Ahhhh.... but this year we just hit a breakeven point with natural gas. We now consume more than we produce. When cars run from power plant power, a lot of things will change. Taxes will be shifted from gas to electricity to fund road improvements, scarcity problems will arise in coal and natural gas markets, driving prices up, etc... The best solution is the one that enviromentalists don't want to here -- nuclear. Build 100 more modern nuclear power plants in the US and move to wall-charged cars and things will truely be better.
I spent the last 10 years as a computer teacher. High end expensive corporate stuff where the client expects to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Well, our best classrooms had a way to get the student AWAY FROM the computers for discussion time. Most of the students would be less productive if behind a keyboard most of the time.
Now, if I think that learning Java Threads is best done with at least 40% no-computer time and 60% hands-on practice, what do you think I feel about learning English? When I teach, I want the students participating in the discussion, not doing something on the computer. Even in the above Java example, I would rather have the student raise his/her concern to the class and we'll all go through some code together. If they want to try something different, there will be plenty of time for that later.
Electronic balast flourescents already do that. They flicker at an unnoticable 12KHz or so insted of the 60Hz of old fashioned balasts. They also get more light output from the same power consumption. Any new construction that is trying to be energy conscious is already using them. I have them in my shop at home and I love 'em.
As for this technology being used for any energy conserving purpose, I'd doubt it. They don't glow white. If they where used to supplement the regular light output, the color would be strange.
Also, we have a basic physics problem here. In order to be a energy conserving technology, one of two things would have to happen. The new material would have to provide some of it's own energy, or it would have to convert otherwise wasted energy into usable light. Obviously #1 isn't true. As for #2, the material absorbs UV light and emits visible light. That's the same thing that the normal coating on a flourescent light does. So, if it were contributing a significant amount of light during the off phase, it would be absorbing at least as much light during the on phase. That would cause the bulbs to be dimmer and would require more bulbs to get the same light level in the room. There goes the energy savings.
Maybe you missed where the light decreases to 10% brightness in six minutes and 1% in one hour. Good enough to evacuate, but you wouldn't want to work under it. 1% light in a windowless office building would be about the same as an average suburban street without street lights in the middle of the night.
Systems like this have been around for a long time. Does anyone object to Friend or Foe identification systems? They aren't perfect, but they have saved a lot of lives. How about targeting systems?, auto pilot? Hell, many planes wouldn't even fly if they weren't actually flown by a computer. Computers make a lot of our decisions for us every day. As long as the systems are designed to work WITH the team and not trying to control the team, it will probably work out well.
Simplistics attitudes like this get in the way of real decision making.
What if by allocating resources to this project, the project to build a resource allocation system for medical personnel is scrapped?
Anyone who says "If it saves only one life..." has turned off their brain. How about this... We take your house and turn it into a homeless shelter (you included). It will save several lives. If we do it to 100 people in 50 cities in colder climates, we can save hundreds of lives in one winter, for almost no money.
Even though this may be a troll, I want to respond anyway.
I cringe every time I hear someone say evolution is just a theory. They don't understand what it takes to get to the next step beyond theory (law). Let me go back a hundred years... This guy named Einstein proposed that Newton's Laws of Motion may be incomplete when the numbers get reallllllllly big. Turns out he was right. Well, the scientific community felt a great amount of embarassment that something they had accepted as law was flawed. Since then, pretty much nothing has become a law, just in case it gets proved wrong.
So, evolution is a theory because that's pretty much as far up the ladder as things go these days!!! Not because the scientific community isn't quite sure. What most people think of as a theory (a conjecture that hasn't been thoroughly tested yet) is really called a hypothesis in the scientific community.
Read the interview. The author has no issue with corporations using management speak. He has a problem with politicians and teachers. They have a different responsibility that this sort of language is NOT suited for.
Then explain why highway speeds are usually the ones people are raising their voices about. On the interstates around here you can usually see around 5 miles ahead and there are only 50 exits in 400 miles. It's not uncommon to go 25 miles between exits on the I-90 through New York. Exits and merges are only on the right, the road is very well maintained, there is a large amount of grass runoff if there is an issue. Yet, the NY State Troopers patrol the place like they're saving babies from rapists.
Also, the back roads we ride through often have straightness issues. There is one 10mph turn I know of that you simply won't get through over 25 or 30. On the other hand, I have been on a lot of roads in the hills in NY's Souther Tier that are marked as 55, but you wouldn't dare drive over 40 in a lot of places because you can't see more than 100 feet in front of you over the next hill. If the roads really were labelled due to stopping distances, those wouldn't be 55.
Most speed limits are derived from Army Corp of Engineers recommendations. Those recommendations were developed by one guy in a '55 Studebaker and haven't been seriously revised since.
Oh wait, I forgot about one more issue... people complain about more than just highway speeds. They also complain about how fast you drive when you are 100 feet from their children. Even though they moved to a house on a 55 mile an hour road, once they have kids, the whole world has to slow down. Now, I have a small child so I know where they are coming from, but I don't think it's right to limit the useages of public highways just to reduce the already infintesimal chance that their child might be injured. If we made all our decisions using that logic, we'd all be walking everywhere, wearing boxing gloves 24 hours a day, and eating nothing but yogurt with a rubber spoon.
Safety is an import issue, but we must think rationally about what exactly we gain for each of these choices versus what we give up. And for those of you thinking that it is imposible to put a price on a human life (or for some of you, an animal life too), well then you'd better get out your rubber spoon as we'll be by to collect all your butter knives in the morning. Happy Independence Day!!!
There is no way the US will ever buy into this in a big way. The government of almost every suburb in the whole country relies heavily on speeding fines. If a box prevents people from speeding, they'll have to raise taxes. Now the money will come from non-speeders as well as speeders. Ironic, huh?
Also, someone mentioned above that roads here have reasonable speed limits posted. Nope. In my younger and stupider days, we used to go out on our motorcycles looking for an adrenaline rush. Our back of the hand speed guide was 2.5 to 3 times the posted limit. That would keep you focused on the road and out of the ditch. I don't recommend this to anyone, but it shows something interesting. At 9 times the kinetic energy dictated by the speed limit, we made all the corners and stops. That means the posted limits keeps a well-maintained vehicle at about 10% of it's maximum capability. Three times the limit is way too high to keep travel safe, but the posted limit is VERY conservative most places.
Also, speed is a secondary factor in most accidents. Most accidents happen at intersections where at least one of the cars should be stopped!!! If a driver doesn't make a mistake, cars don't hit each other. If the cars don't hit, speed is irrelevant. We spend millions of man hours trying to get drivers to slow down, but almost nothing is done to actually prevent accidents. Want proof -- how come in order to keep your license for life, you only have to prove you can drive well once? How hard would it be to make people take road tests every ten years? 99% of the bad drivers would either have to take lessons or stop driving. Good drivers would simply need to miss a half day of work every decade to take the stupid easy test.
Sure, you can use your TiVo. But you rights are still limited. In today's still-predominantly-analog world, I can TiVo a show, record it to DVD, and watch it on an airplane while flying to my next business trip. In the post broadcast flag HD world, I will only be able record my HD show to my DVD-HD and watch it on the plane IF THEY LET ME!!!!!
This is exactly what the broadcast flag was designed for. You can tape all the analog stuff you want, but with the broadcast flag in effect, it will be illegal to sell any device that can transmit an HD signal to anything that doesn't honor the broadcast flag. There goes any hope of a homebrew HDTV TiVo.
There also goes any hope of any non-corporate innovation in HDTV and the beginning of all-out consumer fleecing without any regard for fair use. From now on, we'll have to beg for everything from Hollywood. Even the stuff we take for granted today.
Read the article, looked at the documents. There is no need for both to be created at the same time. It would be impossible for a court to tell which of these ocurred:
1. Employer made two documents, one really nasty with no hidden garbage and one really nice with garbage that makes them hash the same. Employee signs nice document and Employer copies that signature to nasty document.
2. Employer made nasty document, and Employee signed it. Then, after the fact, Employee makes a nicer document and adds crap to it to make it hash to the same value as the nasty document. Employee then claims scenario #1 actually ocurred.
Timestamps can be forged and this process can happen at any time after the deal is signed. That's the whole problem here. It is supposed to be nearly impossible to do either of those 2 above with SHA-1 or MD5. If it turns out to be trivial (the article claims it only takes a few hours with standard hardware), then these signature algorithms are worthless. Fortunately, there are alternatives.
If you're willing to put a few hours into an install and config that will work reallllllly well, look into coLinux. http://www.colinux.org/
You won't have to dual boot, just run Linux at the same time as Windows. It performs better than virtualization. The only hurdle is getting a desktop, coLinux doesn't have video drivers for X. However, you can just use cygwin and run the desktop as a Windows app. For me, doing app development on Linux and Windows simultaneously, it's the best solution I've found so far. I can get a KDE desktop in 22 seconds (I just timed it) on an old P3 850Mhz laptop with 256MB of ram. All without interrupting my work in Windows.
Hmmm.... I've installed Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo in Microsoft Virtual PC. Just Pick "Other" from the list in the Wizard. Actually, I don't think the Wizard does anything except set the initial RAM size anyways.
Besides, would you expect VPC to "support" Linux? Essentially, VPC is hardware. You'd expect the same level of support that you get from a typical hardware vendor. Well, sure some hardware vendors are good at supporting Linux. But, most have exactly the same support policy that Microsoft does for VPC.
BTW, look here: http://vpc.visualwin.com/ to see a list of what works in VPC and how to get some of the tougher ones to work.
All they did was run a processor slower and measure how slow it was. Then they measured the temp. However, by their own admission, neither of those were relevant.
What they should have done was get a few CPUs and underclock each to the point that they can run fanless reliably. Then look which made the cheapest, acceptably fast, silent system. Putting that video card with a fan in it was a really dumb move too.
Actual crytographic hash spoofing is unneccesary. All they need is to build a custom client that reports the expected hash. By the time the client downloads the file and verifies the hash is spoofed, the damage has been done. The technique doesn't work on all P2P networks, but it is effective for some.
Now the guys fighting P2P filesharing are fighting each other!!! If Macrovision decides not to go after a file, they might go after the company that is going after the file. They might even stop the actual publisher from protecting their own content.
In the end this will simply make it more expensive and difficult to police P2P networks. Think of this like someone patenting the idea of a police force and how it would impact crime.
.MDB != Access
MDB files use the Microsoft "Jet" database engine. Ever since Access 2000 (yes, 5 years ago), an Access database doesn't have to be an MDB file. The front end could be an ADP (Access Data Project) and the back end MSSQL or MSDE. Microsoft knows MDBs suck for most non-trivial applications, that's why they give the Jet database engine away for free (it's part of MDAC, a freely downloadable add-on for windows). I don't understand why anyone willing to put the word "professional" on an Access solution would use MDB files. MSDE is free (well, cost free anyways).
Back on topic...
I understand why people might want to use Excel to view and manipulate data, but storing data in Excel files in insanity. That pretty much limits "professional" Excel development. Any professional system that involves Excel would need a non-Excel based system to collect and store data, and to launch Excel only when necessary to do the stuff Excel is good at.
...and VPC SP1 fixes that problem. Your point is....?
Are you saying that no competent developer would ever make a change to a support library that would ever introduce a problem into one of their applications? Are you suggesting that this is enough reason for the DOJ to break up MS?
Also remember that MS bought Virtual PC from Connectix. They most likely inherited the problem and have since been nice enough to fix it for free.
I read the list of software that doesn't work with SP2. And out of tens of thousands of software packages that run on XP......
10 give blue screens (and 4 of them are old versions af ZoneAlarm)
6 don't run
18 have reduced functionality.
Also, from reports of above commenters, much of the software on the list only fails on some computers. I don't think that is evidence that SP2 is going to be a support nightmare. NOT installing SP2 is more of a support nightmare.
SUS (soon to be WUS) make it so easy to manage Windows patches that you'd have to be an idiot to not use it if you manage more than 10 computers.
I completely agree that WEP has problems. But this is not evidence of those problems. This attack would have been successful against ANY security scheme using the same key-generation method.
The article mentioned that aircrack would have taken a significant amount of time to get the key in this case.
This doesn't show that WEP is insecure... simply that the key-generation schemes favored by many manufacturers are insecure. Netscape 2.2 was vulnerable to the same type of weakness by using 22 bits of information to build it's 40 bit session key for SSL.
BTW, assuming a similar key generation scheme, this technique could break AES or 3DES, the encryption algorithm is irrelevant here. Why is it that vendors of security products can't figure out security?
Flash is only a few features short of being as dangerous as ActiveX, only in a cross-platform way. As long as Macromedia is on the consumer's side, it won't cross the line. As soon as they start getting revenue from other source than sales of Flash design products, new invasive feature will start creeping in. At first they will be relatively harmless. But as the revenue shifts more towards online entities, Macromedia will start to pay less attention to the potential side effects of their technology. They already have a near monopoly, conventional business logic says now is the time to cash in.
BTW, does everyone remember that Macromedia now recommends you download the Yahoo toolbar when getting the Flash Player? Whats next? Require it? Install it silently?
Voice your opinion to Macromedia and see where it goes. If they ignore us, watch out.
Interesting ActiveX parallel:
Microsoft allowed embedded ActiveX in browsers for one reason only, to keep their marketshare. They hoped that users would like the "rich experience" of ActiveX over standards-compliant web pages and then would stick with MS platforms to avoid losing their new toy.
Macromedia made Flash to create an new "rich experience" over standards-compliant web pages to gain and keep marketshare.
ActiveX worked out so well (sarcasm intended), what makes Flash so different?
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhhh.... but this year we just hit a breakeven point with natural gas. We now consume more than we produce. When cars run from power plant power, a lot of things will change. Taxes will be shifted from gas to electricity to fund road improvements, scarcity problems will arise in coal and natural gas markets, driving prices up, etc... The best solution is the one that enviromentalists don't want to here -- nuclear. Build 100 more modern nuclear power plants in the US and move to wall-charged cars and things will truely be better.
Yup.
I spent the last 10 years as a computer teacher. High end expensive corporate stuff where the client expects to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Well, our best classrooms had a way to get the student AWAY FROM the computers for discussion time. Most of the students would be less productive if behind a keyboard most of the time.
Now, if I think that learning Java Threads is best done with at least 40% no-computer time and 60% hands-on practice, what do you think I feel about learning English? When I teach, I want the students participating in the discussion, not doing something on the computer. Even in the above Java example, I would rather have the student raise his/her concern to the class and we'll all go through some code together. If they want to try something different, there will be plenty of time for that later.
Electronic balast flourescents already do that. They flicker at an unnoticable 12KHz or so insted of the 60Hz of old fashioned balasts. They also get more light output from the same power consumption. Any new construction that is trying to be energy conscious is already using them. I have them in my shop at home and I love 'em.
As for this technology being used for any energy conserving purpose, I'd doubt it. They don't glow white. If they where used to supplement the regular light output, the color would be strange.
Also, we have a basic physics problem here. In order to be a energy conserving technology, one of two things would have to happen. The new material would have to provide some of it's own energy, or it would have to convert otherwise wasted energy into usable light. Obviously #1 isn't true. As for #2, the material absorbs UV light and emits visible light. That's the same thing that the normal coating on a flourescent light does. So, if it were contributing a significant amount of light during the off phase, it would be absorbing at least as much light during the on phase. That would cause the bulbs to be dimmer and would require more bulbs to get the same light level in the room. There goes the energy savings.
Maybe you missed where the light decreases to 10% brightness in six minutes and 1% in one hour. Good enough to evacuate, but you wouldn't want to work under it. 1% light in a windowless office building would be about the same as an average suburban street without street lights in the middle of the night.
Systems like this have been around for a long time. Does anyone object to Friend or Foe identification systems? They aren't perfect, but they have saved a lot of lives. How about targeting systems?, auto pilot? Hell, many planes wouldn't even fly if they weren't actually flown by a computer. Computers make a lot of our decisions for us every day. As long as the systems are designed to work WITH the team and not trying to control the team, it will probably work out well.
Simplistics attitudes like this get in the way of real decision making.
What if by allocating resources to this project, the project to build a resource allocation system for medical personnel is scrapped?
Anyone who says "If it saves only one life..." has turned off their brain. How about this... We take your house and turn it into a homeless shelter (you included). It will save several lives. If we do it to 100 people in 50 cities in colder climates, we can save hundreds of lives in one winter, for almost no money.
Even though this may be a troll, I want to respond anyway.
I cringe every time I hear someone say evolution is just a theory. They don't understand what it takes to get to the next step beyond theory (law). Let me go back a hundred years... This guy named Einstein proposed that Newton's Laws of Motion may be incomplete when the numbers get reallllllllly big. Turns out he was right. Well, the scientific community felt a great amount of embarassment that something they had accepted as law was flawed. Since then, pretty much nothing has become a law, just in case it gets proved wrong.
So, evolution is a theory because that's pretty much as far up the ladder as things go these days!!! Not because the scientific community isn't quite sure. What most people think of as a theory (a conjecture that hasn't been thoroughly tested yet) is really called a hypothesis in the scientific community.
Read here rof a second opinion http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
Read the interview. The author has no issue with corporations using management speak. He has a problem with politicians and teachers. They have a different responsibility that this sort of language is NOT suited for.
Then explain why highway speeds are usually the ones people are raising their voices about. On the interstates around here you can usually see around 5 miles ahead and there are only 50 exits in 400 miles. It's not uncommon to go 25 miles between exits on the I-90 through New York. Exits and merges are only on the right, the road is very well maintained, there is a large amount of grass runoff if there is an issue. Yet, the NY State Troopers patrol the place like they're saving babies from rapists.
Also, the back roads we ride through often have straightness issues. There is one 10mph turn I know of that you simply won't get through over 25 or 30. On the other hand, I have been on a lot of roads in the hills in NY's Souther Tier that are marked as 55, but you wouldn't dare drive over 40 in a lot of places because you can't see more than 100 feet in front of you over the next hill. If the roads really were labelled due to stopping distances, those wouldn't be 55.
Most speed limits are derived from Army Corp of Engineers recommendations. Those recommendations were developed by one guy in a '55 Studebaker and haven't been seriously revised since.
Oh wait, I forgot about one more issue... people complain about more than just highway speeds. They also complain about how fast you drive when you are 100 feet from their children. Even though they moved to a house on a 55 mile an hour road, once they have kids, the whole world has to slow down. Now, I have a small child so I know where they are coming from, but I don't think it's right to limit the useages of public highways just to reduce the already infintesimal chance that their child might be injured. If we made all our decisions using that logic, we'd all be walking everywhere, wearing boxing gloves 24 hours a day, and eating nothing but yogurt with a rubber spoon.
Safety is an import issue, but we must think rationally about what exactly we gain for each of these choices versus what we give up. And for those of you thinking that it is imposible to put a price on a human life (or for some of you, an animal life too), well then you'd better get out your rubber spoon as we'll be by to collect all your butter knives in the morning. Happy Independence Day!!!
There is no way the US will ever buy into this in a big way. The government of almost every suburb in the whole country relies heavily on speeding fines. If a box prevents people from speeding, they'll have to raise taxes. Now the money will come from non-speeders as well as speeders. Ironic, huh?
Also, someone mentioned above that roads here have reasonable speed limits posted. Nope. In my younger and stupider days, we used to go out on our motorcycles looking for an adrenaline rush. Our back of the hand speed guide was 2.5 to 3 times the posted limit. That would keep you focused on the road and out of the ditch. I don't recommend this to anyone, but it shows something interesting. At 9 times the kinetic energy dictated by the speed limit, we made all the corners and stops. That means the posted limits keeps a well-maintained vehicle at about 10% of it's maximum capability. Three times the limit is way too high to keep travel safe, but the posted limit is VERY conservative most places.
Also, speed is a secondary factor in most accidents. Most accidents happen at intersections where at least one of the cars should be stopped!!! If a driver doesn't make a mistake, cars don't hit each other. If the cars don't hit, speed is irrelevant. We spend millions of man hours trying to get drivers to slow down, but almost nothing is done to actually prevent accidents. Want proof -- how come in order to keep your license for life, you only have to prove you can drive well once? How hard would it be to make people take road tests every ten years? 99% of the bad drivers would either have to take lessons or stop driving. Good drivers would simply need to miss a half day of work every decade to take the stupid easy test.
Sure, you can use your TiVo. But you rights are still limited. In today's still-predominantly-analog world, I can TiVo a show, record it to DVD, and watch it on an airplane while flying to my next business trip. In the post broadcast flag HD world, I will only be able record my HD show to my DVD-HD and watch it on the plane IF THEY LET ME!!!!!
This is exactly what the broadcast flag was designed for. You can tape all the analog stuff you want, but with the broadcast flag in effect, it will be illegal to sell any device that can transmit an HD signal to anything that doesn't honor the broadcast flag. There goes any hope of a homebrew HDTV TiVo.
There also goes any hope of any non-corporate innovation in HDTV and the beginning of all-out consumer fleecing without any regard for fair use. From now on, we'll have to beg for everything from Hollywood. Even the stuff we take for granted today.
Read the article, looked at the documents. There is no need for both to be created at the same time. It would be impossible for a court to tell which of these ocurred:
1. Employer made two documents, one really nasty with no hidden garbage and one really nice with garbage that makes them hash the same. Employee signs nice document and Employer copies that signature to nasty document.
2. Employer made nasty document, and Employee signed it. Then, after the fact, Employee makes a nicer document and adds crap to it to make it hash to the same value as the nasty document. Employee then claims scenario #1 actually ocurred.
Timestamps can be forged and this process can happen at any time after the deal is signed. That's the whole problem here. It is supposed to be nearly impossible to do either of those 2 above with SHA-1 or MD5. If it turns out to be trivial (the article claims it only takes a few hours with standard hardware), then these signature algorithms are worthless. Fortunately, there are alternatives.
You created it so that you could get of the nasty contract that you signed. What's so hard to believe about that?
If you're willing to put a few hours into an install and config that will work reallllllly well, look into coLinux. http://www.colinux.org/
You won't have to dual boot, just run Linux at the same time as Windows. It performs better than virtualization. The only hurdle is getting a desktop, coLinux doesn't have video drivers for X. However, you can just use cygwin and run the desktop as a Windows app. For me, doing app development on Linux and Windows simultaneously, it's the best solution I've found so far. I can get a KDE desktop in 22 seconds (I just timed it) on an old P3 850Mhz laptop with 256MB of ram. All without interrupting my work in Windows.
Hmmm.... I've installed Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo in Microsoft Virtual PC. Just Pick "Other" from the list in the Wizard. Actually, I don't think the Wizard does anything except set the initial RAM size anyways.
Besides, would you expect VPC to "support" Linux? Essentially, VPC is hardware. You'd expect the same level of support that you get from a typical hardware vendor. Well, sure some hardware vendors are good at supporting Linux. But, most have exactly the same support policy that Microsoft does for VPC.
BTW, look here: http://vpc.visualwin.com/ to see a list of what works in VPC and how to get some of the tougher ones to work.
All they did was run a processor slower and measure how slow it was. Then they measured the temp. However, by their own admission, neither of those were relevant.
What they should have done was get a few CPUs and underclock each to the point that they can run fanless reliably. Then look which made the cheapest, acceptably fast, silent system. Putting that video card with a fan in it was a really dumb move too.
Actual crytographic hash spoofing is unneccesary. All they need is to build a custom client that reports the expected hash. By the time the client downloads the file and verifies the hash is spoofed, the damage has been done. The technique doesn't work on all P2P networks, but it is effective for some.
Now the guys fighting P2P filesharing are fighting each other!!! If Macrovision decides not to go after a file, they might go after the company that is going after the file. They might even stop the actual publisher from protecting their own content.
In the end this will simply make it more expensive and difficult to police P2P networks. Think of this like someone patenting the idea of a police force and how it would impact crime.
.MDB != Access
MDB files use the Microsoft "Jet" database engine. Ever since Access 2000 (yes, 5 years ago), an Access database doesn't have to be an MDB file. The front end could be an ADP (Access Data Project) and the back end MSSQL or MSDE. Microsoft knows MDBs suck for most non-trivial applications, that's why they give the Jet database engine away for free (it's part of MDAC, a freely downloadable add-on for windows). I don't understand why anyone willing to put the word "professional" on an Access solution would use MDB files. MSDE is free (well, cost free anyways).
Back on topic...
I understand why people might want to use Excel to view and manipulate data, but storing data in Excel files in insanity. That pretty much limits "professional" Excel development. Any professional system that involves Excel would need a non-Excel based system to collect and store data, and to launch Excel only when necessary to do the stuff Excel is good at.
...and VPC SP1 fixes that problem. Your point is....?
Are you saying that no competent developer would ever make a change to a support library that would ever introduce a problem into one of their applications? Are you suggesting that this is enough reason for the DOJ to break up MS?
Also remember that MS bought Virtual PC from Connectix. They most likely inherited the problem and have since been nice enough to fix it for free.
I read the list of software that doesn't work with SP2. And out of tens of thousands of software packages that run on XP......
10 give blue screens (and 4 of them are old versions af ZoneAlarm)
6 don't run
18 have reduced functionality.
Also, from reports of above commenters, much of the software on the list only fails on some computers. I don't think that is evidence that SP2 is going to be a support nightmare. NOT installing SP2 is more of a support nightmare.
SUS (soon to be WUS) make it so easy to manage Windows patches that you'd have to be an idiot to not use it if you manage more than 10 computers.
I completely agree that WEP has problems. But this is not evidence of those problems. This attack would have been successful against ANY security scheme using the same key-generation method.
The article mentioned that aircrack would have taken a significant amount of time to get the key in this case.
This doesn't show that WEP is insecure... simply that the key-generation schemes favored by many manufacturers are insecure. Netscape 2.2 was vulnerable to the same type of weakness by using 22 bits of information to build it's 40 bit session key for SSL.
BTW, assuming a similar key generation scheme, this technique could break AES or 3DES, the encryption algorithm is irrelevant here. Why is it that vendors of security products can't figure out security?
Flash is only a few features short of being as dangerous as ActiveX, only in a cross-platform way. As long as Macromedia is on the consumer's side, it won't cross the line. As soon as they start getting revenue from other source than sales of Flash design products, new invasive feature will start creeping in. At first they will be relatively harmless. But as the revenue shifts more towards online entities, Macromedia will start to pay less attention to the potential side effects of their technology. They already have a near monopoly, conventional business logic says now is the time to cash in.
BTW, does everyone remember that Macromedia now recommends you download the Yahoo toolbar when getting the Flash Player? Whats next? Require it? Install it silently?
Voice your opinion to Macromedia and see where it goes. If they ignore us, watch out.
Interesting ActiveX parallel:
Microsoft allowed embedded ActiveX in browsers for one reason only, to keep their marketshare. They hoped that users would like the "rich experience" of ActiveX over standards-compliant web pages and then would stick with MS platforms to avoid losing their new toy.
Macromedia made Flash to create an new "rich experience" over standards-compliant web pages to gain and keep marketshare.
ActiveX worked out so well (sarcasm intended), what makes Flash so different?