Hmmm, I'd love to see an "Enforce Godwin's Law" in my Comment Options on Slashdot. Just check the little box and everything is cut off at the first post mentioning Nazis or Hitler.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
...he's about to get a letter from my lawyer, since I'm suing him too. He is obviously violating my patent on Seeking potentially dubious legal advice on an
Internet based chat forum.
"Catastrophic failure is usually idiocy's best reward." BigBlockMopar
Mmm, so editing a well documented text file is hard, while drilling down through a badly documented menu system (which reinstalls Visual Basic Scripting in the background without asking) is easy...
...you'll also start seeing memos that tell ya to shred all the important documents specifically stating that the memo itself is included in the list of douments to shred.
The ability to make a few minor changes without having to reboot.
In a production server this is a Good Thing. I know this has been hit on in a lot of posts, but a server should just be there period. If your average random websurfer hits a 404 on your site (based say on a Google search) he's not going to think "maybe they're just applying the latsest Service Pack because of Code Red IV" - he's going to back up and click on the next link.
Now as far as "ease of use" goes, I find hand editing the Apache config files to be a lot more comfortable than drilling down through half a zillion cryptic configuration menues. I know that I made a change in line 23 of httpd.conf - so how much do I know exactly about the changes made (to both the application and the underlying OS) when I apply the latest update patch to IIS?
Give me "ease of control" over "ease of use" any day...
At my moms work, if their email servers go down, the whole company shuts down, all 10,000 people.
...sounds like email is "mission critical" to them. So make sure it works.
People have become too depenedent on email in some cases. They can't do their job without it.
So what? People have become way too dependant on elecrticity too, and we won't even mention fire... Just keep the PHBs happy and it's all good.
Every time a new virus comes out the spreads through email they have to shut down the whole system because all the employees are too stupid and still don't know better then to open the attachments.
Sounds like a bad sysadmin to me... why give users the chance to blow their foot off?
But email has improved their productivity by at least 25% and the cost is worth it to them.
Damn, so who is this company? A 25% increase in productivity just because Joe Blow has email? Now, if it made my penis bigger or increased my chances of meeting "Naughty Teen Coeds" I'd believe you;)
The thing I hate most about email is that it is so impersonal. People fire people though emails.
They applogize to them thourgh them, ask people out on dates.
Yup, they sure do.
It gives the anti-social a way to not interact. I hate that
*shrug* so how exactly is it "anti-social"? There are people that I "talk to" on a regular basis that the only proof I have that they exist is via email/im/whatever... Maybe I'm way off base as to who these people *are* that I'm dealing with (possibility), but I still don't get "anti-social"...
Now it's getting late here, but my anti-social North American ass is off to play StarCraft with some dude from Australia...
TaoJones
"Every 24 hours seven people step on mines in Afghanistan. Be careful not to be one of them today and tomorrow." iranian.com
I don't even buy that it's 'easier' to secure BSD.
It may take a few less keystrokes out of the box, on any particular version, but that's where it ends.
Nope, completely different worlds. When I update an app (say, pine for example) on my *nix box, that one app is all that changes. If I switch over to the latest and greatest version of Outlook on a Windows box I have to check to make sure that Windows Scripting Host or IIS hasn't automagically been installed too.
Running *real* live systems, it takes the same amount of diligence and effort to keep them secured. You have to be aware of each new application you install, and how it impacts your security. It's no different on any OS.
So where is the source code or documentation that tells me that this particular service pack installes completely unrelated software that is installed without even asking me if I want to install it?
Win2k is not hard to secure; neither is any other MS system.
Uhm, Code Red was based on an exploit that was how old? There is IMHO a difference in the mindset of *nix admins vs. MSCSEs. *nix admins want to control their boxes, MCSEs just want them to work.
"Anyways, you are precisely right - the best admin is at heart a lazy, worthless bastard who will do anything, script anything, to get out of work." danheskett
scrytch wrote:
At least when I buy my coffee, I own it.
Oh sure, right now you do - but wait untill the DMCA (Digital Millenium Coffee Act) gets pushed though by Starbuck's lobbiests and Juan Valdez. Then you'll be buying the right to savor the thick, rich Columbian coffee - but you won't be able to share it with a friend, or add "unapproved" condiments to it. If the EULA (uhm, you did read the fine print on the bottom of the cup, right?) says "no cinnamon" in your latte, then no cinnamon for you!
"If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?" Monty Python
Orbitalb wrote:
>I'm sure stem cell researchers have nothing but > good intentions. However, good ends don't
> always justify the means you take to reach
> them. Remember, Dr. Frankenstein thought his
> biological research would benefit the world,
> but instead of a medical revolution that
> created life... the result of his work was a
> monstrocity that killed people.
The difference between ActiveWorlds (and similar) sites is that they are little more than avatar chatrooms with flashier graphics. The emphasis is still on talking rather than taking action.
I agree wholeheartedly. I've piddled around with several of the interactive "build your own world" apps out there including OuterWorlds (a blatant plug for a friend there BTW), but they all fall short on certain aspects that various Moos and Muds have had down pat for years. LambdaMOO for example let me not only create my own "environment" (albiet text based), but also to program new objects into the environment. Couple that with a truly interactive social/political structure and you have a level of interaction that I haven't seen in any of the 3D equivalents out there - yet...
BTW - kudos to Pavel Curtis for LambdaMOO, he'd make an interesting/. interview (hint hint)...
> what books would you recommend for a desert-island library collection?
Well, based on that, the whole Foxfire series is a must have. How can you re-invent TCP/IP on a desert island if you can't survive? A definite must read, and if nothing else, knowing how to brew your own is about the closest you're going to come to "free beer";)
Wah spoke:
> How about this one. Not realizing how
> incredibly powerful these suckers are, they
> dispose of the ones that don't work (i.e. kill > blood cells)
> in a less than perfect fashion.
You think that's bad? Suppose this technology becomes common (as nanotech is eventually supposed to do). Now suppose that anybody with access to this ubiquitous technology decides to create a strain of the critters that targets human red blood cells...
Now that's the kinda headline that would usually make me scroll on past and not read the article - to me, Stallman saying "free software is good" is akin to the American Dairy Association saying "milk does a body good".
Reading on though:
He pointed that while nearly everyone cooks, "unless you're great, you probably use recipes. You've probably had the experience of getting a recipe from a friend -- and unless you're a total neophyte, you probably have also had the experience of changing the recipe. If you've made changes and you make it for your friends, and they like it, you can write down your changes for them." Imagine, he said, if recipes were packaged in black boxes, unavailable for inspection.
Now that's good. It's a nice little metaphor than non-geek buisness type folk can actually understand. It'll make a hell of a lot more sense than trying to explain "free as in free beer" to a PHB.
A friend of mine has a telephone number that sounds exactly like "Mary had a Little Lamb" when dialed on a standard (US) touchtone phone. Guess I'd better warn her to change it before the RIAA stormtroopers come to collect...
IntlHarvester wrote:
Is this only a problem in PPTP mode or something?
IANABT (I Am Not A Broadband Technician), but I'd guess that it's mostly an issue for folks running PPPoE and such where the Alcatel unit itself has an IP address. I've lucked out with my DSL provider (HellSouth - er, BellSouth to those not familiar with 'em;) and managed to keep mine running as a bridge so far (easier to deal with under Linux - no messing with the extra overhead PPPoE adds on).
> I guess I'm just trying to say that space is
> the coolest thing out there.
Okay, I won't pick any nits and go off on the thermodynamic propeties of a vacuum;)
> Back in the 'good old days' only the biggest
> and baddest people (USA and USSR) could send
> people up there.
The phrase "good old days" is kinda relative... I figure I know the timeline you're talking about, but to me the phrase brings up different memories. I missed out on Sputnik, Mercury 6, the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova-Nikolayeva), the whole glorious Apollo series...
My memories start kicking in with Skylab and the Apollo/Soyuz docking in '75.
> Now its trickeld down to gameshow winner. My
> question is: Is this a good thing?
I honestly don't know. From my frame of reference it seemed people were getting excited by the first few shuttle launchs (not to mention Challenger), now we're lucky if they even make the news.
I'll just keep watching and hoping that we'll keep going - people spend too much time joking/bitching about recent failures while the things that really work get buried on page Z (if they're reported at all).
Make all the lame metric conversion jokes you want, I'll keep following things like Pathfinder, NEAR, Cassini (& Huygens soon), Deep Space 1, Stardust, and you go Galileo!
IANAA (I Am Not An Astrophysicist) but, is it possible that these critters could be deorbited in a way to maximise the chance that they could survive reentry? Depending on how well they could be aimed, that would give the Pentagon 74 brand new orbiting bombs...
Things will go wrong, and people will die, but Jeeze peoples, we're still learning how to do this fancy "keeping people alive in space" shit. Things will go wrong, and bad things will happen, but we must learn to survive and thrive in the harsh environments outside of our biosphere.
Keep crackin those lame ass jokes about NASA crashing things into Mars and ignoring things like Galileo, which should have been dead a long time ago. Or what about the fact that we've got a close up view of a friggin near Earth asteroid. I won't even mention the Mars shit that worked... Oh well, maybe I will;)
Yes, they're throwing a buttload of money into things that might not be perfect, things will break and people might die... but we're exploring; we're going "boldly where no man has gone before."
It might not mean squat to you, but I remember where I was on July 4th of '97 (following the bouncing ball). I cried for Challenger, and I look at Eros in awe.
Now none of it directly affects me - it should all mean jack shit to me... But it's all "News for nerds, stuff that matters" to me.
First of all: uhm, yeah, I guess that lil submission was badly phrased. I ran across a "the sky is falling" email and jumped the gun a bit. My bad.
Yes, it looks like the folks in question did some stupid shit and got caught. I've got no problem with that. Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. What I'm worried about is the precedence this sets for law enforcement to get the "they got hacker tools, therefore they must be hackers" mentality. A few quotes from the various threads:
ConceptJunkie: As was stated before, if you're not doing anything illegal, owning the tools (or the software) is not a crime
bridgette The pipe would have to have at least *some* drug residue to be consiered paraphenelia.
...make me want to ask: What color is the sky in your world?
Sorry, but I have been busted for "paraphernalia", namely a pack of rolling papers. Nevermind the fact that I also had a pouch of tobacco in my pocket and not a trace of anything illegal - I was guilty of a serious crime: I had long hair and an earring. I fit a profile so I spent several hours in jail. This is the real world, and it happens all the time.
When it comes down to a decision on the part of law enforcement, you are pretty much automatically the Bad Guy. Your intent pretty much means squat - tell it to the judge.
...& as to the "if they'd just taken 30 seconds to read it" faction, when I submitted this there were 289 submissions lined up before mine. Now at 30 seconds a pop that's a bit more than 6 days of reading.
Now, as an act of penance I will pour hot grits down my pants and get stoned with Natalie Portman.
> In short, yeah, it's perfectly valid to learn > by book... but there is really no substitute > for experience and trial by fire.
Hehe - wish I had a dime for every time I've wanted to set The Book on fire & lob it at one of the MCSE/CNA/whatever at work who couldn't ping localhost if their lives depended on it...
I love the idea, but I think you'd have a hard time finding anybody to host such a beast. Besides supporting what would probably be a huge amount of traffic - and some pretty funky looking packets, you've also got to consider what kind of collateral damage it could cause. Somebody mentioned that the MS test box has had it's DNS servers taken down already...
Anything remotely "near" the beast would probably take quite a beating too.
Or the gamma ray burst from a quasar on the edge of the universe.
That one did get my attention. So besides the known big bad nasties out there, there are a lot more bigger, badder, nastier ones we have no clue about...
Slashdot Mirror
Bummer...
"Is a parrot considered poultry?.?..?..."
Unknown
Hmmm, I'd love to see an "Enforce Godwin's Law" in my Comment Options on Slashdot. Just check the little box and everything is cut off at the first post mentioning Nazis or Hitler.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
Mark Twain
I'm sure J.R.R. would have just loved one of the glowing Burger King Lord of the Rings mugs...
"Catastrophic failure is usually idiocy's best reward." BigBlockMopar
I'll take hard for $200 Alex...
The ability to make a few minor changes without having to reboot.
In a production server this is a Good Thing. I know this has been hit on in a lot of posts, but a server should just be there period. If your average random websurfer hits a 404 on your site (based say on a Google search) he's not going to think "maybe they're just applying the latsest Service Pack because of Code Red IV" - he's going to back up and click on the next link.
Now as far as "ease of use" goes, I find hand editing the Apache config files to be a lot more comfortable than drilling down through half a zillion cryptic configuration menues. I know that I made a change in line 23 of httpd.conf - so how much do I know exactly about the changes made (to both the application and the underlying OS) when I apply the latest update patch to IIS?
Give me "ease of control" over "ease of use" any day...
...sounds like email is "mission critical" to them. So make sure it works.
So what? People have become way too dependant on elecrticity too, and we won't even mention fire... Just keep the PHBs happy and it's all good.
Sounds like a bad sysadmin to me... why give users the chance to blow their foot off?
Damn, so who is this company? A 25% increase in productivity just because Joe Blow has email? Now, if it made my penis bigger or increased my chances of meeting "Naughty Teen Coeds" I'd believe you
Yup, they sure do.
*shrug* so how exactly is it "anti-social"? There are people that I "talk to" on a regular basis that the only proof I have that they exist is via email/im/whatever... Maybe I'm way off base as to who these people *are* that I'm dealing with (possibility), but I still don't get "anti-social"...
Now it's getting late here, but my anti-social North American ass is off to play StarCraft with some dude from Australia...
TaoJones
"Every 24 hours seven people step on mines in Afghanistan. Be careful not to be one of them today and tomorrow." iranian.com
Nope, completely different worlds. When I update an app (say, pine for example) on my *nix box, that one app is all that changes. If I switch over to the latest and greatest version of Outlook on a Windows box I have to check to make sure that Windows Scripting Host or IIS hasn't automagically been installed too.
So where is the source code or documentation that tells me that this particular service pack installes completely unrelated software that is installed without even asking me if I want to install it?
Uhm, Code Red was based on an exploit that was how old? There is IMHO a difference in the mindset of *nix admins vs. MSCSEs. *nix admins want to control their boxes, MCSEs just want them to work.
"Anyways, you are precisely right - the best admin is at heart a lazy, worthless bastard who will do anything, script anything, to get out of work." danheskett
At least when I buy my coffee, I own it.
Oh sure, right now you do - but wait untill the DMCA (Digital Millenium Coffee Act) gets pushed though by Starbuck's lobbiests and Juan Valdez. Then you'll be buying the right to savor the thick, rich Columbian coffee - but you won't be able to share it with a friend, or add "unapproved" condiments to it. If the EULA (uhm, you did read the fine print on the bottom of the cup, right?) says "no cinnamon" in your latte, then no cinnamon for you!
"If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?" Monty Python
>I'm sure stem cell researchers have nothing but > good intentions. However, good ends don't
> always justify the means you take to reach
> them. Remember, Dr. Frankenstein thought his
> biological research would benefit the world,
> but instead of a medical revolution that
> created life... the result of his work was a
> monstrocity that killed people.
Mmm, so it looks like
I agree wholeheartedly. I've piddled around with several of the interactive "build your own world" apps out there including OuterWorlds (a blatant plug for a friend there BTW), but they all fall short on certain aspects that various Moos and Muds have had down pat for years. LambdaMOO for example let me not only create my own "environment" (albiet text based), but also to program new objects into the environment. Couple that with a truly interactive social/political structure and you have a level of interaction that I haven't seen in any of the 3D equivalents out there - yet...
BTW - kudos to Pavel Curtis for LambdaMOO, he'd make an interesting
The submission did include the phrase:
;)
> what books would you recommend for a desert-island library collection?
Well, based on that, the whole Foxfire series is a must have. How can you re-invent TCP/IP on a desert island if you can't survive? A definite must read, and if nothing else, knowing how to brew your own is about the closest you're going to come to "free beer"
Wah spoke:
> How about this one. Not realizing how
> incredibly powerful these suckers are, they
> dispose of the ones that don't work (i.e. kill > blood cells)
> in a less than perfect fashion.
You think that's bad? Suppose this technology becomes common (as nanotech is eventually supposed to do). Now suppose that anybody with access to this ubiquitous technology decides to create a strain of the critters that targets human red blood cells...
Reading on though:
Now that's good. It's a nice little metaphor than non-geek buisness type folk can actually understand. It'll make a hell of a lot more sense than trying to explain "free as in free beer" to a PHB.
IntlHarvester wrote:
;) and managed to keep mine running as a bridge so far (easier to deal with under Linux - no messing with the extra overhead PPPoE adds on).
Is this only a problem in PPTP mode or something?
IANABT (I Am Not A Broadband Technician), but I'd guess that it's mostly an issue for folks running PPPoE and such where the Alcatel unit itself has an IP address. I've lucked out with my DSL provider (HellSouth - er, BellSouth to those not familiar with 'em
Hey now, I thought Frank kicked butt in Shoemaker of Dune and Foot Fetish Boy 'O Dune...
> I guess I'm just trying to say that space is
;)
> the coolest thing out there.
Okay, I won't pick any nits and go off on the thermodynamic propeties of a vacuum
> Back in the 'good old days' only the biggest
> and baddest people (USA and USSR) could send
> people up there.
The phrase "good old days" is kinda relative... I figure I know the timeline you're talking about, but to me the phrase brings up different memories. I missed out on Sputnik, Mercury 6, the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova-Nikolayeva), the whole glorious Apollo series...
My memories start kicking in with Skylab and the Apollo/Soyuz docking in '75.
> Now its trickeld down to gameshow winner. My
> question is: Is this a good thing?
I honestly don't know. From my frame of reference it seemed people were getting excited by the first few shuttle launchs (not to mention Challenger), now we're lucky if they even make the news.
I'll just keep watching and hoping that we'll keep going - people spend too much time joking/bitching about recent failures while the things that really work get buried on page Z (if they're reported at all).
Make all the lame metric conversion jokes you want, I'll keep following things like Pathfinder, NEAR, Cassini (& Huygens soon), Deep Space 1, Stardust, and you go Galileo!
IANAA (I Am Not An Astrophysicist) but, is it possible that these critters could be deorbited in a way to maximise the chance that they could survive reentry? Depending on how well they could be aimed, that would give the Pentagon 74 brand new orbiting bombs...
Just an idea, not sure how feasible it is.
Things will go wrong, and people will die, but Jeeze peoples, we're still learning how to do this fancy "keeping people alive in space" shit. Things will go wrong, and bad things will happen, but we must learn to survive and thrive in the harsh environments outside of our biosphere.
;)
Keep crackin those lame ass jokes about NASA crashing things into Mars and ignoring things like Galileo, which should have been dead a long time ago. Or what about the fact that we've got a close up view of a friggin near Earth asteroid. I won't even mention the Mars shit that worked... Oh well, maybe I will
Yes, they're throwing a buttload of money into things that might not be perfect, things will break and people might die... but we're exploring; we're going "boldly where no man has gone before."
It might not mean squat to you, but I remember where I was on July 4th of '97 (following the bouncing ball). I cried for Challenger, and I look at Eros in awe.
Now none of it directly affects me - it should all mean jack shit to me... But it's all "News for nerds, stuff that matters" to me.
It's all some pretty cool shit...
First of all: uhm, yeah, I guess that lil submission was badly phrased. I ran across a "the sky is falling" email and jumped the gun a bit. My bad.
Yes, it looks like the folks in question did some stupid shit and got caught. I've got no problem with that. Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. What I'm worried about is the precedence this sets for law enforcement to get the "they got hacker tools, therefore they must be hackers" mentality. A few quotes from the various threads:
ConceptJunkie:
As was stated before, if you're not doing anything illegal, owning the tools (or the software) is not a crime
bridgette
The pipe would have to have at least *some* drug residue to be consiered paraphenelia.
...make me want to ask: What color is the sky in your world?
Sorry, but I have been busted for "paraphernalia", namely a pack of rolling papers. Nevermind the fact that I also had a pouch of tobacco in my pocket and not a trace of anything illegal - I was guilty of a serious crime: I had long hair and an earring. I fit a profile so I spent several hours in jail. This is the real world, and it happens all the time.
When it comes down to a decision on the part of law enforcement, you are pretty much automatically the Bad Guy. Your intent pretty much means squat - tell it to the judge.
...& as to the "if they'd just taken 30 seconds to read it" faction, when I submitted this there were 289 submissions lined up before mine. Now at 30 seconds a pop that's a bit more than 6 days of reading.
Now, as an act of penance I will pour hot grits down my pants and get stoned with Natalie Portman.
> In short, yeah, it's perfectly valid to learn
> by book... but there is really no substitute
> for experience and trial by fire.
Hehe - wish I had a dime for every time I've wanted to set The Book on fire & lob it at one of the MCSE/CNA/whatever at work who couldn't ping localhost if their lives depended on it...
I love the idea, but I think you'd have a hard time finding anybody to host such a beast. Besides supporting what would probably be a huge amount of traffic - and some pretty funky looking packets, you've also got to consider what kind of collateral damage it could cause. Somebody mentioned that the MS test box has had it's DNS servers taken down already...
Anything remotely "near" the beast would probably take quite a beating too.
That one did get my attention. So besides the known big bad nasties out there, there are a lot more bigger, badder, nastier ones we have no clue about...
fun thought ;)