Do you even know what the EAL levels mean??? I'll bet any amount of money you don't. Especially since you're touting an EAL4 piece of software as being better than EAL2 piece of software. You see EAL4 means an audit of your OS design methodology, the software itself is never tested by anybody except the developer at this level. That's right, the software itself need never even be booted up for an EAL4 certification. So you cannot infer that an EAL4 certified piece of software is provably and certifiably superior to an EAL2 piece of software because that's not a part of the certification process at that level, it only certifies the development methodology and documentation.
Now, you want to impress me, show me an EAL7 certified operating system (ie. formally verified design and tested). It's gonna be hard though because there are none yet.
We have "standard" C++ libraries now??? Just kidding. I'd say yeah, C and C++ being the basis of the languages would mean they're the same. If we're going to isolate.NET libraries then we may as well say people using RogueWave are using another language too.
I think (not sure) that the problem is that VB uses a lot of undocumented APIs and memory "tricks" that WINE just plain doesn't like. I totally agree with you about the support for VB and Access. VB apps (and especially ActiveX controls) are a nasty sticking point when it comes to conversions but a LOT of "internal" apps seem to have been written using it. Yeah it sucks but it's one of those shitty facts that can't just be ignored away. It's easy enough to get the source code to these apps (if they're internal) to try and convert them but toss one ActiveX control in there and you've made your task exponentially harder. If MS intended to glue users to Windows using VB/ActiveX, they did a fantastic job.
As for the WINE devs, I can't tell them what to do with their free time. On the non-free side of things, Codeweavers does a good job with business apps but so far they only support the "big dog" apps. It would get really interesting if they were to add support for VB applications but that's a tall order to fill.
Tariffs are based on value. However, it's easy to set a common value for hardwood lumber but it's not so easy to affix a common value on intangible goods like software or consulting services. That's my point. Here's an example abuse of a tariff system on intangible goods:
Moonsoft opens a "development" center in Canada. This newly formed Canadian company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Moonsoft, contracts all it's development work to India. All that gets reported back to the parent company is the profit/loss of the Canadian company while the "software" product moves at whatever price Moonsoft decides they want to pay tariffs on, say $1, to the parent company.
The situation gets even trickier if Moonsoft opens a development center in India directly. Since there's no auditable unit for work sent to the Indian subsidiary, what will the tariffs be charged on?
The tax any software/services/consulting provided by foreign organizations to US organizations only works if a company is wholly based in the US with no foreign subsidiaries. Unfortunately, the multinationals are the ones doing the bulk of the exporting of jobs.
I'm not saying a "tariff-like" idea is bad, I'm just saying that the tariff system itself can't be used *effectively* for intangible goods.
To head off into the realm of "never", a really effective solution to offshore outsourcing issue would be a labor law whereby companies with a US presence would be obliged to maintain a profit per headcount target of say 1 headcount per $100K profit.
At least you tried. WINE is not a panacea and any apps written in VB rather than WinAPI/MFC are notoriously tough to get working on WINE. After all, you've got an interpreter running on an interpreter in those situations so it's twice as tricky. You're best bet would be Win4Lin terminal server instead of WINE and simply serve the GUIs out to the clients. I had a similar situation where I had to get a 16-bit VB 3.0 app working and WINE consistently choked on it (not surprising since nobody is working on the 16-bit emulation anymore). Anyhow, Win4Lin (not terminal server though) was the cheapest / easiest solution since they already had WinME licenses and they've been humming along for almost a year that way.
For anybody else reading this, VB apps are an absolute terror to get working under WINE. If you're considering a Linux migration, be weary of these particular apps and have a backup plan.
I'm not saying yes or no -but- remember that tariffs are very effective on physical goods since those goods all go through customs on their way in/out. That's arguably not so easy with "work units" and it's very easy to spot loopholes to exploit any system they try to put in place. If you have an offshore subsidiary farming out the work, then where's the tariff going to be collected? Since there's no effective way of measuring a "work unit" there's no effective way of running it through the customs system.
Microsoft first and foremost don't make money from backstabbing, they make money from selling people tools.
That's really only addressing the wording of the parent's post. Of course MS makes money from selling people tools but you need a market to sell into and getting that market is 90% of the work of making a sale. MS makes (some, not all) sales by stealing it's partners' markets. Think of it as piggy-backing on the partner to gain traction and then shutting them out. Just do a little research on MS's partnerships with IBM, Sybase, and Corel for examples. The only companys I know of that weren't noticably hurt with an MS partnership are Citrix and Symantec, even then MS introduced their "Terminal Server" and bought out Symantec competitor GeCAD suspiciously soon after those partnerships were formed.
As for Plan B, that's possible but I highly doubt it. MS makes the bulk of it's profits from Windows and Office, not dev tools. MS cannot loose the Windows market or the Office market and remain the company it is today. I think MS is tolerating the Mono and DotGNU projects because it's not impacting their market, it's very low profile, and they don't believe it's perceived as a viable alternative. That's probably accurate outside the/. crowd. However, if those projects ever start to gain credibility and be seen as a migration path off of Windows, I'm certain you'll see MS shut those down. Judging by the imperceptible impacts of non-Windows ASP runtimes, they appear to be adopting the same "wait and see" strategy.
I think you're right, they haven't sued anybody over their software patents. Kudos to them for that. However, MS, for all it's talk about IP sure seems to do an about face when they're violating somebody's IP. When it's about funding SCO's lawsuit against Linux by "respecting their IP" it's all fine and good, but when somebody asks Microsoft to respect their IP and pay up, they fight tooth and nail.
Now that that's out of the way, I don't like this patent and I think it's is a prime example of how software patents are eventually going to kill this industry. Software patents and business method patents need to be abolished, end of story.
I just can't imagine this not giving the user a pounding headache after a few hours. It's one thing to create 3D using perspective on a 2D screen but to implement it by using the shift in the focal points, better keep the bottle of aspirin handy.
Actually, Slashdot only mentions the export of tech jobs but it's happening in many other service fields too. I've heard of legal research, accouting, and medical transciption work being exported out of the US too.
Good admins make secure servers, not an operating system, despite what the zealots would have us believe.
That makes now sense. An admin is only as good as their operating system will allow them to be. A good admin working with an insecurable operating system is unlikely to be responsible for a breach. A poor admin working with a securable operating system is likely to be responsible for a breach.
Is a Formula 1 driver who fails to finish a race because of mechanical failure a worse driver than another who does finish the race but in last place? The car is a vehicle for the driver's skill set just like an OS is a vehicle for the admin's skill set.
Ummm... this article has one hell of a sping on it. What exactly was breached? I find it highly doubtful that the Linux kernel was breached since there are a scare few modules within the kernel tree that expose network services. Rather, they even state that 3rd party applications are mostly to blame.
Another thing to note, these are specific targeted attacks and not "viruses and worms" which they apparently track as another category. Does anybody know who won in that category?
Anyhow, within more specifics, this article is about as poignant as saying, "More people die in their homes than in the ocean, so you are safer being in the ocean".
That's not true. If you are employed by a consulting organization *outside* the US, you can work in the US but get paid in your country of employment. I did an almost year long stint in Sweden working for a US consulting firm and certainly did not pay Swedish income taxes. I also did a 6 month project in Canada and did not pay Canadian income tax. If an Indian consultant works in the US but is employed in India, they also would not pay US income tax.
Why a new name when it does the same thing that's been going on over networks for the last 20 years?
Probably because the folks in marketing think new names sell more software and services. Wasn't there a Dilbert on this a while back?
Re:Maybe it time to start working on HURD
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't think for one second the ass monkeys at SCO wouldn't claim something similar against "the next big thing". What's needed here is a crushing defeat of SCO (I mean losing in court, fines, delisting, bankruptcy, and SEC criminal charges) to discourage any copy-cat claims in the future.
The problem is that the court system is notoriously slow and SCO is milking that lag to the best of it's ability. SCO's day in court will come in April 2005 and they're going to get slaughtered but until then the best we can do is to keep refuting any evidence they leak or make public and keep our cool. There's an old saying that "it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for" and I fully expect IBM to prove that true in 2005.
Problem is we're running out of names in IT. If not Web Services then what?
Network Services... taken
Remote Services... taken
Shared Services... taken
Pluggable Services... taken
Grid Services... taken
We need a new name, something that's kinda "Net" but not used yet. How about "Scattered" or "Decentralized", or are those taken too? I think a good acronym would have been less confusing and more importantly would result in fewer questions.
Anyhow, a lot of words just to say "I agree", the "Web" portion just serves to confuse the folks who approve the budgets.
The salary levels makes sense to me but the increases are way out of whack from anything I've heard. I haven't heard of any salary decreases but I know of VERY few companies in the valley that do not have salary freezes in place. I've heard of a few targeted (ie. not across the board) raises and even those are only in the sub 5% range. So, if somebody would please post the names of those companies in the valley that are offering the 20% increases needed to pull the average up to 6% it would be much appreciated.
Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux. Linux requires knowing a lot of intricate details and knowledge of...
Right, but this is irrelevant in Java. Also, Java suffers from history hangover. It had some growing pains but most of those have long since been corrected. Also, MS seems to have a penchant for comparing unoptimized Java code with highly optimized C# code, hardly unbiased. Finally, with Java 1.5 due out in early 2004, current comparisons between.NET and Java will all become dated. I'm not particularly worried about.NET but Microsoft appears to be particularly worried about Java.
TV Control - after the popular Remote Control
Recording Machine - after the Answering Machine
TV Magnet - after the ever tacky fridge magnet
In hindsight, those all suck, but I'd pick Recording Machine if I had to pick one because the TV Guide folks probably have a trademark on the initials TV already.
Sounds alot like the guts of a Tivo system. As for being weak, all the heavy lifting (encoding/decoding video) is done in hardware, not software, so you don't need a huge amount of processing power. However, that would explain the exciting selection of games including tic-tac-toe and snakes, yeehaw. I'm throwing out my PS2 as we speak!
Assuming you're not trolloing, and it is a toy, then you'd better get busy and tell the NSA, US Army, US Navy, NOAA, LANL, Exxon, BP, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Citigroup, Morgan Stanely, Merrill Lynch, Caterpillar, Siemans, 3M, Home Depot, Fedex, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Verizon, Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Cisco, Motorola, Novell, CA, and Borland among others because they obviously didn't get the same information you did.
You're ignoring that that $0.50 fee times 10 million copies of a game is $5 million dollars in pure bottom line extra gravy. As for what it has to do with the iPod, absolutely nothing. It would be a *nice feature* to be able to have pluggable codecs for the iPod but it's certainly not impacting iPod sales in any material way to not have this feature so we won't be seeing it anytime soon.
I think Ogg Vorbis is good technology, I use it, it sounds great and it compresses a file of equivalent bitrates smaller than MP3 (not 50% smaller though, maybe 20%). However, Joe Pirate has most likely never heard of it and wouldn't know what it meant if "Now with Ogg Vorbis support!" was plastered all over an iPod box at BestBuy. We live in a society where the majority of the people get their information from marketers, not Slashdot or (coughs) any other unbiased source.
Simple, it costs more, and it doesn't really matter by how much. You'd be surprised at how single minded companies are when it comes to per unit costs. Fixed costs they could almost care less about but try to increase a budget by $1 more *per unit* and people go absolutely fricken nuts. You're right though, if a competing cable modem maker offered a unit for the *same price* they might be able to steal the business away from the existing supplier or, at the very least, convince the existing supplier to add the firewall functionality gratis.
Yeah but you can't just float stock whenever you want to, you have to register the float with the SEC. It looks great on paper but it's not money in the bank until you've sold stock into the market to materialize that value. It will only take one defeat in a courtroom to send SCO back to the verge of delisting. It would suck like hell if they miraculously exacted a victory though.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you even know what the EAL levels mean??? I'll bet any amount of money you don't. Especially since you're touting an EAL4 piece of software as being better than EAL2 piece of software. You see EAL4 means an audit of your OS design methodology, the software itself is never tested by anybody except the developer at this level. That's right, the software itself need never even be booted up for an EAL4 certification. So you cannot infer that an EAL4 certified piece of software is provably and certifiably superior to an EAL2 piece of software because that's not a part of the certification process at that level, it only certifies the development methodology and documentation.
Now, you want to impress me, show me an EAL7 certified operating system (ie. formally verified design and tested). It's gonna be hard though because there are none yet.
Here, read this.
We have "standard" C++ libraries now??? Just kidding. I'd say yeah, C and C++ being the basis of the languages would mean they're the same. If we're going to isolate .NET libraries then we may as well say people using RogueWave are using another language too.
I think (not sure) that the problem is that VB uses a lot of undocumented APIs and memory "tricks" that WINE just plain doesn't like. I totally agree with you about the support for VB and Access. VB apps (and especially ActiveX controls) are a nasty sticking point when it comes to conversions but a LOT of "internal" apps seem to have been written using it. Yeah it sucks but it's one of those shitty facts that can't just be ignored away. It's easy enough to get the source code to these apps (if they're internal) to try and convert them but toss one ActiveX control in there and you've made your task exponentially harder. If MS intended to glue users to Windows using VB/ActiveX, they did a fantastic job.
As for the WINE devs, I can't tell them what to do with their free time. On the non-free side of things, Codeweavers does a good job with business apps but so far they only support the "big dog" apps. It would get really interesting if they were to add support for VB applications but that's a tall order to fill.
Tariffs are based on value. However, it's easy to set a common value for hardwood lumber but it's not so easy to affix a common value on intangible goods like software or consulting services. That's my point. Here's an example abuse of a tariff system on intangible goods:
Moonsoft opens a "development" center in Canada. This newly formed Canadian company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Moonsoft, contracts all it's development work to India. All that gets reported back to the parent company is the profit/loss of the Canadian company while the "software" product moves at whatever price Moonsoft decides they want to pay tariffs on, say $1, to the parent company.
The situation gets even trickier if Moonsoft opens a development center in India directly. Since there's no auditable unit for work sent to the Indian subsidiary, what will the tariffs be charged on?
The tax any software/services/consulting provided by foreign organizations to US organizations only works if a company is wholly based in the US with no foreign subsidiaries. Unfortunately, the multinationals are the ones doing the bulk of the exporting of jobs.
I'm not saying a "tariff-like" idea is bad, I'm just saying that the tariff system itself can't be used *effectively* for intangible goods.
To head off into the realm of "never", a really effective solution to offshore outsourcing issue would be a labor law whereby companies with a US presence would be obliged to maintain a profit per headcount target of say 1 headcount per $100K profit.
At least you tried. WINE is not a panacea and any apps written in VB rather than WinAPI/MFC are notoriously tough to get working on WINE. After all, you've got an interpreter running on an interpreter in those situations so it's twice as tricky. You're best bet would be Win4Lin terminal server instead of WINE and simply serve the GUIs out to the clients. I had a similar situation where I had to get a 16-bit VB 3.0 app working and WINE consistently choked on it (not surprising since nobody is working on the 16-bit emulation anymore). Anyhow, Win4Lin (not terminal server though) was the cheapest / easiest solution since they already had WinME licenses and they've been humming along for almost a year that way.
For anybody else reading this, VB apps are an absolute terror to get working under WINE. If you're considering a Linux migration, be weary of these particular apps and have a backup plan.
I'm not saying yes or no -but- remember that tariffs are very effective on physical goods since those goods all go through customs on their way in/out. That's arguably not so easy with "work units" and it's very easy to spot loopholes to exploit any system they try to put in place. If you have an offshore subsidiary farming out the work, then where's the tariff going to be collected? Since there's no effective way of measuring a "work unit" there's no effective way of running it through the customs system.
Microsoft first and foremost don't make money from backstabbing, they make money from selling people tools.
/. crowd. However, if those projects ever start to gain credibility and be seen as a migration path off of Windows, I'm certain you'll see MS shut those down. Judging by the imperceptible impacts of non-Windows ASP runtimes, they appear to be adopting the same "wait and see" strategy.
That's really only addressing the wording of the parent's post. Of course MS makes money from selling people tools but you need a market to sell into and getting that market is 90% of the work of making a sale. MS makes (some, not all) sales by stealing it's partners' markets. Think of it as piggy-backing on the partner to gain traction and then shutting them out. Just do a little research on MS's partnerships with IBM, Sybase, and Corel for examples. The only companys I know of that weren't noticably hurt with an MS partnership are Citrix and Symantec, even then MS introduced their "Terminal Server" and bought out Symantec competitor GeCAD suspiciously soon after those partnerships were formed.
As for Plan B, that's possible but I highly doubt it. MS makes the bulk of it's profits from Windows and Office, not dev tools. MS cannot loose the Windows market or the Office market and remain the company it is today. I think MS is tolerating the Mono and DotGNU projects because it's not impacting their market, it's very low profile, and they don't believe it's perceived as a viable alternative. That's probably accurate outside the
I think you're right, they haven't sued anybody over their software patents. Kudos to them for that. However, MS, for all it's talk about IP sure seems to do an about face when they're violating somebody's IP. When it's about funding SCO's lawsuit against Linux by "respecting their IP" it's all fine and good, but when somebody asks Microsoft to respect their IP and pay up, they fight tooth and nail.
Now that that's out of the way, I don't like this patent and I think it's is a prime example of how software patents are eventually going to kill this industry. Software patents and business method patents need to be abolished, end of story.
I just can't imagine this not giving the user a pounding headache after a few hours. It's one thing to create 3D using perspective on a 2D screen but to implement it by using the shift in the focal points, better keep the bottle of aspirin handy.
Actually, Slashdot only mentions the export of tech jobs but it's happening in many other service fields too. I've heard of legal research, accouting, and medical transciption work being exported out of the US too.
c/now/no
Good admins make secure servers, not an operating system, despite what the zealots would have us believe.
That makes now sense. An admin is only as good as their operating system will allow them to be. A good admin working with an insecurable operating system is unlikely to be responsible for a breach. A poor admin working with a securable operating system is likely to be responsible for a breach.
Is a Formula 1 driver who fails to finish a race because of mechanical failure a worse driver than another who does finish the race but in last place? The car is a vehicle for the driver's skill set just like an OS is a vehicle for the admin's skill set.
Ummm ... this article has one hell of a sping on it. What exactly was breached? I find it highly doubtful that the Linux kernel was breached since there are a scare few modules within the kernel tree that expose network services. Rather, they even state that 3rd party applications are mostly to blame.
Another thing to note, these are specific targeted attacks and not "viruses and worms" which they apparently track as another category. Does anybody know who won in that category?
Anyhow, within more specifics, this article is about as poignant as saying, "More people die in their homes than in the ocean, so you are safer being in the ocean".
That's not true. If you are employed by a consulting organization *outside* the US, you can work in the US but get paid in your country of employment. I did an almost year long stint in Sweden working for a US consulting firm and certainly did not pay Swedish income taxes. I also did a 6 month project in Canada and did not pay Canadian income tax. If an Indian consultant works in the US but is employed in India, they also would not pay US income tax.
Why a new name when it does the same thing that's been going on over networks for the last 20 years?
Probably because the folks in marketing think new names sell more software and services. Wasn't there a Dilbert on this a while back?
Don't think for one second the ass monkeys at SCO wouldn't claim something similar against "the next big thing". What's needed here is a crushing defeat of SCO (I mean losing in court, fines, delisting, bankruptcy, and SEC criminal charges) to discourage any copy-cat claims in the future.
The problem is that the court system is notoriously slow and SCO is milking that lag to the best of it's ability. SCO's day in court will come in April 2005 and they're going to get slaughtered but until then the best we can do is to keep refuting any evidence they leak or make public and keep our cool. There's an old saying that "it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for" and I fully expect IBM to prove that true in 2005.
Problem is we're running out of names in IT. If not Web Services then what?
... taken ... taken ... taken ... taken ... taken
Network Services
Remote Services
Shared Services
Pluggable Services
Grid Services
We need a new name, something that's kinda "Net" but not used yet. How about "Scattered" or "Decentralized", or are those taken too? I think a good acronym would have been less confusing and more importantly would result in fewer questions.
Anyhow, a lot of words just to say "I agree", the "Web" portion just serves to confuse the folks who approve the budgets.
The salary levels makes sense to me but the increases are way out of whack from anything I've heard. I haven't heard of any salary decreases but I know of VERY few companies in the valley that do not have salary freezes in place. I've heard of a few targeted (ie. not across the board) raises and even those are only in the sub 5% range. So, if somebody would please post the names of those companies in the valley that are offering the 20% increases needed to pull the average up to 6% it would be much appreciated.
Finally, it is quite obvious that stupid people find it easier to program in Windows. This is not true on linux. Linux requires knowing a lot of intricate details and knowledge of ...
.NET and Java will all become dated. I'm not particularly worried about .NET but Microsoft appears to be particularly worried about Java.
Right, but this is irrelevant in Java. Also, Java suffers from history hangover. It had some growing pains but most of those have long since been corrected. Also, MS seems to have a penchant for comparing unoptimized Java code with highly optimized C# code, hardly unbiased. Finally, with Java 1.5 due out in early 2004, current comparisons between
This seems like fun, here are my 3 contibs:
TV Control - after the popular Remote Control
Recording Machine - after the Answering Machine
TV Magnet - after the ever tacky fridge magnet
In hindsight, those all suck, but I'd pick Recording Machine if I had to pick one because the TV Guide folks probably have a trademark on the initials TV already.
Sounds alot like the guts of a Tivo system. As for being weak, all the heavy lifting (encoding/decoding video) is done in hardware, not software, so you don't need a huge amount of processing power. However, that would explain the exciting selection of games including tic-tac-toe and snakes, yeehaw. I'm throwing out my PS2 as we speak!
Assuming you're not trolloing, and it is a toy, then you'd better get busy and tell the NSA, US Army, US Navy, NOAA, LANL, Exxon, BP, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Citigroup, Morgan Stanely, Merrill Lynch, Caterpillar, Siemans, 3M, Home Depot, Fedex, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Verizon, Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Cisco, Motorola, Novell, CA, and Borland among others because they obviously didn't get the same information you did.
You're ignoring that that $0.50 fee times 10 million copies of a game is $5 million dollars in pure bottom line extra gravy. As for what it has to do with the iPod, absolutely nothing. It would be a *nice feature* to be able to have pluggable codecs for the iPod but it's certainly not impacting iPod sales in any material way to not have this feature so we won't be seeing it anytime soon.
I think Ogg Vorbis is good technology, I use it, it sounds great and it compresses a file of equivalent bitrates smaller than MP3 (not 50% smaller though, maybe 20%). However, Joe Pirate has most likely never heard of it and wouldn't know what it meant if "Now with Ogg Vorbis support!" was plastered all over an iPod box at BestBuy. We live in a society where the majority of the people get their information from marketers, not Slashdot or (coughs) any other unbiased source.
Simple, it costs more, and it doesn't really matter by how much. You'd be surprised at how single minded companies are when it comes to per unit costs. Fixed costs they could almost care less about but try to increase a budget by $1 more *per unit* and people go absolutely fricken nuts. You're right though, if a competing cable modem maker offered a unit for the *same price* they might be able to steal the business away from the existing supplier or, at the very least, convince the existing supplier to add the firewall functionality gratis.
Yeah but you can't just float stock whenever you want to, you have to register the float with the SEC. It looks great on paper but it's not money in the bank until you've sold stock into the market to materialize that value. It will only take one defeat in a courtroom to send SCO back to the verge of delisting. It would suck like hell if they miraculously exacted a victory though.