We've already had one Prime Minister go missing. Went swimming one day and the body was never found. Rumour has it he was picked up by an American submarine...
2) TiVo is a company with company goals. These aren't always in line with what people want.
3) MS wants in in this area. If there's a Free alternative to what is essentually an applience (read MS's inertia doesn't apply) then hw manufacturers/assemblers will quite happily tell MS where to go to save a couple of hundred dollars.
They show governments the source to their cryptographic functions. Suits go "It must be secure then." People beaten with the clue bat reply "Well, in a word. No."
Unless they show them everything then it's completely pointless. Sure the data is properly encrypted by the function but the data and the key has to get to the function first.
And even with the code they can't be sure that it still isn't backdoored. It's the same as the login/compiler trojan that was in unix for years (somebody karma whore for a link, I can't be bothered).
USB was designed to reduce cable clutter for the myriad of low speed devices that live near a computer. In this role one of the main concerns was reducing the cost of the peripherals. Firewire was never designed to fill this niche and isn't particularily good at it. Theres no real need to connect your mouse to your keyboard and have them talk to each other independant of a host but a firewire implementation must be able to do this (I believe). USB is much better for cheap and low speed than firewire will ever be.
But USB isn't good at high end. USB 2 has a higher theoretical bandwidth than firewire 400 but currently no host controller has gotten close to the theory. USB device can't talk to each other without a host controller. USB cable lengths are really short when compared with firewire. USB can't supply as much power to devices as firewire.
There's no reason why firewire and USB can't coexist and there are enough people interested in each standard to see them survive. Firewire while more expensive is not so expensive (for relatively little gain, like SCSI) as to be for people who are spending other peoples money. And firewire is starting to come as standard on higher end motherboards and multimedia cards (as well as standard on Macs) so it's getting better market penetration now.
And remember, Intel invented USB but it was headed for the dust bin of history until Apple adopted it.
"Remember the Unified Field Theory? Well, forget it. Physicists have pretty much thrown in the towel on unifying gravity with the other elemental forces, so now we have the Standard Model, which says that
everything works together in intricate harmony except gravity, which is on holiday in Tasmania and need not concern us further."
- Jon Carroll on the Higgs Boson
Atleast from IE's point of view. It sounds as though the way pipelining is done is by simply trying a request first and they are using some low level api to the network stack. So if the connection happens to be open they get a speed up, if not they get a slow down. Seeing as the connection is going to be open more than it is closed it's a general plus.
The IIS team probably noticed this and just accepted the command even though there wasn't actually a valid TCP connection present. So if they receive a packet that looks enough like a HTTP request then do it. There's probably a stack of vulnerabilities here.
The interesting point is that IE and IIS must be using the network stack at a layer lower than the BSD style socket calls otherwise these packets would be rejected at the OS level and no, I don't believe Windows' networking stack is that crap. TCP processing is fiddly so cue more security holes.
This is also an easy in to hurt IE performance. Rather than responding to the dud packet with a RST, don't respond at all (which according to the article is an acceptable response). I'm not sure how linux handles this atm. The end result is IE is dog slow to start loading the page but every other browser is super quick.
And to all those people who posted saying this is HTTP pipelining, please don't talk about networking, ever. You lack a basic understanding of how network protocols are layer upon each other. It would be better if you just rub your chin and nod sagely, possibly saying "hmmmm" at the same time. That way you wont look so stupid.
Why can't they just fall asleep like generations of uni students before them? It prepares you for later life when you need to look attentive and not drool in meetings.
Grep has nothing to do with the shell or its capabilities, grep is just an application.
It's just an application that is missing from the Windows command line. Without all those little applications the commandline is borderline useless.
Then there's the real applications. Burning a CD from the command line isn't possible on Windows where with *nix most GUI cd burning programs don't actually know anything about burning cds. They just call cdrecord and it does all the work for it.
What does that have to do with anything?
It shows that the commandline is important in *nix. In windows it's a second class citizen. All the real work is done by gui tools.
The nomenclature may be different, but the similarities surprised me - I expect that lots of it was actually copied from unix,
It probably was. All MS's early coding was done on Xenix boxes cross compiled for the PC. But the similarity is purely cosmetic. The command interpreter was intended for suit types, not coders. Also it was written for an OS that could only do one thing at a time for one person only.
I can't think of anything I can do with a Bourne shell (admittedly a limited example) that I can't do with M$.
And by defining the example you neatly exclude the problem with the windows command line. cmd.exe is reasonably passable. It's not great but it works ok. The problem is the lack of everything else. The *nix command line was the way you used the box for the longest time and so there are so many useful commands that are missing on Windows. grep for instance.
Then there's the real applications. Burning a CD from the command line isn't possible on Windows where with *nix most GUI cd burning programs don't actually know anything about burning cds. They just call cdrecord and it does all the work for it.
Curse at a system that does not let my set my keyboard mapping to dvorak before forcing me to enter textual data ~ frustration +1
Isn't this the first option to set? (And yes, I also use dvorak).
Get to the partition screen and find out that the installer doesn't dynamically resize windows partitions to make room for itself. ~ frustration +2
Realise that Windows doesn't even recognise linux partitions as there much less attempt to resize them. And don't get me started on the Windows boot loader.
Set up mount points and a swap partition because the system won't configure available space in a sane way automatically ~ frustration +3
Ease of use, exactly what you want. Pick one.
Choose 'custom' from the workstation/server/custom menu, and select package groups that I think I'll need.
See above action.
Realize that package management systems under linux...
Realise that windows doesn't actually have a package management system.
Realize that even though linux has reached version 2.4 and redhat's distro has been around for so many years, no one has ever considered that long, fast-scrolling startup text barfed out by the kernel scares away users who "can't read the error messages fast enough to keep up" and instead replaced them with a progress bar by default, while still making advanced startup an option ~ frustration
Realise that hiding the messages would piss the vast majority of your users off.
Make an educated guess that even if package management system developers could put aside their egos, develop a decent universal package system, and get every distro to use it that it would still force me to use the console ~ frustration +9
Realise that "One size fits all" means that everyone is equally pissed off with it.
Realize the reason why the interface feels so uncomfortable: my wheel mouse doesn't work ~ frustration +11
Wonder why you are using a version of Redhat that is over two years old. Consider the possibility that the user didn't pay attention during the install.
In general I think the background (dominant color) should be the "neutral state", which is black on CRTs and white/gray on reflective LCDs.
I don't think the neutral state is all that important. More important is that you aren't staring at a light all day trying to pick out dark bits. Light grey on black with muted colour highlights.
Not that this has anything to do with the Ars sight. They use white on black which is just as bad.
So MS sues them. Probably the only justified legal move MS has made in the last decade.
Ummm, no. "Windows" is a generic term describing graphical user interfaces. MS has a trademark on "Microsoft Windows". You can't release a product called that but you are most entitled to call your product windows. What they were trying to do is make "windows" a trade mark by default.
MS made a mistake when they sued Lindows. If they'd have just ignored them they would be in a much better position.
The strategic people say "we want something that does this." The tactical people go ahead and make it.
The problem occurs when the strategic people (who are higher up in the company and therefore assume they know more) start dictating to the tactical people design decisions or not listening to the tactical people when they say it will take x amount of time.
When was the last time you actually used mozilla? You appear to have trouble with the concept of constant development and improvement.
I have to say that United Linux is just as interesting as all the other unfinished hobby projects-- er, I mean "free software projects"-- out there.
Yeah, like Apache. Who would seriously be using that? And the linux kernel. That's still not finished and it's been over 10 years now! What a load of crap.
Screw shaking hands with people. I want a machine that lets me slap people over the internet.
Hypocritical ... or good business sense?
on
Xandros 1.0
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· Score: 2
Reading over the posts, it seems many are miffed about Xandros not having a downloadable version for people to try. Apparently, the prevailing view is why buy it if you can't try it
This is a valid complaint if linux already had a sizeable desktop presence. As it stands the only way linux is going to gain any serious ground on the desktop is by the same grass roots support that got it into the server room. Also support from big companies (ie IBM). A small company with a dot-com business model really doesn't quite inspire confidence.
People make such a big deal out of keynotes since Jobs came back...
He dug that hole out of desperation. Apple was in the shitter when he took over. Product lines were a mess. Sales were way down. Only the die hards could get excited about the latest, almost same Mac.
The solution? Take a chainsaw to the product line and make a really big deal out of new product launches. Suddenly people get excited about Macs and sales go up.
Unfortunately actions have consequences and one of them here is that if nothing new is released people get unhappy. The solution to this is not to have a bit of a cry, take your bat and ball and go home. All that's going to do is piss people off. Better would have been to make it quite clear that there will be no big new releases at this MacWorld (which is pretty much what everyone expects anyway). That way there's no expectation. Downside is people will expect something big if you don't say there's nothing big.
If Apple is planning on moving to a 64-bit architecture then they'll need to start educating their developers real soon now. If everything is coded properly then there's no problem. In the real world pointers get assumed to be int size or int is assumed to be 32-bits. Also word alignment becomes an issue.
This is not something they should just spring on their developers.
Seriously, I'm suprized with all of the security cameras everwhere that he hasn't popped up on a video tape yet.
If you want to commit a serious crime, security cameras aren't going to stop you. They are only useful in spur of the moment things (drunken brawls etc).
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We've already had one Prime Minister go missing. Went swimming one day and the body was never found. Rumour has it he was picked up by an American submarine ...
2) TiVo is a company with company goals. These aren't always in line with what people want.
3) MS wants in in this area. If there's a Free alternative to what is essentually an applience (read MS's inertia doesn't apply) then hw manufacturers/assemblers will quite happily tell MS where to go to save a couple of hundred dollars.
4) It'll be fun.
Unless they show them everything then it's completely pointless. Sure the data is properly encrypted by the function but the data and the key has to get to the function first.
And even with the code they can't be sure that it still isn't backdoored. It's the same as the login/compiler trojan that was in unix for years (somebody karma whore for a link, I can't be bothered).
But USB isn't good at high end. USB 2 has a higher theoretical bandwidth than firewire 400 but currently no host controller has gotten close to the theory. USB device can't talk to each other without a host controller. USB cable lengths are really short when compared with firewire. USB can't supply as much power to devices as firewire.
There's no reason why firewire and USB can't coexist and there are enough people interested in each standard to see them survive. Firewire while more expensive is not so expensive (for relatively little gain, like SCSI) as to be for people who are spending other peoples money. And firewire is starting to come as standard on higher end motherboards and multimedia cards (as well as standard on Macs) so it's getting better market penetration now.
And remember, Intel invented USB but it was headed for the dust bin of history until Apple adopted it.
"Remember the Unified Field Theory? Well, forget it. Physicists have pretty much thrown in the towel on unifying gravity with the other elemental forces, so now we have the Standard Model, which says that everything works together in intricate harmony except gravity, which is on holiday in Tasmania and need not concern us further."
- Jon Carroll on the Higgs Boson
The IIS team probably noticed this and just accepted the command even though there wasn't actually a valid TCP connection present. So if they receive a packet that looks enough like a HTTP request then do it. There's probably a stack of vulnerabilities here.
The interesting point is that IE and IIS must be using the network stack at a layer lower than the BSD style socket calls otherwise these packets would be rejected at the OS level and no, I don't believe Windows' networking stack is that crap. TCP processing is fiddly so cue more security holes.
This is also an easy in to hurt IE performance. Rather than responding to the dud packet with a RST, don't respond at all (which according to the article is an acceptable response). I'm not sure how linux handles this atm. The end result is IE is dog slow to start loading the page but every other browser is super quick.
And to all those people who posted saying this is HTTP pipelining, please don't talk about networking, ever. You lack a basic understanding of how network protocols are layer upon each other. It would be better if you just rub your chin and nod sagely, possibly saying "hmmmm" at the same time. That way you wont look so stupid.
Sigh, the times we live in.
Then there's the real applications. Burning a CD from the command line isn't possible on Windows where with *nix most GUI cd burning programs don't actually know anything about burning cds. They just call cdrecord and it does all the work for it.
Realise that Redhat != linux.
Not that this has anything to do with the Ars sight. They use white on black which is just as bad.
"Microsoft Windows" is. Just as Word isn't a trademark, "Microsoft Word" is.
MS made a mistake when they sued Lindows. If they'd have just ignored them they would be in a much better position.
The problem occurs when the strategic people (who are higher up in the company and therefore assume they know more) start dictating to the tactical people design decisions or not listening to the tactical people when they say it will take x amount of time.
Screw shaking hands with people. I want a machine that lets me slap people over the internet.
Use the instruments Luke. That's what they're there for.
The solution? Take a chainsaw to the product line and make a really big deal out of new product launches. Suddenly people get excited about Macs and sales go up.
Unfortunately actions have consequences and one of them here is that if nothing new is released people get unhappy. The solution to this is not to have a bit of a cry, take your bat and ball and go home. All that's going to do is piss people off. Better would have been to make it quite clear that there will be no big new releases at this MacWorld (which is pretty much what everyone expects anyway). That way there's no expectation. Downside is people will expect something big if you don't say there's nothing big.
This is not something they should just spring on their developers.
To quote Tyler Durden:
The illusion of safety.
Even in the US you'd have to challenge the patent in court and the burden of proof is on you.
In the rest of the world you'd just get laughed at until you hang up.