Microsoft has been warned over and over by the Windows security community (which, believe it or not, is alive and well) about security issues surrounding "active" content. But Microsoft is not one company (but then again, is any) to pay attention to any outside concern that do not address it own needs.
While the evolution of Office macro language to VBA may be seem as a good thing, allowing the same code to unify all Office apps and use all features in a wholesome manner, the combined effect of VBA and the "webfication" of Office brings forth security issues far beyond a Melissa.
Think about Melissa virus as a test and about its creator as script kid. The next virus will not be so harmless(the documented effect of Melissa is the slashdotting of some mail servers and a few hard undeserved words being screamed in corporations corridors) nor will its author be so reckless.
Naturally I am assuming above that the GUID found points to right machine. Wouldn't it be funny if it doesn't? Remember, the number points to a machine. And it can easily be faked (there is even a specific C++ function in the COM API to generate GUIDs. It works in the absence of network cards).
As for privacy, we should pay close attention to the development of all this. This is a mediatic demo for IDs and also for Clipper chips (so that the "bad guys" can be traced, right?). The supporters of those features and technologies will certanly use this as a showcase.
Slate and "The Ultimate Argument Against Linux"
on
Slate Takes on Linux
·
· Score: 1
For those who haven't noticed, Slashdot run today the story The Ultimate Argument Against Linux. The "sinergy" between that article and Slate's storys is amazing.
It is fairly obvious that Slate has an agenda. But at least they are far more subtle and elegant with their FUD. It is "FUD for the thought", if you will. All in all, the technical guy final argument was "Why change?" (see the "Ultimate..." story).
Now, am I too picky or the Slate self-assumed technically clueless journalist managed to install Linux in just one article? While I was reading I kept remembering another self-assumed technically clueless journalist that spend two(or three?) articles up to now just to tell us how technically clueless he was...
First and foremost, a complete and well-studied deconstruction of Katz was long on order. Woods does it superbly.
I read Jon Katz. Actually, I have been reading Katz for a long time. I used to like his writing a lot more when he talked about subjects he had studied. The real problem, and Woods points it wiht many more words, is that this late Katz is shallow and mostly self-referencial.
Some of you around here seems to solve Katz problem (if one exists) by simply asking people to filter him out and leave him alone. But I don't think this attitude solves the right problem. Filtering Katz out solves a noise problem. It doesn't solve the content dillution Katz brings to Slashdot.
Why is there content dillution if I don't have to read it? (Or, does the falling of a tree makes a noise if nobody is there to hear it?). Well, in the same way a salad recipe would cause some disconfort if published in C++ Report, so does Katz causes the same disconfort being published in Slashdot. This kind of misplacement of content tends to bother people because it usually brings along a misplaced audience and misplaced adds. A dillution of content may also signal a deeper change. Katz in Slashdot may well mean that Slashdot itself is changing and that we should start searching for technological news elsewhere. Most Katz detractors, consciously or not, are reacting against this last threat.
As for Katz, he used to be a good journalist. I can't say he is a good writer. His mountain book is shallow and dry. "Running to the Mountain" does not add a comma do the meaning of aging in the late twenth century, to the search of spirituality in the modern age or to anything else. It is just a long account of a middle-aged man summer fever. And a boring account, for that matter. If Katz did not considered himself so important, this book could have been a lot better.
And I don't think he can be forgived for making himself "news for nerds". Because "stuff that matters" he certanly isn't.
First post, meept etc. Most articles have nothing bellow 0. Some have a -1 (yes, I see -1). But I do not believe all noise has moved away afraid of the moderators.
It may have been caused by changing the system in the middle of the day (ie, moderators moderated post bellow -1 and now the system uses -1 as the negative limit). But then again it may not.
If offered, the moderator status MUST be accepted. Failure to accept it will cause you to be banished from Slashdot and all other sites ever quoted on it (in article or comment).
Also, your IP activity log will be sent to your employer, your family and Microsoft(to be accidentaly entered in a database).
Webdiva, Queen of Discussion? Nice to see you around.:)
I am yet to see a comment go past 9. Leave it at 2 and you will get the better stuff anyway. Also, adjust the prefs to get the threads ordered by score, so the comments with greater scores go to the beggining of the page.
I use -15 myself. Some good stuff is being lost bellow zero (and MEEPT!, naturally).
Yesterday I was out of base and posted a comment as AC. It got moderated up to 4 and ended up as the second or third thread in the article (the GNU stuff).
As far as I can see the system is starting to work pretty well after some initial glitches. There are some mistakes, but can anyone come up with something better and feasible?
It was not my intention to compare RMS/FSF and Newton point by point. I was just trying to say that if someone DOES a thing, it is not fair to dimish the effort just by saying that "if X haven't done it someone else would certanly have done"
Could he have used another group of tools at that time? Maybe, maybe not.
The fact that someone else out of sheer luck could have decided to develop what was needed in the absence of FSF can not be used to dimish their role.
"Who's this Newton guy anyway? He did almost nothing, if he hasn't come out with those laws someone else would." Now we can invalidate Newton's contribution based on this phrase, can't we?
The main point of the effort seems to be coming up with a protocol. Protocol use is obviouly free of concern.
The reference libraries for database access will not be GPLed, for the reasons you stated. They will probably be LGPLed or something, allowing free use even in proprietary software. The objective is to disseminate the protocol.
Any full implementation (reference clients, server software, etc) will probably be GPLed.
Mysql was used because it was available. But note that even though Mysql is not GPL, it is free for non-comercial use (and source code is available). CD-Index certanly qualifies as non-comercial and the guys over Mysql are very open about these things (they are one of "us", not one of "them":)).
As for MD5, it only being discussed. Nothing is hardwired for now.
The discussion in the developer's mailing lists are gearing toward maintaining the old protocol for a while (a long while maybe) and develop a new one, both using the same dataset.
This way, we can accomodate old clients while the new clients arrive.
Sorry about the breaking up of your previous post, but the paragraphs were so well formed (one idea per paragraph, etc) that I could not resist. Let me try another format this time, so as not to add noise to our little conversation.
I am prepared to admit that up to now (now being sometime between 1997 and 1999), little or no consideration was given to graphical applications that seem to be your main point of dispute. Why should it be so?
First, Linux, FreeBSD and Unix were always closely related to academia (where graphical needs are highly specialized) and/or to high-end server space (where gui are IMHO a handcap, not a plus). Second, Linux (or mainly Linux by now) is just now being seem as a possible desktop alternative. Before that you had only Windows, Apple and those one hundred guys using Amiga. So, development of client-side gui apps was no one's priority.
In this respect, you should consider Linux is where PC GUIs were in the mid-80s. Only now standards are being discussed and tested. Hopefully the Gnome/KDE thing will result in a better desktop for all.
I tend to look at Free Software as a new way of doing things. I certanly do not think the only way of innovating is by incorporating and selling the new idea in a beautiful package. I dont know exactly how the existing economic system will deal with it. But it will have to deal with it. We now have many many examples of developers being paid to develop free software. Are they all under some kind of charity? I dont think so.
This is again and again the old english-only confusion between free and free. Says who you can not sell your software? Not only you can sell it, entering first in the market as open source will probably prevent B companies from entering the same market (except for the microsoft-like types , but are you seeing hordes of sysadmins throwing away their Apaches and running to buy Site Servers and NT boxes?).
Besisdes, if there is a problems there will be a solution. That is what is being advocated. The custumers themselves will finance the development even if A Company manager do not let it go ahead.
"Apache, Bind, Sendmail, etc are all very nice pieces of software. What they are not is innovative"
Oh, I really remember there were a huge amount of competing commercial offers for every one of your examples when they were released. Care to name one?
The fundamental problem with free software is that of direction of resources. The only areas which OSS is successfull in is in areas where there is an obvious need. eg: previously existing and well used commercial software.
Ok, let me continue your paragraph for you. Let us imagine I have a grat idea, and this idea is to create a protocol, a server and a client to allow image and text to be send using the existing internet infra-structure. Now what should I do? You would probably incorporate and make Xanadu. Bernes-Lee thought it better and created the Web.
Might it have ever occurred to you that what interests the programmer who wants to develop an OSS project might not appeal to 99% of the population.
That is hardly the case. There will always be someone to create anything. Even tax software (a bad example, as tax laws vary wildly from country to country).
Where was Richard Stallman and Co when Macintosh brought the GUI to the end user
When Jobs stole the GUI idea from Xerox PARC Stallman was probably at MIT. The GUI idea entered Unix world by the way of X some time after that.
Anyhow, I can point out many rational flaws in the free software logic, but I prefer the empirical examples
Gimme the rational flaws, your empirical examples are all making water.
Both benchmarks he uses are wrong. One measures the performance of web serves, the other the performance and cost-benefit of databases. The Web test he uses was also used by ZDNet to "show" that M$ Web Servers were faster than Apache (the non-production NT version of Apache...).
In the database test case he is lying deep. He is quoting from the transaction test. SQLServer does not even appear in the top-ten performance list. But gets all ten positions in the cost-benefit list (does anyboy else sees dumping here?) with very poor performances. This test only shows that MS SQL Server is a expensive alternative to MS Access. He obviously refrain from quoting the warehouse test (large data sets, low transaction rates). SQL Server is not even listed.
Even ZDNet published file-serving and print-serving tests showing Linux beating the crap out of NT (both running in exactly the same hardware).
A consumer or group of consumers can not be accused of being a "trust". If a company will choose not to fulfill the needs od a consumer or a group of consumers, that group has every right to refuse to buy services or goods from the said company.
The buying person does not have the power to force a company to do this or that, except by voting with money.
The driver support issue is very delicate for free software. I support and will always support a boycott to hardware manufacturers that refuse to give away specs OR a working driver (notice I am not for forcing them to give away the specs. I am for forcing them to offer an usable solution). The driver thing is also a point M$ can use to bash Linux (forcing hardware manufacturers NOT to release drivers or specs).
Besides, VAR/Intel deal around the Merced port porves that there are ways to deal with trade secret issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Don Box is a well-known COM expert. He wrote this script that generates GUIDs in the open, without MAC information:
GUID generator
have fun.
Microsoft has been warned over and over by the Windows security community (which, believe it or not, is alive and well) about security issues surrounding "active" content. But Microsoft is not one company (but then again, is any) to pay attention to any outside concern that do not address it own needs.
While the evolution of Office macro language to VBA may be seem as a good thing, allowing the same code to unify all Office apps and use all features in a wholesome manner, the combined effect of VBA and the "webfication" of Office brings forth security issues far beyond a Melissa.
Think about Melissa virus as a test and about its creator as script kid. The next virus will not be so harmless(the documented effect of Melissa is the slashdotting of some mail servers and a few hard undeserved words being screamed in corporations corridors) nor will its author be so reckless.
Naturally I am assuming above that the GUID found points to right machine. Wouldn't it be funny if it doesn't? Remember, the number points to a machine. And it can easily be faked (there is even a specific C++ function in the COM API to generate GUIDs. It works in the absence of network cards).
As for privacy, we should pay close attention to the development of all this. This is a mediatic demo for IDs and also for Clipper chips (so that the "bad guys" can be traced, right?). The supporters of those features and technologies will certanly use this as a showcase.
For those who haven't noticed, Slashdot run today the story The Ultimate Argument Against Linux. The "sinergy" between that article and Slate's storys is amazing.
It is fairly obvious that Slate has an agenda. But at least they are far more subtle and elegant with their FUD. It is "FUD for the thought", if you will. All in all, the technical guy final argument was "Why change?" (see the "Ultimate..." story).
Now, am I too picky or the Slate self-assumed technically clueless journalist managed to install Linux in just one article? While I was reading I kept remembering another self-assumed technically clueless journalist that spend two(or three?) articles up to now just to tell us how technically clueless he was...
First and foremost, a complete and well-studied deconstruction of Katz was long on order. Woods does it superbly.
I read Jon Katz. Actually, I have been reading Katz for a long time. I used to like his writing a lot more when he talked about subjects he had studied. The real problem, and Woods points it wiht many more words, is that this late Katz is shallow and mostly self-referencial.
Some of you around here seems to solve Katz problem (if one exists) by simply asking people to filter him out and leave him alone. But I don't think this attitude solves the right problem. Filtering Katz out solves a noise problem. It doesn't solve the content dillution Katz brings to Slashdot.
Why is there content dillution if I don't have to read it? (Or, does the falling of a tree makes a noise if nobody is there to hear it?). Well, in the same way a salad recipe would cause some disconfort if published in C++ Report, so does Katz causes the same disconfort being published in Slashdot. This kind of misplacement of content tends to bother people because it usually brings along a misplaced audience and misplaced adds. A dillution of content may also signal a deeper change. Katz in Slashdot may well mean that Slashdot itself is changing and that we should start searching for technological news elsewhere. Most Katz detractors, consciously or not, are reacting against this last threat.
As for Katz, he used to be a good journalist. I can't say he is a good writer. His mountain book is shallow and dry. "Running to the Mountain" does not add a comma do the meaning of aging in the late twenth century, to the search of spirituality in the modern age or to anything else. It is just a long account of a middle-aged man summer fever. And a boring account, for that matter. If Katz did not considered himself so important, this book could have been a lot better.
And I don't think he can be forgived for making himself "news for nerds". Because "stuff that matters" he certanly isn't.
we just happen to be right... :))
First post, meept etc. Most articles have nothing bellow 0. Some have a -1 (yes, I see -1). But I do not believe all noise has moved away afraid of the moderators.
It may have been caused by changing the system in the middle of the day (ie, moderators moderated post bellow -1 and now the system uses -1 as the negative limit). But then again it may not.
I am using threshold -1. I can not see any comment bellow 0 in any story. Bug?
If offered, the moderator status MUST be accepted. Failure to accept it will cause you to be banished from Slashdot and all other sites ever quoted on it (in article or comment).
Also, your IP activity log will be sent to your employer, your family and Microsoft(to be accidentaly entered in a database).
Webdiva, Queen of Discussion? Nice to see you around. :)
I am yet to see a comment go past 9. Leave it at 2 and you will get the better stuff anyway. Also, adjust the prefs to get the threads ordered by score, so the comments with greater scores go to the beggining of the page.
I use -15 myself. Some good stuff is being lost bellow zero (and MEEPT!, naturally).
Yesterday I was out of base and posted a comment as AC. It got moderated up to 4 and ended up as the second or third thread in the article (the GNU stuff).
As far as I can see the system is starting to work pretty well after some initial glitches. There are some mistakes, but can anyone come up with something better and feasible?
3. By Article above: 408 moderators
By Guidelines: 10 points/day per moderator
Lowest score: 408 * 10 * -1 = -4080
The URL is correct and is not a bait. Look at every book review with a link to Amazon and you will see slashdotA in everyone of them.
Amazon uses it to identify the site from which the buyer came, so it can pay it(the site) some percentage of the book price if a sale is completed.
It was not my intention to compare RMS/FSF and Newton point by point. I was just trying to say that if someone DOES a thing, it is not fair to dimish the effort just by saying that "if X haven't done it someone else would certanly have done"
And Linus used FSF tools.
Could he have used another group of tools at that time? Maybe, maybe not.
The fact that someone else out of sheer luck could have decided to develop what was needed in the absence of FSF can not be used to dimish their role.
"Who's this Newton guy anyway? He did almost nothing, if he hasn't come out with those laws someone else would." Now we can invalidate Newton's contribution based on this phrase, can't we?
First the poor OpenGLless Be guy then this flame bait. We still need some article "proving" Windows is better than Unix, tough.
First they said Linux would never enter the Fortune 1000 space BECAUSE it had no support from top software vendors.
Now they are saying Linux inroads into Fortune 1000 space will backslash BECAUSE of the top software vendors support.
The problem is that Fortune 1000 PHBs really listen to these guys (they listen because Gartner reports are very expensive, so they must be true).
The main point of the effort seems to be coming up with a protocol. Protocol use is obviouly free of concern.
The reference libraries for database access will not be GPLed, for the reasons you stated. They will probably be LGPLed or something, allowing free use even in proprietary software. The objective is to disseminate the protocol.
Any full implementation (reference clients, server software, etc) will probably be GPLed.
Mysql was used because it was available. But note that even though Mysql is not GPL, it is free for non-comercial use (and source code is available). CD-Index certanly qualifies as non-comercial and the guys over Mysql are very open about these things (they are one of "us", not one of "them":)).
As for MD5, it only being discussed. Nothing is hardwired for now.
The discussion in the developer's mailing lists are gearing toward maintaining the old protocol for a while (a long while maybe) and develop a new one, both using the same dataset.
This way, we can accomodate old clients while the new clients arrive.
Sorry about the breaking up of your previous post, but the paragraphs were so well formed (one idea per paragraph, etc) that I could not resist. Let me try another format this time, so as not to add noise to our little conversation.
I am prepared to admit that up to now (now being sometime between 1997 and 1999), little or no consideration was given to graphical applications that seem to be your main point of dispute. Why should it be so?
First, Linux, FreeBSD and Unix were always closely related to academia (where graphical needs are highly specialized) and/or to high-end server space (where gui are IMHO a handcap, not a plus). Second, Linux (or mainly Linux by now) is just now being seem as a possible desktop alternative. Before that you had only Windows, Apple and those one hundred guys using Amiga. So, development of client-side gui apps was no one's priority.
In this respect, you should consider Linux is where PC GUIs were in the mid-80s. Only now standards are being discussed and tested. Hopefully the Gnome/KDE thing will result in a better desktop for all.
I tend to look at Free Software as a new way of doing things. I certanly do not think the only way of innovating is by incorporating and selling the new idea in a beautiful package. I dont know exactly how the existing economic system will deal with it. But it will have to deal with it. We now have many many examples of developers being paid to develop free software. Are they all under some kind of charity? I dont think so.
This is again and again the old english-only confusion between free and free.
Says who you can not sell your software? Not only you can sell it, entering first in the market as open source will probably prevent B companies from entering the same market (except for the microsoft-like types , but are you seeing hordes of sysadmins throwing away their Apaches and running to buy Site Servers and NT boxes?).
Besisdes, if there is a problems there will be a solution. That is what is being advocated. The custumers themselves will finance the development even if A Company manager do not let it go ahead.
"Apache, Bind, Sendmail, etc are all very nice pieces of software. What they are not is innovative"
Oh, I really remember there were a huge amount of competing commercial offers for every one of your examples when they were released. Care to name one?
The fundamental problem with free software is that of direction of resources. The only areas which OSS is successfull in is in areas where there is an obvious need. eg: previously existing and well used commercial software.
Ok, let me continue your paragraph for you. Let us imagine I have a grat idea, and this idea is to create a protocol, a server and a client to allow image and text to be send using the existing internet infra-structure. Now what should I do? You would probably incorporate and make Xanadu. Bernes-Lee thought it better and created the Web.
Might it have ever occurred to you that what interests the programmer who wants to develop an OSS project might not appeal to 99% of the population.
That is hardly the case. There will always be someone to create anything. Even tax software (a bad example, as tax laws vary wildly from country to country).
Where was Richard Stallman and Co when Macintosh brought the GUI to the end user
When Jobs stole the GUI idea from Xerox PARC Stallman was probably at MIT. The GUI idea entered Unix world by the way of X some time after that.
Anyhow, I can point out many rational flaws in the free software logic, but I prefer the empirical examples
Gimme the rational flaws, your empirical examples are all making water.
Can someone setup a mailing list or a web site to get people willing to work on an alternative protocol/database together?
Both benchmarks he uses are wrong. One measures the performance of web serves, the other the performance and cost-benefit of databases. The Web test he uses was also used by ZDNet to "show" that M$ Web Servers were faster than Apache (the non-production NT version of Apache...).
In the database test case he is lying deep. He is quoting from the transaction test. SQLServer does not even appear in the top-ten performance list. But gets all ten positions in the cost-benefit list (does anyboy else sees dumping here?) with very poor performances. This test only shows that MS SQL Server is a expensive alternative to MS Access. He obviously refrain from quoting the warehouse test (large data sets, low transaction rates). SQL Server is not even listed.
Even ZDNet published file-serving and print-serving tests showing Linux beating the crap out of NT (both running in exactly the same hardware).
A consumer or group of consumers can not be accused of being a "trust". If a company will choose not to fulfill the needs od a consumer or a group of consumers, that group has every right to refuse to buy services or goods from the said company.
The buying person does not have the power to force a company to do this or that, except by voting with money.
The driver support issue is very delicate for free software. I support and will always support a boycott to hardware manufacturers that refuse to give away specs OR a working driver (notice I am not for forcing them to give away the specs. I am for forcing them to offer an usable solution). The driver thing is also a point M$ can use to bash Linux (forcing hardware manufacturers NOT to release drivers or specs).
Besides, VAR/Intel deal around the Merced port porves that there are ways to deal with trade secret issues.