Servers used to have names, now, in the cloud they are scalable service template instances
That is only one of literally dozens of uses of the word "cloud." Deploying virtual machines on clusters or grids is great, I agree -- but calling it "cloud" is about as useful as calling it "a thing."
It's not a buzzword, it's quite a complicated thing that has arisen from the abundance of hardware as a unit and the requirement that none of it be solely relied upon just to provide services
So now it is redundancy? Virtualization?
People who work with cloud infrastructure
Everyone works with "cloud" infrastructure today, because it is trendy...
This is why it's a cloud. It's not a buzzword after all.
In other words, because you think "cloud" should mean the thing you are using it to mean, it must not be a buzzword.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Yet somehow, authors had incentives to share their work...
Thanks, I'll add that to the list of definitions of "cloud" that I have heard from computer scientists. "Cloud computing" is an undefined term; at this point, people use it to mean whatever they want. Scalable infrastructure, computation as a utility, storing files on a server, whatever, it's all cloud at this point.
"Consumer friendly" in this case means, "Making sure people remain friendly." The last thing anyone wants is for consumers to realize they are being exploited.
So? That does nothing to change the fact that my fathers patents protect his inventions from being stolen by the very corporations you mention.
I do not doubt that; however, that is not even close to being the norm. Most patents are used as legal weapons by big corporations, often against people like your father (individual inventors who try to market their invention).
Yes, there are too many patents, and yes, there are too many fields which should not be allowed patents, but do anyway. However, that is not a blanket condemnation of the patent system, nor a reasonable rationale for this scorched-earth attitude so many people (who, I would wager, hold no patents themselves) seem to have.
Keep in mind that most people only really encounter patents in what field they work in. I do research in cryptography, and so I almost all patents that I encounter are software patents, and most of those are patents on cryptographic constructions (a fancy way of saying "algebra, number theory, and the theory of computation, or in other words, patents on abstract math). I try to prevent myself from making "scorched earth" remarks about patents by being specific: I want an end to software patents (we can discuss the reasons if you want, but that is a very long discussion). People in other fields can judge the validity of patents in their fields better than I can.
You can say the same thing about the Internet. You do not need to be online, it's just a service that you agree to the terms of (have you read your ISP's terms?).
I am not on Facebook, and for some reason, people get aggravated when they try to communicate with me. As if email or a phone call were some terrible burden. When Facebook becomes the primary way for people to communicate, it will not be a voluntary service; those who refuse to join will become social outcasts, like people who do not have a phone number. We are pretty close to that point already.
Why was he arrested for planning to have sex with her? Is that now illegal?
It's a matter of legal philosophy. Most Americans want the police to stop crimes from happening, not to just track down and arrest criminals after a crime is committed.
It's not just child abuse. You can be arrested for trying to buy drugs from an undercover police officer. You can be arrested for conspiring to murder someone. You can be arrested for planning to blow up a building.
who the hell relinquishes such personal, and incriminating information on a public server?
People who do not understand that they are doing such a thing. Most people think that if they set something as "private" on Facebook, then it is actually private. They do not understand how a website works, or what is actually happening when they use Facebook chat, etc.
Most people don't understand that they are giving their data to Facebook if they have marked something as "private." You can thank the dismal state of computer education in this country, which is generally on the level of, "Here is how you use MS Word, and here is how you search Google for sources in your essay!"
During the hearings the people on the left did everything they could to try to push it through
Really? SOPA was not a leftist law. I think you are confused about the meaning of "left wing," perhaps because you have spent so much time focusing on Democrats and Republicans...
Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive
Easier said than done. I am on a grad student's salary, and saving a few dollars here or there really does matter sometimes. I suspect that a lot of people are in my position -- even people who are paid more, but who have to feed their children etc. When the little guys are "a bit more expensive," they are going to see less business, and it is not just that people are being cheap or greedy.
I also happen to live in a town that has done plenty of things to promote small, local businesses -- our downtown area has only a handful of corporate chains, and as I understand it, they had to fight pretty hard to get permits. Maybe some towns are in a bind and really cannot do the sorts of things that are necessary to keep local businesses alive, or maybe the people running those towns just lack backbone.
Individuals are at the mercy of wealthy corporations as a result of patents, at least when it comes to software, drugs, plants, etc. The real question is which option has a greater benefit for society: the current system, or a system where patents either do not exist or are greatly curtailed (compared to now)?
So what is your solution? How would you allocate money to drug R&D?
Publicly funded research; the role of drug companies should be in producing drugs discovered by scientists funded with NIH or NSF money; they are free to do their own research if they want, but we should not be giving them a monopoly and raising the price of drugs just for that. Drug research should not be focused solely on those drugs which are most profitable, and cures should not be ignored in favor of maintenance drugs.
Yes, the market has a purpose here: to determine the price level of the drugs we buy, through competition. That's how generic drugs work. What advantage is there in having private companies do the research, and then gouge us for twenty years?
The end result would be that research and production of new drugs would grind to a halt because companies would most likely not get a return on their investment.
That's a false dichotomy; publicly funded research can also develop new drugs.
Is there some sort of mom-and-pop pharmaceutical company that is the alternative to Glaxo-Smith-Kline?
My pedantic side wants to point to medical marijuana producers
My not-so-pedantic side would point to the small generic drug producers, who are not raking in billions of dollars in profit and who are selling affordable drugs (well, at least more affordable than the name brands)
Instead, I would have pointed out individual inventors, like my own father. Without the patents he holds on his inventions, a large, well-funded corporation could easily steal his idea, mass manufacture his product, and essentially use his own invention to drive him out of business without so much as breaking a sweat.
A noble picture of patents, but an unrealistic one. The world's major patent holders are not individual inventors, they are wealthy, powerful corporations, and their patents are keeping "the little guy" out of the game.
The problem is that we have too many patents in too many fields, and we have basically forgotten the original restrictions on what was patentable. When algebra, biology, and ways of doing business can be patented, you know something has gone terribly wrong. The bar is too low, the patent examiners are too overworked, and the system is starting to discourage useful innovations that could benefit society.
Pharmaceuticals and chemicals are the prime examples of industries where patents are not only valuable, but also generally thought to be essential to innovation
Sure, but we could be doing things differently. Considering the substantial benefit that a new drug can bring to our society, I am not sure that it makes sense to say that any person or group of people be able to decide who can have the drug and who cannot. I favor a model where publicly funded drug research is expanded and the barriers to such research are lowered, and where drug companies only produce the products of that research. I know that using tax money for anything other than killing and imprisoning people is unpopular these days, so I am not really holding my breath, but I have not seen any good argument for why this would be destined to fail.
The prime example of an industry that really does need such protection is pharmaceuticals
This is not the example I would have chosen, considering the way Big Pharma has tried to use its patents to prevent third world countries from giving their populations live-saving medications at affordable prices:
I agree, but how about we stop giving out patents on number theory and revoke all previous patents on crypto? Seriously, ECC is a patent minefield, and those patents are holding back attempts at deploying more efficient crypto and crypto that can be used in innovative ways (like IBE, and yes, I am looking you Voltage Security).
You could have stopped assuming the worst over a decade ago. If you really think that the NSA would allow its back door to carry such an obvious name, then you need to get your head checked. Here is the sort of back door I might be willing to attribute to the NSA, but even this seems a little too obvious:
The only way out of this is to use an open source operating system where you can do your own code review
Have you ever tried to do this? I have tried, and trust me, no single person can review all of the software that runs on their system. There are a lot of places where a back door could be hiding, especially if you are talking about cryptography. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the default environment variables that programs see could be part of a back door (in case anyone does not know, the length of the environment variables can affect the alignment of memory, which can affect cache misses and potentially amplify a side channel).
Have you reviewed the millions of lines in the Linux kernel? Have you reviewed OpenSSL? Have you reviewed GnuPG? Have you reviewed glibc, libstdc++, ld, bash, gcc, your python interpreter, your X server, your email client, your web browser, etc?
Slashdot Mirror
Servers used to have names, now, in the cloud they are scalable service template instances
That is only one of literally dozens of uses of the word "cloud." Deploying virtual machines on clusters or grids is great, I agree -- but calling it "cloud" is about as useful as calling it "a thing."
It's not a buzzword, it's quite a complicated thing that has arisen from the abundance of hardware as a unit and the requirement that none of it be solely relied upon just to provide services
So now it is redundancy? Virtualization?
People who work with cloud infrastructure
Everyone works with "cloud" infrastructure today, because it is trendy...
This is why it's a cloud. It's not a buzzword after all.
In other words, because you think "cloud" should mean the thing you are using it to mean, it must not be a buzzword.
BTW ever notice that no Roman or Greek music has survived til today? We have all their other literature but not their songs. Perhaps because there was no monetary incentive for musicians to share their work.
Yet somehow, authors had incentives to share their work...
What innovation? Neither Apple nor Samsung sell innovative products...
Thanks, I'll add that to the list of definitions of "cloud" that I have heard from computer scientists. "Cloud computing" is an undefined term; at this point, people use it to mean whatever they want. Scalable infrastructure, computation as a utility, storing files on a server, whatever, it's all cloud at this point.
What do you need in a mail client seriously? It has more features than pretty much everything else excluding the exchange stuff.
These, for starters:
"Consumer friendly" in this case means, "Making sure people remain friendly." The last thing anyone wants is for consumers to realize they are being exploited.
So? That does nothing to change the fact that my fathers patents protect his inventions from being stolen by the very corporations you mention.
I do not doubt that; however, that is not even close to being the norm. Most patents are used as legal weapons by big corporations, often against people like your father (individual inventors who try to market their invention).
Yes, there are too many patents, and yes, there are too many fields which should not be allowed patents, but do anyway. However, that is not a blanket condemnation of the patent system, nor a reasonable rationale for this scorched-earth attitude so many people (who, I would wager, hold no patents themselves) seem to have.
Keep in mind that most people only really encounter patents in what field they work in. I do research in cryptography, and so I almost all patents that I encounter are software patents, and most of those are patents on cryptographic constructions (a fancy way of saying "algebra, number theory, and the theory of computation, or in other words, patents on abstract math). I try to prevent myself from making "scorched earth" remarks about patents by being specific: I want an end to software patents (we can discuss the reasons if you want, but that is a very long discussion). People in other fields can judge the validity of patents in their fields better than I can.
You can say the same thing about the Internet. You do not need to be online, it's just a service that you agree to the terms of (have you read your ISP's terms?).
I am not on Facebook, and for some reason, people get aggravated when they try to communicate with me. As if email or a phone call were some terrible burden. When Facebook becomes the primary way for people to communicate, it will not be a voluntary service; those who refuse to join will become social outcasts, like people who do not have a phone number. We are pretty close to that point already.
Why was he arrested for planning to have sex with her? Is that now illegal?
It's a matter of legal philosophy. Most Americans want the police to stop crimes from happening, not to just track down and arrest criminals after a crime is committed.
It's not just child abuse. You can be arrested for trying to buy drugs from an undercover police officer. You can be arrested for conspiring to murder someone. You can be arrested for planning to blow up a building.
who the hell relinquishes such personal, and incriminating information on a public server?
People who do not understand that they are doing such a thing. Most people think that if they set something as "private" on Facebook, then it is actually private. They do not understand how a website works, or what is actually happening when they use Facebook chat, etc.
Most people don't understand that they are giving their data to Facebook if they have marked something as "private." You can thank the dismal state of computer education in this country, which is generally on the level of, "Here is how you use MS Word, and here is how you search Google for sources in your essay!"
A thirty something year old man was trying to seduce a 13 year old girl over Facebook.
During the hearings the people on the left did everything they could to try to push it through
Really? SOPA was not a leftist law. I think you are confused about the meaning of "left wing," perhaps because you have spent so much time focusing on Democrats and Republicans...
Help the small guys, even if they are a bit more expensive
Easier said than done. I am on a grad student's salary, and saving a few dollars here or there really does matter sometimes. I suspect that a lot of people are in my position -- even people who are paid more, but who have to feed their children etc. When the little guys are "a bit more expensive," they are going to see less business, and it is not just that people are being cheap or greedy.
I also happen to live in a town that has done plenty of things to promote small, local businesses -- our downtown area has only a handful of corporate chains, and as I understand it, they had to fight pretty hard to get permits. Maybe some towns are in a bind and really cannot do the sorts of things that are necessary to keep local businesses alive, or maybe the people running those towns just lack backbone.
Individuals are at the mercy of wealthy corporations as a result of patents, at least when it comes to software, drugs, plants, etc. The real question is which option has a greater benefit for society: the current system, or a system where patents either do not exist or are greatly curtailed (compared to now)?
So what is your solution? How would you allocate money to drug R&D?
Publicly funded research; the role of drug companies should be in producing drugs discovered by scientists funded with NIH or NSF money; they are free to do their own research if they want, but we should not be giving them a monopoly and raising the price of drugs just for that. Drug research should not be focused solely on those drugs which are most profitable, and cures should not be ignored in favor of maintenance drugs.
Yes, the market has a purpose here: to determine the price level of the drugs we buy, through competition. That's how generic drugs work. What advantage is there in having private companies do the research, and then gouge us for twenty years?
The end result would be that research and production of new drugs would grind to a halt because companies would most likely not get a return on their investment.
That's a false dichotomy; publicly funded research can also develop new drugs.
Is there some sort of mom-and-pop pharmaceutical company that is the alternative to Glaxo-Smith-Kline?
Instead, I would have pointed out individual inventors, like my own father. Without the patents he holds on his inventions, a large, well-funded corporation could easily steal his idea, mass manufacture his product, and essentially use his own invention to drive him out of business without so much as breaking a sweat.
A noble picture of patents, but an unrealistic one. The world's major patent holders are not individual inventors, they are wealthy, powerful corporations, and their patents are keeping "the little guy" out of the game.
The problem is that we have too many patents in too many fields, and we have basically forgotten the original restrictions on what was patentable. When algebra, biology, and ways of doing business can be patented, you know something has gone terribly wrong. The bar is too low, the patent examiners are too overworked, and the system is starting to discourage useful innovations that could benefit society.
Pharmaceuticals and chemicals are the prime examples of industries where patents are not only valuable, but also generally thought to be essential to innovation
Sure, but we could be doing things differently. Considering the substantial benefit that a new drug can bring to our society, I am not sure that it makes sense to say that any person or group of people be able to decide who can have the drug and who cannot. I favor a model where publicly funded drug research is expanded and the barriers to such research are lowered, and where drug companies only produce the products of that research. I know that using tax money for anything other than killing and imprisoning people is unpopular these days, so I am not really holding my breath, but I have not seen any good argument for why this would be destined to fail.
The prime example of an industry that really does need such protection is pharmaceuticals
This is not the example I would have chosen, considering the way Big Pharma has tried to use its patents to prevent third world countries from giving their populations live-saving medications at affordable prices:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18490388/ns/health-aids/t/brazil-break-merck-aids-drug-patent/
Actually, composing ciphers arbitrarily does not necessarily increase your security level:
http://secgroup.ext.dsi.unive.it/teaching/security-course/composition-of-ciphers/
Or if you prefer a more rigorous treatment of this topic,
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~myers/BBCEuro.pdf
You should also be careful about composing a cipher with a compression function:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/26/1933219/Chapel-Hill-Computational-Linguists-Crack-Skype-Calls
I agree, but how about we stop giving out patents on number theory and revoke all previous patents on crypto? Seriously, ECC is a patent minefield, and those patents are holding back attempts at deploying more efficient crypto and crypto that can be used in innovative ways (like IBE, and yes, I am looking you Voltage Security).
Well, until MS explains what the NSAKey does, I'll just assume the worst.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000520001558/http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/backdoor.asp
You could have stopped assuming the worst over a decade ago. If you really think that the NSA would allow its back door to carry such an obvious name, then you need to get your head checked. Here is the sort of back door I might be willing to attribute to the NSA, but even this seems a little too obvious:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1115
The only way out of this is to use an open source operating system where you can do your own code review
Have you ever tried to do this? I have tried, and trust me, no single person can review all of the software that runs on their system. There are a lot of places where a back door could be hiding, especially if you are talking about cryptography. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the default environment variables that programs see could be part of a back door (in case anyone does not know, the length of the environment variables can affect the alignment of memory, which can affect cache misses and potentially amplify a side channel).
Have you reviewed the millions of lines in the Linux kernel? Have you reviewed OpenSSL? Have you reviewed GnuPG? Have you reviewed glibc, libstdc++, ld, bash, gcc, your python interpreter, your X server, your email client, your web browser, etc?