Is the RIAA actually going to try and work with technology? I thought the jamming the head in the sand and yelling aproach was working so well..
This isn't actually a bad idea from a service prospective.. you have your users handling the bulk of the traffic loads, users get songs faster with swarming techniques, and the RIAA gets money. I mean.. the artist.. its all about the artist remember.
I don't know that I would use their service, but trying to work with technology and doing something new is lots better than their previous litigation efforts.
(Of course, I'm assuming this is built on Windows DRM.. ah well.. Are they going to be so restrictive as to DRM limit the files to remove all usefullness to the user? No CD burning, coping to devices.. heck.. copying to my iPod? Oh wait, they said that was Apple's fault for not using an *open* format like MS's..)
If you are only looking at a RAM disk, look at solid-state disks. You can get ATA/SATA attached solid state drives to give you some capacity.. or go for more professional products, like the equipment from Texas Memory Systems for example. Their products are Fibre Channel attached with memory and drive backups for the RAM. You can see them in use for very fast storage, as well as for speeding databases (put logs on the RAM drives, for example).. It would be difficult to loose your data from that sort of drive, unless you wanted to.
Those sorts of systems are better engineered for concurrent access anyway. If you have a bunch of system memory, with a great deal of concurrent access, you are going to start hitting bus bottlenecks..
The virtualization software makes it much easier to build task-focused servers, helping add more security to your environment... with very low overhead.
Has anybody done a 1-to-1 comparison between Solaris Zones and the features that Xen provides? The Solaris setup is really very easy.. you can have a custom environment booted and running in a few minutes..
I will say that Xen is impressive, given its benchmarks posted.. it shows a very efficient virtualization engine.
If you add in VirtualPC... presumably the clustered version.. you should start to get to the level of compute power that was recommended by Microsoft for Longhorn... though it still wouldn't be the high end. Expect some sluggishness..
Well.. this sort of question will lead to the following answers:
1. I don't use Java because my machine is too slow, I don't like applets, or perhaps they use one Java app and say its ok. (These answers are from people who didn't read and understand the question.)
2. I like Java == Coffee! (These answers are from people who did read it, but were being funny.. thats good..)
3. I don't see Java used in the enterprise at all. We run a pure win32 shop and block Java at the firewall. In fact, we only drink tea to ensure we are not contaminated. (These answers are from a software company in Washington state mainly.. with a few other unfortunate exceptions as well.)
4. We use Java in the enterprise. (These answers are from people who actually work in an enterprise.)
A definition.. the enterprise does not mean your home network.. your school lab.. sourceforge.. freshmeat.. the internet cafe that you swap sysadmin services for free scones.. it means large corporate systems and infrastructures.
I haven't seen any enterprise-class system *not* oriented towards Java in a long time. Even ones not build in a J2EE model have evolved over time to support many of those components to streamline integration and development. Java has a good solid foundation in these areas, and with newer versions of the J2SE/J2EE specifications, it gets to be a richer server and client platform.
As far as Java on Linux.. I think the question should be more focused on the adoption of Linux as opposed to Java. Many places I work run many Java applications, but have requirements that Unix-hosted systems and applications must live on Sun Solaris, IBM, or other platforms. These requirements simplify management, accountability, and vendor management. That is worth a lot. Getting that Linux box online is cheaper when compared to that Sparc box, but the lifetime of supporting and maintaining the box could be higher if you are already supporting a large Sun infrastructure. This is all irrespective of Java.
Probably one of the biggest deals for Linux in the enterprise is Oracle's push and support of Linux for their entire suite of applications, and for publishing effective case stories on horizontal scaling on Linux systems. This benefits Java, as that is the primary language in Oracle-land now, but its a bigger benefit to Linux. IBM's push for Linux and Java is also very effective... (I rate Oracle higher, since they don't have a hardware issue to bring to the table, and are just pushing software.. IBM does push the software in the Websphere suite, but tends to bring hardware as well..)
So.. Linux is gaining in enterprise acceptance.. therefore Java on Linux is gaining.. but I think Java is set and has proven itself. Its Linux that is doing the proving now.
I had two kiosks at an outdoor location and the enclosure is *key*! I understand that you are doing it internally, but the enclosure is typically tied to a touchscreen of some sort, and that often will limit your options. Or, atleast provide guidance.
Our touchscreens required a special driver in windows and then simply behaved as a mouse. We had a real problem with text entry however.. we were using a special kiosk browser with pop-up screen, but people found it very difficult to use. A nice enclosure with an attached keyboard and trackball would have helped things dramatically.
I've been trying to get this working for a day or two without too much luck, but others on the mailing list are reporting success.
One good and important point.. yes, its using binary windows drivers, but they are trying to keep the whole project open source. They are going to hardware vendors who would otherwise like to support Linux, but don't want to port their code to a new architecture. Its a win/win for those who go along with it.
I've been working on getting the Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 card in my T40 working without too much luck yet, but I think its my local problem. Others report great success with the same card.
I agree. I company I consult with has a Windows-based mail server that was giving them no end of problems. I couldn't get them to switch platforms (though they have Linux and Solaris in other functions), but they did try out Communigate Pro, and switched a week after testing it out.
It works much faster and is far more reliable than their old solutions. Sure its not free, but you get what you pay for. Its a solid product with many many configuration options, and is easy for people to manage.
Well.. to me, there are certain operations that should be performed in the database, and some that don't *need* to be. If you are going to be processing alot of the rows in a table or multiple tables.. getting that logic as close to (inside) the database engine is the best bet. Keeping as much data off the wire is key with that.
When you get into other systems.. say a site like slashdot or similar, the forward caching that the EJB container gives you in a CMP world can bring a nice performance benefit to your system. If the EJB container is reasonably sure, based on your preferences, that the data is not stale, its not going back to the DB for anything.. its just pulling from local cache. There is your big speed advantage. If you have to hit the DB on every EJB request, rebuild the object, handle the locking, etc.. it will be dog slow.
I think the real problem is EJB is that its overly complex. Its the case of, do people need all of the complexity for 90% of what they do? Probably not. Things like XDoclet simplify that, but still not a trivial exercise. Then when you run into problems, debugging the EJB app is often difficult as well.
I personally prefer not to do the straight JDBC unless necessary, but will generally design with a DAO sort of model to abstract it anyway. Lately I've been using Hibernate2 with lots of luck. I just finished one site using 100% hibernate, and it was wonderful not mucking about with SQL. Especially singe Hibernate will build the right SQL for your target database.. makes portability a bit easier. Hibernate uses the JCS cache so you get some forward caching features without any of the headache of EJB. However, my site is not transactional in nature.. its 95% information viewing, so the traditional advantages of EJB don't apply to this project as much.
As an interesting note.. JBoss, in JBoss 4 seems to be going down more of a JDO supporting route. Thats a big shift for them.. well, and the aspect oriented programming they are doing.. which is telling.
EJBs are going to be in a guarenteed transactional state throughout the cluster, which simplifies all of your access. The containers should be caching some types of beans as well (CMP), so that you end up with a very fast transactionally complete solution across the environment. You can use JDO or other data solutions, add your own cache, manage it across the cluster.. and that may work well for you. Other beans are useful, such as the Message Driven Beans, for building a J2EE standard event driven component. Straight data mapping solutions don't provide this.
That said, personally I find many people don't need to worry as much about clustering, so as long as you are working on a good environment, thats probably more important. I use hibernate more these days with a good solid MVC design. I have servlets set to start at boot that become by queue listeners, and it works quite well. I can use XDoclet to generate my hibernate mappings if I want, and get up and running quickly.
The good thing is that you have alot of options. The bad thing is that you have a lot of options.
It comes down to picking the right technology for the job.. and your team. JDBC, JDO, OR-Mapping, EJB, etc all provide good tools to complete the job.
What happens when a standard is produced in good faith by one or more parties, the W3 picks it up and ultimately generates a standard. Then everybody else picks it up and builds it into their browser, OS, application, tooth brush, and household pets.
Then, a year later, SomeEvil Co (A leader in Evil Patents since 1899.) decides that there is infringement and sues everybody involved?
The problem is two fold.. one is that there needs to be a process to search for applicable patents.. but the problem here is that too many patents are too broad. Secondly, if the search doesn't turn up any problems, whats to stop somebody from deciding that HTTP chunking infringes on their patent on, say, chunky peanut butter?
Is there a process to find *potentially applicable patents* and going to those holders to ask for explicit approval of the use? Or would that just be begging for lawsuits anyway?
Think about your network, load balancing, and other sorts of issues.
For example, I had a site that I ran for a while that was fairly poorly built from an application perspective. However, the client had prepped a flash load (ie: a bursty, concentrated load) for a specific time period.. and I had about a month to prepare. The problem was that we couldn't rewrite the apps part of the site to ease the congestion, nor could we rewrite some apps to be distributed to multiple servers. (They stored state on the server..)
So, I brought in a Foundry ServerIron, and used the URL switching to map all static files/items to a pair of Ultra 5 workstations. These had a bunch of memory and had iPlanet Enterprise Server configured with very agressive caching parameters. For the dynamic content, I also increased any caching parameters available.
(This is high level, but you get the idea. Basically, serve as much out of memory as possible.. other tuning issues.. turn off name resolution obviously.. make sure you aren't I/O bound.. or network bound for that matter.)
The day came around and we served 5 or 6 million hits in two hours or so.. the average load on the servers was around 0.1. In fact, even on the servers with the static content getting lots of hits, there was only really disk activity when access logs were flushed to disk (Every 30 seconds)..
So, don't just think about servers.. consider all options when trying to balance and handle your load.
I couldn't say if it protects against the exact source code listed on that site, but there is a set of kernel security modules which *greatly* protects against these sorts of attacks. The modules are at http://www.grsecurity.org/, and are a wonderful addition to any linux server.
It protects against raw devices, special chroot attacks, UID escalation attacks, many buffer overflows, and other problems. In addition, it adds a whole ACL (Access Control List) system for protecting applications and the overall environment. For a full list of features go to http://www.grsecurity.org/features.php.
I've used this on many different servers with no problems at all. It certainly make you feel better on those servers directly connected to the net.
This probably falls into the "whatever" camp.. I don't keep that close of a watch on hardware, and don't remember what processor I have in the server beside my desk off hand... It may have been Pentium Pro's or Pentium I's for all I know off the top of my head.
The main point is that FreeBSD is stable and fast, and has been for quite a while.
To those who run linux (or other OSs) exclusively, you really should give FreeBSD a try.
I started using it around 8 years ago for some core services.. DNS.. SMTP.. etc. It proved to be fast and reliable even then, and those were on old PII machines.
Since then, its gotten tremendously better.. the security subsystems are great, from ip firewalling to kernel and system level protections. (The jail environment is very interesting..) I currently have DNS and mail services running on it, with a vinum disk mirror (Vinum is a logical volume manager for FreeBSD) and have basically no maintenance.
If you wanted to experiment with a BSD machine, I know that http://www.johncompanies.com/ provides virtualized FreeBSD machines pretty cheaply, or just install it on a spare partition somewhere.
My only gripe is that it tends to trail linux on user interface/user focused device drivers, and in the Java space. Otherwise, it works great for me!
(I haven't tried 4.8 yet, since I don't have any need to upgrade my servers right now, but when I get a spare test box, I'll probably give it a spin..)
Why? Because it would be implemented in, obviously, an open manner with publically defined protocols and specifications. Therefore, anybody who wanted to build an infrastructure to support DRM could do so without locking people into a single vendor or implementation.
Somebody asked why couldn't you just change the libraries to let you bypass it? Well sure, if you can change the code on the machine, you *may* be able to bypass protections, depending on what they are. For example, if the file (text, sound, media, etc.) is encrypted and requires a decrypt key, mucking around in the code isn't going to help it decrypt itself.
Now.. what about extracting the protected media after the decrypt step? Well, thats a bit harder. In fact, that was how people broke Microsoft's first WMP protection.. they wrote a null sound driver that just dumped the output to a file. Works pretty well. Don't think that they didn't notice, when all of their drivers need to be signed these days..
Anyway.. there are different parts to Digital Rights Management. Step 1 is access.. can you access a file or not. Crypto protects that, and no open or closed source will change that. Step 2 is decrypted control. Who can manipulate the decrypted bytes of the media? That is up to people to implement and protect as they see fit.
Remember that an OSS DRM solution could provide an open source platform for building closed source clients and devices.. You have the advantge of an open standard combined with actual devices using it.
Mozilla originally took too much of its Netscape roots to heart. That is understandable, but its a very good thing that people were finally able to break from that past. Netscape Communicator was supposed to be all things.. Mozilla continued that track, but with a nicer rendering engine and snazzy features.
I don't personally I have a problem with the size of mozilla, but since I only use it for browsing, it will be really nice to get rid of the rest of this monolithic application.. but to have it available for when I want it.
The path it has set now reminds me of the KDE applications. The PIM/Mail suite has a great deal of functionality.. but you don't have to load it just to browse a web page. (Though many would argue that Konqueror also tries to be all things to all people..)
On Linux.. Mozilla and Phoenix are the way to go.. though on OS X, Safari is a really nice browser.
I agree on the front that MS is not stagnant.. but I still don't believe that they have any vested interest in moving towards open standards in a meaningful way.
For example. how are you going to read that XML document when you need to use the (patented) MS DRM infrastructure to decode it?
My concern is that they have an appearance of moving towards openness, but have a track record of veering off at the last minute, and hitting the tree of proprietary solutions, and bursting into patented flames.
Finally.. I do agree.. they are not to be ignored. But, I also don't think they are to be trusted to follow through on the users and industries best interests.
Just because they have a stronger commitment to XML doesn't make it any more open, when considered as an enterprise platform.
Take a look at InfoNotes and some of the Office 2003 components. They *fully require* much of your enterprise to be deployed on Microsoft software. They actively spurned W3 standards such as XForms for their own form standard in this line as well.
This sort of thing isn't new.. and the push to drag the enterprise architecture along by the client applications is dangerous. The DRM technologies being built in for document protection at a concept level are good.. but again, no openness and public standards there.
My feel is there is a variety of token gestures to give people warm fuzzies, even as the noose tightens and the enterprise and client architecture looses the possiblity to be *anything but* their platform.
Who cares about an XML file format if you can't decrypt it without Microsoft? What good is a CLR if you can't do anything without patented libraries whose distribution rights are limited to the Windows platform?
Not true.. Kaffe has been around for a long time.. Blackdown has had their Java VM for a while too. Those are just two open source ones off the top of my head.
Other VMs include IBM's.. very good quality and speed there. Its free, but not open source. Even Microsoft has their VM, though its not worth much anymore.
My understanding is that MS is bringing some components to the standards orgs so they can say that, but that their environment will still heavily leverage internal and private APIs.
So, you have to differentiate between a baseline CLR environment, and the actual programming APIs that would be used to build on top of this..NET is not the CLR...NET is the CLR, APIs, Libraries, and so forth.. therefore only a small part of the environment is open.
Who wants to bet that this is more for marketing than it is for getting cross platform capabilities? Without MS opening all libraries and APIs *AND* approving any patent use they have on those components to other systems, a public standard on CLR means nothing.
Sun should bring Java to a standards org, but at the same time, its well documented, understood, and there are no hidden parts to the JVM/Runtime. You aren't going to see that with.NET.
The simplest problem is to assume that a fully functional key escrow system is deployed or that a backdoor/trapdoor encryption algorithm is generated. What if I pre-crypt my data in another algorithm, before encrypting it in the other system? Then I'm transmitting a valid (and legal) message.. but it would have to be decrypted and extracted and analyzed before any determination could be made. Of course, using stenographic techniques to hide the pre-crypted data in an image/etc would make it impossible to detect. And, since you are using the approved system, there isn't even a question of wrong doing.
..and people are missing the point by looking at the smaller picture. Microsoft is trying to establish itself as a better player in the enterprise and servers markets, and to do this they must deploy more server farms.. especially under W2K.
By allowing Real to support the Windows Media formatt, they are opening up a wider base of clients to use their formats.. and therefore a wider base of clients to use their Windows Media Stream servers. These stream servers are only available for Windows.. and it wouldn't be a big shock for future versions to target W2K as its preferred platform.
This push helps to establish MS in data centers and server farms where it may not have had a presence.. and to expand the presence where it was previously located. They don't care a thing about RealPlayer and MediaPlayer per se.. if you can own the servers, you get a big boost in owning the clients as well.
If there is interest in a follow-up mailing list or site for discussions on this topic, let me know and I will create one. This would be a good conversation to continue.
I think it would be interesting to look at standardizing some baseline configuration files, or to explore if this sort of consolidation is possible. Given the number of XML parsers out there (in C, C++, Perl, Python, Java, etc..) it should be reasonably easy for people to use this in their own applications.
Slashdot Mirror
Is the RIAA actually going to try and work with technology? I thought the jamming the head in the sand and yelling aproach was working so well..
This isn't actually a bad idea from a service prospective.. you have your users handling the bulk of the traffic loads, users get songs faster with swarming techniques, and the RIAA gets money. I mean.. the artist.. its all about the artist remember.
I don't know that I would use their service, but trying to work with technology and doing something new is lots better than their previous litigation efforts.
(Of course, I'm assuming this is built on Windows DRM.. ah well.. Are they going to be so restrictive as to DRM limit the files to remove all usefullness to the user? No CD burning, coping to devices.. heck.. copying to my iPod? Oh wait, they said that was Apple's fault for not using an *open* format like MS's..)
If you are only looking at a RAM disk, look at solid-state disks. You can get ATA/SATA attached solid state drives to give you some capacity.. or go for more professional products, like the equipment from Texas Memory Systems for example. Their products are Fibre Channel attached with memory and drive backups for the RAM. You can see them in use for very fast storage, as well as for speeding databases (put logs on the RAM drives, for example).. It would be difficult to loose your data from that sort of drive, unless you wanted to.
Those sorts of systems are better engineered for concurrent access anyway. If you have a bunch of system memory, with a great deal of concurrent access, you are going to start hitting bus bottlenecks..
The virtualization software makes it much easier to build task-focused servers, helping add more security to your environment... with very low overhead.
Has anybody done a 1-to-1 comparison between Solaris Zones and the features that Xen provides? The Solaris setup is really very easy.. you can have a custom environment booted and running in a few minutes..
I will say that Xen is impressive, given its benchmarks posted.. it shows a very efficient virtualization engine.
If you add in VirtualPC... presumably the clustered version.. you should start to get to the level of compute power that was recommended by Microsoft for Longhorn... though it still wouldn't be the high end. Expect some sluggishness..
Well.. this sort of question will lead to the following answers:
1. I don't use Java because my machine is too slow, I don't like applets, or perhaps they use one Java app and say its ok. (These answers are from people who didn't read and understand the question.)
2. I like Java == Coffee! (These answers are from people who did read it, but were being funny.. thats good..)
3. I don't see Java used in the enterprise at all. We run a pure win32 shop and block Java at the firewall. In fact, we only drink tea to ensure we are not contaminated. (These answers are from a software company in Washington state mainly.. with a few other unfortunate exceptions as well.)
4. We use Java in the enterprise. (These answers are from people who actually work in an enterprise.)
A definition.. the enterprise does not mean your home network.. your school lab.. sourceforge.. freshmeat.. the internet cafe that you swap sysadmin services for free scones.. it means large corporate systems and infrastructures.
I haven't seen any enterprise-class system *not* oriented towards Java in a long time. Even ones not build in a J2EE model have evolved over time to support many of those components to streamline integration and development. Java has a good solid foundation in these areas, and with newer versions of the J2SE/J2EE specifications, it gets to be a richer server and client platform.
As far as Java on Linux.. I think the question should be more focused on the adoption of Linux as opposed to Java. Many places I work run many Java applications, but have requirements that Unix-hosted systems and applications must live on Sun Solaris, IBM, or other platforms. These requirements simplify management, accountability, and vendor management. That is worth a lot. Getting that Linux box online is cheaper when compared to that Sparc box, but the lifetime of supporting and maintaining the box could be higher if you are already supporting a large Sun infrastructure. This is all irrespective of Java.
Probably one of the biggest deals for Linux in the enterprise is Oracle's push and support of Linux for their entire suite of applications, and for publishing effective case stories on horizontal scaling on Linux systems. This benefits Java, as that is the primary language in Oracle-land now, but its a bigger benefit to Linux. IBM's push for Linux and Java is also very effective... (I rate Oracle higher, since they don't have a hardware issue to bring to the table, and are just pushing software.. IBM does push the software in the Websphere suite, but tends to bring hardware as well..)
So.. Linux is gaining in enterprise acceptance.. therefore Java on Linux is gaining.. but I think Java is set and has proven itself. Its Linux that is doing the proving now.
I had two kiosks at an outdoor location and the enclosure is *key*! I understand that you are doing it internally, but the enclosure is typically tied to a touchscreen of some sort, and that often will limit your options. Or, atleast provide guidance.
Our touchscreens required a special driver in windows and then simply behaved as a mouse. We had a real problem with text entry however.. we were using a special kiosk browser with pop-up screen, but people found it very difficult to use. A nice enclosure with an attached keyboard and trackball would have helped things dramatically.
I've been trying to get this working for a day or two without too much luck, but others on the mailing list are reporting success.
One good and important point.. yes, its using binary windows drivers, but they are trying to keep the whole project open source. They are going to hardware vendors who would otherwise like to support Linux, but don't want to port their code to a new architecture. Its a win/win for those who go along with it.
I've been working on getting the Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 card in my T40 working without too much luck yet, but I think its my local problem. Others report great success with the same card.
I agree. I company I consult with has a Windows-based mail server that was giving them no end of problems. I couldn't get them to switch platforms (though they have Linux and Solaris in other functions), but they did try out Communigate Pro, and switched a week after testing it out.
It works much faster and is far more reliable than their old solutions. Sure its not free, but you get what you pay for. Its a solid product with many many configuration options, and is easy for people to manage.
Well.. to me, there are certain operations that should be performed in the database, and some that don't *need* to be. If you are going to be processing alot of the rows in a table or multiple tables.. getting that logic as close to (inside) the database engine is the best bet. Keeping as much data off the wire is key with that.
When you get into other systems.. say a site like slashdot or similar, the forward caching that the EJB container gives you in a CMP world can bring a nice performance benefit to your system. If the EJB container is reasonably sure, based on your preferences, that the data is not stale, its not going back to the DB for anything.. its just pulling from local cache. There is your big speed advantage. If you have to hit the DB on every EJB request, rebuild the object, handle the locking, etc.. it will be dog slow.
I think the real problem is EJB is that its overly complex. Its the case of, do people need all of the complexity for 90% of what they do? Probably not. Things like XDoclet simplify that, but still not a trivial exercise. Then when you run into problems, debugging the EJB app is often difficult as well.
I personally prefer not to do the straight JDBC unless necessary, but will generally design with a DAO sort of model to abstract it anyway. Lately I've been using Hibernate2 with lots of luck. I just finished one site using 100% hibernate, and it was wonderful not mucking about with SQL. Especially singe Hibernate will build the right SQL for your target database.. makes portability a bit easier. Hibernate uses the JCS cache so you get some forward caching features without any of the headache of EJB. However, my site is not transactional in nature.. its 95% information viewing, so the traditional advantages of EJB don't apply to this project as much.
As an interesting note.. JBoss, in JBoss 4 seems to be going down more of a JDO supporting route. Thats a big shift for them.. well, and the aspect oriented programming they are doing.. which is telling.
EJBs are going to be in a guarenteed transactional state throughout the cluster, which simplifies all of your access. The containers should be caching some types of beans as well (CMP), so that you end up with a very fast transactionally complete solution across the environment. You can use JDO or other data solutions, add your own cache, manage it across the cluster.. and that may work well for you. Other beans are useful, such as the Message Driven Beans, for building a J2EE standard event driven component. Straight data mapping solutions don't provide this.
That said, personally I find many people don't need to worry as much about clustering, so as long as you are working on a good environment, thats probably more important. I use hibernate more these days with a good solid MVC design. I have servlets set to start at boot that become by queue listeners, and it works quite well. I can use XDoclet to generate my hibernate mappings if I want, and get up and running quickly.
The good thing is that you have alot of options. The bad thing is that you have a lot of options.
It comes down to picking the right technology for the job.. and your team. JDBC, JDO, OR-Mapping, EJB, etc all provide good tools to complete the job.
So,
What happens when a standard is produced in good faith by one or more parties, the W3 picks it up and ultimately generates a standard. Then everybody else picks it up and builds it into their browser, OS, application, tooth brush, and household pets.
Then, a year later, SomeEvil Co (A leader in Evil Patents since 1899.) decides that there is infringement and sues everybody involved?
The problem is two fold.. one is that there needs to be a process to search for applicable patents.. but the problem here is that too many patents are too broad. Secondly, if the search doesn't turn up any problems, whats to stop somebody from deciding that HTTP chunking infringes on their patent on, say, chunky peanut butter?
Is there a process to find *potentially applicable patents* and going to those holders to ask for explicit approval of the use? Or would that just be begging for lawsuits anyway?
Think about your network, load balancing, and other sorts of issues.
For example, I had a site that I ran for a while that was fairly poorly built from an application perspective. However, the client had prepped a flash load (ie: a bursty, concentrated load) for a specific time period.. and I had about a month to prepare. The problem was that we couldn't rewrite the apps part of the site to ease the congestion, nor could we rewrite some apps to be distributed to multiple servers. (They stored state on the server..)
So, I brought in a Foundry ServerIron, and used the URL switching to map all static files/items to a pair of Ultra 5 workstations. These had a bunch of memory and had iPlanet Enterprise Server configured with very agressive caching parameters. For the dynamic content, I also increased any caching parameters available.
(This is high level, but you get the idea. Basically, serve as much out of memory as possible.. other tuning issues.. turn off name resolution obviously.. make sure you aren't I/O bound.. or network bound for that matter.)
The day came around and we served 5 or 6 million hits in two hours or so.. the average load on the servers was around 0.1. In fact, even on the servers with the static content getting lots of hits, there was only really disk activity when access logs were flushed to disk (Every 30 seconds)..
So, don't just think about servers.. consider all options when trying to balance and handle your load.
I couldn't say if it protects against the exact source code listed on that site, but there is a set of kernel security modules which *greatly* protects against these sorts of attacks. The modules are at http://www.grsecurity.org/, and are a wonderful addition to any linux server.
It protects against raw devices, special chroot attacks, UID escalation attacks, many buffer overflows, and other problems. In addition, it adds a whole ACL (Access Control List) system for protecting applications and the overall environment. For a full list of features go to http://www.grsecurity.org/features.php.
I've used this on many different servers with no problems at all. It certainly make you feel better on those servers directly connected to the net.
This probably falls into the "whatever" camp.. I don't keep that close of a watch on hardware, and don't remember what processor I have in the server beside my desk off hand... It may have been Pentium Pro's or Pentium I's for all I know off the top of my head.
The main point is that FreeBSD is stable and fast, and has been for quite a while.
To those who run linux (or other OSs) exclusively, you really should give FreeBSD a try.
I started using it around 8 years ago for some core services.. DNS.. SMTP.. etc. It proved to be fast and reliable even then, and those were on old PII machines.
Since then, its gotten tremendously better.. the security subsystems are great, from ip firewalling to kernel and system level protections. (The jail environment is very interesting..) I currently have DNS and mail services running on it, with a vinum disk mirror (Vinum is a logical volume manager for FreeBSD) and have basically no maintenance.
If you wanted to experiment with a BSD machine, I know that http://www.johncompanies.com/ provides virtualized FreeBSD machines pretty cheaply, or just install it on a spare partition somewhere.
My only gripe is that it tends to trail linux on user interface/user focused device drivers, and in the Java space. Otherwise, it works great for me!
(I haven't tried 4.8 yet, since I don't have any need to upgrade my servers right now, but when I get a spare test box, I'll probably give it a spin..)
Its good.
Why? Because it would be implemented in, obviously, an open manner with publically defined protocols and specifications. Therefore, anybody who wanted to build an infrastructure to support DRM could do so without locking people into a single vendor or implementation.
Somebody asked why couldn't you just change the libraries to let you bypass it? Well sure, if you can change the code on the machine, you *may* be able to bypass protections, depending on what they are. For example, if the file (text, sound, media, etc.) is encrypted and requires a decrypt key, mucking around in the code isn't going to help it decrypt itself.
Now.. what about extracting the protected media after the decrypt step? Well, thats a bit harder. In fact, that was how people broke Microsoft's first WMP protection.. they wrote a null sound driver that just dumped the output to a file. Works pretty well. Don't think that they didn't notice, when all of their drivers need to be signed these days..
Anyway.. there are different parts to Digital Rights Management. Step 1 is access.. can you access a file or not. Crypto protects that, and no open or closed source will change that. Step 2 is decrypted control. Who can manipulate the decrypted bytes of the media? That is up to people to implement and protect as they see fit.
Remember that an OSS DRM solution could provide an open source platform for building closed source clients and devices.. You have the advantge of an open standard combined with actual devices using it.
Mozilla originally took too much of its Netscape roots to heart. That is understandable, but its a very good thing that people were finally able to break from that past. Netscape Communicator was supposed to be all things.. Mozilla continued that track, but with a nicer rendering engine and snazzy features.
I don't personally I have a problem with the size of mozilla, but since I only use it for browsing, it will be really nice to get rid of the rest of this monolithic application.. but to have it available for when I want it.
The path it has set now reminds me of the KDE applications. The PIM/Mail suite has a great deal of functionality.. but you don't have to load it just to browse a web page. (Though many would argue that Konqueror also tries to be all things to all people..)
On Linux.. Mozilla and Phoenix are the way to go.. though on OS X, Safari is a really nice browser.
I agree on the front that MS is not stagnant.. but I still don't believe that they have any vested interest in moving towards open standards in a meaningful way.
For example. how are you going to read that XML document when you need to use the (patented) MS DRM infrastructure to decode it?
My concern is that they have an appearance of moving towards openness, but have a track record of veering off at the last minute, and hitting the tree of proprietary solutions, and bursting into patented flames.
Finally.. I do agree.. they are not to be ignored. But, I also don't think they are to be trusted to follow through on the users and industries best interests.
True.. I agree in general with Kaffe, though I will say its better than it used to be.
a mm ing/Languages/Java/Implementations/?il=1
Blackdown is a port.. but managed in an open process and environment.
IBM's is certainly proprietary.. but that wasn't the complaint. The issue was a non-SUN JVM.. and IBM gives that to you.
Here is a google category
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Progr
This lists many different JVM's available.. some open source.. some commercial. If you want a non-SUN JVM.. go to town.
Just because they have a stronger commitment to XML doesn't make it any more open, when considered as an enterprise platform.
Take a look at InfoNotes and some of the Office 2003 components. They *fully require* much of your enterprise to be deployed on Microsoft software. They actively spurned W3 standards such as XForms for their own form standard in this line as well.
This sort of thing isn't new.. and the push to drag the enterprise architecture along by the client applications is dangerous. The DRM technologies being built in for document protection at a concept level are good.. but again, no openness and public standards there.
My feel is there is a variety of token gestures to give people warm fuzzies, even as the noose tightens and the enterprise and client architecture looses the possiblity to be *anything but* their platform.
Who cares about an XML file format if you can't decrypt it without Microsoft? What good is a CLR if you can't do anything without patented libraries whose distribution rights are limited to the Windows platform?
Not true.. Kaffe has been around for a long time.. Blackdown has had their Java VM for a while too. Those are just two open source ones off the top of my head.
Other VMs include IBM's.. very good quality and speed there. Its free, but not open source. Even Microsoft has their VM, though its not worth much anymore.
How does Sun have the only JVM again?
My understanding is that MS is bringing some components to the standards orgs so they can say that, but that their environment will still heavily leverage internal and private APIs.
.NET is not the CLR.. .NET is the CLR, APIs, Libraries, and so forth.. therefore only a small part of the environment is open.
.NET.
So, you have to differentiate between a baseline CLR environment, and the actual programming APIs that would be used to build on top of this.
Who wants to bet that this is more for marketing than it is for getting cross platform capabilities? Without MS opening all libraries and APIs *AND* approving any patent use they have on those components to other systems, a public standard on CLR means nothing.
Sun should bring Java to a standards org, but at the same time, its well documented, understood, and there are no hidden parts to the JVM/Runtime. You aren't going to see that with
The simplest problem is to assume that a fully functional key escrow system is deployed or that a backdoor/trapdoor encryption algorithm is generated. What if I pre-crypt my data in another algorithm, before encrypting it in the other system? Then I'm transmitting a valid (and legal) message.. but it would have to be decrypted and extracted and analyzed before any determination could be made. Of course, using stenographic techniques to hide the pre-crypted data in an image/etc would make it impossible to detect. And, since you are using the approved system, there isn't even a question of wrong doing.
By allowing Real to support the Windows Media formatt, they are opening up a wider base of clients to use their formats.. and therefore a wider base of clients to use their Windows Media Stream servers. These stream servers are only available for Windows.. and it wouldn't be a big shock for future versions to target W2K as its preferred platform.
This push helps to establish MS in data centers and server farms where it may not have had a presence.. and to expand the presence where it was previously located. They don't care a thing about RealPlayer and MediaPlayer per se.. if you can own the servers, you get a big boost in owning the clients as well.
I think it would be interesting to look at standardizing some baseline configuration files, or to explore if this sort of consolidation is possible. Given the number of XML parsers out there (in C, C++, Perl, Python, Java, etc..) it should be reasonably easy for people to use this in their own applications.