The problem with that is that a PSU for a powered 7-port USB hub already has to supply 3.5 amps. Much larger than that and with current technology you're getting into "big expensive PSU" territory.
As far as I can gather, your argument against a whitelist-based service is "It's too hard".
My argument is that a blacklist service is also too hard. Maybe a happy medium will be found - blocking things like SMTP outside the ISPs network, that kind of stuff.
The Internet in general terms started moving in this direction years ago when people started to configure their firewalls to block everything and allow only what you need through. Previously it was reasonably common practise not to have a firewall at all - or if you did, all it did was block against things which were known to be malicious.
It is a lot of work to maintain any whitelist of any significant size. But the reason you do it is because it's a lot more work to maintain any blacklist of any significant size, and even more work still to clear up the mess after something slips the net.
I thnk residential ISPs will be the first - I'd be surprised if it was even possible to connect outside your own ISPs network. Email through their SMTP server, web access through their proxy, sucks if you want any other service your ISP doesn't provide. Some of the more expensive ISPs may set up some sort of "sign a disclaimer and we'll let you do anything, but we reserve the right to pull the plug if we see so much as a single malicious packet" system.
The discussion is about the kernel, though. It's also being done by RedHat - with Fedora Core, and probably every other distribution out there, even if they don't make their unstable/beta distributions available to the general public.
It makes sense for Linux to fork into two branches: one, a conservative one, aimed at upkeeping what already works, and the second, a wild-ass anarchist, aimed at forging new and innovative technologies.
That was what was done in the past, with 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (while wild development took place in 2.3 and 2.5).
The complaint was that drivers took a long time to be backported from the development to the stable branch, the stable branch wasn't always as stable as it could be and the distro vendors were likely to patch it so much that expecting them to add a couple of patches for stability if/where necessary probably wasn't a big deal.
I will confess that I don't know precisely how these two things operate, but I'm sure you can find out more via Google if you're interested.
I am, but the difficulty I've been facing is getting an idiot's introduction to it. Most seem to assume you already know all about how it works.
The other thing I notice is that it alleviates the problem of passwords or hashes of passwords flying around the network in the clear. But I'd imagine that's a bit less of an issue if everything runs over SSL.
I still don't fully grasp this - perhaps someone can explain.
What does Kerberos+LDAP give you that LDAP on its own doesn't? My reading is that with kerberos-capable client software, once the user's entered their password once for one thing they don't have to for everything else - at least until their token expires - but ICBW.
Linux has been making inroads on commercial Unix vendors revenue streams for many years.
SCO (or, more accurately, any company which chose to sell SCO Unix as its main form of income) were particularly vulnerable and indeed suffering here for a number of reasons:
SCO Unix runs on standard x86 hardware. So anyone who's licensing it doesn't have a massive investment in proprietary hardware that they want to get best value for money out of.
Following on from this, porting code from SCO to some other x86 Unix should be relatively easy. You've got the same "this library's somewhere slightly different, that function has been deprecated" issues you do with any Unix port, but you shouldn't have endianness or word size issues. And because it's already x86 code, it's quite feasible to write support to run it natively on any Unix-like system without needing the original source code - I believe FreeBSD has this functionality.
SCO Unix has languished in terms of hardware support for many years. Linux and FreeBSD both have substantially more drivers, particularly for modern hardware. So there's a lot of work involved in buying a new box to make sure SCO will run on it.
Other basic functionality is also lagging behind. It's hearsay, I know, but apparently at one of the last Unix conferences before all this blew up, the biggest selling point SCO could come up with was "Now supports colour printing!"
SCOs support had earnt itself a bit of a reputation - and I do not mean that in a good way. Again, that's hearsay, so take it with as much salt as you think it needs.
I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)
Oh, so it was you. Everyone else thought it was Sun.
Darl may be a pillock of the highest order, but I don't think even he's stupid enough to try suing Andersen Consulting considering that they haven't actually existed in some time.
The only piece of code they ever showed as being part of the Linux kernel, turned out to have already been released under a BSD license by the original creators and had already been replaced by better alternatives in the Kernel, which made their whole claim seem to go up in smoke.
Indeed. IIRC, the only piece of code they ever showed went something like this:
* Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
I haven't read the actual code, but I assume the "superior" replacement was:
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The ever-increasing push of products like Sharepoint means that I can realistically see Samba fileservers becoming less relevant as more company files are shared through such technology.
IOW, Microsoft will publish full specifications - just as soon as they're sure that doing so wouldn't cause anyone to choose Samba over Windows for a fileserver because hardly anyone's setting up a Windows box as a straight fileserver any more.
I disagree that the stakes are substantially higher.
The entertainment industry has always had a business based on flogging what's New! Shiny! Entertaining! And Not Identical To The Last One, Honest! (singles, latest Britney Spears clone, latest song by established artist) - and another side to the business based on flogging you what was New! Shiny! Entertaining! in the past (albums, DVDs).
It goes without saying that the part of the business which is likely to suffer from private media sharing is the latter part - the next Britney Spears isn't going to be discovered or sold as a result of filesharing. Don't get me wrong, I realise that's a significant part. But the entertainment industry has access to a heck of a lot of material that piracy doesn't - pristine copies of the original (rather than "transcoded from CD at who knows what quality"), original artwork and lyrics sheets which are actually correct.
The only significant problem is "how to bundle this up and sell it in such a way that it is easier for a buyer to do this than it is for them to pirate it?". Now, that is a very hard part - much harder than "let's produce and sell our own tapes" ever was because now everyone has a digital media copier which produces copies with 100% fidelity compared with the original. But I think it's doable - see iTunes and the iTunes music store for an excellent example.
Any technology which allows the end-user to produce their own media (and some which didn't) has scared the entertainment industry.
First there were records - "But who will pay to see live performances if they can just play the record?". Then they realised that they could make a roaring trade selling records themselves.
Then came analogue tapes: "But who will buy records if they can just tape from a friend?" - then they established a business in selling tapes as they're smaller and it's very hard to play a record in a car.
Then came videos: "But who will go to the cinema if they can record movies from the TV?" - then they established a business in selling pre-recorded videos.
Then came affordable CD burners: "But who will buy CDs if they can copy from a friend?" - well, actually rather a lot of people. Though that didn't stop a lot of countries being pressured to establish taxes on blank media and passing these taxes back to the recording studios.
Now audio and movies can be easily shared over the Internet: "But we must stop this, lest nobody buy music, movies or visit the cinema!". What they really mean is "We're not sure that this sits well with our business model and we haven't yet figured out how best to exploit it so it does. While we're in the process of doing that, please talk quietly amongst yourselves AND STOP SHARING MUSIC, DAMMIT!".
3G in the UK hasn't been a huge success. Oh, the company "3"'s doing OK - but that's mainly through offering very cheap contracts with lots of free minutes, not because of fast internet browsing or video calling. So I don't think that's particularly crucial to the iPhone.
What is crucial is that the UK market bears a closer resemblance to the European market than the US one. We get slightly newer, sleeker phones some of which simply never see the light of day in the US - and those that do, by the time they're popular in the US they've already been relegated to "available on Pay as you Talk only, soon to be discontinued" status here. It's by no means uncommon to find that in a group of 20 people, you'll see no more than 2 or 3 with the same model of phone.
Be interesting to see how the iPhone pans out in such a market.
Although I would like that feature, its lack doesn't seem to bother people all that much in the U.S. because SMS picture service *still* doesn't work reliably between different telcos.
Works like a charm here in the UK. I've even used it while roaming (well, I did until I discovered how much they charged me...)
The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs.
Most intelligent comment I've heard in a long time.
Of course, the purpose of IT is to enable the entire company to get things done, not just one person. Had there been a recent, known issue with OS X which caused it to do something silly like flood the network with bogus DHCP responses, then there would perhaps be some justification in being nervous - but even then, you can live with that. You just make sure you know damn well how the network hangs together and either buy switches which have the intelligence to filter out such traffic or you cut off anyone pulling stunts like that.
Yes, and when the OP comes to buy his Intel macs post-Leopard release, there's a chance that the OS release will coincide with a hardware change.
A hardware change which means that (legalities aside), it may well be impossible to use any of his existing "shipped with the system" Intel OS X Tiger install CDs to install Tiger on the new systems.
So if Leopard breaks something horribly, he's stuck. He can't buy new hardware because he can't downgrade it to Tiger and Leopard doesn't work - at least until such time as the breakage is fixed. Meantime, his existing hardware is depreciating and some may be reaching the end of its useful life.
This problem will persist into the future. There may be upgrade versions available through retail but they won't necessarily support the recent hardware, just the hardware that Apple can be sure will work and didn't originally ship with Leopard - and that's an upgrade version, not a downgrade version.
The investment that will be required for this business to come up to "speed" will become legacy within a couple of years. The cost does not generate any new revenue for the business and no longer gives them a productivity advantage. They get that from there POS or ERP or PMS systems. That is why the OS must run legacy software, there are users out there who need it.
Which, AIUI, is exactly what the GP was proposing when he essentially said "Don't worry about handling old apps natively; just provide an emulation environment and run the old OS in its entirety when the user wants to run an app which requires it".
Mainframes have been doing something similar to this for years. You can buy an IBM zSeries mainframe today which will run code written 20 or 30 years ago on a totally different architecture without missing a beat.
A former colleague of mine had terrible trouble with a TV he purchased from Currys. It took about 3 or 4 months to sort out, with him having to take a day off every few weeks to sit at home waiting for them to deliver replacement/pick up broken TV.
Worked out OK in the end - they sent him one worth 3 times what he originally paid. I think he must have got through to the one person in the customer service department who really did care. Even then, they were probably on their last day at work so there wouldn't be any comeback.
The length of time he spent on the phone messing around it would have been significantly easier (and probably cheaper in terms of hassle) to get the expensive TV to begin with.
If you did use credit as part of the purchase you are in clover. Credit card companies won't let themselves end up in court because some dodgy retailer. They settle with the consumer as soon as they know you're serious and then recover the money from the retailer. I find this provision in consumer law particularly great. The PC World manager may be trying to screw you, but you know that his destiny is to end up bent over with a bull elephant called Visa about to go to work on him. Priceless!
You are quite correct. And the stores know this as well.
The phrase "Fix it or I'm reporting you to the bank and let them sort it out through the Visa disputes process. Who would you rather deal with?" has quite remarkable power.
If there were a free alternative to Photoshop that did everything Photoshop does as well as Photoshop does it, a lot of people would use it. Photoshop isn't cheap, and it doesn't "come with the computer" (which is how most people get Windows and Office).
No, but Photoshop Elements frequently comes with scanners and digital cameras.
And if you buy it retail, it's a lot cheaper than the full blown version.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that is that a PSU for a powered 7-port USB hub already has to supply 3.5 amps. Much larger than that and with current technology you're getting into "big expensive PSU" territory.
As far as I can gather, your argument against a whitelist-based service is "It's too hard".
My argument is that a blacklist service is also too hard. Maybe a happy medium will be found - blocking things like SMTP outside the ISPs network, that kind of stuff.
But I don't hold out much hope.
The Internet in general terms started moving in this direction years ago when people started to configure their firewalls to block everything and allow only what you need through. Previously it was reasonably common practise not to have a firewall at all - or if you did, all it did was block against things which were known to be malicious.
It is a lot of work to maintain any whitelist of any significant size. But the reason you do it is because it's a lot more work to maintain any blacklist of any significant size, and even more work still to clear up the mess after something slips the net.
I thnk residential ISPs will be the first - I'd be surprised if it was even possible to connect outside your own ISPs network. Email through their SMTP server, web access through their proxy, sucks if you want any other service your ISP doesn't provide. Some of the more expensive ISPs may set up some sort of "sign a disclaimer and we'll let you do anything, but we reserve the right to pull the plug if we see so much as a single malicious packet" system.
The discussion is about the kernel, though. It's also being done by RedHat - with Fedora Core, and probably every other distribution out there, even if they don't make their unstable/beta distributions available to the general public.
It makes sense for Linux to fork into two branches: one, a conservative one, aimed at upkeeping what already works, and the second, a wild-ass anarchist, aimed at forging new and innovative technologies.
That was what was done in the past, with 2.2 and 2.4 kernels (while wild development took place in 2.3 and 2.5).
The complaint was that drivers took a long time to be backported from the development to the stable branch, the stable branch wasn't always as stable as it could be and the distro vendors were likely to patch it so much that expecting them to add a couple of patches for stability if/where necessary probably wasn't a big deal.
Alternatively....
apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686-bigmem
- Linux kernel 2.6 image on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/P4
apt-get install linux-image-2.6.18-5-486
- Linux 2.6.18 image on x86
apt-get install linux-image-xen-686
- Linux kernel image on i686
(I'd imagine that one has something to do with Xen)
Rather easier than forking the entire kernel, wouldn't you say?
I will confess that I don't know precisely how these two things operate, but I'm sure you can find out more via Google if you're interested.
I am, but the difficulty I've been facing is getting an idiot's introduction to it. Most seem to assume you already know all about how it works.
The other thing I notice is that it alleviates the problem of passwords or hashes of passwords flying around the network in the clear. But I'd imagine that's a bit less of an issue if everything runs over SSL.
I still don't fully grasp this - perhaps someone can explain.
What does Kerberos+LDAP give you that LDAP on its own doesn't? My reading is that with kerberos-capable client software, once the user's entered their password once for one thing they don't have to for everything else - at least until their token expires - but ICBW.
They haven't had to ever since PAE came about.
Linux has been making inroads on commercial Unix vendors revenue streams for many years.
SCO (or, more accurately, any company which chose to sell SCO Unix as its main form of income) were particularly vulnerable and indeed suffering here for a number of reasons:
I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)
Oh, so it was you. Everyone else thought it was Sun.
Darl may be a pillock of the highest order, but I don't think even he's stupid enough to try suing Andersen Consulting considering that they haven't actually existed in some time.
Indeed. IIRC, the only piece of code they ever showed went something like this: I haven't read the actual code, but I assume the "superior" replacement was:
The ever-increasing push of products like Sharepoint means that I can realistically see Samba fileservers becoming less relevant as more company files are shared through such technology.
IOW, Microsoft will publish full specifications - just as soon as they're sure that doing so wouldn't cause anyone to choose Samba over Windows for a fileserver because hardly anyone's setting up a Windows box as a straight fileserver any more.
I disagree that the stakes are substantially higher.
The entertainment industry has always had a business based on flogging what's New! Shiny! Entertaining! And Not Identical To The Last One, Honest! (singles, latest Britney Spears clone, latest song by established artist) - and another side to the business based on flogging you what was New! Shiny! Entertaining! in the past (albums, DVDs).
It goes without saying that the part of the business which is likely to suffer from private media sharing is the latter part - the next Britney Spears isn't going to be discovered or sold as a result of filesharing. Don't get me wrong, I realise that's a significant part. But the entertainment industry has access to a heck of a lot of material that piracy doesn't - pristine copies of the original (rather than "transcoded from CD at who knows what quality"), original artwork and lyrics sheets which are actually correct.
The only significant problem is "how to bundle this up and sell it in such a way that it is easier for a buyer to do this than it is for them to pirate it?". Now, that is a very hard part - much harder than "let's produce and sell our own tapes" ever was because now everyone has a digital media copier which produces copies with 100% fidelity compared with the original. But I think it's doable - see iTunes and the iTunes music store for an excellent example.
Look to past history.
Any technology which allows the end-user to produce their own media (and some which didn't) has scared the entertainment industry.
First there were records - "But who will pay to see live performances if they can just play the record?". Then they realised that they could make a roaring trade selling records themselves.
Then came analogue tapes: "But who will buy records if they can just tape from a friend?" - then they established a business in selling tapes as they're smaller and it's very hard to play a record in a car.
Then came videos: "But who will go to the cinema if they can record movies from the TV?" - then they established a business in selling pre-recorded videos.
Then came affordable CD burners: "But who will buy CDs if they can copy from a friend?" - well, actually rather a lot of people. Though that didn't stop a lot of countries being pressured to establish taxes on blank media and passing these taxes back to the recording studios.
Now audio and movies can be easily shared over the Internet: "But we must stop this, lest nobody buy music, movies or visit the cinema!". What they really mean is "We're not sure that this sits well with our business model and we haven't yet figured out how best to exploit it so it does. While we're in the process of doing that, please talk quietly amongst yourselves AND STOP SHARING MUSIC, DAMMIT!".
3G in the UK hasn't been a huge success. Oh, the company "3"'s doing OK - but that's mainly through offering very cheap contracts with lots of free minutes, not because of fast internet browsing or video calling. So I don't think that's particularly crucial to the iPhone.
What is crucial is that the UK market bears a closer resemblance to the European market than the US one. We get slightly newer, sleeker phones some of which simply never see the light of day in the US - and those that do, by the time they're popular in the US they've already been relegated to "available on Pay as you Talk only, soon to be discontinued" status here. It's by no means uncommon to find that in a group of 20 people, you'll see no more than 2 or 3 with the same model of phone.
Be interesting to see how the iPhone pans out in such a market.
Although I would like that feature, its lack doesn't seem to bother people all that much in the U.S. because SMS picture service *still* doesn't work reliably between different telcos.
Works like a charm here in the UK. I've even used it while roaming (well, I did until I discovered how much they charged me...)
The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs.
Most intelligent comment I've heard in a long time.
Of course, the purpose of IT is to enable the entire company to get things done, not just one person. Had there been a recent, known issue with OS X which caused it to do something silly like flood the network with bogus DHCP responses, then there would perhaps be some justification in being nervous - but even then, you can live with that. You just make sure you know damn well how the network hangs together and either buy switches which have the intelligence to filter out such traffic or you cut off anyone pulling stunts like that.
Yes, and when the OP comes to buy his Intel macs post-Leopard release, there's a chance that the OS release will coincide with a hardware change.
A hardware change which means that (legalities aside), it may well be impossible to use any of his existing "shipped with the system" Intel OS X Tiger install CDs to install Tiger on the new systems.
So if Leopard breaks something horribly, he's stuck. He can't buy new hardware because he can't downgrade it to Tiger and Leopard doesn't work - at least until such time as the breakage is fixed. Meantime, his existing hardware is depreciating and some may be reaching the end of its useful life.
This problem will persist into the future. There may be upgrade versions available through retail but they won't necessarily support the recent hardware, just the hardware that Apple can be sure will work and didn't originally ship with Leopard - and that's an upgrade version, not a downgrade version.
The investment that will be required for this business to come up to "speed" will become legacy within a couple of years. The cost does not generate any new revenue for the business and no longer gives them a productivity advantage. They get that from there POS or ERP or PMS systems. That is why the OS must run legacy software, there are users out there who need it.
Which, AIUI, is exactly what the GP was proposing when he essentially said "Don't worry about handling old apps natively; just provide an emulation environment and run the old OS in its entirety when the user wants to run an app which requires it".
Mainframes have been doing something similar to this for years. You can buy an IBM zSeries mainframe today which will run code written 20 or 30 years ago on a totally different architecture without missing a beat.
It is.
A former colleague of mine had terrible trouble with a TV he purchased from Currys. It took about 3 or 4 months to sort out, with him having to take a day off every few weeks to sit at home waiting for them to deliver replacement/pick up broken TV.
Worked out OK in the end - they sent him one worth 3 times what he originally paid. I think he must have got through to the one person in the customer service department who really did care. Even then, they were probably on their last day at work so there wouldn't be any comeback.
The length of time he spent on the phone messing around it would have been significantly easier (and probably cheaper in terms of hassle) to get the expensive TV to begin with.
Dear PC Superstore,
No idea why you're writing to me, the issue is with PC World.
Sincerely,
If you did use credit as part of the purchase you are in clover. Credit card companies won't let themselves end up in court because some dodgy retailer. They settle with the consumer as soon as they know you're serious and then recover the money from the retailer. I find this provision in consumer law particularly great. The PC World manager may be trying to screw you, but you know that his destiny is to end up bent over with a bull elephant called Visa about to go to work on him. Priceless!
You are quite correct. And the stores know this as well.
The phrase "Fix it or I'm reporting you to the bank and let them sort it out through the Visa disputes process. Who would you rather deal with?" has quite remarkable power.
If there were a free alternative to Photoshop that did everything Photoshop does as well as Photoshop does it, a lot of people would use it. Photoshop isn't cheap, and it doesn't "come with the computer" (which is how most people get Windows and Office).
No, but Photoshop Elements frequently comes with scanners and digital cameras.
And if you buy it retail, it's a lot cheaper than the full blown version.