How about fark? Ars Technica? news.com.com.com.com? What's keeping me from starting my own and competing well? What could Malda do to cause me to not be able to compete?
- Humans have a monopoly as far as higher order species.
High order as in what? Insects outnumber us by a huge amount, and they're a huge problem in the continuation of our species.
- The Earth has a heck of a monopoly on liveable planets (at least in our solar system, at least as far as we can tell)
Earth didn't 'compete' with another planet to obtain life.
- Almost all useable light that shines on the Earth and helps to create/maintain life comes from a single source
Once again, no competition is involved. Stupid analogies don't work.
- Much of what is animalistic instinct is to try to attain a monopoly at any stratum.
I thought that instinct was a mechanism for self-preservation. Oh, wait... it is.
Two possible cases where you wouldn't want someone to read the mail with the encrypted message: A) You're not using a block cipher, so it's possible to tell how long the message is, and B) you don't want anyone to know that you're corresponding with the recipient of your message.
In example A, say someone responds to a message in a non-block-cipher way. The message sent first says, "Should we attack at dawn?" The message you send back has enough information for two characters. Your enemy knows to not expect an attack at dawn.
Also, if you're an executive of a publicly traded company, and someone sees you sending lots of email with another executive of a direct competitor. People looking at this traffic can see that something big is happening, possibly a buyout of one company by the other, so they load up on stock. This isn't something you want to happen, lest the SEC get wind of it.
I don't know why I responded like this to an AC... you'll probably never read it.
You should hold an even tighter requirement than that. If there's something you don't want someone to read something, you shouldn't send it via email... This is not a secure medium at all. Things happen in plaintext.
This rule holds for encryption: If you don't want people reading even the encrypted text, email is the wrong way to do things.
The summary specifically states that this is dealing with cell phones and the like. Although I'm sure that some of the technology is going to come back to the mobile chip division, Intel already had IBM and AMD won with their current offerings.
I think a lot of it is the Mac felt like a lot more effort was put into the usability of the GUI. Dialog boxes are a prime example, instead of something like "Save document? OK, No, Cancel" you'd get "Save document? Save, Don't Save, Cancel". So just looking at the button you were clicking would tell you exactly what was going to happen, even if you didn't read the text of the dialog box.
This is something I don't really like about my mac. I like uniformity of my dialog boxes... I can't press a "Y", "N", or escape on every box. I don't like to grasp around for my mouse when closing my application.
Well said. This is true for a lot of the more specialized articles that come about on Slashdot, like the one about invention of the 100Ghz transistor that spouted lots of theories about a 100 Ghz processor being in development.
It's usually pretty useless to read most of the comments in this type of story, although there will usually be at least one really good post that knows the actual implications. Like yours.
Really, the best way to encourage current high schoolers and college students is support at the school level. Many colleges now sponsor teams every year, even having courses whose sole purpose is teaching strategies for these competitions. High schools have the same kind of support through clubs and such. Somebody just has to get the ball rolling.
Some competitions allow you to bring in some amount of bound materials (including materials bound by you), usually limited to 3 or five pounds. No electronic gadgets are allowed, and no floopy disks of code can be brought in.
"If it's possible to get into a Linux system without knowing the username or the password..*shudders*."
It's not a bad thing to be able to do this with physical access to the machine. If you have physical access, nothing is sacred unless you encrypt the entire volume.
That said, it's possible to not only gain access to a windows machine without a password, it's possible to GET THE PASSWORDS BACK (which is not feasible on a *nix machine). It's also trivial to reset the password.
I agree. Cookies are a huge convenience, and the disadvantages are practically nil. When was the last time something terrible happened to you, and you said "If it weren't for those darn cookies, this wouldn't have happened." Besides, cookies aren't the only way you're being "tracked".
Why should someone be scared that they're being tracked? If you're going somewhere that the advertisers don't want you to know about, use an anonymizer.
Really, done properly, PDFs aren't that painful. I have hated PDF stuff in Windows (and Linux, the Gnome PDF viewer crashed a lot), but I don't mind them since I started using OSX. PDFs are fast and painless, almost as good as reading a webpage. Highlighting would be nice, though.
(Why have all my posts been about OSX since I got the Apple? I don't want to be a zealot...)
Owning it implies that you can do whatever you want with it. It wouldn't be legal for him to, say, sell it without my consent. Why not? Cuz I own it with him.
Separately, we own nothing, until we come up with an agreement on how to split the house and its contents.
Not only is this going to be a headache... You're going to be hand-coding all of the FrontPage stuff into your website, which may grow to be pretty large. Then you're probably stuck doing it that same way, because FP might kick back your code, and it would take too much effort to port to something else. You'll have to keep editing it by hand, FOREVER.
I think you're not really thinking of the right things when making your argument. Some devices are generally very hard to install on Linux, either due to driver inavailability/confusion over which driver to install (many winmodems), non-crippled drivers being offered in one format (ATI Radeon drivers as RPMs), etc.
Have you ever tried installing an accelerated driver for the Radeon 9600 on something like Debian? It's not an easy process, especially for a non-expert. Quite different from going to ati.com and downloading a program to run, which I have been able to do with almost all of my hardware in Windows, no problems.
It seems that the big Linux problem is expecting everyone to be an expert to do anything but the simplest things beyond installation. Personally, I think that's a big target for improvement.
yeah theres the mac mini but I would at least want to buy a more powerful system for my general needs.
Don't you have a niche purpose for a computer in your home? File server, or a box for the living room?
That said, if you wouldn't want to keep the under-powered box around, they have a really high eBay value... You could get just about everything you put in back out.
Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. But, even so, MS should have a better way of doing it than a 3rd party programmer should. They make the APIs! Why can't they access the spreadsheet directly? --- http://www.inchoate.net/
Yeah, but that doesn't do anything for the crashing part.:-P It's just trying to spread the havoc while your machine goes down in flames by putting up an away message with the address in it.
Eh, I'm not impressed. All it did was try to render an image at width="9999999" height="9999999". Definitely shouldn't crash any machine, but if it does, it's an OS exploit, not something ATI could fix (as a sibling poster mentioned).
Think realistically. The $500 Dells in a computer lab in a school are going to come with Windows and Office preinstalled. Furthermore, they will probably be cheaper due to educational discounts. Furthermore, a minimum-wage summer techie can install an entire lab like that in a couple of days. This makes a total charge of well under $63,000, and probably less than $51,000.
Also, as a side-note, Office/Windows upgrades will not happen until computer upgrades occur.
Slashdot Mirror
- How many websites compete with /.?
How about fark? Ars Technica? news.com.com.com.com? What's keeping me from starting my own and competing well? What could Malda do to cause me to not be able to compete?
- Humans have a monopoly as far as higher order species.
High order as in what? Insects outnumber us by a huge amount, and they're a huge problem in the continuation of our species.
- The Earth has a heck of a monopoly on liveable planets (at least in our solar system, at least as far as we can tell)
Earth didn't 'compete' with another planet to obtain life.
- Almost all useable light that shines on the Earth and helps to create/maintain life comes from a single source
Once again, no competition is involved. Stupid analogies don't work.
- Much of what is animalistic instinct is to try to attain a monopoly at any stratum.
I thought that instinct was a mechanism for self-preservation. Oh, wait... it is.
Two possible cases where you wouldn't want someone to read the mail with the encrypted message: A) You're not using a block cipher, so it's possible to tell how long the message is, and B) you don't want anyone to know that you're corresponding with the recipient of your message.
In example A, say someone responds to a message in a non-block-cipher way. The message sent first says, "Should we attack at dawn?" The message you send back has enough information for two characters. Your enemy knows to not expect an attack at dawn.
Also, if you're an executive of a publicly traded company, and someone sees you sending lots of email with another executive of a direct competitor. People looking at this traffic can see that something big is happening, possibly a buyout of one company by the other, so they load up on stock. This isn't something you want to happen, lest the SEC get wind of it.
I don't know why I responded like this to an AC... you'll probably never read it.
You should hold an even tighter requirement than that. If there's something you don't want someone to read something, you shouldn't send it via email... This is not a secure medium at all. Things happen in plaintext.
This rule holds for encryption: If you don't want people reading even the encrypted text, email is the wrong way to do things.
IE is free for mac. "It's been 9 seconds since you hit 'reply'."
The summary specifically states that this is dealing with cell phones and the like. Although I'm sure that some of the technology is going to come back to the mobile chip division, Intel already had IBM and AMD won with their current offerings.
I think a lot of it is the Mac felt like a lot more effort was put into the usability of the GUI. Dialog boxes are a prime example, instead of something like "Save document? OK, No, Cancel" you'd get "Save document? Save, Don't Save, Cancel". So just looking at the button you were clicking would tell you exactly what was going to happen, even if you didn't read the text of the dialog box.
This is something I don't really like about my mac. I like uniformity of my dialog boxes... I can't press a "Y", "N", or escape on every box. I don't like to grasp around for my mouse when closing my application.
Well said. This is true for a lot of the more specialized articles that come about on Slashdot, like the one about invention of the 100Ghz transistor that spouted lots of theories about a 100 Ghz processor being in development.
It's usually pretty useless to read most of the comments in this type of story, although there will usually be at least one really good post that knows the actual implications. Like yours.
Really, the best way to encourage current high schoolers and college students is support at the school level. Many colleges now sponsor teams every year, even having courses whose sole purpose is teaching strategies for these competitions. High schools have the same kind of support through clubs and such. Somebody just has to get the ball rolling.
Some competitions allow you to bring in some amount of bound materials (including materials bound by you), usually limited to 3 or five pounds. No electronic gadgets are allowed, and no floopy disks of code can be brought in.
Quothe Hackers (the movie):
PHREAK (to Cereal): D'you bring those Crayola books?
CEREAL: Oh yeah, technicolor rainbow.
Cereal brings a book out of his bag.
CEREAL: Green one.
JOEY: What is that, what is that? Lemmie see. What are these?
DADE: International Unix Environments.
Cereal pulls out another book.
CEREAL: Luscious orange?
Cereal hands the orange book to Phreak.
DADE: Computer security criteria, DOD standards.
Another book comes out.
DADE: The Pink Shirt Book, Guide to IBM PCs. So called due to the nasty pink shirt the guy wears on the cover.
Another one.
CEREAL: What's that?
DADE: Devil book. The Unix Bible.
Another one.
CEREAL: What's that?
DADE: Dragon book. Compiler design.
Cereal brings out a large red book.
CEREAL: Oh yeah? What's that?
DADE: The Red Book. NSA Trusted Networks. Otherwise known as the Ugly Red Book that won't fit on a shelf.
If you think only one of the DoD's companies are using CAD software extensively, you need to look some more.
"If it's possible to get into a Linux system without knowing the username or the password..*shudders*."
It's not a bad thing to be able to do this with physical access to the machine. If you have physical access, nothing is sacred unless you encrypt the entire volume.
That said, it's possible to not only gain access to a windows machine without a password, it's possible to GET THE PASSWORDS BACK (which is not feasible on a *nix machine). It's also trivial to reset the password.
I agree. Cookies are a huge convenience, and the disadvantages are practically nil. When was the last time something terrible happened to you, and you said "If it weren't for those darn cookies, this wouldn't have happened." Besides, cookies aren't the only way you're being "tracked".
Why should someone be scared that they're being tracked? If you're going somewhere that the advertisers don't want you to know about, use an anonymizer.
Really, done properly, PDFs aren't that painful. I have hated PDF stuff in Windows (and Linux, the Gnome PDF viewer crashed a lot), but I don't mind them since I started using OSX. PDFs are fast and painless, almost as good as reading a webpage. Highlighting would be nice, though.
(Why have all my posts been about OSX since I got the Apple? I don't want to be a zealot...)
My brother and I own a house. He doesn't own it.
Owning it implies that you can do whatever you want with it. It wouldn't be legal for him to, say, sell it without my consent. Why not? Cuz I own it with him.
Separately, we own nothing, until we come up with an agreement on how to split the house and its contents.
Mac and Linux have approximately the same desktop share... The trend is generally around 3%, with Linux slightly ahead.
w3school stats, highly unscientific
And, as a recent OSX switcher, you really don't miss the second mouse button... AppleKey + Click works, and it doesn't inconvenience me.
*has just spent three wonderful weeks discovering his new powerbook*
Not only is this going to be a headache... You're going to be hand-coding all of the FrontPage stuff into your website, which may grow to be pretty large. Then you're probably stuck doing it that same way, because FP might kick back your code, and it would take too much effort to port to something else. You'll have to keep editing it by hand, FOREVER.
Is this something you really want to do?
I think you're not really thinking of the right things when making your argument. Some devices are generally very hard to install on Linux, either due to driver inavailability/confusion over which driver to install (many winmodems), non-crippled drivers being offered in one format (ATI Radeon drivers as RPMs), etc.
Have you ever tried installing an accelerated driver for the Radeon 9600 on something like Debian? It's not an easy process, especially for a non-expert. Quite different from going to ati.com and downloading a program to run, which I have been able to do with almost all of my hardware in Windows, no problems.
It seems that the big Linux problem is expecting everyone to be an expert to do anything but the simplest things beyond installation. Personally, I think that's a big target for improvement.
Oops. :-P
:-P
This, children, was inaccurate AND imprecise.
If I say that a day has 24 hours, I'm pretty precise. (Only about .23 days off) This is not precise.
If I say a day has 138.38284827480284 hours... That's EXTREMELY precise, but entirely inaccurate.
yeah theres the mac mini but I would at least want to buy a more powerful system for my general needs.
Don't you have a niche purpose for a computer in your home? File server, or a box for the living room?
That said, if you wouldn't want to keep the under-powered box around, they have a really high eBay value... You could get just about everything you put in back out.
Yeah, I kind of feel the same way. But, even so, MS should have a better way of doing it than a 3rd party programmer should. They make the APIs! Why can't they access the spreadsheet directly?
---
http://www.inchoate.net/
Yeah, but that doesn't do anything for the crashing part. :-P It's just trying to spread the havoc while your machine goes down in flames by putting up an away message with the address in it.
Eh, I'm not impressed. All it did was try to render an image at width="9999999" height="9999999". Definitely shouldn't crash any machine, but if it does, it's an OS exploit, not something ATI could fix (as a sibling poster mentioned).
Think realistically. The $500 Dells in a computer lab in a school are going to come with Windows and Office preinstalled. Furthermore, they will probably be cheaper due to educational discounts. Furthermore, a minimum-wage summer techie can install an entire lab like that in a couple of days. This makes a total charge of well under $63,000, and probably less than $51,000.
Also, as a side-note, Office/Windows upgrades will not happen until computer upgrades occur.