It's about permission. Sure, the US could jam the EU system, but this is about talks to give the US permission to do so. There's quite a big difference.
For instance, if the EU has a 9/11 terrorist suspect, then the US can ask them nicely to export said terrorism to the US for trial. Or the US could, without any warning, drop a military taskforce into the EU and kidnap the suspect. Obviously, the latter isn't preferable to the former.
These talks are about giving the US permission to shut down the EU system whenever it wants. That's not a good thing.
Yes, except this would give the US Military capabilities over Gallieo, not the EU. Would the US agree to something similar? If the US should be able to jam the EU system, then surely it's perfectly fair for the EU to jam the US GPS system.
I wouldn't mind this provision as much, if the EU had the same rights as the US in this matter. In short, if the US Military wants the ability to shut off the EU's feed, then the EU member countries should have the ability to shut off the US feed. And how likely is it that the US would give France or Germany the ability to arbietarily decide to block their system?
I think you've misunderstood the parent post. It seemed to me as if he was claiming that there's no need to test the whole software and all software it may affect, if it's coded right. Ideally, all you'd need to do is run the unit tests over the affected class, module, or whatever. I'd probably run a test over the software as a whole just to check, but I shouldn't need to (in theory!).
Problem with Microsoft fixes is that they sometimes break other things. That's what the parent was complaining about. A patch should not only not break any other software, but it shouldn't be possible to break other software. "Real programmers don't need to regression test the whole world for a simple bug". He's not talking about dumping testing, just commenting that the fact Microsoft patches break things points to a rather bad API.
Of course, saying Microsoft products have a bad API is rather like commenting that the sky is blue. They make money off their bad APIs. The more obscure their code and document formats are, the more difficult they are to clone. Microsoft doesn't want to be surplanted in the same way they surplanted Lotus 1 2 3 with Excel.
As regards to who invented the first computer, I'd imagine it was more a debate between the German's Z3 and Britain's Colossus. The Z3 was Turing-complete, but only if you hacked it a bit, and it wasn't originally designed to do that, nor was it likely to have ever run that way (if I recall, it involved literally forking the punch tape, and taking advantage of a bug in the mechanical reader to similate an "if" function). Colossus was Turing complete computer, and was designed that way.
Z3 was finished on May 1941. Colossus was finished in January 1944. ENIAC was finished on February 1946.
The US created the second or third computer. Depending on how you figure it, it was Germany or Britain that created the first.
Personally, I'd vote for Colossus, as the Z3 was never intended to be Turing-complete, and probably never used that way. But then, I'm biased:)
What's the big hang up of hacker vs cracker? I understand both meaning of hacker and the definition of cracker. So why the persistence with insisting hackers should be called crackers?
People don't insist that all hackers should be called crackers. It's just a matter of more accurate terminology. If I hack a system, then I could be either putting a system together or breaking it apart. A Linux hacker could specialise in penetrating Linux boxes, or working on the Linux kernal.
Hacking is non-specific. Cracking narrows down the field quite a bit. Personally, I don't care particularly, as long as the context is clear, and as long as script kiddies aren't included in either group.
How so? No-one's denying that the systems were cracked. In fact, it was all admitted and documented rather quickly. But it seems silly to go the opposite way and claim that, for some reason, all Debian boxes are compromised. Whilst ignoring warning signs is bad, it's also not too good to blow up incidents like this into the sky falling down.
Fact is that some servers were compromised. But some remained secure. If there was a rootable flaw in Debian then there would be little reason to leave the more important prizes untouched. Whilst all of the code must be examined to make sure of this, the evidence that's currently about suggests that Debian is not inherently insecure, as you so wildly suggested.
So I'd claim that far from underreacting, it is you who are overreacting.
I disagree. Whilst some Debian servers may have been compromised, that hardly implies that open source is somehow "bad". The fact that this was admitted, and fixed, speaks well of the Debian group. Furthermore, quite a lot of open source software is considered better than proprietry counterparts.
You can hardly claim that Linux is a stupid thing to waste money on. It may be hyped, but it's hardly useless. Look at Google, for instance. And look at other open source products such as Apache, PHP and MySQL. A Linux webserver running Apache/PHP/MySQL is a considerably better server than a Windows server running IIS/ASP/MSSQL. I can't see how Linux can be viewed as a trend, when, for some things, it is clearly better than proprietry competition.
Consider that over 60% of webpages are served up by Apache, an open source product, and the majority or those servers are either *BSD or Linux. This can hardly be considered as a fad. The stability issues of Linux as well, whilst often exaggerated, are hardly non-existant. My box has been up 23 days without a single crash or reboot. The kernal is rock solid. KDE crashes about 10 times a year. When I compare this to friends and family using XP, I can see the difference quite clearly.
What potential compromise? They know the source archive hasn't been compromised. Just a few machines. If Debian as an OS is inherently insecure, then why didn't the attackers change the source too? Since they didn't compromise every machine the Debian team run, only some of them, then we can consider it very likely that Debian, as a distro, is not inherently insecure.
To put it more simply, we know a few Debian machines have been compromised. We also know that the other Debian machines have not. The most enticing target for any cracker would be the Debian source. That was not compromised, therefore we can be fairly certain that the crackers could not get in. Therefore, Debian is not inherently insecure.
Furthermore, due to the open nature of the Debian project, they'll likely find out how the attack was carried out, then tell everyone, and plug whatever problem there was. Or perhaps it was simple social engineering, or a bad password chosen, or a number of different things. It's unlikely to be a problem in the OS, of course, for reasons I've specified.
This is just like the Mandrake frying standard PC hardware story. Yes, the LG drives weren't compliant to the de jure standards, but in the real world, standards are de facto, not de jure.
Well, yes, except that the drives were unstandard in the same way that a "crossroads" sign is an unstandard way of warning that there is a cliff edge ahead. If a drive says, "I'm standard, honest!", and then you tell it to do a standard task, but instead it wipes itself, then it's not really the software's fault.
To put it another way, if there's a button on a video recorder that says "play", when what it really does is "erase", then the hardware is at fault.
Mandrake should have caught it, but in this case it was the incompetance of the hardware manufacturers, not of the OS.
Pesistant world servers are fun. But I have had a lot of fun playing through modules as well. Generally, though, the people who I play modules with are people I've met on... persistant world servers:) - they're like mini MMORPGs:)
Usually the ones with a good number of players are the best. But look around. Don't tie yourself down to a particular server, at least not at first. I did, with Arleah, which turned out not to be that good. I had fun on it, but compared to others, it really wasn't. So hop about, find one that you like, and then settle down and get involved:)
Exactly the same here! I bought it, it lay idle for some time, I tried it out online, someone recommended a good server and *bam*! Wow. It actually became very addictive indeed.
Effectively, all the problems with NWN can be fixed with mods. A good online server is great. Quite a few of the mods availiable for download are far better than the original campaign.
I agree with you, in that the original campaign really wasn't too good. But, and this is a big, big, J-Lo-sized but, you're missing out if you think that's all there is to it. NWN needs the internet, either for a fun online game or for downloading custom modules that are far superior to the one Bioware created.
The major reason why MS Office is so popular is because all it's formats are closed. A company cannot switch to a competitor. The vast majority of Microsoft products are either inbuilt, or lock the user with formats or compatability. Microsoft's great software realisation is that you don't need to make great products if you make sure that people can't use anything different.
Whilst they already may have a very large market share, if there's suddenly 100% open specs, then Word's market share will shrink. People can quite easily undercut the cost. Whilst some PHBs might go for MS, if another word processor offers 100% compatability for a tenth the price... Well, money speaks loudly.
Which is why I doubt Microsoft's intentions. Office isn't really that good a product. It crashes, for one. Look at, say, Warcraft III. A vastly more complex piece of software that is incredibly more stable. Whilst word processors may take a lot of coding, if the standards were truly open, then MS would have to compete on a level playing field. And I can't think of a single software program, on a level playing field, they've produced that is better than the competition.
Compare Apache to IIS. Compare ASP to PHP. Compare IE to Firebird. None of Microsoft's software is outstanding in any technical way. When not bundled in with the OS, or locked in with compatibility issues, MS loses out.
However, I think it's fairly clear that humans are in fact more evolved than our non-vestigial tailed distant cousins. While this might not always be evident, I contend that a careful study of enviromental factors will reveal a lack of standards and a certain sophist world view combined to create a workplace where poop flinging, avoiding eye contact, screaming, and intricate social alliances are the norm. Also, I blame Survivor.
Pretty sweet though, now i don't have to worry about always getting my damn shoelaces stuck on the gear
Yep! That's so annoying! It catches, and suddenly your foot is stuck to the pedal and the pedal can't turn round anymore, so you kinda just fall over:/
Considering the state france and germany are in, looking at being fined for their debt load
I should mention that France and Germany's debts are actually less than the US's, both in size and as a proportion of the country's GDP.
Not to mention the fun that could be had pitting the newer states against the old guard with preferential trade agreements.
Um... Well, fun for the Europeans, maybe. For all your talk about economic textbooks, you don't appear to know that the EU is a single market. For instance, if you sell to Spain something for $10, and sell it to France for $30, then the french won't buy it off you, they'll drive their trucks down to Spain, buy it there, then drive it back to France, incurring only transport costs. Single market, remember?
It's as silly as trying to punish Washington by selling high to them and cheap to California. It doesn't work. Economically, the only thing different from unloading goods in France or Spain is the location. It's the same market you're selling to.
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It's about permission. Sure, the US could jam the EU system, but this is about talks to give the US permission to do so. There's quite a big difference.
For instance, if the EU has a 9/11 terrorist suspect, then the US can ask them nicely to export said terrorism to the US for trial. Or the US could, without any warning, drop a military taskforce into the EU and kidnap the suspect. Obviously, the latter isn't preferable to the former.
These talks are about giving the US permission to shut down the EU system whenever it wants. That's not a good thing.
Yes, except this would give the US Military capabilities over Gallieo, not the EU. Would the US agree to something similar? If the US should be able to jam the EU system, then surely it's perfectly fair for the EU to jam the US GPS system.
I wouldn't mind this provision as much, if the EU had the same rights as the US in this matter. In short, if the US Military wants the ability to shut off the EU's feed, then the EU member countries should have the ability to shut off the US feed. And how likely is it that the US would give France or Germany the ability to arbietarily decide to block their system?
The Register just says that: "Talks are underway between the US and the European Union". Nothing yet seems to be agreed or finalised.
Do we know if anything definite has been decided yet? I can't see the EU caving in that easily (though I may be wrong).
I think you've misunderstood the parent post. It seemed to me as if he was claiming that there's no need to test the whole software and all software it may affect, if it's coded right. Ideally, all you'd need to do is run the unit tests over the affected class, module, or whatever. I'd probably run a test over the software as a whole just to check, but I shouldn't need to (in theory!).
Problem with Microsoft fixes is that they sometimes break other things. That's what the parent was complaining about. A patch should not only not break any other software, but it shouldn't be possible to break other software. "Real programmers don't need to regression test the whole world for a simple bug". He's not talking about dumping testing, just commenting that the fact Microsoft patches break things points to a rather bad API.
Of course, saying Microsoft products have a bad API is rather like commenting that the sky is blue. They make money off their bad APIs. The more obscure their code and document formats are, the more difficult they are to clone. Microsoft doesn't want to be surplanted in the same way they surplanted Lotus 1 2 3 with Excel.
A link is severed between the UK and the US, but by no means are the US and UK cut off from each other. I'm from the UK, and I can still post.
Everything okay here, too, but some sites seem to be down. Moonpod software for one.
I'm from Britain, and I'm still here :)
:)
As regards to who invented the first computer, I'd imagine it was more a debate between the German's Z3 and Britain's Colossus. The Z3 was Turing-complete, but only if you hacked it a bit, and it wasn't originally designed to do that, nor was it likely to have ever run that way (if I recall, it involved literally forking the punch tape, and taking advantage of a bug in the mechanical reader to similate an "if" function). Colossus was Turing complete computer, and was designed that way.
Z3 was finished on May 1941.
Colossus was finished in January 1944.
ENIAC was finished on February 1946.
The US created the second or third computer. Depending on how you figure it, it was Germany or Britain that created the first.
Personally, I'd vote for Colossus, as the Z3 was never intended to be Turing-complete, and probably never used that way. But then, I'm biased
Have you considered the irony of posting such a comment in a web based discussion forum, considering that the creator of the web is British?
Mambo isn't bad. It's certainly pretty simple to use. opensourceCMS has an example of it.
Why should any self-respecting hacker care? To the public, he's a creative software engineer. To anyone who's more informed, he's a hacker.
What's the big hang up of hacker vs cracker? I understand both meaning of hacker and the definition of cracker. So why the persistence with insisting hackers should be called crackers?
People don't insist that all hackers should be called crackers. It's just a matter of more accurate terminology. If I hack a system, then I could be either putting a system together or breaking it apart. A Linux hacker could specialise in penetrating Linux boxes, or working on the Linux kernal.
Hacking is non-specific. Cracking narrows down the field quite a bit. Personally, I don't care particularly, as long as the context is clear, and as long as script kiddies aren't included in either group.
How so? No-one's denying that the systems were cracked. In fact, it was all admitted and documented rather quickly. But it seems silly to go the opposite way and claim that, for some reason, all Debian boxes are compromised. Whilst ignoring warning signs is bad, it's also not too good to blow up incidents like this into the sky falling down.
Fact is that some servers were compromised. But some remained secure. If there was a rootable flaw in Debian then there would be little reason to leave the more important prizes untouched. Whilst all of the code must be examined to make sure of this, the evidence that's currently about suggests that Debian is not inherently insecure, as you so wildly suggested.
So I'd claim that far from underreacting, it is you who are overreacting.
I disagree. Whilst some Debian servers may have been compromised, that hardly implies that open source is somehow "bad". The fact that this was admitted, and fixed, speaks well of the Debian group. Furthermore, quite a lot of open source software is considered better than proprietry counterparts.
You can hardly claim that Linux is a stupid thing to waste money on. It may be hyped, but it's hardly useless. Look at Google, for instance. And look at other open source products such as Apache, PHP and MySQL. A Linux webserver running Apache/PHP/MySQL is a considerably better server than a Windows server running IIS/ASP/MSSQL. I can't see how Linux can be viewed as a trend, when, for some things, it is clearly better than proprietry competition.
Consider that over 60% of webpages are served up by Apache, an open source product, and the majority or those servers are either *BSD or Linux. This can hardly be considered as a fad. The stability issues of Linux as well, whilst often exaggerated, are hardly non-existant. My box has been up 23 days without a single crash or reboot. The kernal is rock solid. KDE crashes about 10 times a year. When I compare this to friends and family using XP, I can see the difference quite clearly.
What potential compromise? They know the source archive hasn't been compromised. Just a few machines. If Debian as an OS is inherently insecure, then why didn't the attackers change the source too? Since they didn't compromise every machine the Debian team run, only some of them, then we can consider it very likely that Debian, as a distro, is not inherently insecure.
To put it more simply, we know a few Debian machines have been compromised. We also know that the other Debian machines have not. The most enticing target for any cracker would be the Debian source. That was not compromised, therefore we can be fairly certain that the crackers could not get in. Therefore, Debian is not inherently insecure.
Furthermore, due to the open nature of the Debian project, they'll likely find out how the attack was carried out, then tell everyone, and plug whatever problem there was. Or perhaps it was simple social engineering, or a bad password chosen, or a number of different things. It's unlikely to be a problem in the OS, of course, for reasons I've specified.
This is just like the Mandrake frying standard PC hardware story. Yes, the LG drives weren't compliant to the de jure standards, but in the real world, standards are de facto, not de jure.
Well, yes, except that the drives were unstandard in the same way that a "crossroads" sign is an unstandard way of warning that there is a cliff edge ahead. If a drive says, "I'm standard, honest!", and then you tell it to do a standard task, but instead it wipes itself, then it's not really the software's fault.
To put it another way, if there's a button on a video recorder that says "play", when what it really does is "erase", then the hardware is at fault.
Mandrake should have caught it, but in this case it was the incompetance of the hardware manufacturers, not of the OS.
I liked it :)
So, you haven't read it?
Oh, and look under the "Persistant Worlds Story" or "Roleplay" catagories for a list on the NWN internet game thing.
Pesistant world servers are fun. But I have had a lot of fun playing through modules as well. Generally, though, the people who I play modules with are people I've met on... persistant world servers :) - they're like mini MMORPGs :)
:)
Usually the ones with a good number of players are the best. But look around. Don't tie yourself down to a particular server, at least not at first. I did, with Arleah, which turned out not to be that good. I had fun on it, but compared to others, it really wasn't. So hop about, find one that you like, and then settle down and get involved
Exactly the same here! I bought it, it lay idle for some time, I tried it out online, someone recommended a good server and *bam*! Wow. It actually became very addictive indeed.
Effectively, all the problems with NWN can be fixed with mods. A good online server is great. Quite a few of the mods availiable for download are far better than the original campaign.
I agree with you, in that the original campaign really wasn't too good. But, and this is a big, big, J-Lo-sized but, you're missing out if you think that's all there is to it. NWN needs the internet, either for a fun online game or for downloading custom modules that are far superior to the one Bioware created.
The major reason why MS Office is so popular is because all it's formats are closed. A company cannot switch to a competitor. The vast majority of Microsoft products are either inbuilt, or lock the user with formats or compatability. Microsoft's great software realisation is that you don't need to make great products if you make sure that people can't use anything different.
Whilst they already may have a very large market share, if there's suddenly 100% open specs, then Word's market share will shrink. People can quite easily undercut the cost. Whilst some PHBs might go for MS, if another word processor offers 100% compatability for a tenth the price... Well, money speaks loudly.
Which is why I doubt Microsoft's intentions. Office isn't really that good a product. It crashes, for one. Look at, say, Warcraft III. A vastly more complex piece of software that is incredibly more stable. Whilst word processors may take a lot of coding, if the standards were truly open, then MS would have to compete on a level playing field. And I can't think of a single software program, on a level playing field, they've produced that is better than the competition.
Compare Apache to IIS. Compare ASP to PHP. Compare IE to Firebird. None of Microsoft's software is outstanding in any technical way. When not bundled in with the OS, or locked in with compatibility issues, MS loses out.
However, I think it's fairly clear that humans are in fact more evolved than our non-vestigial tailed distant cousins. While this might not always be evident, I contend that a careful study of enviromental factors will reveal a lack of standards and a certain sophist world view combined to create a workplace where poop flinging, avoiding eye contact, screaming, and intricate social alliances are the norm. Also, I blame Survivor.
So, exactly like a human workplace?
Pretty sweet though, now i don't have to worry about always getting my damn shoelaces stuck on the gear
:/
Yep! That's so annoying! It catches, and suddenly your foot is stuck to the pedal and the pedal can't turn round anymore, so you kinda just fall over
Considering the state france and germany are in, looking at being fined for their debt load
I should mention that France and Germany's debts are actually less than the US's, both in size and as a proportion of the country's GDP.
Not to mention the fun that could be had pitting the newer states against the old guard with preferential trade agreements.
Um... Well, fun for the Europeans, maybe. For all your talk about economic textbooks, you don't appear to know that the EU is a single market. For instance, if you sell to Spain something for $10, and sell it to France for $30, then the french won't buy it off you, they'll drive their trucks down to Spain, buy it there, then drive it back to France, incurring only transport costs. Single market, remember?
It's as silly as trying to punish Washington by selling high to them and cheap to California. It doesn't work. Economically, the only thing different from unloading goods in France or Spain is the location. It's the same market you're selling to.