Using the same passwords for multiple different services is much more dangerous
You mean like my credit card number or my Social Security Number (here in the U.S.)?
Ain't it great how so much of commerce relies upon us providing master level passwords which, if they are compromised through an identity theft, cause untold headaches!
I long for the day when my private PGP key can be used to sign documents such as
XYZ corporation is authorized to withdraw $42.13 from account 12345 at ABC bank no later than 12 December 2003.
I'd really like the potential for anonymity, too, where plonking down a pile of cash and providing a public key was all I needed to do. But there's a lot of interests that wouldn't like that....
Corporations, therefore, cannot possibly initiate force UNLESS they are granted that power by government.
Strictly, that's true.
Practically, most corporations find it more than sufficient to use their money to influence the government to enact legislation and initiate force on behalf of the corporation (or whatever monied interest).
It's good enough, because corporations aren't interested in gaining direct access to force.
Their overriding objective is to increase shareholder value - buying influence from the authorized force provider (the government) to provide those services is sometimes a good business decision.
they automatically find something wrong with it and drive it into the ground with lawsuits. Does that sound like a good way to get things done to you?
I find lawsuits a more acceptable tactic than spray painting SUVs:)
Seriously, though, the environmental movement has been hobbled somewhat by people that base themselves on emotion - simply uttering the word "nuclear" will cause some people to hyperventilate.
Nuclear energy has genuine dangers, risks, and benefits. But trustworthy information about nuclear cannot become widely known if opponents are basing themselves on emotions rather than rational analysis, anymore than if advocates of nuclear energy base their arugments on selfish economic interests rather than rational analysis.
After 26 years or so, it is still the standard UNIX editor (no ed jokes, please)
Well, ex was the reliable fallback.
My first few years on UNIX I used vi until emacs(Gosling, then Stallman's flavo[u]rs), but one of the big hassles back then was all the different terminal types documented in/etc/termcap, with the vt100 only a fuzzy standard.
I remember dropping into ex instead of either vi or emacs because I couldn't stand the wait for a full 24x80 character screen refresh over a 1200 baud modem.
I hope this wins some more business and government contracts for non-Windows based systems.
These developments will encourage IT directors to evaluate non-Windows systems, but successful migration will happen only if the non-Windows based systems take advantage of their current
relatively low deployment fraction and
relatively high sysadmin proficiency level
to eliminate the bugs that, yes, do exist in them, too.
Much of the big pain in Windows security vulnerabilities has to do with the mono-culture of their use.
If Linux or MacOS were deployed on more than 90% of the machines, the vulnerabilities afflicting them would hurt more than they do now.
I really like your criterion for evaluating performance.
How do some of the lesser known CPU's stack up in this comparison?
I'm thinking here of things like Transmeta, other mobile chips, XScale and maybe some of the newer DSP chips (if they are capable of running all the SPECfp2000 tests).
Trying to get upper management to work with us on setting priorities and sticking to them
Amen.
That introduces the corollary of the first rule, [which was to make a prioritized list of what you're working on and to make higher-ups insert the new task where they believe it should be.]
The corollary is that whenever the top priority changes, there is an associated cost associated with dropping project X like a bomb and spinning up to speed on project Y.
In OS lingo, there's a cost to swapping tasks.
Likewise, there's an similar added cost associated with multi-tasking in general.
Any manager worth his salt ought to know that when you fragment a person's effort into more than a couple of different simultaneous projects that you'll pay a price for doing so.
IOW, if my time is devoted 20% to Project X, 20% to Project Y, etc., you can bet you'll be getting 15% quality time on each project. The rest of the time I'll be swapping, worrying in the back of my mind about the other 4 tasks ongoing issues while I work on the current task.
Yet more big advantages to iSCSI are the ability to keep the
large,
noisy,
power-hungry,
heat-generating,
unsecure
disks out of workstations in workers' offices and down the hall in a
sound-proof,
secure,
air-conditioned,
UPS'd server room with
mirrored images,
archival backups
.
Next thing you know, GPUs will come with on-board Ethernet controllers and USB plugs for keyboard and mouse, and be built in to the back of an LCD monitor.
Unless it can be told to force certian behaivoir upon the user to be in line with corperate requirements
YourCorp must be behind the times.
At MyCorp we've moved beyond the MyCorp Spirit Building Song that sing on our way to work.
My boss, my Life Affirming Counselor, has indicated that these sleek new metal collars we're getting with electrodes and RF receivers will help improve overall corporate efficiency.
I get just tingly all over thinking about all the happiness I'm about to experience!
If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...
You're absolutely correct. There's no way that the typical network admin at a DCC is going to bother with the additional overhead of becoming Big Brother. They've got too much on their plates already.
But realize, too, that a typical DCC is going to do triple back-flips should a BSA audit come in and show the DCC lawyer this clause that says their balls are resting lightly on the spring trigger of a bear trap. Like, how much would we be liable for?
DCC's lawyer will advise DCC's provost or president to do Whatever It Takes to make the BSA or MS happy at that point.
Lemme help you out in your future legal drama. IANAL, BTW.
Based on the court documents, be it hereby known by one and all, that
Bunner
M-dN8F8 posted these secrets in the form of DeCSS on the Internet NOT so Linux users could enjoy and use DVD's and so others could improve the functional capabilities of DeCSS. He DID not^H^H^H post them to comment on any public issue or to participate in any public debate.
[I'm just extracting this from Ed Felten's commentary.]
at a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?
Gates replied quickly and with a smile: "Microsoft Office."
Yes, MSFT will try to benefit itself by attaching strings to money.
It is incumbent upon universities that call themselves places of learning, open-minded, bastions of science, to refuse money that comes attached with any strings.
If MS funds general research into CS, great.
If the money is contingent upon the university replacing standard infrastructure with MS proprietary infrastructure, the decision to change infrastructure should be made completely independent of the money.
Otherwise, it looks as if the univesity can be bought by the highest bidder.
PHB type memos, particularly the ones Goldin used to send around about 'safety'.
Ah, yes.
My company, the same one that Dilbert works for, does similar things when the shit hits the fan.
Everyone runs around with their hands up in the air -
"How could this have possibly happened?"
"Who's to blame?"
"What processes need to be put into place?"
when they start to "put in place processes" then you're on the road to mind-numbing bureaucratization.
I can't tell you how many times I've sat in mandatory meetings about safety, environmental consciousness, equal employment opportunity, ethical behavior, etc. just so that someone can check the boxes that say:
"The X Corporation believes in Y. We have a documented program for Y. Annually, 100% of our employees attend a Y training session. Additionally, our Y documentation is reviewed annually and has become incorporated into our Mission/Vision Statement. Everyone receives a copy of this statement."
what a crock.
When I was younger, in school, one of my engineering professors gave us a 5 minute talk about safety, the upshot being that if we designed anything that was unsafe and it took someone else's life that we'd feel worse than we'd ever want to know.
That was enough for me to realize the responsibility involved.
And the Columbia disaster brought home this message to everyone at NASA in stark terms better than anything else.
The accident itself represents a more important prod to not let anything like this ever happen again than any number of Y programs or processes or finger pointing after the fact.
So much of what makes life interesting (spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.) are poisonous defenses that various plants have built up to protect themselves from insects and other animals.
This development reminds me of earlier uses for snake venom, which, used carefully, can help treat various ailments.
Likewise capsacin, that can be used as a topical anesthesia.
If you're looking to preserve food, treat pain, create hallucinations, and cure illness, look at the poisons!
A couple of years ago someone on the KDE team posted a nice analysis of the performance bottlenecks associated with dynamic linking, C++, and gcc, particularly as regards Qt use.
So I have to wonder, with Qt 4, KDE 3, gcc 3.3, how many of the performance problems remain?
Sounds like loaded terminology, much like Nietzsche.
Sure, viri make the population develop "strength", as measured by resistance to attack, but there's reasonable doubt whether your killing off "weaker" portions of society is a good thing; some of the "weak" members of society might well have contributed a great "strength" in a different area.
I know lots of computer nerds with "weak" constitutions that wouldn't have stood much of a chance against bubonic plague, but they're arguably quite strong when it comes to quickly fixing the latest computer virus infestation.
The problem with the new system, apart from its Orwellian intrusion into people's lives, is that it only monitors a limited selection of behaviors that define good driving.
Most of us have been in the situation where someone is a technically qualified driver - stops when they're supposed to, never exceeds the speed limit, etc. - but they can be among the more dangerous people on the road because they can act without much regard for other drivers, for the flow of traffic. Some of these correct but oblivious drivers don't actually become involved in an accident for every dangerous situation they create; but there cases where other drivers get into the accidents.
I think periodic tests are sufficient, but full time monitoring is overly instrusive and, though it will cut down some on the number of accidents, it will not completely eliminate the problem of bad drivers.
Even though I now run bash for an interactive shell (tcsh would probably be just as good with emacs style command line editing), I'm careful to limit myself to plain Bourne shell for scripts, since those are more portable than anything - I think that's why autoconf is successful.
The modern languages are good for serious scripting, as a glue language, for projects where you're willing to port the language and any needed libraries to the new platform.
But for a gopher build script, poking its head up in the dark of an unknown flavo[u]r of UNIX, sh is the True Path.
Slashdot Mirror
any determined terrorist will find a way to do what they need, without having to resort to any of the banned items.
For example, a wild-eyed terrorist brandishing some ragged piece of heavy plastic toilet seat ripped out from the airplane restroom/closet.
"that fucking moron... screwed us all."
Many of my liberal friends have muttered the exact same phrase with regard to our previous Commander-in-Chief.
Using the same passwords for multiple different services is much more dangerous
You mean like my credit card number or my Social Security Number (here in the U.S.)?
Ain't it great how so much of commerce relies upon us providing master level passwords which, if they are compromised through an identity theft, cause untold headaches!
I long for the day when my private PGP key can be used to sign documents such as
I'd really like the potential for anonymity, too, where plonking down a pile of cash and providing a public key was all I needed to do. But there's a lot of interests that wouldn't like that....Corporations, therefore, cannot possibly initiate force UNLESS they are granted that power by government.
Strictly, that's true.
Practically, most corporations find it more than sufficient to use their money to influence the government to enact legislation and initiate force on behalf of the corporation (or whatever monied interest).
It's good enough, because corporations aren't interested in gaining direct access to force.
Their overriding objective is to increase shareholder value - buying influence from the authorized force provider (the government) to provide those services is sometimes a good business decision.they automatically find something wrong with it and drive it into the ground with lawsuits. Does that sound like a good way to get things done to you?
I find lawsuits a more acceptable tactic than spray painting SUVs:)
Seriously, though, the environmental movement has been hobbled somewhat by people that base themselves on emotion - simply uttering the word "nuclear" will cause some people to hyperventilate.
Nuclear energy has genuine dangers, risks, and benefits. But trustworthy information about nuclear cannot become widely known if opponents are basing themselves on emotions rather than rational analysis, anymore than if advocates of nuclear energy base their arugments on selfish economic interests rather than rational analysis.
After 26 years or so, it is still the standard UNIX editor (no ed jokes, please)
Well, ex was the reliable fallback.
My first few years on UNIX I used vi until emacs(Gosling, then Stallman's flavo[u]rs), but one of the big hassles back then was all the different terminal types documented in /etc/termcap, with the vt100 only a fuzzy standard.
I remember dropping into ex instead of either vi or emacs because I couldn't stand the wait for a full 24x80 character screen refresh over a 1200 baud modem.
Mono and DotGNU
What would be really nice is if Linux server deployment were widespread and both Java and .NET implementations were available.
Just perhaps, then, both Sun and Microsoft would be competing on level third party turf based solely on technical merit.
We might see more genuine developments and innovations in both products and not so much fluffy stuff.
I hope this wins some more business and government contracts for non-Windows based systems.
These developments will encourage IT directors to evaluate non-Windows systems, but successful migration will happen only if the non-Windows based systems take advantage of their current
- relatively low deployment fraction and
- relatively high sysadmin proficiency level
to eliminate the bugs that, yes, do exist in them, too.Much of the big pain in Windows security vulnerabilities has to do with the mono-culture of their use.
If Linux or MacOS were deployed on more than 90% of the machines, the vulnerabilities afflicting them would hurt more than they do now.
While at times Slashdot can be rather hostile towards
No, no, no!
Slashdot is Fair And Balanced.
FLOPS/Watt
I really like your criterion for evaluating performance.
How do some of the lesser known CPU's stack up in this comparison?
I'm thinking here of things like Transmeta, other mobile chips, XScale and maybe some of the newer DSP chips (if they are capable of running all the SPECfp2000 tests).
big what for a big launch?
Paragraph 3.
The whole Armadillo Aerospace team must be really proud to be showcased thusly on /.
Trying to get upper management to work with us on setting priorities and sticking to them
Amen.
That introduces the corollary of the first rule, [which was to make a prioritized list of what you're working on and to make higher-ups insert the new task where they believe it should be.]
The corollary is that whenever the top priority changes, there is an associated cost associated with dropping project X like a bomb and spinning up to speed on project Y.
In OS lingo, there's a cost to swapping tasks.
Likewise, there's an similar added cost associated with multi-tasking in general.
Any manager worth his salt ought to know that when you fragment a person's effort into more than a couple of different simultaneous projects that you'll pay a price for doing so.
IOW, if my time is devoted 20% to Project X, 20% to Project Y, etc., you can bet you'll be getting 15% quality time on each project. The rest of the time I'll be swapping, worrying in the back of my mind about the other 4 tasks ongoing issues while I work on the current task.
iSCSI
A really nice development.
Yet more big advantages to iSCSI are the ability to keep the
- large,
- noisy,
- power-hungry,
- heat-generating,
- unsecure
disks out of workstations in workers' offices and down the hall in a- sound-proof,
- secure,
- air-conditioned,
- UPS'd server room with
- mirrored images,
- archival backups
.Next thing you know, GPUs will come with on-board Ethernet controllers and USB plugs for keyboard and mouse, and be built in to the back of an LCD monitor.
very, very nefarious organizations?
Oh my yes, absolutely!
There's a good documentary on the subject, although dated.
Based on the 2.4 experience with the memory mapper changing horses well after 2.4.0, I'd be careful making predictions.
Also, Linus is now full time at OSDL (+).
Also, Alan will be going back to school (-). Good for him, though.
I'll go out on a limb, though, and say
which is evidently Finnish Independence Day.Unless it can be told to force certian behaivoir upon the user to be in line with corperate requirements
YourCorp must be behind the times.
At MyCorp we've moved beyond the MyCorp Spirit Building Song that sing on our way to work.
My boss, my Life Affirming Counselor, has indicated that these sleek new metal collars we're getting with electrodes and RF receivers will help improve overall corporate efficiency.
I get just tingly all over thinking about all the happiness I'm about to experience!
If you really believe anywhere but (and even then, it's a stretch) dinky community colleges are obsessively watching student PCs for pirated software...
You're absolutely correct. There's no way that the typical network admin at a DCC is going to bother with the additional overhead of becoming Big Brother. They've got too much on their plates already.
But realize, too, that a typical DCC is going to do triple back-flips should a BSA audit come in and show the DCC lawyer this clause that says their balls are resting lightly on the spring trigger of a bear trap. Like, how much would we be liable for?
DCC's lawyer will advise DCC's provost or president to do Whatever It Takes to make the BSA or MS happy at that point.
Lemme help you out in your future legal drama. IANAL, BTW.
Based on the court documents, be it hereby known by one and all, that
[I'm just extracting this from Ed Felten's commentary.]
at a question-and-answer session between the academics and Gates, one professor asked the Microsoft founder about his views about the study of information technology, a part of computer science that emphasizes on how documents, spreadsheets and other data should be handled. What kinds of technologies should students majoring in this subject be taught?
Gates replied quickly and with a smile: "Microsoft Office."
Yes, MSFT will try to benefit itself by attaching strings to money.
It is incumbent upon universities that call themselves places of learning, open-minded, bastions of science, to refuse money that comes attached with any strings.
If MS funds general research into CS, great.
If the money is contingent upon the university replacing standard infrastructure with MS proprietary infrastructure, the decision to change infrastructure should be made completely independent of the money.
Otherwise, it looks as if the univesity can be bought by the highest bidder.
PHB type memos, particularly the ones Goldin used to send around about 'safety'.
Ah, yes.
My company, the same one that Dilbert works for, does similar things when the shit hits the fan.
Everyone runs around with their hands up in the air -
when they start to "put in place processes" then you're on the road to mind-numbing bureaucratization.I can't tell you how many times I've sat in mandatory meetings about safety, environmental consciousness, equal employment opportunity, ethical behavior, etc. just so that someone can check the boxes that say:
what a crock.When I was younger, in school, one of my engineering professors gave us a 5 minute talk about safety, the upshot being that if we designed anything that was unsafe and it took someone else's life that we'd feel worse than we'd ever want to know.
That was enough for me to realize the responsibility involved.
And the Columbia disaster brought home this message to everyone at NASA in stark terms better than anything else.
The accident itself represents a more important prod to not let anything like this ever happen again than any number of Y programs or processes or finger pointing after the fact.
So much of what makes life interesting (spices, like cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.) are poisonous defenses that various plants have built up to protect themselves from insects and other animals.
This development reminds me of earlier uses for snake venom, which, used carefully, can help treat various ailments.
Likewise capsacin, that can be used as a topical anesthesia.
If you're looking to preserve food, treat pain, create hallucinations, and cure illness, look at the poisons!
A couple of years ago someone on the KDE team posted a nice analysis of the performance bottlenecks associated with dynamic linking, C++, and gcc, particularly as regards Qt use.
So I have to wonder, with Qt 4, KDE 3, gcc 3.3, how many of the performance problems remain?
Sounds like loaded terminology, much like Nietzsche.
Sure, viri make the population develop "strength", as measured by resistance to attack, but there's reasonable doubt whether your killing off "weaker" portions of society is a good thing; some of the "weak" members of society might well have contributed a great "strength" in a different area.
I know lots of computer nerds with "weak" constitutions that wouldn't have stood much of a chance against bubonic plague, but they're arguably quite strong when it comes to quickly fixing the latest computer virus infestation.
The problem with the new system, apart from its Orwellian intrusion into people's lives, is that it only monitors a limited selection of behaviors that define good driving.
Most of us have been in the situation where someone is a technically qualified driver - stops when they're supposed to, never exceeds the speed limit, etc. - but they can be among the more dangerous people on the road because they can act without much regard for other drivers, for the flow of traffic. Some of these correct but oblivious drivers don't actually become involved in an accident for every dangerous situation they create; but there cases where other drivers get into the accidents.
I think periodic tests are sufficient, but full time monitoring is overly instrusive and, though it will cut down some on the number of accidents, it will not completely eliminate the problem of bad drivers.
writing non-trivial scripts
I read the reasons not to use csh for scripting after I had spent about 10 years or so with csh from BSD days.
Even though I now run bash for an interactive shell (tcsh would probably be just as good with emacs style command line editing), I'm careful to limit myself to plain Bourne shell for scripts, since those are more portable than anything - I think that's why autoconf is successful.
The modern languages are good for serious scripting, as a glue language, for projects where you're willing to port the language and any needed libraries to the new platform.
But for a gopher build script, poking its head up in the dark of an unknown flavo[u]r of UNIX, sh is the True Path.