Considering most hard drives sold today are in the 120GB-160GB range I don't think everything is going to fit into 2.42 gigs of storage. Furthermore, you have to break that up into small pieces in separate emails if you want to do this via Gmail. People with large backup files are not going to want to saturate their upload bandwidth in order to perform backups using Gmail, not to mention once it gets over 2.42 GB of storage you would need to span across multiple accounts. This may work for a very small subset of users but it's not a good solution for most people and better services are available.
On another note, I imagine Gmail wouldn't be too happy too if all of a sudden everyone had 15 accounts all filled up to the maximum capacity because they were just storing their weekly backups there. The reason they can give so much space is because the vast majority of users don't use 1/100th of that amount of space. Also, deleting a large number of emails becomes a real slow process on Gmail. This would always happen as you're backups need to be divided into small files in order to work with Gmail. For example one backup could be spread out through 30 different emails. They really need some kind of mass delete option or delete by query. Maybe, I'm missing these options if so someone please mention it.
Agreed, I also believe this is more likely. However, I think it would be a big drawback if the new open source JVM was more bloated than Sun's current JVM. A lot of people are becoming more and more angry and vocal about the bloat that is being included directly into the JVM and the base class libraries. I mean they're including a JavaScript engine in the next release you couldn't get much more overkill than that.... Was dropping a Jar from one of the many available JavaScript engines into the project too much to handle for these people? I guess we'll have to wait and see though.
Harmony has a goal of being compliant with Sun Java and that's one of the main points of the project, a completely 100% compliant open source JVM. If anyone's going to use it in business or enterprise level applications it's going to have to be compliant and as polished as the Sun JVM. IBM isn't going to attempt to put SWT into this JVM as the vast majority of people in the Java community have realized that SWT is a huge mess and it's currently running into tons of problems because of the architecture IBM decided to take with it. They're running into problems Swing solved 5 years ago and now they have to either abandon it or make SWT's architecture more like Swing. Furthermore, flaws in SWT go unfixed for months at a time and many times when debugging those bugs you need to look at code written in C which is just a huge pain in the ass for Java developers.
Not to mention that if they included SWT instead of Swing they wouldn't be compliant and most applications out there wouldn't be able to run on this JVM without added Swing libraries. Then if they included both they just made the JVM way more bloated then necessary. IBM is perfectly happy with having people download SWT if they want it and then have developers include the libraries when distributing applications that use it. They're not going to try something as stupid as trying to put it into this JVM.
This proves it. NASA is giving us black and white pictures that consist of cheese zoomed up really close and living it up in some paradise with their riches.
I was touring Microsoft earlier in the week and I couldn't believe how young some of their staff was. Here's a picture I took when visiting the R&D department and talking to the head developer.
Is it just me or is it that the IT sector is the one complaining most about outsourcing? Why would you go into IT at a time like this, these are the exact jobs that are prime targets for outsourcing because they are not that difficult, can easily be done in a remote locations and have pretty easy to find common requirements. To make the situation worse as software gets better and more efficient less IT workers are required.
"All of my CS grads I know who actually took the time to learn the material had no problems. All of us had jobs lined up 2-3 deep before we graduated. The ones who couldn't find jobs were the people playing frisbee during their data structures class.
CS is a very rewarding field IF you put effort into it."
EXACTLY! Best post in this thread. The vast majority of CS students just barely get by and when they come out of there studies they can barely program a Hello World let alone be relied upon for writing secure enterprise level applications. They can't get jobs because they can't offer any value to a company. Programming a Hello World program and barely understanding the basic fundamentals of programming can't get you anywhere in real life. All the students I know which studied, worked hard and did projects in some of their spare time have had no problems getting good paying respectable jobs in the industry.
The problem is that too many people get into the course because they think people that work with computers make good money and they just barely get by, by getting help from others, only doing the bare bones reading and just barely understanding the fundamentals of the subjects. Ask any old programmer that is doing hiring and he will tell you that most of the CS students they interview are utterly clueless and have nothing to offer of value. Most just simply think they should make a good living because they earned there degree and not by actually producing valuable products.
"Besides, who needs a CS undergrad degree, if you want to learn to program, then grab a couple of books and learn, no need to sit in a class with a professor that hasn't ever worked in field try to teach you stuff you'll never use (bubble sort comes to mind)."
Maybe you should take a trip to a university and see how many programmers are enrolled in courses and see the quality of the code they write. Most students I work with simply shouldn't be writing code because they have no real interest in it and don't want to spend the time/read the materials in order to be the best and be competitive in today's world. I feel that we have a small fringe of top notch world class programmers with most of the rest being mediocre at best.
Outsourcing isn't the only factor here; most of the top end programmers that live here in the US have highly paying well respected jobs and don't have a problem in gaining employment. The problem is that we've created mostly an army of mediocre programmers who aren't really good for much without someone walking them through it, and they think that they deserve to be highly paid simply because of the field they are in.
I'm also a university student and have noticed this as well. The problem that Gates is referring to is that once we stop innovating in technology our economy is going to be seriously hurt and right now we are setting ourselves up for that. Honestly, our economy and quality of life cannot be the same if we do not remain innovative and competitive technologically. We are currently falling behind in the area to more dedicated countries and once they surpass us by a larger margin our economy will be hurt badly and the damage will be extremely hard to undue.
The fastest growing major being physical education is just a perfect example of this. Physical education is quite possibly the most useless skill you could take and does not allow us to compete in anything anywhere in the world. I mean are we going to have everyone by Phys-ed teachers?
"First off, "a service that will be used by the most students" !necessarily= "a service that provides all RIAA music". Students care about DRM too."
I don't really think the DRM matters much to most people. I would even go as far to say that most people don't even know what it is. DRM hasn't reached the level yet where the majority of the public is aware of what it is or what it does. I've been around a lot of students (many with iPods and portable mp3 players), as I am one myself, and virtually none of them no what DRM is or how it effects them.
"Second, that's not their only concern anyway. Another is cost - they could just buy every student whatever CDs and iTMS tracks they wanted, thus satisfying all student demand for music and eliminating illegal downloads, but it would be prohibitively expensive. This solution is presumably a lot cheaper, and will still get some use."
Well from what I'm aware they are paying for this music service as well so I would be interested in some hard numbers of how much they will be saving when compared to iTunes or Napster and how the payments are worked out. iTunes and Napster are fairly reasonably priced IMO and have been known to give significant discounts/deals to colleges and universities. You may be right and this service may in fact cost much less than the competition and perhaps that was the big motivating factor.
"All I can say to this is I think time will prove you wrong. It won't replace P2P downloads entirely, but students will find music they like on this service, especially once UC radio stations start playing music from there. If any group is open to new music, its college students."
I honestly hope you are right on this point but I couldn't see it happening anytime soon. The UC radio stations aren't very popular. At this point in time I think the student population gets most of its music influences out of modern day pop culture. I believe they get music from places like MTV, iTunes, movies, word of mouth etc. and this is where RIAA has such a huge advantage. They understand completely where to advertise their products and don't allow the competition to do the same.
"That's exactly what the RIAA does. They pay radio stations (through "independent promoters") to play their songs, so people become familiar with them and want to hear them some more. You think people would listen to Jessica Simpson if she were just some nobody on an indie label?"
What the RIAA does makes no difference in this context. The university is not the RIAA and does not have the means to perform similarly. The university shouldn't be a promoter of any type of music it should be trying to provide a service that the students are going to use and one which will combat piracy (which was the original goal).
As for the Jessica Simpson comment, it is irrelevant to the argument. The university isn't in some war with the music industry and shouldn't be interested in shaping what the students listen too. The university doesn't have the means to change what the students are going to listen too. Students get their music from what they hear on TV, Radio, Movies, in Clubs etc. not from what the university exposes them too. The university simply does not have the power to select and decide what music the students should be listening to and it should only be concerned with providing a service that will be used by the most students and that will effectively reduce piracy. Students aren't going to adapt to the music that is on the download service they're either going to get what they want or disregard it.
"You seem to forget that this is University of California, the birthplace of *BSD. Even if the app doesn't support *BSD, FreeBSD can run many Linux binaries more smoothly than Wine runs Windows binaries."
I still believe throughout most of the University the majority of computer users still use Windows and/or Mac OS X and all of them have access to computers with those operating systems. I don't believe it is worth it to gain a small subset of Linux/BSD users, who most likely would have gotten access anyways, and sacrifice including the music that the students want to hear and are going to use.
""Ve half vays off making you vant the music." Use the same technique RIAA labels use in motor vehicles and grocery stores: advertise to a captive audience. Play the music in the hallways after class. Play it in the dining halls."
This sounds like you are more interested in forcing them to change what they listen to instead of picking what they actually want and would use most.
So basically by using this service they get a much smaller selection of music available in formats that the average user doesn't want and only really gain support for Linux. I really doubt that simply supporting Linux is going to give this application any traction as Linux users do not compromise a large enough target market for an application like this and most Linux users are quite able to get iTunes working in a VM. Being a full time university student, I personally think that students would prefer a well known application like iTunes which they most likely already know how to use and can offer more features (ex. Podcasts, easy integration with iPods etc.).
I mean how can they fight piracy with a service that doesn't offer any music that the average student is going to want? You may or may not like popular music however it's what the students want to listen to whether we like it or not.
"Most often than not the little "routers" are more pain than gain."
I completely disagree however I guess it's a matter of opinion. Nothing is going to offer complete security to a complete nitwit however simple measures like this can and are effective in most situations. You also seem to think that teaching someone about port forwarding and NAT is something that is hard to do. I have explained it to several people and set them up with hardware firewalls and they have all had no problems. Getting MSN/ICQ file transfers etc. to work is all very simple to do and most people just don't bother to take the 10 minutes it takes to learn. Afterwards they'll also be a little better off because they now understand a little bit more about security and how there information is being transmitted. Security will never be achieved with people that have no knowledge of what they're doing, on some level they need to understand the simple concepts.
I would also like to hear what you believe is easier to implement or more effective in this situation. In my opinion, this is currently the cheapest and most effective solution to current problems. Software such as OSs, web servers, IM clients etc. are always going to have exploits, it's best to block access to anything that you don't need.
I get these entries all the time in my logs as well. Futile attempts from a script to generate random login names and passwords. The problem is that you can't really do much about it because they are often in countries that have different laws and blocking by IP/subnet just doesn't work because they have no shortage of IPs/subnets. Best suggestion is just to use strong passwords and a good encryption algorithm.
"It would be easier if EVERY apps where somehow port range specific, just not few frequent application."
What programs are you having problems with? All of the programs you listed are very easy to get working with a hardware firewall. Passive FTP can be setup to a range of ports which you can have open. MSN Messenger file transferring works if you open up the port and this is extremely well documented on the net, same goes for DCC files. Honestly, how many ports do you need to have open? It's pretty much as easy as typing in the port number on your hardware firewall configuration page and so far you've listed three applications. Are you telling me you would rather leave them all open so you don't have to type in the port numbers of those few applications?
Please, blocking all ports is completely realistic and most people with even the most basic computer security knowledge do it. Only let in what you need, block everything else. You also need to remember that you're doing more than the average computer user.
Longhorn exploits will be easier to understand! Such productivity improvements saves time for coders!
<rss version="2.0">
<title>Blaster Version 19.4</title>
<description>New version of blaster now in XML format!</description>
<author>1337 |_0ngh0rn h@x0r</author>
<run>Delete everything and start downloading 600 GBs of porn</run>
</rss>
Yes, I meant for home users mostly. If a corporation is relying solely on a hardware firewall to provide security they have some serious issues that need to be addressed. With that being said remote desktop and most of these applications can still be used with a hardware firewall without many problems, it just needs the appropriate port forwarding and configuration.
Also, a hardware firewall is a very good "part of" the solution in a corporate environment. In a corporate situation there just needs to be more than a hardware firewall as having only one level of security can cause major problems for a large number of people. I can't remember the last time I walked into a large business that's security model didn't include a hardware firewall of some kind.
Good to know. Couldn't really remember clearly with ME because it's not something I would use ever for myself, friends or family. I only have very limited experience with it from work. Thanks for the info.
Yes remote desktop is turned off by default however the point still stands. Honestly look at the list of crap turned on in a default install here. Remote registry, Server, Secondary Login??? Half the services on that list are ones that a normal user will never use or know how to turn off.
Slashdot Mirror
That was one of the first things I noticed as well. In all their supposed testing I can't believe no one caught that...
Considering most hard drives sold today are in the 120GB-160GB range I don't think everything is going to fit into 2.42 gigs of storage. Furthermore, you have to break that up into small pieces in separate emails if you want to do this via Gmail. People with large backup files are not going to want to saturate their upload bandwidth in order to perform backups using Gmail, not to mention once it gets over 2.42 GB of storage you would need to span across multiple accounts. This may work for a very small subset of users but it's not a good solution for most people and better services are available.
On another note, I imagine Gmail wouldn't be too happy too if all of a sudden everyone had 15 accounts all filled up to the maximum capacity because they were just storing their weekly backups there. The reason they can give so much space is because the vast majority of users don't use 1/100th of that amount of space. Also, deleting a large number of emails becomes a real slow process on Gmail. This would always happen as you're backups need to be divided into small files in order to work with Gmail. For example one backup could be spread out through 30 different emails. They really need some kind of mass delete option or delete by query. Maybe, I'm missing these options if so someone please mention it.
It's not your fault it's ugly that's just the effect Perl has on anything. ;-)
Agreed, I also believe this is more likely. However, I think it would be a big drawback if the new open source JVM was more bloated than Sun's current JVM. A lot of people are becoming more and more angry and vocal about the bloat that is being included directly into the JVM and the base class libraries. I mean they're including a JavaScript engine in the next release you couldn't get much more overkill than that.... Was dropping a Jar from one of the many available JavaScript engines into the project too much to handle for these people? I guess we'll have to wait and see though.
Harmony has a goal of being compliant with Sun Java and that's one of the main points of the project, a completely 100% compliant open source JVM. If anyone's going to use it in business or enterprise level applications it's going to have to be compliant and as polished as the Sun JVM. IBM isn't going to attempt to put SWT into this JVM as the vast majority of people in the Java community have realized that SWT is a huge mess and it's currently running into tons of problems because of the architecture IBM decided to take with it. They're running into problems Swing solved 5 years ago and now they have to either abandon it or make SWT's architecture more like Swing. Furthermore, flaws in SWT go unfixed for months at a time and many times when debugging those bugs you need to look at code written in C which is just a huge pain in the ass for Java developers.
Not to mention that if they included SWT instead of Swing they wouldn't be compliant and most applications out there wouldn't be able to run on this JVM without added Swing libraries. Then if they included both they just made the JVM way more bloated then necessary. IBM is perfectly happy with having people download SWT if they want it and then have developers include the libraries when distributing applications that use it. They're not going to try something as stupid as trying to put it into this JVM.
This proves it. NASA is giving us black and white pictures that consist of cheese zoomed up really close and living it up in some paradise with their riches.
filter my mail while I'm playing chess or is it one or the other?
I was touring Microsoft earlier in the week and I couldn't believe how young some of their staff was. Here's a picture I took when visiting the R&D department and talking to the head developer.
Is it just me or is it that the IT sector is the one complaining most about outsourcing? Why would you go into IT at a time like this, these are the exact jobs that are prime targets for outsourcing because they are not that difficult, can easily be done in a remote locations and have pretty easy to find common requirements. To make the situation worse as software gets better and more efficient less IT workers are required.
Why would you pursue IT at this point in time?
"All of my CS grads I know who actually took the time to learn the material had no problems. All of us had jobs lined up 2-3 deep before we graduated. The ones who couldn't find jobs were the people playing frisbee during their data structures class. CS is a very rewarding field IF you put effort into it."
EXACTLY! Best post in this thread. The vast majority of CS students just barely get by and when they come out of there studies they can barely program a Hello World let alone be relied upon for writing secure enterprise level applications. They can't get jobs because they can't offer any value to a company. Programming a Hello World program and barely understanding the basic fundamentals of programming can't get you anywhere in real life. All the students I know which studied, worked hard and did projects in some of their spare time have had no problems getting good paying respectable jobs in the industry.
The problem is that too many people get into the course because they think people that work with computers make good money and they just barely get by, by getting help from others, only doing the bare bones reading and just barely understanding the fundamentals of the subjects. Ask any old programmer that is doing hiring and he will tell you that most of the CS students they interview are utterly clueless and have nothing to offer of value. Most just simply think they should make a good living because they earned there degree and not by actually producing valuable products.
"Besides, who needs a CS undergrad degree, if you want to learn to program, then grab a couple of books and learn, no need to sit in a class with a professor that hasn't ever worked in field try to teach you stuff you'll never use (bubble sort comes to mind)."
That looks real good on a resume.....
Maybe you should take a trip to a university and see how many programmers are enrolled in courses and see the quality of the code they write. Most students I work with simply shouldn't be writing code because they have no real interest in it and don't want to spend the time/read the materials in order to be the best and be competitive in today's world. I feel that we have a small fringe of top notch world class programmers with most of the rest being mediocre at best.
Outsourcing isn't the only factor here; most of the top end programmers that live here in the US have highly paying well respected jobs and don't have a problem in gaining employment. The problem is that we've created mostly an army of mediocre programmers who aren't really good for much without someone walking them through it, and they think that they deserve to be highly paid simply because of the field they are in.
I'm also a university student and have noticed this as well. The problem that Gates is referring to is that once we stop innovating in technology our economy is going to be seriously hurt and right now we are setting ourselves up for that. Honestly, our economy and quality of life cannot be the same if we do not remain innovative and competitive technologically. We are currently falling behind in the area to more dedicated countries and once they surpass us by a larger margin our economy will be hurt badly and the damage will be extremely hard to undue.
The fastest growing major being physical education is just a perfect example of this. Physical education is quite possibly the most useless skill you could take and does not allow us to compete in anything anywhere in the world. I mean are we going to have everyone by Phys-ed teachers?
"First off, "a service that will be used by the most students" !necessarily= "a service that provides all RIAA music". Students care about DRM too."
I don't really think the DRM matters much to most people. I would even go as far to say that most people don't even know what it is. DRM hasn't reached the level yet where the majority of the public is aware of what it is or what it does. I've been around a lot of students (many with iPods and portable mp3 players), as I am one myself, and virtually none of them no what DRM is or how it effects them.
"Second, that's not their only concern anyway. Another is cost - they could just buy every student whatever CDs and iTMS tracks they wanted, thus satisfying all student demand for music and eliminating illegal downloads, but it would be prohibitively expensive. This solution is presumably a lot cheaper, and will still get some use."
Well from what I'm aware they are paying for this music service as well so I would be interested in some hard numbers of how much they will be saving when compared to iTunes or Napster and how the payments are worked out. iTunes and Napster are fairly reasonably priced IMO and have been known to give significant discounts/deals to colleges and universities. You may be right and this service may in fact cost much less than the competition and perhaps that was the big motivating factor.
"All I can say to this is I think time will prove you wrong. It won't replace P2P downloads entirely, but students will find music they like on this service, especially once UC radio stations start playing music from there. If any group is open to new music, its college students."
I honestly hope you are right on this point but I couldn't see it happening anytime soon. The UC radio stations aren't very popular. At this point in time I think the student population gets most of its music influences out of modern day pop culture. I believe they get music from places like MTV, iTunes, movies, word of mouth etc. and this is where RIAA has such a huge advantage. They understand completely where to advertise their products and don't allow the competition to do the same.
"That's exactly what the RIAA does. They pay radio stations (through "independent promoters") to play their songs, so people become familiar with them and want to hear them some more. You think people would listen to Jessica Simpson if she were just some nobody on an indie label?"
What the RIAA does makes no difference in this context. The university is not the RIAA and does not have the means to perform similarly. The university shouldn't be a promoter of any type of music it should be trying to provide a service that the students are going to use and one which will combat piracy (which was the original goal).
As for the Jessica Simpson comment, it is irrelevant to the argument. The university isn't in some war with the music industry and shouldn't be interested in shaping what the students listen too. The university doesn't have the means to change what the students are going to listen too. Students get their music from what they hear on TV, Radio, Movies, in Clubs etc. not from what the university exposes them too. The university simply does not have the power to select and decide what music the students should be listening to and it should only be concerned with providing a service that will be used by the most students and that will effectively reduce piracy. Students aren't going to adapt to the music that is on the download service they're either going to get what they want or disregard it.
"You seem to forget that this is University of California, the birthplace of *BSD. Even if the app doesn't support *BSD, FreeBSD can run many Linux binaries more smoothly than Wine runs Windows binaries."
I still believe throughout most of the University the majority of computer users still use Windows and/or Mac OS X and all of them have access to computers with those operating systems. I don't believe it is worth it to gain a small subset of Linux/BSD users, who most likely would have gotten access anyways, and sacrifice including the music that the students want to hear and are going to use.
""Ve half vays off making you vant the music." Use the same technique RIAA labels use in motor vehicles and grocery stores: advertise to a captive audience. Play the music in the hallways after class. Play it in the dining halls."
This sounds like you are more interested in forcing them to change what they listen to instead of picking what they actually want and would use most.
So basically by using this service they get a much smaller selection of music available in formats that the average user doesn't want and only really gain support for Linux. I really doubt that simply supporting Linux is going to give this application any traction as Linux users do not compromise a large enough target market for an application like this and most Linux users are quite able to get iTunes working in a VM. Being a full time university student, I personally think that students would prefer a well known application like iTunes which they most likely already know how to use and can offer more features (ex. Podcasts, easy integration with iPods etc.).
I mean how can they fight piracy with a service that doesn't offer any music that the average student is going to want? You may or may not like popular music however it's what the students want to listen to whether we like it or not.
Wow, hide and seek with cell phones....
"Most often than not the little "routers" are more pain than gain."
I completely disagree however I guess it's a matter of opinion. Nothing is going to offer complete security to a complete nitwit however simple measures like this can and are effective in most situations. You also seem to think that teaching someone about port forwarding and NAT is something that is hard to do. I have explained it to several people and set them up with hardware firewalls and they have all had no problems. Getting MSN/ICQ file transfers etc. to work is all very simple to do and most people just don't bother to take the 10 minutes it takes to learn. Afterwards they'll also be a little better off because they now understand a little bit more about security and how there information is being transmitted. Security will never be achieved with people that have no knowledge of what they're doing, on some level they need to understand the simple concepts.
I would also like to hear what you believe is easier to implement or more effective in this situation. In my opinion, this is currently the cheapest and most effective solution to current problems. Software such as OSs, web servers, IM clients etc. are always going to have exploits, it's best to block access to anything that you don't need.
I get these entries all the time in my logs as well. Futile attempts from a script to generate random login names and passwords. The problem is that you can't really do much about it because they are often in countries that have different laws and blocking by IP/subnet just doesn't work because they have no shortage of IPs/subnets. Best suggestion is just to use strong passwords and a good encryption algorithm.
"It would be easier if EVERY apps where somehow port range specific, just not few frequent application."
What programs are you having problems with? All of the programs you listed are very easy to get working with a hardware firewall. Passive FTP can be setup to a range of ports which you can have open. MSN Messenger file transferring works if you open up the port and this is extremely well documented on the net, same goes for DCC files. Honestly, how many ports do you need to have open? It's pretty much as easy as typing in the port number on your hardware firewall configuration page and so far you've listed three applications. Are you telling me you would rather leave them all open so you don't have to type in the port numbers of those few applications?
Please, blocking all ports is completely realistic and most people with even the most basic computer security knowledge do it. Only let in what you need, block everything else. You also need to remember that you're doing more than the average computer user.
Longhorn exploits will be easier to understand! Such productivity improvements saves time for coders!
<rss version="2.0">
<title>Blaster Version 19.4</title>
<description>New version of blaster now in XML format!</description>
<author>1337 |_0ngh0rn h@x0r</author>
<run>Delete everything and start downloading 600 GBs of porn</run>
</rss>
Yes, I meant for home users mostly. If a corporation is relying solely on a hardware firewall to provide security they have some serious issues that need to be addressed. With that being said remote desktop and most of these applications can still be used with a hardware firewall without many problems, it just needs the appropriate port forwarding and configuration.
Also, a hardware firewall is a very good "part of" the solution in a corporate environment. In a corporate situation there just needs to be more than a hardware firewall as having only one level of security can cause major problems for a large number of people. I can't remember the last time I walked into a large business that's security model didn't include a hardware firewall of some kind.
Good to know. Couldn't really remember clearly with ME because it's not something I would use ever for myself, friends or family. I only have very limited experience with it from work. Thanks for the info.
Yes remote desktop is turned off by default however the point still stands. Honestly look at the list of crap turned on in a default install here. Remote registry, Server, Secondary Login??? Half the services on that list are ones that a normal user will never use or know how to turn off.