If this story is actually true (ha ha ha), then it does matter. My freedom and privacy cannot be bought and sold like the shares of Red Hat and VAndover. These are priceless things. I want to know if they've been violated.
This is plainly wrong. The NSA is mainly concerned with eavesdropping on the communications of anyone/any government that might antagonize the US. They are also concerned with securing the communications of the US government to prevent eavesdropping by others.
Additionally, the NSA's mission statement (on nsa.gov) plainly indicates NSA's supportive role for the USA's "warfighters," or American soldiers in various theatres and conflicts throughout the world.
If the NSA runs anything like Echelon, then they further would have both external and internal roles.
You seem to imply that this is some kind of "Weekly World News" publication. It doesn't appear to be. A tabloid, yes. They simply quote from a "French report." They probably haven't done much fact checking themselves on it. But The Age appears to be at least somewhat useful as an information source.
The two Compaq systems that appear on the list have 96 and 64 CPU's (Intel P III Xeon's), respectively. The IBM system in 3rd place (just behind #2) has 24 CPU's.
Would you consider open sourcing the Gore 2000 campaign? There would be a message board on the Al Gore web site, accessible to any developer/contributor. They could address problems you might raise, such as "How to respond to the allegations that Gore does not understand the internal combustion engine." They could also create new lines of discussion, such as, "How to more effectively attack the Bradley health care campaign as a bloated mismanagement of public funds." The input of many brains thinking about the problems the Gore campaign faces may help solve those problems. So how about it?
A software developer can avoid UCITA. To opt out of UCITA, merely include a new provision in the license. The provision should say something like, "Transactions involving this software will come under the scope of common law. The UCITA will not apply."
Here are more details. I'm a law student. The UCITA is the "Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act." Ucita.org has no content yet, but there is content at nccusl.org. Several uniform business laws have been developed to standardize the law within the USA. This includes the well-known Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC. There were actually earlier proposals to change the UCC to include something like the UCITA, but those earlier proposals failed.
Common law is the precedent-based law that courts create over time. The UCITA is a statute that is probably going to be passed by state legislatures. As a statute, it will partially reflect the common law and partially not. Like the UCC and other statutes that modify contract law, those who enter contracts can almost always include a side-agreement that specifies which law should apply. You might have a credit card agreement that specifies that certain bodies of law apply, for example.
So instead of distributing code under the GPL or the BSD license, you just distribute the code under a *slightly changed* version of these. You simply add a provision to the "license", or contract, that explicitly says the UCITA doesn't apply, and common law does.
But I said "almost always," right? Yes. The only reason you couldn't is if that provision makes the contract "unconscionable," in violation of public policy, or illegal in some other way. These are steep hurdles that are not climbed without the contract "exploiting poor people" or creating mandatory sexual relations. (!)
Microsoft has pretty much bought off a lot of state legislators on the UCITA. They think it's great, because "software companies" want it. Let them have their stupid law. Most software companies, like Corel, probably will have a non-UCITA clause in their licenses. Just stop buying Microsoft's buggy software and you probably will never have to deal with it other than to say it doesn't apply.
This smug little spite piece made me gag. Everyone knows that Transmeta is not in a position to "go open source" with their code morphing software. They need to make money to stay in business.
Hardware is best developed in the cathedral because new hardware can't be manufactured in a hacker's basement. OS and application software is best developed in the bazaar because it can be developed in a hacker's basement just as easily as elsewhere.
The best deal that I've seen so far is isp800.com. You get unlimited 800 number access for $15/month.
800 numbers only work in the US and Canada. But wherever you are you just dial the same number and get the same service. In hotels, of course, you frequently have the variation of having to dial "9" first to get an outside line.
Disclaimer. This is simply the best deal that I've found. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the quality of their service, etc... Caveat emptor.
Some other people mentioned ibm.net, the IBM Global Network. That is now attbusiness.net. It's not cheap. My own experience with it is on the whole decent. But they do have a number of problems. In Camden County, New Jersey for instance, their Cherry Hill number has invariably led to bad connections for me. Additionally, their DNS servers go offline once in a while. So I would not recommend IBM/AT&T Business Network. (Note that attbusiness.net is not AT&T World Net. The latter is the consumer service.)
Expensive version: bring your laptop, purchase nationwide ISP service, and constantly manage a phone line connection. Bring lots of extra RJ-11 equipment with you.
Cheap version: get a webmail account that collects all your mail. I like netscape.net, for example. Access it from Kinko's stores (a common photocopier/office supply store), libraries, cybercafes, and wherever.
Only 90% editorial control remains with Rob, etc? That just sucks.
Excuse me, sir, but a content provider taken over by a hardware & service seller inevitably translates into censorship. Expect no articles highly critical of Vandover. Expect any critical articles to be spun in a subtly positive way. Expect that slashdot's days as a free forum for the interchange of ideas are numbered.
I've personally been part of too many electronic communities, be they on mailing lists, news groups, or web sites, that have been decimated by "new ideas" that, put in plain English, translate into fixing & limiting the topics of discussion, to fall for this standard line of crap.
Pardon me while I throw up. Augustin has credibility in the free software/open source community, but that will nosedive once slash starts to croak.
Please direct your flamage to/dev/null. And BTW, it's Commander Taco.
Special note to any moderator who reduces my "score": You know where to go.
I can just hear whoever it is laughing like Dr. Evil:
"Moo hoo ha ha ha ha!!!"
More and more web sites are getting hit. Even Microsoft.com is getting nailed. (oh no!)
How about the following scenario? The attacker is utilizing a wider and wider base of computers from which to launch his distributed DoS attack? Are there any ways to get root on a system after launching a DoS attack? A buffer overflow or something?
If there were, the attacker could be using an ever-widening group of computers from which to launch the attacks.
Actually this seems unlikely. Considering the wide number of problems on the net right now (can't get to anything reliably on the west coast from the east coast), maybe it's more of a router problem.
In any case, if they start hitting your site, good luck.
Apparently they can't count. They report that buy.com, ebay.com, cnn.com, and amazon.com are all having problems that seem to stem from a large DoS attack.
There are actually two possibilities: misconfigured routers or a deliberate distributed DoS attack. If it's misconfiguration it's technically interesting. If it's an attack then you have to wonder about the motivation. There is no "ransom note" or other document that terrorists typically release. That we know of.
The obvious presumption with the list of sites before us is that we have an angry hacker(s) who is ticked at the commercialization of the web. Yahoo, after all, used to be mostly noncommercial. Now, however, searches on Yahoo turn up a bunch of Yahoo content and e-commerce crap. As for CNN, they were somewhat forward thinking compared to the rest of the media, and got on the web bandwagon relatively early. Points for CNN. CNN has has been bought out by AOL. Points taken away from CNN?
But that raises a big question. If this is deliberate, why haven't they targeted the biggest commercialization "offender" of them all: America Online. And they apparently haven't even touched Microsoft.
Maybe AOL and MS are better buttressed against this type of attack.
The subject line of this message is taken from the many humorous, now pretty prophetic messages on Usenet when the neverending rain of Spam began to devastate that formerly superb, and yes, noncommercial Inteneret communication system. This is obviously not the death of the Internet. That will come when President McCain signs the "Mandatory Internet Filtering Act.";-)
The best was the herding cats commercial for the multiple genuinely funny jokes. The worst was the horrible sellout of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," hijacked by a sugar water company. They turned a classic, if cheesy song into a disgustingly trite piece of music video trash. I have never witnessed a commercial charged with such magnatudinous, fire eating stupidity.
The nuclear bomb is the biggest failure of all. Einstein foresaw what could come of his theories and passed a grave warning about the Nazis potential use of it to the US government. They took his theory and created the worst weapon ever built. He fought for the rest of his life to abolish nuclear weapons.
There's an article of related interest in this month's Harper's Index.
I have a small objection to input devices based on radio wave transmissions. With the right scanner, your input is easily read from remote distances. If you have national security concerns, then conceivably the ultra-powerful scopes of Echelon can track your mouse movements. Otherwise maybe it's just a nosy neighbor.
Much of this might seem baffling to Slashdot community. Here is kind of a breakdown (in my view) on the situation.
(1) Novell NetWare is IMHO an excellent NOS (network operating system) for file and print serving. Starting with NetWare 5, Novell is attempting to crack the application server market (currently owned by midrange systems, NT, and *nix). The programming environment they now focus on is Java. The current head of Novell, Eric Schmidt, came from Sun's Javasoft division.
(2) A while back Novell announced "Wolf Mountain" clustering technology. Soon after, a new company called "Wolfpack" announced 3rd party clustering technology for NetWare. Novell sued Wolfpack for stealing trade secrets. It turns out that a number of key Novell developers had formed Wolfpack.
(3) A court ordered Wolfpack to stop some activities and change their name. Their new name was Timpanogas (dot com).
(4) Novell has a large market share in NOS software. They also own the directory market with NDS. Their best product is NDS. It allows sharing of user data between OS's, including NetWare and NT. The practical benefit of NDS is having one username/one password between many systems. NDS is a very secure system. I don't know if it's ever been cracked.
(5) NT has increasingly challenged NetWare's market share. And Linux now challenges NetWare and NT's market share.
(6) To address NT's shortcoming in directory services, Windows 2000 will include "Active Directory." It's likely the technology will suck rocks for years. It's taken Novell 10 years to get NDS right. But due to Microsoft's market presence, Active Directory will probably be a big hit.
(7) Linux has no directory service. Except Kerberos, and that is too complicated for ordinary mortals. NDS is available for some *nix's, like Solaris.
(8) Timpanogas is releasing a lot of open source NetWare compatible software for Linux. This is most likely making the Novell people angry.
(9) Novell may release enough of NDS to make an open source NDS client for Linux. They might also sell a commercial NDS server for Linux. But they are an old school proprietary software company. They will never open source the whole of NDS (IMHO).
(10) For many years, Novell's share price (NOVL) foundered. Then Eric Schmidt took over and the share price took off like a rocket. But Novell declined to open source NDS, Microsoft announced Active Directory, and Novell's share price quickly died off.
(11) Conclusion: Novell is dead unless they open source all of NDS and become a services company. Linux desperately needs a good open source or GPL based directory project that is administrable by non-immortals.
(12)An assumption. IMHO, Linux should focus on workstations, handhelds, and basically the client side. Figuring out the high end can come later. That would basically follow Microsoft's path to success. (Low end first, then high end.)
What would radiocarbon dating say? How old is that skull they have?
There are problems with this kind of inquiry: (1) if it's a deformity there's no way to convince believers of that; (2) if it's really an "alien" or "hybrid" (cough cough, ahem) then they aren't proceeding as scientists would (calling it the "Starchild Project" and otherwise stating their bias toward it being alien; (3) we have no way of finding other anthropological evidence to back up any claim of this kind; and (4) we have too many absolute believers and also too many absolute skeptics--we need some moderates who will look for whatever the truth might be. We have many more questions than answers here.
But still. I admit that more than occasionally I get the feeling that we are just pawns in a larger game, or that we are lab monkeys in some massive lab. Doesn't anyone else think that, too?
One extreme alternative is that there is another line of primates as represented by this skull who are kind of a more advanced human being. I found it disappointing that the web site only compares the skull to cro-magnons (modern humans), and not other primates.
The urge to censor is all around us. We can run from it on the Internet, but it's really everywhere. The original poster said NOTHING out of the ordinary. He said Debian didn't work. You know what? I don't find that worthy of a "moderation score" of -1 that effectively makes it unreadable for all the anonymous "cowards."
My preferences are set to uncut and raw comments, and that isn't going to be changing anytime soon.
I'm fed up with the holier than thou triumphalism that has run rampant on slashdot and other geek communities. Our success comes mainly from our openmindedness, not blotting out unpopular words.
Slashdot Mirror
If this story is actually true (ha ha ha), then it does matter. My freedom and privacy cannot be bought and sold like the shares of Red Hat and VAndover. These are priceless things. I want to know if they've been violated.
Additionally, the NSA's mission statement (on nsa.gov) plainly indicates NSA's supportive role for the USA's "warfighters," or American soldiers in various theatres and conflicts throughout the world.
If the NSA runs anything like Echelon, then they further would have both external and internal roles.
You seem to imply that this is some kind of "Weekly World News" publication. It doesn't appear to be. A tabloid, yes. They simply quote from a "French report." They probably haven't done much fact checking themselves on it. But The Age appears to be at least somewhat useful as an information source.
Conclusion: Microsoft is very inefficient.
Would you consider open sourcing the Gore 2000 campaign? There would be a message board on the Al Gore web site, accessible to any developer/contributor. They could address problems you might raise, such as "How to respond to the allegations that Gore does not understand the internal combustion engine." They could also create new lines of discussion, such as, "How to more effectively attack the Bradley health care campaign as a bloated mismanagement of public funds." The input of many brains thinking about the problems the Gore campaign faces may help solve those problems. So how about it?
Here are more details. I'm a law student. The UCITA is the "Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act." Ucita.org has no content yet, but there is content at nccusl.org. Several uniform business laws have been developed to standardize the law within the USA. This includes the well-known Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC. There were actually earlier proposals to change the UCC to include something like the UCITA, but those earlier proposals failed.
Common law is the precedent-based law that courts create over time. The UCITA is a statute that is probably going to be passed by state legislatures. As a statute, it will partially reflect the common law and partially not. Like the UCC and other statutes that modify contract law, those who enter contracts can almost always include a side-agreement that specifies which law should apply. You might have a credit card agreement that specifies that certain bodies of law apply, for example.
So instead of distributing code under the GPL or the BSD license, you just distribute the code under a *slightly changed* version of these. You simply add a provision to the "license", or contract, that explicitly says the UCITA doesn't apply, and common law does.
But I said "almost always," right? Yes. The only reason you couldn't is if that provision makes the contract "unconscionable," in violation of public policy, or illegal in some other way. These are steep hurdles that are not climbed without the contract "exploiting poor people" or creating mandatory sexual relations. (!)
Microsoft has pretty much bought off a lot of state legislators on the UCITA. They think it's great, because "software companies" want it. Let them have their stupid law. Most software companies, like Corel, probably will have a non-UCITA clause in their licenses. Just stop buying Microsoft's buggy software and you probably will never have to deal with it other than to say it doesn't apply.
Hardware is best developed in the cathedral because new hardware can't be manufactured in a hacker's basement. OS and application software is best developed in the bazaar because it can be developed in a hacker's basement just as easily as elsewhere.
800 numbers only work in the US and Canada. But wherever you are you just dial the same number and get the same service. In hotels, of course, you frequently have the variation of having to dial "9" first to get an outside line.
Disclaimer. This is simply the best deal that I've found. I don't have first-hand knowledge of the quality of their service, etc... Caveat emptor.
Some other people mentioned ibm.net, the IBM Global Network. That is now attbusiness.net. It's not cheap. My own experience with it is on the whole decent. But they do have a number of problems. In Camden County, New Jersey for instance, their Cherry Hill number has invariably led to bad connections for me. Additionally, their DNS servers go offline once in a while. So I would not recommend IBM/AT&T Business Network. (Note that attbusiness.net is not AT&T World Net. The latter is the consumer service.)
Expensive version: bring your laptop, purchase nationwide ISP service, and constantly manage a phone line connection. Bring lots of extra RJ-11 equipment with you.
Cheap version: get a webmail account that collects all your mail. I like netscape.net, for example. Access it from Kinko's stores (a common photocopier/office supply store), libraries, cybercafes, and wherever.
Good luck.
Excuse me, sir, but a content provider taken over by a hardware & service seller inevitably translates into censorship. Expect no articles highly critical of Vandover. Expect any critical articles to be spun in a subtly positive way. Expect that slashdot's days as a free forum for the interchange of ideas are numbered.
I've personally been part of too many electronic communities, be they on mailing lists, news groups, or web sites, that have been decimated by "new ideas" that, put in plain English, translate into fixing & limiting the topics of discussion, to fall for this standard line of crap.
Pardon me while I throw up. Augustin has credibility in the free software/open source community, but that will nosedive once slash starts to croak.
Please direct your flamage to /dev/null. And BTW, it's Commander Taco.
Special note to any moderator who reduces my "score": You know where to go.
This is the most amazing picture of a cow I have ever seen. How did they turn "Forbidden" into a computer?
"Moo hoo ha ha ha ha!!!"
More and more web sites are getting hit. Even Microsoft.com is getting nailed. (oh no!)
How about the following scenario? The attacker is utilizing a wider and wider base of computers from which to launch his distributed DoS attack? Are there any ways to get root on a system after launching a DoS attack? A buffer overflow or something?
If there were, the attacker could be using an ever-widening group of computers from which to launch the attacks.
Actually this seems unlikely. Considering the wide number of problems on the net right now (can't get to anything reliably on the west coast from the east coast), maybe it's more of a router problem.
In any case, if they start hitting your site, good luck.
Apparently they can't count. They report that buy.com, ebay.com, cnn.com, and amazon.com are all having problems that seem to stem from a large DoS attack.
There are actually two possibilities: misconfigured routers or a deliberate distributed DoS attack. If it's misconfiguration it's technically interesting. If it's an attack then you have to wonder about the motivation. There is no "ransom note" or other document that terrorists typically release. That we know of.
The obvious presumption with the list of sites before us is that we have an angry hacker(s) who is ticked at the commercialization of the web. Yahoo, after all, used to be mostly noncommercial. Now, however, searches on Yahoo turn up a bunch of Yahoo content and e-commerce crap. As for CNN, they were somewhat forward thinking compared to the rest of the media, and got on the web bandwagon relatively early. Points for CNN. CNN has has been bought out by AOL. Points taken away from CNN?
But that raises a big question. If this is deliberate, why haven't they targeted the biggest commercialization "offender" of them all: America Online. And they apparently haven't even touched Microsoft.
Maybe AOL and MS are better buttressed against this type of attack.
The subject line of this message is taken from the many humorous, now pretty prophetic messages on Usenet when the neverending rain of Spam began to devastate that formerly superb, and yes, noncommercial Inteneret communication system. This is obviously not the death of the Internet. That will come when President McCain signs the "Mandatory Internet Filtering Act." ;-)
The best was the herding cats commercial for the multiple genuinely funny jokes. The worst was the horrible sellout of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," hijacked by a sugar water company. They turned a classic, if cheesy song into a disgustingly trite piece of music video trash. I have never witnessed a commercial charged with such magnatudinous, fire eating stupidity.
Avoiding management of this type is why I want to use free software.
There's an article of related interest in this month's Harper's Index.
Two: there is no pressing need for enhanced "night vision" in cars. I mean, if you can't handle night driving, get a hotel room.
Peace out. Warm fuzzies. Happy Happy. Satan.
Of course, who would care where you clicK?
(1) Novell NetWare is IMHO an excellent NOS (network operating system) for file and print serving. Starting with NetWare 5, Novell is attempting to crack the application server market (currently owned by midrange systems, NT, and *nix). The programming environment they now focus on is Java. The current head of Novell, Eric Schmidt, came from Sun's Javasoft division.
(2) A while back Novell announced "Wolf Mountain" clustering technology. Soon after, a new company called "Wolfpack" announced 3rd party clustering technology for NetWare. Novell sued Wolfpack for stealing trade secrets. It turns out that a number of key Novell developers had formed Wolfpack.
(3) A court ordered Wolfpack to stop some activities and change their name. Their new name was Timpanogas (dot com).
(4) Novell has a large market share in NOS software. They also own the directory market with NDS. Their best product is NDS. It allows sharing of user data between OS's, including NetWare and NT. The practical benefit of NDS is having one username/one password between many systems. NDS is a very secure system. I don't know if it's ever been cracked.
(5) NT has increasingly challenged NetWare's market share. And Linux now challenges NetWare and NT's market share.
(6) To address NT's shortcoming in directory services, Windows 2000 will include "Active Directory." It's likely the technology will suck rocks for years. It's taken Novell 10 years to get NDS right. But due to Microsoft's market presence, Active Directory will probably be a big hit.
(7) Linux has no directory service. Except Kerberos, and that is too complicated for ordinary mortals. NDS is available for some *nix's, like Solaris.
(8) Timpanogas is releasing a lot of open source NetWare compatible software for Linux. This is most likely making the Novell people angry.
(9) Novell may release enough of NDS to make an open source NDS client for Linux. They might also sell a commercial NDS server for Linux. But they are an old school proprietary software company. They will never open source the whole of NDS (IMHO).
(10) For many years, Novell's share price (NOVL) foundered. Then Eric Schmidt took over and the share price took off like a rocket. But Novell declined to open source NDS, Microsoft announced Active Directory, and Novell's share price quickly died off.
(11) Conclusion: Novell is dead unless they open source all of NDS and become a services company. Linux desperately needs a good open source or GPL based directory project that is administrable by non-immortals.
(12)An assumption. IMHO, Linux should focus on workstations, handhelds, and basically the client side. Figuring out the high end can come later. That would basically follow Microsoft's path to success. (Low end first, then high end.)
Go Linux!!!
There are problems with this kind of inquiry: (1) if it's a deformity there's no way to convince believers of that; (2) if it's really an "alien" or "hybrid" (cough cough, ahem) then they aren't proceeding as scientists would (calling it the "Starchild Project" and otherwise stating their bias toward it being alien; (3) we have no way of finding other anthropological evidence to back up any claim of this kind; and (4) we have too many absolute believers and also too many absolute skeptics--we need some moderates who will look for whatever the truth might be. We have many more questions than answers here.
But still. I admit that more than occasionally I get the feeling that we are just pawns in a larger game, or that we are lab monkeys in some massive lab. Doesn't anyone else think that, too?
One extreme alternative is that there is another line of primates as represented by this skull who are kind of a more advanced human being. I found it disappointing that the web site only compares the skull to cro-magnons (modern humans), and not other primates.
My preferences are set to uncut and raw comments, and that isn't going to be changing anytime soon.
I'm fed up with the holier than thou triumphalism that has run rampant on slashdot and other geek communities. Our success comes mainly from our openmindedness, not blotting out unpopular words.