Most of you may not know a guy named Sergey Lukyanenko. Well he his a Russian SF author. A couple of years ago he wrote a tremendous blockbuster called Labirint of Reflections. I don't know if there is an english translation but I tell you the book is Hell!. Here in Russia it is a MUST to read it. For those who understand Russian:
The book goes around a virtual world born mostly on our present technology and a strange hypnotic effect most people suffer by looking at a pattern of colors. This world is a world of programs, processes, networks turned to people, buildings and roads. A world much near to our Doom, Quake, Ultima and fantasies. A world where a financial transfer is turned into an 3D aberration of money running trough a funnel. A world where a security system turns into a gigantic cyclop. A world that started with a guy playing Doom through the night...
Well we still don't have the ill-famous "deep" - Enter sequence. But the Prophecy is fulfilled. Since Linus famous letter, this is the next Revolution.
Most of still don't realize that today is too different from yesterday...
After Microsoft convinced everyone to wash their hands with SOAP and to quietly eat their SOUP, now it comes back with the LEMON protocol. Presently they refuse to disclose the meaning and details of their new Open Protocol. Meanwhile some anonymous sources claim to be "Lamers Entitled to Moron Over the Network". Anyway it seems this will be the last blow Microsoft plans to give their concurrents. First it was SOUP where they teached a lesson to all those dirty and nasty Linux boys. Later it was SOUP where they teached good manners to IBM and SUN.
"Finally we get the final standard..." says Mr. John Johnson of expert Gardners Group. With a clear and fresh yellow smile, he explained the great advantages of the new protocol. "You see, it might not taste well at first sight, but similarly to a real lemon, it can give you a lot health to your enterprise. It has a lot of vitamin C on it..."
It seems that Microsoft has already filed a proposal to international standards bodies to make it an new well accepted protocol. So, soon, every one of us will be happily eating lemons while roaming the net...
A cracker IS a hacker. A hacker of the sad side but anyway one of us.
Sincerly I think that some people are making a damn confusion about hackers. Nearly ten years ago we knew that we had already a clear division between "white", "black" and "grey" hackers. And among it we had another miriad of groups and subgroups.
"Hacker" is a computer fanatic. Not matter is "angelic" or "demonic" intentions. No matter he loves to roam the Net or sit hours on a isolated computer. His motto "to know". His objective "Think!". His law - "information should be free".
Everything else is hype...
For those "wannabeahacker" a warning: Think if you really don't wanna play with anything else. Being a hacker is not romance. It's just life and frequently not a easy one.
There is one thing we should note. This sillyness seems to have appeared in a populist "popular science" magazine. Well I'm an anti-peer-reviewing partisan but sincerly this article makes me think if I'm not too radical...
However the problem is that for the last years peer-reviewing has exactly allowed such pieces of crap to go floating around. Some time ago I saw several "serious" articles with a respectable peer-review stamp that made me scare.
The general pattern of these things is exactly the way that this article was written. Amid theories and controversies, to form a "theoretical body" with a superficial taste of being complete. To achieve such objective, authors cleverly manipulate facts by patching holes with less known hypothesis and theories. They do not invent them. They just pick up one or other relatively unfortunate idea that was dropped some years ago and process a few "modernisations".
The whole problem is exactly on these modernisations. In general they have nothing in common with Science. They are just clever "phraseologic" implants that, among the whole theoretical building, hide they lack of scientific basis.
Meanwhile, the article could have had a few interesting points. Time capsules could be a very interesting idea. In some aspects I consider that our Universe could have such things. However among this whole crap they loose any concept. Petty.
PS For those who get scared about time. Remember that it is time that makes you alive. Because YOU ARE TIME...
Ok what will IETF consider as their "particpation" on wiretapping?
A technical protocol? Then sorry. Russia saw this with proposal SORM-1. A very good document in their technical aspects but completely outdated. The proposed technology was nearly 5-year old and no one was agreeing to follow it. And the discussion that followed made the FSB to drop any ideas to make it reality. They didn't publish why but we can infer from proposal SORM-2:
Technologies change. To force a specific wiretapping protocol may "kill" the technological advance.
You have a technical wiretapping protocol that everyone knows about. So will just the government use it? And how to secure it? And if someone really breaks in? Can we manage to measure the damage?
Can we wiretap telephones? Yes. Can we wiretap IP? Sure. Can we wiretap WWW? Of course. Can you wiretap everything? ARE YOU MAD???
Today wiretapping 100 seems easy. Tomorrow we may face the fact that every home has its TV set and its Internet connection. And whatever concern we may face in relation to security we can't follow everybody. Even 1 person is enough for weeks of work. Specially if he is some kind of geek or hacker.
Well these were some of the arguments I saw in discussions. I deliberately avoided to state here any moral and imoral parts of the discussion. However I can say that a broad part of the people agreed to allow FSB to follow criminals on the Net.
The result was SORM-2. I can't say it was perfect. Maybe far from it. But it possessed a principal difference. It didn't carry anymore things about technical protocols and obligations. It was mostly a "List of principles" regulating the behaviour of FSB and ISPs in situations where wiretapping was required. One important point was that FSB was required to get a court order to proceed any wiretapping on Internet. Besides any technical aspect should be regulated in common by the ISP and FSB in mostly a case-to-case basis.
Sincerly I think that soon or later the lawmakers will realize that they should go this way. But then, I think it's not IETF problem to consider about wiretapping.
Apart from this. A teological aspect. Somehow, States are trying to know everything. However every theology teaches us that only God knows everything. So it seems that, anyway, these attempts are doomed. Or will they try to wiretap God?
Ok I got this damn news. Well here it goes. Some years ago a colleague decided to spread a very sad joke about me. Frankly I don't belong to the saints. But what he described was a Hell. That I even broke into a major worldwide bank. However at that time this didn't make too much noise. Mass media didn't even know what was FIDONet or BBS...
Now this bastard journalist decided to write some blockbuster article and picked that damned piece of crap. Somehow he managed to go with my full name on it. With the usual media overexageration. He even incorrectly published my alias of some years ago.
Really he made two silly mistakes and my bosses considered this as a very very bad joke on me (THANKS GOD!..).but I had to pass some hellish minutes explaining that all that this guy published is pure yellow-press and nothing more.
Damn this media hype is coming up to the nerves. It's everywhere. Hackers do that, broke that. They are watching you even in the bathroom. Looks too crazy? Well this week one of the police departments to combat cybercrime was shown on TV on how they adverted the attempt to kill a crime testimony in intensive care. It seems that the artificial breath system was connected to.. Internet!:)))))))))))))
That's the funny part. The sad one was that, last week, one journalist decided to dig up on my personality and "discovered" that I'm one of the 100 most dangerous hackers in the world. And it seems that he describes all this with some good detail (still I couldn't get my hands to this piece of crap). The newspaper possesses a nationwide spread and it is known for its scandalous notoriety.
Well I'm a hacker. But I don't have any will to be on the first or last of these 100 "hackers/lamers" of the Universe. I would send this guy to Hell if it was not a problem. I have some good job here. What will happen tomorrow when I'll come in? "Sorry man but we have some bad news for you". Or "Don't leave the town until we check all you have done!"
The worst of all is that it was the brother of my wife that first discovered this piece of crap. So imagine what's going home...
Really these guys are going too far. All them to the Gulag. Or stamp in each of their heads a display with Slashdotters comenting their crap.
Some time ago I faced a situation that suggested me a reason for the cracking fever we see today.
The main problem is not education. I saw even people on their 50's cracking computers. Nor it is culture, race or age. The problem goes around a psychological problem I would call the "Forbidden Fruit".
The recept for it is quite simple. Give a system with several restrictions. They can be directly forced or be just "features". And secure all this with a relatively superficial security system.
This will forcefully create a wave of cracking. The level this "crimewave" may grow depends on how juicy are the results of circumventing the security.
Frankly I saw cracking waves at different levels of "prizes". In one case, when the relation restriction/prize was quite high, the cracking wave rose to levels that almost destroyed all the network. The only two choices to save the situation were either to establish administrative fascism, recurring even to Law, or to remake the whole conception of work.
We choose for remaking the whole thing. It was hard but the cracking wave dropped by nearly 10 times.
We didn't choose administrative fascism more for pragmatic reasons rather than moral. Frankly parallel networks suffered a lot with it. Besides there was a need to be politically correct and technically sincere. These restrictions were mostly created from technical problems. And here we had some serious responsability to solve them. Unfortunately the first type of system and OSes didn't give a clear chance to solve these problems. In some point we were also cracking one OS to solve some of these problems:)
Well people. That's very very funny. Knowing that a lot of that rocket stuff is made by the same Lockheed-Martin I would like to note a point when that stuff about Y2k comes up. Just to avoid errors from a certain UScentrism about the World.
Please remember that Russia is located at GMT+3hours. Roughly New Year will appear here 8 hours before US. So if we shoot at 8 hours before New Year - it's our fault. If you do it at New Year then it's your fault.
Now seriously. Lockheed-Martin is a very well known company with a huge experience in rocketry. They participated in several Mars missions. And they did much more than Mars. How such an error could go up with a company that possesses some of the closest ties with NASA?
Most people seem concerned about two scenarios: 1984 and "Good government caring for its citizens"
Frankly there are reasons for wiretapping. There are also reasons to be concerned for 1984. However let me tell you one thing. It is a losen battle. This wiretapping stuff will bring only more confusion and nothing else. 5 years from now we may not only face 1984 and good government scenarios but also a lot of "ooops", "its not a bug its a feature" and such.
Sincerly right now wiretapping, will hardly stop terrorists, criminals and states. And this can be inferred even at much lower levels. Let's take a typical user environment at a University or commercial company. Most security on such environments have already take a level where wiretapping is presumed to exist, at least potentially. And it is presumed that any user can wiretap lines. Does this sounds fantastic? Three years ago yes. Today when Linux distributions carry tcpdump and anyone can download similar programs for Windows no.
This story can be seen interpreted in two ways. Either someone is just keeping pace with the new world, in a relatively bad way. Or someone is making the biggest stupidity, one ever could dream of.
Consider that someone taps you. You write, speak, spell: "Daisen aek veon aksavan dion sat". Can anyone arrest you for this?
If the soul of the present laws remain the same no. No one can arrest you for communicating in a foreign language. No one can accuse you of anything before clearly translate the meaning of these words. And if someone taps you "for free" he can get some serious trouble in the future. In several ways and at several levels.
Five years from now, someone in the FBI will have to explain a loooot of a mess they may have made with this...
Somehow this patent frantics are starting to look like Y2K or Armageddon freakies. Well Open Source has been on its highs for the last 10 years and it looks hard to see it dying.
The patent restrictions have shown a lot of minus but also plus. The 30s have shown a similar fever. Like the 90s, it was a time of crisis going parallel with one of the most inventive periods of History. And anyone who opens an History book will see that several "gold mine" patents turned into empty baskets. The social answer for such things was either turining into less but more affordable technologies or to "reinvent the wheel" in completely unexpected ways.
So it is hard that this patent frantic will turn into some Armageddon. Well at least on what concerns Open Source. Besides there are a lot of legalities that in fact may turn software patenting into an danger for its partisans.
Software patenting is typical in the US. Other countries don't support it. Yes US government tries to convince that soft needs to be patented. There are some laws going there and there about it. But there are some fundaments on making software (and even hardware) that logically contradicts patenting principles. Until now it seems that these principles are untouched in most of the World. Somehow even US legislation goes by these principles. It is not so well remarked but it is there.
Unfortunately US patenting organs seem to have done the second bolshevization in Human History. They managed to forget the moral principles. They clearly ignored legal regulations for giving patents. They have set up in a frantics of giving software patents much like the soviets printed rubles.
The result? In the computing world USA may become known as United Soviets of America. Software developers in an economical and political misery and a whole set of burrocrates fastening themselves in a labyrint of regulations counter-regulations, patents and patents and patents and patents.
However, considering the potential danger that this frantics may turn to US geopolitics, soon the federal and state organs will probably start to put some breaks on it. It will not be tomorrow but quite soon. Right now there is already a current of developers turning to other countries. They are a miserable number but significative by the fields they deal with. A little more and people will start thinking of Malta for software development. When this happens, then axes will start working in Washington. They are not stupid. Well, I think...
Sincerly I'm an upgrade freak. At the moment our mirror gets 2.2.12 I'll upgrade my machines. But not because I need to. Just I'm in my nature I love to experiment. Frankly my job is to know what goes on the edge so I'll be ready for the future.
2.2.x kernels are mostly stable to work on Internet since 2.2.9. Frankly even 2.2.5 is stable in 80% of the tasks. The 2.2.10 is pretty good for regular and intensive desktop work. At least in a "multimedia horse", "Windows-like" working environment, I have noted a good robustness on it: 2 crashes in almost 2 months.
The only point I would see useful for using the last kernels would be in a server environment. However that also depends on the tasks. A 2.2.3 kernel worked with a few occasional bugs for nearly 4 months in a small web server. The main problem were some memory leaks form time to time.
Note that Linus has announced code freezing for development kernel 2.3 in two weeks. So in late Fall we probably will start seeing the new 2.4 coming up. No matter the cooleness one should be aware that each kernel jump is usually traumatic. Sometimes app code needs to be rewritten. People need to hunt for new features between new and old code. Today there is a strange fever of upgrading. And, recently, many newbies seem to have been caught in it. They don't understand why but they go with the fashion. When 2.3 bug-fixing starts up many may fall on the error of following up the vets and face some serious consequences.
Frag them! Just yesterday I repeated ten times one and the same thing to one journalist who wanted to write an article about Y2K. She hanged in some idea-fixed conception of it and "wanted" that I would support it. It was a comedy.
Every time I would "near" her ideas she would get excited and give a standard question "anyway, you confirm...". However most of the conversation turned into an embroglio on explaining her that she was wrong from the start.
A lot of modern journlistics are no more lies today. They are fantasy novels. The journalist gets into some stupid start-up idea and hangs on it. No matter what experts, tetimonies, friends and foes tell him, he goes up to the end with it.
This article is not FUD. It is just one more product of these kind of journalists. I managed to see such situation several times. You are damn busy, you have a work to do. A journalist calls and you (un)politely send him to Hell. Next day you find in the 1st page, that you are not only a bastard, but also that only God knows what you're hidding out and what you're up to.
Frankly the in the last times the only people I nearly broke their faces were journalists. One almost got his $1800 camera in his head. I told him FIVE times that I didn't want to be on the news...
Frankly it seems that this time a lot of people came in to hold up on Windows. Good thing as Linux frantics were becoming quite monotonous.
But unfortunately your Windows hype is no better than the Linux one. Frankly, Windows doesn't crash? IT CRASHES AND CRASHES BADLY! But these crashes also are dependent on many things. My work environment does not live with Windows and that's the reason I left M$ world. But I would not recomend 80% of users to do the same thing. And maybe 50% of them may live under Windows without problems. Meanwhile the other 50% may need to start thinking about Linux in the future...
You are concentrating too much your efforts on a development basis. And this is not related to free software. Proprietary software also suffers this stigma.
Franfly I consider that is wrong to concentrate income objectives in doing exclusively development. It's much like Galileo inventing (well, reinventing) telescopes for $50 a piece. Any development is by nature a deficit venture. It is the end-use that can bring some income to it. Most individual developers don't realize it because they make their reference points to the corporative environment. However corporations manage to hold R&D and end-use in one line of production. Individuals cannot afford doing this.
Just think: 1.You are now the "Universal Soldier" of your little program. But do you believe that you can hold up everything during further development? Know every single bit of its application? Even if anyone pays for it?
2.Do you know all possibilities of your program? Can you realize all its potential? Can you see its future? Did Linus Torvalds realize what he have done 5 minutes after making that post in 1991?
3.Today you have 1 user. Tomorrow maybe 10.A month later maybe 100. A year later God knows. You may hold up with them but not forever.
4. Programming is much like DNA. Alone it is a beautiful but useless program. Together with a whole series of organics, water and minerals it even makes human bodies.
I think these four points are fundamental to understand why programs cannot be proprietary. By consequence they cannot be charged in most of its path. The only good place to charge anything from it is the end-use. And frankly you may not get millionare but you don't get hunger either. End-use based in a powerful development infrastructure can give huge opportunities.
he demonstration of this is on Linux user environment. After KDE-GNOME-WM-AfterStep Horde many users shifted they requirements basis for more radical end-uses. In fact Windows is making a huge damage in the industry by fixing users in a desktop problem. On Linux such problems are of different level. Users require adapting the environment for very specific tasks like conferencing, a workplace for a scientific work or a very complex office environment where everything is at shotgun range.
I make money on this. And frankly I don't even make these things proprietary. Usually I jump from one task to another. I'm not a millionare and don't think about it. However I have managed to make my ends meet. If under a proprietary environment I barely could pay my rent, today I managed to buy a new computer on my birhtday (I didn't have such thing for the last 5 years), throwing $700 on it. And still have money for making a small beer-party with my friends. Meanwhile my friend managed to buy a second-hand car under the same situation. An year ago he was overworking to pay a rent due for three months.
The article is talking about 18 months lifespan for computers. Quite true if you consider the proprietary software and that you consider your computer as a whole. While hanging on Windows I noted that my P166MMX 32M 1.6G S3 TrioV2 2M became "old" in nearly 9 months. If I would keep using it for 9 months more than I would have to stop my work...
However this box still lives. After 20 monthes of using it has my main home desktop, now it turned into a small server with some secondary desktop tasks. And I'm planning to use it for a year more.
We should all realize that OpenSource is creating problems. In fact many people cannot adapt to this new world. But one thing that OpenSource detractors should realize is that OpenSource is working. Or else we wouldn't be here discussing IBM's thinkings and Linux success.
Several years ago I created a product under the typical frame of proprietary code. The only thing I wanna remember from it is that all that was a bad dream. Yes I managed to make some good money at start. However the what came after was a Hell for many reasons. I realized my error and quit that world. One of the main reasons was that I couldn't afford to spend more money and other resources on developing the product.
Today I barely code the way I did. I don't make programs anymore. The most I do is patching exisiting ones. And it is quite frequent to just hang around a few hacks to make things work. Call me parasite, sucker whatever you want. I could recognize these labels on me if I worked on the principle "mine, mine and only mine!". But I also share what I do. And I don't have seen a cent vanishing from my pocket for this. Quite the contrary.
Yesterday I could barely pay my bills. Today, I can afford a life for me and my family. And most of the stuff I work with runs stable and performing.
Yesterday I could afford to help 3-4 people at one time. Today I have more than 3000 users dependent on what I do. I work 99% on OpenSource software. Last time I touched 100% commercial software was more than a month ago.
The problem many developers suffer today is by seeing their ideas as gold mines. Most like those patent-fan inventors that try to grable every idea under a piece of paper and calmly waiting that someone brings them a suitcase full of dollars for it. Unfortunately software is a hybrid mutant constantly changing its faces. So while you're waiting your gold you may suddenly realize that your idea got some rust...
Ok it seems that/. has started a wave of bad information. No I don't mean it bad. I mean it horrible. In three days we get a desinformation, a hoax and now a bit of yellow advertisement. To be precise:
Life is 2.7 US Government considering charging E-mail Linux can be installed in 4 minutes
I make part of my living by installing Linux boxes. Specially for users who wouldn't never had dreamed to work on it. And I can say one thing for sure. Presently no average desktop workstation/server can be installed with such speed. If you do it you'll just get the same M$ LemonSoft out-of-the-box or even worse.
The reality is that Linux is hard to configure. At least to create an environment for a typical M$ user I and several people take A MONTH to do it.
Looks strange? Under my experince no. An advanced *NIX user or an experienced computer user may have the luck to get such things in a few hours. For some maybe even an hour is enough. On servers things may run up to a week or two. However the ill-doomed average user is unable to work on such stations.
For such users the installation, configuration, tuning can turn into a long wait. However I can say that after such headaches they can use such stations. It may take a month for them to get acquainted with several features that are natural to *NIX. At first time they usually hang in the usual conditionalisms brought from M$ world. But in a few monthes they start making a few steps into a more *NIX world. But I can say they Linux is a painful thing to learn. A few thousands users I forced into *NIX can testify for it.
Anyway I can say one thing for sure. It takes two weeks for them to forget the "back to M$!" mood. And in a month or two the vast majority becomes Linux partisan. Yes there are some conservators that wish that things would go back. But not even they criticize the move. Most argumentation goes around "M$ still rules" and the dangers of running out of it.
There is one thing I would like to state clear. No average user, today, can make a good Linux station out of the box. Only a good expert can do such thing now. And it is not an easy work. One have to take into account a lot of things:
User psychology
Level of computer knowledge
Linking console and X applications into a more friendly environment, while preserving the traditional independence they possess
Constraints based on hardware and work environment
Bug-fixing, feature-fixing.
Doing all this and keeping Linux stable and high-preforming
Now anyone can do this in 4 minutes? I take a month doing this on each station release. Truly, after it, I rarely take more than 4 minutes hanging on each problem that comes up.
The move is interesting. But it is late. Let's see one thing. OpenSource came into the high arena 1,5 year ago not because it is right. It is needed. No one, even a corporation like M$, is able to afford the exponential spending that software development is going into. Yes, most still are making profit under the old proprietary schemes. But this profit is quickly becoming nil. In some cases it had passed the red line long ago. But it is hard to forget old traditions... The idea of renting software is not new. At least M$ has been showing will to implement such schemes since 97. And in Internet one can see "canned software" schemes laying around. However "canned software" possesses two failures. First it considers that everyone will use a restricted environment of applications. Second that creating a financial scheme that constantly "feeds" the developer, one will overcome the shortcomings of present proprietary schemes. The first point may look controversial. However it is a must for such schemes. No matter how many resources the developer possesses, he can't afford to answer to everyone's demands. So users necessities will just be hijacked in an "Office-like" world. "Wanna have a 3D interface? Maybe two-three versions from now." The second point is the main failure of this scheme. It is based on the idea that "money solves everything". If there is a key example that contradicts this assumption then look at M$ itself. They have lots of money. However they are unable to hold the current. "Canned software" is doomed to failure. It may give a new breath to the proprietary extremistes. However it will be a temporary measure. Much like Internet gave a hand to many, by allowing a cheap and effective distribution of upgrades and bugfixes in its early times. Besides it can be simply an illusion of security. In fact the idea of renting software came too late. Some years ago it may have found a place in this world. Now it will have to fight the OpenSource ruler.
The dumb article on CNN is: "Life on Earth a billion years older than previously shown" http://cnn.com/NATURE/9908/12/earlylife.ap/index .html
Please note that while it is true that no organic molecules were found anyway the inorganic by-products and sedimentary-metamorphic traces clearly show that Life existed at ages older than 3.4 billion years.
Well right now I don't clearly remember the dating T of known Life... It has been some time since I looked through my Biology stuff and I don't have it at hand. But if I'm weel remembered we know that traces of Life on Earth are as old has 3.4 or even 3.8 billion years! The first dating is referred to Greenland's discoveries, the second if I'm well remembered comes from some study of rocks in South Africa.
Besides I know that there are already data on complex organisms as old as 1.1-1.5 billion years. Ok, that makes us 1 billion away from what the posting says. HOWEVER! The article is speaking about eucaryotes. That is, it is speaking about highly complex cells. Cells that possess nucleous, "organs", and specialized functions. The same type we are made of. Moreover the article talks about a 3.5 billion year mark for bacterial Life (bacterias are already very complex organisms).
Btw CNN wrote an article carrying the same error as this posting. People be careful on writing about these things. Life on Earth is one of the most heaten questions. It may look that 2 billion or 3 billion does not make a difference. However consider that Earth is 4.6 billion years old. And reconsider this question taking into account that, presently, the "theoretical barrier" for Life is just 4.2 billion...
Well this step is not original. As far as I know several countries possess such legislation. Russia has done this step some years ago. Both russian and australian laws look similar in the sense on how and when reverse engineering can or should be applied.
In fact looking at both laws the logic of them is quite clear. Why I shouldn't reverse engineer a product if I need to adapt it to some specific needs? Specially when almost everything needs a small touch of the "magic wand"??
For many people reverse engineering may look as something extraordinary. However many don't understand that a lot of "features" and "bugs" can be circunvented by this processes. For several years I've been working around I had several times to reverse engineer a lot of stuff. It's true that the advent of Internet made this need not so critical. One can wait for the next patch, bug-feature or hope that the developer hears you.
However this was at the beginning. Reverse-engineering has seen some new revivals in the open source era. Most of it because original developers cannot hold up their buildups anymore. It is humanly impossible for many to proceed a wide and stable path of development for their products. And while, at the beginning, Internet almost helped to kill reverse-engineering, now it is delivering its detractors to extinction.
Frankly it is time for US to THINK seriously about reverse engineering. In a good frame of Law this thing is deeply fundamental for the future of the industry.
Well why anyone goes so negative about this? It's great! I think it's the best chance to preserve some of the old, crappy culture that has been dying for the last 4 centuries and was almost delivered to extinction.
Kansas National Park. To protect the wildlife of reactionary minds, schlerotic theories and religious fanatics.
At least they will be protected from outside evolutionary processes. But I would not make guesses where they will go to in a 200 years from now. Anyway humans and its communities cannot avoid Evolution. Maybe they will become something like Australia marsupials in social terms...
Are you joking yeah? I don't know where were you during DOS times and first OS wars but let me remind you about a few facts:
A: Windows was originally written in Pascal. Later for several reasons it turned into C. Unfortunately the convertion was made such way that a lot of M$ Windowz C code is a Hell of half-hybrid mess. I know because I worked with it.
B: I don't know what are the prices for Visual C now. But when I worried about it it costed a Hell. Even Borland C++ was much more cheaper and costed only $250. Is this what you mean popularity?
C: I have seen several shows made by Microsoft people around here. They advertise everything they can. But one thing that I clearly noted is that C, C++, SDK, DDK and similar stuff are poor relatives in these shows. Note that I am talking about developers.
D: The above doesn't go with VB. At least then, when I still had some interest in Windows. No matter that most of the people around here, where C and/or Pascal fans, these guys were always trying to convince that VB was the "real thing".
E: Mission critical application in C? Well I agree, if you don't presume Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of you may not know a guy named Sergey Lukyanenko. Well he his a Russian SF author. A couple of years ago he wrote a tremendous blockbuster called Labirint of Reflections. I don't know if there is an english translation but
s 20.zip
I tell you the book is Hell!. Here in Russia it is a MUST to read it. For those who understand Russian:
http://sf.glasnet.ru/books/xussr_l/lukyas12.zip
http://sf.glasnet.ru/books/add-on/xussr_l/lukya
The book goes around a virtual world born mostly on our present technology and a strange hypnotic effect most people suffer by looking at a pattern of colors. This world is a world of programs, processes, networks turned to people, buildings and roads. A world much near to our Doom, Quake, Ultima and fantasies. A world where a financial transfer is turned into an 3D aberration of money running trough a funnel. A world where a security system turns into a gigantic cyclop. A world that started with a guy playing Doom through the night...
Well we still don't have the ill-famous "deep" - Enter sequence. But the Prophecy is fulfilled. Since Linus famous letter, this is the next Revolution.
Most of still don't realize that today is too different from yesterday...
After Microsoft convinced everyone to wash their
hands with SOAP and to quietly eat their SOUP, now
it comes back with the LEMON protocol. Presently they refuse to disclose the meaning and details of their new Open Protocol. Meanwhile some anonymous sources claim to be "Lamers Entitled to Moron Over the Network". Anyway it seems this will be the last blow Microsoft plans to give their concurrents. First it was SOUP where they teached a lesson to all those dirty and nasty Linux boys. Later it was SOUP where they teached good manners to IBM and SUN.
"Finally we get the final standard..." says Mr. John Johnson of expert Gardners Group. With a clear and fresh yellow smile, he explained the great advantages of the new protocol. "You see, it might not taste well at first sight, but similarly to a real lemon, it can give you a lot health to your enterprise. It has a lot of vitamin C on it..."
It seems that Microsoft has already filed a proposal to international standards bodies to make it an new well accepted protocol. So, soon, every one of us will be happily eating lemons while roaming the net...
A cracker IS a hacker. A hacker of the sad side but anyway one of us.
Sincerly I think that some people are making a damn confusion about hackers. Nearly ten years ago we knew that we had already a clear division between "white", "black" and "grey" hackers. And among it we had another miriad of groups and subgroups.
"Hacker" is a computer fanatic. Not matter is "angelic" or "demonic" intentions. No matter he loves to roam the Net or sit hours on a isolated computer. His motto "to know". His objective "Think!". His law - "information should be free".
Everything else is hype...
For those "wannabeahacker" a warning:
Think if you really don't wanna play with anything else. Being a hacker is not romance. It's just life and frequently not a easy one.
There is one thing we should note. This sillyness
seems to have appeared in a populist "popular science" magazine. Well I'm an anti-peer-reviewing partisan but sincerly this article makes me think
if I'm not too radical...
However the problem is that for the last years peer-reviewing has exactly allowed such pieces of crap to go floating around. Some time ago I saw several "serious" articles with a respectable peer-review stamp that made me scare.
The general pattern of these things is exactly the way that this article was written. Amid theories and controversies, to form a "theoretical body" with a superficial taste of being complete. To achieve such objective, authors cleverly manipulate facts by patching holes with less known hypothesis and theories. They do not invent them. They just pick up one or other relatively unfortunate idea that was dropped some years ago and process a few "modernisations".
The whole problem is exactly on these modernisations. In general they have nothing in common with Science. They are just clever "phraseologic" implants that, among the whole theoretical building, hide they lack of scientific basis.
Meanwhile, the article could have had a few interesting points. Time capsules could be a very interesting idea. In some aspects I consider that our Universe could have such things. However among this whole crap they loose any concept. Petty.
PS For those who get scared about time. Remember that it is time that makes you alive. Because YOU ARE TIME...
http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9910/12/internet.pri vacy.ap/index.html
Somehow this could be considered already has an wiretapping implementation
Ok what will IETF consider as their "particpation"
on wiretapping?
A technical protocol? Then sorry. Russia saw this with proposal SORM-1. A very good document in their technical aspects but completely outdated. The proposed technology was nearly 5-year old and no one was agreeing to follow it. And the discussion that followed made the FSB to drop any ideas to make it reality. They didn't publish why
but we can infer from proposal SORM-2:
Technologies change. To force a specific wiretapping protocol may "kill" the technological advance.
You have a technical wiretapping protocol that everyone knows about. So will just the government use it? And how to secure it? And if someone really breaks in? Can we manage to measure the damage?
Can we wiretap telephones? Yes. Can we wiretap IP? Sure. Can we wiretap WWW? Of course. Can you wiretap everything? ARE YOU MAD???
Today wiretapping 100 seems easy. Tomorrow we may face the fact that every home has its TV set and its Internet connection. And whatever concern we may face in relation to security we can't follow everybody. Even 1 person is enough for weeks of work. Specially if he is some kind of geek or hacker.
Well these were some of the arguments I saw in discussions. I deliberately avoided to state here any moral and imoral parts of the discussion. However I can say that a broad part of the people agreed to allow FSB to follow criminals on the Net.
The result was SORM-2. I can't say it was perfect. Maybe far from it. But it possessed a principal difference. It didn't carry anymore things about technical protocols and obligations. It was mostly a "List of principles" regulating the behaviour of FSB and ISPs in situations where wiretapping was required. One important point was that FSB was required to get a court order to proceed any wiretapping on Internet. Besides any technical aspect should be regulated in common by the ISP and FSB in mostly a case-to-case basis.
Sincerly I think that soon or later the lawmakers will realize that they should go this way. But then, I think it's not IETF problem to consider about wiretapping.
Apart from this. A teological aspect. Somehow, States are trying to know everything. However every theology teaches us that only God knows everything. So it seems that, anyway, these attempts are doomed. Or will they try to wiretap God?
Ok I got this damn news. Well here it goes. Some
years ago a colleague decided to spread a very sad joke about me. Frankly I don't belong to the saints. But what he described was a Hell. That I even broke into a major worldwide bank. However at that time this didn't make too much noise. Mass media didn't even know what was FIDONet or BBS...
Now this bastard journalist decided to write some blockbuster article and picked that damned piece of crap. Somehow he managed to go with my full name on it. With the usual media overexageration. He even incorrectly published my alias of some years ago.
Really he made two silly mistakes and my bosses considered this as a very very bad joke on me (THANKS GOD!..).but I had to pass some hellish minutes explaining that all that this guy published is pure yellow-press and nothing more.
Damn this media hype is coming up to the nerves. :)))))))))))))
It's everywhere. Hackers do that, broke that. They are watching you even in the bathroom. Looks too crazy? Well this week one of the police departments to combat cybercrime was shown on TV on how they adverted the attempt to kill a crime testimony in intensive care. It seems that the artificial breath system was connected to.. Internet!
That's the funny part. The sad one was that, last week, one journalist decided to dig up on my personality and "discovered" that I'm one of the 100 most dangerous hackers in the world. And it seems that he describes all this with some good detail (still I couldn't get my hands to this piece of crap).
The newspaper possesses a nationwide spread and it is known for its scandalous notoriety.
Well I'm a hacker. But I don't have any will to be on the first or last of these 100 "hackers/lamers" of the Universe. I would send this guy to Hell if it was not a problem. I have some good job here. What will happen tomorrow when I'll come in? "Sorry man but we have some bad news for you". Or "Don't leave the town until we check all you have done!"
The worst of all is that it was the brother of my wife that first discovered this piece of crap. So imagine what's going home...
Really these guys are going too far. All them to the Gulag. Or stamp in each of their heads a display with Slashdotters comenting their crap.
Some time ago I faced a situation that suggested
:)
me a reason for the cracking fever we see today.
The main problem is not education. I saw even people on their 50's cracking computers. Nor it is culture, race or age. The problem goes around a psychological problem I would call the "Forbidden Fruit".
The recept for it is quite simple. Give a system
with several restrictions. They can be directly forced or be just "features". And secure all this with a relatively superficial security system.
This will forcefully create a wave of cracking. The level this "crimewave" may grow depends on how juicy are the results of circumventing the security.
Frankly I saw cracking waves at different levels of "prizes". In one case, when the relation restriction/prize was quite high, the cracking wave rose to levels that almost destroyed all the network. The only two choices to save the situation were either to establish administrative fascism, recurring even to Law, or to remake the whole conception of work.
We choose for remaking the whole thing. It was hard but the cracking wave dropped by nearly 10 times.
We didn't choose administrative fascism more for pragmatic reasons rather than moral. Frankly parallel networks suffered a lot with it. Besides
there was a need to be politically correct and technically sincere. These restrictions were mostly created from technical problems. And here we had some serious responsability to solve them.
Unfortunately the first type of system and OSes didn't give a clear chance to solve these problems. In some point we were also cracking one OS to solve some of these problems
Well people. That's very very funny. Knowing that
a lot of that rocket stuff is made by the same Lockheed-Martin I would like to note a point when that stuff about Y2k comes up. Just to avoid errors from a certain UScentrism about the World.
Please remember that Russia is located at GMT+3hours. Roughly New Year will appear here 8 hours before US. So if we shoot at 8 hours before
New Year - it's our fault. If you do it at New Year then it's your fault.
Now seriously. Lockheed-Martin is a very well known company with a huge experience in rocketry. They participated in several Mars missions. And they did much more than Mars. How such an error could go up with a company that possesses some of the closest ties with NASA?
Most people seem concerned about two scenarios: 1984 and "Good government caring for its citizens"
Frankly there are reasons for wiretapping. There are also reasons to be concerned for 1984. However let me tell you one thing. It is a losen battle. This wiretapping stuff will bring only more confusion and nothing else. 5 years from now we may not only face 1984 and good government scenarios but also a lot of "ooops", "its not a bug its a feature" and such.
Sincerly right now wiretapping, will hardly stop terrorists, criminals and states. And this can be inferred even at much lower levels. Let's take a typical user environment at a University or commercial company. Most security on such environments have already take a level where wiretapping is presumed to exist, at least potentially. And it is presumed that any user can wiretap lines. Does this sounds fantastic? Three years ago yes. Today when Linux distributions carry tcpdump and anyone can download similar programs for Windows no.
This story can be seen interpreted in two ways. Either someone is just keeping pace with the new world, in a relatively bad way. Or someone is making the biggest stupidity, one ever could dream of.
Consider that someone taps you. You write, speak, spell: "Daisen aek veon aksavan dion sat". Can anyone arrest you for this?
If the soul of the present laws remain the same no. No one can arrest you for communicating in a foreign language. No one can accuse you of anything before clearly translate the meaning of these words. And if someone taps you "for free" he can get some serious trouble in the future. In several ways and at several levels.
Five years from now, someone in the FBI will have to explain a loooot of a mess they may have made with this...
Somehow this patent frantics are starting to look like Y2K or Armageddon freakies. Well Open Source has been on its highs for the last 10 years and it looks hard to see it dying.
The patent restrictions have shown a lot of minus but also plus. The 30s have shown a similar fever. Like the 90s, it was a time of crisis going parallel with one of the most inventive periods of History. And anyone who opens an History book will see that several "gold mine" patents turned into empty baskets. The social answer for such things was either turining into less but more affordable technologies or to "reinvent the wheel" in completely unexpected ways.
So it is hard that this patent frantic will turn into some Armageddon. Well at least on what concerns Open Source. Besides there are a lot of legalities that in fact may turn software patenting into an danger for its partisans.
Software patenting is typical in the US. Other countries don't support it. Yes US government tries to convince that soft needs to be patented. There are some laws going there and there about it. But there are some fundaments on making software (and even hardware) that logically contradicts patenting principles. Until now it seems that these principles are untouched in most of the World. Somehow even US legislation goes by these principles. It is not so well remarked but it is there.
Unfortunately US patenting organs seem to have done the second bolshevization in Human History. They managed to forget the moral principles. They clearly ignored legal regulations for giving patents. They have set up in a frantics of giving software patents much like the soviets printed rubles.
The result? In the computing world USA may become known as United Soviets of America. Software developers in an economical and political misery and a whole set of burrocrates fastening themselves in a labyrint of regulations counter-regulations, patents and patents and patents and patents.
However, considering the potential danger that this frantics may turn to US geopolitics, soon the federal and state organs will probably start to put some breaks on it. It will not be tomorrow but quite soon. Right now there is already a current of developers turning to other countries. They are a miserable number but significative by the fields they deal with. A little more and people will start thinking of Malta for software development. When this happens, then axes will start working in Washington. They are not stupid. Well, I think...
Sincerly I'm an upgrade freak. At the moment our mirror gets 2.2.12 I'll upgrade my machines. But not because I need to. Just I'm in my nature I love to experiment. Frankly my job is to know what goes on the edge so I'll be ready for the future.
2.2.x kernels are mostly stable to work on Internet since 2.2.9. Frankly even 2.2.5 is stable in 80% of the tasks. The 2.2.10 is pretty good for regular and intensive desktop work. At least in a "multimedia horse", "Windows-like" working environment, I have noted a good robustness on it: 2 crashes in almost 2 months.
The only point I would see useful for using the last kernels would be in a server environment. However that also depends on the tasks. A 2.2.3 kernel worked with a few occasional bugs for nearly 4 months in a small web server. The main problem were some memory leaks form time to time.
Note that Linus has announced code freezing for development kernel 2.3 in two weeks. So in late Fall we probably will start seeing the new 2.4 coming up. No matter the cooleness one should be aware that each kernel jump is usually traumatic. Sometimes app code needs to be rewritten. People need to hunt for new features between new and old code. Today there is a strange fever of upgrading. And, recently, many newbies seem to have been caught in it. They don't understand why but they go with the fashion. When 2.3 bug-fixing starts up many may fall on the error of following up the vets and face some serious consequences.
Frag them!
Just yesterday I repeated ten times one and the same thing to one journalist who wanted to write an article about Y2K. She hanged in some idea-fixed conception of it and "wanted" that I would support it. It was a comedy.
Every time I would "near" her ideas she would get excited and give a standard question "anyway, you confirm...". However most of the conversation turned into an embroglio on explaining her that she was wrong from the start.
A lot of modern journlistics are no more lies today. They are fantasy novels. The journalist gets into some stupid start-up idea and hangs on it. No matter what experts, tetimonies, friends and foes tell him, he goes up to the end with it.
This article is not FUD. It is just one more product of these kind of journalists. I managed to see such situation several times. You are damn busy, you have a work to do. A journalist calls and you (un)politely send him to Hell. Next day you find in the 1st page, that you are not only a bastard, but also that only God knows what you're hidding out and what you're up to.
Frankly the in the last times the only people I nearly broke their faces were journalists. One almost got his $1800 camera in his head. I told him FIVE times that I didn't want to be on the news...
Frankly it seems that this time a lot of people came in to hold up on Windows. Good thing as Linux frantics were becoming quite monotonous.
But unfortunately your Windows hype is no better than the Linux one. Frankly, Windows doesn't crash? IT CRASHES AND CRASHES BADLY! But these crashes also are dependent on many things. My work environment does not live with Windows and that's the reason I left M$ world. But I would not recomend 80% of users to do the same thing. And maybe 50% of them may live under Windows without problems. Meanwhile the other 50% may need to start thinking about Linux in the future...
You are concentrating too much your efforts on a development basis. And this is not related to free software. Proprietary software also suffers this stigma.
Franfly I consider that is wrong to concentrate income objectives in doing exclusively development. It's much like Galileo inventing (well, reinventing) telescopes for $50 a piece. Any development is by nature a deficit venture. It is the end-use that can bring some income to it. Most individual developers don't realize it because they make their reference points to the corporative environment. However corporations manage to hold R&D and end-use in one line of production. Individuals cannot afford doing this.
Just think:
1.You are now the "Universal Soldier" of your little program. But do you believe that you can hold up everything during further development? Know every single bit of its application? Even if anyone pays for it?
2.Do you know all possibilities of your program? Can you realize all its potential? Can you see its future? Did Linus Torvalds realize what he have done 5 minutes after making that post in 1991?
3.Today you have 1 user. Tomorrow maybe 10.A month later maybe 100. A year later God knows. You may hold up with them but not forever.
4. Programming is much like DNA. Alone it is a beautiful but useless program. Together with a whole series of organics, water and minerals it even makes human bodies.
I think these four points are fundamental to understand why programs cannot be proprietary. By consequence they cannot be charged in most of its path. The only good place to charge anything from it is the end-use. And frankly you may not get millionare but you don't get hunger either. End-use based in a powerful development infrastructure can give huge opportunities.
he demonstration of this is on Linux user environment. After KDE-GNOME-WM-AfterStep Horde many users shifted they requirements basis for more radical end-uses. In fact Windows is making a huge damage in the industry by fixing users in a desktop problem. On Linux such problems are of different level. Users require adapting the environment for very specific tasks like conferencing, a workplace for a scientific work or a very complex office environment where everything is at shotgun range.
I make money on this. And frankly I don't even make these things proprietary. Usually I jump from one task to another. I'm not a millionare and don't think about it. However I have managed to make my ends meet. If under a proprietary environment I barely could pay my rent, today I managed to buy a new computer on my birhtday (I didn't have such thing for the last 5 years), throwing $700 on it. And still have money for making a small beer-party with my friends. Meanwhile my friend managed to buy a second-hand car under the same situation. An year ago he was overworking to pay a rent due for three months.
The article is talking about 18 months lifespan for computers. Quite true if you consider the proprietary software and that you consider your computer as a whole. While hanging on Windows I noted that my P166MMX 32M 1.6G S3 TrioV2 2M became "old" in nearly 9 months. If I would keep using it for 9 months more than I would have to stop my work...
However this box still lives. After 20 monthes of using it has my main home desktop, now it turned into a small server with some secondary desktop tasks. And I'm planning to use it for a year more.
We should all realize that OpenSource is creating problems. In fact many people cannot adapt to this new world. But one thing that OpenSource detractors should realize is that OpenSource is working. Or else we wouldn't be here discussing IBM's thinkings and Linux success.
Several years ago I created a product under the typical frame of proprietary code. The only thing I wanna remember from it is that all that was a bad dream. Yes I managed to make some good money at start. However the what came after was a Hell for many reasons. I realized my error and quit that world. One of the main reasons was that I couldn't afford to spend more money and other resources on developing the product.
Today I barely code the way I did. I don't make programs anymore. The most I do is patching exisiting ones. And it is quite frequent to just hang around a few hacks to make things work. Call me parasite, sucker whatever you want. I could recognize these labels on me if I worked on the principle "mine, mine and only mine!". But I also share what I do. And I don't have seen a cent vanishing from my pocket for this. Quite the contrary.
Yesterday I could barely pay my bills. Today, I can afford a life for me and my family. And most of the stuff I work with runs stable and performing.
Yesterday I could afford to help 3-4 people at one time. Today I have more than 3000 users dependent on what I do. I work 99% on OpenSource software. Last time I touched 100% commercial software was more than a month ago.
The problem many developers suffer today is by seeing their ideas as gold mines. Most like those patent-fan inventors that try to grable every idea under a piece of paper and calmly waiting that someone brings them a suitcase full of dollars for it. Unfortunately software is a hybrid mutant constantly changing its faces. So while you're waiting your gold you may suddenly realize that your idea got some rust...
Ok it seems that /. has started a wave of bad information. No I don't mean it bad. I mean it horrible. In three days we get a desinformation, a hoax and now a bit of yellow advertisement. To be precise:
Life is 2.7
US Government considering charging E-mail
Linux can be installed in 4 minutes
I make part of my living by installing Linux boxes. Specially for users who wouldn't never had dreamed to work on it. And I can say one thing for sure. Presently no average desktop workstation/server can be installed with such speed. If you do it you'll just get the same M$ LemonSoft out-of-the-box or even worse.
The reality is that Linux is hard to configure. At least to create an environment for a typical M$ user I and several people take A MONTH to do it.
Looks strange? Under my experince no. An advanced *NIX user or an experienced computer user may have the luck to get such things in a few hours. For some maybe even an hour is enough. On servers things may run up to a week or two. However the ill-doomed average user is unable to work on such stations.
For such users the installation, configuration, tuning can turn into a long wait. However I can say that after such headaches they can use such stations. It may take a month for them to get acquainted with several features that are natural to *NIX. At first time they usually hang in the usual conditionalisms brought from M$ world. But in a few monthes they start making a few steps into a more *NIX world. But I can say they Linux is a painful thing to learn. A few thousands users I forced into *NIX can testify for it.
Anyway I can say one thing for sure. It takes two weeks for them to forget the "back to M$!" mood. And in a month or two the vast majority becomes Linux partisan. Yes there are some conservators that wish that things would go back. But not even they criticize the move. Most argumentation goes around "M$ still rules" and the dangers of running out of it.
There is one thing I would like to state clear. No average user, today, can make a good Linux station out of the box. Only a good expert can do such thing now. And it is not an easy work. One have to take into account a lot of things:
User psychology
Level of computer knowledge
Linking console and X applications into a more friendly environment, while preserving the traditional independence they possess
Constraints based on hardware and work environment
Bug-fixing, feature-fixing.
Doing all this and keeping Linux stable and high-preforming
Now anyone can do this in 4 minutes? I take a month doing this on each station release. Truly, after it, I rarely take more than 4 minutes hanging on each problem that comes up.
The move is interesting. But it is late. Let's see one thing. OpenSource came into the high arena 1,5 year ago not because it is right. It is needed. No one, even a corporation like M$, is able to afford the exponential spending that software development is going into. Yes, most still are making profit under the old proprietary schemes. But this profit is quickly becoming nil. In some cases it had passed the red line long ago. But it is hard to forget old traditions... The idea of renting software is not new. At least M$ has been showing will to implement such schemes since 97. And in Internet one can see "canned software" schemes laying around. However "canned software" possesses two failures. First it considers that everyone will use a restricted environment of applications. Second that creating a financial scheme that constantly "feeds" the developer, one will overcome the shortcomings of present proprietary schemes. The first point may look controversial. However it is a must for such schemes. No matter how many resources the developer possesses, he can't afford to answer to everyone's demands. So users necessities will just be hijacked in an "Office-like" world. "Wanna have a 3D interface? Maybe two-three versions from now." The second point is the main failure of this scheme. It is based on the idea that "money solves everything". If there is a key example that contradicts this assumption then look at M$ itself. They have lots of money. However they are unable to hold the current. "Canned software" is doomed to failure. It may give a new breath to the proprietary extremistes. However it will be a temporary measure. Much like Internet gave a hand to many, by allowing a cheap and effective distribution of upgrades and bugfixes in its early times. Besides it can be simply an illusion of security. In fact the idea of renting software came too late. Some years ago it may have found a place in this world. Now it will have to fight the OpenSource ruler.
The dumb article on CNN is:x .html
"Life on Earth a billion years older than previously shown"
http://cnn.com/NATURE/9908/12/earlylife.ap/inde
Please note that while it is true that no organic molecules were found anyway the inorganic by-products and sedimentary-metamorphic traces clearly show that Life existed at ages older than 3.4 billion years.
Well right now I don't clearly remember the dating T of known Life... It has been some time since I looked through my Biology stuff and I don't have it at hand. But if I'm weel remembered we know that traces of Life on Earth are as old has 3.4 or even 3.8 billion years! The first dating is referred to Greenland's discoveries, the second if I'm well remembered comes from some study of rocks in South Africa.
Besides I know that there are already data on complex organisms as old as 1.1-1.5 billion years. Ok, that makes us 1 billion away from what the posting says. HOWEVER! The article is speaking about eucaryotes. That is, it is speaking about highly complex cells. Cells that possess nucleous, "organs", and specialized functions. The same type we are made of. Moreover the article talks about a 3.5 billion year mark for bacterial Life (bacterias are already very complex organisms).
Btw CNN wrote an article carrying the same error as this posting. People be careful on writing about these things. Life on Earth is one of the most heaten questions. It may look that 2 billion or 3 billion does not make a difference. However consider that Earth is 4.6 billion years old. And reconsider this question taking into account that, presently, the "theoretical barrier" for Life is just 4.2 billion...
Well this step is not original. As far as I know several countries possess such legislation. Russia has done this step some years ago. Both russian and australian laws look similar in the sense on how and when reverse engineering can or should be applied.
In fact looking at both laws the logic of them is quite clear. Why I shouldn't reverse engineer a product if I need to adapt it to some specific needs? Specially when almost everything needs a small touch of the "magic wand"??
For many people reverse engineering may look as something extraordinary. However many don't understand that a lot of "features" and "bugs" can be circunvented by this processes. For several years I've been working around I had several times to reverse engineer a lot of stuff. It's true that the advent of Internet made this need not so critical. One can wait for the next patch, bug-feature or hope that the developer hears you.
However this was at the beginning. Reverse-engineering has seen some new revivals in the open source era. Most of it because original developers cannot hold up their buildups anymore. It is humanly impossible for many to proceed a wide and stable path of development for their products. And while, at the beginning, Internet almost helped to kill reverse-engineering, now it is delivering its detractors to extinction.
Frankly it is time for US to THINK seriously about reverse engineering. In a good frame of Law this thing is deeply fundamental for the future of the industry.
Well why anyone goes so negative about this? It's great! I think it's the best chance to preserve some of the old, crappy culture that has been dying for the last 4 centuries and was almost delivered to extinction.
Kansas National Park. To protect the wildlife of reactionary minds, schlerotic theories and religious fanatics.
At least they will be protected from outside evolutionary processes. But I would not make guesses where they will go to in a 200 years from now. Anyway humans and its communities cannot avoid Evolution. Maybe they will become something like Australia marsupials in social terms...
Are you joking yeah?
I don't know where were you during DOS times and first OS wars but let me remind you about a few facts:
A: Windows was originally written in Pascal. Later for several reasons it turned into C. Unfortunately the convertion was made such way that a lot of M$ Windowz C code is a Hell of half-hybrid mess. I know because I worked with it.
B: I don't know what are the prices for Visual C now. But when I worried about it it costed a Hell. Even Borland C++ was much more cheaper and costed only $250. Is this what you mean popularity?
C: I have seen several shows made by Microsoft people around here. They advertise everything they can. But one thing that I clearly noted is that C, C++, SDK, DDK and similar stuff are poor relatives in these shows. Note that I am talking about developers.
D: The above doesn't go with VB. At least then, when I still had some interest in Windows. No matter that most of the people around here, where C and/or Pascal fans, these guys were always trying to convince that VB was the "real thing".
E: Mission critical application in C? Well I agree, if you don't presume Windows.