Well, they built a platform they wanted to prove secure. I've read their hiring requirements for Singularity and was awed. They do mean to solve security at the OS level. It's basically "This can't be broken. And we can prove it." Trusted toolchain + design everything by contract + check every transaction for consistency against contract requirements = you do the math.
That's the basic idea. Moreover, they've sealed the memory areas with 20-foot-thick concrete. Then run tiny, brightly-illuminated transparent tubes between the cement blocks, so as to check everything that passes through those exclusive comm channels.
It's HARDCORE security.
I've read their hiring requirements, and, you know what? Even Linus and Theo de Raadt don't qualify, they haven't published enough papers in peer-reviewed journals about computer security science. (Not taking mailing lists into account, since those don't require a PhD to begin to write in them.)
So they basically hire the most respected OS designers in the world. I know this is slashdot, but since I've read what Singularity is, I'm willing to believe that they've solved security as we know it.
There might be other flaws, yes. But... designing malware for such a platform requires to outthink the smartest OS designers on the planet. When it was just Windows code-monkeys, that was easy, any Russian kid could, but then?
Yeah, but a GUI app that has an FPS of one and below is UNUSABLE CRAP. That's the case of Azureus. That's not the case of, say, Paint.NET (Bad example, I know, it's just the most widely-used.NET program vs the most widely-used Java program).
Benchmarks don't mean shit..Net code does not take an age and an half to load 150 megs of libs and gobble up about as much RAM. It does not ruin my browsing with its "Java runtime loading, go plant some coffee trees and by the time you've harvested, dried, fermented, roasted, shipped, ground, and used them, I might have finished loading, unless it's near harvest season already; in which case, come back next year when your applet gives its ridiculous ripple effect on half the webpage so that it's illegible save for the 200 pixels above the smeared text".
Not only code startup... I meant to say that Java programs, even JIT compiled, even natively compiled, are teh suck for perfs.
In the case of Azureus, it's just a case of hammer meets screw : an app that runs quasi continuously, gobbling up cycles and RAM like crazy, all because it's coded in Java so that the devs get to write it once and debug it everywhere. Or package it everywhere, with that process' own problems.
It just should not have been programmed in Java, especially since it's supposed to run continuously (no one stops BitTorrent clients after downloading just one linux ISO. That's the story for the suits, remember? We're among ourselves here.).
And it's not like a BT client sits idle all the time! HEAVY I/O there, from/to disk and network. So, inefficient code that gets indirected four times before any actual operation running all the time doing heavy I/O : well, that explains the need for
a score of UltraSPARC hyperthreaded multicore CPUs that command a ton of RAM.
Not that Java is bad, it's just Not For The Desktop. A fast, portable lib that abstracts everything platform-specific? Qt.
Not even beginning to speak about how my hackintosh beachballs for MINUTES when loading webpages with applets...
Java is for servers. Servlet. Repeat after me. Serv-let. A ton of RAM and two hundred "hyper"threads running in one hundred cores on fifty CPUs. THAT runs Java fast enough. On the desktop, forget it. Applets take hours to load, apps can be written once, but have to be debugged everywhere, several indirection layers to each and every instruction, ugly interfaces that NEVER EVER look right, and can't update over once a second (and thus feels sluggish with a load of 0,1)...
Now, writing JSPs, on the other hand, that is sweet. Powerful and... dunno, it just feels good.
Oh, about the 20% : I believe you. 20% of perf of equivalent C++ code, that's a 80% perf loss, it's about right. It's okay, I would not want to write C++ Server Pages. And since they would need five times more code, they'd have about the same perfs on the same hardware.
"Java might be a great development platform, but the performance of java apps on the desktop is so pitiful they're painful to use."
More?
"Sever-side apps written in Java have great perfs, however, which is easily explained since they're meant to be run on a score of UltraSPARC hyperthreaded multicore CPUs that command a ton of RAM."
Or until they run out of courtrooms. There are only so many circuits to sue and file appeals in, and once it's before the Supreme Court, the judgement is pretty final meseems.
And now I'll have a visible space to comment in. Go Me!
So. Flying cars? ABOUT GODDAMN TIME. Like it's harder to fly a car than drive one! People are trusted with two tons of plastic and steel, developing power of the order of 10 to 200 kW, and not fly light devices, because it's so dangerous? Gimme a break. And my flying car.
They've been promised for a century and the tech is good enough since 1960. There was that design of two propellers turning in opposite directions with opposed angles, so as to create a blowing air column that takes the "flying saucer" off the ground. Lean right and it goes right, left and it goes left, use gears and injection to control blowing power and thus height.
That's a flying car, and it's been developed and implemented and tested and MADE in the 50s or 60s. Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down (resulting in death), to descend too fast (death or broken limbs), or crash in an other flying device (don't go too near any signal all flying devices give off).
That's one possible design. It's not a car, but it's a flying personal transportation device. Near enough for me.
Hate speech agains Muslims? Serves them right, yes it does.
Open the Koran at any page. "Allah is great, fear Allah. Kill them all non-muslims. Allah is great and Mohammed is His Prophet." All the book is in that tone. Is it not striking that "Allah uh-akbar" is the most repeated phrase in the book, Allah is Great, the well-known war cry of all the Jihadis?
If you believe Islam is a religion of peace, you're as severely deluded as the manic, megalo, raving schizo who wrote their Book.
Fuck my karma score. They're indoctrinating young and old alike. The mothers, first, because they shape their childrens' thought. The young girls next, because they'll be mothers and NOTHING ELSE in their LIVES, if they can indoctrinate them Just Right. "But I'd be happy to wear the burkha, if my husband and imam told me to" I've personnally heard that, several times, from a well-brainwashed Turkish lady living in Belgium. An other, young, went to Turkey looking nothing but a civilized, open young woman and went back with a tchador and with no ambition left other than marry and replicate. That's a BROKEN LIFE, and I shudder to think what the imams will tell her to teach her children.
Instruct them. Teach them. Give them reasons to stop the madness! Let all the humans have enough resources to live and growing, and wars will stop, and all large-scale social unrest.
But the theory behind "give all enough and wars will automagically stop" depends on Science, Real, Hard Science, and even in 2008, the governing morons still have to pay lip service to God or not be elected? We are all doomed.
Those mem chips cost the SAME marginal price, yet one is twice the price? How comes? "R&D costs" MY ASS. But yes, those sound better than "price-fixing extortionist cartel" full of morons that whine to mommy when we refuse to pony up.
Get a support contract with the Uni, hire yourself with the $, and others with the rest. Now make a company (MySoftware Ltd?) and you've gotten yourself and some devs a job. You even have a recruiting pool of people who know the code well.
None. I'm using an HP Hackintosh, because I didn't have 1800 Euros to pay just for a working webcam and Sleep Mode.
Bah, enough replying to that troll. Just posting to point out that AMD is utter crap and I'll say it enough times again. Intel CPUs arebuilt to run at their nominal speed, AMD CPUs are built to run at reduced speeds unless more is needed. My last AMD was a laptop, which fried when it lacked the Amd Processor Support driver, the thing that makes its SpeedStep work. (Yeah, SpeedStep is Intel, but I can't remember the name of the underclocking tech on AMDs.)
Anyway.. What ttriggers the crashes? Do they happen on clean installs of XPSP3? Or only on upgraded Windowses? (Hint : if you upgrade or update any MS software, it will die a slow death, getting slower and slower until your computer refuses to run anything at all. Try running MS Office 2004 on a G4 after you updated it regularly for three years : launch it and weep for an hour, then try to type anything and count the framerate with your naked eyes. It's not that difficult since it's under 1 fps.) That's why I'm asking if it is the Standard issue (don't upgrade/update Windows YOU FOOL!) or it's Microsoft's usual Quality Label. Or to drive people to install OSX (on Pentium4Ds and C2D) or Linux (on AMD crap and older Intels).
How comes Roland still writes for/.? Is it not evident enough he's fried his brains on drugs? Did he ever post any article totally rooted in reality? His "science" is on the level of the justifications for supernatural stuff in X-Files. As in, "it does Not Work Like That in the Real World".
I'm going to learn whatever language Slash is written in just to tag all further Roland's stories with "ohnoitsroland", because that oh-so-helpful tag is so often forgotten.
If they were allowed to downlo0ad pr0n on BitTorrent using Military Fat pipes, they would never spend a cent to buy infected DVDs.
Oh, but, and, they run Windows, then! (Remember, no virus on any other platform right?) So... Either give them BitTorrent pr0n, or do as armies always did in ye olden times : GIVE THEM WOMEN to have sex with.
Or castrate them all. Clean-cut, disciplined, gilded soldiers will do wonders for America's image. So much better than a whorehouse next to the barracks! Yeah, good idea, that!
They do have a little cost/opportunity. As a matter of fact SMS messages are sent on the control channel. Initially SMS were implemented in the GSM standard as a control system, just like the ICMP protocol of the IP stack. Then NOKIA though to implement a actual instant message function using SMS. The Contol channel is the channel that your mobile listens to in order to receive calls. So for receiving a SMS a control signal is sent. Since bandwidht is somehow limited on these channels it could happen that in a situation of massive usage of texting the control channel gets saturated and normal voice protocol initiation is disrupted. To prevent this carriers nowadays apply a kind of QoS delaying SMSs until there is no risk of congestion. So we can state that the marginal cost is 0 and the cost/opportunity is also 0
Another story is for the MMSs. Their cost/opportunity is even lower since they run almost enterely on GPRS thus using most bandwidht on normal data channels. Thus a MMS with pictures sounds and maybe video SHOULD cost less than a SMS.
So you wonder, why do I pay so much for a SMS or a MMS or even a Call: after the debts for the initial hardware infrastructure have been paid by the carrier you are still paying because of market segmentation (You wonâ(TM)t change the carrier on the fly) and a little monopoly (Almost impossible to start a new carrier from 0).
This hasn't been originally written by me. Found it some day while following links here on/.
Not to troll, but MACs can and do break bad software in Linux, and prevent non-bad software from operating properly. Bad sofware = not malware, there is none in linux and every F/OSS project that includes any gets posted on Slashot Front Page. Bad Software on linux is Oracle, for one. And each, every, all Big Commercial Program. They're coded like the OS is a platform they must code around, so they refuse to run on "hardened" systems. Non-bad software operating non-properly : if it's not SELinux-aware, it WILL break at some point : "Resource refused, please crash." I'd happily try WINE on that.
Not to mention that the NSA are the only ones who can write a SELinux policy. Or even modify it. SELinux : use at your own risk. But if any software asks for a resource that SELinux denies it, then, rewrite the program. It's much, much easier than tweaking an SELinux policy. It's like they're written in Malbolge, but harder to modify. At least you can disassemble what the Malgolge interpreter does, but SELinux is about as painful as SQL in MS Access : it's written right, but refuses to run, or to do what it's supposed to.
SELinux is not "a hardened Linux". It's a different OS, one that is not 100% compatible with Linux software.
The one platform I'm accepting to believe to be secure, like in "Hey, we solved security", is Microsoft Singularity. It's provably secure. Design by contract, analyze everything, deny by default, totally self-contained programs, you name it, it's in there. The other Secure Platform is OpenBSD. But there, it's secure "by default", not because it's designed around the concept of security. (Proof : it's a Unix, not an OS designed from scratch using secure languages, platform, toolchain, etc.)
Non-admin rights, client-side file-scanners, web-side black-lists, and user training is the only way malware is going to go away.
I wish I had written the Checklist Form For Why Your Anti-Malware Idea Will Not Work already.
Non-admin rights : yeah, right. "Your mouse has moved : cancel or allow"?
Client-side file-scanners : reactive security. Useless. Moreover, there are tons of ways to hide malware so that file scanners don't see them.
Web-side blacklists : Not going to happen. When the file is on the blacklist, it already has infected boxen. And why should I trust you, your servers and your lists? And how do you sign files, with self-modifying, polymorph virii?
User training :... I can't even find anything funny on that one anymore.
No, the only way is to use semantics. What has the user installed? What does the user need? Whitelisting is the only way to go. And use the NX bit. And randomize memory addresses. (I can't begin to understand how comes we had to wait THAT long before SOMEone figured out that abstracting lib calls off the memory addresses would be a GOOD idea! I thought of Just That the very first time I ever thought of programming an OS. Not for security, even - for EASE.)
A list of the software you use, an unflashable BIOS for security only (with no bug whatsoever, and I want it proven in math and by design-by-contract andd total testing for all possible values at every level), fill in missing info automagically, check every incoming network packet for consistency, put everything in memory in tight, tight containers like Microsoft Singularity, and voilÃ, perfect security, unbreakable, forever. VoilÃ, solved.
Just to ask in a high thread, is it any faster than Reiser4?
No, not flamebait. But Reiser3 was so much faster than everything, and Reiser4 squashed those perfs with one hand tied. So I'd like to know. Benchmarks anyone?
About "moving your data" : backup, format, restore. (tar, mkfs.ext4, tar -x. See? Polyglot!) How hard is that and why does it need an article and how is that news?
No RAID - normal behaviour. "Chip Not Supported Yet" No WiFi - "Use some random crappy hack that involves binary Windows drivers and" and it craps on you evey time. No support for dual-screen without editing Xorg.conf, normal behaviour.
Unix for the masses is here, and it's called OS X. Hardy Heron is difficult to use, poorly documented junk.
Yes and yes. Linux is handy as an emergency boot disk, or on Big Iron, where it is supported. By the companies that fund it.
so basically a mac is cheaper, smaller and quieter. Not to mention the mac comes with software updates and you can re-install the software.
Yeah, they could at least give you some pirate edition that you CAN reinstall. Like the ToH, Leo4all, Kalyway, Tubgirl...
Maybe PsyStar sells computers even more overpriced than Apple, but anyone can build a Hackintosh for MUCH CHEAPER than a Mac pro.
And, here in Europe, Apple sells Macs for the same price in Euros as in the US in dollars. SO, they're about 60% more expensive over here. (Who thought that an $200 Apple/ATT Overprice Tax for each iPhone was crazy?)
And, what are you talking about anyway? Which Macs for $599? The unusably slow pieces of CRAP integrated in their monitors? Who even ever considers buying one of those?
About the Mac Pro, well, anything is less expensive. I just checked what a monster rig would cost with eight cores and 8G of RAM and 6 HDs (3 raptors for speed and 3x1T for space) and a pair of 22" monitors and a studio sound card and wireless speakers and an nVidia GF9800 : 4000 Euros. That one is at the very least as fast as a MacPro, and with the watercooling it's as silent or more.
It's possible to build it for 2000 euros with 8G of DDR3 and one quad-core that holds 12M of cache. Might be even faster too.
Currently typing this on my HP Pavilion dv9540 running OSX 10.5.2.
The ideal Hackintosh in tower would be: CPU : Intel C2D or Quad (or Xeon if you're that rich) Mobo : Anything with an ALC888 audio chip, unlesss you plan on using a separate audio card (or USB audio). Oh, and the Intel ICHx chipset are supported out of the box, as are all Realtek Ethernet chips. If you want WiFi, use an Atheros card : they're recognized as AirPort devices. Graphics : nVidia. Everything else : whatever you want.
Yeah, yeah, like that is a threat assessment on keyloggers and the black-market where such tools are SOLD to merchant operations such as large-scale phishing.
Slashdot Mirror
You guy? Me too. You gay? Me not.
Well, they built a platform they wanted to prove secure. I've read their hiring requirements for Singularity and was awed. They do mean to solve security at the OS level. It's basically "This can't be broken. And we can prove it." Trusted toolchain + design everything by contract + check every transaction for consistency against contract requirements = you do the math.
That's the basic idea. Moreover, they've sealed the memory areas with 20-foot-thick concrete. Then run tiny, brightly-illuminated transparent tubes between the cement blocks, so as to check everything that passes through those exclusive comm channels.
It's HARDCORE security.
I've read their hiring requirements, and, you know what? Even Linus and Theo de Raadt don't qualify, they haven't published enough papers in peer-reviewed journals about computer security science. (Not taking mailing lists into account, since those don't require a PhD to begin to write in them.)
So they basically hire the most respected OS designers in the world. I know this is slashdot, but since I've read what Singularity is, I'm willing to believe that they've solved security as we know it.
There might be other flaws, yes. But... designing malware for such a platform requires to outthink the smartest OS designers on the planet. When it was just Windows code-monkeys, that was easy, any Russian kid could, but then?
Yeah, but a GUI app that has an FPS of one and below is UNUSABLE CRAP. .NET program vs the most widely-used Java program).
.Net code does not take an age and an half to load 150 megs of libs and gobble up about as much RAM. It does not ruin my browsing with its "Java runtime loading, go plant some coffee trees and by the time you've harvested, dried, fermented, roasted, shipped, ground, and used them, I might have finished loading, unless it's near harvest season already; in which case, come back next year when your applet gives its ridiculous ripple effect on half the webpage so that it's illegible save for the 200 pixels above the smeared text".
That's the case of Azureus.
That's not the case of, say, Paint.NET (Bad example, I know, it's just the most widely-used
Benchmarks don't mean shit.
I win.
In the case of Azureus, it's just a case of hammer meets screw : an app that runs quasi continuously, gobbling up cycles and RAM like crazy, all because it's coded in Java so that the devs get to write it once and debug it everywhere. Or package it everywhere, with that process' own problems.
It just should not have been programmed in Java, especially since it's supposed to run continuously (no one stops BitTorrent clients after downloading just one linux ISO. That's the story for the suits, remember? We're among ourselves here.).
And it's not like a BT client sits idle all the time! HEAVY I/O there, from/to disk and network. So, inefficient code that gets indirected four times before any actual operation running all the time doing heavy I/O : well, that explains the need for
Not that Java is bad, it's just Not For The Desktop. A fast, portable lib that abstracts everything platform-specific? Qt.
Not even beginning to speak about how my hackintosh beachballs for MINUTES when loading webpages with applets...
Java is for servers. Servlet. Repeat after me. Serv-let. A ton of RAM and two hundred "hyper"threads running in one hundred cores on fifty CPUs. THAT runs Java fast enough. On the desktop, forget it. Applets take hours to load, apps can be written once, but have to be debugged everywhere, several indirection layers to each and every instruction, ugly interfaces that NEVER EVER look right, and can't update over once a second (and thus feels sluggish with a load of 0,1)...
Now, writing JSPs, on the other hand, that is sweet. Powerful and
Oh, about the 20% : I believe you. 20% of perf of equivalent C++ code, that's a 80% perf loss, it's about right. It's okay, I would not want to write C++ Server Pages. And since they would need five times more code, they'd have about the same perfs on the same hardware.
Okay.
"Java might be a great development platform, but the performance of java apps on the desktop is so pitiful they're painful to use."
More?
"Sever-side apps written in Java have great perfs, however, which is easily explained since they're meant to be run on a score of UltraSPARC hyperthreaded multicore CPUs that command a ton of RAM."
Better that way, yes, you're right.
Or until they run out of courtrooms. There are only so many circuits to sue and file appeals in, and once it's before the Supreme Court, the judgement is pretty final meseems.
Java is fast? Go try to run Azureus and weep.
Oh, you do? And you think it is fast? Try utorrent on Windows or Transmission on OSX or KTorrent on Linux some time.
Yeah, right. Where have you ever found an OS that, for one thing, uses a "trusted" toolchain? And combines that with design-everything-by-contract? And so on and so forth. Go read up on it and reply with more than a cliché in four words and one line of adlib on same.
http://research.microsoft.com/os/Singularity/
Solve security, for one.
And now I'll have a visible space to comment in. Go Me!
So. Flying cars? ABOUT GODDAMN TIME. Like it's harder to fly a car than drive one! People are trusted with two tons of plastic and steel, developing power of the order of 10 to 200 kW, and not fly light devices, because it's so dangerous? Gimme a break. And my flying car.
They've been promised for a century and the tech is good enough since 1960. There was that design of two propellers turning in opposite directions with opposed angles, so as to create a blowing air column that takes the "flying saucer" off the ground. Lean right and it goes right, left and it goes left, use gears and injection to control blowing power and thus height.
That's a flying car, and it's been developed and implemented and tested and MADE in the 50s or 60s. Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down (resulting in death), to descend too fast (death or broken limbs), or crash in an other flying device (don't go too near any signal all flying devices give off).
That's one possible design. It's not a car, but it's a flying personal transportation device. Near enough for me.
yay
Hate speech agains Muslims? Serves them right, yes it does.
Open the Koran at any page. "Allah is great, fear Allah. Kill them all non-muslims. Allah is great and Mohammed is His Prophet." All the book is in that tone. Is it not striking that "Allah uh-akbar" is the most repeated phrase in the book, Allah is Great, the well-known war cry of all the Jihadis?
If you believe Islam is a religion of peace, you're as severely deluded as the manic, megalo, raving schizo who wrote their Book.
Fuck my karma score. They're indoctrinating young and old alike. The mothers, first, because they shape their childrens' thought. The young girls next, because they'll be mothers and NOTHING ELSE in their LIVES, if they can indoctrinate them Just Right. "But I'd be happy to wear the burkha, if my husband and imam told me to" I've personnally heard that, several times, from a well-brainwashed Turkish lady living in Belgium. An other, young, went to Turkey looking nothing but a civilized, open young woman and went back with a tchador and with no ambition left other than marry and replicate. That's a BROKEN LIFE, and I shudder to think what the imams will tell her to teach her children.
Instruct them. Teach them. Give them reasons to stop the madness! Let all the humans have enough resources to live and growing, and wars will stop, and all large-scale social unrest.
But the theory behind "give all enough and wars will automagically stop" depends on Science, Real, Hard Science, and even in 2008, the governing morons still have to pay lip service to God or not be elected? We are all doomed.
DDR2-1100 OCZ 2048MB (2x1024MB) Gold XTC : EUR 49,00
DDR3 OCZ 2x1024MB Kit PC10666 1333MHz 7-7-7-20 : EUR 116,00
That's why.
Those mem chips cost the SAME marginal price, yet one is twice the price? How comes? "R&D costs" MY ASS. But yes, those sound better than "price-fixing extortionist cartel" full of morons that whine to mommy when we refuse to pony up.
Get a support contract with the Uni, hire yourself with the $, and others with the rest. Now make a company (MySoftware Ltd?) and you've gotten yourself and some devs a job. You even have a recruiting pool of people who know the code well.
Couldn't you figure that out yourself?
None. I'm using an HP Hackintosh, because I didn't have 1800 Euros to pay just for a working webcam and Sleep Mode.
Bah, enough replying to that troll. Just posting to point out that AMD is utter crap and I'll say it enough times again. Intel CPUs arebuilt to run at their nominal speed, AMD CPUs are built to run at reduced speeds unless more is needed. My last AMD was a laptop, which fried when it lacked the Amd Processor Support driver, the thing that makes its SpeedStep work. (Yeah, SpeedStep is Intel, but I can't remember the name of the underclocking tech on AMDs.)
Anyway.. What ttriggers the crashes? Do they happen on clean installs of XPSP3? Or only on upgraded Windowses? (Hint : if you upgrade or update any MS software, it will die a slow death, getting slower and slower until your computer refuses to run anything at all. Try running MS Office 2004 on a G4 after you updated it regularly for three years : launch it and weep for an hour, then try to type anything and count the framerate with your naked eyes. It's not that difficult since it's under 1 fps.) That's why I'm asking if it is the Standard issue (don't upgrade/update Windows YOU FOOL!) or it's Microsoft's usual Quality Label. Or to drive people to install OSX (on Pentium4Ds and C2D) or Linux (on AMD crap and older Intels).
How comes Roland still writes for /.? Is it not evident enough he's fried his brains on drugs? Did he ever post any article totally rooted in reality? His "science" is on the level of the justifications for supernatural stuff in X-Files. As in, "it does Not Work Like That in the Real World".
I'm going to learn whatever language Slash is written in just to tag all further Roland's stories with "ohnoitsroland", because that oh-so-helpful tag is so often forgotten.
LOL11
If they were allowed to downlo0ad pr0n on BitTorrent using Military Fat pipes, they would never spend a cent to buy infected DVDs.
Oh, but, and, they run Windows, then! (Remember, no virus on any other platform right?) So... Either give them BitTorrent pr0n, or do as armies always did in ye olden times : GIVE THEM WOMEN to have sex with.
Or castrate them all. Clean-cut, disciplined, gilded soldiers will do wonders for America's image. So much better than a whorehouse next to the barracks! Yeah, good idea, that!
The marginal cost of a SMS is 0.
/.
They do have a little cost/opportunity. As a matter of fact SMS messages are sent on the control channel. Initially SMS were implemented in the GSM standard as a control system, just like the ICMP protocol of the IP stack. Then NOKIA though to implement a actual instant message function using SMS. The Contol channel is the channel that your mobile listens to in order to receive calls. So for receiving a SMS a control signal is sent. Since bandwidht is somehow limited on these channels it could happen that in a situation of massive usage of texting the control channel gets saturated and normal voice protocol initiation is disrupted. To prevent this carriers nowadays apply a kind of QoS delaying SMSs until there is no risk of congestion. So we can state that the marginal cost is 0 and the cost/opportunity is also 0
Another story is for the MMSs. Their cost/opportunity is even lower since they run almost enterely on GPRS thus using most bandwidht on normal data channels. Thus a MMS with pictures sounds and maybe video SHOULD cost less than a SMS.
So you wonder, why do I pay so much for a SMS or a MMS or even a Call: after the debts for the initial hardware infrastructure have been paid by the carrier you are still paying because of market segmentation (You wonâ(TM)t change the carrier on the fly) and a little monopoly (Almost impossible to start a new carrier from 0).
This hasn't been originally written by me. Found it some day while following links here on
Not to troll, but MACs can and do break bad software in Linux, and prevent non-bad software from operating properly.
Bad sofware = not malware, there is none in linux and every F/OSS project that includes any gets posted on Slashot Front Page. Bad Software on linux is Oracle, for one. And each, every, all Big Commercial Program. They're coded like the OS is a platform they must code around, so they refuse to run on "hardened" systems.
Non-bad software operating non-properly : if it's not SELinux-aware, it WILL break at some point : "Resource refused, please crash." I'd happily try WINE on that.
Not to mention that the NSA are the only ones who can write a SELinux policy. Or even modify it. SELinux : use at your own risk. But if any software asks for a resource that SELinux denies it, then, rewrite the program. It's much, much easier than tweaking an SELinux policy. It's like they're written in Malbolge, but harder to modify. At least you can disassemble what the Malgolge interpreter does, but SELinux is about as painful as SQL in MS Access : it's written right, but refuses to run, or to do what it's supposed to.
SELinux is not "a hardened Linux". It's a different OS, one that is not 100% compatible with Linux software.
The one platform I'm accepting to believe to be secure, like in "Hey, we solved security", is Microsoft Singularity. It's provably secure. Design by contract, analyze everything, deny by default, totally self-contained programs, you name it, it's in there.
The other Secure Platform is OpenBSD. But there, it's secure "by default", not because it's designed around the concept of security. (Proof : it's a Unix, not an OS designed from scratch using secure languages, platform, toolchain, etc.)
I wish I had written the Checklist Form For Why Your Anti-Malware Idea Will Not Work already.
Non-admin rights : yeah, right. "Your mouse has moved : cancel or allow"?
Client-side file-scanners : reactive security. Useless. Moreover, there are tons of ways to hide malware so that file scanners don't see them.
Web-side blacklists : Not going to happen. When the file is on the blacklist, it already has infected boxen. And why should I trust you, your servers and your lists? And how do you sign files, with self-modifying, polymorph virii?
User training :
No, the only way is to use semantics. What has the user installed? What does the user need? Whitelisting is the only way to go. And use the NX bit. And randomize memory addresses. (I can't begin to understand how comes we had to wait THAT long before SOMEone figured out that abstracting lib calls off the memory addresses would be a GOOD idea! I thought of Just That the very first time I ever thought of programming an OS. Not for security, even - for EASE.)
A list of the software you use, an unflashable BIOS for security only (with no bug whatsoever, and I want it proven in math and by design-by-contract andd total testing for all possible values at every level), fill in missing info automagically, check every incoming network packet for consistency, put everything in memory in tight, tight containers like Microsoft Singularity, and voilÃ, perfect security, unbreakable, forever. VoilÃ, solved.
Just to ask in a high thread, is it any faster than Reiser4?
No, not flamebait. But Reiser3 was so much faster than everything, and Reiser4 squashed those perfs with one hand tied. So I'd like to know. Benchmarks anyone?
About "moving your data" : backup, format, restore. (tar, mkfs.ext4, tar -x. See? Polyglot!) How hard is that and why does it need an article and how is that news?
No RAID - normal behaviour. "Chip Not Supported Yet"
No WiFi - "Use some random crappy hack that involves binary Windows drivers and" and it craps on you evey time.
No support for dual-screen without editing Xorg.conf, normal behaviour.
Yes and yes. Linux is handy as an emergency boot disk, or on Big Iron, where it is supported. By the companies that fund it.
Yeah, they could at least give you some pirate edition that you CAN reinstall. Like the ToH, Leo4all, Kalyway, Tubgirl...
Maybe PsyStar sells computers even more overpriced than Apple, but anyone can build a Hackintosh for MUCH CHEAPER than a Mac pro.
And, here in Europe, Apple sells Macs for the same price in Euros as in the US in dollars. SO, they're about 60% more expensive over here. (Who thought that an $200 Apple/ATT Overprice Tax for each iPhone was crazy?)
And, what are you talking about anyway? Which Macs for $599? The unusably slow pieces of CRAP integrated in their monitors? Who even ever considers buying one of those?
About the Mac Pro, well, anything is less expensive. I just checked what a monster rig would cost with eight cores and 8G of RAM and 6 HDs (3 raptors for speed and 3x1T for space) and a pair of 22" monitors and a studio sound card and wireless speakers and an nVidia GF9800 : 4000 Euros. That one is at the very least as fast as a MacPro, and with the watercooling it's as silent or more.
It's possible to build it for 2000 euros with 8G of DDR3 and one quad-core that holds 12M of cache. Might be even faster too.
Currently typing this on my HP Pavilion dv9540 running OSX 10.5.2.
The ideal Hackintosh in tower would be:
CPU : Intel C2D or Quad (or Xeon if you're that rich)
Mobo : Anything with an ALC888 audio chip, unlesss you plan on using a separate audio card (or USB audio). Oh, and the Intel ICHx chipset are supported out of the box, as are all Realtek Ethernet chips. If you want WiFi, use an Atheros card : they're recognized as AirPort devices.
Graphics : nVidia.
Everything else : whatever you want.
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.2 for a list of compatible devices.
Yeah, yeah, like that is a threat assessment on keyloggers and the black-market where such tools are SOLD to merchant operations such as large-scale phishing.
Moron.