Northpoint's warning was too late for us. Sometime between last thursday and friday our internet service went down. When we called XO Communications for service we were told they knew of no major outages. It wasn't until we dialed into another ISP and saw last Friday's Slashdot story on this very subject that we knew what was going on and confronted XO, finally getting them to admit that, yes, the link would never be coming back on.
A friend of mine (who serves a number of lawfirms that are Northpoint customers via XO) was informed yesterday that, as of Monday, they too will be out of service. At least he has time to get his DNS moved, while his email is still working. We on the other hand have experienced the joy of faxing and calling and waiting, only to still be unable to receive emails a week later (despite getting a new, 256k DSL link through another providor in our building). If you haven't moved your DSL from Network Solutions to someone who uses a less archaic form of authentication (e.g. Joker.com or domainmonger.com), do so before something like this bites you in the ass.
As of this morning I was "assured" the change to our new DNS servers (with new IP addresses due ot the ISP change) would be done by tonight (the fax and authorization was sent on Monday). Of course, I was assured the same thing yesterday, and the day before that, so I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile web pages don't resolve and my users must make do without email. (as a comparison, nunames.nu took 30 seconds and $10 for the change to go through, $10 I would have gladly paid for such speedy service from NSI).
Thank you Northpoint. Thank you XO for the heads up. Thank you Network Solutions for your competence and responsiveness in updating your DNS maps. Not.
Somebody with years of experience in traditional programming probably won't find their skills translate too easily. The investment in layers of abstraction built on traditional processors is too big ever to throw away, but this kind of a machine is a nifty trick to have available.
It is extremely cool to have this technology emerging. As for our years of skills translating, or not, it isn't really all the important. We will simply learn how to program this new equipment, from scratch if necessary.
It is a myth that the young learn better than the less-young. As an example, I learned German at 21 (and am now very fluent), Linux at 26, how to fly a plane at 33, and am now learning to write screenplays at 36. (As an amusing counterpoint I will almost certainly never learn to spell, even at 60. Not because I cannot, but because I have better things to do with my time, and a spell checker when absolutely necessary, but most of all, because I take perverse pleasure in yanking the grammar nazis' chains). While I doubt I'll be performing any airshows, or attending the Oscars, anytime soon, the point remains: we have already been taught how to think and learn. Learning how to use and program FPGAs won't be that big of a problem, with or without years of programming experience behind us.
There is at least one utility I know of which allows read/write access to ext2 filesystems from within windows. My point stands... any security you think you may have gained by running Linux or FreeBSD is completely circumvented the moment you boot windows, whether the offending program makes use of an ext2 tool under windows to infect Linux files (for example) or simply trashes the Linux partition.
Either way your secure operating system has been successfully attacked, and the attack vector which bypasses said security is in fact running an insecure operating system via dual boot on the same hardware.
As an unrelated aside (unrelated to your post, that is), I find it interesting that someone moderated my post down as "flaimbait" for pointing out a well documented security risk. Looks like some MS minions are excersizing their moderator priveleges today.
Fair enough, but this has nothing to do with the original claim that Linux files could be infected by running this program in Windows. They can't.
This isn't true. Lunux files can be infected from windows, if you load a utility which allows you access to the extended 2 filesystem. And yes, there are such utilities available for windows.
If the files can be accessed, they can be modified, which means they can be infected. If you reread my original post you will notice that I refer to exactly such a utility (though the precise name escapes me... its been over a year since I've messed around with it).
While only an idiot runs mystery software as root on a *nix system, what happens when you dual boot into Windows to play that favorite game or run that beloved flight simulator? At this point you *are* essentially running everything as "root", and Linux filesystems are potentially just as accessible and corruptable as windows filesystems (assuming the virus is smart enough to parse the inode map, or a ext2win type driver is loaded in windows).
The infection vector for Linux software may be more via the windows dual-boot option so many of us keep around, rather than the clueless newbie running a downloaded executable as root. If the virus author chooses a target intelligently, one which runs as root by default (for example, say, "getty" or "X"), your Linux system could well become a warren of virial activity no matter how secure the Linux portion of the configuration is.
Using an encrypted filesystem, inaccessible under windows, might prevent this sort of contagion, but of course that wouldn't prevent the windows incarnation of the virus from simply trashing the encrypted data and destroying the Linux installation outright.
The upshot is, if you have Windows installed on your system, and use it in any kind of promiscuous fashion (which, for an operating system as insecure as Windows must include having any kind of connection to the internet), any data anywhere on the hardware is at risk, and all the security Linux or FreeBSD offers you is for naught.
The details on how I go about this are here, but to answer your question: I do use dvgrab for the actual capture. MainActor is used soley for the non-linear editing of the product, in order to cut out commercials and cruft preceeding (and following) the actual program (dv grab captures the video, but it does not filter commercials or do any kind of editing).
Yes, it is a little tedious... editing the footage takes about twenty minutes, and the renders to MJPEG avi format take several hours, as does the final conversion to DivX. The latter isn't an issue, really, as I fire off the MJPEG renders in parallel before going to bed, then fire off the DivX conversion before leaving for work the next morning. That evening I burn the result to CD and watch it.
Obviously this is something you only do for a program you really enjoy and want to add to your personal video library, not something you are just casually watching.
Of course, PBS broadcasts are much easier, as there is almost no editing out of the commercials involved.
An old dual PII/450 box running Mandrake 8.0 beta 2 (I was also doing this using Mandrake 7.2).
Sony DVMC-DA2 Media Converter (converts the analog signal to firewire -- I've also used a mini-dv camcorder to do this, but prefer the media converter. I am replacing it with a Hollywood media converter, as the Sony only does NTSC and I have some home videos in PAL I wish to convert, so if you're buying new hardware I suggest the Hollywood over the Sony kit)
TI OHCI Compliant FireWire Controller
75 GB IDE UDMA/100 driver w/ Promise controller
I have 512 MB RAM, but that is way more than is needed... 128 MB should be plenty
You really don't get it, do you? Nor do you know much about TiVo, do you? You cannot build your own video library with TiVo, unless you first output the signal in analog format (read: you lose quality). Your viewing habits are public knowledge, or at least purchasable for the right price, etc. etc.
If you want to be a serf, forced to submit to the whims and limitations the Copyright Cartels choose to impose upon you, with your viewing habits recorded and made available to marketing enterprises with their own, not your, interests at heart, be my guest. If instead you wish to retain your rights to fair use, record and archive the programs and movies you wish, under your own terms (and with better quality), then may I suggest thinking outside of the box just a little?
I don't know about the general viewer, but when I watch TV, I change the channel when the commercials come on.
I watch (and record) Babylon 5 religiously. However, I don't watch it at 6:00 PM CDT when it comes on the Sci-Fi channel. Instead, I capture the signal using a firewire converter box (Sony) and host adapter to my Linux box using dvgrab. Once the episode is recorded I fire up MainActor, snip out the commercials and splice the various parts together (moving the intro sequence to the beginning for good measure), then convert the resulting product to divx and burn to CD.
I end up watching each episode a day or so later (usually while the current episode is recording), but I do so without any commercial interruptions of any kind. Once I've watched the episode I put the freshly burned CD in a booklet with a hundred or so others. I already have most of season 4, all of season 5, and am currently getting season's 1 through 4. In the end I'll have every episode of my favorite show on CD, and have watched every episode without having seen a single commercial.
Not everyone is interested in taking the time to edit out commercials of course, but for those programs one really enjoys, viewing the show without interruption enhances the experience immensly and is well worth waiting a day or so to watch (while the render and conversion take place overnight).
XO Communications, formerly concentric, is an example of how an ISP should NOT handle this type of situation. In contrast to other reports in this discussion with respect to other, more responsible ISPs, XO kept the situation completely under wraps, sending out no notifications by email or otherwise.
Indeed, when our internet service was down this morning we placed a service call and were told that "XO is unaware of any major outages." Meanwhile, for at least the last six weeks they were, apparently, sereptitiously moving their some of their customers to alternative DSL services (a friend of mine owns a consulting company whose customers were serreptitiously switched... the fact that these customers were legal firms probably had something to do with their good fortune. XO did not tell their customers what they were doing... their DSL service simply got interrupted for a couple of hours mid-day for "unspecified upgrades").
After dialing in to a personal account from a laptop and finding the story here on slashdot we called XO's customer service back and finally got them to admit that our DSL link would never be coming back up. When asked if they could swing us to another DSL providor over the weekend we were told to contact Sales regarding new service. Of course, we will be contacting Sales, but not with XO.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
We are fortunate, in that there happens to be a tier one providor with a DSLAM in our building, through whom we will be able to get reconnected on an emergency basis sometime Monday. Hundreds of other XO customers were equally blindsided, and not nearly so lucky.
Here's hoping someone more litigous than I sues their socks off (and here's being glad my home service is through 21st Century broadband rather than DSL).
The Cult of $cientology destroyed the anonymouty of funet.fi after someone posted their secret holy scriptures (the horrifically bad science fiction we read last week here on slashdot) to USENET.
They did this by posting naked pictures of children through the same anonymous server, then reporting the same to the Finland police, who naturally demanded the list of actual user names. As it was not a double-blind system, the administrators were forced to comply. The Co$ then had no trouble extracting the true target of their efforts and suing said person into oblivion.
While not identical to the social engineering described before, the technique they used bore striking similarities.
Oddly, as far as I know, no one from the Cult of Scientology was ever arrested for peddling the child pornography they themselves sent through the anonymous remailer. Funny, that.
I can see the headlines now. As NASA purchases more sparcs, HPs, and Linux PCs, now preinstalled with Bloatware's latest TapeYourMouthShut Censorware(tm) product for their respective platforms, missions are disrupted, perahps even scrubbed, or worse, as the poorly written, closed source software memory leaks all over the system, bringing it to its (still operational, but just barely) knees. Calculations which once to microseconds now lag for tens of seconds, orbits and maneuvers are started too late or missed altogether, etc. etc. Until the computer handling communications signalling gets so out of sync that communications are lost, or rerouted to some other locale with less, shall we say, encumbered equipment (such as Russia or Edwards)
All so some idiot 30year plus legislature can go a few more years without bending a single brain cell to obtain basic computer literacy.
No. It refers to states creating excize taxes on goods and services from other states. At the time the US was more of a federation of *independent* states, rather than the collection of provinces it has, often in unconstitutional ways, become.
Unfortunately many (most?) judges no longer adhere to the constitution as the highest law in the land, substituting such phrases as "compelling public interest" to justify unconstitutional, but (in their minds) desirable, behavior or legislation. It would not surprise me in the least to see the same thing happen here, where such laws are passed, and permitted, in direct conflict with the constitution, the given a stamp of judicial approval after the fact out of expediency for the moment.
Historical examples of this include, but are not limted to, various definitions of obscenity, child pornography, threats against the president's life, and so on. Speach which is, strictly speaking, protected by the constitution but has nevertheless been abridged, with judicial approval, for reasons of expediency.
The reason I ask if you read the article in detail is that it states one thing, but cites facts which imply another. It is an impressive achievement of spin, but little else. Bush did not win a statewide recount, he won the recount based on undervotes in the counties Al Gore tried to have selectively counted (according to the article you cited). The article implies Bush won the state, when in fact they only discussed a subset of the existing data and ignored a large portion of the data gleaned from recounts in other, more republican areas which surprisingly favored Gore.
Specifically, recounts conducted by the Orlando Sentinal and further discussed in the Kausfiles indicate that the overvote in largely republican counties, ignored by both sides, would have resulted in a win by Al Gore by several thousand votes, even using the most stringent recount standards. The reason turns out to be the unambiguous votes by many first time voters, who voted for Al Gore, then wrote in Al Gore and marked the write-in box as well. As unambiguous votes they would have, by law, been counted for Al Gore. Apparently many people misunderstood the write-in box as a "confirmation" box, a sort of check to make sure the vote was counted correctly (and is a strong indication that voters really do need to be educated in exactly how the ballotting process works).
The upshot is this: If Al Gore had gotten his way (selective recounts of Democratic counties) Bush would have been declared the winner. However, if the entire state had been recounted correctly, current data indicate that Al Gore would have won handsomely. It is an interesting ethics lesson, both that, had Al Gore done "the right thing" he would have won and no one could have reasonably denied him a recount.
By all indications, Al Gore won the election, both in Florida and in the US as a whole. The Bush camp knew (or at least suspected) that this was the case and pressed ahead, taking the presidency without a full and proper accounting of the votes in the state (contrary to every other close election in the country, where recounts were in fact conducted, including hand recounts of ballats unreadable by machine).
The fact that the opposing side behaved in a disengenous manner by not requesting a statewide recount and trying to select particular counties instead does not in any way diminish the fact that the Bush camp has usurped the electorial process and taken office in opposition to the explicit will of the American people. That makes him a usurper as far as I am concerned, and I strongly suspect history will, in time, agree, no matter the amount of spin his supporters may put on the issue in the short term.
Finally, I should note that my point in referring to Dubya as the Usurper is not intended to somehow "drive him from power", but to be in his face that he doesn't belong there, he has no mandate, and he'd better tread softly and not attempt to shove his right-wing agenda down our unwilling throats. It is important that we as a people show as much backbone as we can, in a peaceful manner, lest such behavior be repeated in the future (perhaps next time by the democrats). Our democracy is more important than either of those clowns (and for the record, I didn't vote for either of them), and it does not serve our democracy at all for us to take this sort of thing without comment, nor for our so-called "fourth estate" to curry favor in an effort to enhance their access to public figures by promoting such blatently biased spin.
One important advantage this gives developers is the ability to develop on the platform of their choice, and deploy the application on the platform of the consumers choice, which may very well not be the same.
This could be an important foot in the door, allowing people to develop on Linux and deploy on windows (taking much of the programming frustration associated with developing under windows -- oh the humanity of it all! Memories best left repressed -- out of the picture). Potentially quicker development cycles not held hostage by Microsoft release schedules and instant deployment to two popular platforms could make for a very potent combination that can well favor platforms such as Linux.
A colleague of mine drives his SGI 1600SW at 1600x1024 using DVI from his Nvidia and Matrox g400 cards (using XFree 4.0.2 and drivers downloaded from the manufacturers). The flat panel itself uses a proprietary SGI digital interface, however, the panel he bought (circa $1400) came with a multilink adapter allowing DVI or analog input. The analog didn't look all that great, but the DVI was excellent.
So, in short, 1600x1024 works perfectly, meaning that while there may be a 1024 limit on the vertical resolution DVI can drive, there is not a 1280 limitation on the horizontal resolution.
Still, the standard is already showing its age now that even higher res monitors are shipping.
SLI has a budget of $290 million for fiscal year 2001, while the 2002 budget
proposal submitted to Congress Wednesday by President Bush calls for a 64
percent increase in the program to $475 million. The complete SLI program
envisions spending $4.5 billion over a five-year span.[1]
You are wrong in the particulars of this situation. The Usurper, for all his faults, is actually increasing spending on the SLI program sixty four percent. NASA has readjusted its spending priorities.
That having been said, you are correct in pointing out that the Usurper is buying off public opinion directly through tax cuts which give everyone a small break (but the wealthy a huge break). It is a popular tax plan with many people (even I like the idea of having a few extra grand in my pocket at the end of the year). Your comparison to the fall of the Republic is interesting, and the parallels quite striking: a man usurping the democratic process, buying off the people with gifts and emerging a popular force despite his despotism.
He has little choice. He and his administration are demonstrably usurping the authority of our democratic process, as press sponsored recounts in Florida have demonstrated. We are stuck with him for four years (at least). What is important is what happens in four years: do we get our democracy back, or suffer more of the same?
Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make that trip in under two hours
Argh! I should really preview before posting.
The above should have read "Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make the trip in under two hours with a good tailwind." Normally such a trip, in still air, will take my plane closer to 2 hours and 40 minutes (110 - 120 kts tas), which is slower than many General Aviation aircraft.
My guess is he's either flying a fast single (150-200 kts), a twin (150-200kts), or a corporate jet (300+ kts).
Assuming he didn't exaggerate his time door to door, he could easilly do this under two hours.
PDX (Portland International) to BOI (Gowen Field, Boise) is 298.2 nautical miles. Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make that trip in under two hours (true airspeed 110 knots, ground speed wind dependent). If he lives relatively close to the airport, and the office at the other end is relatively near, and he flies in a reasonably fast plane, he should have no trouble in getting door to door in a couple of hours.
Of course, bad weather and other factors can cause delays, or force the flight to be cancelled altogether. This is especially true with General Aviation aircraft, which fly at lower altitudes and are more vulnerable to weather en route than higher-flying commuter or corporate jets.
Remeniscent of Faranheit 451
on
The DeCSS Haiku
·
· Score: 2
As someone who has read science fiction for much of my life, I must say it never ceases to amaze me how some of what reads as unrealistic turns out to have a profoundly prophetic view of the world a scant decade or two later.
Faranheit 451, a story in which "firemen" burned books (books make people think critically, something the state can't allow) leads to people memorizing novels and great works of literature to preserve it for future generations in a world where every last book has been burned.
Ironic indeed, that our own cheap whores of a congress, a sleazy president, together with one of the more corrupt Copyright Cartels (the MPAA) have managed to conjure the beginnings of such a world in a remarkably short time.
Memorizing the DeCSS algorithm is one of the most sensible and effective methods of protest I've heard to date... short of lobotomizing you, or directly and blatently abridging your right to speech in its purest form, there is nothing they can do. And should they chose such a direct abridgement, even the most blindly passive television enamoured sheep could not fail to see it as a violation of one of our most highly prized constitutional rights.
Has anyone published a DeCSS book? I think it would be a very interesting end-run around the DMCA. Publish a book, which includes the source code to DeCSS, details the algorithm, and perhaps includes some background information on what has happened. Include an "e-book" CD containing the exact text of the book, in ASCII or HTML format, for online reading.
I for one would pay as much as $50 for such a book (even though I have no use for DeCSS and already have a copy of the code in text format, printed out before it was banned). I would probably be wiling to pay twice that if some portion of the profits were to go to the EFF and/or 2600's legal defense fund.
It might be interesting to publish such a book and donate it to a number of libraries around the country as well...
This is just the sort of ridiculous position I've come to expect from the US government, and with Bush in office I'm sure we can expect alot more "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" play with big corps.
As much as the Usurper annoys me, and as opposed to his notions as I am on several issues, it is IMHO unfair and inaccurate to imply that he will be engaged in any more quid-pro-quo money for politics behavior than his Democratic counterparts. The difference mainly lies in who the parties of the transaction will be (e.g. Big Oil vs. Big Law Firms), not the quantity of sleazy bargaining engaged in.
As far as this particular issue is concerned (Copyright Cartels stealing our rights through corrupt legislation bought and paid for), both parties are equally reprehensible. It was a republican congress that passed the bill, but a democratic president who eagerly signed it into law. The same is true for encryption and a number of other issues that concern technology folks BTW -- on the issues many of us really care about, there is no difference between the two major parties, and hence no real choice.
It is doubtful that the Bush folks would have put something like this just since the swearing in, or even since the election, since they were so distracted with other business.
This simply isn't true. Beurocracies chug along just fine during political transitions and have for the last century (at least). You are probably right in that the foundation was almost certainly laid under the Clinton administration, but you are wrong to assign innocence to the Bush administration.
Hollywood has its claws into both parties. Actors and Artists are typically in the Democratic camp, while Recording and Movie Executives are typically in the Republican camp. I say typically; there are obvious exceptions, such as Actor turned President Ronald Reagan. In any event Hollywood and the Copyright Cartels hold a great deal of influence over both parties.
Remember, it was a Republican congress who passed the DMCA into law, and a Democratic president who signed it.
Of course, I feel that RMS ought to use the term "liberated software" to avoid the whole "free beer/free speech" issue, but that's another story....
That is not such a good idea.
"Liberated" is slang in many areas for "procured by illicit means" (e.g. he "liberated" a pack of cigarretts from the local five and dime). To many "liberated software" has an unsavory implication of "warez."
The Free Speach/Free Beer discussion is IMHO a good one... it forces people to think about what freedom and free really mean, and allows an easy and natural avenue for pointing it out to those less aware.
ObSSH: if the SSH trademark should be enforceable (which I doubt, given that "ssh" is the name of an IETF standard, the original license allowed derivative products to use the term "ssh" as long is such products adhered to the RFCs, and OpenSSH has been using it for over a year now) I think your suggestion (Fresh) would be an excellent choice.
I am reminded of the Ameritrade commercial, where the woman dumps 300 shares of stock because she "didn't like the management."
In all fairness, I did make good money when the stock went from $6 to $40 per share, my mistake being to buy it back at $12 and ride it down to $4. Nevertheless, when it became clear that Corel didn't understand Open Source or Free Software and that their Linux strategy was more of a flirtation than a strategy, I dumped their stock like a hot potato and ate the $8 per share loss. (I still made $26/share overall, so I can't really complain I guess)
I only wish I'd done it sooner (having tried their Linux product and discovering how closely tied it was to their particular distribution and how unfriendly it was to other distros such as Red Hat and Mandrake, I certainly had plenty of early warning). The cluelessness of this fool's comments underscore the entire company's inability to think outside of their little box. Their willingness to sell their soul to their most dangerous competitor, while ignoring and downplaying an emerging market (Linux) that, in world wide terms, will probably grow much larger than Microsoft's share of the pie over the next several years, is indicative of their inability to form any coherent strategy beyond "survive for the moment, hope for the best, and remain as buzzword compliant as possible."
With solid commercial products like Applixware available today and emerging products like Koffice and gnome office it is unlikely Corel will get much if any market share at all so late in the game. Whatever chance they may have had they've now squandered and sabataged, both with the belated releases of the Linux version(s) of their software vs. the Windows versions and with their openly dismissive rhetoric of their (Linux) customer's and the communities values and philosophies. No PR company on the planet can rehabilitate Corel's image at this point.
I am glad I made so much money on their stock's brief ascent, but am ever so glad to be rid of it today. I do not give the company as such more than two years of continued existence, although I'm sure someone will purchase the WordPerfect product and keep it alive, as their is an existing market in the legal profession that, if managed correctly, can remain profitable.
Slashdot Mirror
Northpoint's warning was too late for us. Sometime between last thursday and friday our internet service went down. When we called XO Communications for service we were told they knew of no major outages. It wasn't until we dialed into another ISP and saw last Friday's Slashdot story on this very subject that we knew what was going on and confronted XO, finally getting them to admit that, yes, the link would never be coming back on.
A friend of mine (who serves a number of lawfirms that are Northpoint customers via XO) was informed yesterday that, as of Monday, they too will be out of service. At least he has time to get his DNS moved, while his email is still working. We on the other hand have experienced the joy of faxing and calling and waiting, only to still be unable to receive emails a week later (despite getting a new, 256k DSL link through another providor in our building). If you haven't moved your DSL from Network Solutions to someone who uses a less archaic form of authentication (e.g. Joker.com or domainmonger.com), do so before something like this bites you in the ass.
As of this morning I was "assured" the change to our new DNS servers (with new IP addresses due ot the ISP change) would be done by tonight (the fax and authorization was sent on Monday). Of course, I was assured the same thing yesterday, and the day before that, so I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile web pages don't resolve and my users must make do without email. (as a comparison, nunames.nu took 30 seconds and $10 for the change to go through, $10 I would have gladly paid for such speedy service from NSI).
Thank you Northpoint. Thank you XO for the heads up. Thank you Network Solutions for your competence and responsiveness in updating your DNS maps. Not.
Somebody with years of experience in traditional programming probably won't find their skills translate too easily. The investment in layers of abstraction built on traditional processors is too big ever to throw away, but this kind of a machine is a nifty trick to have available.
It is extremely cool to have this technology emerging. As for our years of skills translating, or not, it isn't really all the important. We will simply learn how to program this new equipment, from scratch if necessary.
It is a myth that the young learn better than the less-young. As an example, I learned German at 21 (and am now very fluent), Linux at 26, how to fly a plane at 33, and am now learning to write screenplays at 36. (As an amusing counterpoint I will almost certainly never learn to spell, even at 60. Not because I cannot, but because I have better things to do with my time, and a spell checker when absolutely necessary, but most of all, because I take perverse pleasure in yanking the grammar nazis' chains). While I doubt I'll be performing any airshows, or attending the Oscars, anytime soon, the point remains: we have already been taught how to think and learn. Learning how to use and program FPGAs won't be that big of a problem, with or without years of programming experience behind us.
There is at least one utility I know of which allows read/write access to ext2 filesystems from within windows. My point stands ... any security you think you may have gained by running Linux or FreeBSD is completely circumvented the moment you boot windows, whether the offending program makes use of an ext2 tool under windows to infect Linux files (for example) or simply trashes the Linux partition.
Either way your secure operating system has been successfully attacked, and the attack vector which bypasses said security is in fact running an insecure operating system via dual boot on the same hardware.
As an unrelated aside (unrelated to your post, that is), I find it interesting that someone moderated my post down as "flaimbait" for pointing out a well documented security risk. Looks like some MS minions are excersizing their moderator priveleges today.
Fair enough, but this has nothing to do with the original claim that Linux files could be infected by running this program in Windows. They can't.
... its been over a year since I've messed around with it).
This isn't true. Lunux files can be infected from windows, if you load a utility which allows you access to the extended 2 filesystem. And yes, there are such utilities available for windows.
If the files can be accessed, they can be modified, which means they can be infected. If you reread my original post you will notice that I refer to exactly such a utility (though the precise name escapes me
While only an idiot runs mystery software as root on a *nix system, what happens when you dual boot into Windows to play that favorite game or run that beloved flight simulator? At this point you *are* essentially running everything as "root", and Linux filesystems are potentially just as accessible and corruptable as windows filesystems (assuming the virus is smart enough to parse the inode map, or a ext2win type driver is loaded in windows).
The infection vector for Linux software may be more via the windows dual-boot option so many of us keep around, rather than the clueless newbie running a downloaded executable as root. If the virus author chooses a target intelligently, one which runs as root by default (for example, say, "getty" or "X"), your Linux system could well become a warren of virial activity no matter how secure the Linux portion of the configuration is.
Using an encrypted filesystem, inaccessible under windows, might prevent this sort of contagion, but of course that wouldn't prevent the windows incarnation of the virus from simply trashing the encrypted data and destroying the Linux installation outright.
The upshot is, if you have Windows installed on your system, and use it in any kind of promiscuous fashion (which, for an operating system as insecure as Windows must include having any kind of connection to the internet), any data anywhere on the hardware is at risk, and all the security Linux or FreeBSD offers you is for naught.
The details on how I go about this are here, but to answer your question: I do use dvgrab for the actual capture. MainActor is used soley for the non-linear editing of the product, in order to cut out commercials and cruft preceeding (and following) the actual program (dv grab captures the video, but it does not filter commercials or do any kind of editing).
... editing the footage takes about twenty minutes, and the renders to MJPEG avi format take several hours, as does the final conversion to DivX. The latter isn't an issue, really, as I fire off the MJPEG renders in parallel before going to bed, then fire off the DivX conversion before leaving for work the next morning. That evening I burn the result to CD and watch it.
Yes, it is a little tedious
Obviously this is something you only do for a program you really enjoy and want to add to your personal video library, not something you are just casually watching.
Of course, PBS broadcasts are much easier, as there is almost no editing out of the commercials involved.
(One hour dv video requires ~12 GB as avi's).
Details on the software I use can be found here
You know, there's this thing called TiVo and...
It even runs Linux fer chrissakes!
You really don't get it, do you? Nor do you know much about TiVo, do you? You cannot build your own video library with TiVo, unless you first output the signal in analog format (read: you lose quality). Your viewing habits are public knowledge, or at least purchasable for the right price, etc. etc.
If you want to be a serf, forced to submit to the whims and limitations the Copyright Cartels choose to impose upon you, with your viewing habits recorded and made available to marketing enterprises with their own, not your, interests at heart, be my guest. If instead you wish to retain your rights to fair use, record and archive the programs and movies you wish, under your own terms (and with better quality), then may I suggest thinking outside of the box just a little?
I don't know about the general viewer, but when I watch TV, I change the channel when the commercials come on.
I watch (and record) Babylon 5 religiously. However, I don't watch it at 6:00 PM CDT when it comes on the Sci-Fi channel. Instead, I capture the signal using a firewire converter box (Sony) and host adapter to my Linux box using dvgrab. Once the episode is recorded I fire up MainActor, snip out the commercials and splice the various parts together (moving the intro sequence to the beginning for good measure), then convert the resulting product to divx and burn to CD.
I end up watching each episode a day or so later (usually while the current episode is recording), but I do so without any commercial interruptions of any kind. Once I've watched the episode I put the freshly burned CD in a booklet with a hundred or so others. I already have most of season 4, all of season 5, and am currently getting season's 1 through 4. In the end I'll have every episode of my favorite show on CD, and have watched every episode without having seen a single commercial.
Not everyone is interested in taking the time to edit out commercials of course, but for those programs one really enjoys, viewing the show without interruption enhances the experience immensly and is well worth waiting a day or so to watch (while the render and conversion take place overnight).
XO Communications, formerly concentric, is an example of how an ISP should NOT handle this type of situation. In contrast to other reports in this discussion with respect to other, more responsible ISPs, XO kept the situation completely under wraps, sending out no notifications by email or otherwise.
... the fact that these customers were legal firms probably had something to do with their good fortune. XO did not tell their customers what they were doing ... their DSL service simply got interrupted for a couple of hours mid-day for "unspecified upgrades").
Indeed, when our internet service was down this morning we placed a service call and were told that "XO is unaware of any major outages." Meanwhile, for at least the last six weeks they were, apparently, sereptitiously moving their some of their customers to alternative DSL services (a friend of mine owns a consulting company whose customers were serreptitiously switched
After dialing in to a personal account from a laptop and finding the story here on slashdot we called XO's customer service back and finally got them to admit that our DSL link would never be coming back up. When asked if they could swing us to another DSL providor over the weekend we were told to contact Sales regarding new service. Of course, we will be contacting Sales, but not with XO.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
We are fortunate, in that there happens to be a tier one providor with a DSLAM in our building, through whom we will be able to get reconnected on an emergency basis sometime Monday. Hundreds of other XO customers were equally blindsided, and not nearly so lucky.
Here's hoping someone more litigous than I sues their socks off (and here's being glad my home service is through 21st Century broadband rather than DSL).
The Cult of $cientology destroyed the anonymouty of funet.fi after someone posted their secret holy scriptures (the horrifically bad science fiction we read last week here on slashdot) to USENET.
They did this by posting naked pictures of children through the same anonymous server, then reporting the same to the Finland police, who naturally demanded the list of actual user names. As it was not a double-blind system, the administrators were forced to comply. The Co$ then had no trouble extracting the true target of their efforts and suing said person into oblivion.
While not identical to the social engineering described before, the technique they used bore striking similarities.
Oddly, as far as I know, no one from the Cult of Scientology was ever arrested for peddling the child pornography they themselves sent through the anonymous remailer. Funny, that.
I can see the headlines now. As NASA purchases more sparcs, HPs, and Linux PCs, now preinstalled with Bloatware's latest TapeYourMouthShut Censorware(tm) product for their respective platforms, missions are disrupted, perahps even scrubbed, or worse, as the poorly written, closed source software memory leaks all over the system, bringing it to its (still operational, but just barely) knees. Calculations which once to microseconds now lag for tens of seconds, orbits and maneuvers are started too late or missed altogether, etc. etc. Until the computer handling communications signalling gets so out of sync that communications are lost, or rerouted to some other locale with less, shall we say, encumbered equipment (such as Russia or Edwards)
All so some idiot 30year plus legislature can go a few more years without bending a single brain cell to obtain basic computer literacy.
No. It refers to states creating excize taxes on goods and services from other states. At the time the US was more of a federation of *independent* states, rather than the collection of provinces it has, often in unconstitutional ways, become.
Unfortunately many (most?) judges no longer adhere to the constitution as the highest law in the land, substituting such phrases as "compelling public interest" to justify unconstitutional, but (in their minds) desirable, behavior or legislation. It would not surprise me in the least to see the same thing happen here, where such laws are passed, and permitted, in direct conflict with the constitution, the given a stamp of judicial approval after the fact out of expediency for the moment.
Historical examples of this include, but are not limted to, various definitions of obscenity, child pornography, threats against the president's life, and so on. Speach which is, strictly speaking, protected by the constitution but has nevertheless been abridged, with judicial approval, for reasons of expediency.
The reason I ask if you read the article in detail is that it states one thing, but cites facts which imply another. It is an impressive achievement of spin, but little else. Bush did not win a statewide recount, he won the recount based on undervotes in the counties Al Gore tried to have selectively counted (according to the article you cited). The article implies Bush won the state, when in fact they only discussed a subset of the existing data and ignored a large portion of the data gleaned from recounts in other, more republican areas which surprisingly favored Gore.
Specifically, recounts conducted by the Orlando Sentinal and further discussed in the Kausfiles indicate that the overvote in largely republican counties, ignored by both sides, would have resulted in a win by Al Gore by several thousand votes, even using the most stringent recount standards. The reason turns out to be the unambiguous votes by many first time voters, who voted for Al Gore, then wrote in Al Gore and marked the write-in box as well. As unambiguous votes they would have, by law, been counted for Al Gore. Apparently many people misunderstood the write-in box as a "confirmation" box, a sort of check to make sure the vote was counted correctly (and is a strong indication that voters really do need to be educated in exactly how the ballotting process works).
The upshot is this: If Al Gore had gotten his way (selective recounts of Democratic counties) Bush would have been declared the winner. However, if the entire state had been recounted correctly, current data indicate that Al Gore would have won handsomely. It is an interesting ethics lesson, both that, had Al Gore done "the right thing" he would have won and no one could have reasonably denied him a recount.
By all indications, Al Gore won the election, both in Florida and in the US as a whole. The Bush camp knew (or at least suspected) that this was the case and pressed ahead, taking the presidency without a full and proper accounting of the votes in the state (contrary to every other close election in the country, where recounts were in fact conducted, including hand recounts of ballats unreadable by machine).
The fact that the opposing side behaved in a disengenous manner by not requesting a statewide recount and trying to select particular counties instead does not in any way diminish the fact that the Bush camp has usurped the electorial process and taken office in opposition to the explicit will of the American people. That makes him a usurper as far as I am concerned, and I strongly suspect history will, in time, agree, no matter the amount of spin his supporters may put on the issue in the short term.
Finally, I should note that my point in referring to Dubya as the Usurper is not intended to somehow "drive him from power", but to be in his face that he doesn't belong there, he has no mandate, and he'd better tread softly and not attempt to shove his right-wing agenda down our unwilling throats. It is important that we as a people show as much backbone as we can, in a peaceful manner, lest such behavior be repeated in the future (perhaps next time by the democrats). Our democracy is more important than either of those clowns (and for the record, I didn't vote for either of them), and it does not serve our democracy at all for us to take this sort of thing without comment, nor for our so-called "fourth estate" to curry favor in an effort to enhance their access to public figures by promoting such blatently biased spin.
One important advantage this gives developers is the ability to develop on the platform of their choice, and deploy the application on the platform of the consumers choice, which may very well not be the same.
This could be an important foot in the door, allowing people to develop on Linux and deploy on windows (taking much of the programming frustration associated with developing under windows -- oh the humanity of it all! Memories best left repressed -- out of the picture). Potentially quicker development cycles not held hostage by Microsoft release schedules and instant deployment to two popular platforms could make for a very potent combination that can well favor platforms such as Linux.
A colleague of mine drives his SGI 1600SW at 1600x1024 using DVI from his Nvidia and Matrox g400 cards (using XFree 4.0.2 and drivers downloaded from the manufacturers). The flat panel itself uses a proprietary SGI digital interface, however, the panel he bought (circa $1400) came with a multilink adapter allowing DVI or analog input. The analog didn't look all that great, but the DVI was excellent.
So, in short, 1600x1024 works perfectly, meaning that while there may be a 1024 limit on the vertical resolution DVI can drive, there is not a 1280 limitation on the horizontal resolution.
Still, the standard is already showing its age now that even higher res monitors are shipping.
You are wrong in the particulars of this situation. The Usurper, for all his faults, is actually increasing spending on the SLI program sixty four percent. NASA has readjusted its spending priorities.
That having been said, you are correct in pointing out that the Usurper is buying off public opinion directly through tax cuts which give everyone a small break (but the wealthy a huge break). It is a popular tax plan with many people (even I like the idea of having a few extra grand in my pocket at the end of the year). Your comparison to the fall of the Republic is interesting, and the parallels quite striking: a man usurping the democratic process, buying off the people with gifts and emerging a popular force despite his despotism.
He has little choice. He and his administration are demonstrably usurping the authority of our democratic process, as press sponsored recounts in Florida have demonstrated. We are stuck with him for four years (at least). What is important is what happens in four years: do we get our democracy back, or suffer more of the same?
Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make that trip in under two hours
Argh! I should really preview before posting.
The above should have read "Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make the trip in under two hours with a good tailwind." Normally such a trip, in still air, will take my plane closer to 2 hours and 40 minutes (110 - 120 kts tas), which is slower than many General Aviation aircraft.
My guess is he's either flying a fast single (150-200 kts), a twin (150-200kts), or a corporate jet (300+ kts).
Assuming he didn't exaggerate his time door to door, he could easilly do this under two hours.
PDX (Portland International) to BOI (Gowen Field, Boise) is 298.2 nautical miles. Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make that trip in under two hours (true airspeed 110 knots, ground speed wind dependent). If he lives relatively close to the airport, and the office at the other end is relatively near, and he flies in a reasonably fast plane, he should have no trouble in getting door to door in a couple of hours.
Of course, bad weather and other factors can cause delays, or force the flight to be cancelled altogether. This is especially true with General Aviation aircraft, which fly at lower altitudes and are more vulnerable to weather en route than higher-flying commuter or corporate jets.
As someone who has read science fiction for much of my life, I must say it never ceases to amaze me how some of what reads as unrealistic turns out to have a profoundly prophetic view of the world a scant decade or two later.
... short of lobotomizing you, or directly and blatently abridging your right to speech in its purest form, there is nothing they can do. And should they chose such a direct abridgement, even the most blindly passive television enamoured sheep could not fail to see it as a violation of one of our most highly prized constitutional rights.
Faranheit 451, a story in which "firemen" burned books (books make people think critically, something the state can't allow) leads to people memorizing novels and great works of literature to preserve it for future generations in a world where every last book has been burned.
Ironic indeed, that our own cheap whores of a congress, a sleazy president, together with one of the more corrupt Copyright Cartels (the MPAA) have managed to conjure the beginnings of such a world in a remarkably short time.
Memorizing the DeCSS algorithm is one of the most sensible and effective methods of protest I've heard to date
Has anyone published a DeCSS book? I think it would be a very interesting end-run around the DMCA. Publish a book, which includes the source code to DeCSS, details the algorithm, and perhaps includes some background information on what has happened. Include an "e-book" CD containing the exact text of the book, in ASCII or HTML format, for online reading.
...
I for one would pay as much as $50 for such a book (even though I have no use for DeCSS and already have a copy of the code in text format, printed out before it was banned). I would probably be wiling to pay twice that if some portion of the profits were to go to the EFF and/or 2600's legal defense fund.
It might be interesting to publish such a book and donate it to a number of libraries around the country as well
This is just the sort of ridiculous position I've come to expect from the US government, and with Bush in office I'm sure we can expect alot more "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" play with big corps.
As much as the Usurper annoys me, and as opposed to his notions as I am on several issues, it is IMHO unfair and inaccurate to imply that he will be engaged in any more quid-pro-quo money for politics behavior than his Democratic counterparts. The difference mainly lies in who the parties of the transaction will be (e.g. Big Oil vs. Big Law Firms), not the quantity of sleazy bargaining engaged in.
As far as this particular issue is concerned (Copyright Cartels stealing our rights through corrupt legislation bought and paid for), both parties are equally reprehensible. It was a republican congress that passed the bill, but a democratic president who eagerly signed it into law. The same is true for encryption and a number of other issues that concern technology folks BTW -- on the issues many of us really care about, there is no difference between the two major parties, and hence no real choice.
It is doubtful that the Bush folks would have put something like this just since the swearing in, or even since the election, since they were so distracted with other business.
This simply isn't true. Beurocracies chug along just fine during political transitions and have for the last century (at least). You are probably right in that the foundation was almost certainly laid under the Clinton administration, but you are wrong to assign innocence to the Bush administration.
Hollywood has its claws into both parties. Actors and Artists are typically in the Democratic camp, while Recording and Movie Executives are typically in the Republican camp. I say typically; there are obvious exceptions, such as Actor turned President Ronald Reagan. In any event Hollywood and the Copyright Cartels hold a great deal of influence over both parties.
Remember, it was a Republican congress who passed the DMCA into law, and a Democratic president who signed it.
Of course, I feel that RMS ought to use the term "liberated software" to avoid the whole "free beer/free speech" issue, but that's another story....
... it forces people to think about what freedom and free really mean, and allows an easy and natural avenue for pointing it out to those less aware.
That is not such a good idea.
"Liberated" is slang in many areas for "procured by illicit means" (e.g. he "liberated" a pack of cigarretts from the local five and dime). To many "liberated software" has an unsavory implication of "warez."
The Free Speach/Free Beer discussion is IMHO a good one
ObSSH: if the SSH trademark should be enforceable (which I doubt, given that "ssh" is the name of an IETF standard, the original license allowed derivative products to use the term "ssh" as long is such products adhered to the RFCs, and OpenSSH has been using it for over a year now) I think your suggestion (Fresh) would be an excellent choice.
I am reminded of the Ameritrade commercial, where the woman dumps 300 shares of stock because she "didn't like the management."
In all fairness, I did make good money when the stock went from $6 to $40 per share, my mistake being to buy it back at $12 and ride it down to $4. Nevertheless, when it became clear that Corel didn't understand Open Source or Free Software and that their Linux strategy was more of a flirtation than a strategy, I dumped their stock like a hot potato and ate the $8 per share loss. (I still made $26/share overall, so I can't really complain I guess)
I only wish I'd done it sooner (having tried their Linux product and discovering how closely tied it was to their particular distribution and how unfriendly it was to other distros such as Red Hat and Mandrake, I certainly had plenty of early warning). The cluelessness of this fool's comments underscore the entire company's inability to think outside of their little box. Their willingness to sell their soul to their most dangerous competitor, while ignoring and downplaying an emerging market (Linux) that, in world wide terms, will probably grow much larger than Microsoft's share of the pie over the next several years, is indicative of their inability to form any coherent strategy beyond "survive for the moment, hope for the best, and remain as buzzword compliant as possible."
With solid commercial products like Applixware available today and emerging products like Koffice and gnome office it is unlikely Corel will get much if any market share at all so late in the game. Whatever chance they may have had they've now squandered and sabataged, both with the belated releases of the Linux version(s) of their software vs. the Windows versions and with their openly dismissive rhetoric of their (Linux) customer's and the communities values and philosophies. No PR company on the planet can rehabilitate Corel's image at this point.
I am glad I made so much money on their stock's brief ascent, but am ever so glad to be rid of it today. I do not give the company as such more than two years of continued existence, although I'm sure someone will purchase the WordPerfect product and keep it alive, as their is an existing market in the legal profession that, if managed correctly, can remain profitable.