This combination scares the crap out of me. Now all those shrinkwrap licenses will have even more binding power than the UCITA offers. Now your "accept" button that you click without even thinking about it, signs your soul away in a perfectly legal fashion. Frightening....
#ifdef SHAMELESSPLUG At the risk of sounding biased in favor of Oracle, I'd say it's an excellent database to run on Linux. If you want to run a large, professional database, Oracle has a lot of features to offer (and likely more in the works). The reason I say this is more of the line that if you're interested in spending money on an important database you get a lot out of Oracle. Though, Linux isn't a primary build for 8i, it does get a lot of eyeshare with the higher-ups. Our CEO's announcement of a Linux box distributor business should give you some proof of that statement.
One person's comment that Linux 8i is akin to C++, highly mutable, & blisteringly fast, yet a bitch to use, might not be too far off, though, but you're already getting yourself into that boat if you're intending to run your database on Linux, eh? If you could do a Slackware installation 4-5 years ago, you demonstrate the intelligence needed to figure out Oracle, but it'll just take a bit of time. Grabbing a nice O'Reilly book might help, too.:) Some other databases (like Microsloth's) might give you more usability, but always at the cost of some of the impressive features of a more complex system. I suppose the situation is just a classic trade off. Research the prices and -features-, and look for some independent benchmarks, and you're set. #endif// SHAMELESSPLUG
Egads! You went to CMU in the 80's and you think that that experience is still pertinent? I went to CMU from 1995-1999 (5 years, forgive me if I can't count or figure out what year it currently is), and things changed a LOT, mostly for the better, some things not, (specifically some housing issues.) But CMU did teach me a lot about computers, programming, and thinking. And I did come in with a fair amount of programming experience... As was mentioned before, it is definitely a pressure cooker and weeds out some after a while, but some of them maybe should have considered whether they thought they were up for a top rate CS school in the first place.
Admittedly the administration sucks dirty, scummy rocks downstream from biological/nuclear testing sites (Warner Hall), but is industry much better? There are good people here and there in industry and at CMU, you just have to know who they are and they can help a lot. Anyone interested in some names can contact me and I'll oblige.
And what's the deal with all the CMU people posting anonymously? (scritch, scritch, scritch.)
It was commented on another top-level response that the physical aspect might be the most vulnerable. If you wish to see more evidence of this, look back about a month in/.'s entries and look at the EMP device (from hardware store components) that could disable an electronic system from a reasonable distance. In certain circumstances you could probably fry some hardware with that sucker. (Note that NASA actually has notions of EM resistant hardware that they take into consideration when they launch shuttles because of the background radiation that would normally be filtered by our atmosphere.)
IM(PNS)HO, this analysis is more the domain of the NSA (though I'm uncertain whether they have a division catering to the safeguarding the nation's infrastructure.) They supply hardware and information to protect the FBI, CIA and military from similar threats, why not use their repositories to at least inform infrastructure organizations about their vulnerabilities.
In general, I think the article was just a bunch of technobabble, similar to all the Y2k hype and all the destructive salesmanship so prevalent nowadays. If the administrators of these important sites listened to the techies instead of the salesmen on the security aspects of their systems, there would be much less need for concern about this issue. Sadly, even taking into account DEFCON (also highlighted today) I'd say that the techies have a far superior comprehension of ethics than salesmen...
IM(PNS)HO, many of the linux folk truly like to fiddle with their kernels and modules and such. So if for the *linux community* linux wouldn't die, but perhaps for the business types, they'd embrace solaris more readily, since there's someone to blame if it goes bad.;p The additional question would be, "what if solaris went open-source", in which case there would most likely be a division. Solaris might be rather fun to play with for a while for some of the real linux community.
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This combination scares the crap out of me. Now all those shrinkwrap licenses will have even more binding power than the UCITA offers. Now your "accept" button that you click without even thinking about it, signs your soul away in a perfectly legal fashion. Frightening....
#ifdef SHAMELESSPLUG
:) Some other databases (like Microsloth's) might give you more usability, but always at the cost of some of the impressive features of a more complex system. I suppose the situation is just a classic trade off. Research the prices and -features-, and look for some independent benchmarks, and you're set. // SHAMELESSPLUG
At the risk of sounding biased in favor of Oracle, I'd say it's an excellent database to run on Linux. If you want to run a large, professional database, Oracle has a lot of features to offer (and likely more in the works). The reason I say this is more of the line that if you're interested in spending money on an important database you get a lot out of Oracle. Though, Linux isn't a primary build for 8i, it does get a lot of eyeshare with the higher-ups. Our CEO's announcement of a Linux box distributor business should give you some proof of that statement.
One person's comment that Linux 8i is akin to C++, highly mutable, & blisteringly fast, yet a bitch to use, might not be too far off, though, but you're already getting yourself into that boat if you're intending to run your database on Linux, eh? If you could do a Slackware installation 4-5 years ago, you demonstrate the intelligence needed to figure out Oracle, but it'll just take a bit of time. Grabbing a nice O'Reilly book might help, too.
#endif
The words of an engineer, it would appear
Egads! You went to CMU in the 80's and you think that that experience is still pertinent? I went to CMU from 1995-1999 (5 years, forgive me if I can't count or figure out what year it currently is), and things changed a LOT, mostly for the better, some things not, (specifically some housing issues.) But CMU did teach me a lot about computers, programming, and thinking. And I did come in with a fair amount of programming experience... As was mentioned before, it is definitely a pressure cooker and weeds out some after a while, but some of them maybe should have considered whether they thought they were up for a top rate CS school in the first place.
Admittedly the administration sucks dirty, scummy rocks downstream from biological/nuclear testing sites (Warner Hall), but is industry much better? There are good people here and there in industry and at CMU, you just have to know who they are and they can help a lot. Anyone interested in some names can contact me and I'll oblige.
And what's the deal with all the CMU people posting anonymously? (scritch, scritch, scritch.)
It was commented on another top-level response that the physical aspect might be the most vulnerable. If you wish to see more evidence of this, look back about a month in /.'s entries and look at the EMP device (from hardware store components) that could disable an electronic system from a reasonable distance. In certain circumstances you could probably fry some hardware with that sucker. (Note that NASA actually has notions of EM resistant hardware that they take into consideration when they launch shuttles because of the background radiation that would normally be filtered by our atmosphere.)
IM(PNS)HO, this analysis is more the domain of the NSA (though I'm uncertain whether they have a division catering to the safeguarding the nation's infrastructure.) They supply hardware and information to protect the FBI, CIA and military from similar threats, why not use their repositories to at least inform infrastructure organizations about their vulnerabilities.
In general, I think the article was just a bunch of technobabble, similar to all the Y2k hype and all the destructive salesmanship so prevalent nowadays. If the administrators of these important sites listened to the techies instead of the salesmen on the security aspects of their systems, there would be much less need for concern about this issue. Sadly, even taking into account DEFCON (also highlighted today) I'd say that the techies have a far superior comprehension of ethics than salesmen...
IM(PNS)HO, many of the linux folk truly like to fiddle with their kernels and modules and such. So if for the *linux community* linux wouldn't die, but perhaps for the business types, they'd embrace solaris more readily, since there's someone to blame if it goes bad. ;p The additional question would be, "what if solaris went open-source", in which case there would most likely be a division. Solaris might be rather fun to play with for a while for some of the real linux community.