...was supposed to have been Java's big selling point. Now it seems we are relying on the browsers to do everything Java just really isn't working for.
The idea of a safe sandbox for powerful web delivered code to work within falls apart when you realize that the average user is a complete dim bulb when it comes to system administration and security. They just don't know what to do to limit what code.
Now if the web world ever came up with a simple point and click interaction method and clear concise and simple instructions as to how to stop rogue sandbox code from eating resources and what to do with it to limit it for security's sake, it would definitely help sys admins, but it still would not make enough of a dent in the denseness of the average user.
Too bad, because Google is right as to what web apps of this sort need for power on the client side.
that drives this neverending fascination with fluff non-news about where Linux is being used or is it to cover up and draw attention away from poor Windows skills, or both?
I think both.
I may use Linux but that doesn't mean I care to hear about every single place, thing, entity, etc. that uses some iteration of Linux. Nor do I need to hear endless fawning over Steve Jobs and Apple and OSX as if it was going to bring spiritual salvation.
Fer crissakes people, it's just an operating system. It's not giving you longer life, making you smarter, conferring beauty and handsomeness on you, or sleeping with you (although I'm sure there's some geeks looking to cyberneticize a real doll with Linux and report on it here). I really think we need to get a grip here at Slashdot when it comes to Linux.
I bet if my mother started using Linux at work and my company stopped using BSD it would get rave reviews and seven hundred replies in a day and a half. Meanwhile, there's actual apps being written that do amazing things running ON various OSes and we're too busy short-stroking to see the forest for the trees.
but digital is better for sanity's sake. Imagine trying to store your pr0n on vinyl. "Damn. One scratch and that whole Ginger Lynn compilation is fubar..."
It would be nice if there was an analog that was compact, and of course modern digital systems will be the tools used to design and create it: the optical storage device. That's right, light need not be binary. In the future a continuous spectrum usage will allow us to hear all the sneezes, barfing, women tossing bras on stage, children crying, mistuned bass guitars, poorly maintained drums played by drunken idiots, and other goodness we've unfortunately missed out on with modern concert recordings.
Yeah, I certainly miss pops, hiss, static, and all the other nuance of a technology that catches every little tiny thing. Makes it a real challenge to pick out the other nuances I actually do want like the complex cord changes of a four string electric guitar being played in a studio on digital equipment and played back at the concert so the performer can lip synch to it...
But I look at this way. If I can't afford one of those nice vacuum tube audio boards, I can always wait for the next generation of Intel and AMD processors and sooner or later, they'll be as large and glowing with heat. Maybe they'll even be analog. "This processor supposed to hiss and hum like this?"
I keep a copy of Perl 5 for Dummies on my desk...
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Learning Perl, 4th Ed.
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· Score: 2, Funny
...just to remind me that there are things in this world less sane than C++ but oddly more seductive.
The other Perl books I keep in my private collection with my BSD books hidden behind a box of pr0n tapes and DVDs so no one thinks I'm a total perv.
I think their "one-stop shop" approach to computing makes a lot of sense in today's world of shite PCs running a shite OS...
Actually, this is what keeps the Apple choice more expensive and much more limited than the PC choice every time. Apple decides who can make what for it by their decisions on who to release what technical information to. They've been this way since the Apple ][ days and have not practically changed yet. All else that gets past Lord Jobs and the rest of the Apple Fanatics is done through sheer bloody mindedness.
Meanwhile on Windows, or Linux, there's ZERO problem getting LOADS of technical info for the PC platform and those OS varieties, and writing your own code. Are we to believe that "shite PCs running a shite OS" is caused by accessibility to the hardware and software specifics? Well then for Linux to finally take on Windows, that means the same open access to info and Linux is supposed to be all about open. The more that it spreads and the more that is written for it, the greater the "shite" will be.
Therefore only the top-down dictatorial arrogance of Apple makes it not"shite". Who here confuses Apple with an OSS friendly company? Well obviously way too many. Let me correct that impression. Anyone not romantically or religiously involved with Apple as a techie and coder knows that they are about as warm and fuzzy as Steve Ballmer aroused to anger. Pure and simple, Apple is Microsoft with its own in-house hardware platform to go with the OS.
I'll take Microsoft and Linux being written to a hardware platform pushed more by the various hardware working groups and industry associations over one company supplying everything from soup to nuts and having to put up with anything they do no matter how outrageous just because one or two things are cool even though the rest is crap. The IT industry has already been there and gotten the t-shirt with IBM, Sun, and Silicon Graphics. Time for real change at Apple and it is the ONLY way we will see a *nixish OS truly take on Windows on the desktop in the near future.
Put the average end-user in front of two identical machines, ready to load. Each with one Ethernet card, one webcam, one HP inkjet printer, one external USB/Firewire device, one HD, one DVD burner, one dial-up modem. Give them Windows XP Home retail for one and Fedora Core 3 for the other. The assignment: by yourself with no external references or help, install each one and have all peripherals and harware working. You may only connect to the net to download drivers but may NOT research anything. You have to go with the interfae and help files immediately availible with the OS in question.
I guarantee you it will be Windows XP Home every single time that is totally or mostly successful. The webcam alone will be enough to prevent the FC3 build from reaching totality. The second most problematic will be the external USB or Firewire device. The third will be the modem and fourth will be the printer.
People can whine about there being a monopoly when the Linux would comes up with a disto that is as easy to use, as well supported, has as wide support for hardware as easily, and is so easy to maintain as Windows. Of course, the method Microsoft chose to follow to this plateau also came with a lot of tradeoffs on stability and security but any Linux zealot who claims Linux is secure and stable is lying blatantly. If Linux was so stable, or any *nix for that matter, would you need to have (you@yourbox)# kill [process id] in your toolbox never mind the legendary issues with the quirks of the most common *nix tools?
Here's a neat one. Load up the Stardock Object Desktop software suite on a WinXP box. Load up xcompmgr w/KDE on the FC3 box. Make each work. I guarantee the xcompmgr on FC3 will be so unstable and resource hogging as to make the machine useless, illustrating the claim of those who put it in, that is is unstable. Not so with SOD. Neat shadows, transparancy, zoomers like OSX, etc. Eye candy in abundance.
All that said, I use FC3 every day at home. But I have no blinders on that it is a techies' OS and NOT a casual end-user OS. I've been supporting Windows since before most of the anti-Microsoft crowd began their inane tinfoil hat FUD ranting against Redmond and if there is one central truth to it that I've learned, that it is very stable and secure IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING (with the exception of Millenium Edition which sucked donkey balls, especially on HP Pavillions).
I guarantee you that should any distro of Linux of tomorrow become equal to the ease of use and intuitiveness of Windows of today, it will be equally open to user error because that is the nature of the situation. The only practical way to shield against user error is to make the doing of things so hard that it discourages the attempt. The only practical way to make the system easy to use for total idiots is to make it childishly open and easy to do the slightest thing.
I wouldn't sell ANY version of Linux preloaded on consumer PCs aimed at casual end-users because as someone who's supported them for years on end, I know they won't even read their VCR manuals to stop the clock from flashing 12:00. They won't have truck with RPMs and dependency never mind makefiles and builds.
Please oh G-d please do not let this come to fruition. Please let it be optioned to oblivion and tossed in a drawer. May they get horrible debilitating diseases if they attempt it. May a curse on the level of Tut's strike them.
If this happens, Gatchaman cannot be far behind. We must act now to stop this for the preservation of all human kind.
I'm going to go put myself in an 80s-bad-Japanese-animation-adaptations-free room and not come out till this is a painful and soul-scarring memory... And drink... A lot...
Would I buy something like this? Maybe in conjunction with a hardware encryption system, I'd have the ultimate in secure quick erase storage as well as being rugged for mobile usage.
It's a step in the right direction, but we need advances in memory size, cost, and MTBF...
"The supercomputer has a performing capacity equivalent to 500,000 high-functioning computers, the business daily said." Forbes, June 22, 2005 Haha ha.
Now if only we could find 500,000 high-functioning computer users who didn't magically have the unerring ability to turn a machine that powerful into a sluggish virus infested mess in five minutes flat of free pr0n surfing. Now that would be an accomplishment.
They also announced that the name was a joke gotten out of hand and no one could remember what it was anyways, so it will now be called "Debbie".
Lawyers for Little Debbie and several hundred thousand women named Deborah were audibly drooling.
Trekkies promised a write-in campaign saying that no one hearing the name would be in the slightest reminded of the Denebian Slime Eel reference anymore.
Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?
"Damn, Mr. Reaper. That was right on time. Another minute and it would have been really bad timing."
What WOULD failure be for this? They declared surrender and changed the base to Red Hat/Fedora Core? They decided that the new policy was too fast and people can't live at these speeds and we need to go back to the "when Hell freezes over" method of updates?
What the hell is failure for a Debian Conference? Most not getting drunk after hours at the bar with their friends? No one gets lucky with a geekette? What was the definition of success?
Seems weasel-worded to me. I think it would be better to say that the conference "went well" or "went wonderfully" or "narrowly avoided raid by local police".
...how will we know the fans are still running correctly?
(tinfoil hat on)
Oh, I know. The PC hardware vendors can now put in all sorts of electronic monitoring of the coolant systems and add to the cost of the system. If we pay a premium, it will page us. It will be separate and not part of the PC itself, sort of like a home router. And it can then even monitor other things.
Oh, wait. X10 systems can already do this and control my stereo and open my curtains and so on.
No thanks, I'd rather do like the late Engineer Scott and tell how well my cooling is doing by the sound it makes, like the vibration of the deck plates of a starship. I mean, imagine suggesting to mechanics that they pay no attention to their ears when diagnosing auto problems.
There's an old saying that figures do not lie but that liars figure. Unlike the term "engineer" which does have a very well specified and limited set of disciplines to which it officially applies, anyone can call themselves a scientist or be called a scientist by others no matter what their credentials or lack thereof, no matter what their politics or level of involvement in the political arena, no matter what their history of claims and outcomes, etc.
I recall a lot of so-called "scientists" such as Jeremy Rifkin dominating the 70s and early 80s talk on the environment, politics, population, and so forth. By now, according to "scientists", we were supposed to have been buried under overpopulation and feeding on recycled bodies ala Soylent Green, nearly extinct due to starvation and lack of drinkable water, burned to a crisp by greenhouse effect and disappearing ozone, and frozen solid in another ice age.
None of these have come to pass and when this is pointed out, these "scientists" and their supporters go, "see? That's because we told you it could happen and we got people mobilized to stop it" despite the fact that the evidence shows to the contrary.
I look askance at any scientists who adopt a POV and then take part in political lobbying based on it. Science is not about absolutes most of the time. We start from "we don't know anything" and with luck progress to "we don't know everything". The wise researcher always assumes there is more to learn and leaves the making of assumptions to those outside of science, searching on for more and more fine results and knowledge. The wise leave preponderance of evidence to the weight of the results and history.
The claim that "scientists, by definition, work via the scientific method and thus bogus conclusions will be challenged and repudiated" is one used by so-called "scientists" themselves whenever they make wild absolute claims that are without merit.
We should no more allow the aura and cloak of "science" to go unquestioned any more than politics. The whole point of science and for that matter democracy is to question.
This is the third level. Everything you need to store in encrypted containers you can quite easily. You can also encrypt files and then store them in encrypted containers to add a fourth level.
Using all of these, no hack will open the system to unauthorized use. You need the physical and software keys and the password. Without them there's no chance of recovery in this lifetime with any computer technology now or forseen within the next century that will break all of it without the entire resources of the planet being turned to the job for a period slightly in excess of the sun's remaining lifespan.
You can also get hardware encrypted external drives as well and use multiple layers of software encryption on them.
To address the main post, like who didn't know the best way to gain access to a system was to physically pwn it? I mean, really...
(It's just that with prudent countermeasures and the machines not being left on and requiring all authentication for decryption from start to finish, that point is moot.)
Re:Uh Oh.
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Why FreeBSD
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, about the time of the DOS/Win to Win transition and beginning of the elimination of the 16-bit section to move to 32-bit, there was some argument that Microsoft should have stayed with a windowing manager on top of core OS paradigm as they previously had and beefed up DOS to be something like Unix.
Fortunately, saner minds prevailed.
As advanced as current iterations of Linux are over BSD in useability and sanity (Gentoo notwithstanding) they still harken back to phosphor terminals and text interaction at every turn. Want to install everything in FC3 off the DVD and work with nothing more than what is on there? Fine. But it won't include Java, Macromedia Flash, the latest Firefox, drivers for any webcams or a dozen other things you might have or want to put on your box, etc.
Use of a text interface and system fiddling is inevitable. Not so with Windows.
If the BSD community could drop their (admitedly less than the Linux crowd's) dislike of Windows and Microsoft, they might see that useability and integration do not have to be wholly separate from security. I would love to see OpenBSD as the guts of a good GUI-centric OS with modern packaging systems as easy as those found on Windows. Then you could say, "here's an OS that is as easy to use as Windows and infinitely more secure because its parentage was all about security."
Using Windows 98 or 95 instead of Windows XP is like using Xenix instead of Fedora Core 3/4 or any other latest modern Linux or BSD distribution. Microsoft should not be making everything eternally backward compatible. People who b*tched endlessly about Windows 3.1 nevertheless did the same about Microsoft dropping 16-bit Win 3.1 compatibility even though they were on Windows 95 Revision B by then.
Would you still use a ten year old version of a Unix variant in your business simply because you didn't want to pay for the upgrade? Would you use a ten year old Linux distro because you didn't want to spend the time on upgrading?
You do what you have to, to be part of the modern technological world. I don't expect vidoes to be published on Betamax, I don't expect music to be published on 8-track, I don't expect the latest and greatest software to be ported to OSes that are the farthest removed from latest and greatest. This would be like trying to publish modern PC games for use with a Trident chipset video card with 1MB RAM. The latest and greatest should work with the contemporary, not the yesterday.
Not much you can do about it. Encryption, anonymous remailers, proxies, all can be used for good and bad purposes. So can speech, religion, press, arms, etc.
Either we stand up to our responsibilities as adults and advanced and civilized people with a sense of honor, propriety, and duty, and chase criminals and terrorists while playing by the traditions, rules, regulations, and laws... or we dispense with our rights, liberties, and privileges in the name of safety and prevention of infractions.
As we all well know, you cannot trade freedom for security and we'll be damned if we do. We can only try to find ways to stop the abuse but I sincerly hope people do not seek to go beyond that. I use Tor to get out of my subnet when it is blacklisted due to abuse activities by people also on the subnet. Why should I suffer for some arse's misbehavior? I also use it to keep my privacy when dealing with places where locals tend to have more than a touch of nastiness and vindictiveness.
The Internet is crawling with bad people. We shouldn't hesitate to use the privacy technologies availible to defend ourselves and we shouldn't be looking askance at them because some people abuse them. People abuse just about anything. That's human nature. Should we live in padded rooms in underground bunkers?
This is about a shift in it. In many areas of telecommunications, networking, software, and hardware the advances are coming from consortiums and associations of corporations and private organizations more than they are any individual member. This is good.
Don't believe me? Imagine more backplane standards than we already have covered by PICMG. Imagine one from every vendor. Imagine a different cable modem standard from every vendor. If you were around pre-DOCSIS when the IEEE could not find its arse with both hands, a hunting dog, a flashlight, and a copy of Gray's Anatomy with 802.14 then you know what I mean. Imagine forty different slot standards. Imagine ninety different processors.
More and more ideas are being expanded on and pushed forward by the force of more and more ideas from more and more people. Sometimes innovation does come from one company such as Sony's Passage system allowing the use of the formerly mutually exclusive Motorola and Scientific Atlanta systems. But the force of history is clear that cross-platform will become closer and closer to synthetic uniplatforms and the parents will give way to others in society shepherding their seed along.
Mr. Kay has plenty of places his contributions will be welcome. It's not about HP or Apple or any other single group. It's about the groups of groups and the individuals who comprise them.
I'll just be moving my investment targets away from companies like HP to those embracing better stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
...was supposed to have been Java's big selling point. Now it seems we are relying on the browsers to do everything Java just really isn't working for.
The idea of a safe sandbox for powerful web delivered code to work within falls apart when you realize that the average user is a complete dim bulb when it comes to system administration and security. They just don't know what to do to limit what code.
Now if the web world ever came up with a simple point and click interaction method and clear concise and simple instructions as to how to stop rogue sandbox code from eating resources and what to do with it to limit it for security's sake, it would definitely help sys admins, but it still would not make enough of a dent in the denseness of the average user.
Too bad, because Google is right as to what web apps of this sort need for power on the client side.
that drives this neverending fascination with fluff non-news about where Linux is being used or is it to cover up and draw attention away from poor Windows skills, or both?
I think both.
I may use Linux but that doesn't mean I care to hear about every single place, thing, entity, etc. that uses some iteration of Linux. Nor do I need to hear endless fawning over Steve Jobs and Apple and OSX as if it was going to bring spiritual salvation.
Fer crissakes people, it's just an operating system. It's not giving you longer life, making you smarter, conferring beauty and handsomeness on you, or sleeping with you (although I'm sure there's some geeks looking to cyberneticize a real doll with Linux and report on it here). I really think we need to get a grip here at Slashdot when it comes to Linux.
I bet if my mother started using Linux at work and my company stopped using BSD it would get rave reviews and seven hundred replies in a day and a half. Meanwhile, there's actual apps being written that do amazing things running ON various OSes and we're too busy short-stroking to see the forest for the trees.
but digital is better for sanity's sake. Imagine trying to store your pr0n on vinyl. "Damn. One scratch and that whole Ginger Lynn compilation is fubar..."
It would be nice if there was an analog that was compact, and of course modern digital systems will be the tools used to design and create it: the optical storage device. That's right, light need not be binary. In the future a continuous spectrum usage will allow us to hear all the sneezes, barfing, women tossing bras on stage, children crying, mistuned bass guitars, poorly maintained drums played by drunken idiots, and other goodness we've unfortunately missed out on with modern concert recordings.
Yeah, I certainly miss pops, hiss, static, and all the other nuance of a technology that catches every little tiny thing. Makes it a real challenge to pick out the other nuances I actually do want like the complex cord changes of a four string electric guitar being played in a studio on digital equipment and played back at the concert so the performer can lip synch to it...
But I look at this way. If I can't afford one of those nice vacuum tube audio boards, I can always wait for the next generation of Intel and AMD processors and sooner or later, they'll be as large and glowing with heat. Maybe they'll even be analog. "This processor supposed to hiss and hum like this?"
...just to remind me that there are things in this world less sane than C++ but oddly more seductive.
The other Perl books I keep in my private collection with my BSD books hidden behind a box of pr0n tapes and DVDs so no one thinks I'm a total perv.
I think their "one-stop shop" approach to computing makes a lot of sense in today's world of shite PCs running a shite OS...
Actually, this is what keeps the Apple choice more expensive and much more limited than the PC choice every time. Apple decides who can make what for it by their decisions on who to release what technical information to. They've been this way since the Apple ][ days and have not practically changed yet. All else that gets past Lord Jobs and the rest of the Apple Fanatics is done through sheer bloody mindedness.
Meanwhile on Windows, or Linux, there's ZERO problem getting LOADS of technical info for the PC platform and those OS varieties, and writing your own code. Are we to believe that "shite PCs running a shite OS" is caused by accessibility to the hardware and software specifics? Well then for Linux to finally take on Windows, that means the same open access to info and Linux is supposed to be all about open. The more that it spreads and the more that is written for it, the greater the "shite" will be.
Therefore only the top-down dictatorial arrogance of Apple makes it not "shite". Who here confuses Apple with an OSS friendly company? Well obviously way too many. Let me correct that impression. Anyone not romantically or religiously involved with Apple as a techie and coder knows that they are about as warm and fuzzy as Steve Ballmer aroused to anger. Pure and simple, Apple is Microsoft with its own in-house hardware platform to go with the OS.
I'll take Microsoft and Linux being written to a hardware platform pushed more by the various hardware working groups and industry associations over one company supplying everything from soup to nuts and having to put up with anything they do no matter how outrageous just because one or two things are cool even though the rest is crap. The IT industry has already been there and gotten the t-shirt with IBM, Sun, and Silicon Graphics. Time for real change at Apple and it is the ONLY way we will see a *nixish OS truly take on Windows on the desktop in the near future.
Certainly won't be Linspire.
Put the average end-user in front of two identical machines, ready to load. Each with one Ethernet card, one webcam, one HP inkjet printer, one external USB/Firewire device, one HD, one DVD burner, one dial-up modem. Give them Windows XP Home retail for one and Fedora Core 3 for the other. The assignment: by yourself with no external references or help, install each one and have all peripherals and harware working. You may only connect to the net to download drivers but may NOT research anything. You have to go with the interfae and help files immediately availible with the OS in question.
I guarantee you it will be Windows XP Home every single time that is totally or mostly successful. The webcam alone will be enough to prevent the FC3 build from reaching totality. The second most problematic will be the external USB or Firewire device. The third will be the modem and fourth will be the printer.
People can whine about there being a monopoly when the Linux would comes up with a disto that is as easy to use, as well supported, has as wide support for hardware as easily, and is so easy to maintain as Windows. Of course, the method Microsoft chose to follow to this plateau also came with a lot of tradeoffs on stability and security but any Linux zealot who claims Linux is secure and stable is lying blatantly. If Linux was so stable, or any *nix for that matter, would you need to have (you@yourbox)# kill [process id] in your toolbox never mind the legendary issues with the quirks of the most common *nix tools?
Here's a neat one. Load up the Stardock Object Desktop software suite on a WinXP box. Load up xcompmgr w/KDE on the FC3 box. Make each work. I guarantee the xcompmgr on FC3 will be so unstable and resource hogging as to make the machine useless, illustrating the claim of those who put it in, that is is unstable. Not so with SOD. Neat shadows, transparancy, zoomers like OSX, etc. Eye candy in abundance.
All that said, I use FC3 every day at home. But I have no blinders on that it is a techies' OS and NOT a casual end-user OS. I've been supporting Windows since before most of the anti-Microsoft crowd began their inane tinfoil hat FUD ranting against Redmond and if there is one central truth to it that I've learned, that it is very stable and secure IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING (with the exception of Millenium Edition which sucked donkey balls, especially on HP Pavillions).
I guarantee you that should any distro of Linux of tomorrow become equal to the ease of use and intuitiveness of Windows of today, it will be equally open to user error because that is the nature of the situation. The only practical way to shield against user error is to make the doing of things so hard that it discourages the attempt. The only practical way to make the system easy to use for total idiots is to make it childishly open and easy to do the slightest thing.
I wouldn't sell ANY version of Linux preloaded on consumer PCs aimed at casual end-users because as someone who's supported them for years on end, I know they won't even read their VCR manuals to stop the clock from flashing 12:00. They won't have truck with RPMs and dependency never mind makefiles and builds.
...have you ever tried to rhyme with only ones and zeros?
Please oh G-d please do not let this come to fruition. Please let it be optioned to oblivion and tossed in a drawer. May they get horrible debilitating diseases if they attempt it. May a curse on the level of Tut's strike them.
If this happens, Gatchaman cannot be far behind. We must act now to stop this for the preservation of all human kind.
I'm going to go put myself in an 80s-bad-Japanese-animation-adaptations-free room and not come out till this is a painful and soul-scarring memory... And drink... A lot...
Would I buy something like this? Maybe in conjunction with a hardware encryption system, I'd have the ultimate in secure quick erase storage as well as being rugged for mobile usage.
It's a step in the right direction, but we need advances in memory size, cost, and MTBF...
First, it seems almost powerful enough that it might start and run Adobe Premiere within four or five hours instead of six or seven.
Second, Kingdom of Loathing would finally have zero lag on the server side.
Third, it might be slightly more resistant to Slashdoting and building a router out of one of these might complete the defense.
Fourth, by the time this ends up on my desktop, Duke Nukem Forever will be in beta.
Other than that, should make wonderful blurb filler regarding chess matches with Russians for kids' science news periodicals.
"The supercomputer has a performing capacity equivalent to 500,000 high-functioning computers, the business daily said." Forbes, June 22, 2005 Haha ha.
Now if only we could find 500,000 high-functioning computer users who didn't magically have the unerring ability to turn a machine that powerful into a sluggish virus infested mess in five minutes flat of free pr0n surfing. Now that would be an accomplishment.
Forget violins. Now you can go to your whiny teenager and say, "this is the world's smallest MP3 player, playing just for you" and not be lying.
Didn't we have already an article that most of the studies carried out are useless ?
Yes, and I predicted that no one would care.
I was right!
Let me save you the time. I'll just take my camera phone and...
(Ziiiip)
There ya go.
Or could you see it coming, my response to this nonsense?
They also announced that the name was a joke gotten out of hand and no one could remember what it was anyways, so it will now be called "Debbie".
Lawyers for Little Debbie and several hundred thousand women named Deborah were audibly drooling.
Trekkies promised a write-in campaign saying that no one hearing the name would be in the slightest reminded of the Denebian Slime Eel reference anymore.
Actually, I was going to ask this too. I mean, it's like saying in the news that someone "suffered an untimely death". Might they have "enjoyed a timely death"?
"Damn, Mr. Reaper. That was right on time. Another minute and it would have been really bad timing."
What WOULD failure be for this? They declared surrender and changed the base to Red Hat/Fedora Core? They decided that the new policy was too fast and people can't live at these speeds and we need to go back to the "when Hell freezes over" method of updates?
What the hell is failure for a Debian Conference? Most not getting drunk after hours at the bar with their friends? No one gets lucky with a geekette? What was the definition of success?
Seems weasel-worded to me. I think it would be better to say that the conference "went well" or "went wonderfully" or "narrowly avoided raid by local police".
Because it's 1337?
Yeah, pretty much that.
You could do the same with a dozen shareware, freeware, abandonware, and pay programs on Windows. But it wouldn't be 1337.
...how will we know the fans are still running correctly?
(tinfoil hat on)
Oh, I know. The PC hardware vendors can now put in all sorts of electronic monitoring of the coolant systems and add to the cost of the system. If we pay a premium, it will page us. It will be separate and not part of the PC itself, sort of like a home router. And it can then even monitor other things.
Oh, wait. X10 systems can already do this and control my stereo and open my curtains and so on.
No thanks, I'd rather do like the late Engineer Scott and tell how well my cooling is doing by the sound it makes, like the vibration of the deck plates of a starship. I mean, imagine suggesting to mechanics that they pay no attention to their ears when diagnosing auto problems.
This was the idea in Marshall Savage's The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps .
I suspect that custom molded composite/elastic gloves would be a good idea to try.
There's an old saying that figures do not lie but that liars figure. Unlike the term "engineer" which does have a very well specified and limited set of disciplines to which it officially applies, anyone can call themselves a scientist or be called a scientist by others no matter what their credentials or lack thereof, no matter what their politics or level of involvement in the political arena, no matter what their history of claims and outcomes, etc.
I recall a lot of so-called "scientists" such as Jeremy Rifkin dominating the 70s and early 80s talk on the environment, politics, population, and so forth. By now, according to "scientists", we were supposed to have been buried under overpopulation and feeding on recycled bodies ala Soylent Green, nearly extinct due to starvation and lack of drinkable water, burned to a crisp by greenhouse effect and disappearing ozone, and frozen solid in another ice age.
None of these have come to pass and when this is pointed out, these "scientists" and their supporters go, "see? That's because we told you it could happen and we got people mobilized to stop it" despite the fact that the evidence shows to the contrary.
I look askance at any scientists who adopt a POV and then take part in political lobbying based on it. Science is not about absolutes most of the time. We start from "we don't know anything" and with luck progress to "we don't know everything". The wise researcher always assumes there is more to learn and leaves the making of assumptions to those outside of science, searching on for more and more fine results and knowledge. The wise leave preponderance of evidence to the weight of the results and history.
The claim that "scientists, by definition, work via the scientific method and thus bogus conclusions will be challenged and repudiated" is one used by so-called "scientists" themselves whenever they make wild absolute claims that are without merit.
We should no more allow the aura and cloak of "science" to go unquestioned any more than politics. The whole point of science and for that matter democracy is to question.
This is the first level. Hard drive is encrypted from the word go.
This is the second level. Everything on the hard drive from boot onwards is encrypted in software.
This is the third level. Everything you need to store in encrypted containers you can quite easily. You can also encrypt files and then store them in encrypted containers to add a fourth level.
Using all of these, no hack will open the system to unauthorized use. You need the physical and software keys and the password. Without them there's no chance of recovery in this lifetime with any computer technology now or forseen within the next century that will break all of it without the entire resources of the planet being turned to the job for a period slightly in excess of the sun's remaining lifespan.
You can also get hardware encrypted external drives as well and use multiple layers of software encryption on them.
To address the main post, like who didn't know the best way to gain access to a system was to physically pwn it? I mean, really...
(It's just that with prudent countermeasures and the machines not being left on and requiring all authentication for decryption from start to finish, that point is moot.)
Actually, about the time of the DOS/Win to Win transition and beginning of the elimination of the 16-bit section to move to 32-bit, there was some argument that Microsoft should have stayed with a windowing manager on top of core OS paradigm as they previously had and beefed up DOS to be something like Unix.
Fortunately, saner minds prevailed.
As advanced as current iterations of Linux are over BSD in useability and sanity (Gentoo notwithstanding) they still harken back to phosphor terminals and text interaction at every turn. Want to install everything in FC3 off the DVD and work with nothing more than what is on there? Fine. But it won't include Java, Macromedia Flash, the latest Firefox, drivers for any webcams or a dozen other things you might have or want to put on your box, etc.
Use of a text interface and system fiddling is inevitable. Not so with Windows.
If the BSD community could drop their (admitedly less than the Linux crowd's) dislike of Windows and Microsoft, they might see that useability and integration do not have to be wholly separate from security. I would love to see OpenBSD as the guts of a good GUI-centric OS with modern packaging systems as easy as those found on Windows. Then you could say, "here's an OS that is as easy to use as Windows and infinitely more secure because its parentage was all about security."
And I could finally stop referencing BSD/M.
Using Windows 98 or 95 instead of Windows XP is like using Xenix instead of Fedora Core 3/4 or any other latest modern Linux or BSD distribution. Microsoft should not be making everything eternally backward compatible. People who b*tched endlessly about Windows 3.1 nevertheless did the same about Microsoft dropping 16-bit Win 3.1 compatibility even though they were on Windows 95 Revision B by then.
Would you still use a ten year old version of a Unix variant in your business simply because you didn't want to pay for the upgrade? Would you use a ten year old Linux distro because you didn't want to spend the time on upgrading?
You do what you have to, to be part of the modern technological world. I don't expect vidoes to be published on Betamax, I don't expect music to be published on 8-track, I don't expect the latest and greatest software to be ported to OSes that are the farthest removed from latest and greatest. This would be like trying to publish modern PC games for use with a Trident chipset video card with 1MB RAM. The latest and greatest should work with the contemporary, not the yesterday.
Not much you can do about it. Encryption, anonymous remailers, proxies, all can be used for good and bad purposes. So can speech, religion, press, arms, etc.
Either we stand up to our responsibilities as adults and advanced and civilized people with a sense of honor, propriety, and duty, and chase criminals and terrorists while playing by the traditions, rules, regulations, and laws... or we dispense with our rights, liberties, and privileges in the name of safety and prevention of infractions.
As we all well know, you cannot trade freedom for security and we'll be damned if we do. We can only try to find ways to stop the abuse but I sincerly hope people do not seek to go beyond that. I use Tor to get out of my subnet when it is blacklisted due to abuse activities by people also on the subnet. Why should I suffer for some arse's misbehavior? I also use it to keep my privacy when dealing with places where locals tend to have more than a touch of nastiness and vindictiveness.
The Internet is crawling with bad people. We shouldn't hesitate to use the privacy technologies availible to defend ourselves and we shouldn't be looking askance at them because some people abuse them. People abuse just about anything. That's human nature. Should we live in padded rooms in underground bunkers?
This is about a shift in it. In many areas of telecommunications, networking, software, and hardware the advances are coming from consortiums and associations of corporations and private organizations more than they are any individual member. This is good.
Don't believe me? Imagine more backplane standards than we already have covered by PICMG. Imagine one from every vendor. Imagine a different cable modem standard from every vendor. If you were around pre-DOCSIS when the IEEE could not find its arse with both hands, a hunting dog, a flashlight, and a copy of Gray's Anatomy with 802.14 then you know what I mean. Imagine forty different slot standards. Imagine ninety different processors.
More and more ideas are being expanded on and pushed forward by the force of more and more ideas from more and more people. Sometimes innovation does come from one company such as Sony's Passage system allowing the use of the formerly mutually exclusive Motorola and Scientific Atlanta systems. But the force of history is clear that cross-platform will become closer and closer to synthetic uniplatforms and the parents will give way to others in society shepherding their seed along.
Mr. Kay has plenty of places his contributions will be welcome. It's not about HP or Apple or any other single group. It's about the groups of groups and the individuals who comprise them.
I'll just be moving my investment targets away from companies like HP to those embracing better stuff.