ISS worms killed plenty of web businesses, unlike Apache. Did he count those jobs that remain safe with Apache and go to hell with ISS???
Internet Explorer vulnerabilities make plenty of people hate computers, and stop using the Internet. What do you think having fewer customers mean??? More jobs???
Improving computing and the Internet as a whole CREATES JOBS. Microsoft crap KILLS JOBS.
For god's sake! THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL. Ditto may be an expert in chaos theory, but the content of the article makes no sense whatsoever to any trained scientist. The whole blood-sucking thing is hilarious (and an attempt to help the reader understand that this is an April's fool). The Economist really pulled your leg on this one!:):):):D:D:D
It has been clear for some years that most countries are very unhappy with the existing OS monopoly. Given how critical IT has become, it is simply unacceptable to rely on a single, foreign vendor like Microsoft. Linux (in some evolved or forked form) will be the standard OS everywhere, at least outside the US. Other open source projects, like FreeBSD, may also conquer quite a few markets. Paradoxically, the only solution is an free, open source Windows, but I doubt Microsoft is so brave!
The amount of damage a single probe can make to an entire ecology is infinitesimal, it doesn't matter how radiactive it is. Come on, even a nuke will not destroy it! Biological contamination is a different matter, though...
Well, software has a well-known life cycle, and this is what forces developer to rewrite code. After some point in the life of a software project, bug fixing and adding features becomes so complicated that it is not cost effective to maintain the software anymore. It is simply better to rewrite with the new set of requirements derived from the life of the original project. Apache is a good example. The old version works very well, but adding each new feature is a nightmare, so they collected the existing requirements, and using their new insights coming from years of experience they rewrote the whole system. Sure, it will be a while before it is as stable, but the code is much better. Also, I can think of many example in which the rewrite ended up being much better, such as Netscape, the rewrite of Mosaic.
It depresses me to think that any open medium can be so easily undermined by people with no scruples, no sense of responsibility and no idea of the damage they are doing.
Well, welcome to humanity. Yes, most (?) people are responsible, but some are not. In the real world, people can do what they did in Bagdad today, or in New York in Sep 11, or in Columbine, so yes, some people have no scruples. The behavior of people on the Internet is no different. Those without scruples can do any imaginable damage. The Internet needs the same weapons to fight those without scruples that are available in the real world: police forces and laws. Those that still believe on the "Truly-Free-No-Responsability- Internet" are either unaware of human nature or anarchists. Both groups of people are just destroying the Internet, our most best communication medium ever.
The guys that found this vulnerability have an amusing web site. It looks rather professional for the underground (?) community. I bet the wear white coats while they hack.
Yes, it will happen, since they will be the hydrogen industry. They have the money, they have the expertise, they have the distribution networks, and they do not want to depend on the third-world or war-torn nations for their supply. The way I see this, the hydrogen industry is the best thing that could happen to the oil industry (at least in the US). Guess who is now pushing for this... G.W. Bush, a guy that is the oil industry.
The present invention provides a virtual network, sitting "above" the physical connectivity
We call this the Internet (late 60s). Or the telegraph (XIXth century).
and thereby providing the administrative controls necessary to link various communication devices via an Access-Method-Independent Exchange.
Also known as Patent-Nonsense-Is-Stealing (as old as patent system)
In accordance with the present invention, connectivity is provided by a series of communication primitives designed to work with each of the specific communication devices in use.
The Internet Protocol (IP) RFC 791 September 1981.
Intraprocess, as well as Interprocess, services are available.
Interprocess: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) RFC 793 September 1981.
Intraprocess: main memory ENIAC 1946.
..and so on. This is plain nonsense and any competent lawyer will win the case against this atent. Not even OJ Simpson's pals can play this practical joke on a federal court.
Everything you're pointing out is very true, but there's an important disadvantage in rebates: many consumers hate rebates and they will avoid them at all cost. For example, I never buy anything with a rebate. I have lost money in the past, and I will not do it again. There're just too many thing that can go wrong and too much hassle, so I just don't consider products with rebates anymore. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, and companies that rely on rebates too much end up loosing many customers. It's not worthy, and that's why smarter companies that want to stay in business don't do rebates.
I can't wait until we can attribute violence to the nightly news.
Bowling for Columbine is certainly making that point. US citizens are constanly bombarded with news from the wars and violent conflicts in which the US is involved. The idea is that this sort of news, and in general, this type of government policy, constantly shows that violence and killing are acceptable solutions. Iraq is a great example of this. I do think this is an important point, but it is much easier to blame videogames than government policy. Furthermore, government policy has an impact in the way everybody thinks, while videogames only affect those that play violent games (if it affects them at all).
Among other things, web-based games need flash! (or something similar). Waronline.net is a really cool web-based real-time strategy game that uses Flash very effectively. This wouldn't work in HTML! When you need some fast, complex local interaction, HTML is just not enough, so you either use Flash or Java applets (usually too heavy).
This is actually quite encouraging. Having an organization that deals with the painful process of contacting each vendor and major user of a program with a newly discovered vulnerability is a major improvement. They also seem to have the law behind them (is this true?), so we finally have someone that can force people to fix security holes. I don't quite like the homeland-security big-brother model, but it worked nicely in this case and got the job done, something pretty hard in the Internet jungle.
The study looked at a single part of an operating systems (TCP/IP stack) and then the posting made a very general claim about open source software. This is cheap engineering (a.k.a. bad science). Period. You need a much larger sample to make such a claim. A single data point is meaningless. In fact, I believe that code bugs are much more a function of programmer performance and code complexity than open vs. close source development model. Opening the code may have a positive impact, but it is not the major factor to consider. The last thing Open Source needs is this kind of marketing strategies...
I glanced at this book before, and I found it totally useless. The few ideas presented are already well-known facts about software engineering, heavily adorned with buzzwords like extreme programming and agile software. I did not see a single idea that was not present in Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month", that was written back in the 70s. Do not waste your time with this: I'd much rather read a classic, timeless work on project management and its challenges that this scum. If you want to look at contemporary, more applied works, I recommend Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" and "Code Complete".
How can someone be so hungry to try to eat a laptop??? This is almost as disgusting as
eating cats
...
OSS and Immortal Code
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
One of the true beauties OSS is its immortality. Given the "deep" copying of source code from OSS projects (there're many many repositories), it's hard to believe that we will ever lose any software developed in this way. In addition, good, useful OSS is iterated over and over. Just look at Emacs for example. I like to think that Science and OSS work the same way: result/programs are published and reviewed over and over by other scientists/programmers. Some projects will achieve amazing level of perfection, just as some theories, like quantum mechanics, are exceptionally accurate and useful. It took many iterations to get that theory right, as it takes many iterations to create perfect code.
And the Internet Made an Enemy
on
Shutting down Kazaa
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The world media corporations are scared to death of the Internet and how file sharing is quickly decreasing their revenue. At some point they are going to realize that the Internet, as we know it today, is their main enemy (rather than just file sharing applications). Don't you think they will try really hard to lobby for killing the Internet? I know, I know, they can and they do sell content on-line, but the threat is too great, and they may push really hard to create a new network with such draconian control that no piracy will take place. Do you think this is a real threat? Will they succeed? As a first step, they could simply buy a few of the major ISPs (most are bankrupt) and impose content filtering. They certainly have enough money to fight this war...
It's time for/. to be more polite. You should tell web server administrators that they are going to get x100 load increase, at least a couple of hours ahead of time, so they can try to do something. This will benefit slashdotter (increasing the chances of accessing the web sites featured in the stories), and administrators, that will be able to simplify their sites, or at least know what hit them. And no, hiding the hand is not a good policy.
Let's get this straight. The web uses the HTTP protocol, not FTP, so this web-enabled spacecraft headline is misleading. Browsers include an anonymous FTP client, so you can navigate and download from FTP servers, but that doesn't mean FTP is part of the web. The piece of news is the use of out-of-the-box Internet protocols in a spacecraft. It is great news. Save money by using solid, well-known technologies. This is part of the agenda of the new NASA, and it is basically good. You cannot reinvent the wheel in every mission.
BTW, you still need a deep space antenna to contact the spacecraft, so it cannot be hacked unless the attacker breaks into a well-protected NASA site.
That's right. You only need a sexy blonde in the movie and people will pour into the theaters, so why should Hollywood care about plots and explore the interesting side of the franchise (i.e., the rise of Skynet)? Good plots require time to develop, and a thinking audience. This is way too complicated in a very simple business... We are here to make $100 million, not a good movie, so let's put more sexy blondes and forget about everything else.
Wait and see. T3 will work, so Hollywood will get yet another reinforcement of their movie industry model. Give people what they want. Help them be even more braindead. Skynet, please, come and save us from our pitiful future!
Well, good tape systems are very reliable. In my job, we make very heavy use of a 200-TB tape silo, and, in the last 5 years, not a single tape went bad. I would call this excellent reliability, given that we have more than 4000 tapes.
Yes, let's make OSS look like M$... This is about free software, that you can use in any platform, in any way you want. As people use OSS more and more, the OS will matter less and less, that is the only way to get rid of monopolies (call them M$ or Linux, they can be as bad).
Slashdot Mirror
ISS worms killed plenty of web businesses, unlike Apache. Did he count those jobs that remain safe with Apache and go to hell with ISS???
Internet Explorer vulnerabilities make plenty of people hate computers, and stop using the Internet. What do you think having fewer customers mean??? More jobs???
Improving computing and the Internet as a whole CREATES JOBS. Microsoft crap KILLS JOBS.
For god's sake! THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL. Ditto may be an expert in chaos theory, but the content of the article makes no sense whatsoever to any trained scientist. The whole blood-sucking thing is hilarious (and an attempt to help the reader understand that this is an April's fool). The Economist really pulled your leg on this one! :) :) :) :D :D :D
It has been clear for some years that most countries are very unhappy with the existing OS monopoly. Given how critical IT has become, it is simply unacceptable to rely on a single, foreign vendor like Microsoft. Linux (in some evolved or forked form) will be the standard OS everywhere, at least outside the US. Other open source projects, like FreeBSD, may also conquer quite a few markets. Paradoxically, the only solution is an free, open source Windows, but I doubt Microsoft is so brave!
A rumor is circulating that Gnome was using an unpatched IIS... I wish they would run Linux, it is much more secure, believe me.
The amount of damage a single probe can make to an entire ecology is infinitesimal, it doesn't matter how radiactive it is. Come on, even a nuke will not destroy it! Biological contamination is a different matter, though...
Well, software has a well-known life cycle, and this is what forces developer to rewrite code. After some point in the life of a software project, bug fixing and adding features becomes so complicated that it is not cost effective to maintain the software anymore. It is simply better to rewrite with the new set of requirements derived from the life of the original project. Apache is a good example. The old version works very well, but adding each new feature is a nightmare, so they collected the existing requirements, and using their new insights coming from years of experience they rewrote the whole system. Sure, it will be a while before it is as stable, but the code is much better. Also, I can think of many example in which the rewrite ended up being much better, such as Netscape, the rewrite of Mosaic.
The guys that found this vulnerability have an amusing web site. It looks rather professional for the underground (?) community. I bet the wear white coats while they hack.
Yes, it will happen, since they will be the hydrogen industry. They have the money, they have the expertise, they have the distribution networks, and they do not want to depend on the third-world or war-torn nations for their supply. The way I see this, the hydrogen industry is the best thing that could happen to the oil industry (at least in the US). Guess who is now pushing for this... G.W. Bush, a guy that is the oil industry.
Interprocess: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) RFC 793 September 1981.
Intraprocess: main memory ENIAC 1946.
..and so on. This is plain nonsense and any competent lawyer will win the case against this atent. Not even OJ Simpson's pals can play this practical joke on a federal court.
Everything you're pointing out is very true, but there's an important disadvantage in rebates: many consumers hate rebates and they will avoid them at all cost. For example, I never buy anything with a rebate. I have lost money in the past, and I will not do it again. There're just too many thing that can go wrong and too much hassle, so I just don't consider products with rebates anymore. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, and companies that rely on rebates too much end up loosing many customers. It's not worthy, and that's why smarter companies that want to stay in business don't do rebates.
Among other things, web-based games need flash! (or something similar). Waronline.net is a really cool web-based real-time strategy game that uses Flash very effectively. This wouldn't work in HTML! When you need some fast, complex local interaction, HTML is just not enough, so you either use Flash or Java applets (usually too heavy).
2003-01-16 23:28:15 Could Microsoft Go Fully Open Source? (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
This is actually quite encouraging. Having an organization that deals with the painful process of contacting each vendor and major user of a program with a newly discovered vulnerability is a major improvement. They also seem to have the law behind them (is this true?), so we finally have someone that can force people to fix security holes. I don't quite like the homeland-security big-brother model, but it worked nicely in this case and got the job done, something pretty hard in the Internet jungle.
Open Code Has Fewer Bugs
The study looked at a single part of an operating systems (TCP/IP stack) and then the posting made a very general claim about open source software. This is cheap engineering (a.k.a. bad science). Period. You need a much larger sample to make such a claim. A single data point is meaningless. In fact, I believe that code bugs are much more a function of programmer performance and code complexity than open vs. close source development model. Opening the code may have a positive impact, but it is not the major factor to consider. The last thing Open Source needs is this kind of marketing strategies...I glanced at this book before, and I found it totally useless. The few ideas presented are already well-known facts about software engineering, heavily adorned with buzzwords like extreme programming and agile software. I did not see a single idea that was not present in Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month", that was written back in the 70s. Do not waste your time with this: I'd much rather read a classic, timeless work on project management and its challenges that this scum. If you want to look at contemporary, more applied works, I recommend Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" and "Code Complete".
How can someone be so hungry to try to eat a laptop??? This is almost as disgusting as eating cats ...
One of the true beauties OSS is its immortality. Given the "deep" copying of source code from OSS projects (there're many many repositories), it's hard to believe that we will ever lose any software developed in this way. In addition, good, useful OSS is iterated over and over. Just look at Emacs for example. I like to think that Science and OSS work the same way: result/programs are published and reviewed over and over by other scientists/programmers. Some projects will achieve amazing level of perfection, just as some theories, like quantum mechanics, are exceptionally accurate and useful. It took many iterations to get that theory right, as it takes many iterations to create perfect code.
The world media corporations are scared to death of the Internet and how file sharing is quickly decreasing their revenue. At some point they are going to realize that the Internet, as we know it today, is their main enemy (rather than just file sharing applications). Don't you think they will try really hard to lobby for killing the Internet? I know, I know, they can and they do sell content on-line, but the threat is too great, and they may push really hard to create a new network with such draconian control that no piracy will take place. Do you think this is a real threat? Will they succeed? As a first step, they could simply buy a few of the major ISPs (most are bankrupt) and impose content filtering. They certainly have enough money to fight this war...
It's time for /. to be more polite. You should tell web server administrators that they are going to get x100 load increase, at least a couple of hours ahead of time, so they can try to do something. This will benefit slashdotter (increasing the chances of accessing the web sites featured in the stories), and administrators, that will be able to simplify their sites, or at least know what hit them. And no, hiding the hand is not a good policy.
Let's get this straight. The web uses the HTTP protocol, not FTP, so this web-enabled spacecraft headline is misleading. Browsers include an anonymous FTP client, so you can navigate and download from FTP servers, but that doesn't mean FTP is part of the web. The piece of news is the use of out-of-the-box Internet protocols in a spacecraft. It is great news. Save money by using solid, well-known technologies. This is part of the agenda of the new NASA, and it is basically good. You cannot reinvent the wheel in every mission. BTW, you still need a deep space antenna to contact the spacecraft, so it cannot be hacked unless the attacker breaks into a well-protected NASA site.
That's right. You only need a sexy blonde in the movie and people will pour into the theaters, so why should Hollywood care about plots and explore the interesting side of the franchise (i.e., the rise of Skynet)? Good plots require time to develop, and a thinking audience. This is way too complicated in a very simple business... We are here to make $100 million, not a good movie, so let's put more sexy blondes and forget about everything else. Wait and see. T3 will work, so Hollywood will get yet another reinforcement of their movie industry model. Give people what they want. Help them be even more braindead. Skynet, please, come and save us from our pitiful future!
Well, good tape systems are very reliable. In my job, we make very heavy use of a 200-TB tape silo, and, in the last 5 years, not a single tape went bad. I would call this excellent reliability, given that we have more than 4000 tapes.
Yes, let's make OSS look like M$... This is about free software, that you can use in any platform, in any way you want. As people use OSS more and more, the OS will matter less and less, that is the only way to get rid of monopolies (call them M$ or Linux, they can be as bad).