Hey, your're right, we are on the right track; there's just one problem -- We've been on the right track for YEARS now. All the things that are going to make Linux a Luser operating system have been RSN for a LONG time. Why this you ask ?
1. Windoze has an advantage we cannot have. Everyone already knows how to use it. Windoze == computer for millions of people.
2. All (OK, OK, Most) of the GUI effort in KDE/GNOME etc. has been in providing cool geek features like widget themes, rather than real application integration.
3. The apps that could really make a difference (KOffice, Abiword, so on) are all going to save us Real Soon Now. Soon hasn't got here for a Long Time.
4. Collaboration apps (read Exchange + Outlook) aren't here either.
5. No reasonable Directory Services are available either. SysAdmins of large institutions won't live without this. While OpenLdap has potential here, it doesn't have the tools to be a viable alternative (yet).
This list could go on for a long time, but I have to get back to work. The Point here is that Real Soon Now isn't going to get here; that making cool stuff is always more fun than making useful stuff, and Free Software developers DO IT because its cool. Trust me, I've done BORING stuff at work for years, but it was something someone was willing to PAY for. These issues have to be resolved for Linux to be a "real" Luser OS. If you don't care, that's OK too.
A large part of the issue here (outside of the/. crowd) is the perception that "The can be only one" operating system. I know plenty of (non-technical people) who have invested LARGE amounts of money taking classes on how to use M$-Office to improve their job standing. These people are TERRIFIED of software that they don't know how to use -- and when you're an office manager, you don't care about choice of software, you don't care about software beyond the fact that you only know how to use one package; fortunately for you, its the package that *everyone* uses. If you are one of these people, the M$ Monopoly is a GOOD thing (for you), especially in the short run. This probably also applies if you're an Appeals Court Judge... chances are they don't go home and hack the kernel til bedtime;-) This is the problem, no matter how predatory M$ may have been, is, or will be, it's an advantage to almost everyone who isn't us. Fighting the monopoly in court isn't the answer; cracking M$ in half will only give us two predatory monopolies, where we used to have one. And no amount of ANYTHING is going to convince my office manager that she shouldn't use Outlook -- All she knows is that she knows how to use Outlook, and she doesn't know how to use anything else. The ONLY way to crack the Monopoly is to crack this PERCEPTION
This is a little like saying that going to prison for 10 years is MUCH better that going to prison for life. Its true, but not very satisfying. The real advantage in java lies not in the language itself (which has issues... character count not being the least) but in its massive library.
Third, Java on the server is the best thing since sliced bread.
Compared to what ? Ok, I know, but its the java library which is so valuable here, not the language. Any language with such a massive library so oriented to network programming would have this advantage (Python anyone ?)
Let's suppose that the manufacturer of a word-processor decides to go to a subscription-based sale model in which the word-processor disables itself after its subscription has expired. Given this model, I could violate the DMCA by attempting to access my own documents (of which I am the copyright holder). This is because it seems to be implicit in the DMCA that the means of access to copyrighted works is also copyrightable (??). We need a good legal case in which someone is sued for accessing works on which THEY hold the copyright. Even judges should get that
It is interesting that the article mentions that a Real (handwritten) signature requires either testimony in court as to who signed a document, or the verification of a court-sanctioned witness (a Notary Public). Do digital signatures require the same sort of legal backing? People steal "real" signatures all the time, its called forgery; and the courts recognize this; by both requiring other evidence that a person signed a document, and by imposing heavy sanctions on persons who forge signatures (its a felony in most states in the US). There seems to be a parallel between a real signature that looks like it was signed by me, and a digital signature that looks like it was signed by my computer; it seems to require another piece of evidence. I hope that laws recognizing digital signatures also allow for this "extra evidence"; and if not, that the courts impose this requirement. I think all that will take is one high-profile case of forgery involving someone with deep pockets, after all, when things impact business - things change.
Well, the money part is certainly true. Unfortunately, many groups get portrayed by popular culture as being "evil". After the OK City bombing, many people suspected Moslems (particularly Middle-Eastern ones). This comes from a popular perception of Islam which comes from the fact that the only thing Average Joe knows about Islam is when he hears about terrorism. If the only thing people heard about Catholics came from the UK press in Northern Ireland, he would probably have the same opinion of Catholics. This is my point: ignorance is the enemy. Because the ideals, beliefs, and values of non-mainstream people are largely unknown outside their own societies, mainstream people tend to have views of them which are not accurate; AND because these views come largely from the media, which has an interest in portraying the negative, these inaccuracies always seem to portray people as dangerous.
No, I hold no opinion as to whether or not he is guilty or innocent; my opinion is that he didn't stand much chance of getting a fair shake in his trial. IF he had been someone else, the jury may have disregarded the testimony of a single witness-- or maybe not. My point is that if you don't subscribe to mainstream views, you will be considered dangerous by those who do; and those who do are represented by the police, courts, and other intitutions of government.
Hold on a second; did he break the law ? I don't have the court transcript, however, the people blocking the intersection WEREN'T arrested; seems to me that this guy was arrested for supposedly organizing said road blockage. Ever been to a US jury selection ? I have. If you're not 100% mainstream for whatever area you're in YOU WILL NOT get on that jury. So IF you happen to belong to some group that the mainstream views negatively, you're almost certain to have a jury that views you negatively. So a police officer's word, however subjective and uncorroborated it may be, is very likely to be taken over yours. I don't know whether this guy did anything illegal or not; I do know that his chances got pretty slim just by being charged.
Its unfortunate, but this is the type of reception ANYONE who is in conflict with mainstream society should expect. Face it, the institutions of ANY society reflect the status quo, and in this country (USA) that means corporatism (along with at alot of other IMHO undesirable traits). Anyone who comes into conflict with the status quo, be it because they're an environmentalist, gay, pagan, moslem, or an employee of 2600, can expect that the institutions of that status quo will treat them as DANGEROUS. Because they are; but only to the status quo that these intitutions represent. And what are these institutions ? The police, the courts, news media, Federal, State, and Local governments etc. You know, the people you don't want hauling you off. If you want to change it, the ONLY way is to change the institutions themselves, and the only way to change the institutions is to change the status quo. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that. Maybe someone else does.
It would be EXCEPTIONALLY unusual for a plaintiff to also be a court-appointed representative; I think this is illegal in most States, (IANAL). If this were to happen, it would make for a lot of Good Fun in the Appellate Court; judges tend to frown on private entities attempting to assume their authority. On the other hand, the law is whatever a judge says it is...
Hold on a second. I programmed on QNX for many years, and... They are right; you don't need the kernel source code. Why you ask ? because its only a couple of thousand lines of assembly, and hasn't changed significantly since about 1993. The whole Idea behind QNX, (and other RTOS'es) is stablility, and I can tell you QNX is fscking stable. Because its a microkernel (emphasis on micro), the things that we consider to be "kernel" functions in *nix aren't. You can replace all of the filesystem, process scheduler, vm, device manager/drivers you want to. All of those things are just processes (!). The QNX kernel is just the glue that binds those things together.
Unlimited access to education is probably the major stimulus in the US. Another may be that the alleged "education deficit" in the US is a myth, propagated by those with a political agenda. It is always popular to cry out that the education system is in shambles, but is it really ? My experience with US public education (secondary, undergraduate and graduate) tells me that the system is efficient and effective, so far as these things can be efficient and effective; I don't know anyone who went through that system and remained uneducated. When a system like this is universally accessible, certainly some will excel more than others, but providing access to everyone insures that you will get almost everyone.
Well, according to Cooke's theorem, any NP-Complete problem can be converted to any other NP-Complete problem in Polynomial time. Hence a solution to any NPC problem is a solution to all of them. And some of them are very useful... if P != NP then there do not exists "1-way" functions, on which ALL public/private key cryptography depends.
Well, certainly noone has ever proven that P != NP, which should be easier. If P != NP, however, there is a non-empty set of problems which are not in P, are in NP, and not NP-complete. None of these has ever been found without mathematically generating a problem based on P != NP. Of naturally occuring problems, no NP (remember P is a subset of NP) problem has been found which was not either in P or NP-complete. While it is certainly counter-intuitive, this may mean that there is simply something we don't understand (Could it Be ???;-) about the mathematics of NP-Completeness which bars us from solving NPC problems.
-- Rich
Re:NP Non-deterministic Polynomial
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
Your argument makes an invalid assumption... that there is a fundamental difference (time-complexity wise) between a non-deterministic Turing Machine, and a deterministic one. This is the undetermined theoretical problem here, and its not as obvious as one thinks. Any non-deterministic Turing machine can be converted a deterministic one, however, all KNOWN algorithms to do this produce a deterministic Turing Machine that arrives at a solution in super-polynomial time. This does not mean that an algorithm to do this does not exist. In fact, Cooke's theorem clearly implies that if a Polynomial time solution to an NP-complete problem exists, then such an algorithm must also exist. (i.e. if a Non-deterministic TM can solve a problem in Polynomial time, there exists a deterministic TM which can also solve that problem in Polynomial time).
Just my $0.02
Well, folks, the giant software companies have done it again... and the quest for the disposable programmer with 2 years of experience continues. Face it, there is no shortage of programmers, there's just a shortage of cheap programmers. A major reason why so much software sucks, is because its written by some guy with his brand new AS in Visual Basic. There are thousands of 30+ (REAL ancient) programmers out there having trouble getting a job, because their resume doesn't win buzzword bingo. The HARD part of programming isn't happening to know the syntax of the latest hip code doo-dad, but rather in knowing how to think about problem solving. That comes from experience. People who understand how programs work have no trouble learning a new way to do the same old thing. Unfortunately, time-to-market/end-of-quarter thinking in large corporations impels managers to seek the cheapest, fastest solution... and it looks like its a foreign programmer.
Its all good. The more cryptography gets into more computers, the more difficult it will become for governments to regulate it. Computers will become more secure, and crackers will become less of a black hat for government agencies. The linux distros ought to follow suit. Before long, folks will be encrypting everything. THEN, the FBI will have to do real investigating, instead of trolling for leads with Carnivore. It means more freedom.
A fully real-time linux that could support Rate monotic analysis is EXACTLY what the real-time world needs. Reliance on expensive, proprietary Realtime OSes prevents many small companies from entering the real-time world (I used to work for one - a license for QNX and a compiler was about $5000 US and it was the cheapest. Of course, prices have come down:-)
I don't really know what sort of terminal emulation/command-line thingie (vt100.App ?) OS-X is going to ship with. If its not available, the 99.999% of OS-X programs are going to use a NeXTStep-like, window based eventing model; which would be VERY hard to port to a NOT Next-like environment. The other way is true also. HOWEVER, I suspect that text programs will be accessible, the implication here is that Linux/BSD/etc programs (character based + daemons) should compile relatively easy. But do Mac Guys write this sort of program ?? Not in my experience. It really seems like the porting flow would be from Un*x to OS-X, not the other way around. Unless of course, someone ports Display PDF/Aqua/etc to Un*x;)
Many people, especially journalists, seem to have this idea that public-key/private-key encryption somehow provides privacy. The ONLY thing that this form of encryption provides is a (sort of) secure channel between endpoints; it tells you Nothing about the endpoints. There are many digital signature schemes, but they all rely on the fact that the public key you see in netspace, is in fact, the public key of the person or institution with whom you wish to communicate. Ask Nike's webmaster; netspace can be manipulated. Furthermore, reversing ANY public-key/private-key encryption system can be no harder that problems in NP, for which it can not be shown that there is not a tractable solution. Quantum computers are theorized to solve all NP problems in tractable time. Claims made about the NSA over the last few years imply that they have at least good heuristic solutions to NP problems, if not a theoretical / quantum solution. What does this mean ? It means that privacy probably can't be enforced between endpoints unknown to each other (i.e. they do not share a secret unknown to others which can be) by technological means (or any other... If you don't know who you're talking to...) The only mechanism for persons who do "know" each other, would be encryption based on a shared secret (Private-Key encryption). These systems do NOT avoid the VCR Syndrome (at least yet), and, because they require SOME extra effort, probably wouldn't be used even by people who could. Never mind that most private-key solutions probably have the same NP characteristics that Public-key/Private-key systems have (although it is NOT demostrable for the entire class, as Public/Private systems are), heuristic, theoretical, or quantum means are effective.
All In All there are no secrets. and those interested in acquiring them will acquire them.
This is all true, but there are bigger, closer dangers than invisible back doors. They're called buffer overflow exploits, and they're the #1 primo way of getting root on box. While a buffer overflows can be found on closed source systems (happens all the time), you can save a lot of hard work by looking at the code -- Plus it takes a lot less effort to turn a buffer overflow into a rootkit when you have the source. Instead of putting the effort into proving a good compiler, put the effort into the code that the compiler compiles. BTW, even things that people think are VERY secure have holes... I recently read about a buffer overflow exploit in Kerberos. Having your KDC rooted is a Bad Thing (tm)
This looks like another Brilliant Idea from M$ Marketing. It has all the telltale signs of the same genius who put VB Script in everything so that virus writers could have a high level language to use. I personally can't wait to live in a world where I just rent my own data from Bill; isn't that some kind of copyright violation or something? IMNSHO, we should just make Gates Dictator For Life, and then we won't have to worry about anything.
Hopefully this book addresses (suitably) the reason why people have good reason to fear C++. In many ways it is a language in which you must know everything before you know anything. The complexities of how constructors/destructors interact when returning objects (for instance) is very confusing and one of the reasons why it often takes many years of C++ programming before a programmer is truly competent. If this book effectively addresses educating people in the "hard stuff" its good. If not, well its not.
As many have commented, the ability to over-the-net transactions is what keeps people using Quicken (tm) & Windoze. Quicken uses a protocol called OFX http://www.ofx.net . There may be some issues with incorporating this into GnuCash, They've been talking about it for a long time. BTW, it may already be in there, I've still got an old 1.3 version.
Unfortunately, it is an issue. The worst case scenario is one in which some large and important piece of software depends upon some proprietary extension. Imagine a world in which some corporation controls the piece of software (maybe a component model, like COM ) upon which hundreds of commercial Linux programs depend. That company could wield the same kind of monopoly power that M$ wields now, only they would have leveraged the hard work and ideals of the thousands of programmers into a world which those same programmers sought to avoid. This is a place in which ideals ARE important; it is important that we REFUSE to allow propietary extensions to GPL'ed Operating Systems, it's the only thing keeping us from being Windoze.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, your're right, we are on the right track; there's just one problem -- We've been on the right track for YEARS now. All the things that are going to make Linux a Luser operating system have been RSN for a LONG time. Why this you ask ?
1. Windoze has an advantage we cannot have. Everyone already knows how to use it. Windoze == computer for millions of people.
2. All (OK, OK, Most) of the GUI effort in KDE/GNOME etc. has been in providing cool geek features like widget themes, rather than real application integration.
3. The apps that could really make a difference (KOffice, Abiword, so on) are all going to save us Real Soon Now. Soon hasn't got here for a Long Time.
4. Collaboration apps (read Exchange + Outlook) aren't here either.
5. No reasonable Directory Services are available either. SysAdmins of large institutions won't live without this. While OpenLdap has potential here, it doesn't have the tools to be a viable alternative (yet).
This list could go on for a long time, but I have to get back to work. The Point here is that Real Soon Now isn't going to get here; that making cool stuff is always more fun than making useful stuff, and Free Software developers DO IT because its cool. Trust me, I've done BORING stuff at work for years, but it was something someone was willing to PAY for. These issues have to be resolved for Linux to be a "real" Luser OS. If you don't care, that's OK too.
-- Rich
A large part of the issue here (outside of the /. crowd) is the perception that "The can be only one" operating system. I know plenty of (non-technical people) who have invested LARGE amounts of money taking classes on how to use M$-Office to improve their job standing. These people are TERRIFIED of software that they don't know how to use -- and when you're an office manager, you don't care about choice of software, you don't care about software beyond the fact that you only know how to use one package; fortunately for you, its the package that *everyone* uses. If you are one of these people, the M$ Monopoly is a GOOD thing (for you), especially in the short run. This probably also applies if you're an Appeals Court Judge... chances are they don't go home and hack the kernel til bedtime ;-) This is the problem, no matter how predatory M$ may have been, is, or will be, it's an advantage to almost everyone who isn't us. Fighting the monopoly in court isn't the answer; cracking M$ in half will only give us two predatory monopolies, where we used to have one. And no amount of ANYTHING is going to convince my office manager that she shouldn't use Outlook -- All she knows is that she knows how to use Outlook, and she doesn't know how to use anything else. The ONLY way to crack the Monopoly is to crack this PERCEPTION
-- Rich
...Java is a MUCH better langage than C++
This is a little like saying that going to prison for 10 years is MUCH better that going to prison for life. Its true, but not very satisfying. The real advantage in java lies not in the language itself (which has issues... character count not being the least) but in its massive library.
Third, Java on the server is the best thing since sliced bread.
Compared to what ? Ok, I know, but its the java library which is so valuable here, not the language. Any language with such a massive library so oriented to network programming would have this advantage (Python anyone ?)
just my $0.02
-- Rich
Let's suppose that the manufacturer of a word-processor decides to go to a subscription-based sale model in which the word-processor disables itself after its subscription has expired. Given this model, I could violate the DMCA by attempting to access my own documents (of which I am the copyright holder). This is because it seems to be implicit in the DMCA that the means of access to copyrighted works is also copyrightable (??). We need a good legal case in which someone is sued for accessing works on which THEY hold the copyright. Even judges should get that
-- Rich
It is interesting that the article mentions that a Real (handwritten) signature requires either testimony in court as to who signed a document, or the verification of a court-sanctioned witness (a Notary Public). Do digital signatures require the same sort of legal backing? People steal "real" signatures all the time, its called forgery; and the courts recognize this; by both requiring other evidence that a person signed a document, and by imposing heavy sanctions on persons who forge signatures (its a felony in most states in the US). There seems to be a parallel between a real signature that looks like it was signed by me, and a digital signature that looks like it was signed by my computer; it seems to require another piece of evidence. I hope that laws recognizing digital signatures also allow for this "extra evidence"; and if not, that the courts impose this requirement. I think all that will take is one high-profile case of forgery involving someone with deep pockets, after all, when things impact business - things change.
-- Rich
Well, the money part is certainly true. Unfortunately, many groups get portrayed by popular culture as being "evil". After the OK City bombing, many people suspected Moslems (particularly Middle-Eastern ones). This comes from a popular perception of Islam which comes from the fact that the only thing Average Joe knows about Islam is when he hears about terrorism. If the only thing people heard about Catholics came from the UK press in Northern Ireland, he would probably have the same opinion of Catholics. This is my point: ignorance is the enemy. Because the ideals, beliefs, and values of non-mainstream people are largely unknown outside their own societies, mainstream people tend to have views of them which are not accurate; AND because these views come largely from the media, which has an interest in portraying the negative, these inaccuracies always seem to portray people as dangerous.
-- Rich
No, I hold no opinion as to whether or not he is guilty or innocent; my opinion is that he didn't stand much chance of getting a fair shake in his trial. IF he had been someone else, the jury may have disregarded the testimony of a single witness-- or maybe not. My point is that if you don't subscribe to mainstream views, you will be considered dangerous by those who do; and those who do are represented by the police, courts, and other intitutions of government.
-- Rich
Hold on a second; did he break the law ? I don't have the court transcript, however, the people blocking the intersection WEREN'T arrested; seems to me that this guy was arrested for supposedly organizing said road blockage. Ever been to a US jury selection ? I have. If you're not 100% mainstream for whatever area you're in YOU WILL NOT get on that jury. So IF you happen to belong to some group that the mainstream views negatively, you're almost certain to have a jury that views you negatively. So a police officer's word, however subjective and uncorroborated it may be, is very likely to be taken over yours. I don't know whether this guy did anything illegal or not; I do know that his chances got pretty slim just by being charged.
-- Rich
Its unfortunate, but this is the type of reception ANYONE who is in conflict with mainstream society should expect. Face it, the institutions of ANY society reflect the status quo, and in this country (USA) that means corporatism (along with at alot of other IMHO undesirable traits). Anyone who comes into conflict with the status quo, be it because they're an environmentalist, gay, pagan, moslem, or an employee of 2600, can expect that the institutions of that status quo will treat them as DANGEROUS. Because they are; but only to the status quo that these intitutions represent. And what are these institutions ? The police, the courts, news media, Federal, State, and Local governments etc. You know, the people you don't want hauling you off. If you want to change it, the ONLY way is to change the institutions themselves, and the only way to change the institutions is to change the status quo. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that. Maybe someone else does.
-- Rich
It would be EXCEPTIONALLY unusual for a plaintiff to also be a court-appointed representative; I think this is illegal in most States, (IANAL). If this were to happen, it would make for a lot of Good Fun in the Appellate Court; judges tend to frown on private entities attempting to assume their authority. On the other hand, the law is whatever a judge says it is ...
anus (pl. ani) Latin for "ring".
Hold on a second. I programmed on QNX for many years, and ... They are right; you don't need the kernel source code. Why you ask ? because its only a couple of thousand lines of assembly, and hasn't changed significantly since about 1993. The whole Idea behind QNX, (and other RTOS'es) is stablility, and I can tell you QNX is fscking stable. Because its a microkernel (emphasis on micro), the things that we consider to be "kernel" functions in *nix aren't. You can replace all of the filesystem, process scheduler, vm, device manager/drivers you want to. All of those things are just processes (!). The QNX kernel is just the glue that binds those things together.
-- Rich
Unlimited access to education is probably the major stimulus in the US. Another may be that the alleged "education deficit" in the US is a myth, propagated by those with a political agenda. It is always popular to cry out that the education system is in shambles, but is it really ? My experience with US public education (secondary, undergraduate and graduate) tells me that the system is efficient and effective, so far as these things can be efficient and effective; I don't know anyone who went through that system and remained uneducated. When a system like this is universally accessible, certainly some will excel more than others, but providing access to everyone insures that you will get almost everyone.
-- Rich
Well, according to Cooke's theorem, any NP-Complete problem can be converted to any other NP-Complete problem in Polynomial time. Hence a solution to any NPC problem is a solution to all of them. And some of them are very useful... if P != NP then there do not exists "1-way" functions, on which ALL public/private key cryptography depends.
--Rich
Well, certainly noone has ever proven that P != NP, which should be easier. If P != NP, however, there is a non-empty set of problems which are not in P, are in NP, and not NP-complete. None of these has ever been found without mathematically generating a problem based on P != NP. Of naturally occuring problems, no NP (remember P is a subset of NP) problem has been found which was not either in P or NP-complete. While it is certainly counter-intuitive, this may mean that there is simply something we don't understand (Could it Be ??? ;-) about the mathematics of NP-Completeness which bars us from solving NPC problems.
-- Rich
Your argument makes an invalid assumption... that there is a fundamental difference (time-complexity wise) between a non-deterministic Turing Machine, and a deterministic one. This is the undetermined theoretical problem here, and its not as obvious as one thinks. Any non-deterministic Turing machine can be converted a deterministic one, however, all KNOWN algorithms to do this produce a deterministic Turing Machine that arrives at a solution in super-polynomial time. This does not mean that an algorithm to do this does not exist. In fact, Cooke's theorem clearly implies that if a Polynomial time solution to an NP-complete problem exists, then such an algorithm must also exist. (i.e. if a Non-deterministic TM can solve a problem in Polynomial time, there exists a deterministic TM which can also solve that problem in Polynomial time).
Just my $0.02
-- Rich
Well, folks, the giant software companies have done it again... and the quest for the disposable programmer with 2 years of experience continues. Face it, there is no shortage of programmers, there's just a shortage of cheap programmers. A major reason why so much software sucks, is because its written by some guy with his brand new AS in Visual Basic. There are thousands of 30+ (REAL ancient) programmers out there having trouble getting a job, because their resume doesn't win buzzword bingo. The HARD part of programming isn't happening to know the syntax of the latest hip code doo-dad, but rather in knowing how to think about problem solving. That comes from experience. People who understand how programs work have no trouble learning a new way to do the same old thing. Unfortunately, time-to-market/end-of-quarter thinking in large corporations impels managers to seek the cheapest, fastest solution... and it looks like its a foreign programmer.
Sorry for the rant, but this REALLY bugs me
-- Rich
Its all good. The more cryptography gets into more computers, the more difficult it will become for governments to regulate it. Computers will become more secure, and crackers will become less of a black hat for government agencies. The linux distros ought to follow suit. Before long, folks will be encrypting everything. THEN, the FBI will have to do real investigating, instead of trolling for leads with Carnivore. It means more freedom.
-- Rich
A fully real-time linux that could support Rate monotic analysis is EXACTLY what the real-time world needs. Reliance on expensive, proprietary Realtime OSes prevents many small companies from entering the real-time world (I used to work for one - a license for QNX and a compiler was about $5000 US and it was the cheapest. Of course, prices have come down :-)
-- Rich
I don't really know what sort of terminal emulation/command-line thingie (vt100.App ?) OS-X is going to ship with. If its not available, the 99.999% of OS-X programs are going to use a NeXTStep-like, window based eventing model; which would be VERY hard to port to a NOT Next-like environment. The other way is true also. HOWEVER, I suspect that text programs will be accessible, the implication here is that Linux/BSD/etc programs (character based + daemons) should compile relatively easy. But do Mac Guys write this sort of program ?? Not in my experience. It really seems like the porting flow would be from Un*x to OS-X, not the other way around. Unless of course, someone ports Display PDF/Aqua/etc to Un*x ;)
Just my $0.02
-- Rich
Many people, especially journalists, seem to have this idea that public-key/private-key encryption somehow provides privacy. The ONLY thing that this form of encryption provides is a (sort of) secure channel between endpoints; it tells you Nothing about the endpoints. There are many digital signature schemes, but they all rely on the fact that the public key you see in netspace, is in fact, the public key of the person or institution with whom you wish to communicate. Ask Nike's webmaster; netspace can be manipulated. Furthermore, reversing ANY public-key/private-key encryption system can be no harder that problems in NP, for which it can not be shown that there is not a tractable solution. Quantum computers are theorized to solve all NP problems in tractable time. Claims made about the NSA over the last few years imply that they have at least good heuristic solutions to NP problems, if not a theoretical / quantum solution. What does this mean ? It means that privacy probably can't be enforced between endpoints unknown to each other (i.e. they do not share a secret unknown to others which can be) by technological means (or any other... If you don't know who you're talking to ...) The only mechanism for persons who do "know" each other, would be encryption based on a shared secret (Private-Key encryption). These systems do NOT avoid the VCR Syndrome (at least yet), and, because they require SOME extra effort, probably wouldn't be used even by people who could. Never mind that most private-key solutions probably have the same NP characteristics that Public-key/Private-key systems have (although it is NOT demostrable for the entire class, as Public/Private systems are), heuristic, theoretical, or quantum means are effective.
All In All there are no secrets. and those interested in acquiring them will acquire them.
-- Rich
This is all true, but there are bigger, closer dangers than invisible back doors. They're called buffer overflow exploits, and they're the #1 primo way of getting root on box. While a buffer overflows can be found on closed source systems (happens all the time), you can save a lot of hard work by looking at the code -- Plus it takes a lot less effort to turn a buffer overflow into a rootkit when you have the source. Instead of putting the effort into proving a good compiler, put the effort into the code that the compiler compiles. BTW, even things that people think are VERY secure have holes... I recently read about a buffer overflow exploit in Kerberos. Having your KDC rooted is a Bad Thing (tm)
-- Rich
This looks like another Brilliant Idea from M$ Marketing. It has all the telltale signs of the same genius who put VB Script in everything so that virus writers could have a high level language to use. I personally can't wait to live in a world where I just rent my own data from Bill; isn't that some kind of copyright violation or something? IMNSHO, we should just make Gates Dictator For Life, and then we won't have to worry about anything.
-- Rich
Hopefully this book addresses (suitably) the reason why people have good reason to fear C++. In many ways it is a language in which you must know everything before you know anything. The complexities of how constructors/destructors interact when returning objects (for instance) is very confusing and one of the reasons why it often takes many years of C++ programming before a programmer is truly competent. If this book effectively addresses educating people in the "hard stuff" its good. If not, well its not.
-Rich
As many have commented, the ability to over-the-net transactions is what keeps people using Quicken (tm) & Windoze. Quicken uses a protocol called OFX http://www.ofx.net . There may be some issues with incorporating this into GnuCash, They've been talking about it for a long time. BTW, it may already be in there, I've still got an old 1.3 version.
-- Rich
Unfortunately, it is an issue. The worst case scenario is one in which some large and important piece of software depends upon some proprietary extension. Imagine a world in which some corporation controls the piece of software (maybe a component model, like COM ) upon which hundreds of commercial Linux programs depend. That company could wield the same kind of monopoly power that M$ wields now, only they would have leveraged the hard work and ideals of the thousands of programmers into a world which those same programmers sought to avoid. This is a place in which ideals ARE important; it is important that we REFUSE to allow propietary extensions to GPL'ed Operating Systems, it's the only thing keeping us from being Windoze.
-- Rich