OK. You got me. I admit it. I didn't actually go track down a video of a Dell commercial and verify that I have the numbers right. I was referring (as I thought it might be obvious) to the pattern of having three initial configurations, the economy model, for home users, ideal for such-and-such tasks, the middle grade one, best for multimedia, digital photography, and so forth, and the power-user model, best for gaming, video editing, etc. These ads were really prevalent, from almost every major OEM, a few years ago. Even now, I often see ads for the ``Dimension XYZ desktop, with the power you need for your digital lifestyle. Surf the web, create personal photo albums, and burn CDs faster than ever with the Intel Pentium 4 processor!'' You get the drift. I wouldn't call it outright lying, but then, I wouldn't call Apple's ad that, either.
Why? Do you work for Dell?
Re:Can someone with some experience in these progr
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I knew someone here had to know something about this stuff. Thanks for clearing that up!
A Dell representative said in an e-mail: We "notified NAD because we felt there were some inaccuracies in Apple's advertisement and wanted to act on behalf of consumers in the marketplace who deserve accurate information on which to base their purchase decisions...Essentially, we felt that clarity in the marketplace benefits consumers, and NAD agreed."
I'm sure that's it. That concern for the consumers' well-being would be why Dell advertises the Celeron 2.4GHz as only suitable for word processing and e-mail. ``Ooh, ma'am, if you're going to be surfing the 'web, you're going to need top-notch power for that kinda number-crunching!''
Re:Can someone with some experience in these progr
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I think this sort of thing is probably pretty rare among slashdotters. It's got a really steep learning curve (but then, so does coding and Linux), is taught fewer places, is done less in industry, and so forth.
Yes, Maya is used in a number of high end 3d design shops, including many, if not all, that make 3d animated movies and special effects (think Shrek, etc). Renderman is a rendering plugin that allows for better looking renders. I've used it, and it does indeed look better, but I'm not expert enough to tell you what the algorithmic difference is. I believe Renderman was developed at Pixar, as a point of trivia.
Maya itself, after a recent price cut, still runs in the thousands of dollars, depending upon which version you get, but there was and may still be a Personal Learning Edition for free on Alias|Wavefront's site. It can't save as files that can be read by the real version, and its renders are watermarked right across the center, but I would suggest you check it out if you're interested. And then there's the open-source Blender, which I just started messing with. It seems pretty good, especially for the price.
Yeah, you are also right that Maya is a lot like 3DSMax or Lightwave (neither of which I've used, as a matter of fact), but it is indeed supposed to be better. I don't know a huge amount about 3d modelling, but I like to think I'm not that bad at Maya. So, you know, maybe an expert here can chip in.
I think the idea of using other computers as bridges to the Internet is the really neat one. Mesh networks promise ad-hoc networks that are connected to the Internet. Now THAT would be cool.
Looks kinda like an actually useful version of
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this. Which clearly is designed to just look cool (and is successful, I'd say).
Re:Can someone with some experience in these progr
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· Score: 5, Informative
Maya isn't CAD, just so you know. CAD is more for engineers; Maya is for design in the sense of cool-looking things (as opposed to architectural diagrams--NB being that I've never actually done CAD, but I do know Maya).
The deal with Maya is that to easily create in 3d, you actually work in a 3d environment. Navigation, just as in a video game, is done with one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. The keyboard hand is used to select tools, etc, and to choose what mode the mouse input goes in. The mouse is used to rotate, scale, and pan the object in front of the camera (or the camera around the object, depending on your philosophy). For example, holding CTRL while using the left mouse button rotates (if I remember right--I really can't tell offhand without actually doing it).
So because input is so odd in such a program, I can imagine many ways to do it differently (unlike, say, typing, in which there really is only one obvious paradigm--one key per letter). I don't know specifically how they implement this, and I do personally feel relatively comfortable with the current setup, but it could be neat.
On a tangent, though, I think personally the big issue with working in 3d is not input per se, but the fact that the input and display are both two dimensional, despite the goal being to create something three dimensional. So for example, how two dimensional movements on a mousepad translate into three dimensional rotation can be kinda hard to get used to, and quite hard to be precise with. Also, I occasionally found myself, when I was first learning Maya, trying to move my head to look around the edges of an object (quite silly, I know). So the limitations of a two dimensional screen are also clear.
Maya is not a plug-in for Photoshop (at least, not the 3d modelling Maya). It's a 3d modelling suite by Alias|Wavefront, who is owned by SGI. It does modelling, animation, and a whole lot more.
No, it sounds like an ad hoc network. From a Powerbook. Real revolutionary.
On a more serious note, you'd have a) no need for ipv6 (easier to just give everyone a 10.0.0.0/24 address--you really think you'll have that many people?--and avoid ipv6 compatibility requirements), b) DHCP makes it easier anyhow, c) how would you know what files are available in caches? It'd be impossible to have any real browsing, since slashdot may be cached but the offsite links may not. Instead, you may as well just do regular file sharing. Big deal. And d) what possible tuning is necessary for this?
I mean, it's a kinda cool idea. But not terribly revolutionary. It's just ad-hoc networked filesharing.
Yeah, this is complete bullshit. It's a laptop. With ad hoc networking. And a battery. Apparently, that's all it takes to be provocative. Which I'm glad to hear; now, I know my aluminum Powerbook and 15GB iPod aren't yuppy, materialistic toys (which, I'll admit, I think they are). They're revolutionary and provocative. Gee. It really makes you think.
Er, what's the advantage over ad hoc networking again? Setting up an ad hoc network is one-click, too, depending on client software. So what, it's a little juiced up? Big deal. Get a bigger antenna for your laptop.
I honestly can't see how this is any different than existing tech. It's essentially a laptop in a backpack (in fact, I'd bet you that that's exactly what it is). The notion of ad-hoc wifi networks isn't new. And how this is ``provocative'' is way beyond me. It provides no capabilities not provided by my Powerbook. And I seriously doubt the minimum-wage-making drones behind the counter in McDonalds really notice or care if you set up your own hotspot. Even if it serves up pages of anti-McDonalds propoganda.
I'm not trying to troll, here, but this sort of thing really ticks me off. ``We're not just revolutinoary. We're provocative! You may not like what we do, but we made you think, didn't we?''
I doubt the issue here was the difficulty of parsing line continuations. There are plenty of parser generators that make this a piece of case (i.e. lex and jlex). The point is that if whitespace is significant, which it is in this case, it becomes fairly difficult to make code readable when you have line continuations that may or may not contain apparently-significant whitespace. In other words, to make this easy, you'd have to make the syntax harder.
Anyway, if this is an issue for you, you're using the wrong editor.
I was probably a bit glib, I'll admit. Large scale software design is something I'm quite bad at. It's not that it's intellectually challenging, or I can't grasp the concepts--it's just plain hard. But my point was that there is undoubtedly a ladder in terms of expertise. I may have to call tech support once in a while (I called Apple tech support a few days ago because my brand new Powerbook had a kernel panic after installing the OSX 10.3.3 patch), but it's not because they're higher trained or higher on the ladder than I am. It's because they simply know something I don't know.
The point was not arrogance, but rather to explain to the original poster that there are better and worse jobs in technology, higher paying and lower paying and more routine (as in his factory worker analogy) and less routine, and just because there are more more routine jobs now doesn't mean that the whole field is in the dumps or you can't still do pure research.
As for capability, hell, I can probably find a few researchers who'd find themselves stumped at a misconfiguration in Eudora, so there's definitely a field of expertise for even the lowliest technician.
And finally, as for the lines between computer science and programming; you're right, they're quite blurred. Some programmers are crap, for sure, but some do stuff I could only dream of. So, yeah, it's a bit more complex than all that, I guess.
Oh, yeah. And one thing that we can do to help mitigate this problem? Help managers understand what it is we do. If we want the uninitiated to think that programming is this difficult, arcane task they'll never understand, then they won't ever learn to tell the difference between a valid excuse (``that's a complex request that will require a lot of time for writing and testing to do well'') and a lame one (``I need to contact MSDN for the latest version of the J2EE hashtable implementation to speed up our ASP.NET servers''). Let them in on your secrets and they'll be a bit more receptive to your side of the story.
Sorry for the replying to myself thing. I hate it when people do that.
Perhaps it's poor management, not poor programmers, who are to blame. If managers knew enough about when to cut corners and hire the cheapest talent, and when to actually spring for the good coders, you probably wouldn't have to worry quite so much about shoddy software and slaps in the face at work.
Some coders are elite, and others aren't. That's not a bad thing. That's the way the market works.
I know a number of people just bitched you out for this post, so I'm going to try to keep it brief.;) Just a few points, in no particular order.
You refer to the cable guys as iif they are the epitome of computer science. They aren't computer scientists. They almost certainly aren't even programmers. Perhaps to the completely ignorant, all computer-related jobs are the same, but they aren't. Most jobs as a technician are crap. Slightly above that would be the post of admin. Keeping something up to date. Installing new software. Above that, some network and system admins have interesting jobs designing new systems, implementing creative solutions to problems, and so forth. Programmers have a similar opportunity, to do creative coding, but often it's just another solution to another problem. Not something that sounds like a lotta fun. And above that would be computer science. Research. Whole different ball game.
I think this is the root of your confusion. You see more blue-collar technical jobs. This doesn't mean less research is going on, though. Back in the day, the only people who interacted with computers were academics and researchers. There was no ITT tech. Now, in addition to the academics and researchers (of whom there are actually almost certainly many many more), there are hordes of unwashed masses actually (heaven forbid) using computers as tools, rather than just for the academic prospects themselves. Point is, the research is still there; in fact, there's far more of it. But there are also more and more other uses. This isn't a bad thing; it's a good thing.
In case you don't see what I mean, look at it this way. Your complaint could be summarized with an analogous complaint about the watch industry. Back in the 1800's, the only watches available were really classy, expensive, work-of-art kinda things. A gentleman's accessory. Now, any old Joe on the street has one; they come in all sorts of cheap, disposable, low-quality shitty versions. But that doesn't mean there are less high-quality versions; in fact, there are more. Tag Huer, Rolex, Citizen, Suunto...the competition to make the greatest precision timepiece is quite tough, I suspect. Point is, there's a lotta shit out there now that wasn't there in 1800, but plenty more nice watches as well.
Hmm. I guess I didn't really keep that brief. Sorry.
I'm reasonably knowledgeable about computer science, but when it comes to AI, I'm a layperson. So I'm not entirely sure what the goals of AI are, exactly. It's certainly a departure from traditional computation, in which the problems are quite clearly defined. But I don't think the intent is precisely to do things that are not Turing-recognizable; that is, the goal is not to do something that is beyond the realm of typical programming logic. Instead, it's to figure out how we humans make good guesses about things, how we make decisions, and implement that methodology.
I think you may be right about emotion (though it may very well be implemented by accident rather than through understanding what causes emotion in us; regardless, who's to say we really feel any more than a machine programmed to react a certain way feels?), but when it comes to the decision-making stuff, it seems a reasonable, if disputable, assumption that humans make decisions based on logic that could be processed by any Turing machine; were we to figure out what that logic is (as Bayesian spam filters, for example, attempt to do), we would be able to implement it on a machine.
I saw a recent headline either here on Slashdot or on Kuro5hin that said that humans may use Bayesian logic in ordinary decision making. That would imply that any decision we make could be made by a sufficiently accurate algorithm. (I happen to doubt that this is the case; I've taken a minimal amount of psych, and research seems to indicate that people are quite inconsistent with conditional probabilities; for example, school children,wheen asked what the probability of seeing a woman at the beach wearing a bathing suit was, rated it as higher than the probability of seeing a woman at the beach, implying there are more women wearing bathing suits than total women!)
``For purposes of settlement, Respondent admits the truth and accuracy of the allegations and charges in the Accusation. Respondent and his accountancy corporation engaged in the practice of public accounting with expired licenses.
Respondent additionally failed to pay an administrative fine imposed by the Board for failing to supply the Board with copies of a financial report representing the highest level of service rendered, in accordance with Section 89.1 of the California Code of Regulations. Respondent's failure to pay the administrative fine caused the Board to withhold renewal of his CPA license.''
I'd be tempted to point out that if he admits the claims are true, it wouldn't be libel. I know he claims that it's taken out of context, but I'm reasonably sure that context is unimportant; assuming a party has full rights to reproduce in part or in whole the information (which in this case Google does, since Mr. Maughan doesn't own the information being presented), I see no legal issues with reproducing it only in part. I thought that if it were factual, it would not be libel, regardless of context. Not positive, though.
Either way, he clearly hopes for a quick settlement (though I don't think that will happen; precedence on this would just really hurt Google, so they're bound to fight it). No way this is going to help his reputation, after all.
For one thing, the point of AI research, short-term, is to provide machines that can do reasoning on their own. We aren't talking, ``I think therefore I am.'' We're talking about self-driving vehicles, for example (a very real possibility, even if DARPA's Grand Challenge was a bit of a bust). For that matter, there are plenty of reasonably efficient ways to make entirely self-learning software (expert systems and the like are good at this within a limited context).
You are right that we don't know how humans think, so we don't know if we're emulating them or not. But blame psychology or neurology for this. AI research is, at least, churning out real results.
I'm not saying you shouldn't vote. And I like to complain as much as the next guy (more, according to my friends). But in all reality, the chances of the vote making a difference, even with your ``butterfly effect'', is pretty slim. That's all I'm saying, that we delude ourselves to think we have greater influence than we do. Not that we should for some reasn avoid voting (unless we have something better to do that day).
If you realize your logic is fallacious, I suppose I hardly need bother to reply, eh? My point was that the political environment in the world in which I did vote and in that in which I did not is likely the same. My vote will make no actual difference, thus whether or not I make it is irrelevant to anything else.
I wasn't saying that votes as a whole do not count, as you seem to think I said. I was arguing that a single vote does not count. I don't mean ideologically, or metaphorically, or rhetorically or intellectually. I mean that literally, the future in which I did vote and the future in which I did not vote are almost certainly going to be politically the same. I don't really see how you can dispute that.
My particular vote, in that it can affect the outcomes of no elections, does not force any politician to do anything. In fact, it truly has no effect on the political landscape at all. Such was my argument, and I don't believe you have refuted it.
I already addressed GRSecurity. My point would be that with a little bit of work, I can configure FreeBSD to have the same general features as OpenBSD (chrooted daemons, encrypted swap, compile all my binaries with stack overflow protection, etc). With a bit more work, I can do the same with Linux (gentoo-hardened has been making some neat progress integrating stack overflow protections, again). Point is that regardless of those features, the code itself is just rawer. OpenBSD apparently really did gain something from its extensive code review, judging by its particularly good record for vulnerabilities.
So theres a difference between configuring something security, which you can do on Linux or FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and having an OS which simply is less likely to have vulnerabilities. GRSec, LSM implementations, SELinux, etc, are all great stuff. But they don't really help if you have mmap bugs or ICMP memory leaks or what have you.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Do you work for Dell?
I knew someone here had to know something about this stuff. Thanks for clearing that up!
I'm sure that's it. That concern for the consumers' well-being would be why Dell advertises the Celeron 2.4GHz as only suitable for word processing and e-mail. ``Ooh, ma'am, if you're going to be surfing the 'web, you're going to need top-notch power for that kinda number-crunching!''
Yes, Maya is used in a number of high end 3d design shops, including many, if not all, that make 3d animated movies and special effects (think Shrek, etc). Renderman is a rendering plugin that allows for better looking renders. I've used it, and it does indeed look better, but I'm not expert enough to tell you what the algorithmic difference is. I believe Renderman was developed at Pixar, as a point of trivia.
Maya itself, after a recent price cut, still runs in the thousands of dollars, depending upon which version you get, but there was and may still be a Personal Learning Edition for free on Alias|Wavefront's site. It can't save as files that can be read by the real version, and its renders are watermarked right across the center, but I would suggest you check it out if you're interested. And then there's the open-source Blender, which I just started messing with. It seems pretty good, especially for the price.
Yeah, you are also right that Maya is a lot like 3DSMax or Lightwave (neither of which I've used, as a matter of fact), but it is indeed supposed to be better. I don't know a huge amount about 3d modelling, but I like to think I'm not that bad at Maya. So, you know, maybe an expert here can chip in.
I think the idea of using other computers as bridges to the Internet is the really neat one. Mesh networks promise ad-hoc networks that are connected to the Internet. Now THAT would be cool.
this. Which clearly is designed to just look cool (and is successful, I'd say).
The deal with Maya is that to easily create in 3d, you actually work in a 3d environment. Navigation, just as in a video game, is done with one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. The keyboard hand is used to select tools, etc, and to choose what mode the mouse input goes in. The mouse is used to rotate, scale, and pan the object in front of the camera (or the camera around the object, depending on your philosophy). For example, holding CTRL while using the left mouse button rotates (if I remember right--I really can't tell offhand without actually doing it).
So because input is so odd in such a program, I can imagine many ways to do it differently (unlike, say, typing, in which there really is only one obvious paradigm--one key per letter). I don't know specifically how they implement this, and I do personally feel relatively comfortable with the current setup, but it could be neat.
On a tangent, though, I think personally the big issue with working in 3d is not input per se, but the fact that the input and display are both two dimensional, despite the goal being to create something three dimensional. So for example, how two dimensional movements on a mousepad translate into three dimensional rotation can be kinda hard to get used to, and quite hard to be precise with. Also, I occasionally found myself, when I was first learning Maya, trying to move my head to look around the edges of an object (quite silly, I know). So the limitations of a two dimensional screen are also clear.
Maya is not a plug-in for Photoshop (at least, not the 3d modelling Maya). It's a 3d modelling suite by Alias|Wavefront, who is owned by SGI. It does modelling, animation, and a whole lot more.
They're not selling it. It's just some project by this Julian guy. Anywho, how would being named make you a karma whore?
On a more serious note, you'd have a) no need for ipv6 (easier to just give everyone a 10.0.0.0/24 address--you really think you'll have that many people?--and avoid ipv6 compatibility requirements), b) DHCP makes it easier anyhow, c) how would you know what files are available in caches? It'd be impossible to have any real browsing, since slashdot may be cached but the offsite links may not. Instead, you may as well just do regular file sharing. Big deal. And d) what possible tuning is necessary for this?
I mean, it's a kinda cool idea. But not terribly revolutionary. It's just ad-hoc networked filesharing.
Yeah, this is complete bullshit. It's a laptop. With ad hoc networking. And a battery. Apparently, that's all it takes to be provocative. Which I'm glad to hear; now, I know my aluminum Powerbook and 15GB iPod aren't yuppy, materialistic toys (which, I'll admit, I think they are). They're revolutionary and provocative. Gee. It really makes you think.
I honestly can't see how this is any different than existing tech. It's essentially a laptop in a backpack (in fact, I'd bet you that that's exactly what it is). The notion of ad-hoc wifi networks isn't new. And how this is ``provocative'' is way beyond me. It provides no capabilities not provided by my Powerbook. And I seriously doubt the minimum-wage-making drones behind the counter in McDonalds really notice or care if you set up your own hotspot. Even if it serves up pages of anti-McDonalds propoganda.
I'm not trying to troll, here, but this sort of thing really ticks me off. ``We're not just revolutinoary. We're provocative! You may not like what we do, but we made you think, didn't we?''
Anyway, if this is an issue for you, you're using the wrong editor.
Wait, where can I buy it?
The point was not arrogance, but rather to explain to the original poster that there are better and worse jobs in technology, higher paying and lower paying and more routine (as in his factory worker analogy) and less routine, and just because there are more more routine jobs now doesn't mean that the whole field is in the dumps or you can't still do pure research.
As for capability, hell, I can probably find a few researchers who'd find themselves stumped at a misconfiguration in Eudora, so there's definitely a field of expertise for even the lowliest technician.
And finally, as for the lines between computer science and programming; you're right, they're quite blurred. Some programmers are crap, for sure, but some do stuff I could only dream of. So, yeah, it's a bit more complex than all that, I guess.
Sorry for the replying to myself thing. I hate it when people do that.
Some coders are elite, and others aren't. That's not a bad thing. That's the way the market works.
You refer to the cable guys as iif they are the epitome of computer science. They aren't computer scientists. They almost certainly aren't even programmers. Perhaps to the completely ignorant, all computer-related jobs are the same, but they aren't. Most jobs as a technician are crap. Slightly above that would be the post of admin. Keeping something up to date. Installing new software. Above that, some network and system admins have interesting jobs designing new systems, implementing creative solutions to problems, and so forth. Programmers have a similar opportunity, to do creative coding, but often it's just another solution to another problem. Not something that sounds like a lotta fun. And above that would be computer science. Research. Whole different ball game.
I think this is the root of your confusion. You see more blue-collar technical jobs. This doesn't mean less research is going on, though. Back in the day, the only people who interacted with computers were academics and researchers. There was no ITT tech. Now, in addition to the academics and researchers (of whom there are actually almost certainly many many more), there are hordes of unwashed masses actually (heaven forbid) using computers as tools, rather than just for the academic prospects themselves. Point is, the research is still there; in fact, there's far more of it. But there are also more and more other uses. This isn't a bad thing; it's a good thing.
In case you don't see what I mean, look at it this way. Your complaint could be summarized with an analogous complaint about the watch industry. Back in the 1800's, the only watches available were really classy, expensive, work-of-art kinda things. A gentleman's accessory. Now, any old Joe on the street has one; they come in all sorts of cheap, disposable, low-quality shitty versions. But that doesn't mean there are less high-quality versions; in fact, there are more. Tag Huer, Rolex, Citizen, Suunto...the competition to make the greatest precision timepiece is quite tough, I suspect. Point is, there's a lotta shit out there now that wasn't there in 1800, but plenty more nice watches as well.
Hmm. I guess I didn't really keep that brief. Sorry.
I think you may be right about emotion (though it may very well be implemented by accident rather than through understanding what causes emotion in us; regardless, who's to say we really feel any more than a machine programmed to react a certain way feels?), but when it comes to the decision-making stuff, it seems a reasonable, if disputable, assumption that humans make decisions based on logic that could be processed by any Turing machine; were we to figure out what that logic is (as Bayesian spam filters, for example, attempt to do), we would be able to implement it on a machine.
I saw a recent headline either here on Slashdot or on Kuro5hin that said that humans may use Bayesian logic in ordinary decision making. That would imply that any decision we make could be made by a sufficiently accurate algorithm. (I happen to doubt that this is the case; I've taken a minimal amount of psych, and research seems to indicate that people are quite inconsistent with conditional probabilities; for example, school children,wheen asked what the probability of seeing a woman at the beach wearing a bathing suit was, rated it as higher than the probability of seeing a woman at the beach, implying there are more women wearing bathing suits than total women!)
Respondent additionally failed to pay an administrative fine imposed by the Board for failing to supply the Board with copies of a financial report representing the highest level of service rendered, in accordance with Section 89.1 of the California Code of Regulations. Respondent's failure to pay the administrative fine caused the Board to withhold renewal of his CPA license.''
I'd be tempted to point out that if he admits the claims are true, it wouldn't be libel. I know he claims that it's taken out of context, but I'm reasonably sure that context is unimportant; assuming a party has full rights to reproduce in part or in whole the information (which in this case Google does, since Mr. Maughan doesn't own the information being presented), I see no legal issues with reproducing it only in part. I thought that if it were factual, it would not be libel, regardless of context. Not positive, though.
Either way, he clearly hopes for a quick settlement (though I don't think that will happen; precedence on this would just really hurt Google, so they're bound to fight it). No way this is going to help his reputation, after all.
For one thing, the point of AI research, short-term, is to provide machines that can do reasoning on their own. We aren't talking, ``I think therefore I am.'' We're talking about self-driving vehicles, for example (a very real possibility, even if DARPA's Grand Challenge was a bit of a bust). For that matter, there are plenty of reasonably efficient ways to make entirely self-learning software (expert systems and the like are good at this within a limited context).
You are right that we don't know how humans think, so we don't know if we're emulating them or not. But blame psychology or neurology for this. AI research is, at least, churning out real results.
I'm not saying you shouldn't vote. And I like to complain as much as the next guy (more, according to my friends). But in all reality, the chances of the vote making a difference, even with your ``butterfly effect'', is pretty slim. That's all I'm saying, that we delude ourselves to think we have greater influence than we do. Not that we should for some reasn avoid voting (unless we have something better to do that day).
If you realize your logic is fallacious, I suppose I hardly need bother to reply, eh? My point was that the political environment in the world in which I did vote and in that in which I did not is likely the same. My vote will make no actual difference, thus whether or not I make it is irrelevant to anything else.
My particular vote, in that it can affect the outcomes of no elections, does not force any politician to do anything. In fact, it truly has no effect on the political landscape at all. Such was my argument, and I don't believe you have refuted it.
So theres a difference between configuring something security, which you can do on Linux or FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and having an OS which simply is less likely to have vulnerabilities. GRSec, LSM implementations, SELinux, etc, are all great stuff. But they don't really help if you have mmap bugs or ICMP memory leaks or what have you.