If someone is obtuse enough that his/her/its work can be mistaken for a troll, IMAO we shouldn't try to distinguish between him/her/it and a "true" troll.
Tangentially related: Read an economics textbook some time, it'll bring your fear-and-loathing of politicians to a whole new level (specifically, politicians are legislating about things they don't understand; many of the basic things in the book both make sense and also have almost nothing to do with stupid things politicians say/do; e.g. surpluses and shortages are symptoms of price controls and nothing else). Unfortunately, my textbook is from the year 2000 or so and doesn't discuss Linus's Law etc. (not in the curriculum either), which is annoying.
[snip] one guy lasted only for his contracted year before his contract wasn't renewed, and another guy who's been dragging his heels at finishing his certs is leaving at the end of May, after maybe three years.
Probably neither of those teachers had tenure. In most states (IANAL) the school board must either fire or offer tenure after three years.
RTFS. This is a story about a legal matter, right? Well, lawyers have a love/hate relationship with and/or: they love it when it describes the actions their client can/may/must take, and hate it when it describes the actions the other guy can/may/must take. And that's just contract law!
By the way, that weird  symbol should be a U+00B7 "middle dot" or equivalent which I can't persuade Slashdot to let me (X)HTML escape. It's essentially a multiplication sign.
[this is from Wikipedia, not the parent] NiMH cells are not expensive, and the voltage and performance is [sic] similar to primary alkaline cells in those sizes; they can be substituted for most purposes. The ability to recharge hundreds of times can save money and resources.
[snip]
NiMH cells are particularly advantageous for high current drain applications, due in large part to their low internal resistance. Alkaline batteries, which might have approximately 3000 mAÂh capacity at low current demand (200 mA), will have about 700 mAÂh capacity with a 1000 mA load.[20] Digital cameras with LCDs and flashlights can draw over 1000 mA, quickly depleting alkaline batteries. NiMH can handle these current levels and maintain their full capacity. [emphasis added]
No, because breaking windows uses up resources. There are ~infinitely many possible copyrightable things, so the more incentive we have to make them, the more we make. Now, of course, making these things also takes resources, but that didn't seem to stop Linus & friends. I do agree that Copyright etc. as they stand are FAR too *AA-biased, however.
"Windows needs your permission to repaint the screen. Allow or deny?" (duh yes) "Windows needs your permission to start the printer. Allow or deny?" (yes please) "Windows needs your permission to install malware. Allow or deny?"(yeesss... I MEAN NO!!!... FUCK!!!)
Did you somehow figure out how to do anything even remotely hackish with those? If so, my hat is off to you, sir! But more likely, you're just guessing. I called the customer service, formatted the drive like the nice man from India told me, put DSL on it, made it "bootable", and it won't work! WTF??
What if a virus "infects" a USB stick? What if the luser puts the infected stick into the computer? What if social engineering is used to trick the luser into hitting "OK, run it!" on the dialog box?
In GNOME you can add a button to the panel which hides all open windows. Ubuntu puts it in the lower left corner (the corner pixel is active by default, as are the other three. Apple and MS are STILL too dumb to figure that one out.).
Lemme put that into Java for you: Java.luser.ask("you.do.want.what?");//1. ask the user what he wants to do if(Java.luser.clicked()){//2. if the user clicked the "autorun" button... //Java doesn't support GOTO
Program.run.now();//5. run the program }else{
Program.dontRun.now();//3. don't run the program } Java.lang.System.end()
Caution:YMMV, and MS will probably complain about patent issues in the above code.
No, Sony got in HUGE trouble for that (not sure if it was legal trouble, but after the public outcry, they recalled EVERYTHING and IIRC a court may have ordered them to do more or something...?).
won't have access to their file system, except what documents they choose to copy over temporarily
Not true on any VM I've seen.
VirtualBox only gives the guest access to the virtual drive and to host directories that you manually configure as "shared", which then need to be "mapped" (i.e. you have to push "map network drive" under windoze and type the right thing.). Since the system sees these directories as servers (i.e. they are assigned their own drive letters), there is no way for the system to represent the notion of the parent directory of a "shared" host directory, or indeed to know that such a thing is applicable (read:.==..~=[D-Z]:\ for such directories as far as the guest is concerned), so how do you expect the virus/rootkit/what-have-you to get out of the box you've put it in?
In the long run, open source is more secure than closed source. But in the short run, opening up a closed source program is totally insecure, because it has the worst of both worlds: Limited # of dev's have actually worked on the thing (it's only recently been opened) but black-hats can read the code. Next time, build an open-source system from the ground up.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they operate in China?
If someone is obtuse enough that his/her/its work can be mistaken for a troll, IMAO we shouldn't try to distinguish between him/her/it and a "true" troll.
Wow, the first link is already Slashdotted. Headers:
HTTP/1.x 404 Not Found
[wow, that's not what the error page said at all!]
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
[gee, what a surprise!]
Content-Length: 3855
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Mon, 04 May 2009 19:25:43 GMT
[GMT? c'mon, this is a computer; say "UTC" or get a real clock!]
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Maybe (random conspiracy theory). Or perhaps you just messed up the link (Internet archive, Google, et al. have never heard of it).
Tangentially related: Read an economics textbook some time, it'll bring your fear-and-loathing of politicians to a whole new level (specifically, politicians are legislating about things they don't understand; many of the basic things in the book both make sense and also have almost nothing to do with stupid things politicians say/do; e.g. surpluses and shortages are symptoms of price controls and nothing else). Unfortunately, my textbook is from the year 2000 or so and doesn't discuss Linus's Law etc. (not in the curriculum either), which is annoying.
-1, bizarre
[snip] one guy lasted only for his contracted year before his contract wasn't renewed, and another guy who's been dragging his heels at finishing his certs is leaving at the end of May, after maybe three years.
Probably neither of those teachers had tenure. In most states (IANAL) the school board must either fire or offer tenure after three years.
RTFS. This is a story about a legal matter, right? Well, lawyers have a love/hate relationship with and/or: they love it when it describes the actions their client can/may/must take, and hate it when it describes the actions the other guy can/may/must take. And that's just contract law!
IANAL.
and you can't run anything newer than IE6 with that.
Correction:
"and you can't run anything newer than IE6 with that without losing your sanity."
There, fixed that for you.
For the anally retentive:
"content type" == MIME type
By the way, that weird  symbol should be a U+00B7 "middle dot" or equivalent which I can't persuade Slashdot to let me (X)HTML escape. It's essentially a multiplication sign.
[this is from Wikipedia, not the parent]
NiMH cells are not expensive, and the voltage and performance is [sic] similar to primary alkaline cells in those sizes; they can be substituted for most purposes. The ability to recharge hundreds of times can save money and resources.
[snip]
NiMH cells are particularly advantageous for high current drain applications, due in large part to their low internal resistance. Alkaline batteries, which might have approximately 3000 mAÂh capacity at low current demand (200 mA), will have about 700 mAÂh capacity with a 1000 mA load.[20] Digital cameras with LCDs and flashlights can draw over 1000 mA, quickly depleting alkaline batteries. NiMH can handle these current levels and maintain their full capacity. [emphasis added]
What are you smoking? (Permalink)
No, because breaking windows uses up resources. There are ~infinitely many possible copyrightable things, so the more incentive we have to make them, the more we make. Now, of course, making these things also takes resources, but that didn't seem to stop Linus & friends. I do agree that Copyright etc. as they stand are FAR too *AA-biased, however.
"Windows needs your permission to repaint the screen. Allow or deny?" (duh yes)
"Windows needs your permission to start the printer. Allow or deny?" (yes please)
"Windows needs your permission to install malware. Allow or deny?"(yeesss... I MEAN NO!!!... FUCK!!!)
What switch?! Floppies haven't been used for years!
Did you somehow figure out how to do anything even remotely hackish with those? If so, my hat is off to you, sir! But more likely, you're just guessing. I called the customer service, formatted the drive like the nice man from India told me, put DSL on it, made it "bootable", and it won't work! WTF??
What if a virus "infects" a USB stick? What if the luser puts the infected stick into the computer? What if social engineering is used to trick the luser into hitting "OK, run it!" on the dialog box?
assert(then != than);
There. Fixed that for you.
In GNOME you can add a button to the panel which hides all open windows. Ubuntu puts it in the lower left corner (the corner pixel is active by default, as are the other three. Apple and MS are STILL too dumb to figure that one out.).
Lemme put that into Java for you:
//Java doesn't support GOTO
Java.luser.ask("you.do.want.what?");//1. ask the user what he wants to do
if(Java.luser.clicked()){//2. if the user clicked the "autorun" button...
Program.run.now();//5. run the program
}else{
Program.dontRun.now();//3. don't run the program
}
Java.lang.System.end()
Caution:YMMV, and MS will probably complain about patent issues in the above code.
No, Sony got in HUGE trouble for that (not sure if it was legal trouble, but after the public outcry, they recalled EVERYTHING and IIRC a court may have ordered them to do more or something...?).
I'm not very familiar with KDE history, but if I had to guess I'd say MS shamelessly ripped that off...
[snip]
Fingerprint is not a secret. Repeat that until it sinks in. (They use it to catch criminals because we leave them all over the place, you know.)
No shit!
Well, not actually Rule the world but sell a shed load :-).
What color shed?
won't have access to their file system, except what documents they choose to copy over temporarily
Not true on any VM I've seen.
VirtualBox only gives the guest access to the virtual drive and to host directories that you manually configure as "shared", which then need to be "mapped" (i.e. you have to push "map network drive" under windoze and type the right thing.). Since the system sees these directories as servers (i.e. they are assigned their own drive letters), there is no way for the system to represent the notion of the parent directory of a "shared" host directory, or indeed to know that such a thing is applicable (read: .==..~=[D-Z]:\ for such directories as far as the guest is concerned), so how do you expect the virus/rootkit/what-have-you to get out of the box you've put it in?
In the long run, open source is more secure than closed source. But in the short run, opening up a closed source program is totally insecure, because it has the worst of both worlds: Limited # of dev's have actually worked on the thing (it's only recently been opened) but black-hats can read the code. Next time, build an open-source system from the ground up.