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I think it's important to note that you don't have the same legal protection when using a debit card as you do when using a credit card (at least in the U.S. unless they changed this recently). With a CC, the law says that you are only required to pay up to $50 of the disputed charge(s), and most CC companies waive that. With a debit card, the money is deducted directly from your account and the bank is under no obligation to repay you that money unless they can recover it (which rarely happens and takes a long time if they can). So if a theif runs off with your debit card number, they can empty your bank account and you're the one who can't pay the mortgage/rent.

This is why I refuse to carry a debt card anymore - not even an ATM card that can be used as a debit card.

For the record, IANAL. I was enlightened by this fact by Spafford himself back when I was at Purdue, so I trust it and haven't heard of it being changed lately.

-"Zow"

I think that's true but I should clarify what I am saying:

1. If you can transmit information at faster than c you can violate causality.
2. This experiment does not transmit information faster than c.

To truly violate causality, you must have a closed timelike path through the tank and back to the event point the light was launched at, which you cannot do with this setup.

If you do send information faster than c in this experiment I think you can violate causality by having 2 setups in different reference frames. The first sends a signal into the second's past (a space-like interval) and the second returns the signal into the first's past, back to where the signal originated (now a time-like interval because the signal is refected back to it's point of origin).

This is why I don't think that any signal is being transmitted faster than c, if it was this would be the most important discovery of the century.

For anyone who is interested a nice discussion of faster than light stuff is the Relativity and FTL Travel FAQ

only problem is that patents live after the filers death, have to kill enough people to make it look suspicious

I've always wanted to track down who has UNIX as their license plate in all 50 states. I'm the person that has Georgia's, and I know that George Goble (aka GHG) has Indiana's. With Jon Hall having New Hampshire's (I presume, the article doesn't explicitly say), now I only have 47 more to track down!

Linux and Unix software is pretty immune to attacks like the one exploited by ILOVEYOU. In my mind, there are two reasons for this:

1. We've already lived through such attacks. We haven't already forgotten The Internet Worm, have we? It happened back in 1988, so I'm guessing there are readers who don't remember it. Do yourself a favor and at least check out This Executive Summary of what the worm was.

2. Open source lets us learn from our past. In the Unix world, no software with blatant holes has those holes for long. Code is scrutinized for previous exploits. Nobody wants to get burned twice. On the other hand, in the closed-source world, it's likely that the developer won't know every previous software exploit ever, and he's likely to make the same mistake that someone else did. We will never see ANOTHER program that works like the internet worm; we now know to look for those type of exploits.

We might not be immune, but it's nearly impossible that we woule make the same mistake twice. That's the beauty of open source.

lsof: [Description] Lsof is a Unix-specific diagnostic tool. Its name stands for LiSt Open Files, and it does just that. It lists information about any files that are open by processes currently running on the system.

and

CASL [Description] Custom Auditing Scripting Language (CASL) implements a packet shell environment for the Custom Auditing Scripting Language that is the basis for the Cybercop(tm) line of products by Network Associates. The CASL environment provides an extremely high performance environment for sending and receiving any normal and/or morbid packet stream to firewalls, networking stacks and network intrusion detection systems as well as being sufficiently rich of a language to write honeypots, virtual firewalls, surfer hotel, phantom networks and jails.

Hmm ... yes and no. The signal would arrive later than it was sent _in the frame of reference of the sender_ But it could arrive ealier than it was sent in the frame of reverence of someone else who travels relative to the sender (even possibly the receiver) at a relativistic speed (>0.1c). This has to do with the time dilatation caused when moving at great speed. An event that happens BEFORE another one in the view of a not-moving observer can possibly happen AFTER the other in the view of a moving observer. As to not violate casuality both the relative speed of the two observers and any connection between the two events is not allowed to be faster than the speed of light.

A much better (but quite long) description can be found here.

This is all based on the theory of relativity. Quantum physics OTOH allows for faster than light information transport. The most famous example is perhaps the tunnel effect. This effect allows particles to pass through energetical barriers although their energy would not be sufficient to do it according.to conventional physiscs. Tunneling is known for a long time but recently (95 or so) it was discovered that the particles need a shorter time to pass that barrier than light would have taken. It was even calimed that information was sent at about 4 times light speed through a barrier.
For further information use e.g this.

I do not know how this all relates to this invention (theres something suspicious in there, namely the claim that increased plant growth has been observed .... go figure) but its interesting nonetheless

I don't think there is any way of enforcing these terms (on people giving back changes and feedback), but at least it's there in the license. Since we do not profit from these projects (at least not initially), we are interested in the feedback mostly for academic purposes anyway, so enforcement in our case is not much of a concern.

You can read the license for the AAFID project (my main project now) here.

--Diego

I don't think there is any way of enforcing these terms (on people giving back changes and feedback), but at least it's there in the license. Since we do not profit from these projects (at least not initially), we are interested in the feedback mostly for academic purposes anyway, so enforcement in our case is not much of a concern.

You can read the license for the AAFID project (my main project now) here.

--Diego

Apart from the other recommendations made (Essential Sys Admin and Practical Unix Security are must-haves), I would suggest:

• Install TCP Wrappers and configure it appropriately. Block anything that you don't need, log everything else.
• Read the corresponding tech tips from CERT, depending on what you need (e.g. if you want to set up an FTP server, read the "Anonymous FTP Configuration guidelines")
• Read the WWW security FAQ if you are planning on running a web server.
• Use Tripwire. They have a commercial version, but you can always use the free version (1.3). I think they also give the newer version for Linux for free.
• Read other documents at http://www.cert.org/nav/securityim provement.html and http://xforce.iss.net/library/faqs/.
• Be always alert for anything strange that happens on your system. There is no substitute for an alert and informed sysadmin.

Just Some Guy dun said:

Why, oh why, is everything ludicrous attributed to right-wingers? I am just about as far-right-wing as you can get, and I assure that my core beliefs do not condone censorship in any form. I mean, remember the PMRC (record labeling)? That was Tipper Gore, not Pat Buchanan.

Hate to have to bring some things up to dash the illusion there, but there are some things I do need to bring up in light of your venting...

1). The vast majority of groups pushing censorship, and for that matter a lot of flatly ludicrous stuff, are right-wing--specifically, members of various political groups which are basically run by fundamentalist "Christians" in the US. (For that matter, Israel sees the same thing with ultraorthodox "Jews", and darn near every country with a signifigant Islamic population deals with fundamentalist "Moslems" of the two main denominations of their religion. For THAT matter, as I understand it, India's having the same damn problem with fundamentalist "Sikhs" and fundamentalist "Hindus".)

2). For all intents and purposes, there is no functioning left-wing in the United States. The US has literally gone so far to the right (largely because of influence of fundamentalist "Christian" groups, which at one point had pretty much taken over the entire Republican Party apparatus in thirty-four states; they have apparently led to the self-destruction now of a second party [the Reform Party]. It's not all the GOP's fault, though--I'll note that in a minute) that were Richard Nixon to run today on his present political platform, he would be considered a liberal. The most "liberal" parties in the US with any large percentage of voters (the Democratic and Libertarian parties) would be considered right-moderate in most political systems in the industralised world (yes, that includes Canada, too); the largest "conservative" party (the GOP) would be hard-right in nearly any other country's political system, and the second or third-largest "conservative" political party in the US (the US Taxpayer's Party) is, for all intents and purposes, run by extreme far-righters in the US and in fact promotes theocracy as a platform. (The Reform Party, before it basically started destroying itself when Pat Buchanan got considered for nomination, probably fell in between the Republicans and Libertarians; now, for all intents and purposes, the Reform Party will probably end up as two parties, one beign slightly more left-leaning but both still firmly on the right.) One newspaper, which started in the 1800's as a "moderate conservative" paper of the times and has had pretty much the same political bent ever since it started, is now considered one of the hardest-left papers in the US. It would also probably be considered moderate or moderate-left in political spectrums in most industralised countries.

Sad to say, but the political spectrum in the US today is less like other industrialised countries and more like those in which a fair amount of corruption occurs (such as in many "third-world" nations) or which are having very serious problems with fundamentalists trying to subvert the very structure of the government itself (this is certainly true in the US, and in a lot of other places you hear about in the news--like Israel, or Pakistan and India (basically a pissing contest between Muslim fundies and Hindu fundies which could well end up in a nuclear war before it's over with) or Sudan (which is having a rather nasty civil war between Muslim fundies and Christian fundies)).

2a). On a related note, and this is very important to note with anything related to fundy movements in general--most fundy groups, especially so in the US, are basically run by power-hungry individuals. In the US at least (and probably elsewhere--there's real signs of it at least in some ultra-Orthodox communities, and among nations like Iran and Afghanistan especially), many of the people who are members of the various fundy PACs here--and especially the more decidedly active ones--are members of churches that can be described as coercive groups much as Scientology can be described as a coercive group. Many of these groups use various mind-control techniques on their members to not only have them basically allow their minister to think for them, but to specifically "block out" anything that could be averse to what the minister says (these include basically teaching that the people in the church or group are the only ones who are "saved" and that anyone who isn't "saved" is in direct league with Satan; teaching that any doubt is the result of either demonic oppression or (if someone else says it) outright possession and one needs to "pray the doubts out" or have exorcisms performed (often involuntarily); forced confession of "sins" (which have included the involuntary outing of gays in church; most Religious Right groups are homophobic at best and some (like Fred Phelps, or Donald Wildmon, or Kentucky's own Frank Simon) are downright infamous for it); telling members to only do business with "members of like faith" (including printing special directories, like the "Christian Yellow Pages") and to only watch media that is affiliated with the church because all other media sources are "worldly" at best and outright "Satanic" at worst, not to mention businesses; "shepherding" programs and "cell churches" (in most programs, the people are divided into groups of five which, in essence, play "Big Brother" on each other--if someone has doubts, the other members try to work them more into the group, in extreme cases by methods like involuntary exorcisms), and so-called "divine lies" (basically, lying about your goals or at the least being dishonest about them to lure folks in to "win more souls for Christ"--this encompasses everything from "hell house" haunted-houses which are marketed as regular haunted houses for "educational purposes" which in fact are used to make people listen to fundy preaching (and yes, sometimes the doors ARE locked and the people not allowed to leave, so yes, they are in essence forced to listen) to "pep talks" run in high schools by groups that have fundy athletes come in to prosyletise, often on the premise that these are "anti-drug" or "self-esteem" talks (most of the time, these assemblies are mandatory to attend for kids, and often the groups will take innocuous-sounding names like "Athletes Against Drugs" or suchlike to hide their fundy links) to "free pizza parties" held by fundy groups who then hold the kids for hours, not allowing them to leave (it is almost never revealed that the "pizza party" is in fact being run by a fundy group) to "stealth candidates" for political offices (which don't reveal their fundy links till elected)...). Basically, because a lot of these groups ARE essentially Bible-based cults, they can feed their members an amazing amount of horsesheisse and (because they literally have nothing else to "error-check" it with) their followers will swallow it. If anything, most folks involved are to be pitied (the only ones that really deserve hate are probably the leaders who outright manipulate their followers).

There has not been a terrible amount of info on how "Bible-based cults" do manipulate their followers until fairly recently, largely because most folks associate "cults" with "new religions" and most folk haven't wanted to believe that "Christian" groups can and sadly do turn into coercive groups preaching far more of a god of Fear, Hate and Loathing (both of self and others) than a god of love, acceptance, and respect (which is what, at least with those folks whom I've met who I sense actually "get" what Yshua was saying, feel it's supposed to be about anyways). I also expect this is a big reason why most mainstream churches in the US haven't spoken out about "Bible-based cults" except in cases where they've been really extreme (part of this, too, might be because--sadly--coercive tactics are getting into larger and larger denominations; one of the largest fundy denominations in the US, which is in essence a Bible-based cult, was the major source of TV preachers for years and has well over one million members...a recent expose of the "Brownsville Movement" (which is centered at one of the larger churches in the US for this denomination in Pensacola, Florida) using coercive tactics is one of the major exceptions; the Southern Baptists, which have had their entire church head and seminary taken over by the fundamentalist wing of the denomination, are starting to dance close to using coercive tactics though they aren't as bad as the "traditionally" fundy denominations yet); part of that, though, may be because most fundy denominations (and especially those which are basically Bible-based cults) don't have anything to do with most major ecumenical conventions, holding their own separate worldwide conferences because they feel mainstrean Christianity is "lukewarm" at best and outright perverted by Satan at worst).

I'll also note (this is a personal aside, based on my own observations of having grown up in a family of raving fundies and having seen far more than I like of the internals of the Religious Right and fundamentalist groups in the US) that--probably because many of these folks have literally been in these groups for generations (I know of three-generation households in the group I walked away from; also, many of the younger especially are literally isolated from the outside world from birth all the way through college (fundies push homeschooling in large part so that kids CAN be isolated and not see anything that could spur them to walk away; there is now even a college being set up specifically for fundy-homeschooled kids to train them to be "political leaders for Christians", homeschooled kids being perfect fodder because they have literally been raised and brainwashed in Bible-based cults from birth), partly because walkaways from groups one has been raised in are EXTREMELY rare (pretty much most kids walk away when their parents do, or if they are forced out of their homes due to "irreconcilable differences" like the kid discovering he's gay; there are literally no statistics on kids walking away on their own (with no help from parents or exit counselors) from groups they were raised in because it is so rare), and partly because this is all they know as a result...a large percentage of those involved in Bible-based cults and in groups like the FRC are, to put none too fine a term on it, control-freaks. This is probably because the only real model they have IS the preacher, who basically uses coercive tactics (and a hell of a lot of FUD) to keep his flock "in line" and not questioning the preacher--this is especially true of folks who have been raised in such groups for generations--and so they basically take the whole "coercive-tactics"/"control-freak" thing to ALL walks of life. Literally everything from politics (a big part of why fundies want a theocracy here has to do with Control and Power over others; again, this is probably an extension of how their own ministers and deacons use Power and Control to keep the flock in line, along with the major "us versus them" mindset in such groups) to parenting (a lot of fundy parents will homeschool kids specifically to keep a maximum amount of Control and Power over them--this is also why they push so much for censorship initiatives to "protect the children", and a lot of fundies won't allow their kids to attend non-Christian colleges or allow them to attend schools with coed dorms or alcohol on campus [yes, I've had experience with this; the fact Beloit College had coed dorms and alcohol on campus pretty much shot all hell out of any chance I had of going there, even without money concerns]). Basically, to put a fine point on it, many of them are control-freaks by basis of being in groups that are run by control-freaks who use coercive tactics, and they have no other model to use (either by model of literally not knowing any better, or by model of literally being so brainwashed that pretty much they have nothing else to go by).

A good starter for exploring the mindset of which I'm talking on is here. It's a page for walkaways, specifically from Bible-based cults, run by a person who was formerly involved in one (he walked away, and now actually runs a "fight-the-right" group largely because of his experiences in the coercive group); it gives you a lot of perspective on where they're coming from, if you've never been misfortunate enough to have experienced Fundie Hell for yourself. (I honestly don't recommend the latter for anyone, especially not kids and other living things. It can screw you up for life, seriously. Look at me. ;)

2b). As another aside--this is probably not widely known by folks, but there are a lot of businesses in the US--many of them Fortune 500 companies, yet--that not only are affiliated with the Right Wing in the US, but are in fact members and actually supportive of it. An enlightening--and scary page--for starters is here--this is a page featuring info on the Coalition for National Policy, which is essentially a secretive, invite-only think-tank for the Religious Right in the United States. It features a membership list that includes, among others, many members of the Coors family, a (former) Presidential candidate, and a number of representatives to US and state legislatures. There's also a good link here that talks about the CNP and a lot more of the big names in the Religious Right...

For more starters...both the Coors family (yep, as in Coors Breweries) and the Waltons (yep, as in Sam's Wholesale/Wal-Mart--as in, before Sam Walton died, one of the single richest individuals on the planet, worth more than Bill Gates, and only surpassed by the Sultan of Brunei; the Waltons collectively are still in the top 100 of the richest people on the planet) are heavily involved with the Religious Right, outright subsidizing them and being sympathetic to concerns (to give examples--the Coors family supported Amendment 2 in Colorado, which would have rescinded civil-rights laws that included sexual orientation; the Waltons have made it a policy not to carry albums with "Tipper-stickers", refused to carry heavy-metal magazines for a long time, and refuse to provide "morning-after" contraceptives even though they will provide Viagra). Needless to say, these are two of the biggest companies in the US. Another interesting one is AmWay--AmWay in and of itself has been accused of using coercive tactics with its sales representatives, but is also run by fundamentalists with links to the CNP and AmWay has been known to bankroll fundy groups in past. Not even home shopping is immune--as it turns out, the person who owns Home Shopping Club, Home Shopping Network (the off-hours version of HSC that shows up on a lot of "Christian" TV stations and also used to show up on the "Family Channel") and PAX TV is a major bankroller of the Religious Right (more on that below).

For even more shockers...a lot of times, Religious Right groups deal in a fair bit of "cloaking". The Arthur S. DeMoss foundation (a Religious Right group that pushes "Christian Reconstructionism", has actually endorsed Christian Identity groups on occasion, and pretty much is a major funding source for the Religious Right; it was founded by the widow of a Religious Right supporter who happened to be a multi-millionaire) hides most of its nastier stuff by not only doing innocuous-sounding adverts for adoption and "Power for Living" (basically a book which hawks fundamentalist Christianity), but has sympathetic multi-million-dollar stars like the woman from "Children of a Lesser God" and Jeff Gordon (great...have NASCAR drivers hawking fundamentalism to the kiddies...Jeff Gordon, probably more than anyone in NASCAR short of the Pettys, is seen as particularly "kid-friendly" and as a general, All-American "Wheaties"-box boy) and NFL stars hawking for them. (Knowing that group, I'm almost willing to bet that either a) they might not have been too forthcoming with these folks other than that they were a group promoting a book about "Christian living", or b) a hell of a lot of people in show-business need a good expose like there has been with Scientologists in Hollywood...more info on the Arthur S. Demoss Foundation here and here [thank you Google...it seems that Pathfinder is not wanting to behave well].) The Family Channel, until recently, was owned by the same folks who brought you Pat Robertson and the 700 Club--it was renamed from the "Christian Broadcasting Network" to make it sound like it offered "family-friendly" programming and to hide its links to the Religious Right (as Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition had started to get a rather bad name). In fact, the Family Channel was sold to FOX, which does have some links to the right in the US (though not as bad as, say, Coors).

PAX TV, which is a TV network set up by a fundamentalist (again, using the exact same canard that the "Family Channel" did in its Pat Robertson days--as a purveyor of "family-friendly entertainment" which conveniently neglects to mention its links to the Religious Right) and which is largely carried on "Christian" TV stations, is heavily bankrolled by Home Shopping Club and Home Shopping Network (which--not exactly coincidentially--also showed on the Family Channel on off-hours and shows on a lot of "Christian" TV stations in off-hours) and--even worse--is also owned 20 percent by CBS and NBC was planning to buy 32 percent in PAX TV (this would be over 400 million dollars). More info here, and more info on PAX here...for that matter, the very head of Focus on the Family (which spawned off Family Research Council as a lobbying wing), James Dobson, makes a rather healthy living selling parenting books promoting "tough love" and "discipline".

Even besides all THAT, a lot of the major Religious Right groups get a lot of funding from members, and many of them can actually get it tax-free (by either setting up separate "political" wings when the heat from the IRS gets too much, or by setting it up with roughly the same tax exemptions a church would get). There are also local businesses...as one guide has advised, if you want to boycott teh Religious Right you almost have to look through one of the directories made for the Religious Right or avoid every business with an ichthus-fish on it...and besides all THAT, Religious Right groups are increasingly going stealth or relying on certain "code words" within the community like "Family", "Heritage", or names confusingly similar to existing groups (one anti-abortion "counseling center" actually named themselves "PPC, Inc." and based themselves in the same building as the local Planned Parenthood office; a legal group that bankrolls and supports lawsuits friendly to Religious Right causes is named "American Center for Law and Justice"; a really amazing number of Religious Right groups use "Family" or "Heritage" or "Christian Life Center" (in the case of churches) because these are actual code words in the fundamentalist community for fundy-friendly causes).

Needless to say, unfortunately, the Religious Right isn't exactly hurting for money and, short of ALL of their members walking away combined with a massive economic crash that disrupts nearly the entire worldwide financial system to the point that it forces us to go back to barter or most of their members walking away combined with a massive boycott of ANYTHING the Religious Right has their fingers in, they aren't going to be hurting for money anytime soon. :P

2c). Media that isn't tied with the Religious Right somehow is often basically bullied into submission. As noted above, a lot of folks in fundy groups have a very "us versus them" viewpoint to begin with--they literally believe they are fighting Satan and all of us not in a fundy group are practicing Satanists as a direct result. :P If ANYTHING is reported whatsoever that is in the LEAST critical of the Religious Right, they will protest (even if they don't read the paper or watch non-"Christian" TV because it might be "Satanically influenced") because, in essence, they will be informed about it and told to raise forty kinds of hell over it. And they will. In droves. (A Pensacola paper found this out when they basically exposed the "Brownsville Movement" as a Bible-based cult; "20/20" did an expose of the "Brownsville Movement" and likewise were damn near pilloried (of course, most fundies were already boycotting anything relating to Disney because {horror!} they dared give equal rights to gay couples for benefits and had a "gay Day" there, but that's beside the point)...my family raged for days about the expose because "Oh god, they make us all out to be cultists or something" (I hate to inform them, but, well, if the shoe fits...I'd think instead of ranting at ABC maybe you should do some serious soul-searching on whether the chuch is doing the Right Thing or not, but then again, I walked away and I dare to be sensible about the whole thing instead of getting my panties in a wad)...read your newspaper's editorials everytime someone dares suggest that the Religious Right and theocracy or even putting the Ten Commandments in schools might possibly not be the be-all, end-all to the world's problems to get an idea of just WHAT kinds of cain they do raise.) Burger King and Pepsi, among others, have literally been bullied out of running certain adverts or sponsoring programs because of letter-writing campaigns by the American Family Association (a hard-line Religious Right lobbying group which has some decidedly homophobic tendencies); many ABC affiliates were likewise bullied into not carrying "NYPD Blue" during its first two seasons for the same reason.

3). Now, to a direct point I was going to mention--hate to break it to you, but the PMRC is by no bloody means liberal. Tipper Gore (and Al Gore) are (as noted above) right-moderate AT MOST; the other co-founder, oddly enough, just happens to be Elizabeth Dole, wifey of Bob Dole and onetime candidate for the 2000 GOP nomination for President. One of the founding members was Susan Baker (wife of Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (R)).

More to the point, though, the PMRC has many a link to Religious Right groups. First off, they have carried advertising in PMRC literature for "Back In Control Training Center" and other "training centers"; Back In Control was basically an inpatient program run by two former LAPD officers which was advertised to "de-metal" or "de-punk" kids, which was in effect a brainwashing center with links to the Religious Right and which has claimed, among other things, that Wiccans are Satanists and that the Magen David (the Jewish star) is a Satanic symbol and that if kids are wearing "gothy" or "metal" clothing this is a sure sign of Satan-worship. Back In Control has also worked with a lot of police departments and schools, and (ObSlashdot) is one of the groups that is directly responsible for kids being harassed and worse after Columbine for wearing "goth" clothing. (More info here,here (in passing, but in direct relation to how Back In Control Training Center has been heavily promoted by the PMRC), and here.)

Also, they've promoted and used material from Bob Larson Ministries; for those who aren't aware, Bob Larson is a "foamin' fundy" radio preacher who, among other things, promotes censorship and the whole Religious Right agenda. Among other things, he's called peace symbols and the Nike swoosh Satanic symbols (no, I'm not making this up) as well as the good old canard about the Magen David supposedly being a Satanic symbol. More info here (or the newer version here--the "Bob Larson Fan Site"--trust me, the kinds of horsesheisse Larson spews is the kind that must be seen for itself to be believed), and a lovely expose in a British Columbia Christian mag here. Yes, the PMRC actually promoted material from this nut :P

Incidentially, you can confirm all the info above by getting a copy of the book "50 Ways To Fight Censorship" by Dave Marsh (head of Rock and Rap Confidential, and the guy who coined the phrase "rock and roll" incidentially). It's out of print, but most better libraries do have a copy, and if you can't find it there, there are all manner of online bookstores who could probably scare up a copy for you.

Oh, and if you wondered whether the PMRC still has links to the Religious Right...the answer, darling, is an emphatic yes. The present head, one Barbara Wyatt, just happens (ironically) to also sit on the board of Focus on the Family (!)...more info here (again, thank you Google; the more recent version is here, btw), and here.

And BTW, just for the record--I don't have an agenda, other than being a walkaway from a Bible-based cult who really does not the US to descend into a theocracy (I lived under one for all intents and purposes for 25 years of my life; trust me, it sucks, and it will suck twenty times worse if they can get their theocracy nationwide) and who knows all too well both the mindset these folks operate under and the real danger (to freedom and, ultimately, to the psyches of both their memberships and those who are family to them) these groups ultimately present. In essence, I don't want the rest of y'all on Slashdot to have to put up with what I had to put up with for 25 years of my life, and an especially hellish thirteen years after I walked away and I had to live in a household of which the majority of people were raving fundies (and the rest of my family was, slowly but steadily, being assimilated by the Bible-Based Cult Of Borg). It sucks. Bigtime. :P (I note this because, when I made a little post exposing the agenda of the Family Research Council, I was accused of having an agenda. Sorry, I've got no more of an agenda than a kid who's been abused has in getting the abuse to stop. :P)

I have recently written a paper on this area for a photonics course. The inherent problems of 3D data storage are numerous to say the least. The only way currently to write the data is by way of laser, which also creates a problem of cross talk between the layers of the lattice structure of the recording medium. There is currently research being performed to eliminate this problem by utilising a dual-laser writing technique that would create only constructive interference at the position of recording.

The other major problem is the type of laser used. A pulse laser writes and retrieves data faster, yet is known to damage the recording medium. The solution is to use a high-powered contiuous-wave laser, which is being looked into.

The real decider in whether holographic memory is whether or not a certain compression of data can be reached. Off the top of my head I think it is somewhere around 10 megabits of data per square cm. Last I knew, I believe it was somewhere near 1 megabit per square cm. This is a really facinating topic, and I encourage all to look into it for themselves.

Ciao.
nahtanoj

"Actually, some recent scientific work in the field of molecular biology has tended to demonstrate just that, that life is too complex to have evolved. Take, for instance, the standard Darwinian explanation for the evolution of the eye. Eyes, over time, developed in complexity from simple eyespots."

I know of no such work. In fact, the consensus I see regarding the eye is that results from molecular biology support just that scenario. The development of the eyes in animals as diverse as humans and insects are controled by homologous genes (the Six/sine oculis homeobox family). That is, structures as distinctly different as a fly's compound eye and the human eye are controled by essentially the same genes as modified by divergent evolutionary histories. When you also consider that the vertebrate and arthropod lineages probably diverged before the Cambrian period, before there were eyes as such, anything other than "standard Darwinian explanation" become unlikely.

This is a common theme in biology. Simple, non-essential adaptations can arise in simple contexts. Later, clusters of other mechanisms evolove around that seed adaptaion, and so are dependent upon it, until the cluster is a complex and essential feature; a cluster of small adaptations become a single, essential complex through their tight interdependence. Another interesting example is the " longevity gene" in the worm C. elegans. It seems it is a member of the insulin receptor gene family and is deeply involved in the regulation of metabolism via similar intermediary mechanism (kinases) insulin uses in mammals. Here the basic metabolic control framework arose about 700 MY ago and has, like homeobox, been adjusted and tuned to serve other, somewhat related , functions over time.

The opinions of people like Aquinas, for whom the syllogism was high-tech innovation, are useless as guides for evaluating contemporary sciences which are based on inductive reasoning.

hehe... I find it interesting that Konqueror was given such rave reviews, even though it is an *integrated* browser. I seem to recall something about a company making an integrated browser and a whole bunch of people upset by it :)

Just kidding! I actually like IE, and if Konqueror is as good as IE than I'd probably start using it (of course, then I'd have to switch to KDE).

Of course, I'm kindof in a good mood: quakefest starts today -- lots of fun!

I thought it was a good thing that Time wrote this topic up and is unafraid to present such things in an objective way. The article presented Time's usuall neutral stance. The thing that got to me was how hard I found it to tell the damn server to stop trying to cookie me. I had to stop the page loading to get the damn thing to stop. As for AOL, I have never liked their setup or their majority share of the ISP market. True, their were one of the first providers, but they seized a hold of the market and have never let go. I am glad that when I received the 500 free hours of AOL 5.0 CD I held it over the fire in my fireplace and warped it beyond use. My roommate appreciated the artistry of it and has it still in his room. BTW, AOL, if you see this, email me and I will tell you where to send another CD. I am interested in developing this new CD art-form.
Ciao.
nahtanoj

Oh here's a mirror.

Thanks. Cool reference. I'd run across the Netrek authentication concepts a while back. There's also a paper on doing authenticatable distributed computation at the COAST website somewhere. PS format, IIRC.

What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

Why spend all the money on a rackmount case, when you can just go to the hardware store, buy some cheap supplies, and make some rails?

If you have access to a machine shop, you can even make metal rails. If not, a few sturdy pieces of wood screwed into the mounting holes inside the rack should make nice rails. Then just get another piece of sturdy wood the size of the rack (19" by 22" or whatever) and you've got a shelf.

To see an example of our cluster's custom built rack stuff, check here, and here. (Note these are ~650k images)

Granted, it won't be extremely efficient on rack space, but it's not THAT in-efficient. If we needed to, we could fit another row in there; space for 16 computers.

Why spend all the money on a rackmount case, when you can just go to the hardware store, buy some cheap supplies, and make some rails?

If you have access to a machine shop, you can even make metal rails. If not, a few sturdy pieces of wood screwed into the mounting holes inside the rack should make nice rails. Then just get another piece of sturdy wood the size of the rack (19" by 22" or whatever) and you've got a shelf.

To see an example of our cluster's custom built rack stuff, check here, and here. (Note these are ~650k images)

Granted, it won't be extremely efficient on rack space, but it's not THAT in-efficient. If we needed to, we could fit another row in there; space for 16 computers.

Nominal fee? I wish! At my school getting a (10 Mbit) Ethernet account costs $160/year. Compared to a normal ISP, that's not too bad. But it's sure a lot more than nominal.
(of course, one can get around it by using IP masquerading to get more than one computer on one account)

According to his talk the plans at the time involved the following: Vendors of crypto products simply needed to submit information about the algorithms that they were using. (Typically, the marketing literature was sufficient) This is the review that the document refers to. We then asked him about open source software, and he said he was hopeful of changes to help the open source community.

From what the article says, it appears that all you have to do to post open source crypto software to the net is to send an email to an address with a link inside. Boy, now that's easy!

http://owl.vet.purdue.edu/papa/vendetta .mov

They also format it so that it's very easy to print the results in a script. This is the one I use.

Depending on what you need the cluster for you should adapt network at your clustering technology.

KAOS
PAPERS

He won the 1996 IgNobel Chemistry award for this one: he lit a campfire grill with liquid oxygen.

I think this definitely qualifies. Original, clever, and it involves large fireballs.

"Anything will burn if you soak it in Liquid Oxygen."

Hey Brent,

I'm a CS '97 grad from Purdue (and I'm guessing we know each other, but I digress) and I recall this type of thing being the subject of a couple talks I heard when I was there.

The first one that comes to mind is when Dr. Comer talked to our 413 class. One of the students asked what he thought about someone registering comer.com , and he totally blew it off, saying that when they developed DNS, they never expected people would just go out registering everything, so that's just the way it goes. I know Dr. Comer can be a hard person to find, but (especially if you're a CS student) if you can get him to put in a nice word for you with the administration, saying that that's just the way the system (in part developed by Purdue) was designed to work, it would probably be a big boon for your case. Of course there are deeper political issues with doing that: I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

The second source you'll want to check out is University Cleaners. I heard the owner (who's like a PU ME class of '56 or something) give a talk at a leadership conference. Seems that when he started University Cleaners 30 or 40 years ago, he got the same kind of letter from the University, saying how he had to change the name because people were getting the impression that his business was owned or something by Purdue University, which we all know is a bunch of bunk. Anyway, he made a big case for himself, presented it to Purdue, and they dropped the issue. So look him up and see if he has any pointers for you.

Of course, a bunch of letters from Alums can't hurt. I'd be happy to participate. Just let me know where to send it if you organize such an effort.

Hope this helps!

-"Zow"

#define GETALAWYER

#include

Domain name squatting was once regarded as completely appropriate...

1. Who says that ttyp0 is cybersquatting? According to his article, the website is offering services of a valid nature to Purdue students.
2. He's not attempting to sell the domain name and make money on it, and finally,
3. I disagree that domain name squatting was ever regarded as completely appropriate, even "four to five years ago or something like that"

The second part of your post implies that anything to do with the word Compaq (for example) is trademarked, which may or may not be true. However, ttyp0 checked, and clearly states not only that "I found that Purdue had only two names trademarked, which are "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers"." but also that "I clearly state that we are not affiliated with Purdue University."So on this point, again, the website owner has made efforts to completely obey the law.

This leads to my final dissection of your post, in which you say "...something about trademark law says that if you don't protect your trademark, you lose the right to it, i.e. you can't successfully sue people later on that use it." That is correct. Except that the name Purdue isn't trademarked, just "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers. Which means that your final point ("They can sue you even if you registered it "first", because it was illegal of you to register and use their name in the first place.") doesn't hold up to reality.

The bottom line is, if the University wanted the word "Purdue" trademarked, they should have done it years ago. Since they didn't, they don't have the legal right to challenge PURDUEONLINE.COM's right to exist.

Domain name squatting was once regarded as completely appropriate...

1. Who says that ttyp0 is cybersquatting? According to his article, the website is offering services of a valid nature to Purdue students.
2. He's not attempting to sell the domain name and make money on it, and finally,
3. I disagree that domain name squatting was ever regarded as completely appropriate, even "four to five years ago or something like that"

The second part of your post implies that anything to do with the word Compaq (for example) is trademarked, which may or may not be true. However, ttyp0 checked, and clearly states not only that "I found that Purdue had only two names trademarked, which are "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers"." but also that "I clearly state that we are not affiliated with Purdue University."So on this point, again, the website owner has made efforts to completely obey the law.

This leads to my final dissection of your post, in which you say "...something about trademark law says that if you don't protect your trademark, you lose the right to it, i.e. you can't successfully sue people later on that use it." That is correct. Except that the name Purdue isn't trademarked, just "Purdue University" and "Purdue Boilermakers. Which means that your final point ("They can sue you even if you registered it "first", because it was illegal of you to register and use their name in the first place.") doesn't hold up to reality.

The bottom line is, if the University wanted the word "Purdue" trademarked, they should have done it years ago. Since they didn't, they don't have the legal right to challenge PURDUEONLINE.COM's right to exist.

Look at the OPUS project done by my advisor, Gene Spafford. Consider the kinds of passwords that people use based upon the research--they're abominal!

Look at the OPUS project done by my advisor, Gene Spafford. Consider the kinds of passwords that people use based upon the research--they're abominal!

I am a student at Purdue University, I started a web site back in Janurary called PurdueDating, after it becoming very successfull here, we were shut down by the University for being on their campus. After some debat we redesiged and opened up as CollegeDates.com. We've been around for a while, and have in our opinion been very successful. I've met a few people through the site, and it always makes me feel good when I hear about someone that has been dating someone for the past 6 months and they've meet through my site.

I'm gearing up for some undergraduate research in clustering. I've used Linux for a few years now, and I'm very comfortable with it. However, I'm interested if anyone has done any direct comparisons between the performance of *BSD's and Linux as far as clusters are concerned.

BTW, I know that the implementations of MPI/PVM are the same for each platform, but I'm wondering if there are any differences in the TCP/IP performance which is a definite limitation in Beowulf-type clustering.
Also, if anyone has used PAPERS clusters based on BSD I'd be interested in any results.

-- Zurion

-=-=-=-=-

While you may debate the effectiveness of DARE and othter programs like it, I would argue that you're comparing apples to apricots.

Finally, I think you should consider that when this article says "hacking" they are definitely implying "cracking." An illegal and unethical act and if you have any doubts about the ethics, you should look up some of Gene Spafford's papers on the ethical nature of cracking.

While you may debate the effectiveness of DARE and othter programs like it, I would argue that you're comparing apples to apricots.

Finally, I think you should consider that when this article says "hacking" they are definitely implying "cracking." An illegal and unethical act and if you have any doubts about the ethics, you should look up some of Gene Spafford's papers on the ethical nature of cracking.

A speaker in Gene Spafford's security seminar suggested that most higher-ups in the US Government do realize that the current crypto policy is silly/restrictive/huriting part of the economy. However, they only know how to protect their interests under the current rules, so they're slowly moving from silly to sane. They need time to figure out new policies, etc...

Sounds logical to me...

OK dumbshit here is the WHOLE URL for you..

ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/redhat/redha t-6.1/iso/6.1-i386.iso

Like I said. I pulled 300k/s thru the whole thing.
And maybe you should look around an FTP site
before posting inaccurate information. The nerve
of some people. As if anyone would actually post a bullshit FTP Mirror.. Please.
I hate idiots.

Book Search found it for 24.50 at buybooks.com

"Also, I've got to say that BSD does seem to be preferred for MUD's, which are from a programming perspective very similar to IRC."

My experience has been mostly the opposite. I run an iDirt which started on a Linux server at a college, moved to a BSD server at an ISP (now defunct), and is now hosted on a Linux server at mudsrus.com. Most MUD servers I've seen or looked at are Linux servers and some code bases, including iDirt, don't enjoy the trip to BSD.

When you talk of linux's problems with mulitple processors, I think that you are referring to its limited SMP capacity.

SMP (Symmetric Multi- Processing) is fundamentally different to clustering, as all of the processors in an SMP configuration share the same memory bus, whilst in a cluster the machine architectures are distinct, and we use a high-speed network to exploit parallelism.

See the Linux Parallel Processing HOWTO for more information.

A scan of the mirrors in the com/net/edu/gov/ca domains revealed that a handful have the Lorax release. Here's the list I compiled. Others might also have it, but are overloaded right now, so I can't check.

ftp://ftp.aklug.org/pub/redhat/mirror/ lorax/
ftp://cwrulug.cwru.edu/pub/ftp.red hat.com/lorax/
ftp://ftp.eecs.umic h.edu/pub/linux/redhat/ftp.redhat.com/lorax/
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/p ub/Linux/distributions/redhat/lorax/
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.e du/pub/redhat/lorax/
ftp://ftp.snoopy.net/pub/mirrors/red hat/lorax/

Everyone visit this site and point a copy of ISIC at that box. Call it operation SnowStorm, and re-read the IP from DNS at least hourly. The resulting continuous failure would not be interesting, but it would keep the box off air, maybe permanently, and may indeed kill boxes between it and the world.

Better yet, can we (collectively) afford a box for Rob to put a clone of SlashDot on (two hot-swappable drives and caddies, mirror SlashDot onto a drive, put it in the SlashClone box, let fly and repeat if/when it dies) and do the same to that box, sending the resulting damage reports to the Linux-Kernel mailing list? At least the web-site would look better...

Nevertheless...

The book lists for a whopping $24.95 and if you get it from Amazon you only pay $19.96. Through the help of other /. readers I have a program on the web that found it for only $12.95 (48% OFF) from powells. If your interested the source code is available in a developers edition and you can find lowest price here:

Unix in a Nutshell

The program speciallizes in O'Reillys but you can find any book. Each night I build a list of every O'Reilly and with one click you can find the cheapest price.
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I've been using Slackware with glibc2 as the primary C library since around glibc-2.0.6. Aside from a few initial problems with utmp/wtmp access, its been running fine.

The lsof utility came in handy when I started picking binaries to recompile (deciding that the ones that are constantly running should probably be first). Doing an lsof | grep libc.so.5 showed which running programs were linked with the old library.

Since most people who administer commercial Unix boxen don't enable them, many people don't even realize that some systems have rather verbose extensive logging mechanisms. The best that is out there is the Sun Basic Security Module (BSM) audit facility. It'll generate lots of logs and sure it takes a fair bit of resources not to mention disk space, but it allows you to run fairly sophisticated host-based intrusion detection systems and very good post-mortems!

Because of Linux's open nature, it would be very useful to have a verbose audit trail mechanism. This would allow security researchers like myself to base new systems on Linux more easily. (and yes, it would most likely end up being GPL'd!)

A journaling file system would be super neato as well. From a security standpoint, one could get a much better idea of what an attacker did to the system files even without running tripwire.

In closing, these are somewhat advanced features and there is no reason why they can not be added to Linux. I believe most of the commercial Unices had them added to an existing system as well. Well, Nuff said.

Since most people who administer commercial Unix boxen don't enable them, many people don't even realize that some systems have rather verbose extensive logging mechanisms. The best that is out there is the Sun Basic Security Module (BSM) audit facility. It'll generate lots of logs and sure it takes a fair bit of resources not to mention disk space, but it allows you to run fairly sophisticated host-based intrusion detection systems and very good post-mortems!

Because of Linux's open nature, it would be very useful to have a verbose audit trail mechanism. This would allow security researchers like myself to base new systems on Linux more easily. (and yes, it would most likely end up being GPL'd!)

A journaling file system would be super neato as well. From a security standpoint, one could get a much better idea of what an attacker did to the system files even without running tripwire.

In closing, these are somewhat advanced features and there is no reason why they can not be added to Linux. I believe most of the commercial Unices had them added to an existing system as well. Well, Nuff said.

If you look very closely the picture of the guys pushing the dumpster into the fire is from the good 'ol street riots at Purdue University on March 29th, 1999.

If your doubting, compare with this gallery.

I couldn't get through to the references site because it is too busy. However, there is an excellent FAQ posted to the rec.arts.startrek.tech group on faster than light travel. You can read it at:

http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ft l/

The author is Jason W. Hinson, a graduate student in physics at Purdue.

This FAQ can get a little dense with technical details. (The graphs can be a bit difficult to interpret in the ASCII version). But the layman can definitely get the gist of why FTL travel is essentially forbidden by relativity, as well as some thoughts on overcoming the "light speed barrier".

Barnes-n-Noble is selling it for $504.00
Amazon is selling it for $504.00
Shopping.com is selling it at: $489.60
BuyBooks.com is comes in at the least at: $432.00

I can't believe it!
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try this instead:
ftp://csociety-ftp.ecn.pu rdue.edu/pub/mozilla/releases/m3