A code changes to Debian are submitted or accepted once every 13 seconds to 7 minutes. (depending on the time of day) Source: Debian Weekly News - March 28th
Linux kernel (version 2.2.13) has just under 2 million lines of code in it. And remember that each line of code has probably been changed at least once. Plus 2.4.x has lots of new code in it. And I'm not counting all of the software you would get with a average Linux distribution...
Dell has been the last holdout on using AMD chips; probably due to their cosy relationship with Intel. I havn't heard anything about them switching yet. Maybe you mean another mfg such as Compaq, Gateway, IBM etc. All of which are now using Athlon chips, and promoting that fact too!
All of the OEM's have been burnt by Intel recently by product shortages, bugs and low performence relative to the Athlon. Dell is the last holdout on using AMD processors.
Note that CmdrTaco never really did say that. Find "png" turns up nothing. OTOH now that it's been pointed out... Maybe I should buy him some asbestos underware for Christmas...
One interesting, and usefull, thing to do would be to intentionally put a harmless (say deleting a specific file that has almost no chance of existing like/usr/adfasdf.txt) peice of malicious code in one of the large open-source software packages such as Apache or Samba. Depending on how active the development is the code may be found in a day, or a year or even more. No-one knows as this has never been done before. But someone should try, if only to test if the usual security through peer-review will work at all.
After that a similar test (perferably a whole bunch to be statisticly valid) on some closed source software would be in order. Any MS programmers here?
This isn't as serious as you might think. Sure the "encryption" of crypt on QNX was cracked. But good security assumes that the crypt function returns the plain text anyway. All crypt is used for is to encrypt the passwords in/etc/passwd This was all fine and dandy 20 years ago when it took lots of time to decrypt passwords. But these days you can break through the passwords with brute force in a week or less. Good systems use shadow passwords. So the real passwords go in/etc/shadow, which is unreadable by anyone but root and anyone but root can't even look at the encrypted passwords.
Medievia, a mud, already does that. And to be honest I think those types of rules are a good thing, no sense unbalancing games by allowing people to buy their way to the top. That's for politics.
First, internet purchases should be taxed. Everyone is up in arms about Wal-Mart, etc, but the real people who will lose are the small local businesses. You run a small store, you pay taxes, and fight the big corporations. Suddenly, not only are you losing to the corporations, you are losing to the tax-free internet business. You go out of business quickly, because the online merchants have a clear advantage. Also, consider how much money the governments will lose (I'm not saying we need more or less taxes, but unless taxes are lowered overall, we need the same amount of money). The brick and mortar business are paying for roads, police and fire departments, local city improvements, etc with their taxes. Yet an internet business in the same area uses all of these things, yet doesn't have to pay for any of it? That doesn't make any sense at all. If they use all of the local amenities, they should pay the same local taxes as everyone else.
First of all internet retailers do pay taxes. They pay property taxes for their warehouses, any other taxes on companies, etc. However these taxes don't go to the local goverment where ever the product is being shipped, they go to where the retailer has it's warehouses, computer rooms and other staff.
So instead of leveling the playing field by introducing hard to implement sales taxes on the internet retailers why not abolish the sales taxes on the stone and morter retailers?
Then the only advantage left will be the fact that it's always cheaper to maintain a warehouse etc. then it is to maintain a big store in the middle of the downtown core. But that's always been true. Where I live there are tonnes of computer stores that try to escape property taxes and rent by setting up shop at the outer limits of the city. That isn't new...
Only when "standard" means often outdated, scattered across a thousand websites, and lacking real detail on anything but the common case.
You must be talking about different HOWTO's. I'm thinking of the Linux Documentation Project HOWTOs, and only them.
In the mean time I've installed and used both OpenBSD and many different Linux installations. I perfer the Linux HOWTO system to mailing list archives. For starters HOWTOs are standard and come with the installation. The OpenBSD FAQ isn't good enough, plenty of stuff is missing such as a HOWTO-style intro on setting up networking. (firewalls, nat etc.)
Manual pages just aren't enough. The Linux HOWTO's are a great resource. Even with a well written man page and other documentation it's still easy to get lost. A HOWTO OTOH can provide good step-by-step info for a beginner. The HOWTO's aren't supplimentry anymore, they are *standard* documentation.
Who's to say the DOS attackers won't simply setup their own IRC servers? They may not be very good sysadmins but surly there would be a few easy to setup Windows-based IRC servers. I also have to agree with the line that it may just encourage the kiddies. "c00l!!!!! W3 MaD3 a BuNCh 0f b1g s3rv3r ShTuD0wN!!!!!!! L3Ts d0 th1s Aga1N!!!!!!!"
One of the problems with standard UNIX backup utilities is the fact that they don't have a friendly interface. This isn't a problem for the sysadmin, if he needed a GUI I wouldn't hire him! But what about the secretary or other low-level employee that changes the tapes? Someone has to do that, and in many cases, such as smaller companies, the sysadmin isn't in there full time. A easy to use interface saying exactly what needs to be done is a must. Of course you just need a little prompt saying "Remove current tape" "Inset tape 1" but that can mean the difference between a backup system that gets used and one that is ignored.
"OK, so I do require the original code to generate this patch, but (assuming the patching software I use is efficient) the patch will not contain any of the original GPL code.
Good patches need to include some of the original code to be able to apply with context. If you don't include the original code the patch will not be able to apply on anything but the exact same version of the program.
As for the legality of those patches. To me they sound like they are a dirivitive work. You get the original source and produce a work, in this case your patch, that was dirived from the original program. The patch may not contain *any* code that was from the original program but it was dirived from that GPLed source.
OTOH This means that if you get a GPLed program and make a new program dirived from the original source you still have to use the GPL licence even if you have completely replaced every single part of the program, right?
For this we will probably need a court case to figure it out. And the GPL hasn't been tested in court anyway AFAIK. Perhaps that mod to Quake will go to court...
There is one problem with GPLing a patch. To make any use of the patch the user has to take the extra step of getting the GPLed program. This *might* be anoying enough to reduce the usage of such tricks if they are found to be a legal way of getting past the GPL.
The reason I use Debian instead of Slackware boils down to one simple thing, package managment. IMO The Debian style package managment with dependences and the ability to easilly download packages with apt-get (I have a cable modem BTW) blows all other package managment systems out of the water. The problem with the non-dependency package managment is that it is *so* easy to miss some important package, just imagine trying to upgrade libc without dependences. You can easilly do it with Debian or any RPM supporting distrib, good luck on Slackware!
That TCP/IP over email tunnel sounds quite like the problems space stations and probes have.Often it will take many hours to get a reply back if the probe is far away. NASA has spent lots of research money trying to figure out ways to get past this by allowing the probes to do their work automatically. But supporting something like TCP/IP will always be impossible, TCP connections have problems on *any* high latency connection, even a high-speed satelite connection. To combat this both sides use large send and receive buffers to keep bandwidth up, that's what the Allow Large Windows Linux kernel option is for.
Now just imagine what would happen if there was no copyright law. All of our OpenSource software under the GPL license would be completely unprotectable. Sure you could copy the software, but the source would be hidden. Not to mention that there would be a *huge* increase in the use of anti-copying devices such as dongles, special disks, DVD-style encryption. In all this would be *disaster* Sure it's great for those who want their music. But what about other stuff protected by copyrights?
The copyright system is essential to Free Softare. Without copyright protection all of our OpenSource software has no protection too. It truely does work both ways.
The breaking up of copyrights is not by any means inevitable. If companies start making their technological defenses against copying it doesn't matter that it's possible to copy the information, %99 of the user population won't have a clue of how to do it. There was recently an artical on Slashdot about end-to-end encryption. IOW The whole data line right into the (digital) monitor would be encrypted. Good luck making a perfect copy of *that*
New games can't be copied without a cd burner. They are just too big. Lots of high-end software needs dongles. Music companies are pushing protection systems, they'll probably fail in the end but it will be a long, drawn out war.
There is a all sorts of fuss about DeCSS. Enough that it may very well be the most heavilly mirrored peice of software in the world. You can even get it using DNS of all things! But %99 of the users still won't have a clue of how to copy a DVD. And the developers trying to make practical DVD players for Linux are probably going to be hit with lawsuits soon.
And for those who want to know, here's how you can get DeCSS using DNS. Just type the following lines as a single line under Linux and have fun!
I have to ask the question, Why is it ethical to spy on someone because of a history of bribes and then go and redistribute that intellegence information if it would be convenient? I can support %95 of the operations, the news paper reading and general keeping track of everything. But IMO using espionage, communications intellegence (probably wiretapping etc.) and recon satellites is just going to far for anything that is not a direct threat to *security*, not the economy. I think both sides would do well do back off. After all tit for tat is never a good policy.
Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the US steals economic secrets "with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites", and that there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic intelligence.
When asked why Europe was being spied on James Woolsey replied that it was because he had lost a poker game to a European and because of that it was completely ethical to do whatever he damn well pleased.
First of all, isn't the 'sys' temperature you quote the temp in the case? If so, how can it be higher than the CPU temp... hardly possible as long as you are cooling with the case air and no peltiers. MB sensors are hardly the most accurate thermometers...
What if the case sensor is in the hottest place on the motherboard? And the hottest place is *not* the CPU's. Quite possible actually. For instance harddrives, especially fast high-RPM models, can generate a lot of heat. If your harddrive is close to the case sensor your are going to get a lot of heat there.
The CPU isn't the only thing getting hot on your motherboard too. There are all sorts of other chips and even a power regulator for the CPU. All of those can get very hot.
There is one more possibility too... Depending on how the CPU fans are positioned they could be blowing hot air straight onto the MB heat sensor and taking in cool air from above the motherboard.
About 55 C is a bit on the hot side. Your probably best off getting a better heat sink for both of your CPU's and maybe adding yet another fan. Personally I perfer keeping my CPU's down in the 30 to 40 C range to reduce termal stress. All my systems have good enough cooling that they run at no more then 40 C (room temp 25 C) except for my junk Cyrix (got it for free as it's unstable due to being badly overclocked once) that runs at about 45 C
Having your system 10 C cooler is not suprising at all. When you CPU is doing nothing Linux puts the CPU into a low-power mode. The second anything happens, such as a interupt, the CPU is instantly switched back on. In this low-power mode very little heat is produced, you can guess the results of that.:)
Personally I wouldn't worry for now and keep on using Distributed.net Intel processors have pretty good heat tolerence. However while some people say that since the maximum temperature is 80 C you shouldn't worry at all I disagree. If you're running your CPU at 80 C you are going to cause quite a lot of problems! That's like always running your car at the red line. It won't wreck your engine immediatly but over a period of time will cause a lot of problems.
With this school the students are maintaining the UNIX-running webservers. Not expensive sysadmins. Usually schools have teachers or students maintaining things, not "real" sysadmins. So what you say is wrong.
Secondly it may be easier to fool around with a WinNT server and make it dance. But do you *really* know how to administer it? It's been said that WinNT allows any idiot the ability to screw up a network. Belive me, I know. I've had to clean up Windows networks before.
The problem with encrypting everything is that you can have your key subpoenaed too. If you don't turn over that you get hefty fines (for the defendant) or you case gets forfetured. (for the prosecuter) Encryption just doesn't do a single thing for you, except allow you to swallow those hefty fines if it's worth it. (company secrets might be worth keeping even if you have to pay millions in fines of course)
Destroying email will help you out quite a lot. Make sure that no email gets saved. And make sure that all deleted email is securely overwritten. Don't make backups and if you really need to save something hide it.
If your technology has already been put in just about every single new computer and is gaining support why not charge money? In the case of USB it's popular enough that charging for development documentation won't harm USB at all.
OSes have been talored for specific hardware for years. Compaq used to provide Compaq Dos with their machines, Tandy had Tandy Dos. Even now the Windows installation you get on your average desktop is customized a bit, mainly drivers and included software.
What *is* new though is the fact that a motherboard company decided to do that. I've *never* heard of an OS tweaked to run well on a specific peice of hardware. Very interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
A code changes to Debian are submitted or accepted once every 13 seconds to 7 minutes. (depending on the time of day) Source: Debian Weekly News - March 28th
Linux kernel (version 2.2.13) has just under 2 million lines of code in it. And remember that each line of code has probably been changed at least once. Plus 2.4.x has lots of new code in it. And I'm not counting all of the software you would get with a average Linux distribution...
Dell has been the last holdout on using AMD chips; probably due to their cosy relationship with Intel. I havn't heard anything about them switching yet. Maybe you mean another mfg such as Compaq, Gateway, IBM etc. All of which are now using Athlon chips, and promoting that fact too!
All of the OEM's have been burnt by Intel recently by product shortages, bugs and low performence relative to the Athlon. Dell is the last holdout on using AMD processors.
Note that CmdrTaco never really did say that. Find "png" turns up nothing. OTOH now that it's been pointed out... Maybe I should buy him some asbestos underware for Christmas...
One interesting, and usefull, thing to do would be to intentionally put a harmless (say deleting a specific file that has almost no chance of existing like /usr/adfasdf.txt) peice of malicious code in one of the large open-source software packages such as Apache or Samba. Depending on how active the development is the code may be found in a day, or a year or even more. No-one knows as this has never been done before. But someone should try, if only to test if the usual security through peer-review will work at all.
After that a similar test (perferably a whole bunch to be statisticly valid) on some closed source software would be in order. Any MS programmers here?
This isn't as serious as you might think. Sure the "encryption" of crypt on QNX was cracked. But good security assumes that the crypt function returns the plain text anyway. All crypt is used for is to encrypt the passwords in /etc/passwd This was all fine and dandy 20 years ago when it took lots of time to decrypt passwords. But these days you can break through the passwords with brute force in a week or less. Good systems use shadow passwords. So the real passwords go in /etc/shadow, which is unreadable by anyone but root and anyone but root can't even look at the encrypted passwords.
Medievia, a mud, already does that. And to be honest I think those types of rules are a good thing, no sense unbalancing games by allowing people to buy their way to the top. That's for politics.
First, internet purchases should be taxed. Everyone is up in arms about Wal-Mart, etc, but the real people who will lose are the small local businesses. You run a small store, you pay taxes, and fight the big corporations. Suddenly, not only are you losing to the corporations, you are losing to the tax-free internet business. You go out of business quickly, because the online merchants have a clear advantage. Also, consider how much money the governments will lose (I'm not saying we need more or less taxes, but unless taxes are lowered overall, we need the same amount of money). The brick and mortar business are paying for roads, police and fire departments, local city improvements, etc with their taxes. Yet an internet business in the same area uses all of these things, yet doesn't have to pay for any of it? That doesn't make any sense at all. If they use all of the local amenities, they should pay the same local taxes as everyone else.
First of all internet retailers do pay taxes. They pay property taxes for their warehouses, any other taxes on companies, etc. However these taxes don't go to the local goverment where ever the product is being shipped, they go to where the retailer has it's warehouses, computer rooms and other staff.
So instead of leveling the playing field by introducing hard to implement sales taxes on the internet retailers why not abolish the sales taxes on the stone and morter retailers?
Then the only advantage left will be the fact that it's always cheaper to maintain a warehouse etc. then it is to maintain a big store in the middle of the downtown core. But that's always been true. Where I live there are tonnes of computer stores that try to escape property taxes and rent by setting up shop at the outer limits of the city. That isn't new...
Only when "standard" means often outdated, scattered across a thousand websites, and lacking real detail on anything but the common case.
You must be talking about different HOWTO's. I'm thinking of the Linux Documentation Project HOWTOs, and only them.
In the mean time I've installed and used both OpenBSD and many different Linux installations. I perfer the Linux HOWTO system to mailing list archives. For starters HOWTOs are standard and come with the installation. The OpenBSD FAQ isn't good enough, plenty of stuff is missing such as a HOWTO-style intro on setting up networking. (firewalls, nat etc.)
Manual pages just aren't enough. The Linux HOWTO's are a great resource. Even with a well written man page and other documentation it's still easy to get lost. A HOWTO OTOH can provide good step-by-step info for a beginner. The HOWTO's aren't supplimentry anymore, they are *standard* documentation.
Who's to say the DOS attackers won't simply setup their own IRC servers? They may not be very good sysadmins but surly there would be a few easy to setup Windows-based IRC servers. I also have to agree with the line that it may just encourage the kiddies. "c00l!!!!! W3 MaD3 a BuNCh 0f b1g s3rv3r ShTuD0wN!!!!!!! L3Ts d0 th1s Aga1N!!!!!!!"
One of the problems with standard UNIX backup utilities is the fact that they don't have a friendly interface. This isn't a problem for the sysadmin, if he needed a GUI I wouldn't hire him! But what about the secretary or other low-level employee that changes the tapes? Someone has to do that, and in many cases, such as smaller companies, the sysadmin isn't in there full time. A easy to use interface saying exactly what needs to be done is a must. Of course you just need a little prompt saying "Remove current tape" "Inset tape 1" but that can mean the difference between a backup system that gets used and one that is ignored.
"OK, so I do require the original code to generate this patch, but (assuming the patching software I use is efficient) the patch will not contain any of the original GPL code.
Good patches need to include some of the original code to be able to apply with context. If you don't include the original code the patch will not be able to apply on anything but the exact same version of the program.
As for the legality of those patches. To me they sound like they are a dirivitive work. You get the original source and produce a work, in this case your patch, that was dirived from the original program. The patch may not contain *any* code that was from the original program but it was dirived from that GPLed source.
OTOH This means that if you get a GPLed program and make a new program dirived from the original source you still have to use the GPL licence even if you have completely replaced every single part of the program, right?
For this we will probably need a court case to figure it out. And the GPL hasn't been tested in court anyway AFAIK. Perhaps that mod to Quake will go to court...
There is one problem with GPLing a patch. To make any use of the patch the user has to take the extra step of getting the GPLed program. This *might* be anoying enough to reduce the usage of such tricks if they are found to be a legal way of getting past the GPL.
The reason I use Debian instead of Slackware boils down to one simple thing, package managment. IMO The Debian style package managment with dependences and the ability to easilly download packages with apt-get (I have a cable modem BTW) blows all other package managment systems out of the water. The problem with the non-dependency package managment is that it is *so* easy to miss some important package, just imagine trying to upgrade libc without dependences. You can easilly do it with Debian or any RPM supporting distrib, good luck on Slackware!
That TCP/IP over email tunnel sounds quite like the problems space stations and probes have.Often it will take many hours to get a reply back if the probe is far away. NASA has spent lots of research money trying to figure out ways to get past this by allowing the probes to do their work automatically. But supporting something like TCP/IP will always be impossible, TCP connections have problems on *any* high latency connection, even a high-speed satelite connection. To combat this both sides use large send and receive buffers to keep bandwidth up, that's what the Allow Large Windows Linux kernel option is for.
Now just imagine what would happen if there was no copyright law. All of our OpenSource software under the GPL license would be completely unprotectable. Sure you could copy the software, but the source would be hidden. Not to mention that there would be a *huge* increase in the use of anti-copying devices such as dongles, special disks, DVD-style encryption. In all this would be *disaster* Sure it's great for those who want their music. But what about other stuff protected by copyrights?
The copyright system is essential to Free Softare. Without copyright protection all of our OpenSource software has no protection too. It truely does work both ways.
The breaking up of copyrights is not by any means inevitable. If companies start making their technological defenses against copying it doesn't matter that it's possible to copy the information, %99 of the user population won't have a clue of how to do it. There was recently an artical on Slashdot about end-to-end encryption. IOW The whole data line right into the (digital) monitor would be encrypted. Good luck making a perfect copy of *that*
New games can't be copied without a cd burner. They are just too big. Lots of high-end software needs dongles. Music companies are pushing protection systems, they'll probably fail in the end but it will be a long, drawn out war.
There is a all sorts of fuss about DeCSS. Enough that it may very well be the most heavilly mirrored peice of software in the world. You can even get it using DNS of all things! But %99 of the users still won't have a clue of how to copy a DVD. And the developers trying to make practical DVD players for Linux are probably going to be hit with lawsuits soon.
And for those who want to know, here's how you can get DeCSS using DNS. Just type the following lines as a single line under Linux and have fun!
dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr |
grep '^c..\..*A' |
sort |
cut -b5-36 |
perl -e 'while(){print pack("H32",$_)}' |
gzip -d
I have to ask the question, Why is it ethical to spy on someone because of a history of bribes and then go and redistribute that intellegence information if it would be convenient? I can support %95 of the operations, the news paper reading and general keeping track of everything. But IMO using espionage, communications intellegence (probably wiretapping etc.) and recon satellites is just going to far for anything that is not a direct threat to *security*, not the economy. I think both sides would do well do back off. After all tit for tat is never a good policy.
Former United States Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey confirmed in Washington this week that the US steals economic secrets "with espionage, with communications [intelligence], with reconnaissance satellites", and that there was now "some increased emphasis" on economic intelligence.
When asked why Europe was being spied on James Woolsey replied that it was because he had lost a poker game to a European and because of that it was completely ethical to do whatever he damn well pleased.
First of all, isn't the 'sys' temperature you quote the temp in the case? If so, how can it be higher than the CPU temp... hardly possible as long as you are cooling with the case air and no peltiers. MB sensors are hardly the most accurate thermometers...
What if the case sensor is in the hottest place on the motherboard? And the hottest place is *not* the CPU's. Quite possible actually. For instance harddrives, especially fast high-RPM models, can generate a lot of heat. If your harddrive is close to the case sensor your are going to get a lot of heat there.
The CPU isn't the only thing getting hot on your motherboard too. There are all sorts of other chips and even a power regulator for the CPU. All of those can get very hot.
There is one more possibility too... Depending on how the CPU fans are positioned they could be blowing hot air straight onto the MB heat sensor and taking in cool air from above the motherboard.
BTW The idle instruction is HLT.
About 55 C is a bit on the hot side. Your probably best off getting a better heat sink for both of your CPU's and maybe adding yet another fan. Personally I perfer keeping my CPU's down in the 30 to 40 C range to reduce termal stress. All my systems have good enough cooling that they run at no more then 40 C (room temp 25 C) except for my junk Cyrix (got it for free as it's unstable due to being badly overclocked once) that runs at about 45 C
Having your system 10 C cooler is not suprising at all. When you CPU is doing nothing Linux puts the CPU into a low-power mode. The second anything happens, such as a interupt, the CPU is instantly switched back on. In this low-power mode very little heat is produced, you can guess the results of that. :)
Personally I wouldn't worry for now and keep on using Distributed.net Intel processors have pretty good heat tolerence. However while some people say that since the maximum temperature is 80 C you shouldn't worry at all I disagree. If you're running your CPU at 80 C you are going to cause quite a lot of problems! That's like always running your car at the red line. It won't wreck your engine immediatly but over a period of time will cause a lot of problems.
With this school the students are maintaining the UNIX-running webservers. Not expensive sysadmins. Usually schools have teachers or students maintaining things, not "real" sysadmins. So what you say is wrong.
Secondly it may be easier to fool around with a WinNT server and make it dance. But do you *really* know how to administer it? It's been said that WinNT allows any idiot the ability to screw up a network. Belive me, I know. I've had to clean up Windows networks before.
The problem with encrypting everything is that you can have your key subpoenaed too. If you don't turn over that you get hefty fines (for the defendant) or you case gets forfetured. (for the prosecuter) Encryption just doesn't do a single thing for you, except allow you to swallow those hefty fines if it's worth it. (company secrets might be worth keeping even if you have to pay millions in fines of course)
Destroying email will help you out quite a lot. Make sure that no email gets saved. And make sure that all deleted email is securely overwritten. Don't make backups and if you really need to save something hide it.
If your technology has already been put in just about every single new computer and is gaining support why not charge money? In the case of USB it's popular enough that charging for development documentation won't harm USB at all.
OSes have been talored for specific hardware for years. Compaq used to provide Compaq Dos with their machines, Tandy had Tandy Dos. Even now the Windows installation you get on your average desktop is customized a bit, mainly drivers and included software.
What *is* new though is the fact that a motherboard company decided to do that. I've *never* heard of an OS tweaked to run well on a specific peice of hardware. Very interesting.