Could someone actually provide more details on the patterns that the DoD requires one to use?
I'm not a data recovery expert, but wouldn't a random sequence of bits written between each step of writing the specified sequential pattern of bits make it harder to establish physical patterns during data recovery? Because if I'm right, this would act like the normal process of read/write and throw in confusion while the analyzing a drive under the microscope.
Oh well, at least this piece of news gives the OS/disk encryption camp one more point.
Chad Simonds, webmaster for Tucows Linux, gets credit for kicking off this week's most interesting flamefest with his article bemoaning the lack of objectivity in most online software reviews.
Doesn't this quote say it all about what this potentially damaging controversy has turned into? A large flameflest without much concrete evidence that has already consumed three Slashdot articles and probably generated thousands of dollars in banner counts.
The general consensus seems to be that seasoned Linux users aren't getting burnt by this controversy at all, because most would have enough experience to determine any biases by the reviewed before going out to buy a box set. Only the writers and the forums are burning their credibility with this one by continuing to milk all they can from this controversy.
Perhaps all reviewers should at least make the recommendation that first-timers to a new distribution purchase a GPL CD of a distribution before making that hefty box-set purchase so that all controversy can subside once and for all. I also advise that if you are seeking to purchase a box set, look up distribution-neutral reviews of the free enclosed commercial products, because they all nearly work the same regardless of your distribution. This practice will stamp out biased reviews once and for all.
Before I throw in my two cents, I have to disclaim that there is a tinge of militant elitism within me, but there is a limit to how far it goes. Please do not flame me, because this interpretation is my own and it do represent the views of the Debian community.
"...these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism that Linux gives them. They prefer to understand things that others don't...but these users pose a threat because they often scare mainstream users and investors away from Linux because they make Linux look like a hostile environment... many geeks, militants, and elite users are using hardcore distributions such as Debian and Slackware"
The writer James Hill certainly paints "self-fancied hardcore" Linux users in a bad light, especially those using distributions such as Debian and Slackware, but these extreme cases militant elites are exaggerated and represent only a small part of the community.
The majority of elite users of Linux are NOT generally hostile to new users. I believe that Hill has misinterpreted their motives entirely. Just pop into the Openproject's IRC network irc.openprojects.net and into any of the semi-official and de facto IRC rooms for distributions such as #Debian and see how many users, no matter how arrogant they seem at first are willing to guide newbies through to fixing their problems.
The "schism" appearing between hardcore militants and mainstream users is not aimed at users themselves, but at the vendors that are developing the easier to use distributions. Elitists are proud of the Unix tradition, remember their roots, and see the new rash of distributions as more of a threat and more often than not, a pollutant that threatens to bring in the same problems that have rendered platforms such as Windows impotent. A hindering pollutant from the Old World of Microsoft that Linux does not need.
Sure newbies will always need easy-to-use point and click UIs to let them get a foothold in Linux, but we don't wish for them to cling onto the same principles that drive those distributions. But they have to realise that there is much more to Linux than KDE and simplistic programs.
Elite users are not hostile to Linux users; most of them are willing to help any new user become just as skilled in using Linux as they are - as long as they are using the same "hardcore" distributions, not giving into shallow marketing campaigns and adopt the same principles that many of us share such. This is so that they too can enjoy Linux to the same depth as hardcore Linux users believe the rest of the populus should.
Now that they've managed to get NetBSD running on a originally games platform such as the Dreamcast, wouldn't the next step be porting other BSD/*nixes such as OpenBSD and Linux? But then this would probably raise more paranoid concerns for the import/export departments of a few governments, most notably Japan, where the Playstation 2 is now under restrictive export controls due to the outrageous and overly paranoid concerns that its massive computing power may be converted into a weapons flight/launch control system. Just curious, is the Dreamcast under any export controls?
Now back to porting OpenBSD to a games platform...so consider this overtly paranoid scenario that might just scare the pants off export authorities:
Games platform with massive graphics processing power + OpenBSD = Massively secure and un-crackable* encrypted system for controlling nuclear weapons from so-called rogue states!
(*some may argue that OpenBSD merely creates this illusion)
The story of Silicon Valley reminds of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Perhaps, the 22nd century's adaptation shall offer us this reflective passage:
"No - the Graduate turned out all right in the end; it is what preyed on the Graduate, what foul VPs floated in his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive floats and shortwinded elations of bulls on the NASDAQ."
What will become of the Monterey Alliance now?
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Endgame For SCO
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· Score: 5
Monterey, as you may or may not know, is the recently formed alliance between several Unix distributors, who having faced the prospect of rewriting their operating systems for the 64-bit Itanium processor decided to pool their resources. Monterey was to have been a combination of IBM's AIX, Sequent's Dynix and SCO's Unixware with technical support from other companies such as Compaq and would run on the IA-64 and PowerPC chips (support for AMD's 64-bit chips have yet to be announced).
Monterey was to have a signified a shot in the arm for Unix vendors who are being beset by not only the growing market share of Linux and Windows NT. Industry momentum is building and commitment is growing for Monterey on IA-64, which will be "a leading, high volume, channel-ready, shrink-wrapped, UNIX operating system" as trumpeted by its developers.
Now that SCO is up for sale, will the momentum on the Monterey project be severely hampered? In addition, will the purchasers of the Santa Cruz Operation continue to work on the Monterey project or will they break off from the alliance and take a solo path such as Hewitt Packard and Sun in developing their next generation Unix distributions? Are the prospects of profit arising from the Monterey Project be enough incentive for another company to buy SCO?
Nevertheless, it is sad to see SCO leaving the BSD/*nix scene after their pioneering work in the earlier days and their philanthropy in providing free/lost-cost licenses to students long before Linux became prominent.
"That is the squishiest, leftest post I've seen on this topic."
Thanks for the compliment! You're spot on, I am an egalitarian, first and foremost, a stanch civil libertarian, and quite socialist.
Even if I see space exploration and alien contact in my lifetime, I can only hope we don't ruin it through the exploitation of another race (much like our own Imperialism/Colonialism) or seek to gain profit through unfair trade practices.
Self-advancement at the price of others is a trait of human nature that has outlasted its usefulness. What else is holding us back from space exploration?
"On the other hand, such a display of optimism and hope for the future gives me a warm fuzzy on the inside."
Thanks for that too, without foolish displays of optimism and hope for the future, humanity would never have reached where we are today. Caveman wouldn't have tried to tame fire, Magellan would have never sailed around the world, Galileo would have never revealed the science that defied religion, NASA would have never sent man to moon.
Isn't it time for more of these warm fuzzy displays?
Despite your light-hearted response, I do believe that the New World Order is actually restricting humanity travelling into space. However, the New World Order I am referring to is not the dark, shadowy alien collaborators/defectors of the X-Files, but of capitalistic interests and power-wielding institutions that want to preserve the status quo.
For as long as humanity has existed, the motivation of societies has been as the saying goes, "Sex, Money, Power." In this new millennium, if humanity is to venture forth into the unexplored recesses of space, than it is obvious that the motivators currently in place cannot co-exist with the survival of the human race. How many times has the well-being of humanity and its environment been forsaken for wealth and power?
Just look at the electric car, which could have gone mainstream decades ago in an effort to lessen damage to the environment. Many suspect that Oil-drilling interests, who had too much to lose with the advent of electric motoring, used their influence to bribe car manufacturers into avoiding and dragging on it's development in order to preserve the status quo.
The same applies with space exploration. Humanity, in its currently divided (politically and ethically), and competitive (economically) state is ill-suited for space exploration and the encountering of any alien life. The current ruling interests realise that space exploration and any consequences of encountering alien life would give societies around the world the reasoning to unilaterally unite and abandon the motivations of Money and Power and hence undermine the foundations of which their influence is built upon.
IMHO, Space exploration and intergalactic diplomacy requires a different set of motivation: racial unity and curiosity. This theme in itself has been expressed many times in science fiction, most notably Star Trek where after "First Contact" humanity unites and abandons the pettiness of power and wealth in order to survive, long and prosper as a race. I believe that the sooner the New World Order is toppled, the sooner the human race will unite and achieve its destiny by fulfilling its instinct of curiosity reaching out through the universe.
Public needs to stop pretending there is no issue
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CNet On Online Freedom
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· Score: 5
What if everyone believed that law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail? If a nonconformist tried to assert his privacy by using an envelope for his mail, it would draw suspicion. Perhaps the authorities would open his mail to see what he's hiding. Fortunately, we don't live in that kind of world, because everyone protects most of their mail with envelopes. So no one draws suspicion by asserting their privacy with an envelope. There's safety in numbers. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their email, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their email privacy with encryption. Think of it as a form of solidarity.
---From "An Introduction to Cryptography" by Phil Zimmermann, the programmer of PGP himself.
This is an analogy I remind myself each time one of my friends at high school ridicules me for being a paranoid "conspiracy nut". It concerns me greatly that most of the general public of my country, Australia seems to take a laissez-faire approach to their online Internet rights. For example, Australians have already lost their right to unmonitored and uncensored (but not yet implemented) Internet usage and our intelligence agency, ASIO now has the legal right to actually crack our computers and monitor communications without a warrant all for the sake of so-called "national security".
What is just as worrying is that the general population accepts the face value of our politicians. The government in power, the conservative Liberals claim that they are acting in the best national security and moral interests of the silent majority, but to me, it would seem like they acting to silence the majority. The general public needs to be made aware of how insecure the Internet really is, and how governments are seeking to gain a legal right to infringe upon their basic human rights to freedom of expression and press. There seems to be an accepted dogma by the public here that the online world is different and that their human rights are automatically guaranteed by the nation's law instead of being restricted in reality.
Even my own high school, Sydney Technical High was planning student email access; a proposal to ban students using encryption to circumvent monitoring was considered. The majority of the student seemed unconcerned with this, except for a few others and myself as we saw this as a blatant attempt to impose the school's authority upon us while they were claiming legal responsibility over our moral wellbeing! The school told me that this email service was to be a "privilege and not a right" and thus if I was upset, I should use my own email. I was mainly concerned with those without access to encryption outside of school having their civil liberties breached. Luckily the school abandoned this scheme altogether after discovering free email services provided by services such as Hotmail. However, the mere fact that the school was willing to impose such draconian measures upon its students is a sad reflection of Australia's stance towards online civil liberties.
I am dismayed when my friends exclaim that the CIA will never read my email, because I am not important, nor have I done anything wrong or have something to hide. I wish that they could see that if they we don't start fighting for our rights online now, such as the right to uncensored access, encryption, and online self-security then a time will come when it will be too late for everyone to start voicing their opinions without fear from those seeking to impose their wills upon us.
The BBC article states that Echelon is "used principally by the United States, but Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand also have access to it." Being an Australian, this is the first time I have personally heard of this allegation, but I am not surprised at all when I consider it in account with the recent passing of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment Bill as well as The Telecommunications (Interception) Legislation Amendment Bill. This was recently covered by a Y ahoo! article, but shunned by the mainstream media in June. (Is there a regime of censorship occuring here too?)
This bill allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to enter, modify, delete or copy data as well as disabling any cryptography one may be running, in order to make it easier for them to get future data. Despite the Attorney General, Daryl William's reassurances that the legislation was "designed to ensure an appropriate balance between individual privacy and the public interest in effective law enforcement and national security;" and that an access warrant is required in these cases, I am fearful of the abuses that are bound to follow. Under this act, ASIO will be allowed to cover up the fact that they hacked into the system and will not be subject to the Crimes Act that forbids computer hacking in Australia surely raising the possibility of framing dissenters and now under the auspices of business, perhaps conduct industrial espionage.
Have these recent laws been instituted in order to legitimise hacking by the Australian Government and pave the way for the legal usage of Echelon by the Australian government? Is there some greater conspiracy I am failing to foresee? I hope not, otherwise my future civil liberties online are already under great jeopardy.
Actually, one group led by a postman & a gardener from London (Helen Steel and Dave Morris) in the United Kingdom did in fact protest against McDonalds by distributing pamphlets. McDonalds did what any multi-national would do in order to crush opposition and the truth. Bring in an army of merciless lawyers armed with a libel case designed to bankrupt opposition. This case was known in the press as the infamous McLibel Trial. The trial itself ran for two and a half years and become the longest ever running English trial with the Judge delivering his verdict in June 1997.
"The verdict was devastating for McDonald's. The judge ruled that they 'exploit children' with their advertising, produce 'misleading' advertising, are 'culpably responsible' for cruelty to animals, are 'antipathetic' to unionisation and pay their workers low wages. But Helen and Dave failed to prove all the points and so the Judge ruled that they HAD libelled McDonald's and should pay 60,000 pounds damages. They refused and McDonald's knew better than to pursue it."
The fact that the multi-national attempted to bring about the full financial arm of the law in order to silence a small group of activists serves to highlights the fact that the democratic principles of free speech embraced by Western nations are increasingly being threatened by corporations whose wealth can let them ignore civil liberties.
As most Debian users have come to learn and love, a sure sign of reliability in the Linux world is indicated when Debian decides to release a binary deb package into the main tree. So far, the Debian maintainer for the XFree86 packages, G. Branden Robinson, has refused to release any official, XFree86 4.0 packages. Doesn't that tell you a lot about the current stability of the server? To make matters worse, the actual source for 4.0 didn't compile without a patch.
However, Branden in May did announce that he would be releasing the binary packages for XFree86 4.0.1 during this month. If you're a Debian user who's hoping for the Debian packages for XFree86 4.x, then I'd advise you to read the plans Branden has for XFree86 4.0 packaging.
Presumably, this feature will appear in Netscape 6 and the AOL client, but you never know what marketing will object to...
I'm afraid your comment here is a little naive. AOL does not like to cannibalise its ability to make profits, as illustrated by the Gnutella debacle. As you all know well, one of Time-Warner-AOL's main goals is to promote it's "brand name awareness" to the public in all fields of life where possible. AOL will do it all it can to monitor and then ensure that it is the dominant brand. Without a doubt, AOL will soon begin to use web-bugs in an effort to make sure it knows how much it need to do and spend in order to ensure their dominance. AOL, if not already so, will time up another corporation with wide advertising networks, like doubleclick.net so that it can promote its products and services to the rest of the Internet of which it has no control over.
So in conclusion, it is highly unlikely that AOL would seek to disable a tool it can utilise to make profits and so the ability to utilise web-bugs in Netscape 6 will not be disabled either. Just look how prominent invasive are. (I do admit that cookies can be useful every now and then). On the other hand we can only hope the Open Source arm of the Mozilla will uphold the principles of privacy and civil liberties!
After reading up more on Project Monterey, I've learnt that Intel is playing a major role in it's development. Obviously, this is going to have a huge impact on how much support AMD can possibly provide for Monterey, unless AMD decides to participate in the project itself directly. I hope AMD and Intel can find common ground in the development for the new 64-bit Linuxes/Unices and *BSDs; otherwise it looks like another job for anti-trust laws.
BTW: Where do *BSD distributions fit in this picutre? Self Corrections
I'd just like to state that Project Monterey, an alliance of several Unix vendors consists of IBM, Compaq, Sequent and SCO. I was mistaken about Sun & HP being part of it. For information on Monterey, visit IBM's site here or read the zdNET article
And my last line refers to the problems of AMD's Athlon is its early days, and does not refer to the SledgeHammer.
By now, a lot of us have already heard of plans by many vendors, both Linux and traditional Unix (HP, SCO & Sun under the auspices of Monterey) releasing versions of their operating system for Intel's Itanium 64 (IA-64). The link before refers to a zdNET article on Intel releasing a developer's kit for Linux. Intel has claimed that the strength of the open source movement influenced their discussion to make the unprecedented move of releasing full details of Itanium's architecture to the public without a Non-disclosure agreement.
The question I'd like to ask is whether 64-bit Linux/*BSD distributions designed for the IA-64 be readily compatible with or available for the AMD SledgeHammer, and will AMD follow in the footsteps of Intel in supporting open source development on this architecture?
Hopefully AMD and the Linux kernel developers will be able to avoid the initial MTTR problems that plagued the processor in the first few weeks it was out. Keep up the great work AMD.
This isn't very fair with what CmdrTaco did in removing Timothy's story. CmdrTaco did not even bother porting the posts back over here. To make matters worse, after porting my Score:2 post myself, I get marked redundant, end up on 0 and also lose the great line of debate I was building up with the 6 people who replied to my initial post.
What's going on here?
This is a fair complaint, and not a troll. If you believe otherwise, than please ignore this. Someone else deserves that karma point. Thanks.
I think the Naked Gun system of naming processors would have been a better solution.
For example, with this naming sceme, one would realise that a Intel Pentium 2 1/2 (aka Celeron II) would be crappiers that an Intel Pentium 33 1/3 (aka Pentium III). In conclusion, they should rename the Pentium 4 to Pentium 4 1/0: The Final Insult to your Intelligence.
But then again, this ranting is probably insulting your sense of humour...
On the topic of OS support, I'm also wondering how one of these babies would work with Mac OS X. Presumably, someone could be able to write up a virtual machine which could run Mac OS X in one of these boards while still having a x86 as your main architecture. Hopefully, you wouldn't have to wait while the developers port Mac OS X over to x86 and iron out the bugs.
Hypothetically, this new setup could enable one to run multiple OSes simultaneously in the one box and do away with slow emulation altogether. Yet, IMHO, this would probably raise concerns as how these boards with their respective OSes share resources, most notably RAM, and other peripherals.
But then again, with all that extra processing power on an architecture (x86) that wasn't meant to support several different types of processors at once, why would you want to run several different OSes at the same time instead of being dedicated to one? Well, at least this idea would allow one to have a "universal" interface card. For example, I have 400Mhz G3 card and I configure it run as a graphics card. First, I hope that the manufacturers will think of making the interfaces to these cards scalable/versatile. A year down the track, I'll get a 800Mhz G4 card to replace the graphics processor, and instead of throwing out the 400Mhz, wouldn't it be great if I could reconfigure it to become a high-speed FireWire controller or even a dedicated "software" (because you must load a program into the board's RAM) RAID controller?
One more quick question: does the board work with PPC variants of Linux, x86 variants or both?
mPOWER certainly has implemented an interesting concept in giving the typical "nerd" of what seems to be an affordable scalar platform that could easily compete with SMP systems with the addition of sheer scalability.
I agree that this issue seems to have been enormously hyped to the extreme in most cases. However, as some of programs mentioned within this article as programs are "designed to kill packets based on content", a worrying trend may appear from this. Just reread the following extract from the Security Focus Article:
When it is in blocking mode, it kills unwanted activity by issuing a reset packet to the requesting machine; the user sees only a "connection reset by host" message.
I am extremely concerned with the fact that this new method of blocking information will become a subtle and almost invisible method of censorship with apparently less controversy. If an institutes wishes to restrict access to certain content, it should make that fact known to its users. Otherwise, who can tell the difference whether one is experiencing clandestine censorship or a true network error?
I would rather be made aware that I am being denied access to certain content (with appropriate reasoning), than be subjected to hidden censorship. IMHO, this is the real threat posed by content filtering.
I'm in the same boat as you rutger...being a GNU/Linux user who wants to defect as well. However, not fully yet - I am just going to have a go at OpenBSD 2.7 on a separate box. Hopefully it'll become my fully fledged firewall/gateway and drive away even the most determined hacker.
Despite being a zealous Linux user and Slashdot reader, I still want to remain open-minded about what is out there in the open-source world, and not look at it with a single main frame set on using on Linux alone. Diversification - That's the one beauty of open-source I think a lot more people need to appreciate, and I have a gut feeling that raising concerns about privacy and security on the Internet will create more demand for BSD experience; not that I'm implying that Linux has poor security. It's just that BSD, especially Open has an unrivalled track record with not having any local or default-install exploits for the last 2-3 years. It's a record that even the most paranoid Linux distribution would envy.
I've also noticed in recent months that FreeBSD has one of the largest collection of ports compared to any Open source OS out there, not to mention high performance as indicated by the trust placed in it by so many high-level Net services such as Hotmail. The only thing holding me back from diving straight into BSD is package-management. Please enlighten me on this one if I'm wrong. Sure, FreeBSD has a simple package management system, but does it come anywhere near to the sophistication of Debian's apt? I've never seen anyone else come even close to beating the dpkg system. What does the BSD have in store for the future of it's package management? Please do tell me
I'd also like to point out having a Linux kernel for BSD defeats the purpose of using BSD. BSD is inherently stable due to the maturity of its kernel. Ports are recompiled from source designed with Linux in mind so that it can run at its best on BSD systems. From what I've heard BSD already has very good Linux emulation as well. BSD looks like it could outshine it's famed-endowed cousin Linux with the next few years as long as it keeps its high standards up.
To all BSD developers/auditors/testers out there, keep up the great work (please improve package management for all the BSD newbies/hopeful converts = P) and you're bound to become the next great thing...
PS: Now if only Linux could keep up in security and performance...then we'd have a great competition and higher quality development = )
If you find this offtopic, then please ignore it because this is not trolling in any way. I'm sure someone out there deserves that karma point.
I've never actually seen Meta-meta moderation before. Mind telling me how to join it? = P But still, having a top level in moderation in Slashdot that is unaccountable still creates the same problem, and more and more people are getting disillusioned with the whole system. Just read the posts in the Metamoderation and Moderation rooms/sids. I'm not lying about this one.
Feel free to enlighten me on this one if I'm totally unaware that this is already happening, but I believe that those allowed to participate in highest meta level of moderation should be drawn from those deemed to be the fairest and be a totally an accountable and trackable/tracable system. Currently, anyone (even brand-new trolling accounts) can become meta-moderators. This is really not my idea of a fair Slashdot and I've already been bled about 5 karma despite being my utmost at being fair in all my judgements and yet I have no idea why.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a data recovery expert, but wouldn't a random sequence of bits written between each step of writing the specified sequential pattern of bits make it harder to establish physical patterns during data recovery? Because if I'm right, this would act like the normal process of read/write and throw in confusion while the analyzing a drive under the microscope.
Oh well, at least this piece of news gives the OS/disk encryption camp one more point.
Doesn't this quote say it all about what this potentially damaging controversy has turned into? A large flameflest without much concrete evidence that has already consumed three Slashdot articles and probably generated thousands of dollars in banner counts.
The general consensus seems to be that seasoned Linux users aren't getting burnt by this controversy at all, because most would have enough experience to determine any biases by the reviewed before going out to buy a box set. Only the writers and the forums are burning their credibility with this one by continuing to milk all they can from this controversy.
Perhaps all reviewers should at least make the recommendation that first-timers to a new distribution purchase a GPL CD of a distribution before making that hefty box-set purchase so that all controversy can subside once and for all. I also advise that if you are seeking to purchase a box set, look up distribution-neutral reviews of the free enclosed commercial products, because they all nearly work the same regardless of your distribution. This practice will stamp out biased reviews once and for all.
The writer James Hill certainly paints "self-fancied hardcore" Linux users in a bad light, especially those using distributions such as Debian and Slackware, but these extreme cases militant elites are exaggerated and represent only a small part of the community.
The majority of elite users of Linux are NOT generally hostile to new users. I believe that Hill has misinterpreted their motives entirely. Just pop into the Openproject's IRC network irc.openprojects.net and into any of the semi-official and de facto IRC rooms for distributions such as #Debian and see how many users, no matter how arrogant they seem at first are willing to guide newbies through to fixing their problems.
The "schism" appearing between hardcore militants and mainstream users is not aimed at users themselves, but at the vendors that are developing the easier to use distributions. Elitists are proud of the Unix tradition, remember their roots, and see the new rash of distributions as more of a threat and more often than not, a pollutant that threatens to bring in the same problems that have rendered platforms such as Windows impotent. A hindering pollutant from the Old World of Microsoft that Linux does not need.
Sure newbies will always need easy-to-use point and click UIs to let them get a foothold in Linux, but we don't wish for them to cling onto the same principles that drive those distributions. But they have to realise that there is much more to Linux than KDE and simplistic programs.
Elite users are not hostile to Linux users; most of them are willing to help any new user become just as skilled in using Linux as they are - as long as they are using the same "hardcore" distributions, not giving into shallow marketing campaigns and adopt the same principles that many of us share such. This is so that they too can enjoy Linux to the same depth as hardcore Linux users believe the rest of the populus should.
That was 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing.
Now back to porting OpenBSD to a games platform...so consider this overtly paranoid scenario that might just scare the pants off export authorities:
Games platform with massive graphics processing power + OpenBSD = Massively secure and un-crackable* encrypted system for controlling nuclear weapons from so-called rogue states!
(*some may argue that OpenBSD merely creates this illusion)
Now wouldn't that be an amusing thought!
Quick correction: the 21st Century's apdaption.
Monterey was to have a signified a shot in the arm for Unix vendors who are being beset by not only the growing market share of Linux and Windows NT. Industry momentum is building and commitment is growing for Monterey on IA-64, which will be "a leading, high volume, channel-ready, shrink-wrapped, UNIX operating system" as trumpeted by its developers.
Now that SCO is up for sale, will the momentum on the Monterey project be severely hampered? In addition, will the purchasers of the Santa Cruz Operation continue to work on the Monterey project or will they break off from the alliance and take a solo path such as Hewitt Packard and Sun in developing their next generation Unix distributions? Are the prospects of profit arising from the Monterey Project be enough incentive for another company to buy SCO?
Nevertheless, it is sad to see SCO leaving the BSD/*nix scene after their pioneering work in the earlier days and their philanthropy in providing free/lost-cost licenses to students long before Linux became prominent.
Thanks for the compliment! You're spot on, I am an egalitarian, first and foremost, a stanch civil libertarian, and quite socialist.
Even if I see space exploration and alien contact in my lifetime, I can only hope we don't ruin it through the exploitation of another race (much like our own Imperialism/Colonialism) or seek to gain profit through unfair trade practices.
Self-advancement at the price of others is a trait of human nature that has outlasted its usefulness. What else is holding us back from space exploration?
"On the other hand, such a display of optimism and hope for the future gives me a warm fuzzy on the inside."
Thanks for that too, without foolish displays of optimism and hope for the future, humanity would never have reached where we are today. Caveman wouldn't have tried to tame fire, Magellan would have never sailed around the world, Galileo would have never revealed the science that defied religion, NASA would have never sent man to moon.
Isn't it time for more of these warm fuzzy displays?
For as long as humanity has existed, the motivation of societies has been as the saying goes, "Sex, Money, Power." In this new millennium, if humanity is to venture forth into the unexplored recesses of space, than it is obvious that the motivators currently in place cannot co-exist with the survival of the human race. How many times has the well-being of humanity and its environment been forsaken for wealth and power?
Just look at the electric car, which could have gone mainstream decades ago in an effort to lessen damage to the environment. Many suspect that Oil-drilling interests, who had too much to lose with the advent of electric motoring, used their influence to bribe car manufacturers into avoiding and dragging on it's development in order to preserve the status quo.
The same applies with space exploration. Humanity, in its currently divided (politically and ethically), and competitive (economically) state is ill-suited for space exploration and the encountering of any alien life. The current ruling interests realise that space exploration and any consequences of encountering alien life would give societies around the world the reasoning to unilaterally unite and abandon the motivations of Money and Power and hence undermine the foundations of which their influence is built upon.
IMHO, Space exploration and intergalactic diplomacy requires a different set of motivation: racial unity and curiosity. This theme in itself has been expressed many times in science fiction, most notably Star Trek where after "First Contact" humanity unites and abandons the pettiness of power and wealth in order to survive, long and prosper as a race. I believe that the sooner the New World Order is toppled, the sooner the human race will unite and achieve its destiny by fulfilling its instinct of curiosity reaching out through the universe.
---From "An Introduction to Cryptography" by Phil Zimmermann, the programmer of PGP himself.
This is an analogy I remind myself each time one of my friends at high school ridicules me for being a paranoid "conspiracy nut". It concerns me greatly that most of the general public of my country, Australia seems to take a laissez-faire approach to their online Internet rights. For example, Australians have already lost their right to unmonitored and uncensored (but not yet implemented) Internet usage and our intelligence agency, ASIO now has the legal right to actually crack our computers and monitor communications without a warrant all for the sake of so-called "national security".
What is just as worrying is that the general population accepts the face value of our politicians. The government in power, the conservative Liberals claim that they are acting in the best national security and moral interests of the silent majority, but to me, it would seem like they acting to silence the majority. The general public needs to be made aware of how insecure the Internet really is, and how governments are seeking to gain a legal right to infringe upon their basic human rights to freedom of expression and press. There seems to be an accepted dogma by the public here that the online world is different and that their human rights are automatically guaranteed by the nation's law instead of being restricted in reality.
Even my own high school, Sydney Technical High was planning student email access; a proposal to ban students using encryption to circumvent monitoring was considered. The majority of the student seemed unconcerned with this, except for a few others and myself as we saw this as a blatant attempt to impose the school's authority upon us while they were claiming legal responsibility over our moral wellbeing! The school told me that this email service was to be a "privilege and not a right" and thus if I was upset, I should use my own email. I was mainly concerned with those without access to encryption outside of school having their civil liberties breached. Luckily the school abandoned this scheme altogether after discovering free email services provided by services such as Hotmail. However, the mere fact that the school was willing to impose such draconian measures upon its students is a sad reflection of Australia's stance towards online civil liberties.
I am dismayed when my friends exclaim that the CIA will never read my email, because I am not important, nor have I done anything wrong or have something to hide. I wish that they could see that if they we don't start fighting for our rights online now, such as the right to uncensored access, encryption, and online self-security then a time will come when it will be too late for everyone to start voicing their opinions without fear from those seeking to impose their wills upon us.
This bill allows the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to enter, modify, delete or copy data as well as disabling any cryptography one may be running, in order to make it easier for them to get future data. Despite the Attorney General, Daryl William's reassurances that the legislation was "designed to ensure an appropriate balance between individual privacy and the public interest in effective law enforcement and national security;" and that an access warrant is required in these cases, I am fearful of the abuses that are bound to follow. Under this act, ASIO will be allowed to cover up the fact that they hacked into the system and will not be subject to the Crimes Act that forbids computer hacking in Australia surely raising the possibility of framing dissenters and now under the auspices of business, perhaps conduct industrial espionage.
Have these recent laws been instituted in order to legitimise hacking by the Australian Government and pave the way for the legal usage of Echelon by the Australian government? Is there some greater conspiracy I am failing to foresee? I hope not, otherwise my future civil liberties online are already under great jeopardy.
More information about the McLibel case can be found on the activist's group McSpotlight which also contains information on the current French trial of José Bové, and the French Peasant Confederation.
I bid all the anti-globalisation fighters against multi-nationals striving to deprave us of choice and free speech out there the best of luck.
However, Branden in May did announce that he would be releasing the binary packages for XFree86 4.0.1 during this month. If you're a Debian user who's hoping for the Debian packages for XFree86 4.x, then I'd advise you to read the plans Branden has for XFree86 4.0 packaging.
I'm afraid your comment here is a little naive. AOL does not like to cannibalise its ability to make profits, as illustrated by the Gnutella debacle. As you all know well, one of Time-Warner-AOL's main goals is to promote it's "brand name awareness" to the public in all fields of life where possible. AOL will do it all it can to monitor and then ensure that it is the dominant brand. Without a doubt, AOL will soon begin to use web-bugs in an effort to make sure it knows how much it need to do and spend in order to ensure their dominance. AOL, if not already so, will time up another corporation with wide advertising networks, like doubleclick.net so that it can promote its products and services to the rest of the Internet of which it has no control over.
So in conclusion, it is highly unlikely that AOL would seek to disable a tool it can utilise to make profits and so the ability to utilise web-bugs in Netscape 6 will not be disabled either. Just look how prominent invasive are. (I do admit that cookies can be useful every now and then). On the other hand we can only hope the Open Source arm of the Mozilla will uphold the principles of privacy and civil liberties!
After reading up more on Project Monterey, I've learnt that Intel is playing a major role in it's development. Obviously, this is going to have a huge impact on how much support AMD can possibly provide for Monterey, unless AMD decides to participate in the project itself directly. I hope AMD and Intel can find common ground in the development for the new 64-bit Linuxes/Unices and *BSDs; otherwise it looks like another job for anti-trust laws.
BTW: Where do *BSD distributions fit in this picutre? Self Corrections
I'd just like to state that Project Monterey, an alliance of several Unix vendors consists of IBM, Compaq, Sequent and SCO. I was mistaken about Sun & HP being part of it. For information on Monterey, visit IBM's site here or read the zdNET article
And my last line refers to the problems of AMD's Athlon is its early days, and does not refer to the SledgeHammer.
The question I'd like to ask is whether 64-bit Linux/*BSD distributions designed for the IA-64 be readily compatible with or available for the AMD SledgeHammer, and will AMD follow in the footsteps of Intel in supporting open source development on this architecture?
Hopefully AMD and the Linux kernel developers will be able to avoid the initial MTTR problems that plagued the processor in the first few weeks it was out. Keep up the great work AMD.
What's going on here?
This is a fair complaint, and not a troll. If you believe otherwise, than please ignore this. Someone else deserves that karma point. Thanks.
What next? Slashdot getting sued for Slashdotting servers?
For example, with this naming sceme, one would realise that a Intel Pentium 2 1/2 (aka Celeron II) would be crappiers that an Intel Pentium 33 1/3 (aka Pentium III). In conclusion, they should rename the Pentium 4 to Pentium 4 1/0: The Final Insult to your Intelligence.
But then again, this ranting is probably insulting your sense of humour...
Hypothetically, this new setup could enable one to run multiple OSes simultaneously in the one box and do away with slow emulation altogether. Yet, IMHO, this would probably raise concerns as how these boards with their respective OSes share resources, most notably RAM, and other peripherals.
But then again, with all that extra processing power on an architecture (x86) that wasn't meant to support several different types of processors at once, why would you want to run several different OSes at the same time instead of being dedicated to one? Well, at least this idea would allow one to have a "universal" interface card. For example, I have 400Mhz G3 card and I configure it run as a graphics card. First, I hope that the manufacturers will think of making the interfaces to these cards scalable/versatile. A year down the track, I'll get a 800Mhz G4 card to replace the graphics processor, and instead of throwing out the 400Mhz, wouldn't it be great if I could reconfigure it to become a high-speed FireWire controller or even a dedicated "software" (because you must load a program into the board's RAM) RAID controller?
One more quick question: does the board work with PPC variants of Linux, x86 variants or both?
mPOWER certainly has implemented an interesting concept in giving the typical "nerd" of what seems to be an affordable scalar platform that could easily compete with SMP systems with the addition of sheer scalability.
I would rather be made aware that I am being denied access to certain content (with appropriate reasoning), than be subjected to hidden censorship. IMHO, this is the real threat posed by content filtering.
Despite being a zealous Linux user and Slashdot reader, I still want to remain open-minded about what is out there in the open-source world, and not look at it with a single main frame set on using on Linux alone. Diversification - That's the one beauty of open-source I think a lot more people need to appreciate, and I have a gut feeling that raising concerns about privacy and security on the Internet will create more demand for BSD experience; not that I'm implying that Linux has poor security. It's just that BSD, especially Open has an unrivalled track record with not having any local or default-install exploits for the last 2-3 years. It's a record that even the most paranoid Linux distribution would envy.
I've also noticed in recent months that FreeBSD has one of the largest collection of ports compared to any Open source OS out there, not to mention high performance as indicated by the trust placed in it by so many high-level Net services such as Hotmail. The only thing holding me back from diving straight into BSD is package-management. Please enlighten me on this one if I'm wrong. Sure, FreeBSD has a simple package management system, but does it come anywhere near to the sophistication of Debian's apt? I've never seen anyone else come even close to beating the dpkg system. What does the BSD have in store for the future of it's package management? Please do tell me
I'd also like to point out having a Linux kernel for BSD defeats the purpose of using BSD. BSD is inherently stable due to the maturity of its kernel. Ports are recompiled from source designed with Linux in mind so that it can run at its best on BSD systems. From what I've heard BSD already has very good Linux emulation as well. BSD looks like it could outshine it's famed-endowed cousin Linux with the next few years as long as it keeps its high standards up.
To all BSD developers/auditors/testers out there, keep up the great work (please improve package management for all the BSD newbies/hopeful converts = P) and you're bound to become the next great thing...
PS: Now if only Linux could keep up in security and performance...then we'd have a great competition and higher quality development = )
I've never actually seen Meta-meta moderation before. Mind telling me how to join it? = P But still, having a top level in moderation in Slashdot that is unaccountable still creates the same problem, and more and more people are getting disillusioned with the whole system. Just read the posts in the Metamoderation and Moderation rooms/sids. I'm not lying about this one.
Feel free to enlighten me on this one if I'm totally unaware that this is already happening, but I believe that those allowed to participate in highest meta level of moderation should be drawn from those deemed to be the fairest and be a totally an accountable and trackable/tracable system. Currently, anyone (even brand-new trolling accounts) can become meta-moderators. This is really not my idea of a fair Slashdot and I've already been bled about 5 karma despite being my utmost at being fair in all my judgements and yet I have no idea why.
Someone should start a reform Slashdot movement.