I'm an American. A young one at that (22). I grew up under Regan, Bush, and Clinton. During those 3 administrations I had pride in my country. Yeah, there were scandals and scuffs and this and that, but over all I still had pride in my country. Then came 9/11...
It makes me so made that so many people died in 9/11 for nothing. I think if most of them saw the chain of events that happened after that it would make them sick. This administration has used their deaths to propel their agenda forward. If you oppose them, you are un-american (or so they'd have you believe). It's possibly the sickest thing I've ever seen. This whole administration is on the same level as Hitler. The fact they can send countless troops not only to their deaths, but many injured and may never walk or see or live a normal life again. It's just sick.
They have undone 100 years of privacy laws in just a few short years in the name of "terrorism". Terrorism is like the fucking boogie man in this country. Completely intangable, yet we are being forced by Bush's regime to be constantly scared of it. Before 9/11 terrorism in this country was neglable. Since then, we've had no major attacks in this country. Yet I've had all my rights stripped because of this "threat" that has affect so few people personally. More people will die by morning of heart disease than 9/11 and the Iraq war combined (American deaths). Our priorties are all fucked up.
The 24 hour news channels don't help. They scare everyone into thinking there's something to be afraid of. THERE ISN'T. Be afriad of dying because you don't take care of your body. Be afriad of dying in your SUV because of a rollover. Be afraid of dying from getting AIDS from unprotected sex. Don't be afriad of dying from terrorism.
We are all dying a slow death anyway. Is living in this made up state of fear constantly really living? I sure as hell don't think it is. Our forefathers gave their lives for what? For an administration to come along and undo hundreds of years of work in an instant?
Fuck you bush adminstration for scaring people. Fuck you 24 hour news channels for spreading the bullshit scare tactics. Fuck you Americans who lie back on your sofa being manipulated by these assholes.
Fuck the main story, it's time for some offtopic banter...
I remember thesite on msnbc. That was before tech tv or the similiar. Really, there was little/no tech presence on TV except maybe some shows on discovery channel. I remember seeing N64 for the first time on there. I didn't even know what the hell/dev/null was back then! I must have been like 11. I can't believe I remember this, but... I think Dev Null was run on dual SGI 500 mhz boxes. thesite.com is probably worth A LOT of money today. Now it's something lame like a redirect to g4.com
The story submitter is a fucking idiot. Why he added that comment at the end was merely to troll. He's probably the same type of jackass to troll on wikipedia. Wikipedia needs sane troll control. It's more than reasonable to say "for controversial articles you need to have an account that's been around for a few days". I think this should be the default policy rather than just for controversial articles. Wikipedia needs a lot of work done to get the trolls under control. The idea of wikipedia works only in a world of no trolls. People who have nothing better to do with their day than post false or idiotic content for no other reason than their amusement.
They are probably taking the wait and see approach not to scare off users. Ultimatly much more needs to be done to get the problem under control. Filters need to be in place to stop the common GNAA type of garbage. Also, they _really_ need a more sensible heirchy. Mod points maybe? That way, people with mod points can tag certain content as garbage. Then a higher up can just browse content marked as garbage and lock articles, ban users, etc etc.
The current system is working ok, but to keep good content contributers for the long term we need to get some sensible restrictions and a better authority heirchy.
Reading the policy, it's not very aggressive. So it's not _that_ bad. It's only for selected articles prone to vandals, and you only have to have an account more than 4 days.
I think it's very sensible and over time will become more aggressive. I think it's quite akin to how slashdot started. Slashdot started with good intentions. Then the trolls came. Slashdot had to figure out a way to deal with trolls, and over the period of years, has the trolls mostly under control. If you browse at -1 you can see how many trolls really post on slashdot. Wikipedia's first step really needs to be just to get the trolls under control. Once you weed out that crowd and have (semi) mature individuals serious about the content, it's much easier to improve the quality of wikipedia. I think we want wikipedia's only inaccurate content to be true unintentional mistakes. Not trolls and edit wars.
I don't give a shit if he's correcting errors about himself. I would encourage that. He knows his own life best, doesn't he? I see this more as a bunch of wikipedia haters trying to cause a stir over something that isn't. Now if he starts inserting "facts" about having 17 dicks and 19 balls, then people can bitch. But setting the record straight is a _GOOD_ thing.
Parrot more interesting than Perl 6
on
Larry Wall on Perl 6
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· Score: 4, Interesting
For as long as I've been following Perl 6, I've felt Parrot is more interesting than Perl 6 itself. Parrot is in many ways like.net (obviously there are many internal differences, but the idea is the same). Compile to a common bytecode that a virtual machine understands. This is interesting because it already supports (albeit incompletely) more languages than.Net and is a whole hell of a lot newer. I think Parrot is going to get the attention of a great chunk of languages haven't really considered using a VM before. We could see the age of 3 common bytecodes in practice. Java VM (whatever it's called),.Net, and Parrot. Maybe one day instead of seeing "Ruby 1.8 or greater required" we'll see "Parrot X.X or greater required". It'd be nice if we actually saw the day of the Parrot VM browser plugin or (pipedream) Windows coming with the parrot VM.
I remember when I was a Jazz major, one of my professors alluded to Musicians getting it. Chick Corea (pianist) believed it was a sort of subconcious resentment. That you need to improve your relationship with your instrument (keyboard). When he reestablished his relationship with his instrument, the carpal tunnel went away. Just a theory, but there may be some truth in it. How often does one associate the keyboard with stressful work?
offtopic? I guess some people need things spelled out for them. The above was a reference to Microsoft's blatent disregard of html standards. In effect, when we've got more than one standard out there, the above is the result.
I think everyone is quick to bash wikipedia for it's nature, but the parent poster hits it right on the head though. I can't think of a single place on the internet to get more information than wikipedia. Where else am I going to find detailed articles of the t-virus and bird flu on the same site? Everyone's been so quick to bash wikipedia lately, but give me something better and I'll use it. What are my alternatives? Use google and get my info from a site that could have false information as well? At least I can correct errors on wikipedia. If I read information on an angelfire site I know to be false, what can I do about it?
This is cool and all, but the article measures 15% greater efficiency. Wouldn't something just as complex (say, a turbo) be able to be more efficient? I'm rather suprised there aren't production cars combining multiple technologies such as turbo, steam, and electric.
Solutions like this still have a few problems though. a) still using gas. b) short term solution. What happens when we run out of gas? c) much more complex and more moving parts. It could be argued that an engine that uses these technologies is just as complex as a non-gas solution.
This is nice and all, but with the advent of more efficient gas engines, oil companies will just raise prices so they are still profitable. An engine might be twice as efficient, but will it matter if gas is 6 dollars a gallon?
I love Ruby. Once I discovered Ruby, it's become my prefered general purpose language. I love the fact it's a pure object oriented language. I love it's consisiveness. I love it's lack of "funny" characters (for the most part).
I freakin' can't stand using Rails. I remember getting very excited about it when I first discovered it. Watching apps being developed in 15 minutes. I read all the tutorials. I even bought the book from pragmatic programmer. I studied and wrote programs for 3 weeks. And I just could never get into it. On so many occasions I just felt cheated. It was all valid ruby code, but it just didn't seem in the spirit of ruby. My namespace was cluttered with a million methods. The names of which didn't seem logical and_reminded_me_of_php_function_names_rather_than_ an_object_oriented_language (anyone who's farmiliar with rails will understand the underscores). During those 3 weeks I just couldn't enjoy programming and couldn't get into it. I tried 2 more times over the next 2 months to try it again, but the same thing.
The biggest annoyance was automated code generation. It was almost pointless for me. If I made changes to the database, I either had to a) wipe the directory and start over reimplementing my changes. Or b) go through all the MVC code and find the references to the database. Well, this is what I have to do in most other web languages anyway! So what's the advantage? Scaffolding was great at this because it did everything dynamically. However, you can't reasonably keep the scaffolding because it's not meant to be your program. It's meant to be support around your program.
The experience seemed more like programming in php with a twist of mod_perl. All the reasons I wanted to get away from perl and php for web programming were back when I tried to write a large application. Rails just doesn't seem in the spirit of Ruby. It's not bad. Don't get me wrong. But it's not this revolutionary framework so many people would have you believe. Sure, it's great to show the 15 minute video. But I'd like to see the video of someone doing a large project in rails.
Jebus, has the poster or mod ever used rails??????
on
Ruby on Rails 1.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The point of rails is to have sensible defaults that work most of the time. Web apps share A LOT of commonality. The idea is to take out repitiveness as much as possible. This is done with sensible defaults. If these aren't good for you, they can be changed. But it's meant to have reasonable defaults for most, unlike certain web languages that make you start from scratch every time.
Finding its place
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think being hip and trendy hurt Java more than it helped. People tried to use java where it wasn't appropiate. Java applets for web buttons that could be done in CSS really hurt it a lot (I can't even tell you how many websites were doing that at one point). The Java buzz is cooling off finally. It's finding its place. Java is nestled in the ranks of C and C++. You'd probably use Java in the same places you might consider C or C++. That doesn't mean Java is going away. It means people are getting their acts together and seeing Java for what it is. Not as a way to make cute navigation buttons. But as a way to make serious applications such as Sphinx4.
Languages always have their places. It's important to see what's happening to Java. There was a point when every job description had Java in it. Java java java. Java was used for everything. Web applets. Full fledged GUI programs. Command line. Server side. I think people are finally realizing Java isn't good for everything. I think we are finally reaching an age which Java is finding it's place. It's meant for full fledged, cross platform, programs. GUI or command line. Programs that are meant to be kept open and running for awhile. This is where Java excels.
Java has had a terrible history. It's a lot of people's faults. PHB's, HR depts, Marketing, Bad programmers, Sun, companies releasing Java tools. I think most people on slashdot have a pretty strong opinion of Java. Love it or hate it, they have a strong opinion. The initial GUI implementation was awful. People were expeted by PHB's and Marketing to learn the new buzzword language in weeks, when in reality Java is the type of language you need to spend years studying. It's huge and complex. Just like C++. Java came into wide spread usage in the 90's, when computers were still a bit slow for it. It isn't until now that Java is really finding it's place. It's not as grand as the original plan for it was. If you talk to people, most of them have stale opinions of Java. Their view of Java is Java 8 years ago. And little will change their opinion.
The bug is believe to be a buffer overflow. This makes it a perfect canidate to execute malicious code within excel. Imagine being able to send an excel file to another company you don't think is being truthful with you and r00ting some of their boxen. You could pretty much spy on them all day without antivirus or antispyware picking you up. Imagine sending the excel file to a game developer and stealing source code for an upcoming game *hint* *hint*. 0-day exploits and unknown exploits are a serious problem because most companies think they are safe with anti-virus. Anti-virus supplies little/no protection against these kinds of attacks.
The fact that this project contains so many underdogs just might make it succeed. Their egos won't make it fall apart. Except for the MIT staff, almost every company involved can be replaced with someone bigger at any minute. AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat. They've all got bigger counter parts. I think it really pisses off the bigger companies that these smaller companies had more insight than them. When they realized how big this thing is going to be, it was too late.
I agree. Consumer anti-virus,firewalls, and anti-spyware are not a good metric of security. Most people can't stand blocking and unblocking programs for their outgoing firewall all day. And really, the average consumer doesn't know what's safe and unsafe. Incoming protection is pretty pointless too since so many computers are behind a nat router. Anti-virus provides protection for old viruses, but the 0-day mass speading ones generally beat anti-virus anyway. Anti-virus provides retroactive protection of viruses already written. It doesn't generally provide a means of stopping a suspected virus. I've seen some that can, but the general home user anti-virus doesn't or requires training from users not skilled enough to train it. On top of that, there's so much political bullshit that goes on within the ranks that something could be malicious to your computer, but the supplying company complained it was legit and they let it through anyway. Also! They generally provide little/no spyware protection. So you've got a bloated piece of crap anti virus program that slows down your computer almost as much as the virus itself that doesn't really work all that well.
The only retroactive solution I think is worthwhile these days is spyware scanning your box once a week. And rotate which scanner you use.
On the other hand, there is A LOT you can do not to get spyware and viruses in the first place. First, DON'T USE IE. All the fanboys will cry foul here, but it's true. I don't care if alternative browsers are just as hackable but they aren't being exploited blah blah blah... We'll cross that river when we get to it. For now, using almost anything besides IE will stop the bulk of your spyware. Also, in whatever browser you use, don't allow in browser media to be played. Flash, movies, music, etc etc. Or at the very least, make sure it prompts you first so you have the choice to only do so from websites you trust. Also, don't go to sketch sites. Plain and simple. Let's see... don't use outlook, EVER. In your MUA make sure it it either doesn't display html or prompts you to do so. Don't open attachments. It's stupid. It's so incredibly easy to spoof who you are via email that you can really never fully trust an email. Don't use AIM. There are AIM viruses left and right nowadays. Use an alternative like gaim or trillion and never accept to transfer files.
More than anything, just be smart about where you go and what you do. Understand that the internet really isn't a safe place. Security isn't a product, it's a process. I can't stress this enough. Doing certain things yourself will keep you safer than any anti-virus ever could.
The overall idea in getting away from MS is not to save money immediatly, but save money in the long run. MS has historically shown us they want to lock you in as fiercly as possible. Staying with MS now just means it will be harder to get away from them in 5 or 10 years. Once they are on a system of open document, they can really switch office suites that support it however they want. They can do testing of new suites within single departments and still exchange documents with everyone else. It isn't so much saving money directly on MS licenses. It's having the choice to go to another vendor at any time and not having to do a massive migration (such as what would happen with getting away from MS in the first place).
Regardless, they are fully supporting an open standard. This puts all software on a level playing field. Alternative browsers have gained great amounts of market share recently because they all compete on a (theoretically) level playing field (in practice we all know MS has attempted their own extensions to try and make html not so open standard). So what if IBM promotes their software product. The fact it will fully support open document is good enough. I think all open source advocates want is a level playing field not hindered by market leaders forcing vendor lock-in. We just want an environment where the software speaks for itself.
This is important to understand. This wasn't a google desktop bug. They just created a workaround to mitigate IE's bug MS won't fix. And because this is still an IE bug, MANY other programs are still affected.
From an end user standpoint, it's good they fixed it even though it definatly wasn't their fault in the least bit.
However by fixing it, it would seem to the average Joe an admittance that it was a bug in their software. This isn't the case in the least bit. I remember the old slashdot story and the trolls were out that day. Google desktop was given as an example of one of the dozens, if not thousands of various web based programs affected by this IE bug. Make no mistakes about it, this was an IE bug.
This really goes to show really how much of an ethical company google really is. They took charge and created a workaround in their software for a problem that really isn't theirs. Sadly, this won't convince the google trolls and they'll just add this to the bug count.
That's like the 12th time I've seen that link by you. Do you work for microsoft or something? Reviewing your posts it seems as if your posts are attached to mostly MS stories. I ask you, are you in any way affiliated with Microsoft, Microsoft funded company, or a Microsoft partner?
First of all, they used Windows XP SP2. Why the fuck would you do that in a multicore test. Use an OS that can handle that many cores properly. XP definatly can't. Not bashing windows either. I mean if you are going to use a windows OS at least use 2003 server. And why just test one OS? Also, the triple core title is completely misleading. The AMD arch for multicore processors is much more than just two cores stuck in a single incasing (ala Intel's design). It's much more advanced and just sticking a 2nd cpu into a multicore setup is not analagous to adding another core to the tight multicore setup. It's adding a whole 'nother cpu.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an American. A young one at that (22). I grew up under Regan, Bush, and Clinton. During those 3 administrations I had pride in my country. Yeah, there were scandals and scuffs and this and that, but over all I still had pride in my country. Then came 9/11...
It makes me so made that so many people died in 9/11 for nothing. I think if most of them saw the chain of events that happened after that it would make them sick. This administration has used their deaths to propel their agenda forward. If you oppose them, you are un-american (or so they'd have you believe). It's possibly the sickest thing I've ever seen. This whole administration is on the same level as Hitler. The fact they can send countless troops not only to their deaths, but many injured and may never walk or see or live a normal life again. It's just sick.
They have undone 100 years of privacy laws in just a few short years in the name of "terrorism". Terrorism is like the fucking boogie man in this country. Completely intangable, yet we are being forced by Bush's regime to be constantly scared of it. Before 9/11 terrorism in this country was neglable. Since then, we've had no major attacks in this country. Yet I've had all my rights stripped because of this "threat" that has affect so few people personally. More people will die by morning of heart disease than 9/11 and the Iraq war combined (American deaths). Our priorties are all fucked up.
The 24 hour news channels don't help. They scare everyone into thinking there's something to be afraid of. THERE ISN'T. Be afriad of dying because you don't take care of your body. Be afriad of dying in your SUV because of a rollover. Be afraid of dying from getting AIDS from unprotected sex. Don't be afriad of dying from terrorism.
We are all dying a slow death anyway. Is living in this made up state of fear constantly really living? I sure as hell don't think it is. Our forefathers gave their lives for what? For an administration to come along and undo hundreds of years of work in an instant?
Fuck you bush adminstration for scaring people. Fuck you 24 hour news channels for spreading the bullshit scare tactics. Fuck you Americans who lie back on your sofa being manipulated by these assholes.
Bush is the real terrorist, and he's already won.
Fuck the main story, it's time for some offtopic banter...
/dev/null was back then! I must have been like 11. I can't believe I remember this, but... I think Dev Null was run on dual SGI 500 mhz boxes. thesite.com is probably worth A LOT of money today. Now it's something lame like a redirect to g4.com
I remember thesite on msnbc. That was before tech tv or the similiar. Really, there was little/no tech presence on TV except maybe some shows on discovery channel. I remember seeing N64 for the first time on there. I didn't even know what the hell
The story submitter is a fucking idiot. Why he added that comment at the end was merely to troll. He's probably the same type of jackass to troll on wikipedia. Wikipedia needs sane troll control. It's more than reasonable to say "for controversial articles you need to have an account that's been around for a few days". I think this should be the default policy rather than just for controversial articles. Wikipedia needs a lot of work done to get the trolls under control. The idea of wikipedia works only in a world of no trolls. People who have nothing better to do with their day than post false or idiotic content for no other reason than their amusement.
They are probably taking the wait and see approach not to scare off users. Ultimatly much more needs to be done to get the problem under control. Filters need to be in place to stop the common GNAA type of garbage. Also, they _really_ need a more sensible heirchy. Mod points maybe? That way, people with mod points can tag certain content as garbage. Then a higher up can just browse content marked as garbage and lock articles, ban users, etc etc.
The current system is working ok, but to keep good content contributers for the long term we need to get some sensible restrictions and a better authority heirchy.
Reading the policy, it's not very aggressive. So it's not _that_ bad. It's only for selected articles prone to vandals, and you only have to have an account more than 4 days.
I think it's very sensible and over time will become more aggressive. I think it's quite akin to how slashdot started. Slashdot started with good intentions. Then the trolls came. Slashdot had to figure out a way to deal with trolls, and over the period of years, has the trolls mostly under control. If you browse at -1 you can see how many trolls really post on slashdot. Wikipedia's first step really needs to be just to get the trolls under control. Once you weed out that crowd and have (semi) mature individuals serious about the content, it's much easier to improve the quality of wikipedia. I think we want wikipedia's only inaccurate content to be true unintentional mistakes. Not trolls and edit wars.
I don't give a shit if he's correcting errors about himself. I would encourage that. He knows his own life best, doesn't he? I see this more as a bunch of wikipedia haters trying to cause a stir over something that isn't. Now if he starts inserting "facts" about having 17 dicks and 19 balls, then people can bitch. But setting the record straight is a _GOOD_ thing.
For as long as I've been following Perl 6, I've felt Parrot is more interesting than Perl 6 itself. Parrot is in many ways like .net (obviously there are many internal differences, but the idea is the same). Compile to a common bytecode that a virtual machine understands. This is interesting because it already supports (albeit incompletely) more languages than .Net and is a whole hell of a lot newer. I think Parrot is going to get the attention of a great chunk of languages haven't really considered using a VM before. We could see the age of 3 common bytecodes in practice. Java VM (whatever it's called), .Net, and Parrot. Maybe one day instead of seeing "Ruby 1.8 or greater required" we'll see "Parrot X.X or greater required". It'd be nice if we actually saw the day of the Parrot VM browser plugin or (pipedream) Windows coming with the parrot VM.
Use the idle maker plugin. Sure, it's a little more hassle, but it's better than nothing.
I remember when I was a Jazz major, one of my professors alluded to Musicians getting it. Chick Corea (pianist) believed it was a sort of subconcious resentment. That you need to improve your relationship with your instrument (keyboard). When he reestablished his relationship with his instrument, the carpal tunnel went away. Just a theory, but there may be some truth in it. How often does one associate the keyboard with stressful work?
offtopic? I guess some people need things spelled out for them. The above was a reference to Microsoft's blatent disregard of html standards. In effect, when we've got more than one standard out there, the above is the result.
I think everyone is quick to bash wikipedia for it's nature, but the parent poster hits it right on the head though. I can't think of a single place on the internet to get more information than wikipedia. Where else am I going to find detailed articles of the t-virus and bird flu on the same site? Everyone's been so quick to bash wikipedia lately, but give me something better and I'll use it. What are my alternatives? Use google and get my info from a site that could have false information as well? At least I can correct errors on wikipedia. If I read information on an angelfire site I know to be false, what can I do about it?
This is cool and all, but the article measures 15% greater efficiency. Wouldn't something just as complex (say, a turbo) be able to be more efficient? I'm rather suprised there aren't production cars combining multiple technologies such as turbo, steam, and electric.
Solutions like this still have a few problems though. a) still using gas. b) short term solution. What happens when we run out of gas? c) much more complex and more moving parts. It could be argued that an engine that uses these technologies is just as complex as a non-gas solution.
This is nice and all, but with the advent of more efficient gas engines, oil companies will just raise prices so they are still profitable. An engine might be twice as efficient, but will it matter if gas is 6 dollars a gallon?
I love Ruby. Once I discovered Ruby, it's become my prefered general purpose language. I love the fact it's a pure object oriented language. I love it's consisiveness. I love it's lack of "funny" characters (for the most part).
_ an_object_oriented_language (anyone who's farmiliar with rails will understand the underscores). During those 3 weeks I just couldn't enjoy programming and couldn't get into it. I tried 2 more times over the next 2 months to try it again, but the same thing.
I freakin' can't stand using Rails. I remember getting very excited about it when I first discovered it. Watching apps being developed in 15 minutes. I read all the tutorials. I even bought the book from pragmatic programmer. I studied and wrote programs for 3 weeks. And I just could never get into it. On so many occasions I just felt cheated. It was all valid ruby code, but it just didn't seem in the spirit of ruby. My namespace was cluttered with a million methods. The names of which didn't seem logical and_reminded_me_of_php_function_names_rather_than
The biggest annoyance was automated code generation. It was almost pointless for me. If I made changes to the database, I either had to a) wipe the directory and start over reimplementing my changes. Or b) go through all the MVC code and find the references to the database. Well, this is what I have to do in most other web languages anyway! So what's the advantage? Scaffolding was great at this because it did everything dynamically. However, you can't reasonably keep the scaffolding because it's not meant to be your program. It's meant to be support around your program.
The experience seemed more like programming in php with a twist of mod_perl. All the reasons I wanted to get away from perl and php for web programming were back when I tried to write a large application. Rails just doesn't seem in the spirit of Ruby. It's not bad. Don't get me wrong. But it's not this revolutionary framework so many people would have you believe. Sure, it's great to show the 15 minute video. But I'd like to see the video of someone doing a large project in rails.
The point of rails is to have sensible defaults that work most of the time. Web apps share A LOT of commonality. The idea is to take out repitiveness as much as possible. This is done with sensible defaults. If these aren't good for you, they can be changed. But it's meant to have reasonable defaults for most, unlike certain web languages that make you start from scratch every time.
I think being hip and trendy hurt Java more than it helped. People tried to use java where it wasn't appropiate. Java applets for web buttons that could be done in CSS really hurt it a lot (I can't even tell you how many websites were doing that at one point). The Java buzz is cooling off finally. It's finding its place. Java is nestled in the ranks of C and C++. You'd probably use Java in the same places you might consider C or C++. That doesn't mean Java is going away. It means people are getting their acts together and seeing Java for what it is. Not as a way to make cute navigation buttons. But as a way to make serious applications such as Sphinx4.
Languages always have their places. It's important to see what's happening to Java. There was a point when every job description had Java in it. Java java java. Java was used for everything. Web applets. Full fledged GUI programs. Command line. Server side. I think people are finally realizing Java isn't good for everything. I think we are finally reaching an age which Java is finding it's place. It's meant for full fledged, cross platform, programs. GUI or command line. Programs that are meant to be kept open and running for awhile. This is where Java excels.
Java has had a terrible history. It's a lot of people's faults. PHB's, HR depts, Marketing, Bad programmers, Sun, companies releasing Java tools. I think most people on slashdot have a pretty strong opinion of Java. Love it or hate it, they have a strong opinion. The initial GUI implementation was awful. People were expeted by PHB's and Marketing to learn the new buzzword language in weeks, when in reality Java is the type of language you need to spend years studying. It's huge and complex. Just like C++. Java came into wide spread usage in the 90's, when computers were still a bit slow for it. It isn't until now that Java is really finding it's place. It's not as grand as the original plan for it was. If you talk to people, most of them have stale opinions of Java. Their view of Java is Java 8 years ago. And little will change their opinion.
The bug is believe to be a buffer overflow. This makes it a perfect canidate to execute malicious code within excel. Imagine being able to send an excel file to another company you don't think is being truthful with you and r00ting some of their boxen. You could pretty much spy on them all day without antivirus or antispyware picking you up. Imagine sending the excel file to a game developer and stealing source code for an upcoming game *hint* *hint*. 0-day exploits and unknown exploits are a serious problem because most companies think they are safe with anti-virus. Anti-virus supplies little/no protection against these kinds of attacks.
The fact that this project contains so many underdogs just might make it succeed. Their egos won't make it fall apart. Except for the MIT staff, almost every company involved can be replaced with someone bigger at any minute. AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, Nortel Networks, and Red Hat. They've all got bigger counter parts. I think it really pisses off the bigger companies that these smaller companies had more insight than them. When they realized how big this thing is going to be, it was too late.
I agree. Consumer anti-virus,firewalls, and anti-spyware are not a good metric of security. Most people can't stand blocking and unblocking programs for their outgoing firewall all day. And really, the average consumer doesn't know what's safe and unsafe. Incoming protection is pretty pointless too since so many computers are behind a nat router. Anti-virus provides protection for old viruses, but the 0-day mass speading ones generally beat anti-virus anyway. Anti-virus provides retroactive protection of viruses already written. It doesn't generally provide a means of stopping a suspected virus. I've seen some that can, but the general home user anti-virus doesn't or requires training from users not skilled enough to train it. On top of that, there's so much political bullshit that goes on within the ranks that something could be malicious to your computer, but the supplying company complained it was legit and they let it through anyway. Also! They generally provide little/no spyware protection. So you've got a bloated piece of crap anti virus program that slows down your computer almost as much as the virus itself that doesn't really work all that well.
The only retroactive solution I think is worthwhile these days is spyware scanning your box once a week. And rotate which scanner you use.
On the other hand, there is A LOT you can do not to get spyware and viruses in the first place. First, DON'T USE IE. All the fanboys will cry foul here, but it's true. I don't care if alternative browsers are just as hackable but they aren't being exploited blah blah blah... We'll cross that river when we get to it. For now, using almost anything besides IE will stop the bulk of your spyware. Also, in whatever browser you use, don't allow in browser media to be played. Flash, movies, music, etc etc. Or at the very least, make sure it prompts you first so you have the choice to only do so from websites you trust. Also, don't go to sketch sites. Plain and simple. Let's see... don't use outlook, EVER. In your MUA make sure it it either doesn't display html or prompts you to do so. Don't open attachments. It's stupid. It's so incredibly easy to spoof who you are via email that you can really never fully trust an email. Don't use AIM. There are AIM viruses left and right nowadays. Use an alternative like gaim or trillion and never accept to transfer files.
More than anything, just be smart about where you go and what you do. Understand that the internet really isn't a safe place. Security isn't a product, it's a process. I can't stress this enough. Doing certain things yourself will keep you safer than any anti-virus ever could.
I'll admit the letter is lame and I usually trash the 230498234023948230498 letters I get a day trying to sell me software in that manner =P
The overall idea in getting away from MS is not to save money immediatly, but save money in the long run. MS has historically shown us they want to lock you in as fiercly as possible. Staying with MS now just means it will be harder to get away from them in 5 or 10 years. Once they are on a system of open document, they can really switch office suites that support it however they want. They can do testing of new suites within single departments and still exchange documents with everyone else. It isn't so much saving money directly on MS licenses. It's having the choice to go to another vendor at any time and not having to do a massive migration (such as what would happen with getting away from MS in the first place).
Regardless, they are fully supporting an open standard. This puts all software on a level playing field. Alternative browsers have gained great amounts of market share recently because they all compete on a (theoretically) level playing field (in practice we all know MS has attempted their own extensions to try and make html not so open standard). So what if IBM promotes their software product. The fact it will fully support open document is good enough. I think all open source advocates want is a level playing field not hindered by market leaders forcing vendor lock-in. We just want an environment where the software speaks for itself.
This is important to understand. This wasn't a google desktop bug. They just created a workaround to mitigate IE's bug MS won't fix. And because this is still an IE bug, MANY other programs are still affected.
From an end user standpoint, it's good they fixed it even though it definatly wasn't their fault in the least bit.
However by fixing it, it would seem to the average Joe an admittance that it was a bug in their software. This isn't the case in the least bit. I remember the old slashdot story and the trolls were out that day. Google desktop was given as an example of one of the dozens, if not thousands of various web based programs affected by this IE bug. Make no mistakes about it, this was an IE bug.
This really goes to show really how much of an ethical company google really is. They took charge and created a workaround in their software for a problem that really isn't theirs. Sadly, this won't convince the google trolls and they'll just add this to the bug count.
That's like the 12th time I've seen that link by you. Do you work for microsoft or something? Reviewing your posts it seems as if your posts are attached to mostly MS stories. I ask you, are you in any way affiliated with Microsoft, Microsoft funded company, or a Microsoft partner?
First of all, they used Windows XP SP2. Why the fuck would you do that in a multicore test. Use an OS that can handle that many cores properly. XP definatly can't. Not bashing windows either. I mean if you are going to use a windows OS at least use 2003 server. And why just test one OS? Also, the triple core title is completely misleading. The AMD arch for multicore processors is much more than just two cores stuck in a single incasing (ala Intel's design). It's much more advanced and just sticking a 2nd cpu into a multicore setup is not analagous to adding another core to the tight multicore setup. It's adding a whole 'nother cpu.