I noticed that too. It appears that slashdot has also decided to make it impossible to email an editor. You have to know their super sekret email address.
Buffer overflows are a design problem. Deciding to implement an operating system or application in C or another unsafe language is a design decision.
Buffer overflows are not an inevitable defect in modern operating systems. They are there because most designers and programmers have internalized the philosophy that fast is better than safe.
When Microsoft introduced Windows NT and NTFS, they had the chance to lock down the system, enforcing the separation between user and system like any modern multi-user operating system. My guess is that this idea got shot down by the people at Microsoft who will do just about anything to avoid breaking old applications. What they delivered is a mess, and it's still a mess. They need a BOFH-type security czar to clean things up and tell users to bitch to the original vendor about their broken applications.
A typical hard disk has a design lifetime of 5-10 years. Shit happens. Lubricants migrate or degrade. Motor and actuator driver chips blow up. You may not be able to find a computer that supports the drive's I/O interface in 10 years. There may be no device drivers available if it uses a non-standard I/O interface. The filesystem on the drive may become obsolete and unsupported.
I have much more confidence in my CD-Rs that were recorded on archival quality media.
I still have some spindles of Kodak Gold Ultima CD-Rs. Kodak ran accelerated aging tests on these disks that predicted a very long life. Unfortunately, Kodak bailed out of the CD-R business. With the declining prices of CD-Rs, they couldn't make a profit on the disks. i've read rumors that Mitsui has also decided to get out of the archival CD-R business, although their web site says that they are still selling them. It would be a shame if the rumors are true.
The floppy disk business is a good example of what can happen when media and drive manufacturers are willing to do anything to cut costs. Floppy disks used to be pretty reliable if not abused. Bad disks were rare. With today's drives and media, the good disk is the exception.
There is no law against the use of encryption devices for telephone calls. That said, the federal government has "encouraged" vendors of voice encryption hardware to restrict sales to the unwashed masses.
The USA can afford to build and run the International Space Station, it just lacks the political will to provide adequate funding. Farm subsidies receive more money than NASA.
I believe the U.S. Navy prohibited the use of lithium batteries due to safety concerns. Later this was relaxed to allow their use if stringent engineering and safety standards were followed.
See NAVSEA S9310-AQ-SAF-010.
I had the bad luck, or ignorance, to buy a couple of cable modem routers from Netgear and SMC. Both of them implicated in the SNTP problems, and buggy in their other functions. There were no firmware updates for the bugs and tech support was totally useless. After attempting to research the problems, I got the impression that both companies were just resellers for cheap networking equipment designed and manufactured in Taiwan and China. Netgear and SMC couldn't provide proper support for the equipment because everything was contracted out to an off-shore manufacturer.
After tossing several routers, I bought a Netopia R910 router. It cost more than the cheap routers, but it actually works and doesn't need periodic resets. Netopia also appears to be a real company with an in-house engineering staff.
Of all the companies selling networking equipment, how many actually design and program their own equipment?
Do you really believe the network administrators had the authority to set the policy for interconnections? The responsibility of the network administrators is to implement policy, not to set it. I'd start looking for the chief engineer or VP of engineering.
Taking an idea from Icelandic history, why not declare spammers to be outlaws? An outlaw is outside the protection of the law. You are free to take his property, beat him or kill him.
It might be a DEC LA36 DECwriter II. I used to use one of them as the console terminal of a PDP-11/03 (LSI-11). The nice thing about them is that they use standard line printer fanfold paper. It had a 20 mA current loop serial interface, although I think there was an option for a RS-232 interface.
Old Baudot teletypes, like the models 15 and 19, could run for decades with just occasional preventive maintenance. A typical newspaper newsroom had several teletypes each for the AP and UPI wire services. These would be printing almost continuously, 24 hours a day. They were slow (60 Words Per Minute), but they were built to last forever.
One of my father's first jobs was as a reporter for UPI. He could "edit" a story by reading the punched holes on the 5-level paper tape.
It all depends on what type of threat that you are worried about. SimpleCrypt will protect against low-level threats. DES will protect against mid-level threats. For high-level threats, you are screwed unless you deal with serious physical security and compromising emanations. If someone really wants your data, they can steal/seize your computer, install a key logger, bug the keyboard, etc.
Retrospect Express, which has apparently been discontinued, supported SimpleCrypt, which is designed to be fast. Retrospect Professional adds support for DES, which may slowdown backups. It depends on your CPU speed and the speed of your backup device.
Now that fast floating point hardware is standard on desktop CPUs, I take advantage of it whenever I can. Fixed point arithmetic is an error-prone kludge for CPUs without floating point hardware. I've waited decades for floating point hardware to become a standard feature of PCs. Take it away and I will have to break someone's legs.
HF can be fairly reliable if you are willing to invest the money in equipment, antennas and trained engineers and operators. If you don't have access to a satellite, it is still a practical means of communication.
A friend, who was a professional movie reviewer, told me to beware of any movie that doesn't offer advance screenings for movie reviewers. It's usually the sign of a expensive turkey when the marketing people try to keep the film away from the reviewers for as long as possible.
Are 800 MHz licensees using equipment designed for the best performance using current RF technology? The FCC has an obligation to require licensees to use well designed equipment that takes advantage of modern technology. That allows the most efficient use of the radio spectrum. There is a big difference between the performance of cheap and expensive VHF/UHF equipment. A cheap transceiver is vulnerable to front-end overload, intermodulation and desensing. A well designed transceiver can reject strong signals that are off-channel with minimal performance loss. Public safety agencies should be required to design communications systems with adequate coverage and link margins, and buy high quality radios, not those from the lowest bidder. Cellular sites can install cavity filters to drastically attenuate off-channel noise and spurious emissions.
Although the FCC hasn't always been consistent about it, the general rule has been that the operator of a properly maintained and licensed transmitter is not responsible for the communications problems of other users when those problems are caused by poorly designed receivers.
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I noticed that too. It appears that slashdot has also decided to make it impossible to email an editor. You have to know their super sekret email address.
Buffer overflows are not an inevitable defect in modern operating systems. They are there because most designers and programmers have internalized the philosophy that fast is better than safe.
When Microsoft introduced Windows NT and NTFS, they had the chance to lock down the system, enforcing the separation between user and system like any modern multi-user operating system. My guess is that this idea got shot down by the people at Microsoft who will do just about anything to avoid breaking old applications. What they delivered is a mess, and it's still a mess. They need a BOFH-type security czar to clean things up and tell users to bitch to the original vendor about their broken applications.
Mylar laminated tape is even better. It lasts longer than regular paper tape. It tends to wear out punches prematurely.
I have much more confidence in my CD-Rs that were recorded on archival quality media.
The floppy disk business is a good example of what can happen when media and drive manufacturers are willing to do anything to cut costs. Floppy disks used to be pretty reliable if not abused. Bad disks were rare. With today's drives and media, the good disk is the exception.
There is no law against the use of encryption devices for telephone calls. That said, the federal government has "encouraged" vendors of voice encryption hardware to restrict sales to the unwashed masses.
The USA can afford to build and run the International Space Station, it just lacks the political will to provide adequate funding. Farm subsidies receive more money than NASA.
I believe the U.S. Navy prohibited the use of lithium batteries due to safety concerns. Later this was relaxed to allow their use if stringent engineering and safety standards were followed. See NAVSEA S9310-AQ-SAF-010.
After tossing several routers, I bought a Netopia R910 router. It cost more than the cheap routers, but it actually works and doesn't need periodic resets. Netopia also appears to be a real company with an in-house engineering staff.
Of all the companies selling networking equipment, how many actually design and program their own equipment?
It's COTS, it's cheap, it has a pretty GUI, it has all the latest bells and whistles, it can be easily integrated with existing desktop computers.
Do you really believe the network administrators had the authority to set the policy for interconnections? The responsibility of the network administrators is to implement policy, not to set it. I'd start looking for the chief engineer or VP of engineering.
Taking an idea from Icelandic history, why not declare spammers to be outlaws? An outlaw is outside the protection of the law. You are free to take his property, beat him or kill him.
It might be a DEC LA36 DECwriter II. I used to use one of them as the console terminal of a PDP-11/03 (LSI-11). The nice thing about them is that they use standard line printer fanfold paper. It had a 20 mA current loop serial interface, although I think there was an option for a RS-232 interface.
One of my father's first jobs was as a reporter for UPI. He could "edit" a story by reading the punched holes on the 5-level paper tape.
It all depends on what type of threat that you are worried about. SimpleCrypt will protect against low-level threats. DES will protect against mid-level threats. For high-level threats, you are screwed unless you deal with serious physical security and compromising emanations. If someone really wants your data, they can steal/seize your computer, install a key logger, bug the keyboard, etc.
Retrospect Express, which has apparently been discontinued, supported SimpleCrypt, which is designed to be fast. Retrospect Professional adds support for DES, which may slowdown backups. It depends on your CPU speed and the speed of your backup device.
Now that fast floating point hardware is standard on desktop CPUs, I take advantage of it whenever I can. Fixed point arithmetic is an error-prone kludge for CPUs without floating point hardware. I've waited decades for floating point hardware to become a standard feature of PCs. Take it away and I will have to break someone's legs.
It can be picky about backup hardware. Make sure your backup hardware is on their supported hardware list.
The human ear perceives a 10dB increase in sound level as roughly a doubling of loudness.
Peltiers are inefficient. Instead of cooling a 50W CPU, you now have to cool a 150W peltier.
I usually associate water-cooled computers with ECL, which was the logic family of choice for designers who wanted speed at any cost.
HF can be fairly reliable if you are willing to invest the money in equipment, antennas and trained engineers and operators. If you don't have access to a satellite, it is still a practical means of communication.
A friend, who was a professional movie reviewer, told me to beware of any movie that doesn't offer advance screenings for movie reviewers. It's usually the sign of a expensive turkey when the marketing people try to keep the film away from the reviewers for as long as possible.
Although the FCC hasn't always been consistent about it, the general rule has been that the operator of a properly maintained and licensed transmitter is not responsible for the communications problems of other users when those problems are caused by poorly designed receivers.