I think I was a little too hard on you about it. I am 52 years old and I have been watching the computer industry go to hell since I was 30. I am trying not to be emotional about Microsoft, but I have come to believe they are the evil empire. For instance the Trusted Computing Initiative is a move to make Microsoft the only company that gets to write real code. To make a long story short, I am a Buddhist and I should be providing a good example (I switched) and not being so emotional in public. Helping people is good, I just feel strange about it when Microsoft is the ultimate recepient of the effort. Buddhists dedicate the merit of their actions to the enlightenment of all sentient beings. I haven't drank enough Microsoft koolaid to believe that Windows is the way to enlightenment. By the way, stick a firewire hard drive on the Mac Mini and you might enjoy it yet. At the very least it would make a safer machine to do email, and browse the web. Some people have observed that if Vista is a learning curve, why not learn about Mac OS X. Give the mini another chance.
The convention of two spaces after a period is a very American one. Because web pages are written in HTML, adding two spaces does nothing. The same is true in many word processors when dealing with fonts that don't have fixed character widths. If you are an English teacher, I understand your problem. If you are just a punctuation freak, get over it. Read the HTML specification and think about your experience with word processors, those after wordstar, and ask yourself when the last time having one space kept you from understanding what was being said.
"but knowing how to fix Windows PC's has opened many doors for me(personally and professionally)"
I guess this is useful if he doors you want to go through have to do with fixing Windows. The last time I fixed a Windows problem for someone, they offered to make me responsible for their Windows Small Business Servers. I decided not to walk through that particular door, because I didn't like what was on the other side. Maybe more important than knowing how to fix it yourself is knowing someone who is professional while solving the problems for you or others. My father says if you are indispensable, you can't be promoted, and I aspire to be more than a Windows Technician in this lifetime. There is more to life than reloading Windows, which I have done hundreds of times. My Macs on the other hand have only been reloaded twice, when upgrading from Jaguar, Panther to Tiger.
The whole point of the.NET architechture, and the Trusted Computing Initiative, is that the average joe cannot be trusted to write assembly language. Instead they should write in higher level languages that compile into intermediate code that may get JIT compiled into real code, if the module happens to be signed with a certificate provided by the certification authorities.
In a few more years, we will be lucky if there are enough people around whoo still remember how to low level code.
I guess the record companies would like us to all have ipv6 ip addresses printed on our foreheads if we want to listen to music. There aren't enough ipv4 addresses to do the job, so IPs will rotate, because that is more or less the point of DHCP, NAT, and other ways of conserving the IP space.
As a guy who kept programming in assembler for many years after C was around, I would point out that BIOS code is often written in assembler becauses it is so low level and it gets used a lot, or at least it used to. Now days the operating systems take over most of the hardware after the system comes up, but in the original IBM PC, the BIOS provided the interace layer to all the hardware.
I had major trouble downloading Solaris ISO files from the sun site. I got about 80Kb/sec under Windows. I couldn't complete a download without a connection failure. Then I downloaded the stuff on my Mac using the same connectivity. 8Mb/sec, files complete the first time. IE only allows me 3 concurrent downloads, but Safari let me do what I want. I have switched and I am never going back.
For many years, sex wasn't actually shown in movies and on TV. It was sometimes implied, such as when people are later seen smoking cigarettes. Just because special effects people can shoot or create anything today doesn't mean that its a good an idea to show all this stuff. There are channels for seeing more sex, and there could be channels for seeing more violence. I for one would be a happier person if Hollywood would tone down both. A lot of clever producers have made movies that were powerful without explicit visuals. It was OK for the public to use some imagination in the process of receiving the entertainment. With todays special effects, the imagination is hardly required because CGI can create any scene imaginable. I really was impressed with "Starship Troopers", the book. I waited most of my life for the movie to be made. When it finally hit, there were no powered battle suits, and way too many pictures of people being cut up. For the sake of gratuitous violence, they ruined the movie. From a practical standpoint, when we watch too much of this stuff, it begins to seem more normal. I guess if you see graphic violence every night on TV, the concept of being at war and lots of people dying just kind of goes along with the other input, and you don't think so much about whether there might be something wrong going on.
Funny you would mention the escape sequences:-) Several weeks ago my main Windows XP MCE computer, with hundreds of gigabytes of stuff (none pirated) stored on it had an incident. I had cygwin loaded and updated. I had developed a simple c++ (gnu) program to create html web pages. I was in a cygwin bash window, and I accidentally cat'ed the binary (a.out) of my c++ page generator. Several lines of binary goop appeared on the screen and then the computer froze up. I meant seriously frozen, including the caplock button no longer toggling the led. I tried to reboot and found the entire system was gone. There was no bootable image, no F8 safe booting options. The hard drive partition was gone, and with it all my files, source code (several days worth) and many things I had downloaded such as public domain ISO images for ubuntu and Oracle Linux... Now I realize it is my responsibility to keep my files backup up, but this was my main, "use every day" box, heavily loaded with MSDN Visual Studio, and Tech Net Plus licensed software. I takes approximately three days of continuous work to load up and configure that box that way, not counting the downloads I would have to redo. All of this because the accidental displaying of binary data in the cygwin bash window blew away everything. This was the final fuck you from Windows and Microsoft for me. It should not be possible to cause that much destruction in such a way. I have now switched completely from the Microsoft environment for all daily work and play. It's too bad about cygwin being part of this trouble, because I thought highly of cygwin for quite some time now. Now I am using a Mac OS X Tiger powered G4 17" flat panel Mac for email, web, downloading and develpment coding. BBEdit is very cool. I am using ubuntu to cross develop for the gumstix platform (http://www.gumstix.com). I am running Scientific Linux on an old laptop, and between these systems, everything I currently need to do is being done. I have partaken heavily of the Unix koolaid, but for now, it is sweet.
Bob, you had the deck seriously stacked against you. In my opinion, you were bound to lose. In the real world, I think computer networks and servers are what is called, "A Risky System", because you cannot absolutely guarantee the security and operation. If you came through the test, and still have any interest in computer security, then you really proved you can walk the path. It takes courage every day to be responsible for real world business networks and servers when there are lots of bad guys with time on their hands and with bad intentions. I think the longer you are involved with computer security, the more likely it is that you will eventually get trashed. You have to do as close to 100% of the job to stay ahead, and the hackers only need 1/10th of 1% of a vulnerability to cause trouble. It is a thankless job, and in my opinion, they can't pay me enough money to be responsible for Microsoft servers and network components. You would have to go home each night wondering if your carefully tuned setup was about to be trashed be a Microsoft ex-employee that knew something you don't. Sleeping at night is important to me. Respectfully, Doug
I meditated on what you said, and I see the wisdom now. Because you were gentle with me about it, I learned from you instead of being insulted. Thanks for giving me the chance to think and learn.
Thanks for your even response to my posting. If the hackers have physical control of the server and they reboot it, then fail to enter the proper key, the server would be offline and unavailable to perform its services, and therefore a denial of service would be effected. At least that much damage could be done without the key. I admit they wouldn't get the credit card numbers that way. Having the server offline, they could brung up their own device at the same IP address and there would be no IP conflict at the arp level.
I don't see where an encrypted file system would help unless the key is required to be typed in each time a server is raised above run level 1.
Physical security is a primary foundation of any more sophisticated security scheme. It is a fundamental problem when your security is based oon, "What you have." If you have the machine, game over.
If the machines were set up with easily guessed passwords, that is a fundamental problem called, "What you know." (What you can guess).
It seems to me none of the network was secured with, "Who you are".
OK, so who sold us the first cup of koolaid? was it the 6502 people, or was it intel 4004. The pace has increased continually since there were computers that were smaller than a room.
I guess my question is, "Did she take advantage of the most simple method for specifying her preference regarding the behavior of web crawling robots?". If she had a properly formated file indicating her preference, then she has a legitimate question to ask. If not, she is stirring up a tornado in a teacup on only bringing laughter upon herself for not knowing robots rules of order (a joke).
I have been harping about Mono being based on ECMA standards documents that contain patented technology from Microsoft and have not received even one response after repeated emails to the EFF, DotGNU and Mono people. As Gnome moved toward Mono, I move away from Gnome. If Microsoft and the Trusted Computing Initiative get their way, the only people writing code will be Intel and Microsoft employees.
CP/M had a flat file system with no directories. There was also not a free list on disk as it was dynamically calculated every time you pressed control-c. They did have "user" numbers but these were filters only and not hierarchical. In fact the first version of Dos, called 86dos by seattle computer products didn't support subdirectories and this feature was added later by MS, probably at IBM's request.
Late in the 1980's Digital resarch folded their DosPLUS fat support into Concurrent DOS, and then we had md, cd, rd...
Like many people, I am aghast at the shredding of the constitution. The time I spend learning about our government in school may have been wasted. All of the due process I was taught to believe in has been summarily dismissed in the last few years. What amazes me the most is the speed with which it has occured. Within one human lifetime, the aspects of America that made me proud of our country has all but dissapeared. In half a decade, things have changed so much I can hardly recognize our government. About the time I started watching CSPAN, things started whorling out of control. The primary thing I remember from my studies in high school about the american system was the checks and balances that kept the executive, judicial, and legislative branches from running away with things. It appeaars to me that the excutive branch has gone way out of control, and TFA implies that the executive branch is now hopelessly above the judicial branch. This is of grave concern to me. And again what I find amazing is the speed with which things have changed.
I am a programmer, and I love good movies. I happen to own a large 1080p display because I have poor eyesight. I recently purchased a PS3 for several reasons. This is my first game console, and I intend to enjoy it for a few years at least. I really like the look and sound of BlueRay movies. I am also a programmer. I like Linux, and I want to play with the Cell processors. The thought that Sony pays more to make them than they cost gives me a little thrill. The price of the console over its expected lifetime is not excessive in my mind. The ability to upgrade the hard drive will be a nice feature, especially in the future when 2.5" HD store >300GB.
To the people who still want to punish Sont for the root kit incident, I think they should get over it. People come and go, and punishing a corporation for a single act probably doesn't touch the person who made the bad decision.
Now, as for the PS3, Linux supercomputer with the Cells, $600 for the 60GB wireless version is not a lot of money for a linux machine with 1080p graphics, Gb ethernet...
So for the uses I purchased the PS3 for, I am happy. I can play the several games I purchased with the console. I can watch the several BD movies I purchased, and I can program the box under Yello Dog Linux to my hearts content. In time there will be more games, more movies, and expanded hardware support in Linux.
The only aspect of this that I am religeous about, is that I hate Microsoft and absolutely did not want to buy an xbox. No matter what Sony has done in the past, my feelings about them are MUCH better than my feelings about Microsoft.
I am happy now, and expect to be happy in the future, and I am glad I bought the PS3. In fact I have a spare under the bed.:-)
"How many hours of flipping burgers is Windows Vista Ultimate (or an MSDN subscription) worth to you?"
OK, flipping burgers is the pathological case, I admit. But in the case of Windows Vista, it's not just the OS, or even MSDN. Its Visual Studio + MSDN + Vista + Internet downloading of innumerable updates and add-on packages (more every day). I think Vista Ultimate is a sad example. I wouldn't stand up for a free copy of Vista. When you try to load Visual Studio 2005 on Vista, the install blows up due to OS incompatabilities.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I was a little too hard on you about it. I am 52 years old and I have been watching the computer industry go to hell since I was 30. I am trying not to be emotional about Microsoft, but I have come to believe they are the evil empire. For instance the Trusted Computing Initiative is a move to make Microsoft the only company that gets to write real code. To make a long story short, I am a Buddhist and I should be providing a good example (I switched) and not being so emotional in public. Helping people is good, I just feel strange about it when Microsoft is the ultimate recepient of the effort. Buddhists dedicate the merit of their actions to the enlightenment of all sentient beings. I haven't drank enough Microsoft koolaid to believe that Windows is the way to enlightenment. By the way, stick a firewire hard drive on the Mac Mini and you might enjoy it yet. At the very least it would make a safer machine to do email, and browse the web. Some people have observed that if Vista is a learning curve, why not learn about Mac OS X. Give the mini another chance.
The convention of two spaces after a period is a very American one. Because web pages are written in HTML, adding two spaces does nothing. The same is true in many word processors when dealing with fonts that don't have fixed character widths. If you are an English teacher, I understand your problem. If you are just a punctuation freak, get over it. Read the HTML specification and think about your experience with word processors, those after wordstar, and ask yourself when the last time having one space kept you from understanding what was being said.
"but knowing how to fix Windows PC's has opened many doors for me(personally and professionally)" I guess this is useful if he doors you want to go through have to do with fixing Windows. The last time I fixed a Windows problem for someone, they offered to make me responsible for their Windows Small Business Servers. I decided not to walk through that particular door, because I didn't like what was on the other side. Maybe more important than knowing how to fix it yourself is knowing someone who is professional while solving the problems for you or others. My father says if you are indispensable, you can't be promoted, and I aspire to be more than a Windows Technician in this lifetime. There is more to life than reloading Windows, which I have done hundreds of times. My Macs on the other hand have only been reloaded twice, when upgrading from Jaguar, Panther to Tiger.
The whole point of the .NET architechture, and the Trusted Computing Initiative, is that the average joe cannot be trusted to write assembly language. Instead they should write in higher level languages that compile into intermediate code that may get JIT compiled into real code, if the module happens to be signed with a certificate provided by the certification authorities.
In a few more years, we will be lucky if there are enough people around whoo still remember how to low level code.
I guess the record companies would like us to all have ipv6 ip addresses printed on our foreheads if we want to listen to music. There aren't enough ipv4 addresses to do the job, so IPs will rotate, because that is more or less the point of DHCP, NAT, and other ways of conserving the IP space.
As a guy who kept programming in assembler for many years after C was around, I would point out that BIOS code is often written in assembler becauses it is so low level and it gets used a lot, or at least it used to. Now days the operating systems take over most of the hardware after the system comes up, but in the original IBM PC, the BIOS provided the interace layer to all the hardware.
I had major trouble downloading Solaris ISO files from the sun site. I got about 80Kb/sec under Windows. I couldn't complete a download without a connection failure. Then I downloaded the stuff on my Mac using the same connectivity. 8Mb/sec, files complete the first time. IE only allows me 3 concurrent downloads, but Safari let me do what I want. I have switched and I am never going back.
For many years, sex wasn't actually shown in movies and on TV. It was sometimes implied, such as when people are later seen smoking cigarettes. Just because special effects people can shoot or create anything today doesn't mean that its a good an idea to show all this stuff. There are channels for seeing more sex, and there could be channels for seeing more violence. I for one would be a happier person if Hollywood would tone down both. A lot of clever producers have made movies that were powerful without explicit visuals. It was OK for the public to use some imagination in the process of receiving the entertainment. With todays special effects, the imagination is hardly required because CGI can create any scene imaginable. I really was impressed with "Starship Troopers", the book. I waited most of my life for the movie to be made. When it finally hit, there were no powered battle suits, and way too many pictures of people being cut up. For the sake of gratuitous violence, they ruined the movie. From a practical standpoint, when we watch too much of this stuff, it begins to seem more normal. I guess if you see graphic violence every night on TV, the concept of being at war and lots of people dying just kind of goes along with the other input, and you don't think so much about whether there might be something wrong going on.
I am getting tired of hearing about asses. How about some actual clevel debating and less name calling.
Funny you would mention the escape sequences :-) Several weeks ago my main Windows XP MCE computer, with hundreds of gigabytes of stuff (none pirated) stored on it had an incident. I had cygwin loaded and updated. I had developed a simple c++ (gnu) program to create html web pages. I was in a cygwin bash window, and I accidentally cat'ed the binary (a.out) of my c++ page generator. Several lines of binary goop appeared on the screen and then the computer froze up. I meant seriously frozen, including the caplock button no longer toggling the led. I tried to reboot and found the entire system was gone. There was no bootable image, no F8 safe booting options. The hard drive partition was gone, and with it all my files, source code (several days worth) and many things I had downloaded such as public domain ISO images for ubuntu and Oracle Linux... Now I realize it is my responsibility to keep my files backup up, but this was my main, "use every day" box, heavily loaded with MSDN Visual Studio, and Tech Net Plus licensed software. I takes approximately three days of continuous work to load up and configure that box that way, not counting the downloads I would have to redo. All of this because the accidental displaying of binary data in the cygwin bash window blew away everything. This was the final fuck you from Windows and Microsoft for me. It should not be possible to cause that much destruction in such a way. I have now switched completely from the Microsoft environment for all daily work and play. It's too bad about cygwin being part of this trouble, because I thought highly of cygwin for quite some time now. Now I am using a Mac OS X Tiger powered G4 17" flat panel Mac for email, web, downloading and develpment coding. BBEdit is very cool. I am using ubuntu to cross develop for the gumstix platform (http://www.gumstix.com). I am running Scientific Linux on an old laptop, and between these systems, everything I currently need to do is being done. I have partaken heavily of the Unix koolaid, but for now, it is sweet.
Bob, you had the deck seriously stacked against you. In my opinion, you were bound to lose. In the real world, I think computer networks and servers are what is called, "A Risky System", because you cannot absolutely guarantee the security and operation. If you came through the test, and still have any interest in computer security, then you really proved you can walk the path. It takes courage every day to be responsible for real world business networks and servers when there are lots of bad guys with time on their hands and with bad intentions. I think the longer you are involved with computer security, the more likely it is that you will eventually get trashed. You have to do as close to 100% of the job to stay ahead, and the hackers only need 1/10th of 1% of a vulnerability to cause trouble. It is a thankless job, and in my opinion, they can't pay me enough money to be responsible for Microsoft servers and network components. You would have to go home each night wondering if your carefully tuned setup was about to be trashed be a Microsoft ex-employee that knew something you don't. Sleeping at night is important to me. Respectfully, Doug
I meditated on what you said, and I see the wisdom now. Because you were gentle with me about it, I learned from you instead of being insulted. Thanks for giving me the chance to think and learn.
Thanks for your even response to my posting. If the hackers have physical control of the server and they reboot it, then fail to enter the proper key, the server would be offline and unavailable to perform its services, and therefore a denial of service would be effected. At least that much damage could be done without the key. I admit they wouldn't get the credit card numbers that way. Having the server offline, they could brung up their own device at the same IP address and there would be no IP conflict at the arp level.
I don't see where an encrypted file system would help unless the key is required to be typed in each time a server is raised above run level 1. Physical security is a primary foundation of any more sophisticated security scheme. It is a fundamental problem when your security is based oon, "What you have." If you have the machine, game over. If the machines were set up with easily guessed passwords, that is a fundamental problem called, "What you know." (What you can guess). It seems to me none of the network was secured with, "Who you are".
OK, so who sold us the first cup of koolaid? was it the 6502 people, or was it intel 4004. The pace has increased continually since there were computers that were smaller than a room.
I guess my question is, "Did she take advantage of the most simple method for specifying her preference regarding the behavior of web crawling robots?". If she had a properly formated file indicating her preference, then she has a legitimate question to ask. If not, she is stirring up a tornado in a teacup on only bringing laughter upon herself for not knowing robots rules of order (a joke).
There may be no point to buying it if it is proven in court that Novell still holds the copyright on Unix.
If MS buys products and doesn't create them themselves, why do they need so many PHDs?
Once again, a reason to upgrade to Microsoft's new Office Suite. Bah Humbug.
I have been harping about Mono being based on ECMA standards documents that contain patented technology from Microsoft and have not received even one response after repeated emails to the EFF, DotGNU and Mono people. As Gnome moved toward Mono, I move away from Gnome. If Microsoft and the Trusted Computing Initiative get their way, the only people writing code will be Intel and Microsoft employees.
YYYYYYYY y yyyyyyy ZZZZZZ Z ZZZZZZZZ ZZZ zzzzz z z z z z z z z YYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Plough
CP/M had a flat file system with no directories. There was also not a free list on disk as it was dynamically calculated every time you pressed control-c. They did have "user" numbers but these were filters only and not hierarchical. In fact the first version of Dos, called 86dos by seattle computer products didn't support subdirectories and this feature was added later by MS, probably at IBM's request.
Late in the 1980's Digital resarch folded their DosPLUS fat support into Concurrent DOS, and then we had md, cd, rd...
Like many people, I am aghast at the shredding of the constitution. The time I spend learning about our government in school may have been wasted. All of the due process I was taught to believe in has been summarily dismissed in the last few years. What amazes me the most is the speed with which it has occured. Within one human lifetime, the aspects of America that made me proud of our country has all but dissapeared. In half a decade, things have changed so much I can hardly recognize our government. About the time I started watching CSPAN, things started whorling out of control. The primary thing I remember from my studies in high school about the american system was the checks and balances that kept the executive, judicial, and legislative branches from running away with things. It appeaars to me that the excutive branch has gone way out of control, and TFA implies that the executive branch is now hopelessly above the judicial branch. This is of grave concern to me. And again what I find amazing is the speed with which things have changed.
I am a programmer, and I love good movies. I happen to own a large 1080p display because I have poor eyesight. I recently purchased a PS3 for several reasons. This is my first game console, and I intend to enjoy it for a few years at least. I really like the look and sound of BlueRay movies. I am also a programmer. I like Linux, and I want to play with the Cell processors. The thought that Sony pays more to make them than they cost gives me a little thrill. The price of the console over its expected lifetime is not excessive in my mind. The ability to upgrade the hard drive will be a nice feature, especially in the future when 2.5" HD store >300GB. To the people who still want to punish Sont for the root kit incident, I think they should get over it. People come and go, and punishing a corporation for a single act probably doesn't touch the person who made the bad decision. Now, as for the PS3, Linux supercomputer with the Cells, $600 for the 60GB wireless version is not a lot of money for a linux machine with 1080p graphics, Gb ethernet... So for the uses I purchased the PS3 for, I am happy. I can play the several games I purchased with the console. I can watch the several BD movies I purchased, and I can program the box under Yello Dog Linux to my hearts content. In time there will be more games, more movies, and expanded hardware support in Linux. The only aspect of this that I am religeous about, is that I hate Microsoft and absolutely did not want to buy an xbox. No matter what Sony has done in the past, my feelings about them are MUCH better than my feelings about Microsoft. I am happy now, and expect to be happy in the future, and I am glad I bought the PS3. In fact I have a spare under the bed. :-)
"How many hours of flipping burgers is Windows Vista Ultimate (or an MSDN subscription) worth to you?" OK, flipping burgers is the pathological case, I admit. But in the case of Windows Vista, it's not just the OS, or even MSDN. Its Visual Studio + MSDN + Vista + Internet downloading of innumerable updates and add-on packages (more every day). I think Vista Ultimate is a sad example. I wouldn't stand up for a free copy of Vista. When you try to load Visual Studio 2005 on Vista, the install blows up due to OS incompatabilities.