I would never have expected to say that this is coming from the German government of all places (history aside and all, the modern German government seems to often have it's hands full controlling it's Neo-Nazi and extremist group problem,
Hey, hey, I think this is overstressed in your media. Neo-nazi and extermist problems take up much more space in news coverage about Germany than it actually should. For one part, it's because foreign countries are extra sensitive for anything right-wing that comes from Germany (for good, historical, reasons). Besides, this extremist thing is one of the few things about German that gives the reader a kind of a thrill which, sadly, often is a reason for news to be reported. If you had said that the German government has more important things to care about than Open Source projects because the unemployment is so unacceptably high and gigantic amounts of money go the the absolutely wrong places, I would have agreed.
If you don't believe me, please remember the Neo-Nazi and extremist problems the U.S. have (Oklahoma bombing, KKK, militia groups, Jewish kindergarten shooting...). I'm not saying Neo-Nazis are no problem in Germany, but I don't think they are a bigger problem than in many other countries -- people just watch closer when it comes to Germany.
Even if the article is right, I don't think that's bad news for Linux. Remember the World War II Allies USA, Soviet Union, UK and France. Once the evil empire (Nazi Germany) was defeated and partitioned, the Allies became enemies. The Berlin Crisis right after World War II almost started World War III, and the former Ally, the Soviet Union, became the West's enemy for the following 45 years.
It's normal for allies (unless they are VERY idealistic) to become enemies once their common #1 enemy has been defeated (usually the most evil and strongest one).
Sun and Linux are allies now, and their Alliance makes them stronger against M$. Once M$ will be defeated (if it will ever be), Sun will turn against Linux. Ok, but Linux will be strong enough to defend its part of the cake.
Of all advantages that Linux has over Windows NT, I feel that it's resource efficiency is the most neglectable. It may be great for a private user who can reuse his 486 with a decent OS -- but for companies, total cost of ownership is what counts. The price of some GB of hard disk space for 7,500 clients is peanuts compared to the cost of migrating the entire ordering system to a new platform. Imagine that each of the new servers will cost $250 less than the NT one, saving the money on the OS license and hard disk space. (And that's a generous estimate.) That would be $ 1,25 million saved in an investment. Peanuts.
What we seem to have here is a mid-level manager evaluating Linux for his company, but he seems to feel sympathy for Linux and be making up the reasons afterwards. It's great he likes Linux, and I hope he will succeed. But I have a hard time believing he will.
While they are at it, they could extend an existing browser to storing the user specific data on the card as well. This way, you could just walk up to any terminal that supports this feature (and remember, they give the card reader away for free), insert your card and off you go surfing with all your bookmarsk, cookies etc. AT&T Labs who developed VNC used a technology like that to make your home session appear on any terminal you walk by in their office. Cool.
There already is a mobile phone killer. It's about the size of a cell phone, although wall mounted. The company that makes them didn't plan on making them portable in 1998. What a shame! I'd love to carry one of those around and enjoy the silly faces of all the yuppies who annoy anyone in the vicinity by shouting into their phones all the time.
You could even make the device look like a cell phone itself, so that everybody around you (on the train, for example) will think their cell phone is broken, while you, for a change, bore them out of their skulls talking into your little gadget.
Everyone's afraid of a new class of terrorism that seems to be emerging. Bombing and shooting people is for dumbos. These days, smart terrorists disrupt the use of technologies like phone, cell phone and computers. This is a device for them. Imagine this device placed near a major phone line hub... within view of a cell phone transmitter... on a highway bridge, the latest "drive-by-wire" cars passing beneath it... on an airport... at a stock exchange... Devices like this, at a handy size, could be as dangerous to economics as a gun is to an individual. I wonder if there is a law against things like that.
In a better world, what you said would be true: Contractor Number 3 should keep in mind that contractors Number 4 to 10 will have to read and understand his code, so he will make sure that it's readable and understandable. In practice, Contractor Number 3 doesn't give a [beep]ing [beep] about what will happen after he has left. He won't be around when his poor successor trips into the piles of [beep] that the contractor has left.
I am working in a software company, and that's my experience with contractors. They may have good skills in, say, programming or administration, but each and any of the ones we have here are socially disabled people who no-one wants to have around for more than 3 months. The kind of short-term work a contractor typically does in my company is ok only for the kind of short-term mind the typical contractor is (solely speaking of the company I work for). If anyone should ever have me maintain contractor code again, I will refuse to do that as long as I can. I'm doing it now, and its just plain sick.
I assume that the guys at Microsoft are paranoid enough to do code reviews on a regular basis. It is done in many major (and not-so-major) software companies to ensure code quality. As a side effect, if you are are a developer and you want to introduce a security hole (or even an easter egg) in the "operating system", you would a) have to know in advance who is going to review your code and b) cooperate with your reviewer so that he will look the other way at the right page of code. On the other hand, there are plenty of easter eggs (up to entire litte game engines) inside the code for M$ products. This shows that it is possible for the M$ developers to hide significant portions of code from their management. So there is no technical but rather an ethical restriction on how malicious hidden code inside Windows can be. Ergo, if there's enough really pissed developers who gather and introduce a backdoor into Windows, it could be possible.
Hey, wouldn't that be something? Let yourself be hired by Microsoft, gather the illoyal employees around you and ruin the product!
The Swedish newspaper Expressen reports today that the Hotmail security breach has led to some serious consequences in Sweden. Someone used the "security issue" to steal and publish the email of a circle of Swedish prostitutes, containing data about their customers including sexual preferences. One of the customers named is the "leader of a major Swedish company". My Swedish is, ahem, a little rusty, but here is the article. (No, Babelfish doesn't offer Swedish as a source languange.) I saw it reported first at ct News Ticker (in German).
Those Bozo^H^H^H^HSozo designers should...
on
The Ottoman PC
·
· Score: 1
...be condemned to use the things they design. (As a matter of fact, every designer should.)
Designing a computer that you have to operate at the height of your knees, without space to put your legs to, is so damn stupid that they deserve to be sued by the first guy who was dumb enough to buy this and
a) tripped over the power chord and either broke his neck, or the computer, or both, or
b) damaged his spine while trying to look at he wheather report on Yahoo, or
c) mistook it for a loo while drunk and toasted his willy while peeing into it.
Truly unbelievable. I assume it's these Sozo guys that designed the Pentium casings -- who else would be able to render a business card sized piece of silicon about as handy as a brick...
a book about how Germans behave and how to get along with them.
Considering that DaimlerChrysler has merged from a U.S. and a German Company, still having problems concerning the integration of the two management structures, this is exactly what you would expect to see in the book purchase Top 20 for DaimlerChrysler.
This makes it even more discomforting that at 3rd place it's How to Get Started in Electronic Day Trading : Everything You Need to Know to Play Wall Street's Hottest Game. Doesn't make you feel good about the quality of DC's new cars...
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Hey, hey, I think this is overstressed in your media. Neo-nazi and extermist problems take up much more space in news coverage about Germany than it actually should. For one part, it's because foreign countries are extra sensitive for anything right-wing that comes from Germany (for good, historical, reasons). Besides, this extremist thing is one of the few things about German that gives the reader a kind of a thrill which, sadly, often is a reason for news to be reported.
If you had said that the German government has more important things to care about than Open Source projects because the unemployment is so unacceptably high and gigantic amounts of money go the the absolutely wrong places, I would have agreed.
If you don't believe me, please remember the Neo-Nazi and extremist problems the U.S. have (Oklahoma bombing, KKK, militia groups, Jewish kindergarten shooting...). I'm not saying Neo-Nazis are no problem in Germany, but I don't think they are a bigger problem than in many other countries -- people just watch closer when it comes to Germany.
It's normal for allies (unless they are VERY idealistic) to become enemies once their common #1 enemy has been defeated (usually the most evil and strongest one).
Sun and Linux are allies now, and their Alliance makes them stronger against M$. Once M$ will be defeated (if it will ever be), Sun will turn against Linux. Ok, but Linux will be strong enough to defend its part of the cake.
What we seem to have here is a mid-level manager evaluating Linux for his company, but he seems to feel sympathy for Linux and be making up the reasons afterwards. It's great he likes Linux, and I hope he will succeed. But I have a hard time believing he will.
While they are at it, they could extend an existing browser to storing the user specific data on the card as well. This way, you could just walk up to any terminal that supports this feature (and remember, they give the card reader away for free), insert your card and off you go surfing with all your bookmarsk, cookies etc. AT&T Labs who developed VNC used a technology like that to make your home session appear on any terminal you walk by in their office. Cool.
You could even make the device look like a cell phone itself, so that everybody around you (on the train, for example) will think their cell phone is broken, while you, for a change, bore them out of their skulls talking into your little gadget.
Here's the story on Electronic Telegraph: Immobilising the mobiles
Everyone's afraid of a new class of terrorism that seems to be emerging. Bombing and shooting people is for dumbos. These days, smart terrorists disrupt the use of technologies like phone, cell phone and computers. This is a device for them.
Imagine this device placed near a major phone line hub... within view of a cell phone transmitter... on a highway bridge, the latest "drive-by-wire" cars passing beneath it... on an airport... at a stock exchange... Devices like this, at a handy size, could be as dangerous to economics as a gun is to an individual.
I wonder if there is a law against things like that.
In practice, Contractor Number 3 doesn't give a [beep]ing [beep] about what will happen after he has left. He won't be around when his poor successor trips into the piles of [beep] that the contractor has left.
I am working in a software company, and that's my experience with contractors. They may have good skills in, say, programming or administration, but each and any of the ones we have here are socially disabled people who no-one wants to have around for more than 3 months. The kind of short-term work a contractor typically does in my company is ok only for the kind of short-term mind the typical contractor is (solely speaking of the company I work for).
If anyone should ever have me maintain contractor code again, I will refuse to do that as long as I can. I'm doing it now, and its just plain sick.
On the other hand, there are plenty of easter eggs (up to entire litte game engines) inside the code for M$ products. This shows that it is possible for the M$ developers to hide significant portions of code from their management. So there is no technical but rather an ethical restriction on how malicious hidden code inside Windows can be.
Ergo, if there's enough really pissed developers who gather and introduce a backdoor into Windows, it could be possible.
Hey, wouldn't that be something? Let yourself be hired by Microsoft, gather the illoyal employees around you and ruin the product!
The Swedish newspaper Expressen reports today that the Hotmail security breach has led to some serious consequences in Sweden. Someone used the "security issue" to steal and publish the email of a circle of Swedish prostitutes, containing data about their customers including sexual preferences. One of the customers named is the "leader of a major Swedish company". My Swedish is, ahem, a little rusty, but here is the article. (No, Babelfish doesn't offer Swedish as a source languange.) I saw it reported first at ct News Ticker (in German).
Designing a computer that you have to operate at the height of your knees, without space to put your legs to, is so damn stupid that they deserve to be sued by the first guy who was dumb enough to buy this and
a) tripped over the power chord and either broke his neck, or the computer, or both, or
b) damaged his spine while trying to look at he wheather report on Yahoo, or
c) mistook it for a loo while drunk and toasted his willy while peeing into it.
Truly unbelievable. I assume it's these Sozo guys that designed the Pentium casings -- who else would be able to render a business card sized piece of silicon about as handy as a brick...
I feel like many other posters here: This is a violation of privacy. Look at the Top 20 for DaimplerChrysler:
A book about designing organizations,
an english dictionary,
a book about how Germans behave and how to get along with them.
Considering that DaimlerChrysler has merged from a U.S. and a German Company, still having problems concerning the integration of the two management structures, this is exactly what you would expect to see in the book purchase Top 20 for DaimlerChrysler.
This makes it even more discomforting that at 3rd place it's How to Get Started in Electronic Day Trading : Everything You Need to Know to Play Wall Street's Hottest Game. Doesn't make you feel good about the quality of DC's new cars...