I work for a small web company developing web apps for other small-to-medium sized companies. The one thing that you learn when you're in a small software company is that nobody wants to pay their bills.
This is hard to see from a large-company perspective, because as a developer you aren't the one collecting the money, you have accountants and lawyers and rabid CEOs that make sure you get your contract's worth one way or another. But small companies don't have this option--they can't afford lawyers or even the time to spend in court. They have to find where their next paycheck is coming from.
As a result, many of our clients have tried to jerk us around by either dragging their heels on payments or doing something underhanded like changing passwords to servers to try to lock us out and give us the finger. There have been instances where I've sent out a "it's all done, check it out" email and had the live server's passwords changed on me minutes later, follwed by a "we're not paying" response.
Simply put, backdoors are a small company's only assurance that it will be paid for the work it has done. Given, the backdoors that I put in aren't to r00t the server or take down a whole subnet, they're limited to disabling the application that we developed. Until the client has paid their bills, it's still our code, and we have every right to put in as many backdoors as we want.
That "inferior technology" tends to work on other platforms.
Your "superior technology" tends to work only on your "superior" OS. It also means that DirectX has a limited set of people that can direct its evolution, and that evolution can only proceed on one platform.
OpenGL, as "inferior" as it is, can continue to evolve and function on all platforms. If you had to write a graphics-intensive program that was multi-platform, you wouldn't have much of a choice on your set of libraries, would you?
Doesn't it seem kind of suspicious to anyone that China announces that it's going to be trying to mine worthless rock from the moon that it could mine from its own country?
It seems awfully suspicious that they want to launch many projectiles into orbit -- possibly a decoy project for ICBMs. No one in the world will care that you're making missiles when they think you're going to collect moon rock with it.
Is china trying to fool the world into thinking its missile program is a moon-rock program?
Nailed it on the head. I write software that does scraping of a very popular site, and said site has an expensive plan to allow access to their database. They've thrown some rudimentary tricks out that I've been able to counter, but for the most part, if your webserver will respond to a request, there is someone out there who can parse it.
The smart alternative for sites such as these is to offer a pay-for-API option for users or other sites that don't want to spend months writing scrapers and parsers. If the site that I scrape gave me database access for $5/month, I'd take it in a second -- It saves me time, costs me less, and they make money off of me using their services.
Will this turn into the same repetetive cash cow that the MCSE is? Will certified engineers have to get a new certification on every new release of the kernel? what about major releases?
I hope they realize that one of the major flaws with microsoft's certification is the necessity to get re-certified when a poorly-done ripoff of the previous operating system is released.
Isn't the big price quagmire with LCD's still the liquid crystal? Isn't that why they're so expensive?
Can a major player like Sony suddenly start producing tons of these things with limited production resources?
I doubt that this will have a major effect on the monitor market, aside from Sony giving up market share. The major purchasers of monitors are businesses, and businesses have a choice between a $250 17" flatscreen CRT and a $500 17" LCD. I know which one my business would pick.
This seems like a premature move on Microsoft's part. Sure, they have more money than Ft. Knox, and can buy whatever they want, but this is obviously to shore up the Xbox.
What's more interesting is that this is a wildcard for Microsoft--they can buy these companies as a ploy to make people think they are shoring up the next generation of Xbox games, and then put out tons of (high quality) PC games, dominating a market that no one thought they wanted.
Is Sony going to start buying up development now too? Has the rush on game developers begun?
...And we will see just how well they handle it. Think of how uncopyable and unique drivers licenses and passports and social security numbers were many years ago, and see how faked and copied they are now?
Asking the government to regulate PKI is begging for social engineering tricks and cracked keys...putting a nice fat bullseye on the government's PKI systems for terrorists and miscreants to attack.
If you regulate key management systems, you know how much of a pain it is to handle a few hundred users' keys, let alone 350 million+ for each user in the united states. The system breakdowns would be atrocious.
You are right, you can't export it unless you have arms rights, but most of the windows source that is there is pretty anemic in the way of crypto anyway.
You can find SSL algorithms on the web, but microsoft's use of PKI is so small and so poorly done that you could export it to Iraq without worrying that they'll find some valuable crypto code.
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I work for a small web company developing web apps for other small-to-medium sized companies. The one thing that you learn when you're in a small software company is that nobody wants to pay their bills.
This is hard to see from a large-company perspective, because as a developer you aren't the one collecting the money, you have accountants and lawyers and rabid CEOs that make sure you get your contract's worth one way or another. But small companies don't have this option--they can't afford lawyers or even the time to spend in court. They have to find where their next paycheck is coming from.
As a result, many of our clients have tried to jerk us around by either dragging their heels on payments or doing something underhanded like changing passwords to servers to try to lock us out and give us the finger. There have been instances where I've sent out a "it's all done, check it out" email and had the live server's passwords changed on me minutes later, follwed by a "we're not paying" response.
Simply put, backdoors are a small company's only assurance that it will be paid for the work it has done. Given, the backdoors that I put in aren't to r00t the server or take down a whole subnet, they're limited to disabling the application that we developed. Until the client has paid their bills, it's still our code, and we have every right to put in as many backdoors as we want.
That "inferior technology" tends to work on other platforms.
Your "superior technology" tends to work only on your "superior" OS. It also means that DirectX has a limited set of people that can direct its evolution, and that evolution can only proceed on one platform.
OpenGL, as "inferior" as it is, can continue to evolve and function on all platforms. If you had to write a graphics-intensive program that was multi-platform, you wouldn't have much of a choice on your set of libraries, would you?
Doesn't it seem kind of suspicious to anyone that China announces that it's going to be trying to mine worthless rock from the moon that it could mine from its own country? It seems awfully suspicious that they want to launch many projectiles into orbit -- possibly a decoy project for ICBMs. No one in the world will care that you're making missiles when they think you're going to collect moon rock with it. Is china trying to fool the world into thinking its missile program is a moon-rock program?
A *stone* vibrator? Ow. That's gonna chip some teeth.
Nailed it on the head. I write software that does scraping of a very popular site, and said site has an expensive plan to allow access to their database. They've thrown some rudimentary tricks out that I've been able to counter, but for the most part, if your webserver will respond to a request, there is someone out there who can parse it.
The smart alternative for sites such as these is to offer a pay-for-API option for users or other sites that don't want to spend months writing scrapers and parsers. If the site that I scrape gave me database access for $5/month, I'd take it in a second -- It saves me time, costs me less, and they make money off of me using their services.
Will this turn into the same repetetive cash cow that the MCSE is? Will certified engineers have to get a new certification on every new release of the kernel? what about major releases?
I hope they realize that one of the major flaws with microsoft's certification is the necessity to get re-certified when a poorly-done ripoff of the previous operating system is released.
Isn't the big price quagmire with LCD's still the liquid crystal? Isn't that why they're so expensive?
Can a major player like Sony suddenly start producing tons of these things with limited production resources?
I doubt that this will have a major effect on the monitor market, aside from Sony giving up market share. The major purchasers of monitors are businesses, and businesses have a choice between a $250 17" flatscreen CRT and a $500 17" LCD. I know which one my business would pick.
This seems like a premature move on Microsoft's part. Sure, they have more money than Ft. Knox, and can buy whatever they want, but this is obviously to shore up the Xbox.
What's more interesting is that this is a wildcard for Microsoft--they can buy these companies as a ploy to make people think they are shoring up the next generation of Xbox games, and then put out tons of (high quality) PC games, dominating a market that no one thought they wanted.
Is Sony going to start buying up development now too? Has the rush on game developers begun?
...And we will see just how well they handle it. Think of how uncopyable and unique drivers licenses and passports and social security numbers were many years ago, and see how faked and copied they are now?
Asking the government to regulate PKI is begging for social engineering tricks and cracked keys...putting a nice fat bullseye on the government's PKI systems for terrorists and miscreants to attack.
If you regulate key management systems, you know how much of a pain it is to handle a few hundred users' keys, let alone 350 million+ for each user in the united states. The system breakdowns would be atrocious.
You are right, you can't export it unless you have arms rights, but most of the windows source that is there is pretty anemic in the way of crypto anyway. You can find SSL algorithms on the web, but microsoft's use of PKI is so small and so poorly done that you could export it to Iraq without worrying that they'll find some valuable crypto code.