"How do I change my screen resolution?" or other bits that only techies would know)."
Well, I right-click anywhere on the desktop. Then I click 'Display'. Then I pull down the 'Screen size' menu, and choose whatever I want. Yeah, that's pretty complex.
This is under KDE. Possibly your chosen desktop sucks or something, but constantly hearing about how people can't do even the most basic things under Linux without being a 'techie' (whatever the hell that is) is *so* 20th century. If your Linux isn't getting it done for you--change it! That's the sweet part of it--you *can* change it. Or maybe you have to be a 'techie' to do that. But the idea of trying both Gnome and KDE before making the final call seems basic enough to me. I've recommended that to people, and everyone seems to have managed it, at any rate.
"OS X is my preferred OS as a security analyst..." Exactly how does OS X aid you in that endeavor? I've been doing security for many years, and I can think of many reasons *not* to use it. From generalities, such as using what you recommend (and a lot more Linux is deployed in the security world), through to specifics. Such as blocking v. non-blocking PRNG operations accessible via shell, the lack of anything remotely comparable to SELinux, etc.
I've nothing against OS X. I like it, and I've recommended it to friends, as well as Linux. But I deploy primarily Linux (also OpenBSD, for specific needs) into high-threat environments. I prefer to eat my own dog food, and maintain my focus. Insinuating that OS X is the appropriate choice for a 'security analyst' simply isn't, in general terms, justified. If you just run scans or something, use whatever. Though I suspect that some worthwhile tools don't yet run on OS X. If you do security at a deeper level, you're better off living, day to day, with an OS that's more likely to be deployed in common target environments. That's usually a predominantly Win/Lin mix, with perhaps a leavening of OS X, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.
Yeah, it varies. Sometimes I'm in an almost pure commercial Unix DMZ, sometimes a mainstream business running nearly all Win. But I have *never* been in a situation where I thought, "Luckilly, I'm running OS X. If I weren't, I wouldn't be able to run Deeply Mystical Operation Y."
I prefer Linux for overall tool quality, Win if I have to show Win-only people something specific, in a context they're more likely to 'get'.
"When Redhat crumbles (assuming they haven't already) we'll all be paying a Microsoft tax."
Ever seen Red Hat crumble before? No. So why assume they already have? A generic Red Hat hater? One reason that Slashdotters don't like them is media players. They stay away from murky situations, because they are in a largely corporate market. Now you're seeing *why* they stay away from murky situations. TFA mentions that they've spoken with MS. You'll notice they didn't do a Novell-style deal.
Did you see them freaking out when Oracle went after them? Nope. The stock tumbled, then recovered once people realized the world wasn't ending.
Red Hat spends a lot of money on Linux, paying kernel and gcc devs, etc. Perhaps you're angry with them for not shipping codecs. Or for bagging the Red Hat desktop when they were losing money on it. I, personally don't have any such issues--and I was a RH desktop user when they dumped it. I could see where they were coming from.
Assume they've already buckled? I'd give long odds that you are dead wrong. I suspect that more than a few people are going to discover how tough, and principled, Red Hat is. This is the basis of their business, and unlike Novell, they don't have fools at the helm.
The silver lining is that I get to buy more stock, cheap. Just like after the Oracle attack. I made a few thousand then, and expect to make a few thousand over this SCO-like insanity, as well. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I'll be putting my money up.
Google started with a few PCs under a desk, and PageRank. It took them a few years to come out of the blue and become a verb. I was using Google from the early days, just as I was using Inktomi before it was widely known, way back when.
What might supplant Google is probably going to equally as surprising to most people. Perhaps something from researchers at a university connected to Internet 2, enjoying huge bandwidth. Surely that's something that should make Internet search engine research easier?
The need is there. I have a *huge* bookmark collection. So large that it's often faster to search rather than drill through the collection--though the bookmarks are still valuable in terms of providing direct links to fundamentals. I do a lot of research, but also some education. So it's worthwhile for me to direct links to fundmental references to, say, the Law of Large Numbers. We're talking non-Wikipedia here, as Wikipedia references can change overnight, due to internal wars. References to fundamental papers better meet my needs.
Most people probably don't have that need. Bookmarks, for the mass audience, seem likely to become largely a thing of the past. I can certainly envision a future where large numbers of people prefer to maintain a dozen bookmarks rather than be overwhelmed by complexity. *If* bookmarks do become less relevant to the mass audience, then search grows proportionally, and all is in a state of constant flux, right? I see problems with that scenario. There's entirely too much scope for Googlewashing, etc.
Perhaps the next great search engine advance is a way to weight authoritative references against pop references. Even that would be a stopgap. How do you weight political references? And how do you do something like that while maintaining something like privacy, vice the context of a Google that 'wants to know all about you'? Or is that even possible? Oracle's Ellison has famously declared that there is no privacy, and we should get over it, but as the CEO of the leading DB vendor, he's hardly a disinterested party.
I suspect that the fortunes will be made by quantitative analysis and AI folk.
Just so you know: installing software isn't always a major part of system administration. It depends completely upon your environment. If you admin a single Linux box, it's possibly where most of your time goes. I've seen other environments where it was so completely overshadowed by things like managing users, storage, and the network, reviewing logs, etc., that softare installation wasn't five percent of the job.
You can ask that question and get a different answer per responsdent. I've heard half a dozen, anyway. I'm starting to thing that O'Reilly has seriously gone off the deep end with this. Things like a blogger code of conduct? Yeah, that will happen. While we're at it, let's define 'blog'. It was originally an abbreviation for Web Log. As in recording what you were doing. Now it seems to mean any private person who puts up a few Web pages--from would-be journalists to diaries, to basically whatever. Whether or not they're using various echo chamber-friendly software doesn't even seem to define it.
I think TFA is badly flawed for any number of reasons. Another example would be stating that, "The activities around Web 2.0 are giving rise to Software as a Service (SaaS)." Which began to occur back in the 90's--well before the 'Web 2.0' began to be bandied about. salesforce.com has been around since 1999, which is when SaaS got onto many people's radar. If you consider Application Service Provider hype from the early to mid-90s, the history is pushed back even further.
To me, it's just another example of O'Reilly moving further toward hype. Toward the fringe, IMHO.
BTW, the editor has made a *gasp* mistake. USENIX is a professional organization for anyone that uses a Unixy OS, not just academics. It's companion organization, SAGE, is for SysAdmins. That was almost spun off a couple of years, ago, but in the end it didn't work.
Dell making the call may be a telling point. If HP or another first tier vendor were to follow, all vendors would likely be doing themselves a huge favor. You'd see it in stock prices, too. Remember when MS missed XMAS, and hardware company stocks suffered more than MS?
That may have been the actual turning point, assuming there's actually been one.
I doubt the hardware vendors appreciated that *at all*. If one or two follow Dell's lead, and spark a revolt, they can insulate themselves from that sort of thing in the future. They would definitely gain a negotiating advantage. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a couple of boardrooms.
I've not believed in 'this is the year of the Linux desktop' since, well, forever. Heard it too many times, when it was said for no good reason. But a Microsoft stumble, rather than a Linux advance, could be the tipping point.
Interesting times may lie ahead. Or not. The MS war chest is immense, after all. For that kind of money, you can buy all the DoJ officials, Congress critters, etc., that you need. If there is a sea change, it will be interesting to see whether it's really due to DRM, or file/protocol standards.
"Vista is a great OS, it just may be a little too bulky for it's time."
You do know what a great new OS would have to *do*, to be widely categorized as such, right? As in make new things possible for the user, by making efficient use of hardware? I don't see Vista breaking any new ground so far as the user is concerned. Most people see the new desktop as an Apple knock-off. Some things have *definitely* been in KDE for for quite a while now. So what new userland ground is supposedly being broken? I largely see largely DRM 'advances', which have nothing to do with the user, save in how he/she gets bent over the table.
That doubly sucks, as I'm a pretty firm believer in trusted computing. We need it for several things, such as being able to accurately characterize a remote VPN client before we allow it onto a corporate LAN. And now it's name is even more officially mud, which sets telecommuting back. That alone is huge suckage--and there are other factors as well.
That leaves efficiency. Anyone care to claim that Vista is breaking new ground in terms of efficiently using hardware?
Nah. Me either.
I completely fail to understand any claims about 'great new OS'.
Strongly disagree. It should be made more of a science, not less of one. Computing is going to become increasingly vital for many things. CS should be where the basic reseach happens.
I'm not arguing against better programs which focus on programming--algorithm selection, design patterns, architecture (machine and software), etc. There is a rather large divide between science and engineering. CS already has science in the name of the program. Use it for that. For the rest--stay with engineering terms, such as Software Engineering or similar.
If CS becomes an engineering course, where is the science supposed to happen? How do you train the next generation of researchers? Do we have to create a program called Really Computer Science? Of course we'd immediately need a course within the program called Identification of Serious Semantic Suckage.
I can't go along with this *at all*. There's something about the last line on the link above that just rudes me out.
"To Purchase stocks by Paypal, click on the button below. The price is $10 until we reach 250 stocks, at which point it goes up to $1000. As of April 8, 2007, 10 stocks have been sold, so they're going fast."
You sell of 10 of 250, with no timeframe reference, while promising a 100X jump in price, and claim they're going fast? Also, the references to a 'central AI' are a bit disturbing. I would hope that any potential investors actually knew something about AI. You damned sure don't.
"When the project has sufficient resources and robots, it will be considered mature, and private detectives will be hired to start tracking down stockholders, in order of stock certificate number, to invite to be citizens."
I wander off in stunned disbelief. Please don't reply. I don't want to have to decide whether you're a nutjob or a con non-artist. But I've bookmarked this stuff, just in case a criminal case might be brought against you. I'd be pretty much in favor of that. I'm thinking that the moderator that initially rated you a troll (and whom I argued against) had simply seen your stuff before.
I don't know what to think about that. Was he/she just trying to make your stuff go away (which it urgently needs to) or should moderators ignore experience and just rate the most recent post? A difficult question, and one that won't be seen, as the article is stale.
Marxist Hacker 42 posts are definitely going to get a very careful eyeball on my part, in future. You seem mostly able to game the system. The only positive thing I can come up with is that you seem to have had limited financial success at being a complete slimeball.
Have a nice fucking day. You referenced a family Web site. I bet they're really proud of you, if they're knowledgeable enough to realize that you have well and truly poisoned the well for all of them. If any member of seeberfamily [dot org] wants to do anything *intelligent* with the Web, you have completely hosed them. Hopefully, they will beat you down.
How does it feel to have no sense of personal or familial honor or responsibility? That's *gotta* be weird. I'm sure we'd all like to hear your lamer story of how you came to be such a cur. Not!
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. As you've noted, there's a sharp dichotomy between east and west. Portland is a renowned green city, and eastern Oregon people are almost all Republican, etc.
I live west, but spend time east, and know a bunch of people over there. Migration is already hitting them in some ways that are unrelated to any sort of climate change--such as an increasing shortage of physicians in some smaller desert towns. A few communities seem to be booming, mostly due to non-locals buying vacation homes, etc. But that doesn't always benefit some long term residents, who're taking a large hit on property taxes, etc., that they can ill afford.
I'm an independent--I hate nearly all politicians equally. While I loathe Bush, Clinton also made a few moves that were breathtaking in the sheer scope of their stupidity. As did some voters--meaning anybody that didn't vote the way I did.:)
Anyway, all I can do is vote green (wherever that seems to make sense) and wish my friends in the eastern areas well. I've a feeling that life is going to get harder for them, which rather sucks. Change isn't just coming to Oregon--it's here. However it all shakes out, I hope we take care of those eastern folk. I don't always think they're making good political decisions, but the ones I know are by and large good people. We absolutely need to avoid any intrastate red/blue divide, and just take care of Oregonians.
Times could get tough. There's the old phrase about hanging separately or together...
I don't know how much faith to put in the DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE. It was a good source of information during the most recent N. Korea nuclear fracas, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. If anyone knows a better English-language Japanese news site, please post.
"Personally, I'm no longer willing to take either side of this debate at their word." I am in absolute agreement with you on this point. Particularly as the IPCC has itself been caught out on a bogus graph in their 2001 report. At least the US National Academy of Sciences thought it was bogus, anyway.
I had the impression that the 'CO2 lags temperature issue' had something to do with the Vostok ice cores, and had been resolved. Doing an advanced Google search on the realclimate.org site turned up this little gem: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006 /05/positive-feedbacks-from-the-carbon-cycle/ which is also the main reason I don't trust documentaries to provide much real climate change information. For the record, I haven't seen Gore's movie either. Same reason. The arguments in the above link are complex, and anything prepared for general audiences is bound to be an oversimplification. Which provides much scope for filmmakers, writers, etc., to perform duelling debunking (and sell lots of tickets, books, advertising, etc.)
To accurately judge, one would have to *be* a climatologist (and it's well outside my field), or place your faith in those you have the most trust in. Given my government's many examples of being, shall we say, economical with the truth, I actually have more faith in a UN organization. Particularly as it would seem safest to err on the side of caution. I suppose that carries it's own set of risks. For instance, what if the best available science were to suddenly change, and a carefully assembled carbon trading market were to collapse overnight? But on balance, the IPCC position still seems best to me.
One final comment: I hate seeing references to 'correlation does not imply causation' on Slashdot. I've seen it misused too many times. It actually depends upon your field, and what 'imply' means in that context. I hate to reference Wikipedia, having had a horrible experience where a page changed to nearly it's polar opposite for a short time, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_ imply_causation currently carries a good explanation. I particularly like what Edward Tuft had to say. To quote the article:
Tufte suggests that the shortest true statement that can be made about causality and correlation must be at least expanded to either Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality. or Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint.
That is absolutely the single best summation I've ever seen.
You might want to do a bit of research on Stalinism.
A lot of environmentalists have sound reasons for their positions. Or would you claim that, for instance, the Clean Air Act is silly, because corporations wouldn't possibly fail to install a stack scrubber just to increase their bottom line. Even though the CEO likely has targets to hit, which will decide his bonus this year, and likely doesn't live within a thousand miles of that plant, anyway.
Nah. Couldn't happen. CEOs are all fuzzy little bunnies in business suits. Everyone knows that.
I'm not claiming that the IPCC is some perfect thing. What large group of people is? But the documentary you're referring to, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," is itself the swindle.
Actually, Russia has oil reserves on almost the same scale as Saudi Arabia, and the largest natural gas reserves in the world. So it's like you said, but even more so. And China, while a Kyoto signatory, definitely doesn't really believe in it. Last year they installed more coal fired power plant capacity than England's total plant.
So here we are, with one large scale carbon sequestration trial running (one of the Scandinavian countries, and I believe that there are doubts about the instrumentation being up to the task), and many countries are going to be burning more coal. Including the US, and we couldn't even get the EPA to enforce existing mercury regulations for our existing plants. See the Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=Steubenville+mercur y+epa&btnG=Search&hl=en As we have no experience with carbon sequestration, this is pretty scary. We'll end up building new plants, probably with some thought to being able to retrofit sequestration, but little actual clue.
The report concerns the effects global warming is already having and will have on life on Earth. The disputed paragraph centered on what has already happened.
The paragraph originally said scientists had "very high confidence" which means more than 90% chance of accuracy in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."
After days of intensive small group negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence be reduced to "high confidence" which means more than 80% accuracy.
Three top scientists-authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, including American scientist David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma. The scientists said it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that was not raised when the report was circulated the past several months.
In the hurry to get the report finished before its 4 a.m. ET release and press conference, diplomats forced the last-minute removal and altering of parts of the iconic table, which shows the ill effects of warming with each 1.8 degree increase in temperature, scientists and other delegates told the AP. ============
"What purpose does a section about the economy serve in a document about global warming?" Well, it's part of the IPCC charter. They don't do basic research--they summarize, and produce guidance for policy wonks. There's no way that economic matters aren't going to be a part of this. I'll go further--economic matters *had better be* a part of this, or we are all thoroughly hosed.
A previous post of mine http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=229783 &cid=18644719 has some links to more info on the economics of the issue. Until politicians have some grasp of the economics, there's going to be little real movement on the issue. Maybe not even then...
Parent post is not a troll. One of the forecasted impacts is less snow in the Western US. Oregon has several cities (I live in one) that receive their water supplies from snow pack. Oregon agriculture is *extremely* dependent on snowpack.
If the resource changes, we may well end up adding more infrastructure to use it more efficiently. Also, census data show several eastern (desert) counties losing population, while Willamette Valley populations are growing rapidly.
This was the second of four reports. They are: Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis" (Released 2 February) Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (The one just out -- 4 April) Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change" (Due 3 May) The Synthesis Report (SYR) (Due 16 November)
Industry will certain play some role in getting things moving. A good example would be "CEOs Ask Bush for Mandatory Emissions Caps" at: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55321.html.
Personally, I don't want to see the Win2K sources. Every time MS code has been stolen (they don't handle their own security much better than they do their user's) or published under a limiting license, I see a few 'at last' posts in at least a couple of fora. If you're looking at their code, unless under anything like an explicit agreement with them involving something like 'helping Samba team' or 'complying with EU demands so they halt our massive fines' (fat chance of either) you might want to worry about being a vector for submarine patents, in the same way that some are worried about accepting Novell code into various projects.
I'll look at Microsoft code when it's under a GPL, BSD, or similar, somewhat friendly license. Not something under a license from a clearly hostile corporation. IAMNAL, don't want to be a lawyer, and don't want to have any doubts in my mind. The few people I know who've seen Microsoft code don't give me better than average reviews. I just don't see any up side, unless, say you're on the Samba team, operating under a specific agreement.
Even then I might be wary, in the specific case of Samba. I have pretty strong notions of why you might want to *keep* the separate functions of authentication and authorization separate. I'm not a believer in doing both under, say, a Free LDAP server. Nor an AD server, even if wrapped in proprietary Kerboros extensions.
I wish the Samba team the best of luck, as I'll probably have to do more interoperability work in the future. But it's just a 'dealing with what's popular' thing, for me. Definitely not a 'good idea' thing. Given a choice, I'd keep the functions separate, and implement LDAP next to RADIUS, or TACACS+ (At a minimum. I don't really want to use TACACS+, unless it's improved beyond the flaws Solar Designer found several years ago. I quit tracking or recommending it, at that point, and things may have changed.).
Most networking ideas MS has come up with aren't really things that I buy into. They've been more about lockin than open standards, security, and network efficiency since they discovered networking. Granted, the same could be said about early IBM, MS NETBIOS, Novell IPX, etc., networking. But that stuff is mostly gone, and good riddance.
I'd hope that the future of workstation-friendly networking, where you might want to go beyond the basics of DNS, LDAP, RADIUS, various network filesystems, etc., would lie more along the lines of Zeroconf.
That will get MS, BSDs, Linux, and Apple machines talking. It's even making inroads into HP-UX and OpenSolaris. Be advised that I haven't done a security review--I'm just tossing it out because:
a) A complete security review should finally be *possible*. Shouldn't be as much of a Samba/AD scenario, as, well, Samba/AD. b) Problems found are probably more politically fixable. c) More universally applicable, including easier mixing of KDE and Gnome desktops, which is a big deal for me.
Especially given c), I'll be plugging some serious hours into it starting in April, and continuing for 2-3 months after that. I know at least a couple of other security guys will be doing the same, as we're starting to talk about collaboration. Including extending some tools. I know I'd like a firm handle on Zeroconf as the KDE folk release 4.0, and a couple of Gnome-heads I know are pushing the group, as well. It should be interesting. I only wish we had an AIX guy, as well.
Some of this is going to end up being client-only info, but a couple of us are also pushing for up-front agreements to release docs and code as a joint effort. I'm definitely going to release everything I can.
That is the most stunningly blatant evil I've heard of in recent politics--GW Bush, and Clinton before him, included. I hope you people are limbering up some serious wholesale impeachment machinery...
Slashdot Mirror
"How do I change my screen resolution?" or other bits that only techies would know)."
Well, I right-click anywhere on the desktop. Then I click 'Display'. Then I pull down the 'Screen size' menu, and choose whatever I want. Yeah, that's pretty complex.
This is under KDE. Possibly your chosen desktop sucks or something, but constantly hearing about how people can't do even the most basic things under Linux without being a 'techie' (whatever the hell that is) is *so* 20th century. If your Linux isn't getting it done for you--change it! That's the sweet part of it--you *can* change it. Or maybe you have to be a 'techie' to do that. But the idea of trying both Gnome and KDE before making the final call seems basic enough to me. I've recommended that to people, and everyone seems to have managed it, at any rate.
"OS X is my preferred OS as a security analyst..." Exactly how does OS X aid you in that endeavor? I've been doing security for many years, and I can think of many reasons *not* to use it. From generalities, such as using what you recommend (and a lot more Linux is deployed in the security world), through to specifics. Such as blocking v. non-blocking PRNG operations accessible via shell, the lack of anything remotely comparable to SELinux, etc.
I've nothing against OS X. I like it, and I've recommended it to friends, as well as Linux. But I deploy primarily Linux (also OpenBSD, for specific needs) into high-threat environments. I prefer to eat my own dog food, and maintain my focus. Insinuating that OS X is the appropriate choice for a 'security analyst' simply isn't, in general terms, justified. If you just run scans or something, use whatever. Though I suspect that some worthwhile tools don't yet run on OS X. If you do security at a deeper level, you're better off living, day to day, with an OS that's more likely to be deployed in common target environments. That's usually a predominantly Win/Lin mix, with perhaps a leavening of OS X, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.
Yeah, it varies. Sometimes I'm in an almost pure commercial Unix DMZ, sometimes a mainstream business running nearly all Win. But I have *never* been in a situation where I thought, "Luckilly, I'm running OS X. If I weren't, I wouldn't be able to run Deeply Mystical Operation Y."
I prefer Linux for overall tool quality, Win if I have to show Win-only people something specific, in a context they're more likely to 'get'.
"When Redhat crumbles (assuming they haven't already) we'll all be paying a Microsoft tax."
Ever seen Red Hat crumble before? No. So why assume they already have? A generic Red Hat hater? One reason that Slashdotters don't like them is media players. They stay away from murky situations, because they are in a largely corporate market. Now you're seeing *why* they stay away from murky situations. TFA mentions that they've spoken with MS. You'll notice they didn't do a Novell-style deal.
Did you see them freaking out when Oracle went after them? Nope. The stock tumbled, then recovered once people realized the world wasn't ending.
Red Hat spends a lot of money on Linux, paying kernel and gcc devs, etc. Perhaps you're angry with them for not shipping codecs. Or for bagging the Red Hat desktop when they were losing money on it. I, personally don't have any such issues--and I was a RH desktop user when they dumped it. I could see where they were coming from.
Assume they've already buckled? I'd give long odds that you are dead wrong. I suspect that more than a few people are going to discover how tough, and principled, Red Hat is. This is the basis of their business, and unlike Novell, they don't have fools at the helm.
The silver lining is that I get to buy more stock, cheap. Just like after the Oracle attack. I made a few thousand then, and expect to make a few thousand over this SCO-like insanity, as well. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I'll be putting my money up.
Google started with a few PCs under a desk, and PageRank. It took them a few years to come out of the blue and become a verb. I was using Google from the early days, just as I was using Inktomi before it was widely known, way back when.
What might supplant Google is probably going to equally as surprising to most people. Perhaps something from researchers at a university connected to Internet 2, enjoying huge bandwidth. Surely that's something that should make Internet search engine research easier?
The need is there. I have a *huge* bookmark collection. So large that it's often faster to search rather than drill through the collection--though the bookmarks are still valuable in terms of providing direct links to fundamentals. I do a lot of research, but also some education. So it's worthwhile for me to direct links to fundmental references to, say, the Law of Large Numbers. We're talking non-Wikipedia here, as Wikipedia references can change overnight, due to internal wars. References to fundamental papers better meet my needs.
Most people probably don't have that need. Bookmarks, for the mass audience, seem likely to become largely a thing of the past. I can certainly envision a future where large numbers of people prefer to maintain a dozen bookmarks rather than be overwhelmed by complexity. *If* bookmarks do become less relevant to the mass audience, then search grows proportionally, and all is in a state of constant flux, right? I see problems with that scenario. There's entirely too much scope for Googlewashing, etc.
Perhaps the next great search engine advance is a way to weight authoritative references against pop references. Even that would be a stopgap. How do you weight political references? And how do you do something like that while maintaining something like privacy, vice the context of a Google that 'wants to know all about you'? Or is that even possible? Oracle's Ellison has famously declared that there is no privacy, and we should get over it, but as the CEO of the leading DB vendor, he's hardly a disinterested party.
I suspect that the fortunes will be made by quantitative analysis and AI folk.
The future will indeed be intersting.
Just so you know: installing software isn't always a major part of system administration. It depends completely upon your environment. If you admin a single Linux box, it's possibly where most of your time goes. I've seen other environments where it was so completely overshadowed by things like managing users, storage, and the network, reviewing logs, etc., that softare installation wasn't five percent of the job.
You can ask that question and get a different answer per responsdent. I've heard half a dozen, anyway. I'm starting to thing that O'Reilly has seriously gone off the deep end with this. Things like a blogger code of conduct? Yeah, that will happen. While we're at it, let's define 'blog'. It was originally an abbreviation for Web Log. As in recording what you were doing. Now it seems to mean any private person who puts up a few Web pages--from would-be journalists to diaries, to basically whatever. Whether or not they're using various echo chamber-friendly software doesn't even seem to define it.
I think TFA is badly flawed for any number of reasons. Another example would be stating that, "The activities around Web 2.0 are giving rise to Software as a Service (SaaS)." Which began to occur back in the 90's--well before the 'Web 2.0' began to be bandied about. salesforce.com has been around since 1999, which is when SaaS got onto many people's radar. If you consider Application Service Provider hype from the early to mid-90s, the history is pushed back even further.
To me, it's just another example of O'Reilly moving further toward hype. Toward the fringe, IMHO.
To each there own, but I would rather accidentally delete my credit card, SSN, etc. information several times, than have it compromised a single time.
Maybe security by obscurity is still considered valid by USENIX conference organizers? :)
d ings/best_papers.html
n =new
Yes, that is a joke. It's probably due to space limitations, or they don't want it to take on a Black Hat '07 ambiance or something.
I'd be amazed if at least the best couple of papers didn't appear on the portion of usenix.org available to non-members.
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/procee
BTW, the editor has made a *gasp* mistake. USENIX is a professional organization for anyone that uses a Unixy OS, not just academics. It's companion organization, SAGE, is for SysAdmins. That was almost spun off a couple of years, ago, but in the end it didn't work.
Dues are reasonable. $165/yr. for both, and there are student discounts. I know a couple of people who've been able to expense their dues.
https://db.usenix.org/cgi-bin/memb/memb.cgi?actio
I would recommend either or both, depending upon what your doing at the moment. Look the Web site over, and form your own conclusion, of course.
Dell making the call may be a telling point. If HP or another first tier vendor were to follow, all vendors would likely be doing themselves a huge favor. You'd see it in stock prices, too. Remember when MS missed XMAS, and hardware company stocks suffered more than MS?
That may have been the actual turning point, assuming there's actually been one.
I doubt the hardware vendors appreciated that *at all*. If one or two follow Dell's lead, and spark a revolt, they can insulate themselves from that sort of thing in the future. They would definitely gain a negotiating advantage. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a couple of boardrooms.
I've not believed in 'this is the year of the Linux desktop' since, well, forever. Heard it too many times, when it was said for no good reason. But a Microsoft stumble, rather than a Linux advance, could be the tipping point.
Interesting times may lie ahead. Or not. The MS war chest is immense, after all. For that kind of money, you can buy all the DoJ officials, Congress critters, etc., that you need. If there is a sea change, it will be interesting to see whether it's really due to DRM, or file/protocol standards.
"Vista is a great OS, it just may be a little too bulky for it's time."
You do know what a great new OS would have to *do*, to be widely categorized as such, right? As in make new things possible for the user, by making efficient use of hardware? I don't see Vista breaking any new ground so far as the user is concerned. Most people see the new desktop as an Apple knock-off. Some things have *definitely* been in KDE for for quite a while now. So what new userland ground is supposedly being broken? I largely see largely DRM 'advances', which have nothing to do with the user, save in how he/she gets bent over the table.
That doubly sucks, as I'm a pretty firm believer in trusted computing. We need it for several things, such as being able to accurately characterize a remote VPN client before we allow it onto a corporate LAN. And now it's name is even more officially mud, which sets telecommuting back. That alone is huge suckage--and there are other factors as well.
That leaves efficiency. Anyone care to claim that Vista is breaking new ground in terms of efficiently using hardware?
Nah. Me either.
I completely fail to understand any claims about 'great new OS'.
"CS should be an Engineering degree"
Strongly disagree. It should be made more of a science, not less of one. Computing is going to become increasingly vital for many things. CS should be where the basic reseach happens.
I'm not arguing against better programs which focus on programming--algorithm selection, design patterns, architecture (machine and software), etc. There is a rather large divide between science and engineering. CS already has science in the name of the program. Use it for that. For the rest--stay with engineering terms, such as Software Engineering or similar.
If CS becomes an engineering course, where is the science supposed to happen? How do you train the next generation of researchers? Do we have to create a program called Really Computer Science? Of course we'd immediately need a course within the program called Identification of Serious Semantic Suckage.
I can't go along with this *at all*. There's something about the last line on the link above that just rudes me out.
"To Purchase stocks by Paypal, click on the button below. The price is $10 until we reach 250 stocks, at which point it goes up to $1000. As of April 8, 2007, 10 stocks have been sold, so they're going fast."
You sell of 10 of 250, with no timeframe reference, while promising a 100X jump in price, and claim they're going fast? Also, the references to a 'central AI' are a bit disturbing. I would hope that any potential investors actually knew something about AI. You damned sure don't.
"When the project has sufficient resources and robots, it will be considered mature, and private detectives will be hired to start tracking down stockholders, in order of stock certificate number, to invite to be citizens."
I wander off in stunned disbelief. Please don't reply. I don't want to have to decide whether you're a nutjob or a con non-artist. But I've bookmarked this stuff, just in case a criminal case might be brought against you. I'd be pretty much in favor of that. I'm thinking that the moderator that initially rated you a troll (and whom I argued against) had simply seen your stuff before.
I don't know what to think about that. Was he/she just trying to make your stuff go away (which it urgently needs to) or should moderators ignore experience and just rate the most recent post? A difficult question, and one that won't be seen, as the article is stale.
Marxist Hacker 42 posts are definitely going to get a very careful eyeball on my part, in future. You seem mostly able to game the system. The only positive thing I can come up with is that you seem to have had limited financial success at being a complete slimeball.
Have a nice fucking day. You referenced a family Web site. I bet they're really proud of you, if they're knowledgeable enough to realize that you have well and truly poisoned the well for all of them. If any member of seeberfamily [dot org] wants to do anything *intelligent* with the Web, you have completely hosed them. Hopefully, they will beat you down.
How does it feel to have no sense of personal or familial honor or responsibility? That's *gotta* be weird. I'm sure we'd all like to hear your lamer story of how you came to be such a cur. Not!
It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. As you've noted, there's a sharp dichotomy between east and west. Portland is a renowned green city, and eastern Oregon people are almost all Republican, etc.
:)
I live west, but spend time east, and know a bunch of people over there. Migration is already hitting them in some ways that are unrelated to any sort of climate change--such as an increasing shortage of physicians in some smaller desert towns. A few communities seem to be booming, mostly due to non-locals buying vacation homes, etc. But that doesn't always benefit some long term residents, who're taking a large hit on property taxes, etc., that they can ill afford.
I'm an independent--I hate nearly all politicians equally. While I loathe Bush, Clinton also made a few moves that were breathtaking in the sheer scope of their stupidity. As did some voters--meaning anybody that didn't vote the way I did.
Anyway, all I can do is vote green (wherever that seems to make sense) and wish my friends in the eastern areas well. I've a feeling that life is going to get harder for them, which rather sucks. Change isn't just coming to Oregon--it's here. However it all shakes out, I hope we take care of those eastern folk. I don't always think they're making good political decisions, but the ones I know are by and large good people. We absolutely need to avoid any intrastate red/blue divide, and just take care of Oregonians.
Times could get tough. There's the old phrase about hanging separately or together...
What it comes down to is that as long as there are backhoes, there's a need for local software.
"an effective presentation does not consist of 120 slides with copy-pasted paragraphs and tacky clip art."
Well, obviously not copy-pasted paragraphs and tacky clip art *alone*. You need lots of animation and audio as well.
There may be good news on this front, as it looks as if China may be changing it's stance.1 004.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070407TDY0
That story came out today--7 April.
I don't know how much faith to put in the DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE. It was a good source of information during the most recent N. Korea nuclear fracas, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. If anyone knows a better English-language Japanese news site, please post.
"Personally, I'm no longer willing to take either side of this debate at their word." I am in absolute agreement with you on this point. Particularly as the IPCC has itself been caught out on a bogus graph in their 2001 report. At least the US National Academy of Sciences thought it was bogus, anyway.
6 /05/positive-feedbacks-from-the-carbon-cycle/
_ imply_causation currently carries a good explanation. I particularly like what Edward Tuft had to say. To quote the article:
I had the impression that the 'CO2 lags temperature issue' had something to do with the Vostok ice cores, and had been resolved. Doing an advanced Google search on the realclimate.org site turned up this little gem:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
which is also the main reason I don't trust documentaries to provide much real climate change information. For the record, I haven't seen Gore's movie either. Same reason. The arguments in the above link are complex, and anything prepared for general audiences is bound to be an oversimplification. Which provides much scope for filmmakers, writers, etc., to perform duelling debunking (and sell lots of tickets, books, advertising, etc.)
To accurately judge, one would have to *be* a climatologist (and it's well outside my field), or place your faith in those you have the most trust in. Given my government's many examples of being, shall we say, economical with the truth, I actually have more faith in a UN organization. Particularly as it would seem safest to err on the side of caution. I suppose that carries it's own set of risks. For instance, what if the best available science were to suddenly change, and a carefully assembled carbon trading market were to collapse overnight? But on balance, the IPCC position still seems best to me.
One final comment: I hate seeing references to 'correlation does not imply causation' on Slashdot. I've seen it misused too many times. It actually depends upon your field, and what 'imply' means in that context. I hate to reference Wikipedia, having had a horrible experience where a page changed to nearly it's polar opposite for a short time, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not
Tufte suggests that the shortest true statement that can be made about causality and correlation must be at least expanded to either
Empirically observed covariation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causality.
or
Correlation is not causation but it sure is a hint.
That is absolutely the single best summation I've ever seen.
"Environmentalism is the new Stalinism."
You might want to do a bit of research on Stalinism.
A lot of environmentalists have sound reasons for their positions. Or would you claim that, for instance, the Clean Air Act is silly, because corporations wouldn't possibly fail to install a stack scrubber just to increase their bottom line. Even though the CEO likely has targets to hit, which will decide his bonus this year, and likely doesn't live within a thousand miles of that plant, anyway.
Nah. Couldn't happen. CEOs are all fuzzy little bunnies in business suits. Everyone knows that.
I haven't seen it (I live in the US), but I've seen several references to it. In the Wikipedia article you referenced, be sure to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warm ing_Swindle#Reception_and_criticism
The March 9 and 14 entries at http://www.climatedenial.org/ also rip it thoroughly.
I'm not claiming that the IPCC is some perfect thing. What large group of people is? But the documentary you're referring to, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," is itself the swindle.
Actually, Russia has oil reserves on almost the same scale as Saudi Arabia, and the largest natural gas reserves in the world. So it's like you said, but even more so. And China, while a Kyoto signatory, definitely doesn't really believe in it. Last year they installed more coal fired power plant capacity than England's total plant.
r y+epa&btnG=Search&hl=en
So here we are, with one large scale carbon sequestration trial running (one of the Scandinavian countries, and I believe that there are doubts about the instrumentation being up to the task), and many countries are going to be burning more coal. Including the US, and we couldn't even get the EPA to enforce existing mercury regulations for our existing plants. See the Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Steubenville+mercu
As we have no experience with carbon sequestration, this is pretty scary. We'll end up building new plants, probably with some thought to being able to retrofit sequestration, but little actual clue.
A very sad state of affairs.
From the stories I've read, the parties wanting to remove references were from the political camp, not the science camp.
m ing/2007-04-06-global-warming-report_N.htm
3 &cid=18644719
I don't normally have a very high opinion of USAToday, but http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwar
is a good summary. A relevant chunk:
The report concerns the effects global warming is already having and will have on life on Earth. The disputed paragraph centered on what has already happened.
The paragraph originally said scientists had "very high confidence" which means more than 90% chance of accuracy in the statement that many natural systems around the globe "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."
After days of intensive small group negotiations over this section, delegates from China and Saudi Arabia on Friday insisted that the confidence be reduced to "high confidence" which means more than 80% accuracy.
Three top scientists-authors formally objected to the change by the diplomats, including American scientist David Karoly of the University of Oklahoma. The scientists said it was an unprecedented weakening of the scientific confidence that was not raised when the report was circulated the past several months.
In the hurry to get the report finished before its 4 a.m. ET release and press conference, diplomats forced the last-minute removal and altering of parts of the iconic table, which shows the ill effects of warming with each 1.8 degree increase in temperature, scientists and other delegates told the AP.
============
"What purpose does a section about the economy serve in a document about global warming?" Well, it's part of the IPCC charter. They don't do basic research--they summarize, and produce guidance for policy wonks. There's no way that economic matters aren't going to be a part of this. I'll go further--economic matters *had better be* a part of this, or we are all thoroughly hosed.
A previous post of mine
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22978
has some links to more info on the economics of the issue. Until politicians have some grasp of the economics, there's going to be little real movement on the issue. Maybe not even then...
Parent post is not a troll. One of the forecasted impacts is less snow in the Western US. Oregon has several cities (I live in one) that receive their water supplies from snow pack. Oregon agriculture is *extremely* dependent on snowpack.
If the resource changes, we may well end up adding more infrastructure to use it more efficiently. Also, census data show several eastern (desert) counties losing population, while Willamette Valley populations are growing rapidly.
*Nothing* Marxist Hacker 42 posted was trollish.
1200 scientists say one thing, and some random AC says the opposite. And is modded "Insightful". Only on Slashdot.
This was the second of four reports. They are:
/ stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_ index.cfm
l /2007/04/06/78536.htm4 25E-B058-3A64E020E18F/0/360_RapidClimateChangeRepo rt.pdf
Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis" (Released 2 February)
Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (The one just out -- 4 April)
Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change" (Due 3 May)
The Synthesis Report (SYR) (Due 16 November)
See http://www.ipcc.ch/
The economics of making as early a start as possible are looked at quite closely at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews
Industry will certain play some role in getting things moving. A good example would be "CEOs Ask Bush for Mandatory Emissions Caps" at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55321.html.
The insurance companies are certainly seeing this as important:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/internationa
There's a link from the above to a PDF hosted at Lloyds:
http://www.lloyds.com/NR/rdonlyres/FCA144E6-24D5-
That's a 31 page PDF titled _Rapid Climate Change_. Major topic coverage:
Rapid sea level rise
By Professor David Smith
Destabilisation of parts of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet
By Dr Stephan Harrison
Increased frequency and intensity of floods
By Dr Matt Wilson
Climate variability and changes in global drought intensity and frequency
By Dr Richard Washington
Personally, I don't want to see the Win2K sources. Every time MS code has been stolen (they don't handle their own security much better than they do their user's) or published under a limiting license, I see a few 'at last' posts in at least a couple of fora. If you're looking at their code, unless under anything like an explicit agreement with them involving something like 'helping Samba team' or 'complying with EU demands so they halt our massive fines' (fat chance of either) you might want to worry about being a vector for submarine patents, in the same way that some are worried about accepting Novell code into various projects.
I'll look at Microsoft code when it's under a GPL, BSD, or similar, somewhat friendly license. Not something under a license from a clearly hostile corporation. IAMNAL, don't want to be a lawyer, and don't want to have any doubts in my mind. The few people I know who've seen Microsoft code don't give me better than average reviews. I just don't see any up side, unless, say you're on the Samba team, operating under a specific agreement.
Even then I might be wary, in the specific case of Samba. I have pretty strong notions of why you might want to *keep* the separate functions of authentication and authorization separate. I'm not a believer in doing both under, say, a Free LDAP server. Nor an AD server, even if wrapped in proprietary Kerboros extensions.
I wish the Samba team the best of luck, as I'll probably have to do more interoperability work in the future. But it's just a 'dealing with what's popular' thing, for me. Definitely not a 'good idea' thing. Given a choice, I'd keep the functions separate, and implement LDAP next to RADIUS, or TACACS+ (At a minimum. I don't really want to use TACACS+, unless it's improved beyond the flaws Solar Designer found several years ago. I quit tracking or recommending it, at that point, and things may have changed.).
Most networking ideas MS has come up with aren't really things that I buy into. They've been more about lockin than open standards, security, and network efficiency since they discovered networking. Granted, the same could be said about early IBM, MS NETBIOS, Novell IPX, etc., networking. But that stuff is mostly gone, and good riddance.
I'd hope that the future of workstation-friendly networking, where you might want to go beyond the basics of DNS, LDAP, RADIUS, various network filesystems, etc., would lie more along the lines of Zeroconf.
http://www.zeroconf.org/
http://zeroconf.sourceforge.net/
That will get MS, BSDs, Linux, and Apple machines talking. It's even making inroads into HP-UX and OpenSolaris. Be advised that I haven't done a security review--I'm just tossing it out because:
a) A complete security review should finally be *possible*. Shouldn't be as much of a Samba/AD scenario, as, well, Samba/AD.
b) Problems found are probably more politically fixable.
c) More universally applicable, including easier mixing of KDE and Gnome desktops, which is a big deal for me.
Especially given c), I'll be plugging some serious hours into it starting in April, and continuing for 2-3 months after that. I know at least a couple of other security guys will be doing the same, as we're starting to talk about collaboration. Including extending some tools. I know I'd like a firm handle on Zeroconf as the KDE folk release 4.0, and a couple of Gnome-heads I know are pushing the group, as well. It should be interesting. I only wish we had an AIX guy, as well.
Some of this is going to end up being client-only info, but a couple of us are also pushing for up-front agreements to release docs and code as a joint effort. I'm definitely going to release everything I can.
That is the most stunningly blatant evil I've heard of in recent politics--GW Bush, and Clinton before him, included. I hope you people are limbering up some serious wholesale impeachment machinery...