Well, it could even go beyond security! We (umm, geeks in general) have been for a long time leaning on Moore's Law and saying "we'll fix x in software" because cpu cycles are becoming cheaper all the time. But that may not be the best way to solve some problems even though it may be fastest and cheapest. Thanks.
I've heard one of the reasons for Windows' historical instability is that user applications are permitted (nay, even encouraged) to corrupt the kernel, whereas in a typical vmunix implementation this is not allowed. I.e. my bad calls to free() result in core dumps not BSoDs... But here is a Linux application program right there with hooks in the kernel, and not only that it is hooked up to the network! Is Ingo a) Godlike or b) Nuts?
A big part of the problem in trying to secure UNIX is that we keep trying to solve issues in the wrong domain.
Dang, ain't that true? If a fraction of the energy devoted to overclocking / fps / video hardware & driver issues by the community was devoted instead to hardware-based solutions to security problems, a lot of the software problems might be a lot easier. Cool.
Yeah, I've heard of David Gelernter, too, and realize that he's an author and professor at a highly regarded university. But the essay still stinks. Fame and credentials are more important than content? You must design web sites. Sorry for the flame.
What's the factor that makes women less attracted to the academic career than males? I wonder.
To paraphrase Bob Weir, "oh yes, the women are, SMARTER!"
Speaking as an academic, I'd have to say that to do this you have to work twice as long and twice as hard to have half as much income and half as much job security as someone in a financial or other professional career. My wife and daughters are not that dumb.
Totally true. However, application of the advanced ideas you mention were developed before 1970 has not (necessarily) reached its full potential (now there's an awkward sentence). So what if (Unix) is (30 year) old technology, there's still plenty of stuff to do with (it). And I think it's pretty hackish to find new applications and uses for old technology as well as developing or using the shiniest new things.
Besides, the whole idea of the microcomputer revolution was to give individuals better access to the technology embodied in mainframes without the cost and administrative control/overhead, so it's perfectly understandable that the evolution of micros follows that of macros.
I agree that BEULAs are probably the worst new 'technological innovation.' I've never been able to get over the idea that you can't return something that doesn't work just because you tried it... that s*cks.
I've been denied purchases when traveling. Don't count on using the card on the first day you travel unless you can speak to them! Of course in my case they said it was a mistake but it happened twice...
Don't be silly. Not Cryptonomicon, but Count Zero!
{Conroy and Turner approach a seemingly abandoned oil platform by helicopter: the helipad is marked by a large biohazard symbol...}
Conroy: Somebody tried to set it up once as a data haven, back before the war. ... Turner: There a biohazard down there? Conroy: Not anything you're not used to.
from Count Zero, by William Gibson, 1986!
Not to say that Stephenson's a Johnny-Mnemonic-Come-Lately, but hey, let's get the attributions correct;)
BINGO! You hit it right on the nose. The idea that the $CURRENT_TREND (man that is great) is at all significant in terms of our culture and the rest of the world is simply ludicrous. Kids, they said the same thing about LSD back in '67, and trust me, it didn't change the world. But the idea pops up every week now, still nothing really changes...
Scientists who work in the natural world are always bringing new technology (i.e. hardware!) to bear on "old" problems and discovering new things. This seems to me to be little different from updating UNIX to run on new microprocessors. It's not invitation-to-Stockholm research, certainly, but it is research. I'm surprised at Pike's attitude. Perhaps he was one of those folks who urged their Bell Labs colleagues Penzias and Wilson to stop working on that old radio telescope microwave noise problem and do something new for a change. And I really think that research into multiprocessor high-performance computing *is* thriving, ongoing systems research into new things. I don't mean to say people shouldn't try and develop radical new approaches to systems, that would be great I agree, but it's also exciting to explore new heights in old systems as well.
My title/comment was inspired by grumpiness brought on by yet another "wow look what I discovered, isn't it shiny and new and gosh aren't we important" thing from/. posters. It's hard for them to remember sometimes that 90% of geek history occurred before they discovered the Web...;) cheers
Great, yes! I forgot about GRASS. I don't think about GIS much when thinking about remote sensing data, although some raster GISes do well with RS data sets and they do have mapping tools and so forth built in. I think the original posting is a red herring, there are a lot of relevant tools available already.
The Image Processing Workbench (IPW) of UCSB has been open source and freely available for years, and recent ports include Linux. Very powerful collection of command line Unix utilities written in C that can be pipelined together. It's specifically designed to work with remote sensing data although it does not incorporate image projection (mapping) and navigation functions. There is still a need for freely available OS tools for mapping and navigation.
Unfortunately, your situation is a rare and brilliant opportunity for all kinds of people to make money and not work. I have the same problem. I live in a pseudo-third-world country. To get to the Internet I have to rent a frame relay circuit from the (local) local phone company, pay a local ISP, and the (international) local phone company, which hooks into another ISP in the States -- when anything goes wrong the first thing all of these folks do is point the finger at each other (oh and us of course), and do nothing until we determine where the problem is on there behalf. And no matter what, they still get paid because there is no choice! If you have a choice at all, use it to influence these vendors. Vote with your dollars. Good luck.
Always was L and R for me, but then I took O-chem, ummm, 17 years ago now so maybe it's obsolete terminology. US vs. the world thing, perhaps? (I was in the US) Where did you take O-chem? Non US chemists out there, can you comment? Any IUPAC board members read/.? (cackle)
I don't claim to be a physical chemist, but I do a fair bit of work with optically active compounds, and I'm pretty confident in saying that this reaction is likely to be far too slow to be of any use as a switch (logic gate, transister etc) in any kind of computing device -- perhaps this is obvious, but some are asking.
On the other hand this does seem to be quite relevant to nanotechnology. There is an analogy in the visual system, where a pigment in the retina absorbs a photon and changes conformation (not chirality) -- this shape change ultimately triggers the neural impulse etc. The researchers do specifically mention sensors in their information, so perhaps this sort of chirality change would be useful as a detector of some sort. Or if you could bind one end of the molecule to a larger molecule like a protein, you'd have a teensy tiny lever arm. Neato.
Heard it all before, gang. Can we move on, now? Like, back to the whole news for nerds idea? This 'stuff' perhaps 'matters' too much for my taste. I'm burned out on all the blowharding about rights and the oh-so-important topic of the impact of the telegraph, umm I mean the railroad -- umm I mean the telephone, umm I mean television, umm I mean video games, umm I mean the Internet, on our society. Yawn. Stop pretending it's something new and exciting that will 'change the world.' McLuhan predicted the global village almost 40 years ago, and he's still wrong. Nothing I have seen in the last thirty-five years has changed my mind. There's a whole great big world out there that's not wired. Please, notice it every once in a while.
Yeah I agree, but I meant the *firms* not individual investors when I said "VCs == suits". Although (If we're taking ESR as an example) some investors are more individual than others (ahahahah couldn't resist). But seriously, I also think that there are serious capitalists out there who understand geekism; and while they are suits they are not bad suits. But, it seems that linuxcare did not find these people to be their execs and funding sources.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on what appears to be the central theme of the article -- the whole geeks vs. suits dialectic is held responsible for the company's problems. According to the article: Rather than focusing on the technology, the high-powered excecutives brought in to make the company profitable in the competetive business community concentrated on personal perks (cell phones, parking spaces), and making money on the stock market. Would have done better if they'd left the geeks in charge for a while longer. IMHO Linuxcare need a Jobsian (Jobsesque? Gasseeoid?) suitgeek who at least has a love for the technology and a knack for the sales pitch. Remember what happened to Apple when the suits squeezed out the geeks from the top levels (okay flame me now, I'm gritting my teeth) -- same story here?
And now, some text to evade the lameness filter. Bla, bla. Linux rules, Micro$oft s*cks, beowulf, smp, boy howdy I really love those chips with the funny names.
Durian: Incredibly smelly Indonesian fruit. Duroc: Castrated male pig.
C'mon chip firms, enough with the cute names already. Us geeks liked numbers just fine, and they work fine for car marketdroids. Let's have the numbers back now, thanx...
Slashdot Mirror
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
A big part of the problem in trying to secure UNIX is that we keep trying to solve issues in the wrong domain.
Dang, ain't that true? If a fraction of the energy devoted to overclocking / fps / video hardware & driver issues by the community was devoted instead to hardware-based solutions to security problems, a lot of the software problems might be a lot easier. Cool.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
To paraphrase Bob Weir, "oh yes, the women are, SMARTER!"
Speaking as an academic, I'd have to say that to do this you have to work twice as long and twice as hard to have half as much income and half as much job security as someone in a financial or other professional career. My wife and daughters are not that dumb.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
Besides, the whole idea of the microcomputer revolution was to give individuals better access to the technology embodied in mainframes without the cost and administrative control/overhead, so it's perfectly understandable that the evolution of micros follows that of macros.
I agree that BEULAs are probably the worst new 'technological innovation.' I've never been able to get over the idea that you can't return something that doesn't work just because you tried it... that s*cks.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
Well, I hate to say it, but if you have to ask that question, you're not a hacker.
What was itMaster Y0d4 said in TESB?
Do. Or do not. There is no why.
(or was that try)
I've been denied purchases when traveling. Don't count on using the card on the first day you travel unless you can speak to them! Of course in my case they said it was a mistake but it happened twice...
{Conroy and Turner approach a seemingly abandoned oil platform by helicopter: the helipad is marked by a large biohazard symbol...}
Conroy: Somebody tried to set it up once as a data haven, back before the war.
...
Turner: There a biohazard down there?
Conroy: Not anything you're not used to.
from Count Zero, by William Gibson, 1986!
Not to say that Stephenson's a Johnny-Mnemonic-Come-Lately, but hey, let's get the attributions correct ;)
BINGO! You hit it right on the nose. The idea that the $CURRENT_TREND (man that is great) is at all significant in terms of our culture and the rest of the world is simply ludicrous. Kids, they said the same thing about LSD back in '67, and trust me, it didn't change the world. But the idea pops up every week now, still nothing really changes...
Scientists who work in the natural world are always bringing new technology (i.e. hardware!) to bear on "old" problems and discovering new things. This seems to me to be little different from updating UNIX to run on new microprocessors. It's not invitation-to-Stockholm research, certainly, but it is research. I'm surprised at Pike's attitude. Perhaps he was one of those folks who urged their Bell Labs colleagues Penzias and Wilson to stop working on that old radio telescope microwave noise problem and do something new for a change. And I really think that research into multiprocessor high-performance computing *is* thriving, ongoing systems research into new things. I don't mean to say people shouldn't try and develop radical new approaches to systems, that would be great I agree, but it's also exciting to explore new heights in old systems as well.
My title/comment was inspired by grumpiness brought on by yet another "wow look what I discovered, isn't it shiny and new and gosh aren't we important" thing from /. posters. It's hard for them to remember sometimes that 90% of geek history occurred before they discovered the Web ... ;)
cheers
Great, yes! I forgot about GRASS. I don't think about GIS much when thinking about remote sensing data, although some raster GISes do well with RS data sets and they do have mapping tools and so forth built in. I think the original posting is a red herring, there are a lot of relevant tools available already.
The Image Processing Workbench (IPW) of UCSB has been open source and freely available for years, and recent ports include Linux. Very powerful collection of command line Unix utilities written in C that can be pipelined together. It's specifically designed to work with remote sensing data although it does not incorporate image projection (mapping) and navigation functions. There is still a need for freely available OS tools for mapping and navigation.
Unfortunately, your situation is a rare and brilliant opportunity for all kinds of people to make money and not work. I have the same problem. I live in a pseudo-third-world country. To get to the Internet I have to rent a frame relay circuit from the (local) local phone company, pay a local ISP, and the (international) local phone company, which hooks into another ISP in the States -- when anything goes wrong the first thing all of these folks do is point the finger at each other (oh and us of course), and do nothing until we determine where the problem is on there behalf. And no matter what, they still get paid because there is no choice! If you have a choice at all, use it to influence these vendors. Vote with your dollars. Good luck.
Always was L and R for me, but then I took O-chem, ummm, 17 years ago now so maybe it's obsolete terminology. US vs. the world thing, perhaps? (I was in the US) Where did you take O-chem? Non US chemists out there, can you comment? Any IUPAC board members read /.? (cackle)
On the other hand this does seem to be quite relevant to nanotechnology. There is an analogy in the visual system, where a pigment in the retina absorbs a photon and changes conformation (not chirality) -- this shape change ultimately triggers the neural impulse etc. The researchers do specifically mention sensors in their information, so perhaps this sort of chirality change would be useful as a detector of some sort. Or if you could bind one end of the molecule to a larger molecule like a protein, you'd have a teensy tiny lever arm. Neato.
Heard it all before, gang. Can we move on, now? Like, back to the whole news for nerds idea? This 'stuff' perhaps 'matters' too much for my taste. I'm burned out on all the blowharding about rights and the oh-so-important topic of the impact of the telegraph, umm I mean the railroad -- umm I mean the telephone, umm I mean television, umm I mean video games, umm I mean the Internet, on our society. Yawn. Stop pretending it's something new and exciting that will 'change the world.' McLuhan predicted the global village almost 40 years ago, and he's still wrong. Nothing I have seen in the last thirty-five years has changed my mind. There's a whole great big world out there that's not wired. Please, notice it every once in a while.
Yeah I agree, but I meant the *firms* not individual investors when I said "VCs == suits". Although (If we're taking ESR as an example) some investors are more individual than others (ahahahah couldn't resist). But seriously, I also think that there are serious capitalists out there who understand geekism; and while they are suits they are not bad suits. But, it seems that linuxcare did not find these people to be their execs and funding sources.
I think VCs == suits by definition, and Kleiner Perkins is one of the big VC firms, yes?
Worth starting a thread on the topic of what makes a good suit in a geek world -- not all VC firms are this control-oriented. Cheers
I'm surprised nobody has commented on what appears to be the central theme of the article -- the whole geeks vs. suits dialectic is held responsible for the company's problems. According to the article: Rather than focusing on the technology, the high-powered excecutives brought in to make the company profitable in the competetive business community concentrated on personal perks (cell phones, parking spaces), and making money on the stock market. Would have done better if they'd left the geeks in charge for a while longer. IMHO Linuxcare need a Jobsian (Jobsesque? Gasseeoid?) suitgeek who at least has a love for the technology and a knack for the sales pitch. Remember what happened to Apple when the suits squeezed out the geeks from the top levels (okay flame me now, I'm gritting my teeth) -- same story here?
And now, some text to evade the lameness filter. Bla, bla. Linux rules, Micro$oft s*cks, beowulf, smp, boy howdy I really love those chips with the funny names.
Durian: Incredibly smelly Indonesian fruit.
Duroc: Castrated male pig.
C'mon chip firms, enough with the cute names already. Us geeks liked numbers just fine, and they work fine for car marketdroids. Let's have the numbers back now, thanx...