Would it really screw over earth if [the dud nuke] came down, along with all the (I'm assuming here) fallout?
That'd be kinda like you attacking me with a small sledge-hammer and me worrying about you taping a tack to the end.
If a comet-sized rock hit earth, it would probably impart some thousands of gigatons of kinetic energy. If it hit near a nuclear power station, you'd have hundreds of pounds of released high-end radiation. The remains of a nuke would be the least of our problems.
1/1000 is the probability of actually killing somebody. Then there's the (oh, say, 1 in 5) probability of a front page story like:
Perth schoolkids almost killed by Gamma-Ray Satellite!
The fact that the pieces landed 30 yards from the nearest kids would be entirely secondary to the news editors. They'd probably mention the distance in about the third or forth paragraph.
Consider this: They did the separate binaries test, then they released Outrage. I think that this can be read as a really positive answer.
It's not really a big shock. Things likq Q3 work best on hot-shot high-end geekster systems. People who own those things are also the most likely to have tried (and learned to love:-o) Linux.
The King James Bible is about 4MB as plaintext That's before compression. As I remember, with decent compression, you can put it on a floppy disk (~1.5MB). 1.5MB takes about 15 minutes to transfer over a 14.4Kb link. The bible is generally considered a 'big book'. Very few people are on the internet today with less than a 14.4 link. I'm rounding up, so 15 minutes makes a decent upperbound for how long it would take to download a book from the Library of Congress. I don't think that that's onerous at all.
HMM: As I remember it, when Unisys punted the LZW format to the net, they said that it was free to use on UNIX systems. That being the case, it comes to the question of: Is LINUX UNIX? It could actually become a relevant legal question now.
... And if it turns out that Linux IS UNIX, then it becomes a rather interesting reason to push companies from NT to Linux (don't have to worry about Unisys).
Perhaps, as machine speeds and site bandwidth expands, it simply takes more and more to be able to slashdot a site out of existence. Yesterday's hot server is tomorrow's throw-away
Statistics and finance don't always tell the whole story. GDP, for example, is supposed to indicate the 'health' of an economy in financial terms. In many ways, it's entirely whacked out in terms of the contentment and happiness of the people. Take the Oklahoma bombing, for example: If all you care about is profits and GDP, the bombing was actually GOOD for Oklahoma. Overtime for firefighters and police in the rescue and investigation stages; Media station overtime spent covering the incident; Medical companies made a killing (excuse the pun) taking care of the non-dead victims; here were the psycharitrist and therapy bills for people who dealt with the aftermath; costs for replacing the bombed out building, and the money that went into demolishing the remains, etc.. Then there were the volunteers: These people should be thrown in jail for the suck that they are on the economy. If it wasn't for these people, so much more would have had to be done by paid professionals -- thus further increasing the GDP. Instead all of this sorely needed work gets done and no money changes hands!
So, if all you care about is profits and GDP, encourage acts of wanton terrorism, and blow up volunteer support sites.
Disclaimer: If you can't get the sarcasm in this you are in SERIOUS need of help
The courts have expressed that yelling "Fire! Fire!" in a crowded theatre (where there is no fire) is NOT protected. On the other hand, it obviously IS protected, in the same theatre, if it is yelled by an actor as part of a play.
In the same way, I expect that things like Viruses and cracks are legal, in and of themselves, but that certain USES of them would be just as illegal as causing a riot by yelling "Fire! Fire!" (IANAL)
A Linux viri might be able to infect a USER easy enough, but infecting a SYSTEM would be MUCH harder. It would require two stages: 1) Infect the user 2) root exploit.
Part 2) is only easy if the virus is executed by a user running as root/administrator, or has access to files that are used system-wide. Under Win95, this is trivial. Under NT it's a bit harder, but -- as pointed out elsewhere, much software (esp. Microsoft software) requires write access to system-wide files. This is mostly a legacy of the dos->Win{3.1,9?}->win{NT,2000}. With linux, getting a root execute often requires some serious social engineering. This impedes the spread of viri to something much slower than the spread of news about it.
In almost any case, he most drastic action needed to sanitize a Linux system is to scrub the system of every file writable by the infected user. For Linux modularity, this is usually containable. With windows, this often requires the destruction of enough pieces that you might as well scrub and re-install the whole system.
I think the quick summary is that -- Yes, Linux is susceptible to viri, but: Most unixen (inc. linux) comes with a package of condoms. (remember to read the cautions on the insert). If you're lucky, your Windows box will come with a big box of neo-citrin, and a "Just Say NO" sticker.
Is it simply standard to score anonymous coward as zero, or do you not like the combination of irony and seriousness? Granted the online/corporate fight has been with since the '80s, when the net fought a rear-guard battle against corproatization. Unfortunately, it has mostly occured in places like net.admin, where few general users have forayed.
Now the war has hit the suburbs, and people are recognizing that it's more than a theoretical battle.
The difference between one engine and multiple engines is rather like the difference between Linux: modular code. Lots of parts, but if any one part fails, you can eject it and recover VS: Microsoft's one big piece of "yes IE really IS an integral part of it" spaghetti code and one small error (among the 65K we know of) could cause the whole house of cards to come crashing down" monolithic code. Think RAID-5: If your life was on the top of that stack, wouldn't you want a parity 'disk'? It's also a lot easier than building a 100GB drive that can do that kind of transfer speed. I think that an analogous logic exist in booster design.
When I looked at the article, I saw it as a promo for the Network Associates 'antivirus for unix' service/software. (OK: that's not what they called it, but that's what they positioned it as).
Point of the matter, though, is that they were right that Windows isn't vulnerable to the SPECIFIC exploit used by the script kiddies who set up this series of attacks. This is quite different from saying that windows isn't about as secure as a hermit crab in a styrofoam cup -- in fact, these are people who make big money off of Windows' permeability.
No need to sue them... Call your credit card company and have the charges reversed. I don't know what the credit card rules are in Europe, but in the US, you always have the right to reverse fraudulent charges.
If you're lucky, the fact that they're a US company may give you some support in using the US credit laws. (the transaction took place in the US, so you should have the right to sue in the US [As always, actual legal action -- like war -- should be considered an act of last resort!]). IANAL
On my home computer, I have a picture of Mount Baker at sunrise. Orange and yellows and reds. Bits of sky in dark blue and turquoise, and all of it reflected in a river. It is, for the most part, an image that could have been seen 100 years ago. I'm glad I have that picture.
I know people who take HOURS to craft a background image for their Window manager. -- Why do we do it??
What good is life without beauty? Bare white (or grey) walls are completely functionial, yet people INSIST on cluttering them up with pictures and posters. Other people will go out and spend a day's wages to listen to a good musician for an evening.
Yes, we can make it through life without beauty. A better question, however, is: Can we truely LIVE without random acts of beauty?
A sunset; a beautiful person; a rainbow; an interesting picture or painting; a kind word from a friend (a stranger even!) -- all of these things have no, obvious, utilitarian value. All of them can make someone's life that much better.
To say that something with no utilitarian use isn't "remotely useful" is to argue for the life of a souleless drudge with no other purpose in life beyond working -- eating, and sleeping only in support of accomplishing your boss' wishes. It's not a life that I would willing ly lead, and it's not one that I would suggest to my worst enemy.
It's possible that this has to do with the US lawsuit. The judge, in that case, mentioned that the question of the legality of reverse-engineering DVD in Norway was an issue. If the person who Reverse-Engineered the code is arrested for his actions, it makes for some nice arguments in court (for the plaintiffs).
If this is the case, then the quesiton of who nudged who to get this to happen may be of real interest.
Who does (did) Barnes and Noble have for lawyers?? From my understanding of the documentation for cookies, this is the kind of use that was intended. Should it really be patentable to make an intended use of a feature?? If anything it should be the cookie feature that has a patent -- but, thankfully (hopefully), it's far to late to patent cookies On that line, has anybody considered the idea of patenting GPLed ideas, and then GPLing the patent?? It would, I think be an interesting way to push the GPL issue.
Re:"Into hair, eh? Do they like little boys too?"
on
Gates of Fire
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· Score: 1
We run a radio streaming service, and one of our customers is a Gay radio station. Imagine my surprise, and mirth, at hearing a recruiting add on GAAY radio.
"So where did you hear our adds, son?" "I'm sorry, I can't tell you that, sir."
So here's a question: If RSAREF is SOOO bad, and you need to use it in the US for patent reasons.... Is there any reason why we couldn't gut, clean and all but replace the code in RSAREF, document the changes and still stay within the bounds of the license??
UUX originally ran over modems and phone lines. THe transport protocol was UUCP (read on -- it's not a fatal flaw). The 'master' computer could send a signal to a remote machine. The remote machine would execute the process and could return the result to the 'master' (or any other computer.)
The remote computer was capable of determining when (if at all) it was going to accept execution requests (this was much more important when just LOADING emacs took a few seconds an a good-sized VAX). A computer's admin could also decide WHICH commands could be executed by the so-called central computer.
Of course it all fell together when UUCP over TCP/IP (inc. over a lan) was implemented. You now have the INTEL patent, as described, over TCP/IP and in the earliest days of the internet (read: early to mid-80's). If you ignore the need for it to be done under TCP/IP, then the prior art stretches back to the '70s.
Slashdot Mirror
That'd be kinda like you attacking me with a small sledge-hammer and me worrying about you taping a tack to the end.
If a comet-sized rock hit earth, it would probably impart some thousands of gigatons of kinetic energy. If it hit near a nuclear power station, you'd have hundreds of pounds of released high-end radiation. The remains of a nuke would be the least of our problems.
Innovation at Microsoft is an oxymoron.
I think they've also patented the idea of innovation....
and trademarked the word.
The fact that the pieces landed 30 yards from the nearest kids would be entirely secondary to the news editors. They'd probably mention the distance in about the third or forth paragraph.
It's not really a big shock. Things likq Q3 work best on hot-shot high-end geekster systems. People who own those things are also the most likely to have tried (and learned to love :-o) Linux.
The King James Bible is about 4MB as plaintext That's before compression. As I remember, with decent compression, you can put it on a floppy disk (~1.5MB).
1.5MB takes about 15 minutes to transfer over a 14.4Kb link. The bible is generally considered a 'big book'. Very few people are on the internet today with less than a 14.4 link. I'm rounding up, so 15 minutes makes a decent upperbound for how long it would take to download a book from the Library of Congress.
I don't think that that's onerous at all.
Perhaps, as machine speeds and site bandwidth expands, it simply takes more and more to be able to slashdot a site out of existence.
Yesterday's hot server is tomorrow's throw-away
Take the Oklahoma bombing, for example: If all you care about is profits and GDP, the bombing was actually GOOD for Oklahoma. Overtime for firefighters and police in the rescue and investigation stages; Media station overtime spent covering the incident; Medical companies made a killing (excuse the pun) taking care of the non-dead victims; here were the psycharitrist and therapy bills for people who dealt with the aftermath; costs for replacing the bombed out building, and the money that went into demolishing the remains, etc..
Then there were the volunteers: These people should be thrown in jail for the suck that they are on the economy. If it wasn't for these people, so much more would have had to be done by paid professionals -- thus further increasing the GDP. Instead all of this sorely needed work gets done and no money changes hands!
So, if all you care about is profits and GDP, encourage acts of wanton terrorism, and blow up volunteer support sites.
Disclaimer: If you can't get the sarcasm in this you are in SERIOUS need of help
In the same way, I expect that things like Viruses and cracks are legal, in and of themselves, but that certain USES of them would be just as illegal as causing a riot by yelling "Fire! Fire!" (IANAL)
1) Infect the user
2) root exploit.
Part 2) is only easy if the virus is executed by a user running as root/administrator, or has access to files that are used system-wide. Under Win95, this is trivial. Under NT it's a bit harder, but -- as pointed out elsewhere, much software (esp. Microsoft software) requires write access to system-wide files. This is mostly a legacy of the dos->Win{3.1,9?}->win{NT,2000}.
With linux, getting a root execute often requires some serious social engineering. This impedes the spread of viri to something much slower than the spread of news about it.
In almost any case, he most drastic action needed to sanitize a Linux system is to scrub the system of every file writable by the infected user.
For Linux modularity, this is usually containable. With windows, this often requires the destruction of enough pieces that you might as well scrub and re-install the whole system.
I think the quick summary is that -- Yes, Linux is susceptible to viri, but:
Most unixen (inc. linux) comes with a package of condoms. (remember to read the cautions on the insert).
If you're lucky, your Windows box will come with a big box of neo-citrin, and a "Just Say NO" sticker.
Granted the online/corporate fight has been with since the '80s, when the net fought a rear-guard battle against corproatization. Unfortunately, it has mostly occured in places like net.admin, where few general users have forayed.
Now the war has hit the suburbs, and people are recognizing that it's more than a theoretical battle.
The difference between one engine and multiple engines is rather like the difference between Linux: modular code. Lots of parts, but if any one part fails, you can eject it and recover
VS: Microsoft's one big piece of "yes IE really IS an integral part of it" spaghetti code and one small error (among the 65K we know of) could cause the whole house of cards to come crashing down" monolithic code.
Think RAID-5: If your life was on the top of that stack, wouldn't you want a parity 'disk'? It's also a lot easier than building a 100GB drive that can do that kind of transfer speed. I think that an analogous logic exist in booster design.
It is until you start trying to play MP3s for it.
I don't care HOW much memory you can put into a machine, SOMEBODY will find a way to fill it.
"386MB? That's a pretty big hard disk!"
"No. That's RAM -- It's all we could afford"
- - Conversation from 1993
Point of the matter, though, is that they were right that Windows isn't vulnerable to the SPECIFIC exploit used by the script kiddies who set up this series of attacks. This is quite different from saying that windows isn't about as secure as a hermit crab in a styrofoam cup -- in fact, these are people who make big money off of Windows' permeability.
If you're lucky, the fact that they're a US company may give you some support in using the US credit laws. (the transaction took place in the US, so you should have the right to sue in the US [As always, actual legal action -- like war -- should be considered an act of last resort!]).
IANAL
I know people who take HOURS to craft a background image for their Window manager. -- Why do we do it??
What good is life without beauty? Bare white (or grey) walls are completely functionial, yet people INSIST on cluttering them up with pictures and posters. Other people will go out and spend a day's wages to listen to a good musician for an evening.
Yes, we can make it through life without beauty. A better question, however, is: Can we truely LIVE without random acts of beauty?
A sunset; a beautiful person; a rainbow; an interesting picture or painting; a kind word from a friend (a stranger even!) -- all of these things have no, obvious, utilitarian value. All of them can make someone's life that much better.
To say that something with no utilitarian use isn't "remotely useful" is to argue for the life of a souleless drudge with no other purpose in life beyond working -- eating, and sleeping only in support of accomplishing your boss' wishes. It's not a life that I would willing ly lead, and it's not one that I would suggest to my worst enemy.
If this is the case, then the quesiton of who nudged who to get this to happen may be of real interest.
Who does (did) Barnes and Noble have for lawyers?? From my understanding of the documentation for cookies, this is the kind of use that was intended. Should it really be patentable to make an intended use of a feature??
If anything it should be the cookie feature that has a patent -- but, thankfully (hopefully), it's far to late to patent cookies
On that line, has anybody considered the idea of patenting GPLed ideas, and then GPLing the patent?? It would, I think be an interesting way to push the GPL issue.
"So where did you hear our adds, son?"
"I'm sorry, I can't tell you that, sir."
So here's a question: If RSAREF is SOOO bad, and you need to use it in the US for patent reasons....
Is there any reason why we couldn't gut, clean and all but replace the code in RSAREF, document the changes and still stay within the bounds of the license??
The remote computer was capable of determining when (if at all) it was going to accept execution requests (this was much more important when just LOADING emacs took a few seconds an a good-sized VAX). A computer's admin could also decide WHICH commands could be executed by the so-called central computer.
Of course it all fell together when UUCP over TCP/IP (inc. over a lan) was implemented. You now have the INTEL patent, as described, over TCP/IP and in the earliest days of the internet (read: early to mid-80's). If you ignore the need for it to be done under TCP/IP, then the prior art stretches back to the '70s.
I'm using redhat 6.1 (claiming to be kernel 2.2.12) It SEEMS to be recognizing 256MB ram just fine...