Agreed. It is easy, and it is the only logical thing to do.
What drives me just plain nutty and makes me want to run around screaming every time it happens is the undocumented "feature" of the (so-called) XP firewall that automatically (and permanently) opens up certain ports without promting you, even after you've closed them down!
Most people--even the technically savvy would never notice. After all, you left everything closed last time you were in there, right??
I've found this to be the case with MSN messenger (which is labelled VERY crypically for most users) and the Windows Media Player (which has about a dozen ports it likes to have opened).
A firewall that automatically, *permanently* opens up ports without asking the user? Huh?! You have got to be kidding me, right?
Can anyone imagine iptables, ipchains, ipfilter, or pf doing this? The various authors of any of these programs would be summarily beaten, dragged through the town square at high noon, and then ridiculed for putting in a "feature" like that.
Ya know... kidding aside, this has wonderful other real-world applications, too. Imagine the organ transplant process, for instance.
Ambulances, helicopters, etc., could use this for preserving organs during that critical first period of time when the organ donor no longer (ahem) needs their parts.
While Kodak was slugging it out with Fuji, Ilford, and Agfa across the globe for the traditional film business, all kinds of new competititive threats like HP (a company no one would have called a Kodak competitor 10 years ago) have sprung up and made mincemeat out of what should have been a natural for Kodak: transitioning people and themselves to digital.
Alas, someone was asleep at the switch, oodles of people have lost their jobs, and Kodak, a name almost synonymous with quality photography, will likely be sliced into a much smaller company just to stay afloat. What a shame.
Its only hope is that Hollywood continues using traditional film for feature films forever. Oh, wait, that's not gonna happen, either. Scratch that.
Ah yes, Wang! Software! We have a way out! Let's get people to pay us for our patents! Nice try.
I have to give them praise for trying to work out something with Sun amicably (however zany the claim may seem to us now) without pushing the big red LAWSUIT button long ago, but it does quite seem to be an attempt to make an end run for the cash.
My only advice to Kodak: get HP to buy you. (You heard it here first.)
I am increasingly amazed at how bad, bad ideas are getting. Perhaps my memory of historical stupidity is failing (and I'm being overly generous about the overall absense of stupidity in the past), but things that I feel like are widely accepted as Very Stupid Ideas(tm) today that would have nevvvvver been *said*--much less actually considered--say ten or fifteen years ago are actually being pondered today.
This is the most fundamental problem with closed source: even if the underlying code is 100% perfect, bug-free, and wonderfully coded, there is no mechanism to prevent the last developer with sign-off on a project from slipping something nefarious in as code goes into "release" status.
I say this because, IMHO, Cisco's customers generally trust both them as a company and their products. In short, they've done a good job, for a closed source firm, of keeping the perception that they run a tight ship and keep their corporate nose clean.
That said, this is a ding, no doubt, but the bigger question here is while this backdoor was arguably somewhat obscure, it still existed. Even if no one "on the outside" ever learned of its existence, its very existence is troubling.
This is the type of thing that typically would have been caught in no time by the average open-source code-troller (much less a developer) quite quickly.
Sure, Cisco has a decent name, but what about companies that don't have the positive overall goodwill/reputation that Cisco does?
The notion that closed source software is "just as good" or even "more secure" is just plain wack-a-loo. (You can quote me on that.)
Perhaps so. I bet there'll also be a surprisingly large number of people who, despite all of Wal*Mart's warnings to the contrary, still buy the PC and take it home thinking it's going to run .
Once they figure that out, they'll march back into Wal*Mart for a refund. (Note to self: check Wal*Mart for price-reduced "open-box" PCs in a few months--these buggers might just be going for less than a Snickers bar by then.)
BTW, here's the link to the Wal*Mart Microtel PC in question for the curious among us: Microtel Wal*Mart PC
In short: I have to agree--I do a bit of both, too.
The main thing I encounter that keeps me from using them all the time is the need for specific add-ons that are available as part of packages but are available when rolling-my-own.
As an aside, there are certain bits that I just prefer to compile myself for any number of reasons
That said, there are other bits of software that are pretty generic items that the packages make *trivially* easy to work with, and where compiling those same things from scratch--particularly on older hardware--makes you get a bit long-in-the-tooth waiting for the compile to return.
To me, this is truly one of the ultimate beauties of open source: you're not stuck with pre-built, but you can leverage it when it makes sense.
It's actually much worse than "nothing." "Nothing" would imply (at least) there isn't harm done.
The trivial CRAP that's being given a patent (like the guy with the laser pointer aka cat toy), actually does much worse. As far as I'm concerned, stuff like this literally amounts to theft from the USA's coffers.
What happens after the patent is granted? Even if it sits there idle, that number and the corresponding crap information have to be stored, tracked, sifted through, and referenced against again and again and again.
Every time a new *legitimate* patent is filed, the poor bastards applying AND the people in the patent office have to sift through not just legitimate patents but all the extra @#$%^&* crap in there, too! ARRRRRGH!
Let's remember, there was a period when AV was king... there was also a period where HotBot (aka Inktomi) was a serious, serious contender. I remember very distinctly for a LONG period if I was looking for good technology stuff, (i.e. shopping or mailing list archives) I searched HotBot first.
I also remember what a great resource NorthernLight was for finding printed materials.
IMHO, in search it ain't over 'til the dust settles, and it never stays settled for long.:-)
What gets me about the whole electric industry and the push for electric vehicles is that (and to my knowledge this has only been brought up tangentially in Car and Driver magazine once) electric vehicles are QUITE polluting when you consider the nuclear waste or mercury and other pollutants released "up-stream" in the actual electric-making process.
It seems the pollution, especially of mercury, is increasing, as it's being moved from something that is quite regulated, i.e. fuel refining and tail pipe emissions (ULEV vehicles) to one of low regulations, i.e. coal-fired electric plants!
Remember, too, that many of these plants were allowed to *skip* critical maintenance for extended periods during the California energy crisis, too, exacerbating the condition even more so. Grrrrr.
Thanks for bringing up 311. I'm amazed at how few people even know about 311. It seems the public's adoption of 911 has to be 90%+, yet I bet the adoption of 311 has to be 10% or less.
I recently sat on hold with 911 for literally 20 minutes after I watched a vehicular hit-and-run accident from my car, where the:cough: gentleman fleeing the scene looked around for a good 30 seconds to see if anyone noticed before making a break for it. (Read: he sped away.)
Luckily I was close enough to get the a-hole's license number before he did, and ultimately I got thru, but wow am I glad it was just damage to another vehicle and that there were no injuries/fatalities.
Also worth noting is that I was twice transferred to other divisions/operators after speaking with the first one.
BTW, In case you're wondering it happened in the middle of broad daylight on a Saturday last Fall--not exactly "peak" 911 time.
This has to make you wonder how many of those calls in front of me were BS, and why not allow people to route themselves based upon an automated menu system?
Oh, you're calling about your neighbor's dog barking? We'll get back to you... eventually. Leave your number.
-OR-
Oh, you're on fire? No problem. I'll put you right through.
At $1.99 buy.com someone at buymusic.com / buy.com was asleep at the switch.
What's going to happen though when word of Wal-Mart's $.88/song really hits the mainstream?
Sure, getting something at a bargain price is great, but $.11?!
What I fear the masses will overlook with Wal-Mart's music entry is that the lousy $.11 they're saving by buying their music from Wal-Mart instead of one of the alternative places (i.e. iTunes to name just one) means increasing the likelihood of missing out on the non-corporate and up-and-coming musicians.
Real benefit would come to rescue and disaster recovery units if these babies could be controlled (or at least monitored) via satellite--or even something more remote than a laptop within 5K as the article suggests.
Imagine what could be done in a remote disaster situation in any region--even a metropolitan area--just by being able to fly low and into and around hard-to-reach areas.
Sure, while in this instance it's being used by soldiers, your point about rescue units, etc. is an idea I hope takes hold.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. It is easy, and it is the only logical thing to do.
What drives me just plain nutty and makes me want to run around screaming every time it happens is the undocumented "feature" of the (so-called) XP firewall that automatically (and permanently) opens up certain ports without promting you, even after you've closed them down!
Most people--even the technically savvy would never notice. After all, you left everything closed last time you were in there, right??
I've found this to be the case with MSN messenger (which is labelled VERY crypically for most users) and the Windows Media Player (which has about a dozen ports it likes to have opened).
A firewall that automatically, *permanently* opens up ports without asking the user? Huh?! You have got to be kidding me, right?
Can anyone imagine iptables, ipchains, ipfilter, or pf doing this? The various authors of any of these programs would be summarily beaten, dragged through the town square at high noon, and then ridiculed for putting in a "feature" like that.
Ya know... kidding aside, this has wonderful other real-world applications, too. Imagine the organ transplant process, for instance.
Ambulances, helicopters, etc., could use this for preserving organs during that critical first period of time when the organ donor no longer (ahem) needs their parts.
Go beer research!
While Kodak was slugging it out with Fuji, Ilford, and Agfa across the globe for the traditional film business, all kinds of new competititive threats like HP (a company no one would have called a Kodak competitor 10 years ago) have sprung up and made mincemeat out of what should have been a natural for Kodak: transitioning people and themselves to digital.
Alas, someone was asleep at the switch, oodles of people have lost their jobs, and Kodak, a name almost synonymous with quality photography, will likely be sliced into a much smaller company just to stay afloat. What a shame.
Its only hope is that Hollywood continues using traditional film for feature films forever. Oh, wait, that's not gonna happen, either. Scratch that.
Ah yes, Wang! Software! We have a way out! Let's get people to pay us for our patents! Nice try.
I have to give them praise for trying to work out something with Sun amicably (however zany the claim may seem to us now) without pushing the big red LAWSUIT button long ago, but it does quite seem to be an attempt to make an end run for the cash.
My only advice to Kodak: get HP to buy you. (You heard it here first.)
I am increasingly amazed at how bad, bad ideas are getting. Perhaps my memory of historical stupidity is failing (and I'm being overly generous about the overall absense of stupidity in the past), but things that I feel like are widely accepted as Very Stupid Ideas(tm) today that would have nevvvvver been *said*--much less actually considered--say ten or fifteen years ago are actually being pondered today.
Scratch that. Dan Quayle was around then.
This is the most fundamental problem with closed source: even if the underlying code is 100% perfect, bug-free, and wonderfully coded, there is no mechanism to prevent the last developer with sign-off on a project from slipping something nefarious in as code goes into "release" status.
I say this because, IMHO, Cisco's customers generally trust both them as a company and their products. In short, they've done a good job, for a closed source firm, of keeping the perception that they run a tight ship and keep their corporate nose clean.
That said, this is a ding, no doubt, but the bigger question here is while this backdoor was arguably somewhat obscure, it still existed. Even if no one "on the outside" ever learned of its existence, its very existence is troubling.
This is the type of thing that typically would have been caught in no time by the average open-source code-troller (much less a developer) quite quickly.
Sure, Cisco has a decent name, but what about companies that don't have the positive overall goodwill/reputation that Cisco does?
The notion that closed source software is "just as good" or even "more secure" is just plain wack-a-loo. (You can quote me on that.)
Perhaps so. I bet there'll also be a surprisingly large number of people who, despite all of Wal*Mart's warnings to the contrary, still buy the PC and take it home thinking it's going to run .
Once they figure that out, they'll march back into Wal*Mart for a refund. (Note to self: check Wal*Mart for price-reduced "open-box" PCs in a few months--these buggers might just be going for less than a Snickers bar by then.)
BTW, here's the link to the Wal*Mart Microtel PC in question for the curious among us:
Microtel Wal*Mart PC
In short: I have to agree--I do a bit of both, too.
The main thing I encounter that keeps me from using them all the time is the need for specific add-ons that are available as part of packages but are available when rolling-my-own.
As an aside, there are certain bits that I just prefer to compile myself for any number of reasons
That said, there are other bits of software that are pretty generic items that the packages make *trivially* easy to work with, and where compiling those same things from scratch--particularly on older hardware--makes you get a bit long-in-the-tooth waiting for the compile to return.
To me, this is truly one of the ultimate beauties of open source: you're not stuck with pre-built, but you can leverage it when it makes sense.
It's actually much worse than "nothing." "Nothing" would imply (at least) there isn't harm done.
The trivial CRAP that's being given a patent (like the guy with the laser pointer aka cat toy), actually does much worse. As far as I'm concerned, stuff like this literally amounts to theft from the USA's coffers.
What happens after the patent is granted? Even if it sits there idle, that number and the corresponding crap information have to be stored, tracked, sifted through, and referenced against again and again and again.
Every time a new *legitimate* patent is filed, the poor bastards applying AND the people in the patent office have to sift through not just legitimate patents but all the extra @#$%^&* crap in there, too! ARRRRRGH!
There has to be a better way.
Let's remember, there was a period when AV was king... there was also a period where HotBot (aka Inktomi) was a serious, serious contender. I remember very distinctly for a LONG period if I was looking for good technology stuff, (i.e. shopping or mailing list archives) I searched HotBot first.
:-)
I also remember what a great resource NorthernLight was for finding printed materials.
IMHO, in search it ain't over 'til the dust settles, and it never stays settled for long.
What gets me about the whole electric industry and the push for electric vehicles is that (and to my knowledge this has only been brought up tangentially in Car and Driver magazine once) electric vehicles are QUITE polluting when you consider the nuclear waste or mercury and other pollutants released "up-stream" in the actual electric-making process.
It seems the pollution, especially of mercury, is increasing, as it's being moved from something that is quite regulated, i.e. fuel refining and tail pipe emissions (ULEV vehicles) to one of low regulations, i.e. coal-fired electric plants!
Remember, too, that many of these plants were allowed to *skip* critical maintenance for extended periods during the California energy crisis, too, exacerbating the condition even more so. Grrrrr.
Thanks for bringing up 311. I'm amazed at how few people even know about 311. It seems the public's adoption of 911 has to be 90%+, yet I bet the adoption of 311 has to be 10% or less.
:cough: gentleman fleeing the scene looked around for a good 30 seconds to see if anyone noticed before making a break for it. (Read: he sped away.)
I recently sat on hold with 911 for literally 20 minutes after I watched a vehicular hit-and-run accident from my car, where the
Luckily I was close enough to get the a-hole's license number before he did, and ultimately I got thru, but wow am I glad it was just damage to another vehicle and that there were no injuries/fatalities.
Also worth noting is that I was twice transferred to other divisions/operators after speaking with the first one.
BTW, In case you're wondering it happened in the middle of broad daylight on a Saturday last Fall--not exactly "peak" 911 time.
This has to make you wonder how many of those calls in front of me were BS, and why not allow people to route themselves based upon an automated menu system?
Oh, you're calling about your neighbor's dog barking? We'll get back to you... eventually. Leave your number.
-OR-
Oh, you're on fire? No problem. I'll put you right through.
At $1.99 buy.com someone at buymusic.com / buy.com was asleep at the switch.
What's going to happen though when word of Wal-Mart's $.88/song really hits the mainstream?
Sure, getting something at a bargain price is great, but $.11?!
What I fear the masses will overlook with Wal-Mart's music entry is that the lousy $.11 they're saving by buying their music from Wal-Mart instead of one of the alternative places (i.e. iTunes to name just one) means increasing the likelihood of missing out on the non-corporate and up-and-coming musicians.
--sigh--
Real benefit would come to rescue and disaster recovery units if these babies could be controlled (or at least monitored) via satellite--or even something more remote than a laptop within 5K as the article suggests.
Imagine what could be done in a remote disaster situation in any region--even a metropolitan area--just by being able to fly low and into and around hard-to-reach areas.
Sure, while in this instance it's being used by soldiers, your point about rescue units, etc. is an idea I hope takes hold.