"Security vulnerabilities" are relative.
An awful lot of high value data is stored on Unix, Linux, and MacOS systems. There would seem to be a high incentive to compromise those systems as thoroughly and quickly as possible. The source code for Linux and Darwin (MacOS X base) are available to the general public for free, for anyone to comb through for vulnerabilities. Yet we see almost exclusively Windows-based botnets, exploits, worms, and viruses.
That is awfully strong evidence for Windows being intrinsicly a less secure platform, without needing to make any guesses about anything else.
Is every other platform 100% secure? Not even close, they're mostly crap for security in the installed base.
Is any other platform even close to the hotbed of festering malware that Windows is? Again, not even close.
Because performance suffers horrible degradation if you run 10:1 swap ratios with running applications.
The reason for this is that each running application will need some portion of its allocated memory available to the processor at each time slice. If any of this memory needs to be swapped in performance is reduced by orders of magnitude. If the total "live" memory needed for running applications exceeds the available RAM you get swap cycling and the whole system is slowed down significantly.
So you can have 10G swap with 1G RAM, but if you try to actually use 11G it will be painfully slow.
I think you meant this as a reply to the parent post, but I think I can address it:
Since people decide what makes an animal a reptile (cold blooded, scales, etc.), our understanding of what makes an animal a reptile is perfect. Anything that does not fully meet the definition of "reptile" is something else.
Therefore, as the evidence that dinosaurs were warm blooded increases, it becomes more of a scientific consensus that they were not reptiles at all but rather something else. My understanding is that dinosaurs correspond to the bridge group between reptiles and birds, so there is quite a lot of biological and morphological range involved.
It is quite possible that the Amino Acids formed protiens first, and the RNA formed
in a "soup" of amino acids and protiens with the protiens guiding the way.
Unlike partially formed RNA strands, protiens are quite stable, and being composed
of relatively few amino acids each are more easily formed.
In addition, odds of "billions to one" are pretty darn good when you are talking about
chemical reactions occuring in a high density solution. 6.02x10^23 molecules per gram*molecular weight
and you have millions of tonnes of the stuff churning and burning for thousands of years.
The miracle would be if life didn't form in those circumstances.
With practice a person can get good enough with thrown rocks to take birds out of the air.
Still, it is amazing the capabilities of birds and other animals with much smaller and simpler
brains than humans. My opinion is that we will have something we recognize as intelligent
in computer AI long before we reach human complexity.
On the contrary. I personally expect that the _name_ is not a major barrier to adoption. The vitality of the project itself is evidence of this.
In reality, software that is good enough will get used even if it is named Festering Pustulent Boils. To people who have discovered and use The Gimp, that particular phrase evokes the software first, then any other meanings.
Anyone who lets a little thing like a name keep them from using it deserves to pay $600/seat for PhotoShop. Their loss, not mine, nor the developers.
Hey, it's GPL'd. You don't like it, repackage your own "Highly Attractively Named Image Manipulation Software" based off it and have a blast.
Just don't forget to distribute the source along with it.
If you are correct, problem solved.
If you are wrong, people will ignore you.
But bitching about what someone who has gone to the trouble to actually write a complex piece of software chooses to call it is arrogant and condescending (and my GF could tell you I know all about arrogant and condescending) without purpose or effect.
They did have the power, the authority, but what they didn't have was the will and the skill. The military used to do a pretty good job of handling natural disasters. Arrange for "training" to be taking place in the vicinity of a major storm, all hell breaks loose, and voíla: Marines! Of course, the Republicans will tell you that Possé Comitatas forbids the use of the military on American soil, but that is a canard. Of course, the military is stretched so far out that "training activities" have to be authorised a year in advance and worked into the budget so local commanders don't have the freedom to go about arranging to protect American citizens, the job they are sworn to do and we _need_ a civilian agency added to the bureaucracy to do the job that the Nat Guard (in Iraq) and the military (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and various points in Asia) used to be able to handle so well. Of course, this civilian agency doesn't have disaster management personnel of their own. No, no, no, that would cost too much. They have to use civilian contractors to do the actual work. On cost plus contracts, at usurous rates, that the VP used to work for back before he got into office as VP, and after he set the rules to force the military to use these same contractors. Thereby gutting the quartermaster corp and reducing our warfighting and disaster recovery potential by yet another means.
Yeah, I was in the military under SecDef Cheney. Don't have the time of day for that level of corruption. I don't know why people still put up with "Donkey".
The HUGE gaps are in your knowledge. Mine isn't perfect, but at least I can understand how scientists can measure isotopic variances in the ice and trapped gasses to determine the approximate vitality of the planet's life, and correlate that data with information from tree rings going back 10 thousand years or more to determine how hospitable the climate was and calibrate their results, then follow those results back for hundreds of thousands of years through the glacier cores.
Then you double check this data against fossil records (using radioactive isotope dating as well as other techniques to cross-check your work), and eventually you build up a very complete picture of how the earth's climate has changed over the past few million years, with an accuracy that steadily increases the closer you get to the modern day and the more cross checks you have on your data.
This is as opposed to reading a book written by a few dozen people with various agendas over the period of a couple of thousand years and translated in numerous ways by those who came along later to justify whatever they wanted it to say, and making your mind up from there.
Unlike Religion, Science is actually work. Religion is something that jokers like L.Ron Hubbard make up to win a bet. Science is the accumulated work of lifetimes of people. Work to be built on by us, not discarded because it disagrees with what we would like to believe because it makes us comfortable to do so.
9/11 happened on his watch. This disaster happened on his watch.
Neither might be his fault, but they are both his responsibility.
The Mayor of New Orleans though that Katarina was enough of a threat to order mandatory evacuation Sunday. GW finally got arsed to get off his vacation and back to DC 4 days later. Today he is finally out talking his platitudes, but he should have been out there leading the country (you know, the job he was elected for?) since Tuesday at the latest, when it was painfully obvious the magnitude of the disaster the country was looking at. He might have even put some resources in motion Sunday. The New Orleans flooding is bad, but Mississipi isn't exactly having a picnic either.
Instead he was enjoying a few holes of golf and playing country star. If he wants to "Just get on with his life" I'd suggest he resign and let someone who actually wants to do the job of leading this country be President. Same for the rest of those lazy, incompetent bums inhabiting the White House right now. They are downright disrespectful to this country and her people and anyone who voted for them should be ashamed to have done so.
I wouldn't bet on it. Physical security is closely related to (in fact a part of) computer security. TSA has been caught out making a number of classic security blunders that imply a less than stellar planning process. Of course, this may be more due to the bureaucracy than the people, but what kind of security people would put up with a bureaucracy that neutered their security plans?
While the usual quality of discourse here isn't exactly Plato's lectures, there are enough gems in the dross to make it worth reading, and quite a few people here have a solid security background.
4 yr payoff for solar cells that can have a 10+yr lifespan is pretty good IMHO.
The main thing is the final net payout. Solar is >1 today. It is practical. The next step is whether it is sufficiently desirable. As the net payout number continues to rise, solar and solar/wind setups will begin to dominate over combustion based generation.
Wind is already >1 net payout, but the cost is biased to more maintenance over time which is a problem for many deployments.
The Constitution of the US is the law that the Supreme Court is there to interpret. It is their
job to determine if laws passed by the legislature are legal within that context, and to what extent.
It could be said, in fact, that the Supreme Court's primary purpose is to declare laws unconstitutional, as per the Constitution.
I mean, you don't really trust all those folks in the legislature to do the right thing all the time? They could be corrupted, panicked, or simply overwhelmed by circumstance.
that Free Software doesn't support the business model that he likes.
Whether this is bluster because of that or he _really_ doesn't get free software at all is a good question.
On the plus side of free software are all the companies that don't sell or service software, but still have developers on staff for their custom applications. Free software magnifies the power of these developers manyfold, and they are often the source of innovation. You don't generate new solutions to a problem unless you have to solve it.
So in a way, McVoy is right, the days of the software development house may be numbered, but the tap of innovation stays right where it has been, and always will be, with individuals who have a problem to solve.
Run MSOffice 95-2000 as a non administrator user
under Windows XP and tell me again that Microsoft isn't to blame.
Yes, you can do it, but it takes quite a bit of administrative acumen that most people simply don't have. Frankly, the whole system is set up to require admin access at a frequency that means either having a full time admin, or having the user run as admin.
Failure to provide the needed level of administration either gives you a malware-ridden useless installation, or results in a slow degradation into uselessness from accumulated errors.
Slashdot Mirror
That is awfully strong evidence for Windows being intrinsicly a less secure platform, without needing to make any guesses about anything else.
Is every other platform 100% secure? Not even close, they're mostly crap for security in the installed base.
Is any other platform even close to the hotbed of festering malware that Windows is? Again, not even close.
Because performance suffers horrible degradation if you run 10:1 swap ratios with running applications. The reason for this is that each running application will need some portion of its allocated memory available to the processor at each time slice. If any of this memory needs to be swapped in performance is reduced by orders of magnitude. If the total "live" memory needed for running applications exceeds the available RAM you get swap cycling and the whole system is slowed down significantly. So you can have 10G swap with 1G RAM, but if you try to actually use 11G it will be painfully slow.
Not much to wonder. Desperation can make the risk/benefit ratio look much better than it really is.
Gentlemen, we cannot allow a mine shaft gap!
Of course there was negotiation, but I'm sure Linus paid for his own lunch.
Depression is the illness usually leading to suicide.
Since people decide what makes an animal a reptile (cold blooded, scales, etc.), our understanding of what makes an animal a reptile is perfect. Anything that does not fully meet the definition of "reptile" is something else.
Therefore, as the evidence that dinosaurs were warm blooded increases, it becomes more of a scientific consensus that they were not reptiles at all but rather something else. My understanding is that dinosaurs correspond to the bridge group between reptiles and birds, so there is quite a lot of biological and morphological range involved.
Hope that is clear.
It is quite possible that the Amino Acids formed protiens first, and the RNA formed in a "soup" of amino acids and protiens with the protiens guiding the way.
Unlike partially formed RNA strands, protiens are quite stable, and being composed of relatively few amino acids each are more easily formed.
In addition, odds of "billions to one" are pretty darn good when you are talking about chemical reactions occuring in a high density solution. 6.02x10^23 molecules per gram*molecular weight and you have millions of tonnes of the stuff churning and burning for thousands of years.
The miracle would be if life didn't form in those circumstances.
Still, it is amazing the capabilities of birds and other animals with much smaller and simpler brains than humans. My opinion is that we will have something we recognize as intelligent in computer AI long before we reach human complexity.
If I give it to you, do I still have it?
If the answer is no, protect it as property.
If the answer is yes, it isn't property.
Remember: The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there isn't one, but in practice there is.
In reality, software that is good enough will get used even if it is named Festering Pustulent Boils. To people who have discovered and use The Gimp, that particular phrase evokes the software first, then any other meanings.
Anyone who lets a little thing like a name keep them from using it deserves to pay $600/seat for PhotoShop. Their loss, not mine, nor the developers.
Just don't forget to distribute the source along with it.
If you are correct, problem solved.
If you are wrong, people will ignore you.
But bitching about what someone who has gone to the trouble to actually write a complex piece of software chooses to call it is arrogant and condescending (and my GF could tell you I know all about arrogant and condescending) without purpose or effect.
HAND.
Werespokes?
Yeah, I was in the military under SecDef Cheney. Don't have the time of day for that level of corruption. I don't know why people still put up with "Donkey".
What about lasers?! I want lasers!!!!!
Then you double check this data against fossil records (using radioactive isotope dating as well as other techniques to cross-check your work), and eventually you build up a very complete picture of how the earth's climate has changed over the past few million years, with an accuracy that steadily increases the closer you get to the modern day and the more cross checks you have on your data.
This is as opposed to reading a book written by a few dozen people with various agendas over the period of a couple of thousand years and translated in numerous ways by those who came along later to justify whatever they wanted it to say, and making your mind up from there.
Unlike Religion, Science is actually work. Religion is something that jokers like L.Ron Hubbard make up to win a bet. Science is the accumulated work of lifetimes of people. Work to be built on by us, not discarded because it disagrees with what we would like to believe because it makes us comfortable to do so.
Neither might be his fault, but they are both his responsibility.
The Mayor of New Orleans though that Katarina was enough of a threat to order mandatory evacuation Sunday. GW finally got arsed to get off his vacation and back to DC 4 days later. Today he is finally out talking his platitudes, but he should have been out there leading the country (you know, the job he was elected for?) since Tuesday at the latest, when it was painfully obvious the magnitude of the disaster the country was looking at. He might have even put some resources in motion Sunday. The New Orleans flooding is bad, but Mississipi isn't exactly having a picnic either.
Instead he was enjoying a few holes of golf and playing country star. If he wants to "Just get on with his life" I'd suggest he resign and let someone who actually wants to do the job of leading this country be President. Same for the rest of those lazy, incompetent bums inhabiting the White House right now. They are downright disrespectful to this country and her people and anyone who voted for them should be ashamed to have done so.
I wouldn't bet on it. Physical security is closely related to (in fact a part of) computer security. TSA has been caught out making a number of classic security blunders that imply a less than stellar planning process. Of course, this may be more due to the bureaucracy than the people, but what kind of security people would put up with a bureaucracy that neutered their security plans?
While the usual quality of discourse here isn't exactly Plato's lectures, there are enough gems in the dross to make it worth reading, and quite a few people here have a solid security background.
4 yr payoff for solar cells that can have a 10+yr lifespan is pretty good IMHO.
The main thing is the final net payout. Solar is >1 today. It is practical. The next step is whether it is sufficiently desirable. As the net payout number continues to rise, solar and solar/wind setups will begin to dominate over combustion based generation.
Wind is already >1 net payout, but the cost is biased to more maintenance over time which is a problem for many deployments.
It could be said, in fact, that the Supreme Court's primary purpose is to declare laws unconstitutional, as per the Constitution.
I mean, you don't really trust all those folks in the legislature to do the right thing all the time? They could be corrupted, panicked, or simply overwhelmed by circumstance.
Whether this is bluster because of that or he _really_ doesn't get free software at all is a good question.
On the plus side of free software are all the companies that don't sell or service software, but still have developers on staff for their custom applications. Free software magnifies the power of these developers manyfold, and they are often the source of innovation. You don't generate new solutions to a problem unless you have to solve it.
So in a way, McVoy is right, the days of the software development house may be numbered, but the tap of innovation stays right where it has been, and always will be, with individuals who have a problem to solve.
Linus explicitly mentioned that time for commits was a primary consideration, and 'mv' is a lot faster than 'diff'.
Which makes it who's fault again?
Enjoy choking on your own smug sanctimonious bullshit, coward.
They want the big bucks for their "professional" OS, they accept the responsibility for making it work.
If I want to "take steps to fix it", I'll run Gimp on Linux where it just works, and I can fix it (or pay someone to) when it doesn't.
Yes, you can do it, but it takes quite a bit of administrative acumen that most people simply don't have. Frankly, the whole system is set up to require admin access at a frequency that means either having a full time admin, or having the user run as admin.
Failure to provide the needed level of administration either gives you a malware-ridden useless installation, or results in a slow degradation into uselessness from accumulated errors.