> basically, the wireless stuff is owned by someone > else, licensed by Intel.
That's your guess - but Intel declined to comment on that. IMO, that's really too much BS'ing for such a little piece of code. The reason why someone might want to include the firmware in the distribution is (perhaps) to allow network-installs via wireless. If you're only net-connection is via a wireless nic, you can't go to some website and download it first....
> But I have to say Opera on Linux feels clunky like > Netscape 4.x on Wine
Really ? On my Mobile Celeron 800 (SuSE9.1), it's the fastest thing. Naturally, on my Dual Xeon, the FreeBSD-version is even faster, but when I don't use the DSL-line for something else, I can hardly see a difference between the two. I don't have a version of IE not a VMware to make a real comparison, but for me, it's very fast, as I said.
I once talked to representatvies of a vendor/integrator of cryptographic smartcards. I also talked about Linux/OpenSource with them and it's not that they hate Linux and love MSFT - it's just that for any serious use (read: digital signatures, use of the smart-card instead of your written signature), any "applets", any application, and any hardware has to be "certified" for a specific platform. With this certification-process, the vendor testfies that the software and hardware work as advertised and no "unpleasant surprises" happen. Unfortunately, this is time-consuming and thus very expensive - and must be re-done for every platform. Naturally, smartcard-vendors only certify for the platforms where they have sufficient demand (XP, W2K).
About the only chance that something like this is going to come to the OSS-world is that someone is putting forward a lot of money and essentially pay the vendor for the certification. In Europe, usually the taxpayer does something like this, but in slashdot's home-country, I hear that the government spending money for "the common good" has recently escaped the mind of the general public who instead believes in privatization, tax-cuts and "trickle down". You can probably imagine when such a thing will "trickle down" onto OpenSource-software;-)
I even bought a license-key (and got one additional for free). It's also the only browser on my main FreeBSD-system because it doesn't need hours to recompile like firefox or mozilla and is a 6 MB download compared to the 30 MB sources of mozilla. It's faster than all the other (Konqueror, Firefox, Mozilla) browsers, too. Especially on older hardware.
The only thing that bugs me about it is its handling of cookies and cookie-acceptance/denying. I cannot access ebay with it...
>> Sounds like Guantanamo Bay to me. > yes it does sound like it. with an exception of > the prisoners at guantanamo were captured > durring a war or war like situations were
That in itself is grotesque: they should be treated according to the Geneva convention. Instead, state-departement has coined the "enemy combatant" terminus, to weasel the US out of granting them basic rights. The sheer existance of these camps is - IMO - unforgiveable and has damaged the reputation of all Americans like nothing else (except for Abu Ghraib), just like the Nazi-concentration camps have damaged the reputation of all Germans upto today - and that was 60 years ago.
> The ICC could effectivly legislate laws into our > own country by making somethign we do completly > illegal
I've got a big surprise for you: it's already happening. The US does comply to forgeign-imposed legislation/descicions, through the WTO. The European Union (the monopolies and mergers office) can (and has in the past) denied clearance to some US-based mergers when the EU is also involved.
A nationalistic rally is great and fun - while it lasts. But from our very own history I can tell you that from the moment it's over you will painfully realize that you can't eat nationalism...
> find it funny that foreiners liked clinton and > he didn't sign any of those treaties either
As others have pointed out, he was probably more diplomatic about it. GWB's reasoning was slightly more polite than "STFU".
> Would you like it if america started just > walking > inot other countries and aresting thier citizens > and bringing them to trial for laws not even > passed in thier country?
Sounds like Guantanamo Bay to me.
Also, CIA and friends is deporting prisoners into 3rd-party countries where "other questioning methods" are allowed. Additionally, several American citizens are held "incommunicado" in undisclosed location in the US. So much for your constitution.
You are really diverting the discussion: the point of the ICC was to make sure, things like in Bosnia would never happen again - and if they happen again, the *leaders* could be properly prosecuted.
So, if you think about it, had the US signed the ICC-treaty, someone might have brought Donald Rumsfeld to the ICC over Abu Ghraib, not some poor underling like England or Graner !
The Bush-administration knew fully what they were doing, even back then.
I'd like to believe that Bush's politics will somehow change (commentators speculating about that), but I'm also realistic enough to realize that the quasi-cleptocratic regime will probably continue just like before and stands a good chance of totally annoying and scaring-off the rest of the world, removing the last bit of credibility the USA still had in some places around the world, while also ruining the budget. With cynism, one could argue that the current administration is trying to shove all money that is available now, together with any money they can borrough on to political friends and old allies just so that should one day another administration come into power, it wouldn't be able to spend it on welfare and social causes....
I don't want to say the so called "war on terrorism" cannot be won - but it looks doubtful if it can be done with the means (and dare I say: attidtude?) of the current (and next) administration - and the consequences of a failure of this undertaking are really horrible.
If we're lucky (we=the world), we're only in basically the same situation 4 years from now. *If* the shit hits the fan in the middle-east, people even as far as Ohio or Texas will be more-or-less directly impacted by those events. Not to mention us in Europe,
So, what ? Maybe the only thing that results from this election is that the world will go belly-up just 4 years earlier than anticipated. Small change in God's plan.
Lehmann's in Germany is going to release a DVD-ROM of 5.3 with about 8000 packages.
That should keep most people busy and relieve dial-up users from download-hell.
The DVD seems to be very cheap, so even with international shipping, it shouldn't cost a fortune.
> Except then the password IS stored, at least in > your head. If you think they don't have and/or > can't manufacture some rules to force you to > provide it, I have a bridge to sell you.
That's correct. But it allows me to buy some extra-time to call a lawyer etc. Unless someone is holding me at gunpoint, this is usually all what is needed to prevent "accomplished facts".
> No it's not. It's a fresh new hard drive with > random garbage on it, and can be formatted and > used just fine.
So be it. But nobody can get at the data. This data is also partly the property of my clients/customers. I cannot have this data accessible to some random punk who happened to steal/find my laptop.
> You've made it far more difficult for a > third party who discovers your drive/info in a > ditch somewhere to identify it and give it back
The user-database is still accessible. A google search will quickly turn up my name and address.
> Question is, do you have to turn over your key > when the feds ask you for it? I really don't > know, i heard wild things about this.
I don't know this either, but in case the disks are confiscated and they are encrypted, you still have the option to hand-over the keys. If they are not encrypted, you don't have that option.
It buys you additional time to appeal to courts etc.;-)
> That's pointless for the same reason that so- > called "copy protection" schemes are pointless: > if ANYONE is meant to access the data (and in > the case of indymedia, it's a website, so you > can assume this is the case),
There are things like logfiles etc, that are a not public.
> then the key has > to be SOMEWHERE.
My laptop has a encrypted/home partition. It boots up without interaction, but/home is not mounted then. I can do that anytime later, by running/etc/init.d/boot.crypto, supplying the right password. If I pull the plug, unless I give out the password, the disk is just a piece of metal-junk to anybody else.
from hosting with a large, multinational corporation. It also serves as a good reminder to consider using encrypted discs for servers where the data should not fall into the hands of law-enforcement.
> Hmmm.... biking 12 miles to work on a hot summer > morning...
The trick is, to get up early enough, so it's not too late in the morning. And you must try not to ride too fast. Also, after some training, you're not going to sweat that easily;-)
> Bush did acknowledge those effects. It's just > that he thinks Kyoto would hurt the economy.
He's right. In the short run. But no spin-doctor can argue that a hurricane season like the current one (which isn't even over, as someone else here noted) will also hurt the economy. Plus the fact that oil supplies are very limited - and there's currently no backup "plan" for the day the last barrel of crude is produced. There won't be any new one for a couple of hundred million years. I think, people have no idea what this world would look like with world-wide energy-shortage - it's a truely apocalyptic projection.
Because the reason for the current surge in temperature is mainly the greenhouse-gas sent into the air some decades ago. And yes, for people in Germany (that's me) and France etc, it will be a very tough life, when the Gulf stream changes route and maybe leaves us with a climate like Hudson Bay or so.
What you can blame Bush of course is that he refused to acknowledge these effects even now (or back when he didn't want to sign the Kyoto Treaty)! But then, it's hard to say what he really decides and what is prepared by other people and he just signs it - like with any politician.
> Meanwhile in the non-paraniod world, people > realise that a world with more proof available > on peoples actions is one where more innocent > people can be excluded from suspicion, as well > as more guilty people being caught.
I would like to believe that, but I've got my doubts. I know the feeling when one's been the victim of a crime - you want to use all possibilites to draw-in leads to the criminals. Like when we had a physical break-in in the company I had worked with sometime ago. Due to the fact that they also stole some servers that were monitored by nagios, I could pretty much pinpoint the time when it happened, so I came to the idea that it would be kind-of cool to be able to cross-check the mobile-phones who have been checked into the local and surrounding GSM-cells at around the time and correlate this with their movement-profile. The area is pretty much dead at night and anything moving in, staying 1-3 hours and then quickly moving out would have been suspicious) (I wasn't directly involved in the investigation, and police wasn't very interested anyway - just a break-in, so nothing in this direction happened)
But a lot of innocents would have been hit by this, people who did nothing but happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place. Is it "right" to snoop into other people's lifes, possibly suspecting/arresting them just to catch a criminal ? When does the end justify the means ?
I also got pissed-off about this, because I had thought of checking the nagios webinterface that night (no email-alarm configured, due to firewall-restrictions and no 24x7 service anyway). But I didn't do it. Could have caught them 2h before they set-off the alarm. Grr.;-)
> With a 92 KB keygen (From China, no less) I can > get keys that are so legit they fool Microsoft's > extra special little "Anti-Piracy" website and > that new "No Piracy" verification you need to go > through before downloading that codec pack.
That's what you get when you outsource code-development to 3rd-world countries. Unless you keep your employees imprisoned (<cough>China...</cough>...), the knowledge about your software/product is just going to walk out of the facility....no matter how secure it is.
But it's long way before execs will learn that, I'm afraid.
Slashdot Mirror
> basically, the wireless stuff is owned by someone
> else, licensed by Intel.
That's your guess - but Intel declined to comment on that.
IMO, that's really too much BS'ing for such a little piece of code.
The reason why someone might want to include the firmware in the distribution is (perhaps) to allow network-installs via wireless.
If you're only net-connection is via a wireless nic, you can't go to some website and download it first....
Rainer
Taipeh was given the nickname of "World's largest Microwave-Oven".
> But I have to say Opera on Linux feels clunky like
> Netscape 4.x on Wine
Really ?
On my Mobile Celeron 800 (SuSE9.1), it's the fastest thing.
Naturally, on my Dual Xeon, the FreeBSD-version is even faster, but when I don't use the DSL-line for something else, I can hardly see a difference between the two.
I don't have a version of IE not a VMware to make a real comparison, but for me, it's very fast, as I said.
Rainer
I once talked to representatvies of a vendor/integrator of cryptographic smartcards.
;-)
I also talked about Linux/OpenSource with them and it's not that they hate Linux and love MSFT - it's just that for any serious use (read: digital signatures, use of the smart-card instead of your written signature), any "applets", any application, and any hardware has to be "certified" for a specific platform.
With this certification-process, the vendor testfies that the software and hardware work as advertised and no "unpleasant surprises" happen.
Unfortunately, this is time-consuming and thus very expensive - and must be re-done for every platform. Naturally, smartcard-vendors only certify for the platforms where they have sufficient demand (XP, W2K).
About the only chance that something like this is going to come to the OSS-world is that someone is putting forward a lot of money and essentially pay the vendor for the certification.
In Europe, usually the taxpayer does something like this, but in slashdot's home-country, I hear that the government spending money for "the common good" has recently escaped the mind of the general public who instead believes in privatization, tax-cuts and "trickle down".
You can probably imagine when such a thing will "trickle down" onto OpenSource-software
cheers,
Rainer
I even bought a license-key (and got one additional for free).
It's also the only browser on my main FreeBSD-system because it doesn't need hours to recompile like firefox or mozilla and is a 6 MB download compared to the 30 MB sources of mozilla.
It's faster than all the other (Konqueror, Firefox, Mozilla) browsers, too. Especially on older hardware.
The only thing that bugs me about it is its handling of cookies and cookie-acceptance/denying.
I cannot access ebay with it...
Rainer
> The only game I like by them is Burnout 3.
I hear the employees play it all...
Oh-wait - nevermind
Rainer
Balmer on mp3's on iPods
Rainer
>> Sounds like Guantanamo Bay to me.
> yes it does sound like it. with an exception of
> the prisoners at guantanamo were captured
> durring a war or war like situations were
That in itself is grotesque: they should be treated according to the Geneva convention.
Instead, state-departement has coined the "enemy combatant" terminus, to weasel the US out of granting them basic rights.
The sheer existance of these camps is - IMO - unforgiveable and has damaged the reputation of all Americans like nothing else (except for Abu Ghraib), just like the Nazi-concentration camps have damaged the reputation of all Germans upto today - and that was 60 years ago.
> The ICC could effectivly legislate laws into our
> own country by making somethign we do completly
> illegal
I've got a big surprise for you: it's already happening. The US does comply to forgeign-imposed legislation/descicions, through the WTO.
The European Union (the monopolies and mergers office) can (and has in the past) denied clearance to some US-based mergers when the EU is also involved.
A nationalistic rally is great and fun - while it lasts. But from our very own history I can tell you that from the moment it's over you will painfully realize that you can't eat nationalism...
cheers,
Rainer
> find it funny that foreiners liked clinton and
> he didn't sign any of those treaties either
As others have pointed out, he was probably more diplomatic about it.
GWB's reasoning was slightly more polite than "STFU".
> Would you like it if america started just
> walking
> inot other countries and aresting thier citizens
> and bringing them to trial for laws not even
> passed in thier country?
Sounds like Guantanamo Bay to me.
Also, CIA and friends is deporting prisoners into 3rd-party countries where "other questioning methods" are allowed.
Additionally, several American citizens are held "incommunicado" in undisclosed location in the US.
So much for your constitution.
You are really diverting the discussion: the point of the ICC was to make sure, things like in Bosnia would never happen again - and if they happen again, the *leaders* could be properly prosecuted.
So, if you think about it, had the US signed the ICC-treaty, someone might have brought Donald Rumsfeld to the ICC over Abu Ghraib, not some poor underling like England or Graner !
The Bush-administration knew fully what they were doing, even back then.
Rainer
I'd like to believe that Bush's politics will somehow change (commentators speculating about that), but I'm also realistic enough to realize that the quasi-cleptocratic regime will probably continue just like before and stands a good chance of totally annoying and scaring-off the rest of the world, removing the last bit of credibility the USA still had in some places around the world, while also ruining the budget. With cynism, one could argue that the current administration is trying to shove all money that is available now, together with any money they can borrough on to political friends and old allies just so that should one day another administration come into power, it wouldn't be able to spend it on welfare and social causes....
I don't want to say the so called "war on terrorism" cannot be won - but it looks doubtful if it can be done with the means (and dare I say: attidtude?) of the current (and next) administration - and the consequences of a failure of this undertaking are really horrible.
If we're lucky (we=the world), we're only in basically the same situation 4 years from now. *If* the shit hits the fan in the middle-east, people even as far as Ohio or Texas will be more-or-less directly impacted by those events.
Not to mention us in Europe,
So, what ?
Maybe the only thing that results from this election is that the world will go belly-up just 4 years earlier than anticipated.
Small change in God's plan.
That should keep most people busy and relieve dial-up users from download-hell.
The DVD seems to be very cheap, so even with international shipping, it shouldn't cost a fortune.
Rainer
> Except then the password IS stored, at least in
> your head. If you think they don't have and/or
> can't manufacture some rules to force you to
> provide it, I have a bridge to sell you.
That's correct. But it allows me to buy some extra-time to call a lawyer etc.
Unless someone is holding me at gunpoint, this is usually all what is needed to prevent "accomplished facts".
Rainer
> No it's not. It's a fresh new hard drive with
> random garbage on it, and can be formatted and
> used just fine.
So be it.
But nobody can get at the data. This data is also partly the property of my clients/customers.
I cannot have this data accessible to some random punk who happened to steal/find my laptop.
> You've made it far more difficult for a
> third party who discovers your drive/info in a
> ditch somewhere to identify it and give it back
The user-database is still accessible.
A google search will quickly turn up my name and address.
I think you've never handled sensitive data.
Rainer
> Question is, do you have to turn over your key
;-)
> when the feds ask you for it? I really don't
> know, i heard wild things about this.
I don't know this either, but in case the disks are confiscated and they are encrypted, you still have the option to hand-over the keys.
If they are not encrypted, you don't have that option.
It buys you additional time to appeal to courts etc.
Rainer
> That's pointless for the same reason that so-
/home partition. It boots up without interaction, but /home is not mounted then. I can do that anytime later, by running /etc/init.d/boot.crypto, supplying the right password.
> called "copy protection" schemes are pointless:
> if ANYONE is meant to access the data (and in
> the case of indymedia, it's a website, so you
> can assume this is the case),
There are things like logfiles etc, that are a not public.
> then the key has
> to be SOMEWHERE.
My laptop has a encrypted
If I pull the plug, unless I give out the password, the disk is just a piece of metal-junk to anybody else.
Rainer
from hosting with a large, multinational corporation.
It also serves as a good reminder to consider using encrypted discs for servers where the data should not fall into the hands of law-enforcement.
Rainer
It's a paper lauch !
Currently, it's as much "released" as Longhorn.
The correct headline would have said "SuSE 9.2 announced", or sometime like that.
Rainer
> Hmmm.... biking 12 miles to work on a hot summer
;-)
> morning...
The trick is, to get up early enough, so it's not too late in the morning.
And you must try not to ride too fast.
Also, after some training, you're not going to sweat that easily
Rainer
> Bush did acknowledge those effects. It's just
> that he thinks Kyoto would hurt the economy.
He's right. In the short run.
But no spin-doctor can argue that a hurricane season like the current one (which isn't even over, as someone else here noted) will also hurt the economy.
Plus the fact that oil supplies are very limited - and there's currently no backup "plan" for the day the last barrel of crude is produced.
There won't be any new one for a couple of hundred million years.
I think, people have no idea what this world would look like with world-wide energy-shortage - it's a truely apocalyptic projection.
Rainer
Because the reason for the current surge in temperature is mainly the greenhouse-gas sent into the air some decades ago.
And yes, for people in Germany (that's me) and France etc, it will be a very tough life, when the Gulf stream changes route and maybe leaves us with a climate like Hudson Bay or so.
What you can blame Bush of course is that he refused to acknowledge these effects even now (or back when he didn't want to sign the Kyoto Treaty)!
But then, it's hard to say what he really decides and what is prepared by other people and he just signs it - like with any politician.
Rainer
> Meanwhile in the non-paraniod world, people
;-)
> realise that a world with more proof available
> on peoples actions is one where more innocent
> people can be excluded from suspicion, as well
> as more guilty people being caught.
I would like to believe that, but I've got my doubts.
I know the feeling when one's been the victim of a crime - you want to use all possibilites to draw-in leads to the criminals.
Like when we had a physical break-in in the company I had worked with sometime ago.
Due to the fact that they also stole some servers that were monitored by nagios, I could pretty much pinpoint the time when it happened, so I came to the idea that it would be kind-of cool to be able to cross-check the mobile-phones who have been checked into the local and surrounding GSM-cells at around the time and correlate this with their movement-profile. The area is pretty much dead at night and anything moving in, staying 1-3 hours and then quickly moving out would have been suspicious)
(I wasn't directly involved in the investigation, and police wasn't very interested anyway - just a break-in, so nothing in this direction happened)
But a lot of innocents would have been hit by this, people who did nothing but happened to be at the wrong time at the wrong place.
Is it "right" to snoop into other people's lifes, possibly suspecting/arresting them just to catch a criminal ? When does the end justify the means ?
I also got pissed-off about this, because I had thought of checking the nagios webinterface that night (no email-alarm configured, due to firewall-restrictions and no 24x7 service anyway). But I didn't do it. Could have caught them 2h before they set-off the alarm. Grr.
Rainer
> So what are you worried about? Evidence
n g
> collected without a warrant is inadmissible in a
> court case.
Yeah. But what if there is no court ?
http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-21-03.html
http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/usa-summary-e
"What worth is a phonecall Mr. Anderson, if you cannot speak"
Rainer
> Bullshit. Piracy of MS Products has been going on
> for a long time before Offshoring even reached
> it's current magnitude.
Please behave.
I was specifically referring to the 92kb keygen.exe from China that the posting I replied to was referring to.
Was that so unclear ? I thought I had quoted sensibly ?
cheers,
Rainer
> With a 92 KB keygen (From China, no less) I can
> get keys that are so legit they fool Microsoft's
> extra special little "Anti-Piracy" website and
> that new "No Piracy" verification you need to go
> through before downloading that codec pack.
That's what you get when you outsource code-development to 3rd-world countries.
Unless you keep your employees imprisoned (<cough>China...</cough>...), the knowledge about your software/product is just going to walk out of the facility....no matter how secure it is.
But it's long way before execs will learn that, I'm afraid.
Rainer
It was an attempt to be funny...
> I don't know how often I've heard the urban legend
> that Teflon was somehow related to space research
Even if it was.
The comment was more to show the discrepancy between inpout (xxxE9 $$$) and the supposed output (non-burn-in pans).
Cheers,
Rainer