Most people with such an imbecilic sig as 'Social Justice: A liberal getting slugged in the teeth' are the last people on earth who could actually do it. Probably just another guy overcompensating for something, or someone with far too high an opinion of himself. Certainly not worth getting upset over.
"Adobe et al. don't want to port their applications to Linux -- it's because currently, there is no such thing!"
Astonishing. I could have sworn I'm running half a dozen Linux boxen even as we speak.
Also, you do realize that you're asking for a *lot* of bloat, right?
Personally, I don't care about Adobe ever appearing on Linux. Remember the Skylarov case? They're as evil has any corporation needs to be.
I'm not a graphic artist. I haven't been a Photoshop user since around 3.5. But, I'm not pretending The GIMP is as good. If I were a graphic artist, I'd probably be looking at the new graphics software from Apple, and maybe resigning myself to running it on OS X if it's as capable a product as PS.
All the while in the fond hope that The GIMP would keep improving. I'll run Free software as long as there's any possible way I can do the job with it.
Historically, the LSB hasn't been very useful. Maybe it will in the next version. But not if the problems with the tests aren't sorted.
I was subscribed to the FHS mailing list, back in '98 or '99. I forget which version we were arguing about at the time, and can't check as the list archives don't go back that far. Part of the push to get that version out was that vendors just wanted *something*, optimal or not.
IMHO, it was that sort of thing that led to problems like multiple desktop environment binaries all being located in/usr/bin, etc. The workstation I'm writing this on has 2843 files in there, not counting X11. This is one reason why many systems are so slow to process this directory through a GUI combobox or file manager.
It's also the reason we didn't have/media much sooner, etc.
I'm not berating the list members. A lot of good came out of it, and there were many issues, such as allowing for how existing Unices used/opt, etc. But it could have been a lot better without vendor pressure.
IMHO, OpenGroup and LSB are as much about PR as anything else.
Apology accepted. Yes, we do all have our off days. I shouldn't have brought up the bit about your GPS program. It isn't as if the US has never had trouble launching a worthwhile space mission due to political wrangling. I should have been wishing the ESA well, as I normally do.
The 'yob' bit has to do with the Spanish pronunciation of 'job'. You hear it in the US occasionally in standup comedy routines, etc., from performers such as Carlos Mencia--a fairly popular US comic.
It would likely be considered to be of questionable taste for Anglos to use it in this context.
"For the same reason that the EU is developing Galileo" And much luck you're having with it, right? According a site located within the EU the whole thing is in jeopardy. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/galileo_th reat/
FYI, the US has increased GPS resolution. It makes no economic sense not to. Switching GPS off on it's anniversary is an urban legend the likes of which we haven't even heard here in the US. And since we implemented it, and use it a great deal, it would make headlines if it were down for even a day. Particularly as we like to beat up on our space program--which is way beyond anything the EU has yet managed.
You might consider not hanging out with so many mindless US haters. We have our faults, but *damn*, you're dumb. The 'yee-haw, good yob!' is also totally unappreciated. We have our plague of 'yee-haw' Bush-lovers. Ok, he's an intellectual lightweight. In fact, he's an idiot. So are you. Where did "yob" come from? Racist slur on hispanics?
On a subject like this, I would think that valuable, widely respected opinions would come from a combination of government, academia, and industry. Anyone have any other groups to suggest?
Many here on/. would equate government with industry, perhaps largely due to our current administration. Academia can also be suspect, as they're by no means a disinterested party, and University patent revenue is trending rapidly upwards.
As a confirmed secularist (Oxford sense 1), the fact that we're even hearing about religion in this discussion is alarming.
But you have to believe that someone out there is ethical, and thinking about the greater good, or slide into total apathy. That can't be good for you. Humans aren't wired that way.
We all know something is amiss. Perhaps we should take a page from the environmentalist playbook. Think Globally, Act Locally. Spend 10% of your 'wanking on/.' time to being a parent, or a citizen in general, who supports education.
That rallying cry did wonders for the environmentalists. Perhaps it will here as well. One thing's for certain: there is no downside to it. It's all either neutral or up.
There are a lot of Free Software advocates here, right? Believers in a gift economy? OK, STF and give! Make a personal pledge. "I will not want on/. on this subject until I have made some contribution toward fixing the problem."
My contribution has been electronic and surface mail to my Senators and Congressmen, helping with I think US$13k for the local Boys and Girls Club, and equipment donations to the local school system.
I am not a parent, but I am a citizen of The United States of America. I have responsibilities as well as rights.
So you want to establish a precedent for paying to be covered in Wikis? And build yet more politicization into search engine listings? What wonderful ideas! The only thing that could possibly top those would be your plan for exactly how to close all their blogs.
Not bad for the first day out, I guess. It's recouped about 10% of the cost to make it. There are three new releases reported. Serenity is doing best, by a wide margin.
Disclaimer: I know nada about the movie biz, historical accuracy of data provided by the-numbers.com, etc. I was just curious, and Googling around.
Not even close. Individual bits of Microsoft software have far too many hooks into other applications and the OS. Even the permissions models that are available aren't widely used, etc.
To most Unix or Linux users, the idea of your word processor or Web browser being able to own your system is just laughable. It would require doing something that's as idiotic as surfing as root with a vulnerable browser.
Yes, more security issues will be found in Open Source software, as individual projects move into more mainstream use. They'll probably be fixed more rapidly, as well.
You'll continue to see the steady background of input sanitization problems in a million little PHP apps (photo galleries, etc.), etc. But as projects move into the mainstream, more people look at them, doing code reviews, fuzz testing, etc.
There's much more to this story. Google around a bit.
Criticality data will always be suspect. There are many weighting systems in use. In fairnessm it's a deep subject. But Microsoft has something of a history of severity denial.
2. How fast where patches/new versions deployed
Firefox is the clear winner here.
3. How many days was the browser open to the exploit and 4. Total number of days browser was exploitable - IE vs Firefox
From some research I did back in June:
"Widely read reports indicate that IE enjoyed only seven days of 2004 without being subject to any known vulnerabilities. Those days were between 12 and 19 October. I rather doubt that--it seems likely that at least one vulnerability (specifically that would be gm014) reported to Microsoft 2/20/03 by GreyMagic. This is still unpatched, as I verified this morning with IE 6.0 SP1, on Win2K, SP4. Some security people aren't doing their homework."
This URL has a couple of photos demonstrating it it--ice cube in a beaker.
Also from that URL: "In a paper titled "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level" submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise."
"...I'm starting to come up with a trend: it isn't possible to really secure the computer if the end-user doesn't understand and/or care about security."
Stay in the business long long enough, and you won't regard this as a mere "trend," my friend. It makes some things which should be both useful and easily implemented impossible, etc. You hit stretches where you lose more than you win, because a non-technical manager doesn't really want to hear about a threat. Lots of other frustrations.
But at the end of the day, the up side is that security work is *fun.* I'd much prefer to be doing it than coding some small piece of a thumping great business app in Java. It's also difficult work. So difficult that I suspect it can't be done well, for any length of time, by those that aren't having fun.
So may the fun be with you. The victories make it all worthwhile.
Well, I doubt it will be long before Unix Services is available. That should provide full POSIX compliance, giving you sed, awk, etc., as well as the usuall compile toolchain. I'd be willing to bet that remains a free download. It's certainly in Microsoft's best interests. The filesystem bits will probably be in place from Day 1.
The folk at Cygwin will probably be all over this as well.
If you have to (or just want to) run the thing, it's not all bleak. I'll be avoiding it for many reasons. But for those who are inevitably forced into it (job requirements, etc.) there will be at least *some* Unixy things available.
There's no need for any of this. All we have to do is make use of the security flag defined by RFC3514. See it at: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3514.html
This has been available to us since 4/1/03, and comes to us via Steve Bellovin, a security guy of note.
Excellent points, and I'll not argue against them.
However, a viewpoint:
I personally am not attracted to the distinctions between atheists and agnostics. It would seem to me that if an agnostic believes that nothing can be known about the nature of God, then God is irrelevant as a guide to how to conduct our lives. Mother Theresa may be headed for Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, an eternity of nothing, or ???.
As a practical matter, then, the question would seem to reduce to whether or not to believe in a supernatural being.
Given the complexity of today's world, and the effort that you have to expend to even vote intelligently, believing in the supernatural is not useful. Subscribing to beliefs such as, "be fruitful and multiply," would seem actually counterproductive, if we're actually playing in a zero-sum game, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that we are.
Whether religion has, historically, been inevitable is a less useful question, to me, than how might we at least reduce future belief in the supernatural.
Of course, this all just a viewpoint. I'm sure a large percentage of those following this now dated (Slashdot sense only:)) discussion now regard me as a minion of Satan or something.
It's been an interesting discussion, and has at least made me organize my thoughts a bit, which is always useful.
"All your savings and all your bank debts only exist on mainframes."
That turns out to not be the case. Until a few years ago, the most popular credit union software ran exlusively on MPE/iX on HP3000s. HP has EOL'ed that OS, and you haven't been able to buy an HP3000 since Halloween of last year, I believe. I had to laugh at the date. I've heard systems guys who were obviously on a customer support call talking Unix as they left my bank.
That credit uniion software has been ported to HP-UX, a Unix variant. And in fact, the HP3k (MPE) systems could be changed to HP9k (Unix) systems with the replacement of one chip.
Personally, I rather think that the days of the proprietary Unices are numbered as well. HP certainly doesn't seem to putting much energy into HP-UX itself these days, and hasn't since the early days of 11i. But they are adding lots of Linux compatability software to the OS, from bash to complete Open Source applications.
My personal prediction is that given the steady capability growth of Linux, and the addition of more and more enterprise software (advanced filesystems, backup software and the like), Linux will eventually subsume both of these markets.
The limiting factors are very probably: a) Stability. In these realms customers want stability above all else. That applies to the hardware, the operating system, the application, and the roadmaps. b) Cost. The time and expense of porting applications is probably the most important here. The expense of rare admin talent will be a contributing factor, to be sure. But a comparatively small factor.
This is an ordered list. Cost is definitely the lesser issue, for the vast majority of these business users.
Bingo! I wish someone would do a study on how often that happens. And rated the papers by how often they did it. *That* would be a metric worth seeing.
Of course, few papers would report it...
"...unfounded aggressive anti-religious statements annoy me as an agnostic: I'd like to perceive atheism as being a rational alternative to religion, and broad, sweeping statements like that aren't helping."
To me, that reads that they're not helping you with your personal perceptions. I'm not sure the poster is tremendously concerned about that.
Perhaps the poster has simply seen too many examples of Christianity being used as an agent of control here in the US. Blue laws, required teaching of Creation Science, etc., and is just angry.
Nah, that would never happen on Slashdot.
It could also be argued that if supernatural explanations for natural events hadn't supplied a simplistic way out of a state of ignorance, the scientific method might have arrived before the 17th century.
Since this is all about belief systems, I should now mention that I believe that would have been a Good Thing.
Perhaps because poster has completely confused the production houses and the cinema chains? Is someone from New Line supposed to drive out and yank the annoyance from the chair behind you?
Not that I'm all pleased with the production houses. A poster further up mentioned that 50% of the gate goes straight to them, which I think is low. I remember reading somewhere that Star Wars Episode 3 got closer to 80%, or some such ridiculous amount.
Hence the horrible concession prices, minimum-wage projectionists, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people with such an imbecilic sig as 'Social Justice: A liberal getting slugged in the teeth' are the last people on earth who could actually do it. Probably just another guy overcompensating for something, or someone with far too high an opinion of himself. Certainly not worth getting upset over.
"Adobe et al. don't want to port their applications to Linux -- it's because currently, there is no such thing!"
Astonishing. I could have sworn I'm running half a dozen Linux boxen even as we speak.
Also, you do realize that you're asking for a *lot* of bloat, right?
Personally, I don't care about Adobe ever appearing on Linux. Remember the Skylarov case? They're as evil has any corporation needs to be.
I'm not a graphic artist. I haven't been a Photoshop user since around 3.5. But, I'm not pretending The GIMP is as good. If I were a graphic artist, I'd probably be looking at the new graphics software from Apple, and maybe resigning myself to running it on OS X if it's as capable a product as PS.
All the while in the fond hope that The GIMP would keep improving. I'll run Free software as long as there's any possible way I can do the job with it.
See Ulrich Drepper:m l
/usr/bin, etc. The workstation I'm writing this on has 2843 files in there, not counting X11. This is one reason why many systems are so slow to process this directory through a GUI combobox or file manager.
/media much sooner, etc.
/opt, etc. But it could have been a lot better without vendor pressure.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/8511.ht
Historically, the LSB hasn't been very useful. Maybe it will in the next version. But not if the problems with the tests aren't sorted.
I was subscribed to the FHS mailing list, back in '98 or '99. I forget which version we were arguing about at the time, and can't check as the list archives don't go back that far. Part of the push to get that version out was that vendors just wanted *something*, optimal or not.
IMHO, it was that sort of thing that led to problems like multiple desktop environment binaries all being located in
It's also the reason we didn't have
I'm not berating the list members. A lot of good came out of it, and there were many issues, such as allowing for how existing Unices used
IMHO, OpenGroup and LSB are as much about PR as anything else.
Bad habits are mostly fun.
"...oxygen, which can be used for breathing and for rocket fuel, he explained."
Which is worse:
a) That he made that explanation
b) That he needed to make that explanation
Assuming these people are rational can normally be considered a BFM.
What's wrong with tombstones on the highway?
Apology accepted. Yes, we do all have our off days. I shouldn't have brought up the bit about your GPS program. It isn't as if the US has never had trouble launching a worthwhile space mission due to political wrangling. I should have been wishing the ESA well, as I normally do.
The 'yob' bit has to do with the Spanish pronunciation of 'job'. You hear it in the US occasionally in standup comedy routines, etc., from performers such as Carlos Mencia--a fairly popular US comic.
It would likely be considered to be of questionable taste for Anglos to use it in this context.
"For the same reason that the EU is developing Galileo"h reat/
And much luck you're having with it, right? According a site located within the EU the whole thing is in jeopardy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/galileo_t
FYI, the US has increased GPS resolution. It makes no economic sense not to. Switching GPS off on it's anniversary is an urban legend the likes of which we haven't even heard here in the US. And since we implemented it, and use it a great deal, it would make headlines if it were down for even a day. Particularly as we like to beat up on our space program--which is way beyond anything the EU has yet managed.
You might consider not hanging out with so many mindless US haters. We have our faults, but *damn*, you're dumb. The 'yee-haw, good yob!' is also totally unappreciated. We have our plague of 'yee-haw' Bush-lovers. Ok, he's an intellectual lightweight. In fact, he's an idiot. So are you. Where did "yob" come from? Racist slur on hispanics?
Do the world a favor and kill yourself.
On a subject like this, I would think that valuable, widely respected opinions would come from a combination of government, academia, and industry. Anyone have any other groups to suggest?
/. would equate government with industry, perhaps largely due to our current administration. Academia can also be suspect, as they're by no means a disinterested party, and University patent revenue is trending rapidly upwards.
3 09100399?OpenDocument
/.' time to being a parent, or a citizen in general, who supports education.
/. on this subject until I have made some contribution toward fixing the problem."
Many here on
As a confirmed secularist (Oxford sense 1), the fact that we're even hearing about religion in this discussion is alarming.
But you have to believe that someone out there is ethical, and thinking about the greater good, or slide into total apathy. That can't be good for you. Humans aren't wired that way.
The authors of the report are people who are probably worth listening to. Go read the press release, at least. Their names and titles are on it.
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0
We all know something is amiss. Perhaps we should take a page from the environmentalist playbook. Think Globally, Act Locally. Spend 10% of your 'wanking on
That rallying cry did wonders for the environmentalists. Perhaps it will here as well. One thing's for certain: there is no downside to it. It's all either neutral or up.
There are a lot of Free Software advocates here, right? Believers in a gift economy? OK, STF and give! Make a personal pledge. "I will not want on
My contribution has been electronic and surface mail to my Senators and Congressmen, helping with I think US$13k for the local Boys and Girls Club, and equipment donations to the local school system.
I am not a parent, but I am a citizen of The United States of America. I have responsibilities as well as rights.
So you want to establish a precedent for paying to be covered in Wikis? And build yet more politicization into search engine listings? What wonderful ideas! The only thing that could possibly top those would be your plan for exactly how to close all their blogs.
/.
And this got a +5. Gotta love that
According to:0 930.html
http://www.the-numbers.com/charts/daily/2005/2005
it did $4,200,000 over 2,188 cinemas, for an average of $1,920 at each.
Not bad for the first day out, I guess. It's recouped about 10% of the cost to make it. There are three new releases reported. Serenity is doing best, by a wide margin.
Disclaimer: I know nada about the movie biz, historical accuracy of data provided by the-numbers.com, etc. I was just curious, and Googling around.
There was a time when people couldn't imagine a world with both nuclear power and hunger.
Not even close. Individual bits of Microsoft software have far too many hooks into other applications and the OS. Even the permissions models that are available aren't widely used, etc. To most Unix or Linux users, the idea of your word processor or Web browser being able to own your system is just laughable. It would require doing something that's as idiotic as surfing as root with a vulnerable browser. Yes, more security issues will be found in Open Source software, as individual projects move into more mainstream use. They'll probably be fixed more rapidly, as well. You'll continue to see the steady background of input sanitization problems in a million little PHP apps (photo galleries, etc.), etc. But as projects move into the mainstream, more people look at them, doing code reviews, fuzz testing, etc. There's much more to this story. Google around a bit.
1. How many Critical IE vs Firefox
Criticality data will always be suspect. There are many weighting systems in use. In fairnessm it's a deep subject. But Microsoft has something of a history of severity denial.
2. How fast where patches/new versions deployed
Firefox is the clear winner here.
3. How many days was the browser open to the exploit
and
4. Total number of days browser was exploitable - IE vs Firefox
From some research I did back in June:
"Widely read reports indicate that IE enjoyed only seven days of 2004 without being subject to any known vulnerabilities. Those days were between 12 and 19 October. I rather doubt that--it seems likely that at least one vulnerability (specifically that would be gm014) reported to Microsoft 2/20/03 by GreyMagic. This is still unpatched, as I verified this morning with IE 6.0 SP1, on Win2K, SP4. Some security people aren't doing their homework."
The volumes are not the same, due to density differences. See http://nsidc.org/news/press/20050801_floatingice.h tml
This URL has a couple of photos demonstrating it it--ice cube in a beaker.
Also from that URL: "In a paper titled "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level" submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise."
"...I'm starting to come up with a trend: it isn't possible to really secure the computer if the end-user doesn't understand and/or care about security."
Stay in the business long long enough, and you won't regard this as a mere "trend," my friend. It makes some things which should be both useful and easily implemented impossible, etc. You hit stretches where you lose more than you win, because a non-technical manager doesn't really want to hear about a threat. Lots of other frustrations.
But at the end of the day, the up side is that security work is *fun.* I'd much prefer to be doing it than coding some small piece of a thumping great business app in Java. It's also difficult work. So difficult that I suspect it can't be done well, for any length of time, by those that aren't having fun.
So may the fun be with you. The victories make it all worthwhile.
Well, I doubt it will be long before Unix Services is available. That should provide full POSIX compliance, giving you sed, awk, etc., as well as the usuall compile toolchain. I'd be willing to bet that remains a free download. It's certainly in Microsoft's best interests. The filesystem bits will probably be in place from Day 1.
The folk at Cygwin will probably be all over this as well.
If you have to (or just want to) run the thing, it's not all bleak. I'll be avoiding it for many reasons. But for those who are inevitably forced into it (job requirements, etc.) there will be at least *some* Unixy things available.
There's no need for any of this. All we have to do is make use of the security flag defined by RFC3514. See it at: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3514.html
This has been available to us since 4/1/03, and comes to us via Steve Bellovin, a security guy of note.
Excellent points, and I'll not argue against them.
:)) discussion now regard me as a minion of Satan or something.
However, a viewpoint:
I personally am not attracted to the distinctions between atheists and agnostics. It would seem to me that if an agnostic believes that nothing can be known about the nature of God, then God is irrelevant as a guide to how to conduct our lives. Mother Theresa may be headed for Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, an eternity of nothing, or ???.
As a practical matter, then, the question would seem to reduce to whether or not to believe in a supernatural being.
Given the complexity of today's world, and the effort that you have to expend to even vote intelligently, believing in the supernatural is not useful. Subscribing to beliefs such as, "be fruitful and multiply," would seem actually counterproductive, if we're actually playing in a zero-sum game, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that we are.
Whether religion has, historically, been inevitable is a less useful question, to me, than how might we at least reduce future belief in the supernatural.
Of course, this all just a viewpoint. I'm sure a large percentage of those following this now dated (Slashdot sense only
It's been an interesting discussion, and has at least made me organize my thoughts a bit, which is always useful.
Thanks, skval!
Personally, I think Edsger Dijkstra said it best. "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
Though you'd have to say this about once a week to make any impression at Slashdot, I wish I had mod points or you.
"All your savings and all your bank debts only exist on mainframes."
r s/superdome/.
That turns out to not be the case. Until a few years ago, the most popular credit union software ran exlusively on MPE/iX on HP3000s. HP has EOL'ed that OS, and you haven't been able to buy an HP3000 since Halloween of last year, I believe. I had to laugh at the date. I've heard systems guys who were obviously on a customer support call talking Unix as they left my bank.
That credit uniion software has been ported to HP-UX, a Unix variant. And in fact, the HP3k (MPE) systems could be changed to HP9k (Unix) systems with the replacement of one chip.
Unix variants can run some huge systems, after all. To stay within the HP realm alone, look at
at Superdomes http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/scalableserve
Personally, I rather think that the days of the proprietary Unices are numbered as well. HP certainly doesn't seem to putting much energy into HP-UX itself these days, and hasn't since the early days of 11i. But they are adding lots of Linux compatability software to the OS, from bash to complete Open Source applications.
My personal prediction is that given the steady capability growth of Linux, and the addition of more and more enterprise software (advanced filesystems, backup software and the like), Linux will eventually subsume both of these markets.
The limiting factors are very probably:
a) Stability. In these realms customers want stability above all else. That applies to the hardware, the operating system, the application, and the roadmaps.
b) Cost. The time and expense of porting applications is probably the most important here. The expense of rare admin talent will be a contributing factor, to be sure. But a comparatively small factor.
This is an ordered list. Cost is definitely the lesser issue, for the vast majority of these business users.
Bingo! I wish someone would do a study on how often that happens. And rated the papers by how often they did it. *That* would be a metric worth seeing. Of course, few papers would report it...
"...unfounded aggressive anti-religious statements annoy me as an agnostic: I'd like to perceive atheism as being a rational alternative to religion, and broad, sweeping statements like that aren't helping."
To me, that reads that they're not helping you with your personal perceptions. I'm not sure the poster is tremendously concerned about that.
Perhaps the poster has simply seen too many examples of Christianity being used as an agent of control here in the US. Blue laws, required teaching of Creation Science, etc., and is just angry.
Nah, that would never happen on Slashdot.
It could also be argued that if supernatural explanations for natural events hadn't supplied a simplistic way out of a state of ignorance, the scientific method might have arrived before the 17th century.
Since this is all about belief systems, I should now mention that I believe that would have been a Good Thing.
Perhaps because poster has completely confused the production houses and the cinema chains? Is someone from New Line supposed to drive out and yank the annoyance from the chair behind you?
Not that I'm all pleased with the production houses. A poster further up mentioned that 50% of the gate goes straight to them, which I think is low. I remember reading somewhere that Star Wars Episode 3 got closer to 80%, or some such ridiculous amount.
Hence the horrible concession prices, minimum-wage projectionists, etc.