You don't necessarily need to sue the spammer. If a commercial product is being advertized, track down the company whose product is being sold and sue THEM. The SPAM wouldn't be sent if they didn't order it.
That's what I have to say about religious fanatics who suppress information simply because it doesn't fit their ideals.
I'm religious myself, but I don't understand how someone can make an informed choice about what they want to believe in without knowing all of the options. I guess some would consider my beliefs to be "impure" because I do not constrain myself to one strict doctrine, but I consider myself to be better off because of it. (Interestingly enough, my view of "God" isn't bothered by the idea of the universe being a simulation. I think it's interesting!)
On the other hand, I can see the point in limiting the exposure of minors to sexual and violent material, primarily violence, because there's really nothing wrong with sex (unless it's unconsentingly violent...).
I do understand why religious people want to suppress exposure to other religions. It's because they're afraid that people will choose one of the alternatives. Mostly because they know their beliefs won't stand up to objective scrutiny.:)
People complain about Slashdot staff being stilly for posting an article which they immediately retract. Those people don't get it.
Not to say that Slashdot is necessarily good journalism, but a good journalist cares about presenting the truth to the reader. (I guess there aren't many good journalists in the world.) In this case, we have someone with an open letter who is passing misinformation. Slashdot editors take this opportunity to publically point out the error in the article in an equally (if not moreso) open manner. This helps everyone.
We thought it was going to be Microsoft and SCO that would destroy internet commerce. Instead, it'll be governments imposing an infinite number of impossibly tax laws.
Seriously, though... before Microsoft jumps on this, someone needs to write an open source tool which manages tax information so that people can integrate it into their web sites.
Actually, believe it or not, SCO is on OUR side. They've duped everyone except certain Microsoft competitors who are paying them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. See, SCO KNOWS that they've violated the GPL by copying code from Linux, and they KNOW they're going to get run through the ringer. And that's the POINT! See, once it's out in the open that SCO has been lying, the FSF, IBM, and others will sue SCO into oblivion over GPL violations, finally testing the GPL in court and proving its validity.
I'm 29, and I graduated from highschool in 1991. I was taught forcibly to write cursive, because computers were not yet so pervasive as they are now.
I could never write legibly.
Frankly, I think people are just grasping for excuses. Now, we have people using computers as the reason for illegible writing. What was it before computers were so common? Laziness? Lack of talent? Why aren't those still the reasons?
I believe you are misinformed about that transfer of warranty. I know people who build systems for a living (whether for resale or as sysadmins who have to build and/or repair systems), and in their experience, WD does NOT transfer the warranty. When the drive goes bad, you get a replacement with a 30 day warranty. Period.
If, for whatever reason, you were limiting yourself to only 800mhz FSB Pentium 4 processors, I can see how this article MIGHT be of some value. But what if you want to compare against Athlon? What if you want to compare 800mhz FSB against 533mhz FSB? I mean, I would like to know how a 3ghz with 533 compares to a 2.4ghz with 800. If you really have some shopping to do, this article is useless.
It's been asked before why we don't go to a number-only system for addressing. The problem is that, for instance, in the US, ZIP codes are wrong a significant portion of the time. So, while I think it's great that a new standard of postal codes might be used (10 digits is not harder than 5 digits to memorize when you never bother to memorize them), we shouldn't get rid of the street address and other information.
Oh, and another thing is that adding a few extra digits for "error correction" would be good. It would allow for identification of invalid codes and correction of errors.
Western Digital's 3 year warranty is a smoke screen. They're slow to replace defective drives and when they do, you get a refurbished drive with a 30 day warranty, regardless of how long you've had the drive that died.
Mommy! Linus stole my toys! Tell him to give them back to me!
(I won't bother to mention that I got those toys from Novell in the first place.)
Re:The writer TOTALLY doesn't get it.
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
Don't be foolish. Many systems of coinage have existed before the American one. American money is one result of THOUSANDS of years of development.
Not to say that it necessarily isn't primitive. Bacteria are the result of billions of years of evolution but are pretty damn simple compared to many other life forms.
The real question is whether or not great discoveries in a field come from someone being young and having therefore enough mental clarity or from an amount of exposure to a field, resulting a certain level of understanding.
The writer TOTALLY doesn't get it.
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The average cachier over the age of 18 barely managed to graduate highschool and is very unlikely to be able to do simple arithmetic. The average engineer I know making $80k+ also cannot do simple arithmetic.
It's hard enough when you have to deal in 5's and 10's, but as soon as you start asking a cachier to add or subtract 18 from ANYTHING, you're going to have trouble.
The whole problem here is that the author doesn't realize that humans are (a) not computers, and (b) don't care about handing out one less coin. The system we have, as imperfect as it is, evolved this way through error and natural selection. Sure, perhaps no one considered printing an 18 cent coin, but that's likely because they knew people would have trouble dealing with them. Humans inherently have trouble with simple arithmetic, so a system evolved that was less ERROR-PRONE, completely ignoring minor improvements in efficiency.
So, of course, one has to ask the question: Could we make the system less error-prone? Probably. Maybe our esteemed computer scientist should develop a system to determine which coins we need to have in order to make it more likely for a cachier to give back correct change.
What's better, taking 2 seconds longer to give you correct change or two seconds less to give you incorrect change? I'll wait the extra 2 seconds.
Maybe I'm missing something really simple, but here's my understanding:
1) x86 stack grows from high addresses to lower ones, allowing for a string allocated on the stack to overflow such that it overwrites the return address.
2) x86 is little-endian which means that the return address (in this case, on the stack) starts with the low byte and stops with the high byte.
3) In C programs, strings are null-terminated.
The ASCII shield relies on ASCII not being able to represent certain addresses, namely 0x00000000 to 0x0100ffff.
Well, here's what I don't get. Assuming all three above, there are five possibilities we can generate for overwriting an address:
1) All four address bytes are overwritten by ASCII characters generating an address greater than 0x01010101.
2) The first three bytes are overwritten by ASCII characters, and the last one is overwritten by the null terminator. This results in an address between 0x00010101 and 0x00ffffff. This certainly looks like an address within the 16M "armor"
3-5) For (3), we only overwrite three of the address bytes, the first two being ASCII, and the last being NUL, resulting in an address something like 0x??00AAAA, where AAAA is greater than 0x0101. This would require that the attacker know what the upper byte of the address is, which is possible. (4) and (5) represent similar situations.
As far as I can see, this 16M protected region doesn't exist. WHAT AM I MISSING?
To most of your peers, the greatest thing about computers is MSN instant messenger and Yahoo! chat rooms. They don't know or care what an operating system is.
In response to this posting, countless Linux geeks will spend countless hours talking about how this stuff needs to be fixed. But absolutely no one will do anything to fix it. Ever.
Most Linux geeks are mostly talk. And the ones who aren't focus primarily on internal stuff that the user never sees.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't necessarily need to sue the spammer. If a commercial product is being advertized, track down the company whose product is being sold and sue THEM. The SPAM wouldn't be sent if they didn't order it.
GO MICROSOFT!!!
That's what I have to say about religious fanatics who suppress information simply because it doesn't fit their ideals.
:)
I'm religious myself, but I don't understand how someone can make an informed choice about what they want to believe in without knowing all of the options. I guess some would consider my beliefs to be "impure" because I do not constrain myself to one strict doctrine, but I consider myself to be better off because of it. (Interestingly enough, my view of "God" isn't bothered by the idea of the universe being a simulation. I think it's interesting!)
On the other hand, I can see the point in limiting the exposure of minors to sexual and violent material, primarily violence, because there's really nothing wrong with sex (unless it's unconsentingly violent...).
I do understand why religious people want to suppress exposure to other religions. It's because they're afraid that people will choose one of the alternatives. Mostly because they know their beliefs won't stand up to objective scrutiny.
People complain about Slashdot staff being stilly for posting an article which they immediately retract. Those people don't get it.
Not to say that Slashdot is necessarily good journalism, but a good journalist cares about presenting the truth to the reader. (I guess there aren't many good journalists in the world.) In this case, we have someone with an open letter who is passing misinformation. Slashdot editors take this opportunity to publically point out the error in the article in an equally (if not moreso) open manner. This helps everyone.
Slashdot did a good thing.
We thought it was going to be Microsoft and SCO that would destroy internet commerce. Instead, it'll be governments imposing an infinite number of impossibly tax laws.
Seriously, though... before Microsoft jumps on this, someone needs to write an open source tool which manages tax information so that people can integrate it into their web sites.
Actually, believe it or not, SCO is on OUR side. They've duped everyone except certain Microsoft competitors who are paying them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. See, SCO KNOWS that they've violated the GPL by copying code from Linux, and they KNOW they're going to get run through the ringer. And that's the POINT! See, once it's out in the open that SCO has been lying, the FSF, IBM, and others will sue SCO into oblivion over GPL violations, finally testing the GPL in court and proving its validity.
I'm 29, and I graduated from highschool in 1991. I was taught forcibly to write cursive, because computers were not yet so pervasive as they are now.
I could never write legibly.
Frankly, I think people are just grasping for excuses. Now, we have people using computers as the reason for illegible writing. What was it before computers were so common? Laziness? Lack of talent? Why aren't those still the reasons?
I was commenting on both.
I believe you are misinformed about that transfer of warranty. I know people who build systems for a living (whether for resale or as sysadmins who have to build and/or repair systems), and in their experience, WD does NOT transfer the warranty. When the drive goes bad, you get a replacement with a 30 day warranty. Period.
It's one thing to protect copyrights. I get the idea that those who develop creative works should be compensated and protected from piracy.
But the RIAA is motivated by pure greed. Their message isn't "protect copyrights." It's "we want all of your money."
If, for whatever reason, you were limiting yourself to only 800mhz FSB Pentium 4 processors, I can see how this article MIGHT be of some value. But what if you want to compare against Athlon? What if you want to compare 800mhz FSB against 533mhz FSB? I mean, I would like to know how a 3ghz with 533 compares to a 2.4ghz with 800. If you really have some shopping to do, this article is useless.
It's been asked before why we don't go to a number-only system for addressing. The problem is that, for instance, in the US, ZIP codes are wrong a significant portion of the time. So, while I think it's great that a new standard of postal codes might be used (10 digits is not harder than 5 digits to memorize when you never bother to memorize them), we shouldn't get rid of the street address and other information.
Oh, and another thing is that adding a few extra digits for "error correction" would be good. It would allow for identification of invalid codes and correction of errors.
SCO is trying to get bought out by IBM pissing off IBM. Ok, so maybe IBM will buy them, but it'll be for a pittance and then everyone will get fired.
So, SCO is looking out for stock holders by turning into a penny stock over night?
So, what happens if you sell short and the value goes to zero?
Western Digital's 3 year warranty is a smoke screen. They're slow to replace defective drives and when they do, you get a refurbished drive with a 30 day warranty, regardless of how long you've had the drive that died.
Mommy! Linus stole my toys! Tell him to give them back to me!
(I won't bother to mention that I got those toys from Novell in the first place.)
Don't be foolish. Many systems of coinage have existed before the American one. American money is one result of THOUSANDS of years of development.
Not to say that it necessarily isn't primitive. Bacteria are the result of billions of years of evolution but are pretty damn simple compared to many other life forms.
The real question is whether or not great discoveries in a field come from someone being young and having therefore enough mental clarity or from an amount of exposure to a field, resulting a certain level of understanding.
The average cachier over the age of 18 barely managed to graduate highschool and is very unlikely to be able to do simple arithmetic. The average engineer I know making $80k+ also cannot do simple arithmetic.
It's hard enough when you have to deal in 5's and 10's, but as soon as you start asking a cachier to add or subtract 18 from ANYTHING, you're going to have trouble.
The whole problem here is that the author doesn't realize that humans are (a) not computers, and (b) don't care about handing out one less coin. The system we have, as imperfect as it is, evolved this way through error and natural selection. Sure, perhaps no one considered printing an 18 cent coin, but that's likely because they knew people would have trouble dealing with them. Humans inherently have trouble with simple arithmetic, so a system evolved that was less ERROR-PRONE, completely ignoring minor improvements in efficiency.
So, of course, one has to ask the question: Could we make the system less error-prone? Probably. Maybe our esteemed computer scientist should develop a system to determine which coins we need to have in order to make it more likely for a cachier to give back correct change.
What's better, taking 2 seconds longer to give you correct change or two seconds less to give you incorrect change? I'll wait the extra 2 seconds.
Or maybe I'll just use my credit card.
"WAH! I won't talk to you unless you say GNU/Linux!" -- RMS
That's not right. If the bytes in the address are \1, \0, \0, and \0, then the address is 0x00000001. It's little-endian.
But you can't put that in there anyhow, since you can only have one nul character in a string.
Maybe I'm missing something really simple, but here's my understanding:
1) x86 stack grows from high addresses to lower ones, allowing for a string allocated on the stack to overflow such that it overwrites the return address.
2) x86 is little-endian which means that the return address (in this case, on the stack) starts with the low byte and stops with the high byte.
3) In C programs, strings are null-terminated.
The ASCII shield relies on ASCII not being able to represent certain addresses, namely 0x00000000 to 0x0100ffff.
Well, here's what I don't get. Assuming all three above, there are five possibilities we can generate for overwriting an address:
1) All four address bytes are overwritten by ASCII characters generating an address greater than 0x01010101.
2) The first three bytes are overwritten by ASCII characters, and the last one is overwritten by the null terminator. This results in an address between 0x00010101 and 0x00ffffff. This certainly looks like an address within the 16M "armor"
3-5) For (3), we only overwrite three of the address bytes, the first two being ASCII, and the last being NUL, resulting in an address something like 0x??00AAAA, where AAAA is greater than 0x0101. This would require that the attacker know what the upper byte of the address is, which is possible. (4) and (5) represent similar situations.
As far as I can see, this 16M protected region doesn't exist. WHAT AM I MISSING?
Thank you.
To most of your peers, the greatest thing about computers is MSN instant messenger and Yahoo! chat rooms. They don't know or care what an operating system is.
This'll be REALLY useful when we can finally halt the flood of telemarketers calling constantly.
I think we should let the Marines take care of spammers.
In response to this posting, countless Linux geeks will spend countless hours talking about how this stuff needs to be fixed. But absolutely no one will do anything to fix it. Ever.
Most Linux geeks are mostly talk. And the ones who aren't focus primarily on internal stuff that the user never sees.