I'm not sure what you're getting at. You seem to think that using WPA2 (which is , at the moment, unbreakable in practical use unless someone is foolish enough to use a dictionary word for the passphrase) requires a significant investment in time and effort over WEP. It doesn't - the effort is exactly the same.
If I can spend 10 minutes setting up my wireless network, and have the choice between WPA2 and WEP... I'm going to be choosing WPA2. Because making it criminal to log onto my network isn't what I'm after -- taking reasonable steps to protect my data is.
n this case, you're only making it to where a crime must be committed to gain access, and in a lot of scenarios this is 'secure enough'.
Secure enough for what? This isn't about getting them thrown in jail - it's about ensuring that your data is safe. Whether or not it's a crime is irrelevant once they spend two minutes and gain access to your network.
By comparison, breaking WEP and hopping on a wireless network is simple, and how many people actually keep an eye on their router for rogue MAC numbers?
Also, you do realise that MACs can be spoofed, so in the right situation you could potentially just usurp a machine or use the MAC of a real but currently disconnected one, right?
Many of us lock MAC addresses to the switch ports. You could also use 802.1x for even better security.
See prior comment. "A lot" in this case equals a small minority. Education is not what Best Buy sells alongside routers.
It's indecent, and I am principally against it. It's attacking the integrity of the human body, and a number of other basic human rights.
In
I'm of two minds of this. On the one hand, it's the human body. If we weren't so broken as a society, clothing would exist only for purposes of comfort and decoration. I pity the people who feel shame over their flesh out of some skewed sense of morality. So you see me without clothes? Good on ya, have fun with that.
On the other hand and of far more significance, this is 100% my choice to make -- not the government's. For that reason alone, I can't understand why this technology is being accepted so casually by the populace -- or rather, it is apparently only an issue when it clashes with Think of the Children. Come to think of it, I can't understand why the ashamed-of-flesh crowd is so accepting either.
Before I did IS work, I was a landscaper. And as much as I enjoy the intellectual challenges of software development, I often think back to the work I did then (including the blistering days in the sun, and the sub-freezing days) and wonder why I left it. There's much to be said for being able to turn around say "Yep, I did that" -- and have "that" be something that everyone can see and appreciate.
This article is so poorly written it is hard to take it as a valid source.
Indeed. My favorite is "similarly, the Conference Board Inc., a non-profit research group, said Tuesday that occupants of 45% of 5,000 U.S. households it surveyed last year were satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year the survey was conducted."
There are some trivial details missing -- you know, information that would make this data relevant. Like what the heck are the numbers in between 1987 and 2009?.
None of the products in question make any pretense of validating "spoofed" addresses. And by "spoofed" we mean only that the originating address does not match the server used to send the email. Whcih is a commonplace and valid scenario for many people who outsource web site hosting and email.
What this "article" is really about: "Look at me, I can state the obvious! Come read my site!"
Looking a little closer at the about page, I see what: "The InformationWeek Business Technology Network is a network of market-leading Web sites that provide technology buyers with the information, perspective, and tools they need to make the right decisions for their businesses. "
forget that a keystroke in the 'not quite awesome but kinda neat' bar locks up the browser as it slogs through a SQLLite database of every site I've ever been to, to see if any fo them contain the single letter in the URL, title, or HTTP response keywords.
I've got a few thousand bookmarks and keep history for an indefinite period (6 mos maybe?), and I actually don't have this problem. I'm not doubting that you do, but it sounds like we're definitely having different experiences with it. (And amusingly - yes, I have used the address bar for that purpose a time or three. More often then Run dialog though.) That said: the multi-core oriented development doesn't seem to be focused on such things as that -- which are by their nature linear tasks.
As far as browsers getting more powerful and convenient -- well, we'll see what HTML 5 brings. But it seems to met hey've hit a plateau -- sure, people are finding new(ish) things to do with them, but for all that none of the sites I use require a fraction of what my computer is capable of. Even when I have 30 or 40 tabs open. (I hate doing that too - because inevitably I never get back to all of them once I have that many open...)
That aside: when you get to the point where you're writing truly taxing things for a web browser... perhaps you'd be better off taking advantage of a more rich platform API such as Java or Python, or even.Net.
Web browsers do make a decent platform for development -- but only decent because even after 20 years of practice, I believe only one browser is 100% standards compliant . Quite unlike other platforms, which were designed from the ground up to be consistent and permit developers to disregard trivialities such as underlying OS.
Using a browser for something truly complex is a lot like using an egg beater to stir your soup. Yeah, it works - but there are much better ways.
Yeah, that's something that irks me to no end as well. As you said, it's got to be primarily caching... but 120MB of private bytes when all I've done is open three relatively simple web pages?
Then again, I think it's ridiculous when adobe auto-installs an updater app that "only" takes up 20-30MB in the background. I'm often torn between "well, memory really IS cheap" and "get off my lawn and take your gigabytes with you."
Have you tried jsnes, the NES emulator written using nothing but Javascript and Canvas? Even on a 2GHz Athlon, it runs at 40fps in Chromium but only 2fps in Opera 10.
Seriously? That's like saying "I know you say you have enough horsepower in your Toyota, but have you tried drag racing against a GT 500 with it?"
If I can monitor CPU usage and see that FF (or Chrome) causes only a minor bump in CPU usage averaged over 1 second while loading a page, then it's a safe bet that the CPU is not bottlenecking anything.
Another way of looking at it: if I am not waiting any significant amount of time for a web page to load (and I have not been for years now); and that the experience holds true for my quad-core laptop and my Atom processor netbook, then a given application's performance is not visibly affected by presence or lack of CPUs.
Splitting up the application into multi-CPU friendly executables won't change my perception of performance as a user - since it's already as fast as it can be.
Again, though, this is why the move to multi CPU is not focused on performance for web browsers, but stability. This isn't to say that there won't be any perf gains, but that that's not the primary benefit to expect from such re-architecture of this kind of application.
And now even browsers are being optimized for n-cores.:)
For all the talk around this... I seldom see my browser consuming much CPU for any significant stretch of time. The exceptions are badly written javascript and Flash. The changes being made to browsers (re: multi core) are not so much focused on speed as stability.
Indeed, it always gets under my skin to hear it called "a lot of noise about nothing" or oversimplified to the point of "computers would think your newborn was born in 1901!"
I also worked on Y2K remediation -- and the issues we found and fixed were far from trivial. Had the effort not been applied, it would have been as catastrophic as predicted. That it went as smoothly and quietly as it is the result of uncountable hours of analysis, development, and testing.
he worst part of the whole thing is that we have to go back to the contractor to fix the problem which is going to cost us $$$ beyond the lost revenue of downtime.
It's unfortunate that the bar of quality is so low in this industry.
I warrant my own work against defects I caused, though I do require specific proof that it was my fault and not a requirements issue, etc-- if it is I will fix it at no charge. The scenario you describe unacceptable, yet I know it is essentially industry norm.
With a good hosts file the vast majority of ads are blocked anyway. Only the ones that are hosted on normal servers are loaded. I found that even without Adblock, very few showed.
Setting up and maintaining a hosts file is far more work than I've wanted to invest - - otherwise i"d be happy with this or alternative solutions such as privoxy. I rather like the fact that I can just go about my day (and web surfing) without needing to manually tweak a file every time I discover a new malware/ad host.
While generally I agree with you on the OP confusion on many accounts a good GUI does *NOT* need threads, event driven programming is very capable of powerful and responsive UI.
For trivial apps, this is true. But when you add any kind of complexity, whether or not this is possible depends on your definition of "responsive". If you're willing to pop up an hourglass every time a long-running operation must occur, I guess that might fit - after all the application reacts immediately, albeit with no feedback as to how long the operation will take, and regardless of whether the operation *needs* to be delaying the user. Or perhaps you think something like this is a good idea?
Except it doesn't, really. To paraphrase: "The OSS community can't succeed at managing a project without a driving corporate interest". I think there are many, many thriving examples that prove that statement to be blatantly false.
If you look a little closer at his words, you'll see that he's really saying MySQL can't succeed commercially as open source. This is, of course, true: a product that isn't commercially maintained can't be a commercial success. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be a commercial success in order to succeed.
If every computer was linked to every other in its vicinity, rather than directly to a limited number of ISPs, I wonder everything would be faster and more robust overall; a self healing network rather than one vunerable to a few cables snapping. Th
Especially across continents. The Internets are like a series of tubes, after all...
To be fair, I think this is from 1994. You gotta give Gibson some slack on that one.
If his writing had any redeeming qualities, he'd have earned some slack... but I've just found him to kinda suck. His writing style is torturous reading at best. This holds true in both his newest and oldest work.
I know, I know. I'll be turning in my geek card on the morrow.
This goes down to the root of one primordial liberty: Free speech. If you can talk freely, it means you can communicate freely with your neighbor. So you can give hime any information. Including a movie, MP3 or a digital book. Because down to its core, digital data is just information.
You're right. It's all data - so start with listing your social security number, date and city of birth, and the same for all family members. This is all just data.
It's only "just information" when the information is not of significance to the one who owns it.
The developer, Splash Damage, seems willing to do a Linux port if the publisher, Bethesda, gives them the green light.
What they fail to mention is that developers are almost always willing to do linux ports if the publisher gives them the green light (translation: foots the bill). And that publishers rarely do pay for it. Erm, give the green light.
While I might somewhat agree with the notion that engineers disdain ambiguity, I completely disagree with the statement that engineers hate compromise
But does this same hold true when you're idealistic and still in college learning your trade? What I learned in school in no way prepared me for the compromises required by real life... just because you must be able to compromise doesn't mean that you like doing it -- most folks don't (engineers and otherwise).
Slashdot Mirror
Nope... one major thing PostgreSQL sucks at is replication. You have to buy a commercial add on to get a decent implementation.
I would rather pay for replication then transactions.
Ah, quick... witty... and about 7 years out of date.
If I can spend 10 minutes setting up my wireless network, and have the choice between WPA2 and WEP... I'm going to be choosing WPA2. Because making it criminal to log onto my network isn't what I'm after -- taking reasonable steps to protect my data is.
Sure, but still that's more work than an easylist subscription...
n this case, you're only making it to where a crime must be committed to gain access, and in a lot of scenarios this is 'secure enough'.
Secure enough for what? This isn't about getting them thrown in jail - it's about ensuring that your data is safe. Whether or not it's a crime is irrelevant once they spend two minutes and gain access to your network.
By comparison, breaking WEP and hopping on a wireless network is simple, and how many people actually keep an eye on their router for rogue MAC numbers?
A lot of us do. Arpwatch makes it easy.
But most people don't.
Also, you do realise that MACs can be spoofed, so in the right situation you could potentially just usurp a machine or use the MAC of a real but currently disconnected one, right?
Many of us lock MAC addresses to the switch ports. You could also use 802.1x for even better security.
See prior comment. "A lot" in this case equals a small minority. Education is not what Best Buy sells alongside routers.
It's indecent, and I am principally against it. It's attacking the integrity of the human body, and a number of other basic human rights. In
I'm of two minds of this. On the one hand, it's the human body. If we weren't so broken as a society, clothing would exist only for purposes of comfort and decoration. I pity the people who feel shame over their flesh out of some skewed sense of morality. So you see me without clothes? Good on ya, have fun with that.
On the other hand and of far more significance, this is 100% my choice to make -- not the government's. For that reason alone, I can't understand why this technology is being accepted so casually by the populace -- or rather, it is apparently only an issue when it clashes with Think of the Children. Come to think of it, I can't understand why the ashamed-of-flesh crowd is so accepting either.
Before I did IS work, I was a landscaper. And as much as I enjoy the intellectual challenges of software development, I often think back to the work I did then (including the blistering days in the sun, and the sub-freezing days) and wonder why I left it. There's much to be said for being able to turn around say "Yep, I did that" -- and have "that" be something that everyone can see and appreciate.
This article is so poorly written it is hard to take it as a valid source.
Indeed. My favorite is "similarly, the Conference Board Inc., a non-profit research group, said Tuesday that occupants of 45% of 5,000 U.S. households it surveyed last year were satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 1987, the first year the survey was conducted."
There are some trivial details missing -- you know, information that would make this data relevant. Like what the heck are the numbers in between 1987 and 2009?.
None of the products in question make any pretense of validating "spoofed" addresses. And by "spoofed" we mean only that the originating address does not match the server used to send the email. Whcih is a commonplace and valid scenario for many people who outsource web site hosting and email.
What this "article" is really about: "Look at me, I can state the obvious! Come read my site!"
Looking a little closer at the about page, I see what: "The InformationWeek Business Technology Network is a network of market-leading Web sites that provide technology buyers with the information, perspective, and tools they need to make the right decisions for their businesses. "
forget that a keystroke in the 'not quite awesome but kinda neat' bar locks up the browser as it slogs through a SQLLite database of every site I've ever been to, to see if any fo them contain the single letter in the URL, title, or HTTP response keywords.
I've got a few thousand bookmarks and keep history for an indefinite period (6 mos maybe?), and I actually don't have this problem. I'm not doubting that you do, but it sounds like we're definitely having different experiences with it. (And amusingly - yes, I have used the address bar for that purpose a time or three. More often then Run dialog though.) That said: the multi-core oriented development doesn't seem to be focused on such things as that -- which are by their nature linear tasks.
As far as browsers getting more powerful and convenient -- well, we'll see what HTML 5 brings. But it seems to met hey've hit a plateau -- sure, people are finding new(ish) things to do with them, but for all that none of the sites I use require a fraction of what my computer is capable of. Even when I have 30 or 40 tabs open. (I hate doing that too - because inevitably I never get back to all of them once I have that many open...)
That aside: when you get to the point where you're writing truly taxing things for a web browser... perhaps you'd be better off taking advantage of a more rich platform API such as Java or Python, or even .Net.
Web browsers do make a decent platform for development -- but only decent because even after 20 years of practice, I believe only one browser is 100% standards compliant . Quite unlike other platforms, which were designed from the ground up to be consistent and permit developers to disregard trivialities such as underlying OS.
Using a browser for something truly complex is a lot like using an egg beater to stir your soup. Yeah, it works - but there are much better ways.
Then again, I think it's ridiculous when adobe auto-installs an updater app that "only" takes up 20-30MB in the background. I'm often torn between "well, memory really IS cheap" and "get off my lawn and take your gigabytes with you."
Have you tried jsnes, the NES emulator written using nothing but Javascript and Canvas? Even on a 2GHz Athlon, it runs at 40fps in Chromium but only 2fps in Opera 10.
Seriously? That's like saying "I know you say you have enough horsepower in your Toyota, but have you tried drag racing against a GT 500 with it?"
Another way of looking at it: if I am not waiting any significant amount of time for a web page to load (and I have not been for years now); and that the experience holds true for my quad-core laptop and my Atom processor netbook, then a given application's performance is not visibly affected by presence or lack of CPUs.
Splitting up the application into multi-CPU friendly executables won't change my perception of performance as a user - since it's already as fast as it can be.
Again, though, this is why the move to multi CPU is not focused on performance for web browsers, but stability. This isn't to say that there won't be any perf gains, but that that's not the primary benefit to expect from such re-architecture of this kind of application.
And now even browsers are being optimized for n-cores. :)
For all the talk around this... I seldom see my browser consuming much CPU for any significant stretch of time. The exceptions are badly written javascript and Flash. The changes being made to browsers (re: multi core) are not so much focused on speed as stability.
I also worked on Y2K remediation -- and the issues we found and fixed were far from trivial. Had the effort not been applied, it would have been as catastrophic as predicted. That it went as smoothly and quietly as it is the result of uncountable hours of analysis, development, and testing.
he worst part of the whole thing is that we have to go back to the contractor to fix the problem which is going to cost us $$$ beyond the lost revenue of downtime.
It's unfortunate that the bar of quality is so low in this industry.
I warrant my own work against defects I caused, though I do require specific proof that it was my fault and not a requirements issue, etc-- if it is I will fix it at no charge. The scenario you describe unacceptable, yet I know it is essentially industry norm.
With a good hosts file the vast majority of ads are blocked anyway. Only the ones that are hosted on normal servers are loaded. I found that even without Adblock, very few showed.
Setting up and maintaining a hosts file is far more work than I've wanted to invest - - otherwise i"d be happy with this or alternative solutions such as privoxy. I rather like the fact that I can just go about my day (and web surfing) without needing to manually tweak a file every time I discover a new malware/ad host.
While generally I agree with you on the OP confusion on many accounts a good GUI does *NOT* need threads, event driven programming is very capable of powerful and responsive UI.
For trivial apps, this is true. But when you add any kind of complexity, whether or not this is possible depends on your definition of "responsive". If you're willing to pop up an hourglass every time a long-running operation must occur, I guess that might fit - after all the application reacts immediately, albeit with no feedback as to how long the operation will take, and regardless of whether the operation *needs* to be delaying the user. Or perhaps you think something like this is a good idea?
Chrome's Adblock together with a decent hosts file work well enough for me. And it's a lot faster than FF 3.5, especially on a slow CPU like Atom.
Chrome's adblock isn't the same - you still load the ad content, you just don't see it. FF's adblock actually prevents it from loading.
If you look a little closer at his words, you'll see that he's really saying MySQL can't succeed commercially as open source. This is, of course, true: a product that isn't commercially maintained can't be a commercial success. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be a commercial success in order to succeed.
If every computer was linked to every other in its vicinity, rather than directly to a limited number of ISPs, I wonder everything would be faster and more robust overall; a self healing network rather than one vunerable to a few cables snapping. Th
Especially across continents. The Internets are like a series of tubes, after all...
To be fair, I think this is from 1994. You gotta give Gibson some slack on that one.
If his writing had any redeeming qualities, he'd have earned some slack... but I've just found him to kinda suck. His writing style is torturous reading at best. This holds true in both his newest and oldest work.
I know, I know. I'll be turning in my geek card on the morrow.
This goes down to the root of one primordial liberty: Free speech. If you can talk freely, it means you can communicate freely with your neighbor. So you can give hime any information. Including a movie, MP3 or a digital book. Because down to its core, digital data is just information.
You're right. It's all data - so start with listing your social security number, date and city of birth, and the same for all family members. This is all just data.
It's only "just information" when the information is not of significance to the one who owns it.
The developer, Splash Damage, seems willing to do a Linux port if the publisher, Bethesda, gives them the green light.
What they fail to mention is that developers are almost always willing to do linux ports if the publisher gives them the green light (translation: foots the bill). And that publishers rarely do pay for it. Erm, give the green light.
While I might somewhat agree with the notion that engineers disdain ambiguity, I completely disagree with the statement that engineers hate compromise
But does this same hold true when you're idealistic and still in college learning your trade? What I learned in school in no way prepared me for the compromises required by real life... just because you must be able to compromise doesn't mean that you like doing it -- most folks don't (engineers and otherwise).