Re:Also, there are more addresses!
on
The State of IPv6
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· Score: 1
The US portion of address space is probably considerably more than 25%. Look how many US companies or institutions have class A addresses.
Speaking of class A address assignments... How many of them actually need nearly 17 million Internet-addressable IPs? It's this type of waste (both in assignment and initial design) that is causing the real crunch in IPV4 space.
Re:IP6s problem is the numeric addresses r so comp
on
The State of IPv6
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· Score: 1
That depends on if your typo is in the least or most significant part of the address space.
You won't have much of an effect other than a few chuckles by some. Even if they are actually accepting faxes as the same number (unlikely) it is more likely to go to files on a hard drive somewhere than to actual hard copy.
This assembly line type of legal attack on a corporation or government will only do bad in the long run because each and every corporation/government entity with an insurance policy will be driven out of business by a continuous parade of frivioulous lawsuits.
If they are basing their business on breaking the law, then don't you think they SHOULD be run into the ground?? Imagine if a company figures out how to make money by occasionally coming by peoples' homes and chopping into the house with an Axe. Should we cry foul when those people want to turn around and sue?
Junk faxing doesn't just piss people off.. it IS against the law.
Since they didn't advertise the product - per se - they figured they could get away without advertising side-effects.
Ahhh.. maybe that explains it. If Microsoft doesn't actually advertise the product then they get to leave off disclaimers like: "May enslave you to MS Products." "DRMed files may only work with the application which created them." "Servers running MS operating systems have a higher than average occurance of security incedents." or "May cause excessive weight loss in the wallet area.";-)
They say the average yearly income for their artists is around $1500. While this isn't much, most bands actually end up in DEBT to their label. Also, there is nothing in Magnatune's contract to prevent a band from selling their own CDs or making deals with other labels... just that Magnatune also gets to continue selling the songs they've already given them.
They want *everybody* to associate their company with something. Beer advertising is the epitomy of this. I mean, Coors can't sell their beer when you search for "piss water", can they?;) Instead, they show the mountains, the clear mountain streams, and a whole lot of other crap to sell an image of refreshment or relaxation.
I think it's an interesting trend that commercials are showing less and less of the actual product or it's "features" and are selling more and more by emotion. Some commercials don't even show the product they are selling or even tell you what the heck it does (the drug commercials showing someone wind-surfing over a wheat field come to mind.)
I find it amusing that MS-Office Suite commercials seem to be saying, "Our customers are idiots!" One commercial shows office staff dumping water over a coworker's head (and his report and the printer, floor, etc.) Another has people cutting down a projection screen with scissors (bet a real life office manager would love that, huh?) And, does the MS-Office Suite really inspire users to spin their new laptop on the flooor and do a "victory dance" with the rest of the company watching? If so, I don't think I want to give it to my laptop users.
They MUST make more money on the annoyance than they lose, otherwise it would stop.
Therefore X-10 must be making BANK!
I wonder if these advertisers have any clue how much the lose in sales. Not like most of us are going to send a "I was going to buy from you but I hate popups." message.
I was, in fact, going to do a whole home automation thing with X10 products way back before they started abusing pop-ups. Now the only way I'll do a home automation setup is if I find a different vendor.
I could forgive some vendors for using popups, but I won't cut any slack to those who use "pop-up blocker evasion" techniques. It shouldn't be a battle between me and businesses. If I'm blocking pop-ups, that means I don't want them... period.
The linux development goes on more or less as usual... less some time for Linus or others to take interviews from the press. IBM's Linux development is very likely moving at the same pace it always had.
They may have taken steps to ensure that current programmers had never had any access to protected UNIX or AIX code, but I doubt it goes much further than that.
Surveys show that adoption of Linux is being affected very little by this thing.
IBM already has enough lawyers to darken the skys and a few million $ spent probably will be more than offset by the press and PR of it all when things are finally settled.
As far as I can see only SCO is really being affected. They haven't produced anything new for some time so that's notthe issue... but according to their SEC filings, this thing is costing them millions. (Something like $9 million in the last quarter alone.)
Dan, Bill Gates, Linus, they're all credible experts on the subject.
Sure.. but at least with Bill and Linus you KNOW where the bias is. Dan comes accross in his article as just some poor embeded Linux developer who has been burned by using Linux, has seen the light, and is just warning the rest of us.
Again, I'm not saying his opinions are valueless, or that they should simply be dismissed. What I'm saying is that a little more disclosure would have been appreciated. What's wrong with that?
I would have been satisfied if the mini-bio at the bottom of the article had said, "Dan O'Dowd is President and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software,Inc., which sells real time operating systems. (Santa Barbara, Calif.)" Or, preferably some type of disclaimer early in the article.
I'm certainly not saying he shouldn't be allowed to write an article. Just that, as it is, readers may not know there is any type of conflict.
I would think that if dust was the real problem they could have had some type of film roll (think of a roll of plastic wrap) that unrolled on one side and was taken up on the other.
I'm thinking along the lines of what is used in NASCAR races over the in-car camera lens. When it gets too dirty, you can see it slide off to the side, replaced by a length of fresh, clean film.
Just how much dust "sticks" to an anti-static surface anyhow?
guy who comes to your office with the lead pipe and threatens to break your kneecaps unless you vote the way he tells you
Somehow I doubt it would be easy to significantly influance the results this way... unless of course you could convince a few thousand individuals to risk jail time by going to a few thousand offices with a few thousand baseball bats.
I usually have no problem falling asleep, but occasionally I'll find myself just lying in bed and tossing and turning. I've found that it is nearly always from being tense. In my early twenties I heard about a self-relaxation technique from some TV special (it was about meditation and "amazing feats" of the mind or something... not sleeping.)
As hoaky as this may sound when you read it, keep in mind that it has actually worked for me nearly every time I've tried it over the past 14 years or so. (Disclaimer... I am not a yoga kind of guy or any other type of metaphysical/spiritualistic/crystals/numerology practitioner or anything... this is just about getting your own body ready to sleep. Oh yeah, YMMV!)
Lay flat on your back. If you don't like to sleep on your back don't worry, I don't either.. you don't have to stay this way.
Picture yourself SLOWLY walking down a short flight of stairs into a dark room. Figure out how many steps you want (10-15 seems to be good) and count backwards with each step.
With each step, try to relax just a bit more and "sink" down against the mattress. And yes, I mean that literally... try to actually get your body parts closer to the mattress without lifting any other part up at all. That last bit is important.. the only way to *force* yourself down into the mattress is by lifting another part of your body up a little.. this is the opposite of what you are trying to do here.
When you reach the the bottom of the steps, you find several lights shaped like body parts (hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, head.) Whatever works for you.
Imagine turning each light off... left hand, left arm, right hand, right arm, left foot, left leg, etc.
As you turn off each light, imagine that you are turning off most of the nerves (feeling and movement) in that part and that all the energy is draining out into the air/room.With a little practice, they'll actually seem a little like they are heavier and "asleep" as you go.
After the last light is off, try to stay as relaxed as possible and turn over into the position you find you sleep best in or is most comfortable.
Like I said, I know this all sounds a bit hoaky, but damn if I'm not usually asleep within minutes after doing that. There have quite litteraly been times when I've tossed and turned for 1-2 hours then tried this and fell right to sleep. Again, YMMV, but good luck.
BTW, if the lightswitch thing is too low-tech for you, imagine energy-repelling forcefields are passing over parts of your body pushing the energy out of each part and finally out your big toe. lol... hey, it's your body. Do whatever works for you.
I used to have a dual-alarm clock from Radio Shack. It was perfect when I was single. Each alarm could be set to radio or tone and the volume could be adjusted independantly.
I'd set the first alarm to a fairly low volume radio and the 2nd to a full volume beeping tone about 3 minutes later than the first. I found that three minutes was plenty of time to wake up even to pretty low volume music... assisted by the knowledge that soon I'd be half blasted out of bed by the tone if I didn't get up and turn off the alarm. The three minutes was to keep me from falling too sound asleep again if I just snoozed the thing when the music started playing.
But alas marriage ruined that since it quickly became a his-and-hers alarm clock.
license software developers and make them accountable for security breaches
How will these licensed developers be held accountable? Lose their license? Have points awarded against them (as is done with driver's licenses in many places?) Will they face fines? Jail time?
Exactly who will be willing to take personal responsibility for a security breach? How many new legal cases will come up trying to prove that a breach is the "other guy's" fault? "We'll show, your honor, that it was the 'evil bit' hidden in the compiler that caused the security hole!" I suppose we'll see programmer malpractice insurance not long after too.
Would this mean we could go after MS for monetary damages? Somehow I doubt it. Would MS's recourse be to say "Don't worry, that developer has had his license revoked."?
This whole thing seems like a big CYA bid. Just make sure someone else is available to blame. Seems like they are saying, "We can't blame the hackers because we can't find them. But don't worry, you can blame the programmer now."
Regardless of the intent, I don't see this doing a bit of good for security. People with real talent, but who want to reliable income will shy away from a system which they could easily be responsible for damages, or alternatively lose a license to practice their trade. I have a wife and kids... no matter what I think of my skills, if I'm at the mercy of every hacker out there I'll find another field.
So, the result will be that it will become very HARD to hold someone responsible. Action, if ever taken, will be only in events of gross negligence. Security *may* improve short term. But, if we drive out all but the risk-takers I suspect that security will go down and the quality will go down too.
In the end I just see an institutionalized profession which hasn't given us any real benefits.
This seems like just another knee-jerk-silver-bullet attempt to fix an embarassing problem. Why do I picture a meeting somewhere running late and somebody jumps up saying, "Hey, I know! We'll license programmers and hold them responsible for breaches." Followed by, "Yeah, and licensed programmers will get higher pay, so there is an incentive right there!" Then "Discussion? None? All in favor..." And whispers of "Great.. I'll be home in time for dinner tonight!"
1:50 Are you smoking the same crack as SCO? In my company we run comparable to that and we support a region that is five hours from one end to the other. Where did you get that number????? We run anywhere from 1:200 to 1:600 on our support model.
Even though you apparently have no idea what the actual ratio in your company is (1:200 to 1:600 is a pretty damn big range) it does not mean that your company is consistant with the *average* in business. Based on my experience working with a variety of businesses over the past decade or so, 1:50 is indeed a fairly common ratio.
Basically, I didn't just pull these numbers out of my butt. According to this article ratios from 1:30-125 are realistic in business depending on type of use. Also, this breakdown comes up with a 50:1 ratio. Do some research and you'll find most studies recommend a *maximum* ratio of 1:100 for businesses.
On the other end, in education, this study found school district tech staff ratios averaged "1:250-1:350" with some larger districts having as high as 1:1315 ratio!
So, just because you chose to send a knee-jerk reply based on your narrow sample (one business) doesn't mean your results are at all typical. BTW, the same study shows *some* schools with as low as 1:20 to 1:125 ratio (dependant partially on school district size) but they also say these are mostly charter schools and do not represent the typical public school district. And besides, I did say "average" and not "all" when talking about both business and education staffing.
An important point is that this is a PC-to-support ratio, not user-to-support. The school environment, by neccessity, creates a VERY high user-to-support ratio. Based on my own experience, I have to agree completely with the study's findings that "Very little staff is dedicated to directly assisting teachers with the use of technology to enhance their teaching. This probably means that available hardware and software are underutilized or inefficiently utilized, and that technology-related academic expectations for the district are either limited or not fully achieved."
Re:source code escrow not very useful
on
Source Code Escrow
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· Score: 1
there is no way to know how clean and maintainable the code is
With open source, sorry to say that, you have the same problem.
But with open source you can have someone look over *all* the code any time you want. And, if you actually have any in-house programmers they have the option of asking the developer questions like, "What are you doing here in this function? I don't understand it." It's reasonable to expect that at this point you still have a good relationship with your developer and can expect decent answers to that type of question.
Re:source code escrow not very useful
on
Source Code Escrow
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The biggest problem I would have with this type of escrow situation is that there is no way to know how clean and maintainable the code is until the original developers are gone. Are there comments, are they meaningful. Is the code easy to follow, or does it look like this?
Will my in-house programmers be able to work with it right away, or will they spend the next 6-9 months just figuring out how it works? Will *anybody* but the original programmer know anything about how it works?
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of class A address assignments... How many of them actually need nearly 17 million Internet-addressable IPs? It's this type of waste (both in assignment and initial design) that is causing the real crunch in IPV4 space.
That depends on if your typo is in the least or most significant part of the address space.
You won't have much of an effect other than a few chuckles by some. Even if they are actually accepting faxes as the same number (unlikely) it is more likely to go to files on a hard drive somewhere than to actual hard copy.
If they are basing their business on breaking the law, then don't you think they SHOULD be run into the ground?? Imagine if a company figures out how to make money by occasionally coming by peoples' homes and chopping into the house with an Axe. Should we cry foul when those people want to turn around and sue?
Junk faxing doesn't just piss people off.. it IS against the law.
John... I really like being able to re-download if needed, btw. Good work.
Ahhh.. maybe that explains it. If Microsoft doesn't actually advertise the product then they get to leave off disclaimers like: ;-)
"May enslave you to MS Products." "DRMed files may only work with the application which created them." "Servers running MS operating systems have a higher than average occurance of security incedents." or "May cause excessive weight loss in the wallet area."
They say the average yearly income for their artists is around $1500. While this isn't much, most bands actually end up in DEBT to their label. Also, there is nothing in Magnatune's contract to prevent a band from selling their own CDs or making deals with other labels... just that Magnatune also gets to continue selling the songs they've already given them.
If this means you just jump to the next page without seeing the ad... great! It'll probably spur even more people to alternate browsers.
If it means you can never even get to the next page without IE and WMP... then I guess I'll be avoiding a dozen specific web sites from now on.
I think it's an interesting trend that commercials are showing less and less of the actual product or it's "features" and are selling more and more by emotion. Some commercials don't even show the product they are selling or even tell you what the heck it does (the drug commercials showing someone wind-surfing over a wheat field come to mind.)
I find it amusing that MS-Office Suite commercials seem to be saying, "Our customers are idiots!" One commercial shows office staff dumping water over a coworker's head (and his report and the printer, floor, etc.) Another has people cutting down a projection screen with scissors (bet a real life office manager would love that, huh?) And, does the MS-Office Suite really inspire users to spin their new laptop on the flooor and do a "victory dance" with the rest of the company watching? If so, I don't think I want to give it to my laptop users.
I wonder if these advertisers have any clue how much the lose in sales. Not like most of us are going to send a "I was going to buy from you but I hate popups." message.
I was, in fact, going to do a whole home automation thing with X10 products way back before they started abusing pop-ups. Now the only way I'll do a home automation setup is if I find a different vendor.
I could forgive some vendors for using popups, but I won't cut any slack to those who use "pop-up blocker evasion" techniques. It shouldn't be a battle between me and businesses. If I'm blocking pop-ups, that means I don't want them... period.
They may have taken steps to ensure that current programmers had never had any access to protected UNIX or AIX code, but I doubt it goes much further than that.
Surveys show that adoption of Linux is being affected very little by this thing.
IBM already has enough lawyers to darken the skys and a few million $ spent probably will be more than offset by the press and PR of it all when things are finally settled.
As far as I can see only SCO is really being affected. They haven't produced anything new for some time so that's notthe issue... but according to their SEC filings, this thing is costing them millions. (Something like $9 million in the last quarter alone.)
Sure.. but at least with Bill and Linus you KNOW where the bias is. Dan comes accross in his article as just some poor embeded Linux developer who has been burned by using Linux, has seen the light, and is just warning the rest of us.
Again, I'm not saying his opinions are valueless, or that they should simply be dismissed. What I'm saying is that a little more disclosure would have been appreciated. What's wrong with that?
I'm certainly not saying he shouldn't be allowed to write an article. Just that, as it is, readers may not know there is any type of conflict.
I would think that if dust was the real problem they could have had some type of film roll (think of a roll of plastic wrap) that unrolled on one side and was taken up on the other.
I'm thinking along the lines of what is used in NASCAR races over the in-car camera lens. When it gets too dirty, you can see it slide off to the side, replaced by a length of fresh, clean film.
Just how much dust "sticks" to an anti-static surface anyhow?
I doubt very much that a heavy slashdotting will do much to bring the site down anyhow.
Hey, no problem. After all, isn't that exactly what /. is all about. >;)
"No.. no.. you don't want to pick *him* he's the wrong candidate." ;-)
Somehow I doubt it would be easy to significantly influance the results this way... unless of course you could convince a few thousand individuals to risk jail time by going to a few thousand offices with a few thousand baseball bats.
As hoaky as this may sound when you read it, keep in mind that it has actually worked for me nearly every time I've tried it over the past 14 years or so. (Disclaimer... I am not a yoga kind of guy or any other type of metaphysical/spiritualistic/crystals/numerology practitioner or anything... this is just about getting your own body ready to sleep. Oh yeah, YMMV!)
Like I said, I know this all sounds a bit hoaky, but damn if I'm not usually asleep within minutes after doing that. There have quite litteraly been times when I've tossed and turned for 1-2 hours then tried this and fell right to sleep. Again, YMMV, but good luck.
BTW, if the lightswitch thing is too low-tech for you, imagine energy-repelling forcefields are passing over parts of your body pushing the energy out of each part and finally out your big toe. lol... hey, it's your body. Do whatever works for you.
I used to have a dual-alarm clock from Radio Shack. It was perfect when I was single. Each alarm could be set to radio or tone and the volume could be adjusted independantly.
I'd set the first alarm to a fairly low volume radio and the 2nd to a full volume beeping tone about 3 minutes later than the first. I found that three minutes was plenty of time to wake up even to pretty low volume music... assisted by the knowledge that soon I'd be half blasted out of bed by the tone if I didn't get up and turn off the alarm. The three minutes was to keep me from falling too sound asleep again if I just snoozed the thing when the music started playing.
But alas marriage ruined that since it quickly became a his-and-hers alarm clock.
Actually, given past missions, perhaps a goal of crashing into something and making a crater is ideal for a NASA project. ;)
Exactly who will be willing to take personal responsibility for a security breach? How many new legal cases will come up trying to prove that a breach is the "other guy's" fault? "We'll show, your honor, that it was the 'evil bit' hidden in the compiler that caused the security hole!" I suppose we'll see programmer malpractice insurance not long after too.
Would this mean we could go after MS for monetary damages? Somehow I doubt it. Would MS's recourse be to say "Don't worry, that developer has had his license revoked."?
This whole thing seems like a big CYA bid. Just make sure someone else is available to blame. Seems like they are saying, "We can't blame the hackers because we can't find them. But don't worry, you can blame the programmer now."
Regardless of the intent, I don't see this doing a bit of good for security. People with real talent, but who want to reliable income will shy away from a system which they could easily be responsible for damages, or alternatively lose a license to practice their trade. I have a wife and kids... no matter what I think of my skills, if I'm at the mercy of every hacker out there I'll find another field.
So, the result will be that it will become very HARD to hold someone responsible. Action, if ever taken, will be only in events of gross negligence. Security *may* improve short term. But, if we drive out all but the risk-takers I suspect that security will go down and the quality will go down too.
In the end I just see an institutionalized profession which hasn't given us any real benefits.
This seems like just another knee-jerk-silver-bullet attempt to fix an embarassing problem. Why do I picture a meeting somewhere running late and somebody jumps up saying, "Hey, I know! We'll license programmers and hold them responsible for breaches." Followed by, "Yeah, and licensed programmers will get higher pay, so there is an incentive right there!" Then "Discussion? None? All in favor..." And whispers of "Great.. I'll be home in time for dinner tonight!"
Basically, I didn't just pull these numbers out of my butt. According to this article ratios from 1:30-125 are realistic in business depending on type of use. Also, this breakdown comes up with a 50:1 ratio. Do some research and you'll find most studies recommend a *maximum* ratio of 1:100 for businesses.
On the other end, in education, this study found school district tech staff ratios averaged "1:250-1:350" with some larger districts having as high as 1:1315 ratio!
So, just because you chose to send a knee-jerk reply based on your narrow sample (one business) doesn't mean your results are at all typical. BTW, the same study shows *some* schools with as low as 1:20 to 1:125 ratio (dependant partially on school district size) but they also say these are mostly charter schools and do not represent the typical public school district. And besides, I did say "average" and not "all" when talking about both business and education staffing.
An important point is that this is a PC-to-support ratio, not user-to-support. The school environment, by neccessity, creates a VERY high user-to-support ratio. Based on my own experience, I have to agree completely with the study's findings that "Very little staff is dedicated to directly assisting teachers with the use of technology to enhance their teaching. This probably means that available hardware and software are underutilized or inefficiently utilized, and that technology-related academic expectations for the district are either limited or not fully achieved."
But with open source you can have someone look over *all* the code any time you want. And, if you actually have any in-house programmers they have the option of asking the developer questions like, "What are you doing here in this function? I don't understand it." It's reasonable to expect that at this point you still have a good relationship with your developer and can expect decent answers to that type of question.
Will my in-house programmers be able to work with it right away, or will they spend the next 6-9 months just figuring out how it works? Will *anybody* but the original programmer know anything about how it works?