Linus Named in Upside's Elite 100

Gary Franczyk writes "Apparently Linus Torvalds was named one of the top visionaries in Upside's Elite 100 list of most influential people in the computer industry." He's the only "Visionary" that didn't get his picture on that page. So sad.

Cars are 1920's technology

[Gleef]

Yes, cars were invented before then, but cars as we know it really date back to the 1920's, with a few innovations tacked on in the 50's and 60's.

What's the point of griping that something is based on old technology? Old means that it has time to evolve, mature, and be tested. Linux is certainly many times more robust and powerful than the Unix of the 60's, just like even the cheap cars today are many times more safe and powerful than the cars of the 20's.

They know not!!!

[Kev Vance]

Here's an excerpt from DDJ about it (Jun 1998, admittedly in Swaine's Flames :) --

This miraculous scheme is called "Chaffing and Winnowing," and it is remarkably simple: The sender breaks the message up into packets, possibly as small as a single bit, but not necessarily. A serial number is appended to each packet to keep them straight.

The sender then appends to each packet an authentication code computed as a function of the packet contents and a secret authentication key. The secret key is created and shared by the sender and receiver using existing, tested technology, and there are well-known methods for creating the authentication code, too.

The sender then generates bogus packets, containing duplicate serial numbers, plausible but different message contents, and erroneous authentication keys, and sends off the whole mess of valid and bogus packets.

Now, without the authentication key, it is impossible to reconstruct the message. But with the authentication key, it's automatic: The bogus packets are rejected and only the valid ones come through, producing the original message.

Well, that hopefully cleared things up a bit. Chaffing and winnowing, is of course, free to export under current US laws. It just goes to show you how stupid the crypto export controls are...

Free Software Movement

[Bryce]

There are some very interesting parallels
between the rise of the scientific community
back in the 17th century.

I expect we'll see more and more of these sorts
of lists populated by people of the Free Software
Movement. Yay!

---
Join The Altima Project [altima.org]: The free multiplayer online RPG development team.

Bill Joy a woman?

[Hallow]

Isn't that a female in the picture of Bill Joy?

Plugging a leaking ship

[ilkahn]

Just out of curiosity... I am a CS person, and I would love to know what these "research" operating systems are... I would love to donate my time to them!

no RMS?

[Jose]

where is RMS? Sure Linus helped create the whole surge in the open source popularity...but RMS had the "vision" to start the the FSF, GPL...
I'd say he deserves the award more than Linus...

uh-oh

[UM_Maverick]

Oh no...someone from Microsoft was above Linus...let the flames begin!

Unix Security Model (Was: Plugging a leaking ship)

[tartarus]

Why do these security holes keep showing up in unixes? Because Unix's security model is poor.

I'd be interested to hear exactly why you think this is true. Applications sit in user space, unable to do anything directly to the underlying system; they run under a given uid/gid with certain permissions to restrict what it is they can do. Sure, it might be nice in some cases to have something more akin to the Java sandbox - but at what performance cost - and what, really, do you gain? There are few security improvements you'd get from that, if any.

Also the API is fraught with problems. Just read through the man pages.... you'll often see stuff like "using this function is not recommended because it is insecure".

In which cases there are alternative ways of doing things. These calls exist for backward compatibility reasons - there are some useful programs out there that you might want to run. If you want to get a warning each time these get used, either check the source for those programs, or check a dynamically linked binary to see whether it calls any of them. Simply because there are calls which are inadvisable to use because they are unsafe does not cast doubt on the entire system - if anything, it reassures about its security-conscious facet.

Jeff Bazos?

[Linux Freak]

Jeff Bazos, founder of Amazon, is the #1 most influential man in computing? Hmmm...the only thing noteworthy about Amazon is that they think it is okay to spam to peddle their books.

They know not!!!

[Bobson]

OK, they know a little...
However another entry in their list (#7) is
Ronald Rivest. According to their blurb:
"Also known as "chaffing and winnowing," RSA's method has been called the final answer on cryptography"

What has 'chaffing and winnowing' to do with RSA? Or did I miss something? Or do they not believe that someone can have two great ideas?

old news...

[nikfiend]

Slashdot is getting stale. This came out what, like a month and a half ago? Come on ppl.

old != obsolete

[jdgeorge]

First, a summary:
To learn about Unix, I suggest a look at the UNIX98 standard, available at http://www.opengroup.org/regproducts/xxm0.htm

To learn about the history of microcomputers and their operating systems, I suggest a look at:
http://web.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/comphist.htm

Now, my response to the post:

Hmmm...(looking at my car)... pneumatic tires, internal combustion engine... it seems to me these are pretty old inventions. These may not be precisely "1920's" technologies, but certainly much older than I am.

I must admit I am amazed by the assertion that automobiles are "easy to redesign from scratch and most manufacturers do so every few years." I further admit I am amazed by the implication that automobile development is not "saddled with backwards compatibility concerns."

This is simply untrue. The reason automobiles can be and are frequently redesigned is that most of the core technologies in existing products are refined and reused versions of existing technologies which have not been fundamentally altered. (This, by the way, creates a multitude of backward compatibility concerns.) While it is true that this process of refinement and reuse makes the development cycle of an automobile quite efficient, it is also true that this does not constitute "redesign from scratch."

Perhaps we should consider the words of Alexander Pope, whose ideas have not become obsolete with age:

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"