how a mail program that only deals with plain text can be compromised? When you've done that then tell me how a binary will get run without me knowing it via email. And after that explain why I would be dumb enough to run ANY executable from an unknown source that had not been suitably verified first and even then why exactly would I run then as root user so they could do some serious harm without testing it in a chroot jail first?
I'm sorry , what planet are you on? Security has been a major issue to some of us for over a decade AT LEAST! Just because MS suddenly pricked up its cloth ears only 5 years ago didn't mean other companies or instutions didn't give a damn. You think DEC was extolling the virtues of security in VMS back
in the 80s just for a laugh?? God I wish some of the people on here would realise that every issue in the computing industry didn't arrive when they personally became aware of it.
As a linux user I have to be very careful when I upload windows.exe files just in case they do something nasty like , umm... use up diskspace on my drive? Oh , but perhaps the spammer will get me to run a linux binary and I wouldn't have a clue what was going on as I saved the binary to my disk , opened an xterm , typed in its name and ran it? Yes , he'll have me fooled no doubt about that!
Variable assignment is one of the fundemental parts of programming a von neuman computer you clueless dork. You cannot get away from the concept of storing a value for later use whether you use C, assembler, Prolog, ML or 101 other languages. And as for your comment about arithmetic , well , thats just funny. Perhaps YOU should have been educated properly though somehow I'm not sure your sphincter would be listening.
The day I can get Word up and running on my Linux box WITHOUT it
A) Suddenly dying for no reason
B) Try to use so many uncompleted stub functions it doesn't work properly
C) Can't find x,y,z lib or such and such
D) doesn't lock up completely
is the day I'll think WINE is a useful tool. At the moment its an interesting diversion for a few minutes but as a productivity tool it sucks whole mountains , never mind rocks.
Maybe I'm missing something here but how exactly can you get your C# compiler to run under unix when the compiler is written in C# itself? That means you need an already existing unix C# compiler to compile it! Chicken and egg situation or am I missing something?
Most people would probably agree with you. I certainly do , but try telling this to the droids in these companies marketing departments where the mantra "complexity = good" is chanted on a daily basis.
"People who still use 2.0-kernels for their machines shouldn't use them for multi-user purposes in a hostile environment "
And why not exactly? If it was good enough for this purpose 3 years ago why isn't it good enough now? And if its got so many exploits how about you get them fixed? If you can't be bothered then let someone else do your job!
Umm , given the church was the establishment around the times I mentioned then they're opinion was somewhat important to the rest of the populace. You should read up a bit more history. And yes , da vinci's art was loved but his inventions were generally just a source of amusement in italy.
Wtf are you talking about? You got an issue with people charging for software? If so maybe you should go find some nice communist state to live in. Open Source is fine so long as its voluntary but people should not be EXPECTED to make something they've spent perhaps years developing free just because other people who are too lazy or stupid to reproduce the work themselves resent having to pay.
Any researcher who writes off someone of Wolframs calibre with such juvenille insults either is jealous , didn't understand any of it or has issues.
Whether the book is right or wrong its not "batshit" just because other people don't agree with it. Didn't they say something roughly similar about Galileo, Da Vinci, Newton, Darwin, Einstein etc originally?
"suspicions of many in scientific communities that he was taking advantage of a lot of other people's work for his sole financial gain "
Umm,yes , but so what? Doesn't that describe virtually every non fiction book (and a lot of fiction books too) every published? Everyone derives their knowledge from what has been discovered or created by people before. Any scientist who could write a science book WITHOUT referencing other peoples ideas or work would probably deserve a clutch of nobel prizes.
Its all very nice talking about space stations the moon and mars etc but really , its all a bit pointless until a type of propulsion technology is created than can get people off this planet as easily as an airliner taking off AND be used in space. Chemical fueled systems just don't cut
it and Ion engines are so underpowered as to be useless even in space (15 MONTHS just to get to the moon! Gimme a break!). What the solution is I don't know but currently we're still at the space vehicle equivalent of a canoe , not even a 16th century galleon, and if we wish to start exploring space then we're going to need something a damn site more useful than what we have at the moment.
"Nintendo has almost always been about great games."
Yeah , if you were under 12. For the teenage and adult market forget it, they don't have a clue. You look at any game on Nintendo kit aimed at older players and it'll be a 3rd party job , not a nintendo in-house.
I'm not going to wax lyrical about innovation etc, yes they did innovate in years past but thats being down now in console games. No , my issue is that years ago if you wanted to see what the cutting edge in graphics was (outside the military etc) you just went down the arcade and if you thought a game looked cool you put in some small change and had a go. These days if you want to see top quality graphics you have to fork out $$$$ for a hi-end PC and then more $$$$ for a game. But I'm not a dyed in the wool games junkie and I don't want to spend all that money for a few minutes of fun. So when the aumsement arcade finally dies (which it will, lets face it) people like me will have nowhere to go. Still, thats "progress" I suppose...
"even if your protocol is binary; the conversion is trivial"
Actually its not unless the person has the specs. Ever tried it? Oh I forgot , every on slashdot as a 190 IQ.
"What works for data files also works for data exchange"
Since when? XML data files are entities that only ger referenced occasionally and hence only have to be parsed occsaionally. They don't get referenced dozens of times a second. Instead of practising your tediously patronising acronyms why don't you practice getting a clue.
"IM chat streams are going to take a significant amount of bandwidth, no matter what format the use."
Isn't the art of good coding to make things as efficient as possible?
"How is downloading and calling the parse() method of any of several dozen free XML parsers "harder" than having to write and debug your own custom portable parser for a binary format?"
With a binary format the data can usually in whole or part be mapped direct onto a C structure. In other words the parsing is down for you in a few lines and uses up bugger all CPU.
"How is downloading and calling the parse() method of any of several dozen free XML parsers "harder" than having to write and debug your own custom portable parser for a binary format? "
I said CASUAL snooping. If someone can just run tcpdump on a LAN they can read all the correspondance going on. If they have to figure out the protocol they'll probably not bother unless they have malicious intent.
"XML was developed to solve a certain set of problems"
Yes it was, but being a high level network protocol was NOT one of them.
Yes , it must take all of a few days to evaluate your program compiled under different compilers. And as we all know , new compilers come out every few hours. Right?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Please tell me how a mail program that only deals with plain text can be compromised? When you've done that then tell
me how a binary will get run without me knowing it via email. And after that explain why I would be dumb enough to run ANY executable from an unknown source
that had not been suitably verified first and even then why exactly would I run then as root user so they could do some serious harm without testing it in a chroot jail first?
I'm sorry , what planet are you on? Security has been a major issue to some of us for over a decade AT LEAST! Just because MS suddenly pricked
up its cloth ears only 5 years ago didn't mean other companies or instutions didn't give a damn. You think DEC was extolling the virtues of security in VMS back
in the 80s just for a laugh?? God I wish some of the people on here would realise that every issue in the computing industry didn't arrive when they
personally became aware of it.
As a linux user I have to be very careful when I upload windows .exe files just in case they do something nasty like , umm ... use up diskspace
on my drive? Oh , but perhaps the spammer will get me to run a linux binary and I wouldn't have a clue what was going on as I saved the binary to my disk
, opened an xterm , typed in its name and ran it? Yes , he'll have me fooled no doubt about that!
Variable assignment is one of the fundemental parts of programming a von neuman computer you clueless dork. You cannot get away from the concept of storing a value for later use whether
you use C, assembler, Prolog, ML or 101 other languages. And as for your comment about arithmetic , well , thats just funny. Perhaps YOU should have been educated properly though somehow
I'm not sure your sphincter would be listening.
Last time I looked MS hadn't written one for Solaris, HP-UX, AIX etc.
The day I can get Word up and running on my Linux box WITHOUT it
A) Suddenly dying for no reason
B) Try to use so many uncompleted stub functions it doesn't work properly
C) Can't find x,y,z lib or such and such
D) doesn't lock up completely
is the day I'll think WINE is a useful tool. At the moment its an interesting diversion for a few minutes but as a productivity tool it sucks whole
mountains , never mind rocks.
Maybe I'm missing something here but how exactly can you get your C# compiler to run under unix when the compiler is written in C# itself? That
means you need an already existing unix C# compiler to compile it! Chicken and egg situation or am I missing something?
Ok , B is an outdated precursor to the C language so I'm not sure why that would be any use , but wtf is Z??
Most people would probably agree with you. I certainly do , but try telling this to the droids
in these companies marketing departments where
the mantra "complexity = good" is chanted on a daily basis.
"People who still use 2.0-kernels for their machines shouldn't use them for multi-user purposes in a hostile environment "
And why not exactly? If it was good enough for this purpose 3 years ago why isn't it good enough now? And if its got so many exploits how about
you get them fixed? If you can't be bothered then let someone else do your job!
Umm , given the church was the establishment around the times I mentioned then they're opinion was somewhat important to the rest of the populace. You should read up a bit more history.
And yes , da vinci's art was loved but his inventions were generally just a source of amusement in italy.
Wtf are you talking about? You got an issue with people charging for software? If so maybe you should go find some nice communist state to live in. Open Source is fine so long as its
voluntary but people should not be EXPECTED to make something they've spent perhaps years developing free just because other people who are too lazy or stupid to reproduce the work themselves
resent having to pay.
Any researcher who writes off someone of Wolframs calibre with such juvenille insults either is jealous , didn't understand any of it or has issues.
Whether the book is right or wrong its not "batshit" just because other people don't agree with it. Didn't they say something roughly similar about Galileo, Da Vinci, Newton, Darwin, Einstein etc
originally?
"suspicions of many in scientific communities that he was taking advantage of a lot of other people's work for his sole financial gain "
,yes , but so what? Doesn't that describe virtually every non fiction book (and a lot of fiction books too) every published? Everyone
Umm
derives their knowledge from what has been discovered or created by people before. Any scientist who could write a science book WITHOUT referencing
other peoples ideas or work would probably deserve a clutch of nobel prizes.
Its all very nice talking about space stations the moon and mars etc but really , its all a bit pointless until a type of propulsion technology is
created than can get people off this planet as easily as an airliner taking off AND be used in space. Chemical fueled systems just don't cut
it and Ion engines are so underpowered as to be useless even in space (15 MONTHS just to get to the moon! Gimme a break!). What the solution is I don't know but
currently we're still at the space vehicle equivalent of a canoe , not even a 16th century galleon, and if we wish to start exploring space then we're going
to need something a damn site more useful than what we have at the moment.
It might be rated teen but would you find anyone over the age of 7 playing it for more than a few minutes? Doubt it.
"Nintendo has almost always been about great games."
Yeah , if you were under 12. For the teenage and adult market forget it, they don't have a clue. You look at any game on Nintendo kit aimed at
older players and it'll be a 3rd party job , not a nintendo in-house.
I'm not going to wax lyrical about innovation etc, yes they did innovate in years past but
thats being down now in console games. No , my issue is that years ago if you wanted to see what the cutting edge in graphics was
(outside the military etc) you just went down the arcade and if you thought a game looked cool you put in some small change and had a go.
These days if you want to see top quality graphics you have to fork out $$$$ for a hi-end PC and then more $$$$ for a game.
But I'm not a dyed in the wool games junkie and I don't want to spend all that money for a few minutes of fun. So when the aumsement arcade
finally dies (which it will, lets face it) people like me will have nowhere to go. Still, thats "progress" I suppose...
"even if your protocol is binary; the conversion is trivial"
Actually its not unless the person has the specs. Ever tried it? Oh I forgot , every on slashdot as a 190 IQ.
"What works for data files also works for data exchange"
Since when? XML data files are entities that only ger referenced occasionally and hence only have to be parsed occsaionally. They don't get referenced dozens of times a second.
Instead of practising your tediously patronising acronyms why don't you practice getting a clue.
"A) Easier to parse"
...
Really? Since when? You go show me the code to an XML parser then compare it to something like:
struct data_packet { uint16_t id; uint32_t len
struct data_packet *dp = (struct datapacket *)read_buffer;
dp->id = ntohs(dp->id)
etc etc.
"C) Human readable"
Oh right, and thats a good thing when your passing private conversation over the internet it is?
"IM chat streams are going to take a significant amount of bandwidth, no matter what format the use."
Isn't the art of good coding to make things as efficient as possible?
"How is downloading and calling the parse() method of any of several dozen free XML parsers "harder" than having to write and debug your own custom portable parser for a binary format?"
With a binary format the data can usually in whole or part be mapped direct onto a C structure. In other words the parsing is down for you in a few
lines and uses up bugger all CPU.
"How is downloading and calling the parse() method of any of several dozen free XML parsers "harder" than having to write and debug your own custom portable parser for a binary format? "
I said CASUAL snooping. If someone can just run tcpdump on a LAN they can read all the correspondance going on. If they have to figure out the protocol they'll probably
not bother unless they have malicious intent.
"XML was developed to solve a certain set of problems"
Yes it was, but being a high level network protocol was NOT one of them.
XML is:
A) More bloated than a binary format
B) Harder to parse & hence less efficient that a binary format
C) Much easier to casually snoop on
Face it , XML is flavour of the month and trendy , it has zero advantages over formats.
Yes , it must take all of a few days to evaluate your program compiled under different compilers. And as we all know , new compilers come out every few hours. Right?
That would be a sensible solution. This is MS we're talking about. Besides , they love ignoring RFCs.
Its still sold in the CD-ROM case with the "rock solid stability" guff on the side.