It's a nice story and perfectly proves my point (Linux being installed not because of bad OOXML press, it being free as in speech or Ballmer throwing chairs but because it's free as in beer and less of a hassle to install). EasyUbuntu looks nice, too.
Re:The fact that it's on mainstream press..
on
The Next Leap for Linux
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· Score: 4, Insightful
You're right about the mainstream press 'Next Leap', but apart from the Excel 2007 "problem" I don't see Digg, Vista's network performance, the OOXML fiasco or all those freedom politics helping to get non-techies to consider switching. Even the Excel trouble didn't get too much bad mainstream press 'round here.
Linux's biggest mainstream advance over Vista will probably stay it's lower price for the next few years.
Code signing is not a legal way to prohibit an enterprise from running whatever software they please to on their computers, it's a technical, legally backed way to prohibit a game console user from running unsigned software on their Microsoft game console.
By legal way I meant some kind of contract prohibiting whomever signed it from running anything non-Microsoft (and thus non-Genuine Advantage) on whatever kind of (usually non-msft) hardware said signer was using.
A) They're renting webspace, not a dedicated box. B) The ISP's *gateway* gets the spoofed ARP replies, their content is being reverse proxied thru the attackers server (why not, it may after all be the weakest link) C) They didn't secure their box.
If you haven't done so yet, reading and laughing about German politics is a great idea to spend some boring office hours. American Slashdot readers may already know what it's like to have a moron rule your country, but in everything privacy-related Germany's totally unbeatable.
April 2007. A new law about data retention has just passed the german government[1]. Called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"[2] it forces communication providers to introduce an identification liability. As an example this means no more anonymous E-Mail in Germany. IP addresses of anyone sending and accessing their E-Mail accounts must be stored and retained for a few months (6 IIRC). IIRC this also affects other types of communication, including forced storing of a web site visitor's IP address.
October 2007. A german court decides to outlaw storing of IP addresses by web pages. Anybody see a pattern here?
This is almost as absurd as a court deciding to outlaw not killing people. It may seem completely moronic, but since those guys will have better salaries than you they ARE right.
IANAL but AFAIK there's no legal way for Microsoft to force you not to use software from other vendors, so it's about not using non-geniune Microsoft products.
What exactly is the goal of this new program? They offer businesses the chance to license their (currently mislicensed) installed versions of WinXP, don't seem to offer a huge discount on that and want an assurance of no more mislicensing and an audit?
Why would any business do that instead of just buying a normal volume license? What's the advantage in this?
I call bull on "run identically in all major browsers and operating systems".
Actually they meant "IE, Firefox and Safari on Win and Mac OS". Even on Windows, only one of four Apps really works in Opera (Adobe's own Flex showcase gets caught up in my popup blocker, the VW thingie doesn't work at all, Buzzword serves up an "unsupported Browser" error. Picnik works).
To quote the ubiquitous 'pedia, Flex is "a software development kit and an IDE for a group of technologies initially released in March of 2004 by Macromedia to support the development and deployment of cross platform, rich Internet applications based on their proprietary Macromedia Flash platform.".
They probably can't insert it into every connection, but the gateway will extremely probably have an arp cache which would mean it's inserted into 100% of all requests as long as the gateway's cache is compromised and 0% of all requests for the periods inbetween. TFA doesn't exactly mention how often and when this happens, but I interpreted it as "into some requests all the time". I don't know the TTL an entry in the gateway's ARP cache will receive but imagine it to be in the order of a few hours rather than minutes.
Does anyone understand why such an attack would be launched targeting a security site with a userbase that probably won't be too vulnerable to an IE-specific well-known and detected exploit?
If this really is an ARP-spoofing based attack all other sites in their providers location ought to be vulnerable too and would make better targets, don't you think?
By the way: what's the point in occasinally inserting the attack code (it will get detected sooner or later, no matter how often it's inserted, 100% of pageviews over 2 days would probably be better than 10% over a week)?
Actually, there are several Skype compatible WLan enabled handsets that allow you to use Skype without your computer. Registration will have to be done via PC but the rest works without it.
TFS is a bit unclear on this, but the patent is about moving your cursor over checkbox #1 in a given list, holding down a given mouse button and dragging the cursor over a number of other checkboxes in the same list, changing their state to whatever state #1 assumed after you pressed the button. It's still very but not that stupid.
I'd assume the competition in the IM segment to be a bit too fierce for significantly more banners than MSN Messenger or ICQ feature which doesn't include non-maskable popups and that kind of stuff. Selling E-Mail addresses would surely work but could provoke a storm of complaints and probably even legal problems in some jurisdictions.
Making *existing* features premium-only would probably disgruntle users and cause many to switch (back) to MSN Messenger or ICQ - again, there are lots of IM apps and they aren't gonna ignore a competitors mistake, especially if it really annoys users.
The idea of paid-for skins, pictures and whatnot seems to be the most realistic one, but opposed to AT&T and Verizon, eBay needs to get the user to provide credit card details or similar which I imagine to be a rather huge barrier in the spontaneous $.99 image and ringtone market.
Just out of interest: Of everybody you've ever hear talking about Skype, how many mentioned the free Skype-Skype calls and how many mentioned you can pay to call others, too? (It's about 50:1 with quite a lot of non-techies in the 50 and an ex-coworker in the 1 group...)
Assuming Apple aren't liars and the iPhone really runs (a slimmed down version of) OS X that would, in turns, mean they're not allowing developers to develop software for their PCs (by PC I mean "personal computer", not "x86 machine running MS Windows" as mac loonies would use it) as well?
I too would like the idea of a single timezone for the whole world, but unlike DST I think having a similar set of day/night hours is a rather important thing, so no global UTC for me.
Sorry to say this so harshly, but: Fuck the spirit of the fucking GPL. Everybody's always talking about the Evil Windows Tax and how Linux would take the world in a matter of seconds if driver support was better. And you know what? It's not gonna fucking happen as long as this permanent whine about "violating the spirit of the GPL" and "evilness of binary drivers" persists. If I understand this right, free software is about being free as in freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom of releasing motherfucking binary drivers. For whatever reason, be it architecture secrets, ugly code or pure notwantingness, some manufacturers don't and will not release open drivers.
Suggestion: If you don't like binary drivers, whatever the Linux Driver Project does or Transsexual Midget Porn, ignore it. Stick to Gobuntu or any other exclusively free software distro and be happy about it, but please let the rest of the world have fun with fast, manufacturer-supported unfree binary hunks that let 'em use their hardware.
There's no reason except laziness to not host the ads locally
I can't quote any TOS here, but IIRC many ad providers (in this case DoubleClick/Google) require their users to include a.js from their servers (probably for easier upgradeability from their side).
Actually, you can (theoretically) draw exactly 1650 W from a 15 A/110 VAC wall socket since the 110 Volts do refer to the Effective voltage, which is Peak voltage / sqrt(2).
Actually, Mall CCTV will film them while in the mall (works with garage cctv, too) and (probably) tell whomever is monitoring how his target looks after changing.
I don't worry about such nonsense because I know that if such an experiment should go horribly wrong, the haze of quarks that used to be my body won't care:)
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It's a nice story and perfectly proves my point (Linux being installed not because of bad OOXML press, it being free as in speech or Ballmer throwing chairs but because it's free as in beer and less of a hassle to install). EasyUbuntu looks nice, too.
You're right about the mainstream press 'Next Leap', but apart from the Excel 2007 "problem" I don't see Digg, Vista's network performance, the OOXML fiasco or all those freedom politics helping to get non-techies to consider switching. Even the Excel trouble didn't get too much bad mainstream press 'round here.
Linux's biggest mainstream advance over Vista will probably stay it's lower price for the next few years.
Code signing is not a legal way to prohibit an enterprise from running whatever software they please to on their computers, it's a technical, legally backed way to prohibit a game console user from running unsigned software on their Microsoft game console.
By legal way I meant some kind of contract prohibiting whomever signed it from running anything non-Microsoft (and thus non-Genuine Advantage) on whatever kind of (usually non-msft) hardware said signer was using.
Three possible reasons:
A) They're renting webspace, not a dedicated box.
B) The ISP's *gateway* gets the spoofed ARP replies, their content is being reverse proxied thru the attackers server (why not, it may after all be the weakest link)
C) They didn't secure their box.
If you haven't done so yet, reading and laughing about German politics is a great idea to spend some boring office hours. American Slashdot readers may already know what it's like to have a moron rule your country, but in everything privacy-related Germany's totally unbeatable.
April 2007. A new law about data retention has just passed the german government[1]. Called "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"[2] it forces communication providers to introduce an identification liability. As an example this means no more anonymous E-Mail in Germany. IP addresses of anyone sending and accessing their E-Mail accounts must be stored and retained for a few months (6 IIRC). IIRC this also affects other types of communication, including forced storing of a web site visitor's IP address.
October 2007. A german court decides to outlaw storing of IP addresses by web pages. Anybody see a pattern here?
This is almost as absurd as a court deciding to outlaw not killing people. It may seem completely moronic, but since those guys will have better salaries than you they ARE right.
[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/88449
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorratsdatenspeicherung
IANAL but AFAIK there's no legal way for Microsoft to force you not to use software from other vendors, so it's about not using non-geniune Microsoft products.
What exactly is the goal of this new program? They offer businesses the chance to license their (currently mislicensed) installed versions of WinXP, don't seem to offer a huge discount on that and want an assurance of no more mislicensing and an audit?
Why would any business do that instead of just buying a normal volume license? What's the advantage in this?
I call bull on "run identically in all major browsers and operating systems".
Actually they meant "IE, Firefox and Safari on Win and Mac OS". Even on Windows, only one of four Apps really works in Opera (Adobe's own Flex showcase gets caught up in my popup blocker, the VW thingie doesn't work at all, Buzzword serves up an "unsupported Browser" error. Picnik works).
To quote the ubiquitous 'pedia, Flex is "a software development kit and an IDE for a group of technologies initially released in March of 2004 by Macromedia to support the development and deployment of cross platform, rich Internet applications based on their proprietary Macromedia Flash platform.".
They probably can't insert it into every connection, but the gateway will extremely probably have an arp cache which would mean it's inserted into 100% of all requests as long as the gateway's cache is compromised and 0% of all requests for the periods inbetween. TFA doesn't exactly mention how often and when this happens, but I interpreted it as "into some requests all the time". I don't know the TTL an entry in the gateway's ARP cache will receive but imagine it to be in the order of a few hours rather than minutes.
Does anyone understand why such an attack would be launched targeting a security site with a userbase that probably won't be too vulnerable to an IE-specific well-known and detected exploit?
If this really is an ARP-spoofing based attack all other sites in their providers location ought to be vulnerable too and would make better targets, don't you think?
By the way: what's the point in occasinally inserting the attack code (it will get detected sooner or later, no matter how often it's inserted, 100% of pageviews over 2 days would probably be better than 10% over a week)?
Actually, there are several Skype compatible WLan enabled handsets that allow you to use Skype without your computer. Registration will have to be done via PC but the rest works without it.
TFS is a bit unclear on this, but the patent is about moving your cursor over checkbox #1 in a given list, holding down a given mouse button and dragging the cursor over a number of other checkboxes in the same list, changing their state to whatever state #1 assumed after you pressed the button. It's still very but not that stupid.
I'd assume the competition in the IM segment to be a bit too fierce for significantly more banners than MSN Messenger or ICQ feature which doesn't include non-maskable popups and that kind of stuff. Selling E-Mail addresses would surely work but could provoke a storm of complaints and probably even legal problems in some jurisdictions.
Making *existing* features premium-only would probably disgruntle users and cause many to switch (back) to MSN Messenger or ICQ - again, there are lots of IM apps and they aren't gonna ignore a competitors mistake, especially if it really annoys users.
The idea of paid-for skins, pictures and whatnot seems to be the most realistic one, but opposed to AT&T and Verizon, eBay needs to get the user to provide credit card details or similar which I imagine to be a rather huge barrier in the spontaneous $.99 image and ringtone market.
Just out of interest: Of everybody you've ever hear talking about Skype, how many mentioned the free Skype-Skype calls and how many mentioned you can pay to call others, too? (It's about 50:1 with quite a lot of non-techies in the 50 and an ex-coworker in the 1 group...)
Assuming Apple aren't liars and the iPhone really runs (a slimmed down version of) OS X that would, in turns, mean they're not allowing developers to develop software for their PCs (by PC I mean "personal computer", not "x86 machine running MS Windows" as mac loonies would use it) as well?
I too would like the idea of a single timezone for the whole world, but unlike DST I think having a similar set of day/night hours is a rather important thing, so no global UTC for me.
Sorry to say this so harshly, but:
Fuck the spirit of the fucking GPL. Everybody's always talking about the Evil Windows Tax and how Linux would take the world in a matter of seconds if driver support was better. And you know what? It's not gonna fucking happen as long as this permanent whine about "violating the spirit of the GPL" and "evilness of binary drivers" persists. If I understand this right, free software is about being free as in freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom of releasing motherfucking binary drivers. For whatever reason, be it architecture secrets, ugly code or pure notwantingness, some manufacturers don't and will not release open drivers.
Suggestion: If you don't like binary drivers, whatever the Linux Driver Project does or Transsexual Midget Porn, ignore it. Stick to Gobuntu or any other exclusively free software distro and be happy about it, but please let the rest of the world have fun with fast, manufacturer-supported unfree binary hunks that let 'em use their hardware.
Vista in real-time?
We're talking about ONE quantum proc, not a beowulf cluster of 'em.
Actually, you can (theoretically) draw exactly 1650 W from a 15 A/110 VAC wall socket since the 110 Volts do refer to the Effective voltage, which is Peak voltage / sqrt(2).
It's all the Quantum Chips' fault!
Actually, Mall CCTV will film them while in the mall (works with garage cctv, too) and (probably) tell whomever is monitoring how his target looks after changing.
I don't worry about such nonsense because I know that if such an experiment should go horribly wrong, the haze of quarks that used to be my body won't care :)
... but will it run Linux? (Or will it run and not run Linux at the same time?)