Yes, but the idea of pairing a session ID with *something* to increase the difficulty of such attacks has merit. Take User Agent, Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Language, screen resolution, or some rotating, random combination of these (and other things not listed here) indicated in a hidden field encrypted with a CRC-based cipher for example. The algorithm might tolerate one of these changing during a session, but more than one would be rejected (assuming the rejected request was initiated by a bot, the session would remain active for the actual user, so as not to enable DOS attacks).
5. You have delegated the decision to a well-funded, trusted team of veteran IT decision makers.
Businesses live and die by information, so the severity of your list of relatively insignificant defects rather depends on the criticality of the data in question. When lives are at stake (economically, physically or medically), when every hour of system downtime costs your operation tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, decisions are based on higher level concerns. The integrity of the data is paramount. Data moving between mart and warehouse needs to cost as little as possible.
I'll then hire DBAs who appreciate the chosen technology for reasons that matter to them. If it's MySQL, maybe these are DBAs looking for an opportunity to not only use but enhance the product, and that's fine with me.
Not to rain on your parade, but _you_ are the suspect DBA the author recommended CIOs ignore when weighing the facts -- that is not to vet his weakly argued list of criticisms, I just couldn't let these posts sit at +5 unchallenged.
Re:Is it going to be completely Ubuntu?
on
Dell Linux Details
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Ubuntu is updated every 6 months, and Dell has chosen the more cutting-edge 7.04 version over 6.06 for which Canonical had promised support for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. With Windows, Dell has been accustomed to supporting a relatively stagnant Windows kernel. To commit to supporting a Linux kernel that evolves every dozen weeks or so, and a software distro that evolves every 6 months will require active participation on Dell's part -- regular contributions to testing (n+1) and participation on the Ubuntu launchpad.net site. If Dell is going to contribute at that level it might as well simply become another full ubuntu mirror. Exciting prospects indeed.
As the father of an inquisitive (in the scientific sense, not the 14th c. Catholic sense) 4.5 yr-old, I appreciate your post. But must argue that your last paragraph unfairly presents science as a mode of thinking in which people rightly allocate a brief period of attention, as though that choice were normal and correct. Why should the inquisitive, scientific mode of thought not be the predominant, normal one? Science is a tool we use to learn about the universe we live in -- this is a Good Thing (TM), right?
Professional integrity requires the technology consultant provide objective, well-reasoned analysis of the available options. Once the business has chosen a what it believes is the right solution, the consultant ensures that solution is executed with the right balance of quality, reliability, maintainability and expediency.
Which would be gained via proper preparation, i.e., seeking out the requisite training, mentoring, study materials, etc., right?
To your point I would agree that one does not simply unilaterally implement a new project methodology, regardless of project size, and regardless of experience, training or ability. Any solid methodology will involve stakeholders across the organization, stakeholders who will need to form an understanding of, and an appreciation for the proposed change. With this appreciation, an IT practice should get the funding needed to directly implement, train, hire or outsource the proposed role(s) as needed.
...Costs more to support. Think of the complaining users endlessly frustrated with dog-slow performance attempting to run a real-time OS on a virtual machine. It's just business....
Before running any free software handed out like candy by any 3rd party entity, be it governmental, for-profit or non-profit, the logical first question should not be "what can I do with this software" but "how do I know this software is safe to use"?
Users should be able to satisfy themselves of this question quickly, simply and easily before even so much as considering the potential value of the software in question.
From what I've read this appears to have been an honest mistake and would agree that Novell should still be counted among the 'good guys'... but good guys can and do make mistakes. Novell entered into a contract that it can't simply walk away from considering contractual obligations, penalties etc. It needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat, soon.
I don't understand your response about insurance agents disabling the brakes of other drivers. How is Novell disabling others brakes? All they have done is made their car safer and security sells, like a Volvo.
I don't believe the protection racket analogy applies to Novell so much as Microsoft -- the concern of the Free Software community is this new precedent will raise the barriers to entry for smaller Linux vendors with smaller patent portfolios compared to that of Novell. Surely we can simply pretend the deal was never made, but once Microsoft cuts the brakes of one of RedHat's customers (in true MAFIAA style), the corporate board of virtually every organization running Linux will demand its vendors enter into similar arrangements with Microsoft. Well guess what, for those vendors that have no patent portfolio of their own, dollars will be flowing in the other direction vis-a-vis the Novell deal. Those vendors will be forced to raise the price of their respective offerings, which will have multiple repercussions:
Those vendors with patent portfolios will be more attractively priced than those who don't.
Those vendors without patent portfolios will be priced out of the market.
Companies now investing in patent portfolios will have less incentive to lobby against a patent system from which they increasingly benefit.
Members of the F/OSS community become increasingly disincented to contribute for fear they may in turn be held liable.
None of these endgame scenarios are in the interest of the F/OSS community. This is of course uncharted territory and there may of course be options not yet understood that might prevent this (companies like IBM donating enough patents to the community that the community as a whole is 'protected' via MADD). The negative attention Microsoft might receive suing a F/OSS vendor might itself be enough to prevent it from following this path (perhaps I am being naive, but I can't imagine its best and brightest engineering talent tolerating such a move anyhow). Meanwhile, the charter of the FSF requires it to protect the interests of the community, which is exactly what it is doing (and what I pay it to do as a member).
I'm more curious that they think they can measure Jupiter's position to a fraction of a millimetre, or the velocities to a fraction of a nanometre per second...
These accuracies result from the mathematics. Why toss out digits simply because we can't be absolutely certain to the fraction of a millimeter/nanosecond of any given celestial object? It costs nothing to keep them and they allow the numbers to be independently verified.
Apple's marketing strategy is not dissimilar to that of a seductive young vixen: Sex it up to the abandon of it's own fickle, demanding, expensive whims -- self-obsessed with no commitment to any given customer as there are countless other potential suitors lining up for a taste of the forbidden fruit.
In hindsight, it would have been fair to mention that Microsoft is doing more and more to cooperate with the F/OSS community, both in the interests of its customers (who face the challenge of integrating Microsoft and OSS software stacks), its own public image, good old-fashioned opportunity and (I suspect anyway) a fundamental desire on behalf of some of its employees to be a part of something bigger.
When did the "Linux community" get so vitriolic and spiteful?
There is no vitriol in the parent's post. The term 'enemy' is only as emotionally charged as the listener wishes it to be. As it's easier to hate an 'enemy' than to understand and accept an opposing point of view, this is probably not the best choice of words in a constructive dialogue.
This isn't some ideological war that is being fought, and shame on you for trying to make it into one.
The parent is simply making an observation. Free Software is an ideology just as capitalism is an ideology. While not mutually exclusive (hence efforts being made to monetize Free Software both on the part of "Open Source" startups and established commercial vendors), these two ideologies do conflict in several areas.
Microsoft is [an] enemy?
<executivesummary>
While an organization as large and diverse as Microsoft will never be entirely focused on activities that impede or overtly threaten the F/OSS community, it has interests that are not and may never be compatible with those of the Free Software community. For that reason, MSFT is directly and indirectly engaged in activities that hurt and threaten the F/OSS community, not out of malice or even by choice, but in simply fulfilling obligations to its shareholders. It's just business:).
Whatever your own personal definition of the term 'enemy' may be, it's useful meaning has been pretty well understood for at least a millenia (or two)...
You and a.d.trick were right, my summary judgment of this action as unethical was a bit hasty. I suppose the root of my concern here lies in the fundamental question whether the result (the end) of this action, withholding information, is ethical. This is a very interesting ethical subject around which many professional/ngo and governmental bodies have ruled one way or the other depending on circumstance.
In this situation, the producer, its employees and immediate community (taxes collected, charitable contributions made possible, etc.) benefit at the expense of the consumer who likely will not get what he/she expected.
1. The consumer will also very likely not *need* said product.
1.A. Existing OS (XP) may be perfectly adequate.
1.B. Alternative OSes are perfectly adequate. 2. Said product may *hurt* the consumer:
2.A. Some consumers may spend an amount disproportionate to income, assume unnecessary debt, etc., given the relative cost of available alternatives.
2.B. Remove essential freedoms, as maintained by groups like the FSF, EFF, ACLU, etc. This can be diminished by limiting one's use of Vista to things like gaming.
That individuals can be persuaded to act against their own best interest is a point that irritates me to no end. This is what initially motivated me to respond, albeit hastily given the depth of the subject at hand.
With no strings attached, this is not a bribe. It is a calculated risk:
1. Reviewers will be far less likely to criticize Vista's complex pricing structure not having had to personally invest energy into weighing the cost/benefit of buying a mid-range edition.
2. Reviewers will be far less likely to run into technical issues resulting from running the OS on mid-range hardware.
3. More reviewers will focus more energy on features unique to Ultimate, which would be an implicit endorsement of Ultimate over all other editions.
These actions are intended to inhibit (albeit to a limited extent) the spread of unbiased criticism to those who would benefit most by it. Going back to Ethics 101, this is (however subtly) acting against the best interest of society, and therefore unethical. Of course, in a society accustomed to a continuous assault on fact from many angles (sales/marketing/politics, etc.), this will go entirely unnoticed.
From the perspective of diminished responsibility, I'd say this action is so minutely unethical that to label it "immoral" is misleading. "Guerrilla Marketing" would be a more useful characterization.
Microsoft thinks (hopes) there are hundreds of millions of people waiting for Vista, and therefore took a calculated risk shipping a product that was not yet 100% compatible with every one of its high-end management tools. In any case, no, this is not "HUGE" when there are several alternative ways to run these tools in the interim (rdp, vmware, virtual PC, the other PC on your desk, etc.) If you want to live on the bleeding edge, expect to bleed once in a while. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
T-Mobile's new UMA offering may justify giving them and just about every other provider to offer UMA service a second look.
n ational-with-hotspot-home-wifi-calling/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/27/t-mobile-goes-
You've missed the point. Multi-factor authorization will usually be more effective than single-factor authorization.
Yes, but the idea of pairing a session ID with *something* to increase the difficulty of such attacks has merit. Take User Agent, Accept, Accept-Charset, Accept-Language, screen resolution, or some rotating, random combination of these (and other things not listed here) indicated in a hidden field encrypted with a CRC-based cipher for example. The algorithm might tolerate one of these changing during a session, but more than one would be rejected (assuming the rejected request was initiated by a bot, the session would remain active for the actual user, so as not to enable DOS attacks).
You left out a case:
5. You have delegated the decision to a well-funded, trusted team of veteran IT decision makers.
Businesses live and die by information, so the severity of your list of relatively insignificant defects rather depends on the criticality of the data in question. When lives are at stake (economically, physically or medically), when every hour of system downtime costs your operation tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, decisions are based on higher level concerns. The integrity of the data is paramount. Data moving between mart and warehouse needs to cost as little as possible.
I'll then hire DBAs who appreciate the chosen technology for reasons that matter to them. If it's MySQL, maybe these are DBAs looking for an opportunity to not only use but enhance the product, and that's fine with me.
Not to rain on your parade, but _you_ are the suspect DBA the author recommended CIOs ignore when weighing the facts -- that is not to vet his weakly argued list of criticisms, I just couldn't let these posts sit at +5 unchallenged.
Ubuntu is updated every 6 months, and Dell has chosen the more cutting-edge 7.04 version over 6.06 for which Canonical had promised support for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. With Windows, Dell has been accustomed to supporting a relatively stagnant Windows kernel. To commit to supporting a Linux kernel that evolves every dozen weeks or so, and a software distro that evolves every 6 months will require active participation on Dell's part -- regular contributions to testing (n+1) and participation on the Ubuntu launchpad.net site. If Dell is going to contribute at that level it might as well simply become another full ubuntu mirror. Exciting prospects indeed.
As the father of an inquisitive (in the scientific sense, not the 14th c. Catholic sense) 4.5 yr-old, I appreciate your post. But must argue that your last paragraph unfairly presents science as a mode of thinking in which people rightly allocate a brief period of attention, as though that choice were normal and correct. Why should the inquisitive, scientific mode of thought not be the predominant, normal one? Science is a tool we use to learn about the universe we live in -- this is a Good Thing (TM), right?
Professional integrity requires the technology consultant provide objective, well-reasoned analysis of the available options. Once the business has chosen a what it believes is the right solution, the consultant ensures that solution is executed with the right balance of quality, reliability, maintainability and expediency.
browser.cache.memory.enable
Which would be gained via proper preparation, i.e., seeking out the requisite training, mentoring, study materials, etc., right?
To your point I would agree that one does not simply unilaterally implement a new project methodology, regardless of project size, and regardless of experience, training or ability. Any solid methodology will involve stakeholders across the organization, stakeholders who will need to form an understanding of, and an appreciation for the proposed change. With this appreciation, an IT practice should get the funding needed to directly implement, train, hire or outsource the proposed role(s) as needed.
...Costs more to support. Think of the complaining users endlessly frustrated with dog-slow performance attempting to run a real-time OS on a virtual machine. It's just business....
Before running any free software handed out like candy by any 3rd party entity, be it governmental, for-profit or non-profit, the logical first question should not be "what can I do with this software" but "how do I know this software is safe to use"? Users should be able to satisfy themselves of this question quickly, simply and easily before even so much as considering the potential value of the software in question.
From what I've read this appears to have been an honest mistake and would agree that Novell should still be counted among the 'good guys'... but good guys can and do make mistakes. Novell entered into a contract that it can't simply walk away from considering contractual obligations, penalties etc. It needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat, soon.
- Those vendors with patent portfolios will be more attractively priced than those who don't.
- Those vendors without patent portfolios will be priced out of the market.
- Companies now investing in patent portfolios will have less incentive to lobby against a patent system from which they increasingly benefit.
- Members of the F/OSS community become increasingly disincented to contribute for fear they may in turn be held liable.
None of these endgame scenarios are in the interest of the F/OSS community. This is of course uncharted territory and there may of course be options not yet understood that might prevent this (companies like IBM donating enough patents to the community that the community as a whole is 'protected' via MADD). The negative attention Microsoft might receive suing a F/OSS vendor might itself be enough to prevent it from following this path (perhaps I am being naive, but I can't imagine its best and brightest engineering talent tolerating such a move anyhow). Meanwhile, the charter of the FSF requires it to protect the interests of the community, which is exactly what it is doing (and what I pay it to do as a member).Cranky
Apple's marketing strategy is not dissimilar to that of a seductive young vixen: Sex it up to the abandon of it's own fickle, demanding, expensive whims -- self-obsessed with no commitment to any given customer as there are countless other potential suitors lining up for a taste of the forbidden fruit.
In hindsight, it would have been fair to mention that Microsoft is doing more and more to cooperate with the F/OSS community, both in the interests of its customers (who face the challenge of integrating Microsoft and OSS software stacks), its own public image, good old-fashioned opportunity and (I suspect anyway) a fundamental desire on behalf of some of its employees to be a part of something bigger.
There is no vitriol in the parent's post. The term 'enemy' is only as emotionally charged as the listener wishes it to be. As it's easier to hate an 'enemy' than to understand and accept an opposing point of view, this is probably not the best choice of words in a constructive dialogue.
The parent is simply making an observation. Free Software is an ideology just as capitalism is an ideology. While not mutually exclusive (hence efforts being made to monetize Free Software both on the part of "Open Source" startups and established commercial vendors), these two ideologies do conflict in several areas.
<executivesummary>
While an organization as large and diverse as Microsoft will never be entirely focused on activities that impede or overtly threaten the F/OSS community, it has interests that are not and may never be compatible with those of the Free Software community. For that reason, MSFT is directly and indirectly engaged in activities that hurt and threaten the F/OSS community, not out of malice or even by choice, but in simply fulfilling obligations to its shareholders. It's just business :).
</executivesummary>
Whatever your own personal definition of the term 'enemy' may be, it's useful meaning has been pretty well understood for at least a millenia (or two)...
k
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/enemy?view=u
[I don't generally participate in offtopic discussions but seeing as I have no mod points today...]
whch is mor funny? # dunno..
You and a.d.trick were right, my summary judgment of this action as unethical was a bit hasty. I suppose the root of my concern here lies in the fundamental question whether the result (the end) of this action, withholding information, is ethical. This is a very interesting ethical subject around which many professional/ngo and governmental bodies have ruled one way or the other depending on circumstance.
In this situation, the producer, its employees and immediate community (taxes collected, charitable contributions made possible, etc.) benefit at the expense of the consumer who likely will not get what he/she expected.
1. The consumer will also very likely not *need* said product.
1.A. Existing OS (XP) may be perfectly adequate.
1.B. Alternative OSes are perfectly adequate.
2. Said product may *hurt* the consumer:
2.A. Some consumers may spend an amount disproportionate to income, assume unnecessary debt, etc., given the relative cost of available alternatives.
2.B. Remove essential freedoms, as maintained by groups like the FSF, EFF, ACLU, etc. This can be diminished by limiting one's use of Vista to things like gaming.
That individuals can be persuaded to act against their own best interest is a point that irritates me to no end. This is what initially motivated me to respond, albeit hastily given the depth of the subject at hand.
With no strings attached, this is not a bribe. It is a calculated risk:
1. Reviewers will be far less likely to criticize Vista's complex pricing structure not having had to personally invest energy into weighing the cost/benefit of buying a mid-range edition.
2. Reviewers will be far less likely to run into technical issues resulting from running the OS on mid-range hardware.
3. More reviewers will focus more energy on features unique to Ultimate, which would be an implicit endorsement of Ultimate over all other editions.
These actions are intended to inhibit (albeit to a limited extent) the spread of unbiased criticism to those who would benefit most by it. Going back to Ethics 101, this is (however subtly) acting against the best interest of society, and therefore unethical. Of course, in a society accustomed to a continuous assault on fact from many angles (sales/marketing/politics, etc.), this will go entirely unnoticed.
From the perspective of diminished responsibility, I'd say this action is so minutely unethical that to label it "immoral" is misleading. "Guerrilla Marketing" would be a more useful characterization.
Who needs enemies?
Microsoft thinks (hopes) there are hundreds of millions of people waiting for Vista, and therefore took a calculated risk shipping a product that was not yet 100% compatible with every one of its high-end management tools. In any case, no, this is not "HUGE" when there are several alternative ways to run these tools in the interim (rdp, vmware, virtual PC, the other PC on your desk, etc.) If you want to live on the bleeding edge, expect to bleed once in a while. Sheesh.