Well, I switched from FORTRAN77 to C in 1981. Switched from C to C++ in 1990. Still using C++. Clients hire me to do C++. The right guy for the job I always say.
For fun these days I have also been doing some Arduino stuff. Kinda refreshing. Reminds me of the old days..
An unpleasant side effect of benchmarking is when manufacturers start building products to do well on the benchmark to the detriment of other, also important, specs. So, while the product may kick ass on the common benchmarks it may not be so great because other important stuff gets neglected..
The benchmark process starts steering the design "committee"..
Why is it that we sell this spectrum? Do the purchasers get to use the spectrum forever for a one-time fee? Why are we not renting the spectrum for an on-going revenue stream?
Does anyone here actually work for a company that currently (or ever has) used true dumb terminals?
I do, I do! I'm typing this on a Sun SunRay1 and I love this thing!
You find SunRays in a lot of places where security is taken seriously (ie. security clearance is required for the job). To log in, you need to have a valid smart card and know your usual login credentials. So, security is based on something you have and something you know.
Plus, if you want to move to a different physical place, you just pull your smart card out of the SunRay, go to the new place and insert it into that SunRay. BOOM! Your desktop session comes up and you go back to work, right where you left off. Your apps are still open, nothing has changed. And, there is nothing left behind, the session followed you.
Further, if someone comes in who isn't cleared (or doesn't have a need to know) simply pull the smart card and the screen goes blank. Once they're gone, reinsert the smart card and go back to work.
I've come to the point where I'd rather work on a SunRay. I had a nice multiprocessor SunBlade workstation in my office that I replaced with this SunRay. Since the server is rather beefy, my work (I'm a developer) is actually faster. I also use typical desktop apps (scalc, swriter, etc.) and they're faster too.
As to the single point of failure argument, Sun's SunRay server software has auto fail-over stuff. Multiple servers can share the load and, if one goes down, it's users fail-over to another server transparently. Non-issue.
What happens when the beige box in your office fails? Yes, your important work is probably stored on a server but what about all your configuration stuff? What else did you store on your local workstation that's now gone? If a SunRay fails you unplug it, walk down the hall and hand it in. They hand you a new one and you go plug it in, insert your smart card, log in and go to work. Nothing is lost, not even your session.
The SunRay is completely silent, draws something like 8 watts and the footprint on my desk is about 3" x 10" or so.
"Maybe Apple has been told about these bugs and has had an opportunity to address them. But the article doesn't say that. We just don't know."
Actually, yes, we do know.
FTFA: "As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message."
It's a childish and self centered move on the part of "LMH" to NOT inform the vendor. Apparently, he is more concerned about puffing himself up than with security or the well being of the computing community.
Actually, in the short term "LMH" is seriously compromising security. Ethical behavior is to open a dialog with the vendor. If the vendor does not participate in the dialog and demonstrate a good-faith effort to fix the reported vulnerabilities then make the vulnerabilities public.
But, of course, that doesn't get you your 15 minutes of fame..
To fill out your item [2], the name of the company was Lattice. MS bought the Lattice compiler and renamed it MS C.
It was an early example of the MS method of software development: buy out someone who has a viable product and do a much better job of marketing that product.
I maintain that MS has never been much of a software development company but, rather, a software marketing company. Certainly, the vast majority of their "innovations" have been in marketing. MS tends to incrementally improve on other developers software while being very innovative in their marketing of that software.
Lattice C was an early example. Excel is a mid-life example. A more recent example is the Groove Networks collaboration tool. MS recently bought them and will include the Groove in the next version of Office. They pretty much had to do this as Office is pretty stale. Who really needs a newer version of Word for example? And OpenOffice is coming along and is free. The only way to improve the Office product enough to warrent an upgrade was to add serious collaboration capabilities. And, this being MS we're talking about, the only way to do that was to go out and buy serious collaboration capabilities. Now they'll integrate it into Office and market the bejeezus out of it.
Actually, IBM published the BIOS openly. You could purchase it directly from IBM for $60. It arrived in a nice 3 ring binder. It was very well documented and the actual assembler source code was included.
I now deeply regret having disposed of my copy - probably 20 years ago...
There's no way those huge-ass programs are going to be hosted and downloaded/run on demand.
Climb out of your box! There's no way those huge-ass programs need to be downloaded or run on your machine. They can run on a huge-ass server somewhere else with only screen, keystroke and mouse movements travelling over the 100 mbit pipe into your office. And, you can store the data files on your local hard disk if you like -- so you still have control over your data.
Think about how the world will be when we all have 100 MB (or GB, or better) bandwidth. It's coming..
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I switched from FORTRAN77 to C in 1981. Switched from C to C++ in 1990. Still using C++. Clients hire me to do C++. The right guy for the job I always say. For fun these days I have also been doing some Arduino stuff. Kinda refreshing. Reminds me of the old days..
An unpleasant side effect of benchmarking is when manufacturers start building products to do well on the benchmark to the detriment of other, also important, specs. So, while the product may kick ass on the common benchmarks it may not be so great because other important stuff gets neglected.. The benchmark process starts steering the design "committee"..
Why is it that we sell this spectrum? Do the purchasers get to use the spectrum forever for a one-time fee? Why are we not renting the spectrum for an on-going revenue stream?
I do, I do! I'm typing this on a Sun SunRay1 and I love this thing!
You find SunRays in a lot of places where security is taken seriously (ie. security clearance is required for the job). To log in, you need to have a valid smart card and know your usual login credentials. So, security is based on something you have and something you know.
Plus, if you want to move to a different physical place, you just pull your smart card out of the SunRay, go to the new place and insert it into that SunRay. BOOM! Your desktop session comes up and you go back to work, right where you left off. Your apps are still open, nothing has changed. And, there is nothing left behind, the session followed you.
Further, if someone comes in who isn't cleared (or doesn't have a need to know) simply pull the smart card and the screen goes blank. Once they're gone, reinsert the smart card and go back to work.
I've come to the point where I'd rather work on a SunRay. I had a nice multiprocessor SunBlade workstation in my office that I replaced with this SunRay. Since the server is rather beefy, my work (I'm a developer) is actually faster. I also use typical desktop apps (scalc, swriter, etc.) and they're faster too.
As to the single point of failure argument, Sun's SunRay server software has auto fail-over stuff. Multiple servers can share the load and, if one goes down, it's users fail-over to another server transparently. Non-issue.
What happens when the beige box in your office fails? Yes, your important work is probably stored on a server but what about all your configuration stuff? What else did you store on your local workstation that's now gone? If a SunRay fails you unplug it, walk down the hall and hand it in. They hand you a new one and you go plug it in, insert your smart card, log in and go to work. Nothing is lost, not even your session.
The SunRay is completely silent, draws something like 8 watts and the footprint on my desk is about 3" x 10" or so.
It's seriously cool stuff!
Pathetic Earthlings...
Actually, yes, we do know.
FTFA: "As with the kernel bugs project, Apple will be given no advance notice with the Month of Apple bugs, LMH said in an interview conducted over instant message."
It's a childish and self centered move on the part of "LMH" to NOT inform the vendor. Apparently, he is more concerned about puffing himself up than with security or the well being of the computing community.
Actually, in the short term "LMH" is seriously compromising security. Ethical behavior is to open a dialog with the vendor. If the vendor does not participate in the dialog and demonstrate a good-faith effort to fix the reported vulnerabilities then make the vulnerabilities public.
But, of course, that doesn't get you your 15 minutes of fame..
It was an early example of the MS method of software development: buy out someone who has a viable product and do a much better job of marketing that product.
I maintain that MS has never been much of a software development company but, rather, a software marketing company. Certainly, the vast majority of their "innovations" have been in marketing. MS tends to incrementally improve on other developers software while being very innovative in their marketing of that software.
Lattice C was an early example. Excel is a mid-life example. A more recent example is the Groove Networks collaboration tool. MS recently bought them and will include the Groove in the next version of Office. They pretty much had to do this as Office is pretty stale. Who really needs a newer version of Word for example? And OpenOffice is coming along and is free. The only way to improve the Office product enough to warrent an upgrade was to add serious collaboration capabilities. And, this being MS we're talking about, the only way to do that was to go out and buy serious collaboration capabilities. Now they'll integrate it into Office and market the bejeezus out of it.
I rest my case...
Actually, IBM published the BIOS openly. You could purchase it directly from IBM for $60. It arrived in a nice 3 ring binder. It was very well documented and the actual assembler source code was included. I now deeply regret having disposed of my copy - probably 20 years ago...
Climb out of your box! There's no way those huge-ass programs need to be downloaded or run on your machine. They can run on a huge-ass server somewhere else with only screen, keystroke and mouse movements travelling over the 100 mbit pipe into your office. And, you can store the data files on your local hard disk if you like -- so you still have control over your data.
Think about how the world will be when we all have 100 MB (or GB, or better) bandwidth. It's coming..
Take a look at Evolution. http://gnome.org/projects/evolution/