I agree. I've noticed a number of news stories where the U.S. is lobbying other countries in favor of corporations. I find it embarassing, and I wonder just how much representation we have if what our government does for us is really a matter of what it does for our corporations.
I've traced cables that were tightly bundled. Yes, tightly bundled cables can be traced, but it is harder, and strong hands are a help.
My RS-232 work started in a facility with several Honeywell Multics main frames, a couple of IBM main frames, and a dozen or so mini's. I've paid my dues in blood--literally--from poorly clipped tie wraps. I hate--repeat HATE--tie wraps.
Then, I'd spent some time working in telephone offices. You can tell that the telephone industry has a longer history of dealing with wiring. (Shocking, isn't it.) On many occasion, I've traced their neatly dressed bundles, and I've never scraped my hands on a tie wrap; they DON'T use them. They use waxed lacing cord instead. Sadly, this is a dying craft. 1) you have to know how to tie the right kind of knots. 2) Tie wrap manufactureres have more marketing behind them.
Experience is the only way to know what kinds of cabling layouts work well. Every style has its trade offs. Sloppy inexperience always causes the most trouble.
Professional installations use bundling for a reason; its the only way to manage massive permanent installations. In smaller environments, where tools for tracing are scarce, other styles can be used. But, don't assume that you can get away with being sloppy, because it'll cost ya.
The term Viral here does not refer to a virus. (Though, perhaps, you were being fecetious.)
Instead, it refers to a concept that licensing schemes may pollute one another. In such situations, the owners of rights might lose the right to some content if the viral content is allowed to infect the owned content.
This is a big issue in businesses where there is a fear that open-source code may be accidently included in proprietary code and render that "infected" propietary code subject to an open source license (obligating the business to open source their code).
Here, the fear is that CC content will become subject to Mircrosoft licensing or such.
Seriously, the point is that we can't regulate sites in other countries without a National firewall. Aside from the damage that would do to the Internet, we really don't need an bureaucracy of national censors.
"filled with highfalutin and banal platitudes" (from previos post)
Exactly...
"It's like my PC loves me" (from the article)
[Heave, wretch, heave, wretch...]
We need a new buzzword for these people to use so that they stop calling this sort of thing the "OS". They don't seem to want to admit that they're talking about the windowing system. I thought these people were all Gooey over the term GUI. They're really talking about the user "environment" or "realm". (But, Slashdot users already know this.)
For the future, I can see that there may be a larger division between client and server OS's. Client OS's should be inherently lightweight. I would say that we need a new term for Client OS. Any suggestions.
If there must be a Tiered Internet (and I fear we won't have a choice), then:
We'd like a public standard for the protocols involved.
We don't want corporations mucking up the standards with proprietary sneakiness.
We don't want proprietary sneakiness protected by the DMCA or some other Corporate biased regulation.
Oh yes; the DMCA will become a big part of this.
The quality of the Free Market is not measured by how easy it is for Corporations to regulate the market.
The quality of the Free Market is a matter of the diversity of choices that are available to consumers.
I have no problem with a Tiered Internet that gives us more choices;
I have a problem with anything that allows Corporations to reduce the number of choices;
especially, if they gain control of the regulatory agencies.
And what about the thieves who think cutting off a finger might be a neat way to get a soda?!?!?
Of course, the designers will say that they will guard against this. But, thieves don't always think things through and might cut something off anyway. Sure, dummy's like that are going to get caught, but my digits won't work a keyboard or play music like they used to.
When will I be able to buy insurance for my fingers and eyeballs that is specifically geared to address biometric crimes (as opposed to generic dismemberment insurance)? I don't want to live a poor disabled life because I couldn't afford to sue the inventors of biometric devices.
Originally, there seemed to be a some potential between open source (which I see as a free market force) and communism. This could have been a great bridge between cultures. But, China has been courting the big-business economics of the free World, and Microsoft has been combating the wide-spread pirating in the East. Conspirists would probably fear a creepy deal between China and the illegal monopoly of imperialistic capatalism (M$). Could this Lenovo deal be a part of that? Some have complained of Corporate Socialism in the U.S. Could this be the birth of Corporate Communism? And, will China compromise its standards for intellectual works and submit to Microsoft's DRM?
The whole PowerPC architecture includes memory management and such that is generally regarded as better at context switching. This is supposed to facilitate better task switching for servers that run many processes.
IBM's UNIX, AIX, is designed exclusively for PowerPC, the design of the memory managment and such reflects this, while Linux memory management is designed for portability. (There are bound to be some tests comparing Linux and AIX on IBM servers out there.) You'd think that the Apple kernel would take advantage of such things. But then, how many server farms out there run Apple-based systems?
So how many process forks did that MySql test create, and would that adequately represent a cross section of real-world environments?
To have a secure computer, you must
download the latest patches. Therefore, you must upgrade to SP4, and therefore, you must accept the EULA that requires you to agree with Microsoft's proprietary DRM.
The end is near. Security patches will soon require your body to be injected with RFID.
Surely, we are all doomed.
I have to compliment this post. This is a very meaningful portrayal of how a person may come to feel working in a security position. I appreciate this because this is the direction in which I am now pointed.
My skeptical mind tells me that there are a few considerations that deserve a poster on the security wall.
Nothing is absolute (even this).
Everything erodes and decays no matter how permanent you had hoped it would be.
Everyone, at some point, succumbs to human frailty, and good habits ultimately degrade from this.
Everyone will resist or neglect some area of education (eventually).
There will come a time when you feel like your the one with your finger in the dyke, and nobody cares (so get over it).
But, don't let Jack run your life.
Social engineering depends upon people being trusting. I doesn't matter if something was signed with a pen or a crypto scheme; someone will interpret the presence of a signature to mean more than it does. And then, there will always be forgers, impersonators, and posers.
The telco industry still manages to run at a higher level of reliability and quality than that part of the IT industry that has chosen to ignore such standards. Standards mean that facilities can be managed in a consistent fasion. Seriously, many problems are really a matter of someone settings things up in an unexpected manner.
Sadly, the cell phone industry as well as the Internet is forcing the old telco way to leave behind some of these assurances. Quality and reliability will suffer everywhere.
There will come a time when someone will light a candle during a power outage. The candle will start a fire. But when they go to call the fire deparment, niether phone nor cell phone are working. Cough cough.
Some telco offices don't have raised floor. Instead, cables are run in overhead trays.
You want, and I mean really want, those trays
to be strong and securly mounted.
Agreed. But, I'm often confronted with arguments of the form: for a thing that will likely go ahead anyway, some machiavellian participation could do much to safegaurd our rights.
The question then is: can we apply preassure to get some response as to what there position is on individual rights?
This appears to be hardware independant--which is good if it gains comercial acceptance (as opposed to having hardware requirements forced upon us). But without hardware requirements, what will industry expect of us in order to consider us trusted? With the DMCA be updated to be more draconian? Will we have to be online whenever we access DRM content? And then, what happens when eventually everything on our computers is considered to be some kind of DRM content?
I see projects on the sites, but I don't see any philosophy of operation or concept of user's rights. We need to start establishing boundaries before we loose control over our personal environments.
Vim allows users to create their own syntax highlighting using, among other things, regular expressions. I expect that other tools allow the same flexibility.
Altering such highlighting according to commands and regional settings is also obvious. Perl scripts to generate bold text for numbers in HTML almost certainly exist.
Now, didn't Microsoft make a donation to Vim's favorite charity?
O' SuSE Anna, don't you cry for me.
I come from Alabama with a disto on my er' laptop.
SLES (Enterprise Server) is supposed to make money for Novell. The spreading popularity of an fully open source version may be expected to help promote the enterprise version.
When you receive call for a non-profit organization, the person who is calling is not -- I REPEAT NOT -- a volunteer. That person is a professional telemarketer working for a FOR-PROFIT telemarketing agency. And they are every bit as unscrupulous as any other telemarketer.
They SWITCH their organizations around so that they can claim that you've never requested to be on "THEIR" do-not-call list.
These people cheapen any organization that they work for. Their sleaziness alters my entire sense of humanity.
The entire advertising industry is a world of delusions. They even use their delusions to sell thier delusions until all of the advertising industry operates under the delusion that there is, somehow, more to be gained by further saturating a market that is already faced by intense consumer anger and a deep hatred of the current advertising and marketing environment.
These people deserve to be severely punished. They trample our lives with their cheap dishonest trash. Their punishment may as well come in the form of -- DARE I SAY IT -- REGULATION -- SEVERE HARSH INDUSTRY CRUSHING REGULATION.
There; I feel so much better getting that off my chest... for now.
After reading through the various comments, I notice that there are a number of legitimately serious comments and discussions on the original posting. However, there seems to be a measurable temptation to respond to the humorous self-referential headline. So, not to be left out, I feel compelled (somewhat apologetically) to chime in with yet another silly self-referential comment.
Roughly, a third of all comments are superfluous or redundant.
The notion that corporations are spending money to mislead both the public and the government is indeed frightening. However, you have to expect a certain amount of noise with every discussion.
Unfortunately, there is an enormous academic gap between the undergraduate teaching of langauge and the teaching of technology. I have taken two technical writing courses: one taught by an English professor and the other by a professional technical writer. Surely the professor had a much broader grasp of the various aspects of language. However, the professor, quite naturally, taught in the fashion that is commonly used in liberal arts classes, and that is the method that has evolved to primarily benifit those students that are liberal arts majors. In that environment, technical and scientific majors are the neglected minority.
The professional technical writer, on the other hand, invariably taught directly from is own text. His text was, essentially, a well organized tutorial on techical writing. I became quite fond of his monotone reading since I knew that what I was being taught was going to be very usable.
This gap between the teaching methods of scientific and liberal arts communities alienates technical people. As such, techical people find themselves discouraged from maintain verbal skills.
As a technical person, I know that effort is needed to balance my verbal with my non-verbal skills. I avoid chat services; I would rather use email so that I can always be sure to write in complete sentences. Without this regular practice, my techical writing needs would be harmed.
Unfortunately, a posting of this sort only contributes to the alienation that most techical people feel. I would much rather see something hopeful said about the few language resources available that are suited to those who are more non-verbal.
Slashdot Mirror
There are mount options to deal with this in Linux. Not, that they are always used consistently.
I agree. I've noticed a number of news stories where the U.S. is lobbying other countries in favor of corporations. I find it embarassing, and I wonder just how much representation we have if what our government does for us is really a matter of what it does for our corporations.
I've traced cables that were tightly bundled. Yes, tightly bundled cables can be traced, but it is harder, and strong hands are a help.
My RS-232 work started in a facility with several Honeywell Multics main frames, a couple of IBM main frames, and a dozen or so mini's. I've paid my dues in blood--literally--from poorly clipped tie wraps. I hate--repeat HATE--tie wraps.
Then, I'd spent some time working in telephone offices. You can tell that the telephone industry has a longer history of dealing with wiring. (Shocking, isn't it.) On many occasion, I've traced their neatly dressed bundles, and I've never scraped my hands on a tie wrap; they DON'T use them. They use waxed lacing cord instead. Sadly, this is a dying craft. 1) you have to know how to tie the right kind of knots. 2) Tie wrap manufactureres have more marketing behind them.
Experience is the only way to know what kinds of cabling layouts work well. Every style has its trade offs. Sloppy inexperience always causes the most trouble.
Professional installations use bundling for a reason; its the only way to manage massive permanent installations. In smaller environments, where tools for tracing are scarce, other styles can be used. But, don't assume that you can get away with being sloppy, because it'll cost ya.
The term Viral here does not refer to a virus. (Though, perhaps, you were being fecetious.)
Instead, it refers to a concept that licensing schemes may pollute one another. In such situations, the owners of rights might lose the right to some content if the viral content is allowed to infect the owned content.
This is a big issue in businesses where there is a fear that open-source code may be accidently included in proprietary code and render that "infected" propietary code subject to an open source license (obligating the business to open source their code).
Here, the fear is that CC content will become subject to Mircrosoft licensing or such.
Anyway, the Borg analogy still applies.
yeah, right.
Seriously, the point is that we can't regulate sites in other countries without a National firewall. Aside from the damage that would do to the Internet, we really don't need an bureaucracy of national censors.
Agreed.
I hate to stifle revivals of the greatest series ever, but I see too many oppurtunities to screw this up.
Stop the sacrilege!
"filled with highfalutin and banal platitudes" (from previos post)
Exactly...
"It's like my PC loves me" (from the article)
[Heave, wretch, heave, wretch...]
We need a new buzzword for these people to use so that they stop calling this sort of thing the "OS". They don't seem to want to admit that they're talking about the windowing system. I thought these people were all Gooey over the term GUI. They're really talking about the user "environment" or "realm". (But, Slashdot users already know this.)
For the future, I can see that there may be a larger division between client and server OS's. Client OS's should be inherently lightweight. I would say that we need a new term for Client OS. Any suggestions.
So, Windows would be the OS of choice for people who want to plead insanity for their computer?
Knowledge is power...
Assuming:
1) You let the firewall provide the knowledge
2) You act on the knowledge
The problem is not the firewall, but that people choose ingorance.
I like knowing what software makes outgoing connections, and this is what I like most about personal firewalls.
Hey Government!
If there must be a Tiered Internet (and I fear we won't have a choice), then:
Oh yes; the DMCA will become a big part of this.
The quality of the Free Market is not measured by how easy it is for Corporations to regulate the market.
The quality of the Free Market is a matter of the diversity of choices that are available to consumers.
I have no problem with a Tiered Internet that gives us more choices;
I have a problem with anything that allows Corporations to reduce the number of choices;
especially, if they gain control of the regulatory agencies.
Here comes the New FCC.
And what about the thieves who think cutting off a finger might be a neat way to get a soda?!?!? Of course, the designers will say that they will guard against this. But, thieves don't always think things through and might cut something off anyway. Sure, dummy's like that are going to get caught, but my digits won't work a keyboard or play music like they used to. When will I be able to buy insurance for my fingers and eyeballs that is specifically geared to address biometric crimes (as opposed to generic dismemberment insurance)? I don't want to live a poor disabled life because I couldn't afford to sue the inventors of biometric devices.
Originally, there seemed to be a some potential between open source (which I see as a free market force) and communism. This could have been a great bridge between cultures. But, China has been courting the big-business economics of the free World, and Microsoft has been combating the wide-spread pirating in the East. Conspirists would probably fear a creepy deal between China and the illegal monopoly of imperialistic capatalism (M$). Could this Lenovo deal be a part of that? Some have complained of Corporate Socialism in the U.S. Could this be the birth of Corporate Communism? And, will China compromise its standards for intellectual works and submit to Microsoft's DRM?
The whole PowerPC architecture includes memory management and such that is generally regarded as better at context switching. This is supposed to facilitate better task switching for servers that run many processes.
IBM's UNIX, AIX, is designed exclusively for PowerPC, the design of the memory managment and such reflects this, while Linux memory management is designed for portability. (There are bound to be some tests comparing Linux and AIX on IBM servers out there.) You'd think that the Apple kernel would take advantage of such things. But then, how many server farms out there run Apple-based systems?
So how many process forks did that MySql test create, and would that adequately represent a cross section of real-world environments?
Yes. Your orignal Windows 2000 EULA is revoked!
To have a secure computer, you must download the latest patches. Therefore, you must upgrade to SP4, and therefore, you must accept the EULA that requires you to agree with Microsoft's proprietary DRM.
The end is near. Security patches will soon require your body to be injected with RFID. Surely, we are all doomed.
I have to compliment this post. This is a very meaningful portrayal of how a person may come to feel working in a security position. I appreciate this because this is the direction in which I am now pointed.
My skeptical mind tells me that there are a few considerations that deserve a poster on the security wall.
But, don't let Jack run your life.
Social engineering depends upon people being trusting. I doesn't matter if something was signed with a pen or a crypto scheme; someone will interpret the presence of a signature to mean more than it does. And then, there will always be forgers, impersonators, and posers.
The telco industry still manages to run at a higher level of reliability and quality than that part of the IT industry that has chosen to ignore such standards. Standards mean that facilities can be managed in a consistent fasion. Seriously, many problems are really a matter of someone settings things up in an unexpected manner.
Sadly, the cell phone industry as well as the Internet is forcing the old telco way to leave behind some of these assurances. Quality and reliability will suffer everywhere.
There will come a time when someone will light a candle during a power outage. The candle will start a fire. But when they go to call the fire deparment, niether phone nor cell phone are working. Cough cough.
Some telco offices don't have raised floor. Instead, cables are run in overhead trays. You want, and I mean really want, those trays to be strong and securly mounted.
Agreed. But, I'm often confronted with arguments of the form: for a thing that will likely go ahead anyway, some machiavellian participation could do much to safegaurd our rights.
The question then is: can we apply preassure to get some response as to what there position is on individual rights?
This appears to be hardware independant--which is good if it gains comercial acceptance (as opposed to having hardware requirements forced upon us). But without hardware requirements, what will industry expect of us in order to consider us trusted? With the DMCA be updated to be more draconian? Will we have to be online whenever we access DRM content? And then, what happens when eventually everything on our computers is considered to be some kind of DRM content?
I see projects on the sites, but I don't see any philosophy of operation or concept of user's rights. We need to start establishing boundaries before we loose control over our personal environments.
Syntax Highlighting is an important example.
Vim allows users to create their own syntax highlighting using, among other things, regular expressions. I expect that other tools allow the same flexibility.
Altering such highlighting according to commands and regional settings is also obvious. Perl scripts to generate bold text for numbers in HTML almost certainly exist.
Now, didn't Microsoft make a donation to Vim's favorite charity?
O' SuSE Anna, don't you cry for me. I come from Alabama with a disto on my er' laptop. SLES (Enterprise Server) is supposed to make money for Novell. The spreading popularity of an fully open source version may be expected to help promote the enterprise version.
I must go on record.
When you receive call for a non-profit organization, the person who is calling is not -- I REPEAT NOT -- a volunteer. That person is a professional telemarketer working for a FOR-PROFIT telemarketing agency. And they are every bit as unscrupulous as any other telemarketer.
They SWITCH their organizations around so that they can claim that you've never requested to be on "THEIR" do-not-call list.
These people cheapen any organization that they work for. Their sleaziness alters my entire sense of humanity.
The entire advertising industry is a world of delusions. They even use their delusions to sell thier delusions until all of the advertising industry operates under the delusion that there is, somehow, more to be gained by further saturating a market that is already faced by intense consumer anger and a deep hatred of the current advertising and marketing environment.
These people deserve to be severely punished. They trample our lives with their cheap dishonest trash. Their punishment may as well come in the form of -- DARE I SAY IT -- REGULATION -- SEVERE HARSH INDUSTRY CRUSHING REGULATION.
There; I feel so much better getting that off my chest... for now.
After reading through the various comments, I notice that there are a number of legitimately serious comments and discussions on the original posting. However, there seems to be a measurable temptation to respond to the humorous self-referential headline. So, not to be left out, I feel compelled (somewhat apologetically) to chime in with yet another silly self-referential comment.
Roughly, a third of all comments are superfluous or redundant.
The notion that corporations are spending money to mislead both the public and the government is indeed frightening. However, you have to expect a certain amount of noise with every discussion.
Little more than a midi-controlled guitare-timbred harpsicord. Oh wait! Harpsicords can play more than six notes at a time.
Unfortunately, there is an enormous academic gap between the undergraduate teaching of langauge and the teaching of technology. I have taken two technical writing courses: one taught by an English professor and the other by a professional technical writer. Surely the professor had a much broader grasp of the various aspects of language. However, the professor, quite naturally, taught in the fashion that is commonly used in liberal arts classes, and that is the method that has evolved to primarily benifit those students that are liberal arts majors. In that environment, technical and scientific majors are the neglected minority.
The professional technical writer, on the other hand, invariably taught directly from is own text. His text was, essentially, a well organized tutorial on techical writing. I became quite fond of his monotone reading since I knew that what I was being taught was going to be very usable.
This gap between the teaching methods of scientific and liberal arts communities alienates technical people. As such, techical people find themselves discouraged from maintain verbal skills.
As a technical person, I know that effort is needed to balance my verbal with my non-verbal skills. I avoid chat services; I would rather use email so that I can always be sure to write in complete sentences. Without this regular practice, my techical writing needs would be harmed.
Unfortunately, a posting of this sort only contributes to the alienation that most techical people feel. I would much rather see something hopeful said about the few language resources available that are suited to those who are more non-verbal.