Matt Mullenweg writes: "As mentioned in our release announcement, the update notification sends your blog URL, plugins, and version info when it checks api.wordpress.org for new and compatible updates.
Helping the users keep the software up to date is an honourable goal, but why exactly does WP need to *send* any data in order to do this? Wouldn't it be enough to *retrieve* a text file containing the latest version of everything, compare it to what it's running on and inform the user accordingly?
In this particular case, concern for security is a cheap excuse for invading privacy and actually causing a security problem.
> even if I gradually replace all of the drives with larger ones, > the array will still read the original size.
The key word to your problem is "gradually".
Let's say you have three 500GB disks in a RAID5 array and you want to expand. Let's also assume you can't connect more than four drives to your system. So you add one 1TB disk as part of a new (but still incomplete/failed) RAID5 array and copy all your data to it. Next, you remove the three 500GB disks and add another two 1TB disks. Once you've done this, the new array will synchronise its disks. While it does so, your data is safe because you still have your three old 500GB disks. When your three new 1TB disks have sync'ed, you can wipe and sell off the old drives.
BTW, don't do this with master/slave IDE drives on the same controller.
If you're writing an article dealing with issues of trust, especially if you're about to solicit the reader's trust in the subject of your article, make sure to start the article with the word "Verisign". You need write no more...
Are you suggesting community-driven open-source collaborative pr0n development? The idea is appealing, but sourceforge might find it appalling. The "release early, release often" rule would apply just perfect though...
there needs to be legal mechanisms for tapping calls over what are essentially "public" communications channels
What exactly makes those channels public? The communication, be it traditional phone or VoIP is one-to-one, so by its nature private. The lines belong to private companies. They are rented by the caller and paid for per minute. What more would it take to make a communication channel private according to you?
As for "needs be", that need could be demonstrated by a statistical relation between wiretapping and reduction in crime and/or increase in crime resolution. But it is not. Wiretapping keeps increasing uncontrollably, crime continues as usual. The victims of lowering the thresholds for wiretapping are all innocent citizens caught in the middle.
That way someone misdialing a person under surveilience when trying to order a pizza could just be dropped from consideration without anyone even knowing who he was.
The purpose of massive tapping and analysis is not to keep tabs on known suspects, but to find new, hitherto unknown, suspects. They try to correlate telephone events with other events. They save all the data they can, including the content of your conversations, because that's the only way they can go back and find what you were doing yesterday, should you become a suspect tomorrow. Thus, by definition and design, mass tapping is purposely directed against non-suspects. Known suspects are dealt with elsewhere in much more resource-efficient ways.
To make things worse, innocent actions on one surveillance system can flag you as a suspect on another and, consequently, on all of them. In another/. discussion today, Western Union refused to accept a wire of $120 because the recipient was called Muhammed and lived abroad. Of course that's not policy, it's just some overzealous and totally misguided WU employee, but you can still be sure that this caused the sender's name to get flagged. So now his calls get monitored and all his previous bank transactions are checked and his web browsing habits are analysed and his e-mail is read, all because he tried to send a miserable $120 to a friend named Muhammed.
The only good thing that has come out of all this is that we now get ten times more capacity per dollar on hard drives than we did before 9/11, partly thanks to TIA and the like.
The question to ask is not "how", but "why". Why should the human race survive the next N years. What difference would it make if it didn't? To whom?
This is, I think, the most adequate answer to the original question. You need to know what you're trying to achieve before you start pondering the ways to achieve it.
Agent: Yes, it's a known problem. It's been fixed, you just need to upgrade your BIOS. Customer: How do I do that? A: You have to download the new BIOS and [bla, bla, bla] C: We don't have internet here. A: Uhm, you can download it anywhere and take it to the office on a floppy. C: I don't have internet at home either. A: In that case I'll take your address and send you the BIOS on a floppy. We normally don't do this, but I'll make an exception. C: But if you send it by post it will take a week to arrive (customer is in Spain). A: Well, yes, but what else can I do? C: Fax it to me. A: That's not possible sir, you can't fax a BIOS. C: Why not? I insist that you fax it to me at once. We have paid for premium support and we are entitled to A: OK, OK, can I have your fax number please?
Ten minutes later, the BIOS had been printed and was being faxed to the customer.
From a colleague at HP printer support, Amsterdam, anno 1998:
Customer calls, his brand new deskjet appears to be DOA. Normal troubleshooting takes place, the printer is indeed stone dead. Customer gets a new printer sent to him, case closed.
A few days later the same customer calls again. The replacement printer appears to be DOA. This is very close to the statistically impossible, so this time some very extensive troubleshooting takes place over the phone. There is no getting around it though, the printer is dead. Yet another order for a replacement unit is put in the system, case closed again.
A few days later... the third printer appears to be DOA. The case is put on super-pedantic mode and the support agent is instructed to spend as many hours on the phone as it takes to figure what the customer is doing wrong. Every single step of the printer installation procedure is gone through, including a full diagnostic of the computer, cables, power outlet, the works. The customer has done nothing wrong, the support agent is desperate. The customer is asked to describe in detail everything he did from the very moment he received the printer. Well, says customer, he followed the instructions. Opened the box, took out the printer, removed the plastic bag, removed the transport tapes and foam paddings, assembled the in and out trays, put them in place, connected parallel and power cables, switched on printer, dead.
Have you figured it yet? If not, you'll never make more than a mediocre support agent. What distinguishes a really good agent is his ability to think as the proverbial bigger idiot who can break anything that's idiot-proof.
- You removed the tapes, you say. Could you please be more specific? - Well, you know, the orange adhesive tape that holds the cover. - The one on top? - Yes. And the one at the back. - Right. - And then the big one inside. - Which one? - The white one, the one that keeps the cartridge carriage in place during transport. - You mean the one that's about three centimetres wide, that runs from one end of the printer to the cartridge carriage at the other end? - Yes, that one. - How did you remove it? - It wouldn't come off, so I had to cut it. - I see. With scissors? - That's right. - Thank you sir, I think we found the problem. I'll put an order for a new printer in the system, you should have it in a couple of days. When you get it, please phone us BEFORE you open the box. Ask to speak with me, I'll guide you through the unpacking procedure.
Perhaps your competitors in the arms business are simply smarter than you. They do good business selling arms to peaceful countries, rather than to criminals and madmen. Unlike you, they only sell arms, they don't go about starting wars of their own. As a result, they get to keep their profits rather than waste billions on wars they can't win. Finally, as a master marketing stunt, they loudly condemn the dictators that you keep appointing all over the place, your Pinochets and Videlas and Papadopouloi and Husseins. While US politics, just like US business, can't see further than this presidential term and next quarter's results, those pesky Europeans tend to look years and decades ahead and plan business slower, but more profitable in the long run. And they get all the goodwill too: you never hear of "anti-Swiss sentiments" and all the money, including that of your pet dictators, is in their banks.
How can you talk about the rules of society and justify mines in the same sentence?
In war, the rules of society permit and indeed encourage the killing of enemy soldiers, but they forbid the killing of civilians. In peace, the rules of society forbid killing, period.
Unlike other military weapons, mines kill far more civilians than they kill enemy soldiers. They kill civilians during war and they keep killing civilians in peace time. *This* is what distinguishes mines from other weapons, and there's no way you can justify killing civilians in peace time with any military benefits of war time. Especially not with the rules of society as an argument.
getting rid of [mines] will only empower despots to commit far greater evils
Blessed be thy name, oh Holy Simplification. Hero of Democracy Reagan gives mines to the good Taliban who are fighting the evil Soviet despots, so Hero of Democracy Bush must now plant Afghanistan full of mines in his fight against the evil Taliban despo^Wterrorists, is this what you mean? And the bad guys don't have mines, only the good guys do, right? And the good guys is always "us", the evil despots always "them", and "he who is not with us is against us", right? Do you also refuse to have French fries with your mines?
There. Every backup is a full one, only changed data take space on the disk, and it's encrypted to boot. A simple croned script can do the job for you and also purge old backups after a set time and/or pattern and notify you if your disk is filling up.
You might find this weird, but when people talk about "open source" around here, they really mean much more than just "open". All I see on http://asmith.id.au/freedb.html next to the source code, is "Copyright 2006, Andrew Smith". Would you mind adding "licence: GPL" next to it?
> it seems a little unfortunate that the one developer decided to just abruptly pull the plug on the service
Whooo. That one developer pulled the plug saying "I can't do this without them", after the other two developers quit. All three are "to blame", except that you can't blame anyone for no longer providing a free service financed out of their own pockets.
Re:I'd just like to say,
on
Freedb.org Ending
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Please do your homework. The freedb database dump is released under
the GPL with the following addendum:
For purposes of interpreting the GPL in connection with this work: The database is distributed in the form of plain text files. These will generally be processed into to another form. The text form should be considered "source code" and the other form should be considered a "compiled program".
This means, the moment you publish the database in any other format than
a dump (e.g. through another front end), you must publish a dump of your
own. If freedb2.org is using any part of freedb.org's database, it
is currently infringing freedb.org's copyrights.
What is child pornography, to begin with, legally-technically speaking? What constitutes legal or illegal distibution of child pornography? (If the latter question seems absurd to you, remember that it is perfectly legal for a prosecutor to "distribute" kiddie porn to his aides, as well as for a defendent to his solicitor and to the court). Who is to judge where the gray line goes?
It is for a reason that justice has been entrusted to a special body, the courts, and that they have been given far-reaching independence from everybody else, including the legislative and executive branches of the state. Private entities such as ISPs taking law enforcement in their hands, arbitrarily and of their own accord, is nothing but the old habit of lynching re-applied in a new, more politically correct, way.
Vincent's own terminology put him in the trap. Telling the rep "cancel my account" implies that the rep can argue. The right approach is this: "I have now informed you that I'm cancelling. That's all I have to do according to my contract. I am no longer bound by the contract no matter what you say and no matter whether you put the cancellation in your systems or not. I'm not in a mood for argument, so I'm going to hang up. Have a nice day and remember, if you charge me next month you'll be committing credit card fraud. [click]"
Slashdot Mirror
Every time you think that US ignorance of the world couldn't get any worse, you face proof it's yet worse.
Smoking accelerates your metabolism, stimulates your brain and can be done without leaving the monitor. What else can a geek wish for?
honourable goal, but why exactly does WP need to *send*
any data in order to do this? Wouldn't it be enough to
*retrieve* a text file containing the latest version of
everything, compare it to what it's running on and inform
the user accordingly?
In this particular case, concern for security is a cheap
excuse for invading privacy and actually causing a security
problem.
> even if I gradually replace all of the drives with larger ones,
> the array will still read the original size.
The key word to your problem is "gradually".
Let's say you have three 500GB disks in a RAID5 array and you want to expand. Let's also assume you can't connect more than four drives to your system. So you add one 1TB disk as part of a new (but still incomplete/failed) RAID5 array and copy all your data to it. Next, you remove the three 500GB disks and add another two 1TB disks. Once you've done this, the new array will synchronise its disks. While it does so, your data is safe because you still have your three old 500GB disks. When your three new 1TB disks have sync'ed, you can wipe and sell off the old drives.
BTW, don't do this with master/slave IDE drives on the same controller.
rsync -vva --exclude=/home/me/pr0n backups:/oldmachine/home/me /home/
If you're writing an article dealing with issues of trust, especially if you're about to solicit the reader's trust in the subject of your article, make sure to start the article with the word "Verisign". You need write no more...
The TV-show link in the main article goes to a preview. The full show is at http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=3355684&md5=e83e151 c120fb91b83739b61fda939e6
Are you suggesting community-driven open-source collaborative pr0n development? The idea is appealing, but sourceforge might find it appalling. The "release early, release often" rule would apply just perfect though...
Check http://gmane.org/ (best viewed in a news reader). It's a treasure.
there needs to be legal mechanisms for tapping calls over what are essentially "public" communications channels
/. discussion today, Western Union refused to accept a wire of $120 because the recipient was called Muhammed and lived abroad. Of course that's not policy, it's just some overzealous and totally misguided WU employee, but you can still be sure that this caused the sender's name to get flagged. So now his calls get monitored and all his previous bank transactions are checked and his web browsing habits are analysed and his e-mail is read, all because he tried to send a miserable $120 to a friend named Muhammed.
What exactly makes those channels public? The communication, be it traditional phone or VoIP is one-to-one, so by its nature private. The lines belong to private companies. They are rented by the caller and paid for per minute. What more would it take to make a communication channel private according to you?
As for "needs be", that need could be demonstrated by a statistical relation between wiretapping and reduction in crime and/or increase in crime resolution. But it is not. Wiretapping keeps increasing uncontrollably, crime continues as usual. The victims of lowering the thresholds for wiretapping are all innocent citizens caught in the middle.
That way someone misdialing a person under surveilience when trying to order a pizza could just be dropped from consideration without anyone even knowing who he was.
The purpose of massive tapping and analysis is not to keep tabs on known suspects, but to find new, hitherto unknown, suspects. They try to correlate telephone events with other events. They save all the data they can, including the content of your conversations, because that's the only way they can go back and find what you were doing yesterday, should you become a suspect tomorrow. Thus, by definition and design, mass tapping is purposely directed against non-suspects. Known suspects are dealt with elsewhere in much more resource-efficient ways.
To make things worse, innocent actions on one surveillance system can flag you as a suspect on another and, consequently, on all of them. In another
The only good thing that has come out of all this is that we now get ten times more capacity per dollar on hard drives than we did before 9/11, partly thanks to TIA and the like.
The question to ask is not "how", but "why". Why should the human race survive the next N years. What difference would it make if it didn't? To whom?
This is, I think, the most adequate answer to the original question. You need to know what you're trying to achieve before you start pondering the ways to achieve it.
HP corporate PC support, Amsterdam, 1998:
Agent: Yes, it's a known problem. It's been fixed, you just need to upgrade your BIOS.
Customer: How do I do that?
A: You have to download the new BIOS and [bla, bla, bla]
C: We don't have internet here.
A: Uhm, you can download it anywhere and take it to the office on a floppy.
C: I don't have internet at home either.
A: In that case I'll take your address and send you the BIOS on a floppy. We normally don't do this, but I'll make an exception.
C: But if you send it by post it will take a week to arrive (customer is in Spain).
A: Well, yes, but what else can I do?
C: Fax it to me.
A: That's not possible sir, you can't fax a BIOS.
C: Why not? I insist that you fax it to me at once. We have paid for premium support and we are entitled to
A: OK, OK, can I have your fax number please?
Ten minutes later, the BIOS had been printed and was being faxed to the customer.
From a colleague at HP printer support, Amsterdam, anno 1998:
Customer calls, his brand new deskjet appears to be DOA. Normal troubleshooting takes place, the printer is indeed stone dead. Customer gets a new printer sent to him, case closed.
A few days later the same customer calls again. The replacement printer appears to be DOA. This is very close to the statistically impossible, so this time some very extensive troubleshooting takes place over the phone. There is no getting around it though, the printer is dead. Yet another order for a replacement unit is put in the system, case closed again.
A few days later... the third printer appears to be DOA. The case is put on super-pedantic mode and the support agent is instructed to spend as many hours on the phone as it takes to figure what the customer is doing wrong. Every single step of the printer installation procedure is gone through, including a full diagnostic of the computer, cables, power outlet, the works. The customer has done nothing wrong, the support agent is desperate. The customer is asked to describe in detail everything he did from the very moment he received the printer. Well, says customer, he followed the instructions. Opened the box, took out the printer, removed the plastic bag, removed the transport tapes and foam paddings, assembled the in and out trays, put them in place, connected parallel and power cables, switched on printer, dead.
Have you figured it yet? If not, you'll never make more than a mediocre support agent. What distinguishes a really good agent is his ability to think as the proverbial bigger idiot who can break anything that's idiot-proof.
- You removed the tapes, you say. Could you please be more specific?
- Well, you know, the orange adhesive tape that holds the cover.
- The one on top?
- Yes. And the one at the back.
- Right.
- And then the big one inside.
- Which one?
- The white one, the one that keeps the cartridge carriage in place during transport.
- You mean the one that's about three centimetres wide, that runs from one end of the printer to the cartridge carriage at the other end?
- Yes, that one.
- How did you remove it?
- It wouldn't come off, so I had to cut it.
- I see. With scissors?
- That's right.
- Thank you sir, I think we found the problem. I'll put an order for a new printer in the system, you should have it in a couple of days. When you get it, please phone us BEFORE you open the box. Ask to speak with me, I'll guide you through the unpacking procedure.
Perhaps your competitors in the arms business are simply smarter than you. They do good business selling arms to peaceful countries, rather than to criminals and madmen. Unlike you, they only sell arms, they don't go about starting wars of their own. As a result, they get to keep their profits rather than waste billions on wars they can't win. Finally, as a master marketing stunt, they loudly condemn the dictators that you keep appointing all over the place, your Pinochets and Videlas and Papadopouloi and Husseins. While US politics, just like US business, can't see further than this presidential term and next quarter's results, those pesky Europeans tend to look years and decades ahead and plan business slower, but more profitable in the long run. And they get all the goodwill too: you never hear of "anti-Swiss sentiments" and all the money, including that of your pet dictators, is in their banks.
Not invading far-away countries every other year could save even more US military lives, don't you think?
How can you talk about the rules of society and justify mines in the same sentence?
In war, the rules of society permit and indeed encourage the killing of enemy soldiers, but they forbid the killing of civilians. In peace, the rules of society forbid killing, period.
Unlike other military weapons, mines kill far more civilians than they kill enemy soldiers. They kill civilians during war and they keep killing civilians in peace time. *This* is what distinguishes mines from other weapons, and there's no way you can justify killing civilians in peace time with any military benefits of war time. Especially not with the rules of society as an argument.
getting rid of [mines] will only empower despots to commit far greater evils
Blessed be thy name, oh Holy Simplification. Hero of Democracy Reagan gives mines to the good Taliban who are fighting the evil Soviet despots, so Hero of Democracy Bush must now plant Afghanistan full of mines in his fight against the evil Taliban despo^Wterrorists, is this what you mean? And the bad guys don't have mines, only the good guys do, right? And the good guys is always "us", the evil despots always "them", and "he who is not with us is against us", right? Do you also refuse to have French fries with your mines?
You might find this weird, but when people talk about "open source" around here, they really mean much more than just "open". All I see on http://asmith.id.au/freedb.html next to the source code, is "Copyright 2006, Andrew Smith". Would you mind adding "licence: GPL" next to it?
> it seems a little unfortunate that the one developer decided to just abruptly pull the plug on the service
Whooo. That one developer pulled the plug saying "I can't do this without them", after the other two developers quit. All three are "to blame", except that you can't blame anyone for no longer providing a free service financed out of their own pockets.
> (please be kind to my T1)
/. and says "be kind" in the same breath.
Hah! He puts a link on
If you want kindness, use this instead: http://www.indycomics.org.nyud.net:8080/FreeDB
Please do your homework. The freedb database dump is released under the GPL with the following addendum:
This means, the moment you publish the database in any other format than a dump (e.g. through another front end), you must publish a dump of your own. If freedb2.org is using any part of freedb.org's database, it is currently infringing freedb.org's copyrights.
That's yet another advantage of the centigrade system, it keeps your metaphores accurate ;)
What is child pornography, to begin with, legally-technically speaking? What constitutes legal or illegal distibution of child pornography? (If the latter question seems absurd to you, remember that it is perfectly legal for a prosecutor to "distribute" kiddie porn to his aides, as well as for a defendent to his solicitor and to the court). Who is to judge where the gray line goes?
It is for a reason that justice has been entrusted to a special body, the courts, and that they have been given far-reaching independence from everybody else, including the legislative and executive branches of the state. Private entities such as ISPs taking law enforcement in their hands, arbitrarily and of their own accord, is nothing but the old habit of lynching re-applied in a new, more politically correct, way.
Vincent's own terminology put him in the trap. Telling the rep "cancel my account" implies that the rep can argue. The right approach is this: "I have now informed you that I'm cancelling. That's all I have to do according to my contract. I am no longer bound by the contract no matter what you say and no matter whether you put the cancellation in your systems or not. I'm not in a mood for argument, so I'm going to hang up. Have a nice day and remember, if you charge me next month you'll be committing credit card fraud. [click]"