Slashback: Compromise, Bugs, Slag

Slashback with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code, the recent compromising of millions of credit card numbers, more .uk domain waffling, and more, including a foolproof way to stop anyone from reading data off of your discarded hard drive's platters.

Let me just slide your card a few dozen more times ... Any Web Loco writes "Following on from this piece on /., this story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells us that the company that got hacked (exposing up to 8 million credit card numbers) was Data Processors International. Not much to the story, but we now know who it was."

Another reason to be cautious about domains with "uk" in them. An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports that Nominet has looked at opening .net.uk up or killing it off and then decided it can't decide. The chair of sub-committee responsible, Clive Feather, is currently standing for re-election to Nominets Policy Advisory Board. The sub-committee he chaired had suggested shutting down net.uk entirely, which the main board rejected. His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community."

Interesting bugs are in the teeth of the beholder. dvdweyer writes "I myself do remember having read the whole interview with Bill Gates in Focus, a German weekly news magazine (their online service now seems to be part of MSN *yuck*). There are however resources online which provide full sources, in English, most notably RISKS in issue 17.43 (not 17.42) with a follow-up in issue 17.44."

When fan-subs just aren't what you want. May Kasahara writes "Studio Ghibli fansite Nausicaa.net now has official release dates for Region 1 DVDs of Kiki's Delivery Service , Laputa: Castle in the Sky , and Spirited Away , as well as official preview artwork of the disks and packaging. As a side note, the site now has a page up for Miyazaki's upcoming Howl's Magic Castle . See you at the video store on April 15!"

Fonts make your terminal much more useful. Russ Nelson writes "The Bitstream Vera fonts are available for trial use. Bitstream is still tweaking them, so they're under the provisional "no redistribution" license. You can download them yourself, though, and in about a month, put them in your software distribution. Kudos to X co-creator Jim Gettys for finally getting X some professional-quality fonts."

Dear Mr. Ashcroft: I hope you find this slag useful. eecue writes "Due to the recent MIT study concerning data recovery from old hard drives, we decided that the only foolproof means of data removal was complete destruction."

Comments

the article is from 1995

[RobertTaylor]

with more on Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code

Reading earlier someone (Presence2) stated:

This interview occured in 1995.. don't you folks read? This was before 98,win2k,ME,XP and even NT was still OS2 in disguise. I'm sure Gates et al said a whole mess of stuff (128k memory?) that looking back now is ridiculus. Why drag a 7 year old article out for /. to rag on? - You're just sifting for dirt.

Dont you even read users posts? Its amazing what you would learn ;)

Re:the article is from 1995

[www.sorehands.com]

Didn't Bill Gates also say that OS/2 is the operating system of the future.

Re:the article is from 1995

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont you even read users posts? Its amazing what you would learn ;)

I naively thought the problem was nobody read the stories. Maybe both viewpoints are valid and nobody read Slashdot and the whole thing is a figment of my imagination.

Re:the article is from 1995

[stock]

Well don't you realize that if Bill gates would conduct a interview today with the same statements, he would create a big mess ?

And why would we all suddenly believe that what he said in that interview in 1995 is not valid anymore? Remember latest security flaws on the microsoft platform, and on what massive scale it today happens? That costs fortunes while the legal department of MSFT allows Bill Gates to walk away with a smile.

Robert

Re:the article is from 1995

[Blind Linux]

That's like asking if Al Gore say "misunderestimated" and "dignitude". :P

Re:the article is from 1995

[t0ny]

you are partially correct. Nobody reads anything except the headlines, and figures out how to bash microsoft according in their posts.

Re:the article is from 1995

[caferace]

Dont you even read users posts? Its amazing what you would learn ;)

They don't even RTFA, and you want them to read user posts too?

damn.

Re:the article is from 1995

[kfg]

Because this is indicative of Bill's personal attitude toward his product and customers.

Nor is there any overt evidence that this attitude has changed.

It isn't merely a mistake in prediction, nor does it having anything to do with a *particular* product so it doesn't matter how many products have been introduced since. It could be a thousand of them. It doesn't matter.

Nor does this statement stand on its own. It's just one more in a long line of prognostications, statements, threats and temper tantrums that show an essential disdain, not just for his customers, but for other people in general.

It isn't about MS. It's about Bill. As a person.

KFG

Re:the article is from 1995

[wdr1]

Shhhh... it's best not to alert the editors that it's 2003 and not 1995. They'll be pissed about VA's stock price.

-Bill

Re:the article is from 1995

[optikSmoke]

Heh, read the article? But that would take valuable time that could be better spent making cursory scans of user submissions!

Personally, I think the Slashdot editors are payed on commission. Slashdot editors: Selling cutting-edge pseudo-news to sex-starved 16-year-olds.

By the hour.

Re:the article is from 1995

[Anonymous Coward]

On 1997 or so, he also writes "VBA is the future of computing" on BYTE magazine... only if I remembered correctly. :)

Re:the article is from 1995

[jamie]

Good suggestion!

UPDATE vars SET value='Selling cutting-edge pseudo-news to sex-starved 16-year-olds' WHERE name='slogan';

Re:the article is from 1995

[commodoresloat]

This interview occured in 1995.. don't you folks read? This was before 98,win2k,ME,XP and even NT

True. In the intervening time, he's provided us with hundreds of thousands of newer, cooler bugs than we ever had in Windows 3.1.

Re:the article is from 1995

[thebigbadme]

I think you are telling us quite a bit more about yourself than you had intended...

I envy Freud, he had all the women.

Re:the article is from 1995

[jpop32]

And why would we all suddenly believe that what he said in that interview in 1995 is not valid anymore?

Well, back then Bill didn't even consider Internet to be important. Should we consider that to be valid, too?

One would think that everyone realises that 8 years is a lot of time, especially in IT industry. I guess one might be wrong...

Re:the article is from 1995

[rhadamanthus]

My favorite was Malda's response to this dupe.

"Yeah yeah. It's a dupe. Funny that not a single reader emailed me in almost 2 hours to tell me."

No one emailed you? Jesus, did it ever occur to you that you can just READ YOUR OWN WEBSITE!!

I mean, we knew you had trouble with keeping track of the stories, but saying you hadn't noticed in two hours due to no emails?!? Why not just come out and admit to the whole world you have to be the first "webmaster" who never checks his own site...

----rhad the bemused

Re:the article is from 1995

[TechnoWeenie]

Slashdot: History for Nerds. Stuff that mattered.

Re:the article is from 1995

[Lars T.]

And in 5 years we'll know it was the same thing with "Trustworthy Computing".

hard drive destruction

[odyrithm]

I dont think thats really needed. I remeber reading an article once about how even the most advanced techniques for recovring data ever after multiple writes was about 3-5.

So dd crap from random cd's a few times and its clean.

Re:hard drive destruction

[Nine Mirrors Turning]

In an earlier incarnation I used to work for the government doing military research. We had to burn all disc containing classified material. The reason given, since substantiated by a guy at the swedish equiv of NSA, was that a SQUID (Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device) could manage at least 25 overwrites, possibly many more. Our security officer built a large bonfire every spring of used hard drives and ignited them with thermite. T'was a grand sight!

Re:hard drive destruction

[dann0]

3 - 5 whats? Is this the odds that it will work (pretty good, I'd place a wager on it)? Is a percentage? Time taken?

Re:hard drive destruction

[SatanicPuppy]

No need for dd; its easy enough to write a script that will write 1's to your drive forever, or until the stylus on your drive melts.

I think the underlying issue is that all too often no one takes these kinds of precautions, or no one thinks to take them with a drive that's "Dead". Had a client send me a "dead" drive (awful clicking screeching noise, you know, dead.) Slapped it into an oven for a minute to loosen up the lubricants inside, and was able to write about 60% of the data off it before it crapped out for good.

The way many people take security, I think it's all to the good to tell them to toss a drive in a fire for an hour or so, just to make sure that the data is really gone. Half these jokers think DELETE actually removes information from the drive.

Re:hard drive destruction

[edhall]

In some cases security has to take into account not only current threats, but future threats as well. Magnetic technology has been advancing quickly. A technology which can pack a terabytes in a square inch is also likely to be able to find and separate the remnants of multiple writes at today's gigabyte densities. If you have something you want to keep secret for the next decade or two, it's prudent to take extreme measures when you wnat to destroy it.

-Ed

Re:hard drive destruction

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true. I have a friend who works for a large think tank up here in Massachusetts, and they had some critical data from a few years ago that they had to get off of a drive that had since been reformatted with a couple of different file systems and used for multiple different OSs in different workstations. (How the hell they ever figured out where the data was in the first place, I'll never know, but anyway :)

They took it to a commercial data recovery service and for about $500 they'll put it through one of those devices that reads weak quantum residues and get you back whatever data it was that you were looking for. Of course, the drive is in itty-bitty irradiated pieces, so you can never use it again, but it works :)

Re:hard drive destruction

[Bull999999]

Rats, I don't think that my erased porn collection is worth $500...

Re:hard drive destruction

[Powercntrl]

I don't think it's really needed either. I had 3 seperate replacement 40GB Western Digital drives fail within a few months...

If you want to get rid of sensitive data, just put it on an unreliable hard drive to begin with and the problem will take care of itself.

Course, with how angry I was about having so many drive failures, I wouldn't mind mailing back one of their drives in the form of hardened slag.

Re:hard drive destruction

[JGski]

Ditto. This is a story I heard from the a guy in the HP Fullerton service center a dozen-odd years ago. Back in the early 80's the B-2 bomber project was still a dark black project at Northrup in Pico Rivera (suburb in east LA).

They called HP about a failed disk drive (a 7936 "disk washer" for those who know it). A service tech came out, diagnosed a terminal failure and ordered a replacement under the service contract. When it came time to retrieve the old drive (so that it could be refurbished and resold) the security folks said "no way". There was talk about using multiple overwrites as specified in some military standards for disk disposal. Northrup said "no, this project is different - it's not good enough. It's not leaving. We'll take care of disposal.".

Finally an HP service center manager started making a fuss about how the service contract clearly specified the customer obligation to return the drive (it enabled HP to recover profit from returns). Northrup finally said "Fine, we'll obey the contract. You'll receive your disk by the end of the week."

Sure enough the disk drive arrived as promised.... as a dozen baggies of 1/8" chips of metal and plastic. Northrup later explained that nothing in the contract said anything about the final form of the return, so "...the only way the drive would leave the project premises is through our industrial chipper. If you don't like it we don't have accept you bids for computers in the future." HP realized the situation was probably "misjudged" and the drive was marked in the inventory database as "received, not salvagable.

JGski

netcraft survey says...

[Anonymous Coward]

The site www.dpicorp.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

Re: netcraft survey says...

[Black Parrot]

> The site www.dpicorp.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000.

That's pretty much irrelevant until we find out how the numbers were acquired. For instance, if someone hacked an application rather than the OS, or if the hack had inside help (such as a leaked password), then the OS is completely irrelevant.

Re:netcraft survey says...

[Black Copter Control]

A telnet to port 80 says the same thing...

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Content-Location: http://www.dpicorp.com/Default.htm
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 05:49:36 GMT
.....

Funny thing was: Last night I was talking to my rommate's GF about being paranoid on the net, and I told her that one thing I would not trust my credit card info was anybody running a MS based os.

(There are really 2 reasons:
1) Window has it's well known horrible security
2) almost a corrolary of 1: any company that trusts MS for a high security system like credit card processing either has problems with their IT department, or their IT department has problems with the management.)

See me where?

[rgmoore]

See you at the video store on April 15!

Why should I be at a video store? I already have mine pre-ordered on-line, and with a substantial discount, to boot. The only remaining question is when Nausicaa and Porco Roso are going to be out.

Re:See me where?

[BakaMark]

"Nausicaa" has not been release in Japan on Region 2 DVDs yet.

"Porco Rosso" has been released. The Japanese Region 2 DVD has the English Subtitles and English Soundtracks on it. If you want "Porco Rosso", and cannot wait for the US release, then you will be paying a lot more for the Japanese release.

Anime DVDs for the Japanese market cost a lot more than those sold in the US. To the point that it is a problem for the Japanese Anime distributors when the US Releases flow into Japan at a lower cost. "Porco Rosso" only came out recently, so it is likely that Studio Ghibli is waiting untill they have made enough out of their local market before allowing the US releases to appear. Also the US releases are for the movies that Disney licenced, and it is possible that Disney don't hold the licence for "Porco Rosso" at the moment.

The Bill Gates interview,

[jericho4.0]

while interesting, is;
8 years old.
a multiple dupe.
news for nerds, indeed.

Re:The Bill Gates interview,

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, your powers of deduction are exceptional. I can't allow you to waste them here when there are so many crimes going unsolved at this very moment. Go, go, for the good of the city!

Re:The Bill Gates interview,

[Anonymous Coward]

while interesting, is;
8 years old.
a multiple dupe.

In other words, it's the perfect Slashdot story!

Re:The Bill Gates interview,

[namespan]

There are a lot of things that are eight years old, or older. The Balkan Crisis, the first US-Iraq gulf war, U2's the Joshua Tree, HTTP .9, HTML 1.0, NeXTStep, the Simpsons, Unisyn 1.x, etc. A few of these things are of current interest because they're still useful/cool/relevant. However, even for the things that aren't currently relevant, they're still useful as historical perspective, especially if you start to look for cause/effect relationships.

Windows NT 4/5, based on the Chicago/Cairo projects, were being worked on clear back in 1994. The corporate culture, shaped by the attitudes of the execs, in turn shaped the software being developed -- software in broad use today. It's history, man, cause and effect, and sometimes it takes a few years (or decades) for everything to propogate -- despite American pop culture's mass ADD.

It's understandable, of course, to accuse slashdot editors/readers of knee-jerk pummeling of MS -- and most days I'm certainly ready to pick up my pitchfork and torch at a moments notice. But this seems to be genuine perspective. Gates is actually correct that moaning about computer woes has a partially social component, but one also wonders if a basically evasive response to the issue of bugs says something about the company that's given the market some really big security problems.

It's interesting that it continues, too. After one of the recent big IIS/worm problems (think it was Nimda) I remember seeing an MS spokesman say that the problem was essentially due to their being a market leader, that any market leader would suffer similarly. This argument seemed rather disingenuous when the actual leader in the space IIS occupied (Apache) had no comparable difficulties, and again seemed to come down to evasion of responsibility for bugs.

I think that's a thread throughout their history: mitigate importance of bugs, evade responsibility, promise more in next release. I don't think it's unique to them, and I'm not entirely sure it's bad business practices, seeing as how it seems to have won them an awful lot. But I like seeing the perspective. It's funny how the Jello makes more sense once you've seen the mold.

Re:The Bill Gates interview,

[macdmr]

Yeah, well, so is CT.

Hard Drive Destruction

[OzTech]

I hope virus creators don't find out about this one...

Actually who knows...

[Goronmon]

Bill Gates' attitude back then might have had an effect on the development of future OSes. I mean, just because it was so old doesn't make it completely irrelevant.

Still, one would hope that he has had a few changes of heart since then.

Re:Actually who knows...

[t0ny]

I hardly think that Gates has any control over how the OS develops. From what I have read, he is a good leader- ie, somebody who hires experts and then expects them to make decisions in their field of expertise.

What is interesting is that this article has probably been posted on /. about 5 million times. One would wonder if the editors actually read this e-rag.

Re:Actually who knows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. From what I heard, if he doesn't get his way, he throws tantrums.

Re:Actually who knows...

[KewlPC]

It's a wonder he and Steve Jobs don't get along better.

On the other hand, if they're both screaming at each other instead of their respective employees, that would explain it.

.net.uk

[blowdart]

Clive Feather: His position must surely be under scrutiny by the internet community.

The UK "internet community" cannot vote, assuming you mean UK internet users as the community. You can only vote in nominet elections if you are nominet member, which costs £1000+ per annum.

Re:.net.uk

[ajvtoo]

Nominet membership is a 400ukp one-off joining fee, and 100ukp annual subscription.

http://www.nic.uk/Members/HowToJoin/

Re:.net.uk

[blowdart]

Oops, apologies, been a while since I needed to check. Serves me right for being too lazy to look it up again.

Standard US DoD SOP

[George Walker Bush]

for destruction of magnetic data is to use thermite in situations where time is of the essence and less important than safety (eg, your base is being overrun), and acid in other cases. Both are quite effective, needless to say.

Re:Standard US DoD SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

(eg, your base is being overrun)

Is that all your base, or just some your base?

FOR GREAT PROFIT!!!

Re:Standard US DoD SOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so it's the standard standard operating procedure?

Drive slagging..

[Deamos]

Now that's how I'd want to get rid of my hard drives.. Anyone have a furnace I can use to get rid of some crapped out drives that came from servers that have pissed me off?

Crash unexpectedly have you? Take that!

Turn them in to paperclips! Finally a way to come through with all those threats! HAH!

Re:Drive slagging..

[JonWan]

Yep, I do.... I had thought of posting this but it was hosted on DSL at the time. It's now on a T3,but I think the little RAC server it's on won't hold up too well.

Re:Drive slagging..

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tap 'em with a drill a few times. I suspect that the resulting aluminum filings are as difficult, if not impossible, to read.

It turns out that ...

[DogIsMyCoprocessor]

all 8 million credit cards were held by 6 families in an Alabama trailer park.

Sometimes...

[awx]

...I hate paranoid companies. I have a pdp11 that used to control an experimental blast furnace at British Steel. Guess what the obvious thing to do with a disk rack full of company when the experiment was ended... :(

Re:Sometimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what the obvious thing to do with a disk rack full of company when the experiment was ended... :

Geez, remind me to never accept a dinner invitation to your house...

"I'm afraid you've touched on a rather tender subject there, Dr. Scott. Another slice anyone?"

.uk

[geekoid]

Is supposed to be .gb.

If the people in Great britian complain we don't use metric, that I'm sure as hell going to complain that they don't conform to the Domain standard. Take that!

Re:.uk

[rgmoore]

Why should it be .gb instead of .uk? The full and proper name of the country is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland. People are more likely to call it The United Kingdom (which fully includes the whole country) rather than Great Britain (which excludes the people in North Ireland, many of whom most certainly want to assert that they are part of the UK rather than their neighbor to the south). I've certainly heard lots of people talk about "The UK", but I've never heard them talk about "GB". There's certainly no reason not to use .uk rather than .gb.

Re:.uk

[Nexus Seven]

Why would the people of Britain complain about the US not using metric, when they don't either?

They might complain about the small pint they receive when they order beer in a US bar, though (US pints being 20% smaller than everywhere else)

Re:.uk

[p_d_austin]

I'll take each point in turn. 1. You are correct the 2 letter ISO country code for the UK is gb see http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/ 02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html#sz 2. Britain is now forced to use metric by Europe (the french invented it) but a lot of older people are resiting and like to still use imperial (which we invented). 3. The US Gallon is smaller than the Imperial Gallon. 4. A pint is 568ml so in North America we get short changed when you call a pint 16oz, check out the weights and measures act. And what the hell is a sleeve!! 5. Like .com follows the country Domain standard, I know there is .us but who actually uses it. Just for fun keep it light! Paul

Re:.uk

[$$$$$exyGal]

It looks to me like .gb and .uk are both TLD's for the United Kingdom. A website in Norway tells me so.

--sex

Re:.uk

[tarquin_fim_bim]

Great Britain is a geographical term for the largest island of the British Isles, comprising of England, Scotland and Wales, whereas the United Kingdom also includes Northern Ireland which is part of the island of Ireland, hope this clears things up for you. Otherwise your post is valid.

Re:.uk

[meringuoid]

Great Britain is a geographical term for the largest island of the British Isles, comprising of England, Scotland and Wales, whereas the United Kingdom also includes Northern Ireland which is part of the island of Ireland, hope this clears things up for you. Otherwise your post is valid.

In a spirit of hardcore pedantry, I should add that the UK includes more than just the island of Great Britain and the province of Northern Island; Anglesey and the Isle of Wight are parts of the UK, as are the Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides, assorted other Scottish islands, the Scilly isles, Lundy, Flat and Steep Holm, that L-shaped island in the Irish Sea off Northern Ireland, and a great many worthless little rocks nobody cares about.

The Isle of Man is technically not part of the UK, IIRC. It's a constitutional oddity, similar to the Channel Islands.

Re:.uk

[L7_]

Obviously, you never played Axis and Allies.

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a real pedantist would point out that the Isle of Wight is an English county, Anglesey a Welsh county, the Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides, are Scottish counties etc. etc.

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm, loved that game, though I prefered Conquest of the Empires.

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

"And what the hell is a sleeve!!

A thing most people use for wiping their nose on.

Re:.uk

[zabieru]

And Wales, plus a couple of islands which are considered quasi-separate entities.

Re:.uk

[Willis Wasabi]

Uh, because GB is the ISO 2 letter country code for "The UK". Country codes are *supposed* to follow the ISO country codes. Somebody fucked up.

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares about Gibralter? I was born there, you insensitive clod!

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Then surely you'd be able to spell it correctly.

Re:.uk

[91degrees]

The Isle of Man is technically not part of the UK, IIRC. It's a constitutional oddity, similar to the Channel Islands.

It even has its own tld (.im)

Re:.uk

[IamTheRealMike]

Up until about a month ago, my departmental network backresolved to signal.dra.hmg.gb

I didn't even realise such a domain existed, but it does. It might be because "Great Britain" is technically different to the "United Kingdom".

Re:.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. That still makes them part of the UK. Suggest replacing "no" with "moreover."

Re:.uk

[zabieru]

How the hell is this flamebait? I don't get it. I'm not some sort of Welsh separatist... I mean, boring yes, off topic yes, pedantic yes, but not flamebait...

Thats the best way...

[Cheeziologist]

...but wont it work to do something like
for i in "1 2 3"
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda(or appropraite device)

Re:Thats the best way...

[questionlp]

Why not use /dev/random or another pseudo-random number generator instead of /dev/zero, or at least do one round of zero's, one round of random data, and repeat say... 5-10 times? :)

Aw heck, just rip any boy-band of Spheres CD to fill up the hard drive and you've got enough random noise to fill it up. Just don't listen to it while you's ripping it :D

Re:Thats the best way...

[harlows_monkeys]

Why not use /dev/random or another pseudo-random number generator instead of /dev/zero, or at least do one round of zero's, one round of random data, and repeat say... 5-10 times? :)

Well, one problem with that method is that the data can still be recovered. Read this paper for more information.

In other news

[stefanlasiewski]

I can't wait for Sun to finish on their Oak project for interactive Televisions!

Anyone out there hear of this new free OS called Lineux or something? I think it was written by some student in Estonia or something. Two guys down in San Jose are starting up some company based on this product called "RedHelmet" or something.... but I'm sure they'll go out of business in a year.

I tried to go to their website, but I can't get my Mosaic brower to display these new Jpeg pictures.

Re:In other news

[harlows_monkeys]

Anyone out there hear of this new free OS called Lineux or something?

According to Linus Torvalds, Linux is specific to the x86, and will probably never be ported to any other architecture, so it's probably not going to amount to much in the long run.

When Apple releases Copland, we'll all want to get PPCs.

Re:In other news

[Pinky]

When Apple releases Copland, we'll all want to get PPCs.
---------

Yep, only a year more to wait... yippy! The real fun will be Gershwin a few years after..

Re:In other news

[Shimmer]

Copland? I'm still waiting for Teligent to release their new OS.

-- Brian

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure the project isn't called PurpleHelmet? Oh wait... That's something completely different.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

none of that new fangled junk will do you any good, it won't work at 110 baud on your ASR-33!!

Re:In other news

[krishy]

And ofcourse FreeBSD is dead!!

Re:In other news

[j-pimp]

Ok I'll be the one to point it out I guess. Java used to be called Oak in the planning stages until it was found to be an already existin name for a language or something.

Re:In other news

[objekt]

Apple will be dead in a year.

And as for Oak, Microsoft's Blackbird will kill that.

Wow...fonts

[Eric Savage]

10 Basic fonts are just what was holding me back from setting up a Linux desktop. Does anyone have time to set up a site where you give away true type fonts for free? That would be a great idea and I've never seen one.

Re:Wow...fonts

[questionlp]

I know your being a bit sarcastic or fecitious, but many of the free TrueType or OpenType fonts available on the Internet aren't exactly the best fonts, primarily when printing or used in any high-resolution, anti-aliased, and/or large font size scenarios. It all has to do with how the fonts are hinted, constructed, tweaked and tuned. It's a painful process, even for professionals who spend their work hours producing fonts.

I personally think it's great that they are providing high-quality fonts that can pretty much be free to distribute or hacked... mostly being a free (gratis) replacement for Verdana (and a couple of other fonts Microsoft includes in Windows and Office).

Re:Wow...fonts

[the_real_tigga]

It all has to do with how the fonts are hinted, constructed, tweaked and tuned. It's a painful process, even for professionals who spend their work hours producing fonts.

Actually, with professional fonts it's more like months or years.

[...]mostly being a free (gratis) replacement for Verdana (and a couple of other fonts[...]

I find Helvetica to be a nice "replacement" for Arial. (Originally it was the other way around.) and Verdana, too. On a side note anything is a good replacement for Times New Roman *shudder*

Re:Wow...fonts

[ChaosDiscord]

...many of the free TrueType or OpenType fonts available on the Internet aren't exactly the best fonts, primarily when printing or used in any high-resolution, anti-aliased, and/or large font size scenarios. It all has to do with how the fonts are hinted, constructed, tweaked and tuned. It's a painful process, even for professionals who spend their work hours producing fonts.

Actually, high resolution, anti-aliasing, and large font sizes are extremely forgiving of low quality. The only thing that making a font really big might reveal is that the creator didn't make lines quite horizontal or vertical. Given the ease of making exactly horizontal or vertical lines in any font editing program, this isn't a real issue.

As you point out, the devil is in the hinting. Hinting really only matters when you need to display a character in as few pixels as possible. Typically on screen in small font sizes, but also on low resolution printers (is anyone really using dot matrix anymore), or for very small fonts (on a typical low end 300 dpi laser printer we're talking smaller than about 6 point). As screen resolutions improve hinting will become less important.

Because of all this, free fonts on the web (or the cheapo font knockoffs you can buy) are perfectly fine for use in printed materials or for large font use. It's when you're trying to read body text in a poorly hinted font that you really appreciate what you get with a higher quality font.

Interestingly hinting is largely irrelevant for X users. Hinting in TrueType is patented. Every distributor (including FreeType themselves) disables hinting support as a result. Unless you're willing to build a patent infringing copy of FreeType yourself (it's a simple change), you'll never benefit from high quality hinting information. If you don't mind anti-aliased fonts it's probably not a big deal, between FreeType's non-infringing auto-hinting and anti-aliasing support it's a minimal drop in quality.

Re:Wow...fonts

[questionlp]

Actually, with professional fonts it's more like months or years.

Sorry... I guess I meant to say that they spend all of their work days tweaking and tuning fonts.

Re:Wow...fonts

[questionlp]

Thanks for clarifying and correcting me :)

Re:Wow...fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

-- Hinting in TrueType is patented

have a link for me for more info on all of this issue? thanks a lot!

Re:Wow...fonts

[Russ Nelson]

Sigh. It's not a question of you being able to get fonts. It's a question of your Linux *distributor* being able to *distribute* fonts. That's why this is important, dink-ass.
-russ

Re:Wow...fonts

[i_am_nitrogen]

You could maybe try reading the freetype site.

Re:Wow...fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

gimmefonts.com - free truetype fonts

Re:Wow...fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

have a look at gimmefonts.com

no wonder DPI got hacked!?!?!

[netnerd.caffinated]

check out netcraft

Data Wiping

[tarnin]

Seems to me that writing 0's to the drive is pretty sufficiant for most peoples needs. As it is its near impossible to impossible to retreive data from a disk that way. Turning one into slag after demag and what not is probalby pointless rite now. Of course, if you are thinking long term and have really sensative data that you are storing on a disk somewhere, then slaging is always an option. On the the writing of 0's to the disk. Best that I have come up with for windows is a bootable floppy/cdrom that had any type of program with the ability to write 0's block by block to the drive. This has worked 100% of the times that I have used it. Of course I havent done the extensive work of the MIT students but from the few programs that I've tried to use for recovery, I have come up blank which for what I keep on my drives is good enuf.

Re:Data Wiping

[Anonymous Coward]

you are an idiot... if it is ZERO and not a random then it is trivial to read the data (it needs alternating passes of A5 and 5A and even that is not as good as random. youo are an fbi mole.

Re:Data Wiping

[23orgFlea]

I think you missed the point... We didn't slag the drive to get rid of data.. we slagged it becuase MELTING HARDS DRIVES IS COOL! Besides, 0 fills will only stop the curious not the devoted. MELTING STUFF IN A FURNACE IN YOUR BACK YARD IS COOL OK?

Re:Data Wiping

[tarnin]

Bah, running 0's over the drive, like i said, is good enuf to wipe what I have on my drives. If you REALLY want to spend the time running over my drive block by block to find out I had all the star trek eps in divx format, be my guest.

Re:Data Wiping

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.. you think some piece of $50 "recovery" _software_ is going to get anything off a drive? You're lucky it can read data that hasn't been overwritten at all.

It's a trivial matter to recover data that has been "erased" by writing 0's over it. TRIVIAL. It's a little more difficult if you write true random data mixed with alternating 0/1 bits (overwriting several times, in several passes), but recovery is almost always possible with the right equipment. Complete destruction is the only sure way.

This got modded up, why???

Slashbot morons.

Re:Data Wiping

[23orgFlea]

once again, you're missing the point... nobody cared what was on the drive, it's a joke. We dont really melt our hard drives to get rid of data, we wait around till somebody tries to read them and then sneak up behind them and knock them in the head with the ingots we made melting drives... Security through ouch...

Re:Data Wiping

[Anonymous Coward]

I've generally gone for the 6-pass overwrite, followed by the disassemble and drill-out quasi-random chunks, followed by the mash-to-bits for the remaining (weakened) platter mass.

If you really want to pick little drive platter hunks out of the trash, try to match the brittle fractures, and then guess what went in the drilled-out areas then my data is WAY more important than I thought...

Re:Data Wiping

[Goldsmith]

The problem is you're using a program to do recovery. The people who did this were worried about hardware people could use to read your drives. An atomic force microscope can read a data from a drive that's had just about anything done to it (including writing 0s).

Melting it's a little extreme in my opinion, but it's one of a few methods where there is not even the theoretical chance someone could read your data.

Re:Data Wiping

[kaleth]

The problem with that is that its not actually possible to write all zeros to the drive - no matter what data you send to the drive. (unless you happen to have software from the drive manufacturer that can send special commands to the drive to do it) A hard drive would not be able to accurately read the disk if it contained nothing but zeros, so it encodes the data. The encoding guarantees that there are some ones and some zeros actually written on the disk. So writing "all zeros" is not any better than writing random data, and is actually probably worse, because it generates a regular pattern that would be easier to filter out when someone tries to read your "erased" data.

the part I found funny

[prisoner]

was "after a few minutes we saw a toxic smoke" etc, etc. I don't know why but that made me laugh. For some reason I have visions of some geek smelling that shit and saying "that's not so ACK ACK ACK...thump".

Re:the part I found funny

[BRTB]

Nah, the best part is the end of that sentence...

After a few minutes we noticed toxic smoke rising from the furnace vent and decided to take a look inside.

"Ooh, toxic smoke! Let's get closer so we can breathe it! ::geek looks in and falls over::"

Re:the part I found funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this part is what I found disturbing, considering that if some company had released toxins into the air it would need to report the release as a chemical spill and possibly take action to mitigate the release. Dumping noxious chemicals into the air is most definitely not funny.

Re:the part I found funny

[johnalex]

If that doesn't qualify someone for the Darwin Awards, I don't know what will.

Re:the part I found funny

[ralfg33k]

After a few minutes we noticed toxic smoke rising from the furnace vent and decided to take a look inside. But Keith Richards ran over, pushed me aside and immediately inhaled it....all. He frantically shook his head and mumbled, "Aw mate, that doesn't go wit my coke," then immediately ran off to write Billy Gates' next product launch song.

So what?

[The Bungi]

Bill Gates' comments on bugs in Microsoft's code

So you can justify posting a 8-year old badly written and poorly translated article in an obscure German magazine merely because you think it's a novel way to "stick it to The Man"?

And here I thought that we'd never run out of material to generate amazingly insightful comments and unlimited nasal chuckles from the peanut gallery.

But I guess we've hit a new low.

Re:So what?

[shadowbearer]

"to generate amazingly insightful comments and unlimited nasal chuckles from the peanut gallery. "

That'd be the *Penguin Gallery* - thank you very much. Get it right! :-)

SB

Hard Drive Destroyed

[TedTschopp]

For those of you without the tools necessary in the pictures above. A Road flare works wonders.

This from personal experience. I work for a rather large company. When we were upgrading from Windows 95 to 2000, many of the exec. at the company expressed concerns about the confidential data on their old machines. We Assured them that the data would be deleted.

We took the hard drives out to the parking lot broke open the drive, started up a road flare and proceeded to melt down the platters. We left the drive 'cool' down and took them back into our exec. and showed them to him. He was quite happy with the procedure. He asked that all exec.'s hard drive be treated the same. We decided at that point our supply of flares would not last so one tech mentioned that he had a blow torch at home. Next morning he returned with 10 nicly blown hard drives.

On another note, I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media.

Ted

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[Nine Mirrors Turning]

Thermite. Might be classed as explosive, I dunno.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[antiprime]

Not to worry you, but corporate spies and dirty communists always have a blowtorch at home. That's sop.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[The Bungi]

I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media.

Last I heard, this is how they do it.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[The Bungi]

Well, I should add that's how the DoD does it. I'm sure the Navy does it some other way, and the Department of State some other way, and so on.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[nateb]

Thermite. It takes a little bit of heat to get going, but does a great job.

This is after A DOD wipe, of course. (three passes each of 0's and 1's, AFAICR)

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[JasonSkywalker]

>Next morning he returned with 10 nicly blown hard drives.

God help us all the day porn comes to Slashdot.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[il dus]

On another note, I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media.

Nope, sorry to disappoint, but we don't do anything like that, though it would be pretty cool. The destruction process is so thoroughly regulated that it's often easier to just lock them in a safe and forget about them. In fact, in my office we have several ten year old hard drives. No one knows what's on them, just that they're sensitive, so they'll probably still be there ten years from now.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[RedPhoenix]

> On another note, I've heard (someone please
> verify) that the military uses explosives to take
> care of old hard drives and storage media.

Depends on the circumstances, and size.

Phosphorous Grenades in some cases (eg: when HD is in a safe).

For operational deployments, some laptops have a 'targetting dot' on them, above the location of the hard drive - ie: 'shoot here'.

Red.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[PeterT]

When I was on active duty in the Navy (back in the dark ages) we just torched the drive with a standard oxy-acetaline cutting torch. 20 inch platters would slag in about 15 seconds. The whole platter would be gone in under a minute. Great Fun!!!

We used thermite grenades for 'emergency' destruction.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[ecalkin]

i worked with a gentleman that was working for a military contractor. he said that they did drive disposal via halftrack. when they had enough that were ready to be 'de-classified', they would line them up in the parking lot and drive a a heavy halftrack over them. almost-instant twisted metal.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[Forgotten]

On another note, I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media.

Close...they use old hard drives, floppies and CD-Rs, and obsolete computing equipment as ballast to dampen the explosion as they dispose of old expired ordinance.

;)

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[bkhl]

"On another note, I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media."

I wouldn't put it beneath them :-)

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[blair1q]

You will note that the Earth is a Class-M planet.

--Blair
"Fascinating."

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[ebacon]

On another note, I've heard (someone please verify) that the military uses explosives to take care of old hard drives and storage media.

I seem to recall a usenet post about some chap that was attending a some conference and the subject of deleting data from disks came up during conversation . One of the attendees said something like well, where I work, we just put our old drives into a hole ... you know, the one that the next N-Test is going to be fired off in ...

Everyone laughed at that, til they realised the speaker wasn't joking...

'course, that was quite a while ago now ...

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked in Air Force communications, we used a big-assed degauser and a sledgehammer to take care of our destruction needs.

One of the hazards of working a buzy communications center is that you get a lot of inspectors coming through to see how you operate. We always showed them how to use the degauser and let them put some media through it. Then we'd let them bust it up with the sledge hammer. They really liked that.

The sledge was really a bit gratuitious, since the degauser was powerful enough to wipe the credit cards of people sitting in the next room.

I used to have dreams where I left accidentially the degauser on over night and discovered fusion.

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[Anonymous Coward]

Next morning he returned with 10 nicly blown hard drives.

how can you be sure the hard drives returned were the ones marked for destruction! HE IS A SPY! KILL HIM AT ONCE!

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[Myco]

That was pretty funny. So, shred or slag?

Re:Hard Drive Destroyed

[macdmr]

I just throw mine in Mount Doom.

New business model!

[YetAnotherName]

1) Advertise hard drive slagging service
2) Keep actual slagging procedure secret
3) ???
4) Profit!

Oh wait; I guess step 2 won't work now.

Re:New business model!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better...

1) Advertise hard drive slagging service
2) Copy data on hard drive
3) Slag hard drive
4) Sell data on hard drive
5) Profit!

Re:New business model!

[Anonymous Coward]

that was the joke, moron.

This is pitiful.

[rice_burners_suck]

BillG is the biggest PR-spin LIAR in the world! What, do you think that people in business, with all of their problems, have time to call Microsoft's technical support and pay 10 dollars a minute to be on hold for three hours before some idiot getting paid $2.95 an hour answers the phone and doesn't know what to do about your bug report? So after 30 years of making crappy products, BillG had to come out TODAY and say this to spin everything around. Anybody who is swayed by what he just said is an idiot.

Yes. I know this article or whatever is over seven years old. No, I don't care. Its age is irrelevant. BillG said this RIGHT NOW and that's the way it is.

Drive slagging.

[Black Parrot]

I used to just throw mine into the nearest active volcano, until I found out some volcano-diving kiddie named d4r74 was reading them anyway.

Re:Drive slagging.

[saskboy]

"After a few minutes we noticed toxic smoke rising from the furnace vent and decided to take a look inside.
We realized we should have removed the PCBs from the drives first... oh well:"

What is more unhealthy? Volcanic gas, or melting hydrocarbons with aluminum? I can't decide.

Re: Drive slagging.

[Black Parrot]

> What is more unhealthy? Volcanic gas, or melting hydrocarbons with aluminum? I can't decide.

Snort one up each nostril and see which side of your brain dies the fastest.

Re: Drive slagging.

[saskboy]

But, if I snort up the left nostril, does that correspond to the RIGHT side of my brain? This method is so confusing.

I think they made an idiot proof way to erase a drive, but a better idiot will always find a way...

Re:Drive slagging.

[Crash Gordon]

Our prognosis: drive slagging is a fool-proof method to prevent data recovery.

What experiments have they performed to test this hypothesis? Have they bombarded the ingots with inverse-polarized chronoton radiation and checked for holographic interference patterns? Huh? Bet they haven't.

I'll bet Harper and Rommie could read those drives, if it was essential to the plot.

Insecure Hard Drives - ZERO IT!

[harveyswik]

Now why is it we're now accepting that hard drives cannot be effectively erased? The MIT study did not deal with drives that had a "zero all data"(i.e. remove all magnetic variations from the drive) format performed on them.

Re:Insecure Hard Drives - ZERO IT!

[SystematicPsycho]

you mean dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/my_hd ??

Re:Insecure Hard Drives - ZERO IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the heavy duty real world where real work gets done things aren't necessarily this simple. For example I work with some monsters that are called StorageTek virtual arrays... essentially a box that can look like any kind of disk you want and how ever many you might want. All disks that look real to the os are actually virtual concerning the box. Tracks are compressed by the hardware and are always written to a new location on one of the physical disks. The old location will eventually be freed.

This means you could write zeros over each and every track and all the original data could still be there. Try explaining this shit to an auditor!!

fl0ydz

Re:Insecure Hard Drives - ZERO IT!

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

A very determined enemy can open up the hard drive, take out the platters, and subject them to an electron microscope of some sort. They can, with a bit of work, read everything that's ever been on the drive no matter how it has been overwritten. Doesn't work on melted platters though.

Tim

Re:Insecure Hard Drives - ZERO IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I hate it when my all the geeks in my town go around to the used equipment stores, purchase hard drives, and take them home and examine them with their ELECTRON MICROSCOPES that they bought the weekend before on a whim after spending all night up playing online games....

Gates doesn't say bugs are good!

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, it's 8 years old, so it's irrelevant, but still, the most revealing comment to me is:

The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard.

And it makes perfect sense! New versions should not be about bug-fixes. Being told to "Upgrade" should never be a valid response to someone complaining about a bug. Gates isn't saying bugs are in their on purpose, he isn't saying their good. He isn't saying they're in there because that's what sells. He's saying bugs are bad, bugs should be gotten rid of in any given version, and that a new version isn't about bug fixes, it's about new features. Isn't that what a new version SHOULD be?

Some software companies are bad at that. Some companies <cough, Intuit, cough> *DO* insist that to fix a bug, you must upgrade. That is stupid.

Re:Gates doesn't say bugs are good!

[zeugma-amp]

I've seen several folks say that this interview is terribly old news and should thus be heavily discounted. There is some truth to that but here's the problem...

In the last few years, I've heard (well, seen in print) several interviews with Gates where he essentially says the same thing about upgrading for bugfixes is not a valid reason to upgrade. He always gives it the standard MS spin about the great new and shiny features with new releases, but almost always disclaimed bugfixes as the reason people should upgrade.

I'm sure some enterprising individual can locate a few similar quotes with google. I searched a bit last night but got tired of the search, and didn't much see the point since I specifically recall having seen it on more than just a couple of occasions.

Re:Gates doesn't say bugs are good!

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. I don't know how anyone missed that in the original story. Upgrading for the sole purpose of fixing bugs is a waste of time and money. Bugs should either a) not be there in the first place or 2) fixed in a patch or service pack. People shouldn't have to pay to have their bugs fixed. People should pay for new features.

It seems a lot of Slashdot readers are forgetting that Windows isn't like Linux where you "upgrade" from 2.2.1 to 2.2.2 kernel. Upgrading Windows is upgrading the entire operating system and associated applications. Moving from ME to XP is not about getting a more stable kernel, it's about getting a new GUI and a new Media Player and better interoperability between the included components. If XP was just "ME but more stable" noone would pay $100 for it. Just like virtually noone paid $60 for ME in the first place (because it was little more than a few bugfixes over 98).

Re:Gates doesn't say bugs are good!

[Anonymous Coward]

One major problem with upgrading to get bugfixes, is that the new version may have the old bugs fixed, but often introduces a whole swag of new ones.

The real problem only comes in when you're trying to drop an old line of the product. If you don't want to end up supporting every version forever, eventually you have to stop maintaining old ones. By this point there should be nothing major left to fix, but there's still an argument that if you're not going to fix bugs on the customer's version, you should provide them with an upgrade to a supported one.

Of course, this applies more to big, relatively expensive products for major corporate customers where there is some kind of support commitment. For a product like Windows where support is not exactly guaranteed to the home user, the argument would be that if you're still trying to run 3.1 or 95 or so, you'll just have to suffer with any remaining problems.

Vera, what do you look like?

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, I didn't even realize the joke until I typed in the subject line. So, does anyone know what Vera looks like? The Bitstream fonts, I mean. Having high-quality good looking fonts is nice and all, but I'd like to know what they look like. Is there a sample picture of them anywhere? I haven't been able to find one.

Re:Vera, what do you look like?

[Hal Roberts]

http://www.bitstream.com/categories/products/fonts /vera/index.html

Re:Vera, what do you look like?

[e__alf]

Not hinted well enough for small sizes... yet.

http://tykje.com/temp/vera.png

Re:Vera, what do you look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vera Katz

Re:Vera, what do you look like?

[Anonymous Freak]

Interesting. As I not only live in Portland (the city Vera Katz is mayor of) but I happen to know her. (I went to school with her son.)

Re:Vera, what do you look like?

[darien]

So it appears the answer is:

Bitstream Vera Sans looks like Verdana;

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono looks like somewhat (but not quite exactly) like Lucida Sans Typewriter; and

Bistream Vera Serif looks like Lucida Bright.

Dodgy word "slag"

[Nexus Seven]

Slag:
Is this one of those words, like fag and wank that means something horribly different depending on what side of the Atlantic you happen to be speaking?

I think we should be told.

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Anonymous Coward]

Slag is the stuff left over from the smelting process (i.e. turning ore into useful things through the application of fire, and lots of it).

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[meringuoid]

Is this one of those words, like fag and wank that means something horribly different depending on what side of the Atlantic you happen to be speaking? Out of morbid curiosity, what _does_ 'wank' mean to an American?

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[syrinx]

Out of morbid curiosity, what _does_ 'wank' mean to an American?

That the speaker is British, and therefore would not make a good dentist?

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[23orgFlea]

m-w.com: Main Entry: slag Pronunciation: 'slag Function: noun Etymology: Middle Low German slagge Date: 1552 : the dross or scoria of a metal My guess is the slang tends to come from the slag being the 'left-overs' Ever hear of a slag heap? It's a giant pile of junk basiclly. Pretty sure wank means pretty much the same to everybody ;) Nobody does anything refering to wank without trying to hide in the bathroom while doing it. Fag is a good example tho, offer a fag to somebody over here and you'll get punched, kissed or just looked at strangely depending on the part of town you're in.

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of morbid curiosity, what _does_ 'wank' mean to an American?

It means to masturbate.

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this one of those words, like fag and wank that means something horribly different depending on what side of the Atlantic you happen to be speaking?

Or "fanny pack". ;-)

In fact, though, the literal meaning of slag (melted crud left over from smelting or glassmaking) certainly is the same on both sides -- it just has a slang meaning in England it doesn't have in the US.

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, definitely means to insert one's hand in one's pants and shake vigourously. Humourously though, 'wanker' is often a term reserved for those of the British persuasion.

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's slagadelic baby!

Re:Dodgy word "slag"

[Pembers]

Well, here in Britain, "slag" means the waste from smelting the ore of a metal - much the same as in the US, I suppose. Strictly speaking, therefore, a melted hard drive platter isn't slag, but there's an analogy with something that's left over after intense heat.

The other meaning of "slag" in Britain is as a derogatory term for a debauched or promiscuous woman. Using it to someone's face is a good way to become acquainted with new forms of pain. ;-)

fucktard

[Anonymous Coward]

that was the link in the article...
sheesh...

Re:fucktard

[Anonymous Coward]

duh ... that was the point shithead.

Studio Ghibli's Japanese Releases

[BakaMark]

Both "KiKi's Delivery Service" and "Laputa: Castle in the Sky" Region 2 releases from Japan have english subtitles and the english soundtracks on them. You will need a region unlocked player to watch them.

The storyboards on the 2nd Disk appear to be a standard thing from "Studio Ghibli" with all of their Japan Region 2 releases. It is interesting that the same thing is being done in the US NTSC Region 1 releases.

It's history

[tarquin_fim_bim]

No more ridiculus than looking back on Pearl Harbour or the Gettysburg Address. Humans learn from their mistakes, really clever ones learn from other peoples.

Re:It's history

[t0ny]

Im still waiting for a slashdot post to try and roast Gates for not creating Internet Explorer in Windows 2.0

Re:It's history

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the US government, who doesn't ever seem to learn from their own mistakes...things like funding Osama and Saddam. The chickens always come home to roost!

Re:It's history

[Zathrus]

No more ridiculus than looking back on Pearl Harbour or the Gettysburg Address

So, by that basis, we should be attacking Japan and burning the South to the ground again.

If you're going to examine historical statements then you must do so in the context of the time. Otherwise the Magna Carta looks like a horrible backwards slide in rights - when in fact it was a massive movement forward in those rights.

As it happens, Slashdot and other news outlets portrayed the interview as something happening now, and not as something that happened 7 years ago. That's called yellow journalism, and it's reprehensible.

Spirited Away

[MBCook]

Does anyone know if the US version will have the red tint that was mentioned a while back here on Slashdot a few months ago? The linked site seems to say a new release on VHS over in Japan is correct, but what about the DVD? What about the US DVD?

Re:Spirited Away

[QuietApocalypse]

It's been reported that the VHS copies do NOT have the red tint. No word on the DVD copies, but it's a good sign...

Uhm...

[bnavarro]

I think you are remembering the movie Alien Nation. In the movie, the "newcomers" (outer space alien refugees) were pejoratively called "slags".

According to dictionary.com, "slag" has no known real world pejorative meaning.

Re:Uhm...

[Nexus Seven]

slag (WOMAN)
noun [C]
BRITISH TABOO
a woman whose appearance and behaviour, esp. sexual, are considered unacceptable

Re:Uhm...

[Slashdot Fool]

Since dictionary.com is so reassuring, I'd like to invite you to visit the UK, and refer to the first bloke you see as a slag within his hearing.

Bonus points if you pick significantly bigger and harder than you, or if you refer to his girlfriend as a slag too.

Steff

Re:Uhm...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and harder than you..."

Another example of cross-Atlantic language differences. Where I'm from, we don't talk about someone being "harder" than us. At least, not outside the bath house.

And, in the interest of clarity, around here "slag" means "to trash-talk". I don't know its precise origin, but I first learned it in the Dead Kennedys song "Do The Slag".

Our prognosis:

[Anonymous Coward]

drive slagging is a fool-proof method to prove you are a dork with nothing better to do than to melt a hard drive.

Re:Our prognosis:

[23orgFlea]

If this is true, exactly what does it say about a person who goes out of their way to call this person names, ON A SLASHDOT FORUM NO LESS?! Meet girls dude. ta!

HD Windchimes

[Alien54]

For those of you without the tools necessary in the pictures above. A Road flare works wonders.

I would think that a couple of well placed off center drill holes, along with extended soaking in sea water and or other destructive chemicals would be also effective.

Dis-assembly and conversion to windchimes also is an interesting alternative. Hard drive discs make good raw material for a number of interesting projects.

Why is many writes needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets say you have a secret document in file A, but you overwrite it with file B. Now when you access file A, you get the contents of file B. Since your hard drive reads file B, how can you possibly get back file A? So why is more than one overwrite necessary?

Re:Why is many writes needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the magnetic info can be flipped to 1 or 0. However you can carefully examine the degree to which it is flipped and decide what it used to be before it was updated.

That's nice

[Anonymous Coward]

but when is an uncut Nausicaa coming out?

Next article after MS one

[MrBlue VT]

Did anyone read the next article after the MS bug one? SMTP chicken and the social contract. It talks about how offended a guy was that someone had his own Domain with an MX record and was, get this, trolling while using the postmaster account! What an egregious crime against man!

Heh, just kinda reminds me of the day when the net was so innocent.

I can't clear my drive, it's dead! deceased!

[abirdman]

The problem with all these hard drive clearing programs is that they require a hard drive which is responding to the OS! As long as it's still responding, I have no desire to clear it. When it's not responding, it's too late to clear it. Slagging it seems a bit over-the-top, though effective. And, as the poster who apparently wrote the article pointed out, it's "Cool!"

So what I'd like is a solution to use on a dead drive, short of thermite (none in my garage) or shooting it with a .44 Magnum (also not an option). My solution has been to take off the cover (voiding the warranty), and dropping into the transfer station. Security through obscurity, though I know that's not really secure.

Re:I can't clear my drive, it's dead! deceased!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a "transfer station"?

Re:I can't clear my drive, it's dead! deceased!

[abirdman]

A transfer station is what replaced the landfill (aka "dump", where formerly trash was deposited and buried) here in northern New England, USA. A transfer station has a similar "user interface" (drive trash to same place, and drop it off), but the trash goes into a large metal container which, when full, is trucked away to a trash processing plant, and which, to stay on topic, has dealt more than once with my fritzed hard drives.

My Company Thinks That Too

[Greyfox]

On the first round of security training (The last one with the bunny/golf game, not the current one that tells you not to open E-Mail from people you don't know) at my company (Which shall remain nameless unless you follow the web page link and look at my resume) I got dinged wrong by the program when I said that format was not, in fact, a suitable method for removing classified data from a disk (Floppy or otherwise.) Apparently my company doesn't do much outsourcing for the DOD (Whoops, except for that little $6 Billion contract with the Navy...)

Securely deleting encrypted data

[phr2]

First of all you should never write sufficiently sensitive data to a hard drive in cleartext form. But if you have 10,000 encrypted files and you want to delete one securely, the question then becomes, how do you get rid of the decryption key for that file?

It turns out you can do that if you have some securely deletable way to store just one key (e.g. 16 bytes for an AES key). See here for further description and a link to sample code.

Would it be so hard for screenshots of the fonts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, before I go through the trouble to download, install, and find out they look like ass. Why can't they go through the trouble to provide one little gif showing what the fonts look like?

In other news . . .

[GMontag]

This interview of Emmanuel Goldstein of 2600 magazine, from around 1996, has not been featured on /. for AGES! I miss the nine month recycling of this one that went on for years.

CNN does not help by scooting the copyright date up, it says 2001 on the page I viewed.

Wow, the things I miss from the last century :)

Re:netcraft survey says...OT

[wirefarm]

Who else heard "netcraft survey says..." spoken in Richard Dawson's voice when they read that?

(Of course, I frequently hear Richard Dawson's voice in my head. Werner Klemperer, too...)

Cheers,
Jim

Absolutely Beautiful!

[nathanh]

The Vera Sans Mono Roman is gorgeous. I'm making it my default terminal window font. Thank you, Jim and Jim!

Re:Absolutely Beautiful!

[Mantorp]

you need help

Re:Absolutely Beautiful!

[Feztaa]

I'm too lazy to download them myself. Are there pictures anywere?

Slashdot IQ test for users/ editors

[MyTwoCentsWorth]

It seems to me that since the article is a recycled translation from GERMAN (which probably means that Bill Gates migh have said that Linux is the next great thing and it would have been lost in the translation), this was just an IQ test that either the editors (for publishing it) or the readers (for failing to spot that forever) failed miserable. Smart money is on both - after all, how hard can it be to READ an article that is being submitted and see it's junk before you start ranting on and on? Have fun, Daniel

Why not?

[zogger]

Why not just ask him? Couldn't slashdot officially do one of their interviews? It's not like he's unaware of slashdot. He's got a binary choice, he can accept or decline. The editors and mods pick the questions anyway, might as well try.

It's great to see that the license is Apache-like.

[Brett Glass]

Now, if only we could get a similar license for GNOME....

Re:It's great to see that the license is Apache-li

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because then all the anti-GPL bigots would be forced to go back into hiding!

getting owned and hard drives

[zogger]

--I am just wondering,because I don't know and never heard of it, is there a way to easily have a two "layered" hard drive, where on the surface level you can keep the decoy os and data, but you are really using a complete other system that is stored underneath in apparent deleted space? Then it might not matter as much, even with all the latest patches, etc, etc, anyone who owned you might be faked out and not look "deeper".

This would be a security through obscurity variant.

Re:getting owned and hard drives

[Wolfrider]

--Look up the definition of "honeypot"...

--I do understand what you're saying tho. There was a Star Trek novel or episode that had the multiple-layered data disk; it was IIRC a prototype, and also how they caught the bad guy.

Diana Wynne Jones

[mcc]

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this, but.. good lord, Miyazaki is making Howl's Moving Castle into a movie?? That's *awesome*.

I don't really have a comment here. I'm just curious whether i'm the only person on Slashdot who's heard of Diana Wynne Jones. She was, like, one of my favorite authors all the way through junior and high school, but not a lot of people in america seem to have heard of her (she's apparently mostly known in Britain.. apparently Neil Gaiman is a big fan, or something). I randomly wound up running across and subsequently buying a bunch of her books in paperback last week, after not having really thought about them for years, and now i see that Studio Ghibi is making one of her books into a movie. That's kind of random.

Anyway, DWJ writes this very very well-realized sf/f that is pretty clearly aimed at a "younger audience". but doesn't seem any shallower now that i'm a bit older. Am I the only fan of hers around here? Just curious.

Re:Diana Wynne Jones

[Bishop]

Am I the only fan of hers around here?

No.

It is a shame though that more people haven't read Diana Wynne Jones' books. She is an excellent author. The plots are often quite intricate and always well written. Usually her books are found in the juvenile section which is a great disservice to her and the readers. Few authors in the general fantasy section write as well as she.

I have no doubt

[SHEENmaster]

that those losers would run winshit and IIS, but couldn't a Linux/BSD box/router/firewall be changed to look like another OS?

If iptables filters all traffic then it should be trivial for the authors to let it use an nmap definitions db and pretend to be another box. For example if the db knows that winshit2k responds a certain way to a broken SYN request, iptables could act that way.

Slagging vs.Naval Jelly

[the eric conspiracy]

My inclination as a chemist would be to pry the cover off of the drive, remove the platters and then soak them in a tub of rust remover aka Naval Jelly. That should pretty much take care of any data and/or media capable of retaining data. Once done some baking soda will do a nice job of neutralizing the mess.

The next big thing...Network Computers

[tundog]

These things will be great! Its a computer that links directly to the net! No hard drive needed. I can't wait for DEC to release their prototype. It's gonna have a video-out connector too! I'm going to by some DEC stock before word of this gets out!

I'm sure you've all seen this but

[g_bit]

This is hilarious: http://www.lindows.com/lindows_screenshots_mseula. php

Re:netcraft survey says...OT

[1in10]

I didn't know fringe English cricketers were famous enough to have their voices remembered by slashdot people?!?!?!

http://www.cricinfo.com/link_to_database/PLAYERS /E NG/D/DAWSON_RKJ_01007824/index.html

The GNOME project should not use non-free software

[jbn-o]

According to their website, the GNOME project is part of GNU. GNU was founded to make the dream of software freedom a reality. The Bitstream Vera fonts offered to us here and now (the "beta" fonts) are not Free Software. Nobody is licensed to redistribute the fonts, so they cannot possibly qualify as Free Software. Therefore, it makes no sense why GNOME would do anything with these fonts at all. The GNOME project should wait until Bitstream releases the fonts under a Free Software license.

I'm disappointed that an official part of GNU would get involved with these non-free fonts. If you are interested in using only Free Software, I urge you to not obtain copies of these fonts under their current license. It's times like these one can measure how interested they are in pursuing freedom versus pursuing convenience. The freedoms of Free Software got us the community we treasure. Don't throw that away.

New government revelation

[Latent Heat]

It turns out that a Freedom of Information Act request has release the following transcript of a cell phone call between Gates and Balmer:

G: There are bugs in Windows?

B: Yes, bugs!

G: Many bugs?

B: Yes, many, many bugs! Very terrible stuff.

G: What about Office?

B: Yes, bugs there too?

G: What about Justice Department?

B: Don't worry, Justice Department will blame drivers . . .

Re:New government revelation

[The Bungi]

I got the other one about the Penguin Gallery, but is this supposed to be a joke?

For those that would like to see for themselves

[freeweed]

Ok, there's always telnet and netcat, but for the lazy:

http://grc.com/id/idserve.htm

Yeah, yeah, Steve's a bit of a tinfoiler, but his apps are always damn slick (anyone else remember Chromazone?)

Hey-- slaggin' hard drives was my idea!

[adjuster]

I bought the Dave Gingery Build Your Own Metalworking Shop From Scrap books a year or so ago, but haven't gotten around to building anything yet. It occurred to me, after reading the books, that dead hard drives would make a reasonable good source of aluminum. I guess I've been beaten to the punch.

I actually had a client request that I destroy some of their hard drives a couple years ago. Fun stuff, getting paid to break stuff. I dd'd /dev/zero over 'em, wrote some pseudorandom crap onto them after that, then popped the tops, pulled the platters out, and hit 'em with a belt sander-- all "on the clock"!

OMG you are sooo dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. The fonts have a TEMPORARY license that is not redistributable. Suck it, Trebeck.

Re:OMG you are sooo dumb

[jbn-o]

RTFA. The fonts have a TEMPORARY license that is not redistributable.

Then there's no reason why the GNOME project should not do as I indicated (which you would have noticed had you bothered to read the parent post):

The GNOME project should wait [to distribute the fonts] until Bitstream releases the fonts under a Free Software license.

Since you didn't read the parent post, I'm guessing you also didn't read the links I pointed to. I mention this because it might come as news to you that there is no exception given in software freedom for temporary licenses. When the fonts are free, GNOME (or whatever part of GNU would be more technically appropriate) should help users by distributing the fonts. As for the fonts before us here and now, GNOME should not distribute these fonts.

Re:OMG you are sooo dumb

[Cplus]

The coward was right, you are dumb. The licence will be free in a month after the fonts are completed. They are being released now under an interim licence. Interim means between now and then. The licence then will be free.

To reiterate, the fonts are not currently part of Gnome, or any other free software package, but are available from Bitstream. When they become free after they are completed then they will be part of free software packages.

Writing ones is not enough

[pr0ntab]

Writing one value over and over doesn't flip the field. This is a problem because the magic recovery methods look for the magnetic residue of field flips (and can guess how old they are due to some physical criteria that I can't recall). Writing ones lots and lots of times will make the 0's stick out harder "underneath". Unless you write it like more than a few hundred times.

Random bit patterns with equal mixes of 1's and 0's is ideal. I think the rule is 7 passes. You should always follow with a pass of 0 at the end, and then format it to make it look empty to a casual observer.

The angry Bill Gates is the real Bill Gates.

[Futurepower(R)]

See The angry Bill Gates is the real Bill Gates.

See also Has Gates' combativeness hurt Microsoft in court case?

See Is Bill Gates a Genius?

Cracked, not hacked.

[The Pi-Guy]

Everywhere around the net, people complain about that - and I've decided to do something. So, he CRACKED in, not hacked in, kthx :)

here comes my +Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

A good decade ago when I was in high school I did stupid stuff like this. Burned a floppy disk in my room. I figured it would just kind of melt a little bit and seperate like plastic, but it doesn't. It immediately caught on fire and sent this black soot stuff all over my room. Made a mess.

The poor geek in me feels sad when I hear about this kind of stuff. I could use some more hardware. I can't afford new stuff all the time, so I end up getting a lot of used equipment. Got a nice dual Alpha server that way, and it happily runs debian now. Got a nice retro IBM AT case that I remade to fit an ATX w/ Athlon. Hell, I got the Athlon secondhand too.

Data Processors International has Microsoft server

[BigBlockMopar]

Remember latest security flaws on the microsoft platform, and on what massive scale it today happens? That costs fortunes while the legal department of MSFT allows Bill Gates to walk away with a smile.

Interestingly, and on a somewhat related note, that credit card processor, Data Processors International, appears to run IIS as their primary webserver. Now, if that's their front line server despite its notoriety, are they running Microsoft software anywhere else? Probably.

What's the only good reason to run IIS? Almost instant integration with other Microsoft software (like databases full of credit card numbers?).

I'd peg >50% chance that a Microsoft bug had something to do with the fact that millions of credit card numbers were stolen...

Between that and Microsoft's continued arrogance, Bill's 1995 interview retains its relevance.

paperclips?

[commodoresloat]

Turn them in to paperclips!

Why? You need help writing a letter?

Re:.net.uk - Only �100 per annum

[Joel Rowbottom]

What utter rubbish. It's 500 to join (setup fee), then 100 per year.

Credit Card processors

[dragontooth]

I think that it is really disgusting that the third party processor in this whole mess was sheilded by the credit card companies.

I would like to think that it should be an inalienable right to know exactly who bent you over when you weren't looking and poked you in the bottom.

Having worked for a POS company at the start of my IT career I had the *ahem* privlege to work with a great deal of these carriers and it was hard enough for us to get hold of these companies, nevermind people who actually knew anything. And that was just to see why certain cc batches did or did not post etc.

They are way to secretive for my liking. There was the occasional time where a customer had to call them themselves for one reason or another and it was even harder for them. Most of them thought that the banks actually did the processing themselves.

The other thing is that in that business there is a bad case of small fish gets eaten by big fish. So many times have the companies changed ownership, merged or folded. Some lients were required to deal with several processors so that they could take the whole range of cards.

One of the most frustrating things is that out of the, say 15 companies we dealt with, I think around 10 had 0 as the button to push to disconnect rather than to get an operator. Bastards. Everyone knows to push that for an operator.

Another thing is that now I work for a Managed Service Provider in professional services. We have many, many clients in the financial services field. I vow that I will never, ever do business on-line when it comes to my finances. I don't think we have a single client that has a really solid, efficient code-base. Most of them have a large, bloated application, spread over several platforms that started as a smaller application. They have developers who would prefer to do the wrong thing rather than look stupid.

Title Sounds like...

[WanChan]

A Guy Ritchie film about programming cockney geezers.

"Linux, diamond, sunshine. I'll sort it aht..."

Overkill

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Why on earth write 0 and 1 - I don't see any need when you are going to melt the drive immediately after?

Tim

Re:Overkill

[Anonymous Coward]

And melting the drive isn't overkill?

If you're going to kill, you might as well overkill. You know it'll get the job done, and it's kinda fun.

One and Zero

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

To the computer, every bit on the hard drive is either one or zero.

However, that is not true in terms of magnetism. To make it easy, let's say that the first time a '1' bit is written to a specific spot on the disk, the strength of the magnetic field is exactly equal to 1 in some imaginary measure of magnetism. (This isn't really true...) If that bit is later set to '0', the strength of the magnetic field for that bit will actually be 0.00001 since it was a '1' before. The hard drive considers that to be '0', but if you want to recover erased data it is possible to look at that 0.00001 and see that the '0' used to be '1'.

Tim

Re:One and Zero

[Anonymous Coward]

so write the drive to all zeros then all ones then all zeros again.

Re:One and Zero

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

They can still reconstruct the drive's past. It gets a bit harder but it is still possible.

Tim

About the fonts

[zBoD]

How come the Vera Sans Mono Roman font is called "sans" (which I think means "sans serif")but it does have serifs. In particular on the letters 'i', 'j' and 'l'...

Re:About the fonts

[Anonymous Coward]

How come the Vera Sans Mono Roman font is called "sans" (which I think means "sans serif")but it does have serifs. In particular on the letters 'i', 'j' and 'l'...

"Bitstream is still tweaking them..."

By all means report it as a bug to Bitstream.

However, I know I prefer something to distinguish between the letters I and l (capital i and lowercase L) in my terminal windows, even if the font be generally sans serif.

Shame on those geeks!

[Xenophon Fenderson,]

Everybody knows pollution is a SYN!

Iraqi dudes

[Latent Heat]

I guess jokes about the Iraqi army dudes speaking in Arabic that gets translated into cartoon English haven't gone mainstream yet.

Re:Iraqi dudes

[The Bungi]

LOL. I guess not =)

Software freedom is important and worth supporting

[jbn-o]

Nothing you just said answers the points I have raised and repeated. I understand what "interim" means, but you don't seem to understand that software freedom does not recognize interim or pre-release licenses as an allowable exception. If you think this is in error, please point me to the part of the definition of Free Software that says otherwise.

If you're convinced the delay until the fonts are released under a Free Software license is trivial, then is no harm in waiting for the fonts to be released under a Free Software license. Plenty of other developers release software (including fonts) pre-releases under Free Software licenses. Bitstream could have too. This logic about using a non-free license because the fonts are being worked on is pure rubbish and should be totally rejected.

To reiterate, the fonts are not currently part of Gnome, or any other free software package, but are available from Bitstream.

Of course they're not part of "any other free software package"; they couldn't be. The fonts are not Free Software. So if they were a part of any software package, that package could not be a Free Software package. Furthermore, these non-free fonts are available from what appears to be a GNOME site (ftp.gnome.org). The Slashdot article points to the GNOME webpage where the link to the fonts can be found. GNOME (a part of GNU, GNU being the project started to provide a Free Software operating system) is allowing their resources to be used for non-free software. This point is so plainly obvious, I can only conclude some don't understand that point because they don't understand what software freedom means, or because they are willing to overlook the struggle of software freedom so long as there is $0 software involved.

Distributing these fonts under their current license from a part of the GNU project remains a serious problem for anyone who cares about what GNU means.

Historical accident (TLD authority got it wrong)

[smcv]

When the country TLDs were allocated, the domains were issued individually (rather than "everyone gets their ISO code", it was a case of "the USA is hereby allocated .us, Germany is hereby allocated .de" and so on).

Whoever allocated the United Kingdom's TLD assumed the ISO code was UK, since that was the obvious code for it. (We even call ourselves "the UK", so we've already got a de facto 2-letter name like the US does, right?)

Unfortunately, it turns out that when ISO codes were handed out, nobody was thinking about Northern Ireland, so the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was actually allocated GB. This matches the GB stickers seen on British cars which are temporarily abroad, the other commonly used name for the country is "Britain", and a lot of European languages call us things like Grosbrittanien or Grand Bretagne, so it does make sense to do that.

By the time the TLD authority realised there was a discrepancy, .uk domains were already in active use, and apparently they decided against deprecating .uk and allocating .gb instead. (Don't ask me why... maybe it took long enough to notice that the change would have seriously confused people.)

Why not just replace .uk domain?

[DulcetTone]

With state.uk.us ? We can do it, as someone had the foresight not to name a state Uklahoma. tone

Human Cremation Explosions, BioChips, and You...

[SolemnDragon]

This piece on cremation explosions should give some pretty good ideas. My favourite quote?

"Silicon implants in women who had had cosmetic breast surgery were also known to have exploded during cremation."

Anyone out there want their info to go when they do? And what's more- does anybody want to think about where those smart Bio Chips are gonna go, if they aren't slagged? Do you really want that around forever? (On the other hand, it would make one heck of a 'memory album' for the great-grandkids...)

Werner Klemperer says...OT

[macdmr]

Nobody escapes from Stalag 13!

Re: tonight on FOX!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tonight on FOX: the real Bill Gates; a response to the trashy interview presented earlier. (in this case, much much earlier)

We'll show you:
- The interview they didn't want you to see!
- The footage taken with Gates' own camera!
- How this genius' words were carefully twisted by the bad interview man and then presented in a way that comes out looking really bad for poor old Bill!

We'll show you an objective version of the interviews, not controlled or edited by Bill.

Includes quotes such as:
- "Bill is an excellent father!"
- "Bill really hates bugs and does want his developers to fix them."

Don't miss this 3-hour special, with a surprise ending (the answer is "0xa0000"), tonight only on FOX!