To build on a point that you are making, though, Oracle would like to be Apple for the business world. Steve Job is known to be a close friend of Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison also takes business very personally--to him, if he has a grudge against you, it's not enough to just crush you. He wants to see you suffer.

I'm not surprised Oracle wants to provide an entire database stack like Apple systems and Apple's software, in the manner of how they are sold. I don't think it will be too long before we will see Oracle taking many of Apple's steps, such as supporting their software on only their equipment, as that is part of their "systems" strategy. Rather, they're not in it for the hardware business, but in order for you to have an Oracle database, you might just be forced to buy Oracle hardware to run it. Fortunately, Oracle cannot afford to do it just yet. If they can convince a significant number to do it, you may just be required to be running Oracle DB on an Oracle server with Oracle OS.

It's not much different with Apple's software such as Logic Studio or Final Cut. If you want to run either of those packages, you'd have to buy a Mac system. I can see why such a business model seems so attractive to Larry.

How I wish I had mod points for you! Steve Jobs also jokes that he's God:

Q: Why have you veered away from widgets on the iPad? A: We just shipped it on Saturday. And then we rested on Sunday. Q: So widgets are possible? A: Everything is possible.

Although some aren't so sure he's joking...

Exactly! There is also the "moral" question on whether or not doctors should treat diabetes or any genetic condition, because essentially what "survival of the fittest" would normally take care of is being artificially perpetuated by human beings. I personally think that's a load of BS, but the argument is valid. But that's what differentiates humans from animals is that the "survival of the fittest" also includes using your head.

Taiwan is a part of the Republic of China. Theoretically, there are two Chinas (PRC and ROC). KMT and DPP have been wrangling on renaming ROC to just Taiwan, but the threat of missiles being deployed to Taiwan upon renaming has all but stopped the debate.

He is correct. When China was celebrating its 60th anniversary, it was a sore point for many in Taiwan (Republic of China). 1949 was the year that the Communists moved the capital of China back to Beijing (closer to Mao's power base). Nanjing was the capital of Taiwan (Republic of China) until last year (2009, hence PRC's 60th anniversary).

I thought it was interesting that it was only last year that the Republic of China (Taiwan) Legislative Yuan changed the official capital from Nanjing to Taipei. The reasoning was quite sound, given that ROC doesn't of yet have much a chance of winning Nanjing back, so the provisional capital might as well become the permanent capital.

Why not use Jasig CAS instead? Not that it will be any consolation that Oracle is trying to profit off its expensive SSO solution, but CAS is easy to implement with a Java and Ruby version available, and hundreds of universities are using them. We're a private business and we use CAS easily with phpCAS and RubyCAS-client. It's easy to use and implement, and systems such as PeopleSoft can easily be CASified. While it's sad OpenSSO is being discontinued, CAS is not an option likely to disappear any time soon. We strong recommend those considering replacing their OpenSSO system to move to CAS.

No worries, IE6 will come back from the dead. It's not truly dead. It just wants you to think it is. Ever see the movie I Am Legend?

Trinity used nmap and a tool called `sshnuke,' a tool that presumably exploited the SSH1 CRC32 exploit. If you want to talk about realism, nothing really gets more real than this in the movies. Here's a picture of this Hollywood anomaly.

Oh, and let's not forget the beginnings of PDF, via InterScript, later PostScript, where former Xerox employees later founded a small start-up called Adobe...

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

From Wired

I would like to clarify that when I mean "not any more secure," I mean the current version of Windows 7 that implements a good permissions framework along with UAC. Mac OS X/*nix have a leg up with a strong permissions-based system from the very get-go.

I've been telling many the same thing, but with one exception; Mac and *nix have started out with a better permissions system and therefore users who have downloaded an app from the Internet have been trained to be doubly sure about whatever it is that requires sudo power (e.g, the Mac sudo GUI prompt). Microsoft UAC, on the other hand, has had to deal with transitioning software developers to not write in "Program Files" and other public areas and to save data to personal home folders.

While I'll agree with you that Mac/*nix are not any more secure than Windows, the Mac/*nix users have been taught to take a sudo prompt seriously, while in the early stages and growing pains of UAC, Windows users were easily annoyed by UAC prompts and therefore took the UAC prompts less seriously, because UAC prompted were being triggered by transitioning software developers that did not save data in the user's home folder.

In the end, the security of any system relies on the ability for the user to authenticate and verify software downloaded. But making it more difficult, such as requiring an administrator password to be entered for elevated privileges, makes users more cautious of software requiring a sudo prompt. And while that's not inherently any more secure, at least users think twice before entering their password.

I actually like the office that the Vice President of Engineering has. Wouldn't it be much fun to walk into an underground lair to work every day?

U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!!