I guess everyone would agree that there is some merit to the concept of defense in depth. That said, recognise that the typical user (i.e. those most likely to be hacked) will generally not do anything about an intrusion as long as they can continue to work. I think a result of better intrusion tolerance would be a significant increase in the number of long term compromised systems.
It is more likely that the trade barrier being described would be for sale of hardware rather than for software.
No... amazingly enough, the system they complained about was based on an Intel processor. This must be seen in the context of the political and economic climate of the time. The US was having its head handed to it in most consumer electronics areas. They were terrified that, if the desktop market in Japan was based on a (superior) architecture developed in Japan, they would lose the entire market. To say nothing of what might have happened in the rest of the world...
The action against TRON by the US (government and industry) in 1980 was an injustice. At the time, though, the US was in what it viewed as an economic fight for survival and "alls fair in love and war".
Google is one of the few complex services on the web that is almost always relevant when one tries to use it. The Google cache is one great feature. If they manage to unnecessarily gut that, I wonder what other features they will find to complain about next.
As many others have emphasised, it is easy to turn of the Google cache for whatever pages you wish. But, in the case of the NYT, there is a further factor. They must have special code within their system to recognise the google spider and allow it access without registration. Either that, or there is some other prior agreement allowing access. Given that, they can scarcely claim extra work to support Google. I believe the whole thing is mainly to get some free publicity for their site. I suppose the other possibility is that they want the page accessible from Google News but not the regular search engine cache.
Actually, I doubt whether spam is Chad Deckard's (at least) main form of income. Nevertheless, there is evidence that organisations associated with him posted spam. In his case, there may well be significant damage to his other businesses. He seems to sell himself as a consultant and I expect many potential clients will find the spam thread. Will this have a significant effect on spamming generally? Surely not. Have they succeeded in hurting this specific spammer? I believe, yes!
Chad is also a business savant who has studied and solved every kind of business question, problem, and challenge that has encroached him over his business career.
It will be interesting to see how well he copes with this problem.
When you consider that the average mainframes of the early '70s had around 512K (yes, "K") of memory (the big ones had a meg or two), you can understand the need to conserve memory.
Indeed, and actually 512K was a pretty large mainframe in the early '70s. I remember working with a 370/115 with only 64K and a 370/145 with originally 256K. The 370/145 was running VM/370 with DOS/VS, MVS and VS1 guests, as well as CMS users. As you can imagine, performance was not stellar!
Although I found the article interesting in terms of the modern developments in PC hard drives, it is a little misleading concerning the overall situation in the 1970s and 1980s.
To take the IBM mainframe example he quotes: yes, IBM originally used a CKD (count-key-data) architecture and this was still preferred in the late 1970s for highest performance applications. However, in the last 1970s, IBM already provided FBA (fixed block architecture) disk drives such as the 3370. These moved intelligence of disk geometry into the disk controller and were quite easy to program.
Other mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers had innovative schemes during the early 1980s.
Generalizing to all managers who don't understand the technical content misses the point
Very true. It has long been my view that the best managers of technical people are those who act as motivators and facilitators. While a strong technical grounding is sometimes an advantage (especially when judging who to assign to a project) limited technical knowledge does not necessarily prevent a manager from doing his job. It is important that a non technical manager knows his limitations, though, and is willing to defer on technical matters to those with superior knowledge.
Particularly during the dotcom boom, there was a widespread expectation that the Internet would lead to a worldwide free market in goods and services. The reality is that commerce is, in the most part, restricted by the same laws, customs and general prejudices as in the pre Internet era.
Where does the "vendor" accountability lie, with open source
Is this an attempted troll? The article clearly indicates that the contracts are with Fujitsu Ltd, IBM Japan Ltd and Oki Electric Industry Co. Insofar as vendor are ever held accountable for any software "failure/screwup/loss", these are pretty reputable organisations. It is also worth noting that Japanese do not think that way. The Japanese mindset is whether these organisations are "reliable partners" not "good potential litigation targets".
Since when does a payroll system require $300 million a year to MAINTIAN?
Actually about $3 billion: and this is apparently half current costs. I know computer system costs in Japan are high, but this does seem a bit excessive. If true, today's costs are about $6 billion to process the payroll of 800,000 employees or in the region of $7,500 per year per employee!
SCO is looking to get bought out. But not by IBM - by Microsoft.
Any wealthy company (possibly even including IBM) that bought SCO at this stage would be crazy. At some stage, when SCO's claims have been completely debunked, the claims against SCO start for damage to business and/or repuation of a long list of individuals and organisations. As long as SCO is a small independent company with very limited financial resources, this is not very relevant. But what large organisation would take the risk of billions in damages?
Now, SCO's argument is that even if they did distribute Linux, they weren't aware of their code allegedly being in Linux. However, and this is important, they continued to distribute it afterward - and not a day or two, but a full month after disclosure.
If you accept their argument that the company is so blitheringly incompetent that they did not realise that major parts of UnixWare were in Linux, it is surely consistent to accept an argument that they did not realise they has web servers that were distributing that source code.
In the last few years, Thailand has, in some ways, seemed to be trying to emulate Singapore. The nightlife has been significantly toned down (discos that once opened until 6.00am are now all closed by 2.00am; nude dancing in the gogo bars stamped out etc.). This has been popular with the silent majority who believe in traditional values.
This reported change seems to just be more of the same. Force everyone to behave according to some perceived ideal.
Based on my experience, the main effect will will be making some coppers very rich. Kids who want to play will still generally be able to do so. They will pay higher prices at Internet Cafes that make payoffs to the friendly neighbourhood police force.
If there were anything even remotely real about SCO's allegations, then this would be extremely significant in Japan. It is not to do with the legal position. The business climate in Japan is totally different to that in the US. In Japan, ethics and probity are critical. If SCO could provide convincing evidence that their trade secrets had been infringed in Linux, Japanese organisations would take a big financial hit to avoid using it. However, they will look at any claims with a fine toothcomb before accepting them. Actually, the impact of McBride's visit will be an excellent indication of whether we have anything at all to worry about.
Why do we keep posting articles that we know are only to impose FUD on the Linux/Open source community?
Because the potential impact of this FUD is genuinely scary. Sure, you and I know that this stuff is without foundation. It looks different to corporate lawyers and CEOs who lack the technical background to judge the accuracy of the claims. To be honest, I am even slightly apprehensive of what might eventually happen in court. I could well imagine a jury unable to appreciate the utter worthlessness of SCO's case.
... one possibility does worry me. Imagine a scenario where the government wants to deal with money laundering once and for all. They create banknotes with RFIDs (this is already possible). They further treat banknotes where the RFID has been tampered with in any way as damaged notes.
When you draw money from an ATM, it is known which notes you received. They can track your movements and spending accordingly. Of course, much of this if true of credit cards now. However, people use cash specifically in an attempt to retain some privacy in their personal lives.
I really want SCO totally demolished over this case, but your referenced article is painfully weak. For example,
If IBM actually allowed System V code to leak into other operating systems, SCO would only need to identify the leaks. They would be removed overnight, and their removal would be accompanied by apologies and a check covering realistic damages. That appears to be what happened when UnixSystem Labs teamed with Novell to take the University of California, Berkeley to court, claiming that System V leaked into BSD Unix. USL/Novell proved three instances of leakage, which were promptly plugged. When it was Berkeley's turn at the podium, it identified mountains of reverse leakage -- BSD code that was stripped of BSD's copyright text and pasted into System V. Oops. The plaintiffs quickly settled and had the settlement terms sealed.
Firstly, IBM would fight tooth and nail to protect its reputation for probity in respect of IP. Secondly, the quick settlement referred to respecting the Berkeley vs Novell/USL dispute took about 18 months to resolve. Sure, by the standards of US litigation this was fast but scarcely an immediate solution. Thirdly, Novell bought USL: not quite the same as teaming up with them. Lastly, the solution that was negotiated is misrepresented. The article suggests two separate cases whereas the settlement was largely a trade off between the respective violations of the two parties.
Microsoft is probably the least able to produce this product. Translation software? Show us that you have this technology. (Yeah right.) You want to translate on the fly on text filled with abbreviations and slang?
Okay, show us that you can do this. Show us your model (AND make it no more than 12 inches square!). Given their record breaking incompetence, there is no way in God's green acres that Microsoft has this technology workable or will have it in the near future.
If Microsoft really want this, they will just rip off someone else's solution. Sure, even then, it probably will not work very well, but that never stopped Microsoft yet.
the message is translated prior to transmission, not upon reaching the recipient. Does any prior art cover this?
Well, I have worked with database systems where the language of the screen displays is selected based on a user profile: the screens are transmitted already translated to the client (admittedly not on the fly translation).
I have also used a little known service called Google that uses preferences to decide which language I normally work with and to offer translations from other languages to this language. This translation is also done prior to delivery to the client.
On the other hand, Microsoft may be the first vendor to translate messages in a specific manner for a particular kind of messenger service.
The situation with software patents is becoming totally bizarre. Actually, I almost wonder if someone in the patent office is trying to help point up the absurdity to a degree where the need for changes in the law will become obvious even to the US Congress.
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I guess everyone would agree that there is some merit to the concept of defense in depth. That said, recognise that the typical user (i.e. those most likely to be hacked) will generally not do anything about an intrusion as long as they can continue to work. I think a result of better intrusion tolerance would be a significant increase in the number of long term compromised systems.
No ... amazingly enough, the system they complained about was based on an Intel processor. This must be seen in the context of the political and economic climate of the time. The US was having its head handed to it in most consumer electronics areas. They were terrified that, if the desktop market in Japan was based on a (superior) architecture developed in Japan, they would lose the entire market. To say nothing of what might have happened in the rest of the world ...
The action against TRON by the US (government and industry) in 1980 was an injustice. At the time, though, the US was in what it viewed as an economic fight for survival and "alls fair in love and war".
Google is one of the few complex services on the web that is almost always relevant when one tries to use it. The Google cache is one great feature. If they manage to unnecessarily gut that, I wonder what other features they will find to complain about next.
As many others have emphasised, it is easy to turn of the Google cache for whatever pages you wish. But, in the case of the NYT, there is a further factor. They must have special code within their system to recognise the google spider and allow it access without registration. Either that, or there is some other prior agreement allowing access. Given that, they can scarcely claim extra work to support Google. I believe the whole thing is mainly to get some free publicity for their site. I suppose the other possibility is that they want the page accessible from Google News but not the regular search engine cache.
Actually, I doubt whether spam is Chad Deckard's (at least) main form of income. Nevertheless, there is evidence that organisations associated with him posted spam. In his case, there may well be significant damage to his other businesses. He seems to sell himself as a consultant and I expect many potential clients will find the spam thread. Will this have a significant effect on spamming generally? Surely not. Have they succeeded in hurting this specific spammer? I believe, yes!
Chad is also a business savant who has studied and solved every kind of business question, problem, and challenge that has encroached him over his business career.
It will be interesting to see how well he copes with this problem.
Do not worry. If using Win98 as a production hosting server, they would be too busy problem solving to have time to breed!
Indeed, and actually 512K was a pretty large mainframe in the early '70s. I remember working with a 370/115 with only 64K and a 370/145 with originally 256K. The 370/145 was running VM/370 with DOS/VS, MVS and VS1 guests, as well as CMS users. As you can imagine, performance was not stellar!
To take the IBM mainframe example he quotes: yes, IBM originally used a CKD (count-key-data) architecture and this was still preferred in the late 1970s for highest performance applications. However, in the last 1970s, IBM already provided FBA (fixed block architecture) disk drives such as the 3370. These moved intelligence of disk geometry into the disk controller and were quite easy to program.
Other mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers had innovative schemes during the early 1980s.
Very true. It has long been my view that the best managers of technical people are those who act as motivators and facilitators. While a strong technical grounding is sometimes an advantage (especially when judging who to assign to a project) limited technical knowledge does not necessarily prevent a manager from doing his job. It is important that a non technical manager knows his limitations, though, and is willing to defer on technical matters to those with superior knowledge.
Particularly during the dotcom boom, there was a widespread expectation that the Internet would lead to a worldwide free market in goods and services. The reality is that commerce is, in the most part, restricted by the same laws, customs and general prejudices as in the pre Internet era.
Yes.
Note that, according to the article, the cost is specifically for the payroll system. AP, GL and HR systems are presumably extra.
Is this an attempted troll? The article clearly indicates that the contracts are with Fujitsu Ltd, IBM Japan Ltd and Oki Electric Industry Co. Insofar as vendor are ever held accountable for any software "failure/screwup/loss", these are pretty reputable organisations. It is also worth noting that Japanese do not think that way. The Japanese mindset is whether these organisations are "reliable partners" not "good potential litigation targets".
Actually about $3 billion: and this is apparently half current costs. I know computer system costs in Japan are high, but this does seem a bit excessive. If true, today's costs are about $6 billion to process the payroll of 800,000 employees or in the region of $7,500 per year per employee!
Any wealthy company (possibly even including IBM) that bought SCO at this stage would be crazy. At some stage, when SCO's claims have been completely debunked, the claims against SCO start for damage to business and/or repuation of a long list of individuals and organisations. As long as SCO is a small independent company with very limited financial resources, this is not very relevant. But what large organisation would take the risk of billions in damages?
If you accept their argument that the company is so blitheringly incompetent that they did not realise that major parts of UnixWare were in Linux, it is surely consistent to accept an argument that they did not realise they has web servers that were distributing that source code.
It's really 99% SCO Xenix inserted with IBM's help.
Based on my experience, the main effect will will be making some coppers very rich. Kids who want to play will still generally be able to do so. They will pay higher prices at Internet Cafes that make payoffs to the friendly neighbourhood police force.
If there were anything even remotely real about SCO's allegations, then this would be extremely significant in Japan. It is not to do with the legal position. The business climate in Japan is totally different to that in the US. In Japan, ethics and probity are critical. If SCO could provide convincing evidence that their trade secrets had been infringed in Linux, Japanese organisations would take a big financial hit to avoid using it. However, they will look at any claims with a fine toothcomb before accepting them. Actually, the impact of McBride's visit will be an excellent indication of whether we have anything at all to worry about.
Because the potential impact of this FUD is genuinely scary. Sure, you and I know that this stuff is without foundation. It looks different to corporate lawyers and CEOs who lack the technical background to judge the accuracy of the claims. To be honest, I am even slightly apprehensive of what might eventually happen in court. I could well imagine a jury unable to appreciate the utter worthlessness of SCO's case.
When you draw money from an ATM, it is known which notes you received. They can track your movements and spending accordingly. Of course, much of this if true of credit cards now. However, people use cash specifically in an attempt to retain some privacy in their personal lives.
If IBM actually allowed System V code to leak into other operating systems, SCO would only need to identify the leaks. They would be removed overnight, and their removal would be accompanied by apologies and a check covering realistic damages. That appears to be what happened when UnixSystem Labs teamed with Novell to take the University of California, Berkeley to court, claiming that System V leaked into BSD Unix. USL/Novell proved three instances of leakage, which were promptly plugged. When it was Berkeley's turn at the podium, it identified mountains of reverse leakage -- BSD code that was stripped of BSD's copyright text and pasted into System V. Oops. The plaintiffs quickly settled and had the settlement terms sealed.
Firstly, IBM would fight tooth and nail to protect its reputation for probity in respect of IP. Secondly, the quick settlement referred to respecting the Berkeley vs Novell/USL dispute took about 18 months to resolve. Sure, by the standards of US litigation this was fast but scarcely an immediate solution. Thirdly, Novell bought USL: not quite the same as teaming up with them. Lastly, the solution that was negotiated is misrepresented. The article suggests two separate cases whereas the settlement was largely a trade off between the respective violations of the two parties.
Okay, show us that you can do this. Show us your model (AND make it no more than 12 inches square!). Given their record breaking incompetence, there is no way in God's green acres that Microsoft has this technology workable or will have it in the near future.
If Microsoft really want this, they will just rip off someone else's solution. Sure, even then, it probably will not work very well, but that never stopped Microsoft yet.
Well, I have worked with database systems where the language of the screen displays is selected based on a user profile: the screens are transmitted already translated to the client (admittedly not on the fly translation). I have also used a little known service called Google that uses preferences to decide which language I normally work with and to offer translations from other languages to this language. This translation is also done prior to delivery to the client.
On the other hand, Microsoft may be the first vendor to translate messages in a specific manner for a particular kind of messenger service.
The situation with software patents is becoming totally bizarre. Actually, I almost wonder if someone in the patent office is trying to help point up the absurdity to a degree where the need for changes in the law will become obvious even to the US Congress.