Back in the days when dinosaurs were still walking the streets, I worked for an oil company that owned a large Control Data Corp. Cyber mainframe (ah, those were the days..)
At one point my employer got an offer from CDC to upgrade the memory of their Cyber, to double the size (I think from 32 MB to 64 MB). The only problem was the price, it was so horribly expensive that even an oil company had to think about it. And debate it endlessly internally, as I recall. In the end, CDC offered to lease the upgrade to them, so they accepted.
The next day our resident CDC technician (yes, resident. These computers came with an on-site technician) walked into the computer room with a pair of wire cutters in hand. He shut down the Cyber, opened a cabinet door and cut a single wire on the backplane. "There, all done."
Needless to say, my employer was not amused, but they got the memory upgrade they paid for.
In many ways this issue is the same as downloading crippleware or time limited try-before-you-buy software. The full functionality is already there, but you haven't yet paid a license for the right to use it.
In the end this comes down to a question of virtual vs. physical ownership. If we accept that we don't own a piece of software, just the right to use it, why not the same with hardware? You paid for a processor, yes. It's physical, you carried it home from the store. The manufacturer promised you N cores, spinning at whatever GHz, and with a certain amount of cache. They delivered on that promise.
Now they're offering an upgrade without the need for a new trip to the store. Why is this bad?
Nope. Norway is puritan country. Porn (people fscking) is illegal. Pictures of nekked boobies aren't.
Even so, this has been blown waaay out of proportion (Slashdot, sensationalist?! Nah...) It's just a proposal by a panel so far and what's more, of the 6 members of the panel 4 were against. The minority, i.e. the remaining 2 members, have demanded that the Justice Department consider the proposal anyway and present it to Parliament regardless.
Whether or not that will really happen remains to be seen. Needless to say, just about everyone else are up in arms over this.
Democracy in action, folks. Nothing to see here, move along.
In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output
devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used
to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably)
genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation
in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that
produces a result that's unique to that device type.
In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of
the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the
workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it
(for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS)
will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the
HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device
beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other
products.
Besides which, they'll be gone in 10 years anyways. That's not a rimshot. Shit, it's not even an original thought. It's just the way things are going.
I don't think so. According to Yahoo Finance Microsoft still has a cash reserve of over $28bn, even after the big dividends bonanza a little while back. In most companies, especially in the software business, payroll is usually the biggest expense item. Microsoft has 61,000 employees, figure an average salary of $45K per, and you have a payroll of $2.75bn per year.
In addition to the cash reserves they have other assets in the billons and they still make money by the truckload.
Even if they should stop making money tomorrow, and still didn't lay off a single employee, they could probably stay alive more than your projected 10 years simply by floating on their assets. Or they could finance the payroll from interest from the cash reserve (assuming you could manage to squeeze 10% from 28bn...)
Whether or not they'll still be relevant in 10 years is another question.
It occurs to me that what we saw here was Gingrich announcing that he's running in '08.
On that note, things that make you go "hmmm", from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas N. Adams:
i) "Anyone capable of getting themselves elected president, should on no account be allowed to do the job."
ii) "The real purpose of the office of the president is not to wield power, but to distract attention away from those who do."
(Slightly paraphrased, with posthumous apologies to DNA)
Gingrich is a political animal, through and through. He would never say something like this in public unless he's confident that there is a constituency out there waiting to hear it. Now that's the scary part.
and customers must take a number of factors into consideration
Not least the criteria for selecting and enumerating flaws, and any differences between those criteria for the two products. Not saying that there is a problem, just that any prospective customer needs to take this into consideration and check his facts.
This whole study reminds me of a couple of years ago, when someone decided to make a comparative list of security flaws between Windows and Linux. For the former, they only included official Microsoft security fixes. For the latter, they included just about every bug in every open source project known to man. Big surprise, Windows was found to have less flaws.
When it comes to security, trust no one. Especially not research firms, security "specialists" and people mouthing off about security on Slashdot.
Say "cell phone" to someone, and they'll have a pretty good idea of what you're talking about. The current name is sufficient - no need to change it. Language is intended to convey information, not to be perfectly consistent.
Good point. There's only one problem: To someone who's not familiar with the technology behind these radio networks, what meaning exactly would he be able to deduce from the name "cell phone"? A telephone for use by prison inmates?
The name only works today because it has become colloquial and ubiquitous (in the US). Outside of the tech community the name has little semantic payload value.
My comment was meant tongue-in-cheek, but your reply is nevertheless appreciated. Japanese society is strange and fascinating, at least to me, so I tidbits like this are most welcome.
I wish I had modpoints right now, so I could mod you "insightful".
> handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE
Guess what, the phones already do that and have done for ages. It Just Works(tm) pretty much all over the world, except in the US. Go shout at the your braindead network operators and let the rest of us, with more-or-less 100% cell coverage and functional roaming, enjoy the advanced phones.
BTW, I live in Norway. There are 4.6 million people living here, about 1 million of them around Oslo and the rest pretty thinly spread out. Go look at a map of Norway and you'll appreciate the difficulty and cost of providing cell phone coverage in the 90s percentile here.
Now go tear your cell network operator a new one.
PS. My cell phone is a Nokia E61. Yes, it's got WLAN. And a QWERTY keyboard. An advanced email client. A proper web browser with a pointer cursor. An ssh client. A built-in SIP client for VoIP. 3G. And yes, it just works everywhere I go. DS.
I just saw a newscast on Swedish TV-channel TV4. Looks like the news coverage has turned from how this is a pretty bad political and judicial scandal into how the Swedish Government web site was taken down by a DoS attack by terrorist pirate hackers.
An OpenBSD CD set is $49. If you've ever used OpenSSH or x.org X11 (read the article), you've already got your money's worth. In addition, chances are that somewhere in your organization (or at your house?!?) there's an OpenBSD-based firewall happily chugging away with PF and CARP.
So cut the anti-BSD crap and get over Theo's personality for like 10 seconds and pony up. Some day you'll be glad you did. If for no other reason, do it in your own best interest.
I have a feeling the Singularity is never going to be a one specific point in time, rather it will always be a moving target.
As we draw closer to these fantastic new technologies it becomes easier to speculate about them, even the more revolutionary ones. No technological change happens over night.
A hundred years from now people will take GNR and 300 year lifespans for granted, look back to the turn of this century and wonder "whatever became of the Singularity?"
Well, it's what I think will happen anyway. YMMV. Get back to me in 2100 and we'll compare notes.
> 25 metric tons...does this mean we are one step closer to start launching our garbage into the sun?
No.
1) The delta-vee needed to get to the sun is orders of magnitude higher than that needed for reaching LEO.
2) The amount of garbage generated in order to lift 25 tonnes just into LEO far exceeds 25 tonnes. IOW, it would be a net garbage-generating operation, so why bother?
I used to work at a Compaq dealer in Norway. We had to equip every machine sold with a device called a "Noise killer", which was simply a thermostat regulating the speed of the fans in the power supply.
Without the Noise killers those Compaqs sounded pretty much like a Cessna on its take-off run.
We complained repeatedly to Compaq but their response was always: "What noise?"
They explained to us in great detail that nobody was interested in what a bunch of people living next to the North Pole thought about the finer points of CPU cooling, of all things.
In the real world, according to them, people were using air conditioning systems and cooling fans in their offices anyway and couldn't care less if the fans in their computers made a bit of noise.
Well guess who was right in the end, eh Compaq?? Oh, that's right, you don't even exist anymore. Mu-ha-ha-ha!
> If you let your VMS OS and application licenses lapse
I call bullshit. You could get (usually free) time limited evaluation licenses, but if you purchased a regular license there was no termination date on it. Hence it didn't "lapse".
You could check this by looking at the license with the LICENSE utility ($ LIC LIST/FULL <license name>). Look for the line with "termination date", like this:
PAK Termination Date: (none)
That's not to say that proprietary software and restrictive licenses don't suck big hairy toads.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the days when dinosaurs were still walking the streets, I worked for an oil company that owned a large Control Data Corp. Cyber mainframe (ah, those were the days..)
At one point my employer got an offer from CDC to upgrade the memory of their Cyber, to double the size (I think from 32 MB to 64 MB). The only problem was the price, it was so horribly expensive that even an oil company had to think about it. And debate it endlessly internally, as I recall. In the end, CDC offered to lease the upgrade to them, so they accepted.
The next day our resident CDC technician (yes, resident. These computers came with an on-site technician) walked into the computer room with a pair of wire cutters in hand. He shut down the Cyber, opened a cabinet door and cut a single wire on the backplane. "There, all done."
Needless to say, my employer was not amused, but they got the memory upgrade they paid for.
In many ways this issue is the same as downloading crippleware or time limited try-before-you-buy software. The full functionality is already there, but you haven't yet paid a license for the right to use it.
In the end this comes down to a question of virtual vs. physical ownership. If we accept that we don't own a piece of software, just the right to use it, why not the same with hardware? You paid for a processor, yes. It's physical, you carried it home from the store. The manufacturer promised you N cores, spinning at whatever GHz, and with a certain amount of cache. They delivered on that promise.
Now they're offering an upgrade without the need for a new trip to the store. Why is this bad?
Surely the worst insult facing the Galapagos has to be Crea^H^H^H^H Intelligent Design?
Just a thought.
Nope. Norway is puritan country. Porn (people fscking) is illegal. Pictures of nekked boobies aren't.
Even so, this has been blown waaay out of proportion (Slashdot, sensationalist?! Nah...) It's just a proposal by a panel so far and what's more, of the 6 members of the panel 4 were against. The minority, i.e. the remaining 2 members, have demanded that the Justice Department consider the proposal anyway and present it to Parliament regardless.
Whether or not that will really happen remains to be seen. Needless to say, just about everyone else are up in arms over this.
Democracy in action, folks. Nothing to see here, move along.
IAAN (I Am A Norwegian) and IRTFA.
Wouldn't OpenBSD be better suited than Linux? Not looking to start a flamewar here, but what with PF and OpenBGPD et al...
Just a thought.
because Slashdotters were wrong about the iPod.
Actually, that was mainly CmdrTaco, and the rest of us are just here to remind him of it until the end of time.
My take on the iPhone at my Blog: 'The iPhone: Revolution or Razzle-dazzle?'
From TFA:
Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support
In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that's unique to that device type.
In order for this to work, the spec requires that the operational details of the device be kept confidential. Obviously anyone who knows enough about the workings of a device to operate it and to write a third-party driver for it (for example one for an open-source OS, or in general just any non-Windows OS) will also know enough to fake the HFS process. The only way to protect the HFS process therefore is to not release any technical details on the device beyond a minimum required for web site reviews and comparison with other products.
There's more where that came from. RTFA, people!
I don't think so. According to Yahoo Finance Microsoft still has a cash reserve of over $28bn, even after the big dividends bonanza a little while back. In most companies, especially in the software business, payroll is usually the biggest expense item. Microsoft has 61,000 employees, figure an average salary of $45K per, and you have a payroll of $2.75bn per year.
In addition to the cash reserves they have other assets in the billons and they still make money by the truckload.
Even if they should stop making money tomorrow, and still didn't lay off a single employee, they could probably stay alive more than your projected 10 years simply by floating on their assets. Or they could finance the payroll from interest from the cash reserve (assuming you could manage to squeeze 10% from 28bn...)
Whether or not they'll still be relevant in 10 years is another question.
"Newt Gingrich issued his opinion that the idea of free speech in the U.S. needs to be re-examined in the interest of fighting freedom."
Talk about your freudian slip.
On that note, things that make you go "hmmm", from The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas N. Adams:
i) "Anyone capable of getting themselves elected president, should on no account be allowed to do the job."
ii) "The real purpose of the office of the president is not to wield power, but to distract attention away from those who do."
(Slightly paraphrased, with posthumous apologies to DNA)
Gingrich is a political animal, through and through. He would never say something like this in public unless he's confident that there is a constituency out there waiting to hear it. Now that's the scary part.
Not least the criteria for selecting and enumerating flaws, and any differences between those criteria for the two products. Not saying that there is a problem, just that any prospective customer needs to take this into consideration and check his facts.
This whole study reminds me of a couple of years ago, when someone decided to make a comparative list of security flaws between Windows and Linux. For the former, they only included official Microsoft security fixes. For the latter, they included just about every bug in every open source project known to man. Big surprise, Windows was found to have less flaws.
When it comes to security, trust no one. Especially not research firms, security "specialists" and people mouthing off about security on Slashdot.
Hey, waitaminute....
Good point. There's only one problem: To someone who's not familiar with the technology behind these radio networks, what meaning exactly would he be able to deduce from the name "cell phone"? A telephone for use by prison inmates?
The name only works today because it has become colloquial and ubiquitous (in the US). Outside of the tech community the name has little semantic payload value.
All IMHO, of course.
Shadow99_1,
My comment was meant tongue-in-cheek, but your reply is nevertheless appreciated. Japanese society is strange and fascinating, at least to me, so I tidbits like this are most welcome.
I wish I had modpoints right now, so I could mod you "insightful".
Thanks
> "The point is that Microsoft needs to find its un-Vista."
Or, said differently, Microsoft needs to find its Apple.
Not gonna happen any time soon. ;-)
This guy sounds like a true entrepreneur. Instead of deporting him, how about hiring him?
Just a thought.
> handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE
Guess what, the phones already do that and have done for ages. It Just Works(tm) pretty much all over the world, except in the US. Go shout at the your braindead network operators and let the rest of us, with more-or-less 100% cell coverage and functional roaming, enjoy the advanced phones.
BTW, I live in Norway. There are 4.6 million people living here, about 1 million of them around Oslo and the rest pretty thinly spread out. Go look at a map of Norway and you'll appreciate the difficulty and cost of providing cell phone coverage in the 90s percentile here.
Now go tear your cell network operator a new one.
PS. My cell phone is a Nokia E61. Yes, it's got WLAN. And a QWERTY keyboard. An advanced email client. A proper web browser with a pointer cursor. An ssh client. A built-in SIP client for VoIP. 3G. And yes, it just works everywhere I go. DS.
From TFA:
"A student member of our team, Nick Hollon of Villanova University, spotted the flash."
I'm guessing that simple sentence in the article made Mr. Hollon's day. Or even month. ;-)
I just saw a newscast on Swedish TV-channel TV4. Looks like the news coverage has turned from how this is a pretty bad political and judicial scandal into how the Swedish Government web site was taken down by a DoS attack by terrorist pirate hackers.
Way to go guys!
This is what I call a successful redesign. You can still clearly see that it's Slashdot even though the changes are quite extensive.
Cool, clean, familiar. Kudos!
An OpenBSD CD set is $49. If you've ever used OpenSSH or x.org X11 (read the article), you've already got your money's worth. In addition, chances are that somewhere in your organization (or at your house?!?) there's an OpenBSD-based firewall happily chugging away with PF and CARP.
So cut the anti-BSD crap and get over Theo's personality for like 10 seconds and pony up. Some day you'll be glad you did. If for no other reason, do it in your own best interest.
I have a feeling the Singularity is never going to be a one specific point in time, rather it will always be a moving target.
As we draw closer to these fantastic new technologies it becomes easier to speculate about them, even the more revolutionary ones. No technological change happens over night.
A hundred years from now people will take GNR and 300 year lifespans for granted, look back to the turn of this century and wonder "whatever became of the Singularity?"
Well, it's what I think will happen anyway. YMMV. Get back to me in 2100 and we'll compare notes.
> 25 metric tons...does this mean we are one step closer to start launching our garbage into the sun?
No.
1) The delta-vee needed to get to the sun is orders of magnitude higher than that needed for reaching LEO.
2) The amount of garbage generated in order to lift 25 tonnes just into LEO far exceeds 25 tonnes. IOW, it would be a net garbage-generating operation, so why bother?
I used to work at a Compaq dealer in Norway. We had to equip every machine sold with a device called a "Noise killer", which was simply a thermostat regulating the speed of the fans in the power supply.
Without the Noise killers those Compaqs sounded pretty much like a Cessna on its take-off run.
We complained repeatedly to Compaq but their response was always: "What noise?"
They explained to us in great detail that nobody was interested in what a bunch of people living next to the North Pole thought about the finer points of CPU cooling, of all things.
In the real world, according to them, people were using air conditioning systems and cooling fans in their offices anyway and couldn't care less if the fans in their computers made a bit of noise.
Well guess who was right in the end, eh Compaq?? Oh, that's right, you don't even exist anymore. Mu-ha-ha-ha!
- Is that a woody in your pocket?
- You know what, as a matter of fact, it is!
Tsk, tsk. You must be new here.
I call bullshit. You could get (usually free) time limited evaluation licenses, but if you purchased a regular license there was no termination date on it. Hence it didn't "lapse".
You could check this by looking at the license with the LICENSE utility ($ LIC LIST/FULL <license name>). Look for the line with "termination date", like this:
PAK Termination Date: (none)
That's not to say that proprietary software and restrictive licenses don't suck big hairy toads.