Which I imagine makes sense, as the kernel is very complicated from a dev standpoint.
For most projects I’ve been involved with, the path to success is keeping the trunk in a stable state, and using _that_ as the baseline. Dev code should never be in the trunk imo... the trunk should always be in a ready to release (or proceed to formal testing, or whatever) state. Everyone branches from the trunk.. everyone can update their branch to the latest trunk.. and everyone merges back down into the trunk when it’s good and ready.
Resisting the temptation to make “quick fixes” in the trunk is also important. Additionally, dev platforms should be setup so the system can be run from any branch as easily as the trunk (making it a pain to test out the system from a branch is a great way to ensure unstable code ends up in your trunk).
Obviously in the case of the kernel.. they probably have branches off branches off branches, but I think for most reasonably sized projects, that shouldn’t be necessary.
I actually don't mind this at all.. but I wish shipping companies did a better job of handling the aftermath.
I can accept that in order for me to have a package sent from somewhere in the bowels of the USA to my door step here in Canada within 2 days for under $50.. some corners need to be trimmed. Trying to deal with UPS over the phone however is way too painful, and DHL is (in my experience) akin to eating a lightbulb.
Of course using your analogy, in this case they found some bureaucrats office in some department no one has ever heard of...
I highly doubt anyone on either side visited this site on any kind of regular basis. I doubt even further that either side really cares that it is down.
Truth is, the media industry is hated by enough people (geeks in particular) that I'd be surprised if the real assets weren't near impervious to this kind of attack.
saying that we are in a continually elevated threat of terrorism (at a minimum) is a complete misnomer.
Indeed. A base level should be established and called simply "the norm". The whole "always in danger" thing seems mostly political.
Bulletins (or deviations from the norm) should be posted when a specific event happens. Some arbitrary "level" is just silly because no one is ever going to want to lower it.. which completely defeats any meaning it holds.
I found Debian's unstable to be a little bit _too_ unstable. It didn't feel like it's really meant for daily use (which given the name it probably isn't).
Disclaimer: I'm a Gentoo user, and while I did give Debian a fair try (about a year and a half) a lot of the issues I ran into were probably due to my own stupidity.
Gentoo isn't exactly the hallmark of stability either, but I think it pulls off the rolling update approach better (which of course makes sense, as this is how it's meant to be used by everyone.. rather than a small subset).
On the whole general subject, I think release cycles make sense for servers and production systems/desktops, and rolling systems make sense for a portion of desktop users. I love rolling updates on my desktop, but I don't mind sorting out the minor issues that crop up every once in a while.. most users (especially in the ubuntu crowd) do. That is, I think the current approach makes the most sense for ubuntu.
Disclaimer: I’m Canadian, so my view of this whole color coded terror alert thing may be a bit off.
Rather than trying to produce something that “provides more information”, try producing something that directly satisfies someones requirements.
Who wants this information. What are they going to do with it? Lets say we are a financial institution and our terror alert is high.. what does this mean to us? How does it change our activities for today? What threat specific info would be useful in guiding us?
I think “levels” are kind of silly.. the information should be self explanatory and maybe in bulletin form. “There was an attempted bombing. We are not sure if this is isolated or part of a larger plot. Similar institutions or people in the same geographic area should be on the lookout for: whatever.” If there is a transit bombing.. then other transit institutions should be notified and some kind of established procedures should go into effect.
Using colors I think was especially silly, because paraphrasing Lewis Black (with less profanity), every time they talk about the color they have to explain what it means anyway.
The whole OSS -> FOSS -> FLOSS thing has always bugged me.
It's not enough to say it's open source.. we have to emphasize that it's FREE open source.. and now even that's not enough.. we have to describe the specific _kind_ of free that it is.
And yeah, using the word ecosystem in a non-biology context is _so_ management.
I would normally agree with you.. no one expects an early version to be secure right out of the gate.
However one of the main selling points of diaspora was supposed to be privacy and security. And the critisisms made against it were not minor, they were major problems with (specifically the complete lack of) a security architecture.
You can add in some security at the top, but real security comes from a strong underlying foundation, with diaspora didn't have.. and much like it's hard to replace the foundation of a house, it's hard to replace the foundation of a software without a complete re-write.
Seems silly that the bank would push this new security feature but not use it for ATMs.
Or they should atleast (I am assuming they don't) provide you the option to not allow the card to be used by devices which don't support this.
I really hate that.. it's like the whole "verified by visa". Useless because someone can just use your card at a site that doesn't require it. All it serves is to protect site owners (which may have been the point.. but it could have served both site and card owner).
But we really need to do something about this whole security thing.
Personally I’m all for a one time password key token type device. You have a little key fob dealie generating numbers via a stream cipher at an interval (and with a key) synced with your bank. Once a pin is used, it is invalidated, so an attacker would have to skim the code, than use it before you punched it in. You could even combine it with some kind of traditional pin or even biometrics if you want to be all new age, giving you the very trendy “3 factor authentication”.
Heck you could even automate the first bit with some kind of challenge/response system.
This isn’t a radical or new idea.. people have been talking about this forever, and a few systems like this have actually been implemented.. but I don’t get why this isn’t wide spread yet? Are there vulnerabilities, user issues, or is it just a case of “cheaper to fix the problems reactively than prevent them”?
As has been said, security is a trade off of convenience. But I think money is one area people might be willing to put up with a slightly more cumbersome process.
You could put it in the bank and never touch the principle. Even at 3% you're talking $120,000 a year. It's way more than I make.. and I live pretty comfortably.
A child with hope and enthusiasm and the belief that anything is possible.. oh man this can't be good:(
All kidding aside.. yeah.. I hope the "wow anything is possible" aspect of this takes precidence and he does something awesome for humanity. The other side is that he can probably live off that without doing anything for the rest of his life (assuming his parents give it to him).
Give it to the kid right now.. in cash. Let him spend it on whatever he wants under some weird circumstances where no adult is in a position to stop him! By the end he'll have learnt a valuable lesson about life or something heart warming like that! People still go for the whole coming-of-age personal growth thing right... RIGHT??!!??!!
I just hope they don't turn this into a damn reality TV show...
I'd say trying it on the desktops of regular users is still pretty risky. Unless your users are geeks, you are going to incur training costs, user hostility, and serious issues with compatibility.
Client: wtf is this file you send me. I can't open it You: you need openoffice to open it.. you can downlo.. Client: just send me a version I can open in word You: Client: wtf, this looks like shit.. the formatting is all messed up..
Also if they deal in a lot of media/video, chances are the Linux video editing tools out there are just not going to cut it.. or if they do.. none of the users are going to know how to use them anyway.
And support is a serious consideration. That "freely available" support does not compare to the "call a number, someone comes and fixes it for you" support that companies pay through the nose. If you have an experienced admin it's no worries.. they can browse the mailing lists and get on IRC.. but the submitter does not sound very experienced.
Although one thing I've noticed is a serious reliance on "specialty parts". Now that spaceship comes in a kit with a special cockpit, wing, and landing gear piece..
The mindstorm stuff looks really cool though. I _really_ would have had a blast with something like that as a kid.
Don't know about modern stuff (which I know is what you asked about) and may not be within the age range (I really have a hard time envisioning age) but the classics like meccano and K'nex (if you don't like picking up billions of mini nuts and bolts) were great.
Looking back, I learnt a lot about structure (triangles, width to height ratios etc) and gear ratios just as a side effect of messing around.
I can't be the only one who as a kid one day realized that if you hook a small gear to a large drive gear.. the small gear turns faster! Then tried to make a massive tower of alternating large/small gears.. only to discover that when you get to the top.. you have a fast spinning gear that can barely drive the weight of it's own axle.
Nor the only one who tried to make a crane, only to realize that the second you attach a load, the whole thing crumbles.. seems pretty simple as an adult.. but learning that as much force is applied to the structure as the load was pretty neat at that age.
AND of course, eventually everyone builds a crossbow.. those elastics that came with K'nex were pretty damn sturdy.. making something that could punch a hole in a piece of paper from across the room wasn't too difficult. Then trying to come up with a trigger mechanism was great fun.. and more lessons on the whole force/structure thing.
Aside from "mechanical" toys.. there are also electrical.
Not sure of the age range, but when I was a kid my dad made me what was basically a board with a power source, some lights, switches, and some other odds and ends. It had contacts (bolts) and a bunch of alligator clips for connecting the stuff. I had a lot of fun playing with it, and I've seen commercial versions of this now.. so might be a good idea. Also rates high on the "learning without realizing" category.
Slashdot Mirror
All kidding aside, they probably _should_ have just increased the address space of IPv4.
IPv6 may be better.. sure.. but it is too different for its own good.. and requires too much of a drastic change for most networks to implement it.
"Local Cloud"
That's pure genius! I am actually going to start using it.
Scary thing is, I can _actually_ see it working! Sell it as a "cloud based solution without the liability" or something :D
To the cloud? Really?
Yes.
And it sucks! I hate the whole cloud concept.. but it has achieved buzzword status so expect it to be everywhere fairly shortly..
The approach I tend to like is:
- merge the trunk back up into the branch
- do your "pre trunk commit" testing in the branch
- merge branch down into trunk
If things do get crazy, you can create an "integration branch" .. but I think that can generally be avoided
Which I imagine makes sense, as the kernel is very complicated from a dev standpoint.
For most projects I’ve been involved with, the path to success is keeping the trunk in a stable state, and using _that_ as the baseline. Dev code should never be in the trunk imo... the trunk should always be in a ready to release (or proceed to formal testing, or whatever) state. Everyone branches from the trunk.. everyone can update their branch to the latest trunk.. and everyone merges back down into the trunk when it’s good and ready.
Resisting the temptation to make “quick fixes” in the trunk is also important. Additionally, dev platforms should be setup so the system can be run from any branch as easily as the trunk (making it a pain to test out the system from a branch is a great way to ensure unstable code ends up in your trunk).
Obviously in the case of the kernel.. they probably have branches off branches off branches, but I think for most reasonably sized projects, that shouldn’t be necessary.
they can cease to doing business in America
Careful.. you're going to over-excite everyone..
I actually don't mind this at all.. but I wish shipping companies did a better job of handling the aftermath.
I can accept that in order for me to have a package sent from somewhere in the bowels of the USA to my door step here in Canada within 2 days for under $50 .. some corners need to be trimmed. Trying to deal with UPS over the phone however is way too painful, and DHL is (in my experience) akin to eating a lightbulb.
People also got their heads beat in by "the man".
Of course using your analogy, in this case they found some bureaucrats office in some department no one has ever heard of...
I highly doubt anyone on either side visited this site on any kind of regular basis. I doubt even further that either side really cares that it is down.
Truth is, the media industry is hated by enough people (geeks in particular) that I'd be surprised if the real assets weren't near impervious to this kind of attack.
"News for nerds"
A large portion of the slashdot crowd (and nerds in general) have an interest in security (and security theater).
This is more slashdot-ish than a lot of stuff I've seen in the last few years.
saying that we are in a continually elevated threat of terrorism (at a minimum) is a complete misnomer.
Indeed. A base level should be established and called simply "the norm". The whole "always in danger" thing seems mostly political.
Bulletins (or deviations from the norm) should be posted when a specific event happens. Some arbitrary "level" is just silly because no one is ever going to want to lower it.. which completely defeats any meaning it holds.
I found Debian's unstable to be a little bit _too_ unstable. It didn't feel like it's really meant for daily use (which given the name it probably isn't).
Disclaimer: I'm a Gentoo user, and while I did give Debian a fair try (about a year and a half) a lot of the issues I ran into were probably due to my own stupidity.
Gentoo isn't exactly the hallmark of stability either, but I think it pulls off the rolling update approach better (which of course makes sense, as this is how it's meant to be used by everyone.. rather than a small subset).
On the whole general subject, I think release cycles make sense for servers and production systems/desktops, and rolling systems make sense for a portion of desktop users. I love rolling updates on my desktop, but I don't mind sorting out the minor issues that crop up every once in a while.. most users (especially in the ubuntu crowd) do. That is, I think the current approach makes the most sense for ubuntu.
Disclaimer: I’m Canadian, so my view of this whole color coded terror alert thing may be a bit off.
Rather than trying to produce something that “provides more information”, try producing something that directly satisfies someones requirements.
Who wants this information. What are they going to do with it? Lets say we are a financial institution and our terror alert is high.. what does this mean to us? How does it change our activities for today? What threat specific info would be useful in guiding us?
I think “levels” are kind of silly.. the information should be self explanatory and maybe in bulletin form. “There was an attempted bombing. We are not sure if this is isolated or part of a larger plot. Similar institutions or people in the same geographic area should be on the lookout for: whatever.” If there is a transit bombing.. then other transit institutions should be notified and some kind of established procedures should go into effect.
Using colors I think was especially silly, because paraphrasing Lewis Black (with less profanity), every time they talk about the color they have to explain what it means anyway.
The whole OSS -> FOSS -> FLOSS thing has always bugged me.
It's not enough to say it's open source.. we have to emphasize that it's FREE open source.. and now even that's not enough.. we have to describe the specific _kind_ of free that it is.
And yeah, using the word ecosystem in a non-biology context is _so_ management.
I would normally agree with you.. no one expects an early version to be secure right out of the gate.
However one of the main selling points of diaspora was supposed to be privacy and security. And the critisisms made against it were not minor, they were major problems with (specifically the complete lack of) a security architecture.
You can add in some security at the top, but real security comes from a strong underlying foundation, with diaspora didn't have.. and much like it's hard to replace the foundation of a house, it's hard to replace the foundation of a software without a complete re-write.
Seems silly that the bank would push this new security feature but not use it for ATMs.
Or they should atleast (I am assuming they don't) provide you the option to not allow the card to be used by devices which don't support this.
I really hate that.. it's like the whole "verified by visa". Useless because someone can just use your card at a site that doesn't require it. All it serves is to protect site owners (which may have been the point.. but it could have served both site and card owner).
But we really need to do something about this whole security thing.
Personally I’m all for a one time password key token type device. You have a little key fob dealie generating numbers via a stream cipher at an interval (and with a key) synced with your bank. Once a pin is used, it is invalidated, so an attacker would have to skim the code, than use it before you punched it in. You could even combine it with some kind of traditional pin or even biometrics if you want to be all new age, giving you the very trendy “3 factor authentication”.
Heck you could even automate the first bit with some kind of challenge/response system.
This isn’t a radical or new idea.. people have been talking about this forever, and a few systems like this have actually been implemented.. but I don’t get why this isn’t wide spread yet? Are there vulnerabilities, user issues, or is it just a case of “cheaper to fix the problems reactively than prevent them”?
As has been said, security is a trade off of convenience. But I think money is one area people might be willing to put up with a slightly more cumbersome process.
You could put it in the bank and never touch the principle. Even at 3% you're talking $120,000 a year. It's way more than I make.. and I live pretty comfortably.
A child with hope and enthusiasm and the belief that anything is possible.. oh man this can't be good :(
All kidding aside.. yeah.. I hope the "wow anything is possible" aspect of this takes precidence and he does something awesome for humanity. The other side is that he can probably live off that without doing anything for the rest of his life (assuming his parents give it to him).
I say we do this sitcom style!
Give it to the kid right now.. in cash. Let him spend it on whatever he wants under some weird circumstances where no adult is in a position to stop him! By the end he'll have learnt a valuable lesson about life or something heart warming like that! People still go for the whole coming-of-age personal growth thing right... RIGHT??!!??!!
I just hope they don't turn this into a damn reality TV show...
Linux on the server(s) sure..
I'd say trying it on the desktops of regular users is still pretty risky. Unless your users are geeks, you are going to incur training costs, user hostility, and serious issues with compatibility.
Client: wtf is this file you send me. I can't open it
You: you need openoffice to open it.. you can downlo..
Client: just send me a version I can open in word
You:
Client: wtf, this looks like shit.. the formatting is all messed up..
Also if they deal in a lot of media/video, chances are the Linux video editing tools out there are just not going to cut it.. or if they do.. none of the users are going to know how to use them anyway.
And support is a serious consideration. That "freely available" support does not compare to the "call a number, someone comes and fixes it for you" support that companies pay through the nose. If you have an experienced admin it's no worries.. they can browse the mailing lists and get on IRC.. but the submitter does not sound very experienced.
just to see what they'll come up with
A crippling fear of electricity and computers!
I still remember the lovely combination of little tiny nuts and bolts.. and deep carpeting.. and the sound it made going into vacuum cleaner!
Indeed.
Although one thing I've noticed is a serious reliance on "specialty parts". Now that spaceship comes in a kit with a special cockpit, wing, and landing gear piece..
The mindstorm stuff looks really cool though. I _really_ would have had a blast with something like that as a kid.
Don't know about modern stuff (which I know is what you asked about) and may not be within the age range (I really have a hard time envisioning age) but the classics like meccano and K'nex (if you don't like picking up billions of mini nuts and bolts) were great.
Looking back, I learnt a lot about structure (triangles, width to height ratios etc) and gear ratios just as a side effect of messing around.
I can't be the only one who as a kid one day realized that if you hook a small gear to a large drive gear.. the small gear turns faster! Then tried to make a massive tower of alternating large/small gears.. only to discover that when you get to the top.. you have a fast spinning gear that can barely drive the weight of it's own axle.
Nor the only one who tried to make a crane, only to realize that the second you attach a load, the whole thing crumbles .. seems pretty simple as an adult .. but learning that as much force is applied to the structure as the load was pretty neat at that age.
AND of course, eventually everyone builds a crossbow .. those elastics that came with K'nex were pretty damn sturdy.. making something that could punch a hole in a piece of paper from across the room wasn't too difficult. Then trying to come up with a trigger mechanism was great fun.. and more lessons on the whole force/structure thing.
Aside from "mechanical" toys.. there are also electrical.
Not sure of the age range, but when I was a kid my dad made me what was basically a board with a power source, some lights, switches, and some other odds and ends. It had contacts (bolts) and a bunch of alligator clips for connecting the stuff. I had a lot of fun playing with it, and I've seen commercial versions of this now.. so might be a good idea. Also rates high on the "learning without realizing" category.
Guess it depends on where you live. Round here (Atlantic Canada) you can get a fairly decent house in the sub 200K range.