I guess you are right - in theory we can't really tell what anyone is up to. For all I know it could be using all the CPU time to search for intelligent life in/etc/passwd and/home/secrets then the rest of it to wrap it up in very strong encryption:-)
But the nice thing about Linux is that you can bolt the program down so tightly (separate user, chroot) so that it cannot do any damage - it'll never find my pornography or any of my other dirty secrets;-) (hmm, me reaches for the man chroot command anyway)
Having said that I think it's not really feasible for these guys to give out the source code, because it allows malicious people to write something that'll send fake packets back saying "okay - I've found nothing". This would be a grossly irresponsible thing to do but I wouldn't rule out a cheat who would want to bump up the team's "block count" up a little or religious fanatics whose beliefs depend on there being nothing out there. Security through obscurity, perhaps, but I can't think of any other way of protecting against cheats.*
Despite that I'm still a little irked off about it myself as I'm forced to sit behind a non-transparent proxy and twiddle my thumbs with a cluster of about ~16 decent machines that are just itching to join in the search for extraterrestrial life. If only I had the source I could have written that proxy bit myself already!
*By the way it's probably only a matter of time before someone actually reverse engineers the program. Security through obscurity has always ended in tears.
Running the risk of sounding like some big corporation that slashdot knows and loves, I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that it's the hardware's fault.
The problem is that the market is flooded with all sorts of NE2000 clones at two for a penny, each of them having its own perculiarities and shipped with its own windows driver.
My honest advice would be to stay away from this minefield. Anecdotal evidence (of which there is far too much on/.) suggests that some NE2K clones make a dangerous playground - transfer rates would vary from 20 to 400kb/s, depending on which machine I was talking to. Another NE2000 clone, costing less than a tenner, would produce all sorts of wierd timeout errors and would not talk to anything, computer included. The former was (I think) due to the onboard ethernet electronics - windows produces the same results - and the latter was a pile of poo anyway.
My advice: Buy a different ethernet card and avoid no-name NE2000 clones like the plague. At risk of starting an ethernet flame war^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussion thread I'd recommend any 3com card and the Kingston KNE100TX (based on the dec Tulip 21x4x) - they've both been more than satisfactory (980kb/s average for a 300MB file yestarday), and I'm sure there are many other cards out there well up to the job.
Too bad I haven't yet worked out how to construct a TCP/IP loopback with two cards in one box:-(
The K7 bus system is not just the same one as the newest alpha uses, but it's been designed by the same person who was involve in the alpha design (whatever it's called - I keep forgetting).
If AMD would make their chips pin compatible with the alphas, there would be a very strong case for buying K7/alpha based system (or would there?). In fact it could easily be AMD's chance to steel one up on Intel. Especially given the K7 is aimed at high end of the industry (who might use alphas anyway).
And personally I'm putting off my next computer upgrade until the K7 comes out. The P-120 is fine for everything except mp3 encoding.
However, you will need high end servers with lots of RAM, multiple CPUs, and a 100Mbps network to handle running multiple bloated office suites remotely via X.
Not strictly speaking true: Running two instances of a 16MB program does not necessarily require 32MB - take the hardware requirements of WordPerfect Server for Linux (see http://linux.corel.com/linux8/sysreq.htm):
9 MB memory for first instance of Corel WordPerfect
2.5 MB memory for each additional instance of Corel WordPerfect (running concurrently)
And I'd be surprised if Corel were the only software company to write programs that take advantage of that perk (I think the Linux kernel does code sharing, but I'm not 100% sure)
Of course you could farm out different tasks to different machines, letting one run your favourite WP, another one the favourite Browser. These "servers" could even be sitting on your desktop. Of course you'd have to nail these machines down hard and take away the reset button, but IMHO that's a "good thing"(tm). Now try doing that with Windows...
btw: Linus has stayed out of the KDE/GNOME battle. If he'd demonstrated a few machines running KDE or GNOME, then no doubt proponents of the other desktop environment would have flamed him (and everyone else) bitterly - Despite that I think Linus could probably have done Linux more justice, but hey - he's a coder, not a PR guy.
I'd tend to disagree with the hypothesis that this article was written as flamebait in order to hike up the hit count. While there may be an element of truth, atrocious articles like these are not doing the credibility of Chicago Tribune any favours in the long term.
While a pro-Microsoft stance may be a feasible journalistic position, phrases like "Harumph!" and "Sure da yoot are frustrated" and blind MS praise do the author's and paper's credibility no favours. Neither does the suggestion that Linux "rebels" take up a more conformist position wash very well. But what really puts the icing on the cake is the insinuation that RedHat and co are evil because they are trying make money, this flat bang in the middle of a pro-MS article. You'd think that MS is a large charitable benevolent institution or a public service.
As a 21 year old I find the whole conformist attitude extremely patronising as well as fundamentally flawed (you don't make footprints in the sands of time by sitting down). In fact I believe that even educated Windows users, (yes, they do exist) who acknowledge that MS software isn't perfect, would agree that this article is badly written and that the supression of new ideas is no sound long term strategy. Honestly, this article ought to be taken out and shot;-)
Personally this is the only article out of the Chicago Tribune I've ever seen (there may be more but I've forgotten a few) and it's not really a good advertisement for the newspaper in general. Reading this does not entice me to spend any more time trawling through the rest of the newspaper in search of better reading material. Unless the average Chicago Tribune reader is a moron (a distinct possibility) the Tribune ought to, for their own sake, get a better writer.
nb: It's probably best to refrain from writing to the author unless you feel like taking the time to compose polite, polished, well written and factual response. Otherwise he'll be writing about those power-freaked linux "youths" bent on world domination and making money (shock horror!) and flaming anyone who is pro-MS (as opposed to just him).
According to a rumour I heard around at Cambridge University, UK, Bill Gates is supposed to have attempted exactly the same thing over here. A new computer science department building would be funded and/or furnished by Microsoft (or Bill Gates). One of the snags was that it was to be called "The Gates Building".
The academics in this department declined stating they were not going to name any building the "Gates Building" because they did not want to encourage/endorse that particular approach to programming around here. Microsoft are attempting to build offices over here in future, (to try to recruit a few clever graduates) but the consensus over here is that MS isn't that popular, especially as a career. (especially as the main nightclub in town might be closed to allow for the the new MS-Cambridge extension). (See this link for related news)
Quite possibly quicker linux. In my experience linux seems to attract the better and more competent programmers. I've noticed that both on the internet and at my University. I think that's because Linux far more interesting for us hackers than Windoze.
WP for Linux falls over less often the windoze version, but Netscape Communicator is a tad slower. Since Lokisoft appears to be a 100% linux house (Netscape isn't) I think I've got fair reason to be optimistic this time. Just imagine what that would say for Linux if CTP worked better under Linux than under W98.
It seems that the only ppl who've complained about bloat are the Windoze users.
Does anyone know if it's possible to play LinuxCTP on a network with the Windoze CTP? I'd like to play CTP with those who have still not seen the true light... (it's not clear from the webpages - maybe some of the beta-testers out there have tried)
Apart from that: Shame it seems to hog the whole screen - I'd love to play it in a resizable window. May well buy it anyway - who needs to pass exams?
Three weeks to show an alternative? That's not exactly a lot. Her Majesty's Government has been thinking and stumbling and pondering about this plan for about five years now. This is obviously a half hearted attempt to pacify some of the media. In three weeks' time nothing deemed viable will have been submitted and hey key escrow goes ahead. But we'll have had our chance.
Odd that policy has changed due to "industrial concerns" about the "electronic commerce", ie the economy, not due to problems with the individual who presumably doesn't mind telling everyone he knows just how often he picks his nose. Those that do object to this, must be emailing their partners in crime details of the next shipment of high-explosive cocaine. Otherwise they wouldn't have anything to hide, would they? We're not all like that.
Even the moderate anarchist would have a hard time because he has encrypted his email. Let's suppose he was caught alledgedly shoplifting an easter egg - police would investigate and discover that he's been encrypting emails. This gets mentioned in court as proof of his bad character and he goes to prison for twenty years.
I don't particularly care what sort of solution industry finds for itself. I just want to go about my business of being a pinko-hippie liberal communist/generic anarchist and bring down the evil institutions of Microsoft and capitalism without being spied upon by HM goverment and Sainsbury's for the so-called benefit of my more conventional neighbours.
The best way to confuse spies is to flood them with useless information - yes that's right, send your dog an email every five minutes, put in some naughty words there like sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and watch their automators go beserk. Of course the real message would be in World War I type code: "Send three n fourpence, we're going for a dance" might really mean "Send reinforcements - we're going to advance"
Damn all this makes me want to buy a small(er) island, proclaim it as a my own nation and make everything legal that's fun and everything fun that's legal. Anyone join me?
--- To learn more about paranoids, just follow them around.
As usual, I've seen some pretty poor quality posts around. This one in particular merits attention, for this:
Other than Mr. Torvalds, where are the Europeans on this list? And he lives in the US now, too.
Troll. You don't even know what he's doing at Transmeta, so how can you really make presumptions about his motives for moving?
How about Alan Cox, well known for living in the UK? How about Andrew Tannenbaum, author of that old favourite, Minix? (Denmark, I think)
And Microsoft wants to milk as much British brainpower as possible by setting up labs within the reach of many Cambridge students... Not to mention the University has refused some MS money on grounds that "[they] do not want to encourage this approach to computing". That's academic independence.
I can't be bothered to name any more names because individuals without statistics are meaningless. Otherwise you'll be saying "World War II" or "Declaration of Independence" and that really bores me...
Didn't Einstein once work for the Swiss Patent Office? Apparently he was not afraid to tell inventors that their inventions were unworkable, unoriginal and impossible" (but I forget the occasion). I guess they just can't get patent officers like that any more;-)
Now isn't that a bit of pointless information. Who cares where this moron lives anyway?
This isn't even remotely close because you're not giving out Neal's home addresses, home and office phone number, photograph, age, height, weight, family details and telling everyone that Neal kills doctors (if it were true). And I don't want to know.
Most of your information is given publicly on their own webpages anyway. So there.
I want a Y2K compliant computer
on
Toshiba and EULA
·
· Score: 1
Little sideline on UK law: In the UK if I order a computer and state, for example "I want the computer to be waterproof" on the order form, when the computer supplier takes my money he/she agrees to supply my with a computer that will be fit for the purpose it was ordered for. So if I then drench my computer in water, and it stops working, I can legally send the computer back and get a refund/replacement free of charge. Up to a full seven years later. Of course the supplier, if he/she had any sense, would never ship me a "waterproof" computer in the first place...
But what if I order a year 2000 compliant computer, ie to be Y2K compliant as shipped, and I get a box with Windows pre-installed? Is the computer supplier thereby betting his business on Windows being Year 2000 compliant? What happens if I send the computer back 6 years and 364 days later, telling the supplier that it caught the Y2K bug, only I was too busy to notice it until now. I'd like to see them try to replace that ancient beast.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm using the same report (http://cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/euro/) as you are and this is how I interpreted it:
GDP for Euroland is $6.8trillion, but the Euroland only includes those nations who have adopted the single currency. The UK, Finland and Greece are outside Euroland but still fall within any other definition of the word "Europe" including "EU". These countries more than make up the $1.3 trillion gap, so they probably give Europe a bigger economy than the US. Or am I mistaken?
I'm not. Quite the opposite. I was being sarcastic to counter the previous poster's silly arguments
Whoops - I thought I understood sarcasm - ought to read the whole thread before replying in future. There are a lot of people who seem to think that all evil is confined to one particularly rich and influential software company. They should get out a bit more...
There are a million reasons why your browser might be doing this that have nothing to do with Netscape violating your privacy or gathering privileged information...
True - and I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But this remains somewhat suspicisous. I always disable everything I cannot fully control. The proxy wasn't used and this suggests that this feature is embedded deep in the code somewhere, and not part of the regular picture retrieval service. Who knows, maybe I am just seeing red and confusing buggy programming with something more sinister...
If you have NS, you might want to try the same trick yourself. I'd be interested if you found anything. I would myself but only kernel 2.2 seems to have broken my packet sniffer:-(
--- I'm not paranoid - it's just that everyone's out to get me
Microsoft [possibly] sneaked in some sort of secret evil function in IE that does the things you describe
I wouldn't necessarily assume that Microsoft is always evil and will always sell your soul out and Netscape is always good. Probably the opposite, as MS isn't about to go under (read: trying desparately to survive), and Netscape isn't being investigated by the DOJ, and as a perceived underdog it is less likely to catch so much bad press when/if they're caught.
It's pretty trivial to sniff network connections (especially HTTP, which is typically 100% human-readable).
I have in fact that done that with my own computer and I have found that my Netscape Communicator 4.5 has made some attempts to contact somewhere.spurious.netscape.com when I hadn't been there in a while and was probably slashdotting. Forgotten what it was that NS was trying to leak, but luckily it failed because of a draconian firewall that we have (didn't use the configured proxy: how thick is that?)
ps: Any website that has sponsors is probably evil, ie they might be monitoring and selling your traffic as this may or may not be a condition of getting paid advertising money. I find that principles will fly out through the window remarkably quickly if your survival is at stake.
Well it's easy to slip some piece of software that will check the processor ID number on the chip. Only God (and Intel) know(s) how many undocumented features the Pentium II chip has already. Anybody smell any rats referring to Intel's recent investment in RedHat? Great - we'll probably have the feature in Linux if we're not careful. Not every prog Redhat distributes is open-source (xv, for example). Any how many of you use Netscape?
I know of an immediate and rather frightening problem:
Check processor ID
send it in an encrypted packet to Intel (somehow)
Intel checks this against a database.
Intel sends info back regarding max clockchip speed
Program receives this data. Then spurious OS crashes occur if the computer is discovered to run at a faster clockrate than that permitted by the Intel database
Luser goes out and buys a real chip at proper speed
Far off? Maybe now, but by the time the Pentium V comes out, ID's will be compulsory for most Internet access unless we have a good privacy lobby (or live in the EU;)
Nice one. As I see it emails your IP address to a hotmail address. Microsoft are probably not in any great hurry to stop this because they own hotmail and it makes Linux appear insecure. Except the Law says they ought to. DOJ, here I come..
The account for wlogain@hotmail.com still exists, something I've just confirmed with the help of my own hotmail account;-)
Someone could do this: set up a Linux box w/o hard disk to boot over nfs off another machine. Then apply your patch and login to the machine. Eventually the rogue may (or may not) attempt to log into this machine, but that doesn't matther, cos it's got no hard disk and no one trusts it anyway. But he's on your spare machine and bingo you have his IP address. The harass the ISP enough and you have the culprit's real name and address in no time. Alternatively if you're not so good-natured you could try every possible attack on the machine. Gosh this sounds all too easy.
He [the father] tried to call the help line and they blew him off, so he called the radio in Tampa.
Hehe. I would so much love to see the expression on the face of that guy who told the father he was lying and that "we don't put no South Park videos our CDs."
Quite expensive for a digital version of the first South Park Movie, but I guess you do get a game for it as well.
Slashdot Mirror
> It may have looked like that, but we really left voluntarily because the cheese ;-)
> and beer were so bad!
Actually it was the atrocious television ;-)
But the nice thing about Linux is that you can bolt the program down so tightly (separate user, chroot) so that it cannot do any damage - it'll never find my pornography or any of my other dirty secrets ;-) (hmm, me reaches for the man chroot command anyway)
Having said that I think it's not really feasible for these guys to give out the source code, because it allows malicious people to write something that'll send fake packets back saying "okay - I've found nothing". This would be a grossly irresponsible thing to do but I wouldn't rule out a cheat who would want to bump up the team's "block count" up a little or religious fanatics whose beliefs depend on there being nothing out there. Security through obscurity, perhaps, but I can't think of any other way of protecting against cheats.*
Despite that I'm still a little irked off about it myself as I'm forced to sit behind a non-transparent proxy and twiddle my thumbs with a cluster of about ~16 decent machines that are just itching to join in the search for extraterrestrial life. If only I had the source I could have written that proxy bit myself already!
*By the way it's probably only a matter of time before someone actually reverse engineers the program. Security through obscurity has always ended in tears.
The problem is that the market is flooded with all sorts of NE2000 clones at two for a penny, each of them having its own perculiarities and shipped with its own windows driver.
My honest advice would be to stay away from this minefield. Anecdotal evidence (of which there is far too much on /.) suggests that some NE2K clones make a dangerous playground - transfer rates would vary from 20 to 400kb/s, depending on which machine I was talking to. Another NE2000 clone, costing less than a tenner, would produce all sorts of wierd timeout errors and would not talk to anything, computer included. The former was (I think) due to the onboard ethernet electronics - windows produces the same results - and the latter was a pile of poo anyway.
My advice: Buy a different ethernet card and avoid no-name NE2000 clones like the plague. At risk of starting an ethernet flame war^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussion thread I'd recommend any 3com card and the Kingston KNE100TX (based on the dec Tulip 21x4x) - they've both been more than satisfactory (980kb/s average for a 300MB file yestarday), and I'm sure there are many other cards out there well up to the job.
Too bad I haven't yet worked out how to construct a TCP/IP loopback with two cards in one box :-(
The K7 bus system is not just the same one as the newest alpha uses, but it's been designed by the same person who was involve in the alpha design (whatever it's called - I keep forgetting).
If AMD would make their chips pin compatible with the alphas, there would be a very strong case for buying K7/alpha based system (or would there?). In fact it could easily be AMD's chance to steel one up on Intel. Especially given the K7 is aimed at high end of the industry (who might use alphas anyway).
And personally I'm putting off my next computer upgrade until the K7 comes out. The P-120 is fine for everything except mp3 encoding.
Not strictly speaking true: Running two instances of a 16MB program does not necessarily require 32MB - take the hardware requirements of WordPerfect Server for Linux (see http://linux.corel.com/linux8/sysreq.htm):
- 9 MB memory for first instance of Corel WordPerfect
- 2.5 MB memory for each additional instance of Corel WordPerfect (running concurrently)
And I'd be surprised if Corel were the only software company to write programs that take advantage of that perk (I think the Linux kernel does code sharing, but I'm not 100% sure)Of course you could farm out different tasks to different machines, letting one run your favourite WP, another one the favourite Browser. These "servers" could even be sitting on your desktop. Of course you'd have to nail these machines down hard and take away the reset button, but IMHO that's a "good thing"(tm). Now try doing that with Windows...
btw: Linus has stayed out of the KDE/GNOME battle. If he'd demonstrated a few machines running KDE or GNOME, then no doubt proponents of the other desktop environment would have flamed him (and everyone else) bitterly - Despite that I think Linus could probably have done Linux more justice, but hey - he's a coder, not a PR guy.
I'd tend to disagree with the hypothesis that this article was written as flamebait in order to hike up the hit count. While there may be an element of truth, atrocious articles like these are not doing the credibility of Chicago Tribune any favours in the long term.
;-)
While a pro-Microsoft stance may be a feasible journalistic position, phrases like "Harumph!" and "Sure da yoot are frustrated" and blind MS praise do the author's and paper's credibility no favours. Neither does the suggestion that Linux "rebels" take up a more conformist position wash very well. But what really puts the icing on the cake is the insinuation that RedHat and co are evil because they are trying make money, this flat bang in the middle of a pro-MS article. You'd think that MS is a large charitable benevolent institution or a public service.
As a 21 year old I find the whole conformist attitude extremely patronising as well as fundamentally flawed (you don't make footprints in the sands of time by sitting down). In fact I believe that even educated Windows users, (yes, they do exist) who acknowledge that MS software isn't perfect, would agree that this article is badly written and that the supression of new ideas is no sound long term strategy. Honestly, this article ought to be taken out and shot
Personally this is the only article out of the Chicago Tribune I've ever seen (there may be more but I've forgotten a few) and it's not really a good advertisement for the newspaper in general. Reading this does not entice me to spend any more time trawling through the rest of the newspaper in search of better reading material. Unless the average Chicago Tribune reader is a moron (a distinct possibility) the Tribune ought to, for their own sake, get a better writer.
nb: It's probably best to refrain from writing to the author unless you feel like taking the time to compose polite, polished, well written and factual response. Otherwise he'll be writing about those power-freaked linux "youths" bent on world domination and making money (shock horror!) and flaming anyone who is pro-MS (as opposed to just him).
slashdot isn't accepting my input. Cut and paste (sorry)2 /Content/News/Stories/080598_msoft.html
http://www.varsity.cam.ac.uk/VarsityOnline/Online
According to a rumour I heard around at Cambridge University, UK, Bill Gates is supposed to have attempted exactly the same thing over here. A new computer science department building would be funded and/or furnished by Microsoft (or Bill Gates). One of the snags was that it was to be called "The Gates Building".
The academics in this department declined stating they were not going to name any building the "Gates Building" because they did not want to encourage/endorse that particular approach to programming around here. Microsoft are attempting to build offices over here in future, (to try to recruit a few clever graduates) but the consensus over here is that MS isn't that popular, especially as a career. (especially as the main nightclub in town might be closed to allow for the the new MS-Cambridge extension). (See this link for related news)
Quite possibly quicker linux. In my experience linux seems to attract the better and more competent programmers. I've noticed that both on the internet and at my University. I think that's because Linux far more interesting for us hackers than Windoze.
WP for Linux falls over less often the windoze version, but Netscape Communicator is a tad slower. Since Lokisoft appears to be a 100% linux house (Netscape isn't) I think I've got fair reason to be optimistic this time. Just imagine what that would say for Linux if CTP worked better under Linux than under W98.
It seems that the only ppl who've complained about bloat are the Windoze users.
Does anyone know if it's possible to play LinuxCTP on a network with the Windoze CTP? I'd like to play CTP with those who have still not seen the true light... (it's not clear from the webpages - maybe some of the beta-testers out there have tried)
Apart from that: Shame it seems to hog the whole screen - I'd love to play it in a resizable window. May well buy it anyway - who needs to pass exams?
Three weeks to show an alternative? That's not exactly a lot. Her Majesty's Government has been thinking and stumbling and pondering about this plan for about five years now. This is obviously a half hearted attempt to pacify some of the media. In three weeks' time nothing deemed viable will have been submitted and hey key escrow goes ahead. But we'll have had our chance.
Odd that policy has changed due to "industrial concerns" about the "electronic commerce", ie the economy, not due to problems with the individual who presumably doesn't mind telling everyone he knows just how often he picks his nose. Those that do object to this, must be emailing their partners in crime details of the next shipment of high-explosive cocaine. Otherwise they wouldn't have anything to hide, would they? We're not all like that.
Even the moderate anarchist would have a hard time because he has encrypted his email. Let's suppose he was caught alledgedly shoplifting an easter egg - police would investigate and discover that he's been encrypting emails. This gets mentioned in court as proof of his bad character and he goes to prison for twenty years.
I don't particularly care what sort of solution industry finds for itself. I just want to go about my business of being a pinko-hippie liberal communist/generic anarchist and bring down the evil institutions of Microsoft and capitalism without being spied upon by HM goverment and Sainsbury's for the so-called benefit of my more conventional neighbours.
The best way to confuse spies is to flood them with useless information - yes that's right, send your dog an email every five minutes, put in some naughty words there like sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and watch their automators go beserk. Of course the real message would be in World War I type code: "Send three n fourpence, we're going for a dance" might really mean "Send reinforcements - we're going to advance"
Damn all this makes me want to buy a small(er) island, proclaim it as a my own nation and make everything legal that's fun and everything fun that's legal. Anyone join me?
---
To learn more about paranoids, just follow them around.
Don't let Microsoft "embrace and extend" HTML/open standards... :-)
My country is better than yours. nyah, nyah nya nyaaah nya...
As usual, I've seen some pretty poor quality posts around. This one in particular merits attention, for this:
Other than Mr. Torvalds, where are the Europeans on this list? And he lives in the US now, too.
Troll. You don't even know what he's doing at Transmeta, so how can you really make presumptions about his motives for moving?
How about Alan Cox, well known for living in the UK? How about Andrew Tannenbaum, author of that old favourite, Minix? (Denmark, I think)
And Microsoft wants to milk as much British brainpower as possible by setting up labs within the reach of many Cambridge students... Not to mention the University has refused some MS money on grounds that "[they] do not want to encourage this approach to computing". That's academic independence.
I can't be bothered to name any more names because individuals without statistics are meaningless. Otherwise you'll be saying "World War II" or "Declaration of Independence" and that really bores me...
- KDE is 2 times more stable than WIN98.. It's ready now
That's a rather damning statement about KDE. Surely KDE can't be that bad, can it?Didn't Einstein once work for the Swiss Patent Office? Apparently he was not afraid to tell inventors that their inventions were unworkable, unoriginal and impossible" (but I forget the occasion). I guess they just can't get patent officers like that any more ;-)
The comments just go to show that we'd all rather talk about things we have no clue about.
This isn't even remotely close because you're not giving out Neal's home addresses, home and office phone number, photograph, age, height, weight, family details and telling everyone that Neal kills doctors (if it were true). And I don't want to know.
Most of your information is given publicly on their own webpages anyway. So there.
But what if I order a year 2000 compliant computer, ie to be Y2K compliant as shipped, and I get a box with Windows pre-installed? Is the computer supplier thereby betting his business on Windows being Year 2000 compliant? What happens if I send the computer back 6 years and 364 days later, telling the supplier that it caught the Y2K bug, only I was too busy to notice it until now. I'd like to see them try to replace that ancient beast.
GDP for Euroland is $6.8trillion, but the Euroland only includes those nations who have adopted the single currency. The UK, Finland and Greece are outside Euroland but still fall within any other definition of the word "Europe" including "EU". These countries more than make up the $1.3 trillion gap, so they probably give Europe a bigger economy than the US. Or am I mistaken?
- I'm not. Quite the opposite. I was being sarcastic to counter the previous poster's silly arguments
Whoops - I thought I understood sarcasm - ought to read the whole thread before replying in future. There are a lot of people who seem to think that all evil is confined to one particularly rich and influential software company. They should get out a bit more...- There are a million reasons why your browser might be doing this that have nothing to do with Netscape violating your privacy or gathering privileged information...
True - and I shouldn't jump to conclusions. But this remains somewhat suspicisous. I always disable everything I cannot fully control. The proxy wasn't used and this suggests that this feature is embedded deep in the code somewhere, and not part of the regular picture retrieval service. Who knows, maybe I am just seeing red and confusing buggy programming with something more sinister...If you have NS, you might want to try the same trick yourself. I'd be interested if you found anything. I would myself but only kernel 2.2 seems to have broken my packet sniffer :-(
---
I'm not paranoid - it's just that everyone's out to get me
- Microsoft [possibly] sneaked in some sort of secret evil function in IE that does the things you describe
I wouldn't necessarily assume that Microsoft is always evil and will always sell your soul out and Netscape is always good. Probably the opposite, as MS isn't about to go under (read: trying desparately to survive), and Netscape isn't being investigated by the DOJ, and as a perceived underdog it is less likely to catch so much bad press when/if they're caught.- It's pretty trivial to sniff network connections (especially HTTP, which is typically 100% human-readable).
I have in fact that done that with my own computer and I have found that my Netscape Communicator 4.5 has made some attempts to contact somewhere.spurious.netscape.com when I hadn't been there in a while and was probably slashdotting. Forgotten what it was that NS was trying to leak, but luckily it failed because of a draconian firewall that we have (didn't use the configured proxy: how thick is that?)ps: Any website that has sponsors is probably evil, ie they might be monitoring and selling your traffic as this may or may not be a condition of getting paid advertising money. I find that principles will fly out through the window remarkably quickly if your survival is at stake.
I know of an immediate and rather frightening problem:
- Check processor ID
- send it in an encrypted packet to Intel (somehow)
- Intel checks this against a database.
- Intel sends info back regarding max clockchip speed
- Program receives this data. Then spurious OS crashes occur if the computer is discovered to run at a faster clockrate than that permitted by the Intel database
- Luser goes out and buys a real chip at proper speed
Far off? Maybe now, but by the time the Pentium V comes out, ID's will be compulsory for most Internet access unless we have a good privacy lobby (or live in the EU;)The account for wlogain@hotmail.com still exists, something I've just confirmed with the help of my own hotmail account ;-)
Someone could do this: set up a Linux box w/o hard disk to boot over nfs off another machine. Then apply your patch and login to the machine. Eventually the rogue may (or may not) attempt to log into this machine, but that doesn't matther, cos it's got no hard disk and no one trusts it anyway. But he's on your spare machine and bingo you have his IP address. The harass the ISP enough and you have the culprit's real name and address in no time. Alternatively if you're not so good-natured you could try every possible attack on the machine. Gosh this sounds all too easy.
Hehe. I would so much love to see the expression on the face of that guy who told the father he was lying and that "we don't put no South Park videos our CDs."
Quite expensive for a digital version of the first South Park Movie, but I guess you do get a game for it as well.