Thieves steal honda accords more than any other car. Not because Accords are better, but because they are more common.
So... if I drive a Honda Accord, then there is nothing I can do to prevent it from being stolen by any kid who wants to take it?
Fascinating.
You don't see a lot of mac viruses because virus writers are looking for a large population to spread their malware, and macs are few and far between.
So... if there were more Macs than Windows boxes... the Macs would have a higher percentage of infections due to worms that somehow manage to spread to machines that ship with no open ports by default?
Machines can only be infected by: Worms Viruses Trojans
Worms spread via open ports. If Macs have no open ports by default, then the worm threat should be near zero for Macs.
But you say that it is just because there aren't a lot of Macs out there. So... the worms would somehow manage to infect a machine with no open ports... if that machine were more commonly found.
While I agree that citizens' privacy needs to be protected, obviously there is a much greater focus on terrorism since the September 11 attacks, and the US has engaged in conflicts in two countries.
And you think that those two are somehow related?
Newsflash: They aren't.
It seems only natural that more activities of a secret nature would be taking place, now that we have clearly been made aware that there are people out there that actually would launch an attack on the United States, instead of substance-free posturing.
Did you miss the first attack on the World Trade Center?
That certainly wasn't "substance-free posturing".
I just think that secrecy (at least not necessarily) == (evil|bigbrother|invasionofprivacy), which is the inevitable conclusion some here will reach.
So, we managed to catch terrorists in this country before, without all these secret requests... yet there haven't been many recent captures even with these secret requests.
There are instances where secrecy is necessary. But those instance need to be linked to results.
If we aren't capturing terrorists with these secret requests, then we need to get back to protecting the civil rights of our people. And that means checking the validity of those requests more closely.
I don't see why they do that, some brainer probably sat there and said "if they see our ad 23 times this hour they gotta buy our anal leakage cream for sure!".
Seeing it 23 times won't make you go out and buy it... if you don't need it.
But when you need it... you'll remember the brand. Which usually results in more purchases of that brand over other brands.
So repetition is what the advertisers want.
The trick is to make the repetition less boring so people don't fast forward through the commercial and you lose that repetition.
But the writers have enough trouble making a 20 minute show interesting enough just once a week for a season. Asking them to make the commercials interesting... in 30 seconds... and to make multiple commercials... too much!
Seriously, since you know Mom wouldn't send you that, it's obvious that Mom's machine has been infected.
So you either go over and fix Mom's machine or (if you're less technically competent) you tell Mom you'll take her computer to one of the computer cleaning companies.
Problem solved. Maybe solved forever if Mom gets a different email client (fix email client exploits) or firewall (fix worms) or some education (maybe fix trojans).
If you're asking the government for money you need to prove who you are.
That is one instance.
That is not the only instance.
Go ahead and try to buy a house without providing all kinds of details about yourself. Even if you are NOT going through a bank for a loan.
Or to travel. Even if you drive yourself.
Sure, it is possible in theory to travel without involving the government. But in the Real World, it just doesn't happen.
If the government makes requirements of you, like attending career training or handing in a form once a fortnight, surely there should be some means to prove that you are the person who is supposed to be doing that.
If the government makes demands of me... then I have to prove who I am... and the proof must be the government's card?
The fact that this is even under discussion shows how many of our Rights we've given up and how we've accepted the "protection" of the Government.
Fuck that.
The government can issue 1 card that can be used whenever I apply for any government hand-out and most of the sheep will accept that and even DEFEND it.
But it's one step from issuing that 1 card to requiring that you have it and present it for upon demand.
As long as there isn't a single card, there's no chance that the government will require everyone to have a medi-care card and to present it upon demand by the police.
There's no need from a Civil Rights standpoint to demand a single card. So all of you defending it can go fuck yourselves.
The GP obviously does NOT understand what a "national" ID is.
In California there are lots and lots of illegal immigrants who seem to have no problem getting a job, living quarters and such despite the fact that they shouldn't be able to get a CA drivers license.
So, having one item that can be used for identification purposes is not the same as having one item that DOES identify you.
Is it a problem or just redundant systems (good)?
on
Perils of DNS at RIPE-52
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I was wondering that when I was reading the article.
If you (correctly) configure your systems, you'll have 3 different DNS boxes on 3 different networks so any single problem won't take all of them out.
Okay, that does mean that you've just increased your attack visibility by 3x, but... so what?
And yes, if an attacker can get control of 1 of those boxes and DDoS the other 2 then he can redirect those queries to whatever box he wants to.
As we watch competition help the Linux landscape considerably, is LSB a good thing?
There is no "good" or "bad".
There are objectives that you would like to see achieved and there are avenues to achieve those objectives.
So the question becomes, what objectives will the LSB achieve and whether you believe those objectives should be achieved.
The LSB was, originally, an attempt to make it easier for ISV's to port their apps to a "standard" that would run on any Linux box that was LSB "compliant".
One problem was that one "compliant" box did not have the same libraries and such as another "compliant" box.
Another problem was that the various distributions had more financial incentive to push their own partnerships with ISV's rather than wait for the bugs to be worked out of the LSB. Which is why Red Hat and Oracle work so well together.
The third problem is that the LSB does not set a standard. It merely documents what some of the distributions are doing. In effect, they write down what the "de facto" standard was from 6 months ago and publish it 6 months from today.
Eventually (maybe), Linux (the kernel and all apps including desktops) will have matured sufficiently that there will not be such a difference in a year. Until then, the LSB isn't going to be much use.
The complaint here was that certain ISPs are saying "Thank you, esteemed peer, for sending this valuable message which we will now deliver." when what they really mean is "Bugger off, spammy scum. Your message? Ha! We spit in the general direction of your message, which we will delete as soon as we finish wiping our ass with it."
I'm not seeing that in either the original post in this thread or the original story.
In both cases, it seems that the receiving servers are refusing to receive the message at SMTP time.
They do not seem to be accepting the messages and then deleting them.
In my opinion, while it is stupid of Verizon to reject email from Google, they are following the best practice of rejecting the messages at SMTP time so that the gmail user will get a notice saying that their message was rejected.
Sorry, but the guy you replied to is doing nothing wrong and is going out of his way to make sure his server plays nice?
It isn't about doing something "wrong".
It's the fact that there is nothing to distinguish his email server from any of the hundreds (thousands?) of zombies on that same network.
In cases such as this, the best solution is for the home user to over-comply. And that means learning about relaying and getting a relay account on a server that does not look like a zombie.
And you accuse him (or her) of being an idiot and tell him it's all his fault anyway?
This is not about anyone being an idiot.
This is about making it as easy as possible for the other competent email admins to see that you are not a zombie.
The more concessions you expect from all of them, the more problems you'll face.
It's theoretically possible to carry out this experiment, but it is extremely unlikely. There's more involved than "brain patterns". In the perfect experiment, you would have two monkeys that are atom-for-atom copies of each other.
So if there is a difference in one atom in one toe on one foot of one of the monkeys, then the "experiment" would not be "valid".
All that tells me is that that atom has as much or more influence in the choices made as the portion of the brain that they are studying.
You might have two monkeys with the exact same brain configuration (considering how mind-bogglingly complex a mind is, this will probably never occur) and exact same kidneys (see parentheses but s/mind/kidney/g), etc, but when you confront the monkeys with the choice between apple juice, grape juice, and Fritos, one monkey might be colder than the other because he's closer to the air-conditioning vent, and this might cause him to make a different choice.
Again, that tells me that a 2 degree difference in the room tempurature has as much or more of an effect than the portion of the brain they are studying.
That's why my initial post was titled "Continuum".
If you don't include the extremes (hot, cold, starving, psychotic, etc), then their findings should (if valid) be able to predict what one monkey will choose because it has a similar brain pattern to a known monkey.
Otherwise, they're only identifying the portions of the brain used to make general choices. Not specific choices. And because it is not about specific choices, then the other discussions of freewill and such don't matter in this instance.
Thus if we reduce all of our actions and decisions to physical phenomena, we're probably going to find that none of our actions are a matter of "choice."
At the far extreme of disfunction, I think that that might be valid. It isn't easy to believe that someone chooses to be schizophrenic.
Rather, the actions we take are inevitable given the exact state that our brain is in and the exact environment we are in.
And that's the key.
If this is valid, then the animals with the same neurological structure would make the same choices, right?
So far, all that's been shown is that damaging an area of the brain results in failures to react to certain distinguishing features.
Do monkeys with brain pattern X always choose apple juice? But monkeys with brain pattern Y always choose grape juice? And monkeys with brain pattern Z always choose orange juice?
The same with choosing to gamble. Why does someone choose ponies over blackjack?
The only problem with SpamAssassin is that it is ALMOST perfect.
Most of my users have setup rules so that the stuff SpamAssassin tags is automatically dumped into their trash. But they don't bother checking their trash much any more. They expect the system to always be right.
Which still leads to the situation where someone thinks you've received their message but you haven't read it because it scored just over the spam level and it's sitting in your trash can.
I would prefer a system that rejected messages at the SMTP connection time rather than one that tags suspected spam after accepting it. I run Exim4 at work and it does pretty good. Of course, I still run the messages through SpamAssassin. We're down from 80% of all accepted email being spam to only 5%.
This works, unless you receive mail from gazillion random people every day.
There are different categories of users with different requirements.
The home user who connects to his/her ISP and downloads his/her email with POP3 and sends via the ISP's host has different needs than...
... the small insurance company that deals with insurance agents and the occasional new individual...
... which is different from Amazon or eBay.
Your method works great for the home user who occasionally gets email from new addresses. And, as you've noted, it doesn't scale very well.
It's useless to search for THE Ultimate Solution to ALL spam. Instead, look at ways to better handle segments. And realize that the solution that works for a small company may not be applicable for a company based on selling over the Internet.
When did techies decide that the GUI was the most important aspect of an OS?
I'm probably a "techie" and I don't believe that the GUI is the most important part.
But with Ubuntu, I can install a "server" version and skip the GUI.
Or I can do a regular install and get a nice GUI. This is great for workstations.
With Ubuntu, you no longer need to choose between "stable system" and "nice GUI". You get them BOTH.
I'm sure some people are tingling with anticipation that they'll have "caramel colored theme", but it would be more useful to detail the benefits of switching.
The benefits of switching depend upon the platform you are switching from.
Red Hat to Ubuntu gives one set of benefits.
Debian to Ubuntu gives a different set of benefits.
SuSE to Ubuntu gives another set of benefits.
There isn't one single "best" distribution. The closest we can get is the most "popular" distribution.
If you're trying to reinvent Windows, go right ahead. If you want a streamlined, efficient, and powerful OS that will appeal to converts and linux zealots alike, start pushing something other than Gnome's 'Windows XP feel'.
If you're looking at converting Windows users, then using an interface that they're familiar with is an easy first step.
Once they're a bit more comfortable, you can make Ubuntu look a lot like OS X. Nice eye-candy.
Let people know why they should opt for Ubuntu instead of RedHat or YellowDog...
But there is no real reason for them to. I use Ubuntu because, for me, Ubuntu gives me the most of what I want and use with the minumum of what I dislike.
If you're running Red Hat because of the Oracle support, then Ubuntu isn't a good choice for you... yet.
It all comes down to individual choices based on their desires and dislikes.
I was running Debian on my servers. I've been migrating them because I now use Ubuntu on the desktop. My desktop needs are different from my server needs, but Ubuntu gave me everything that Debian had on the server, and I could save a bit of work by using it on servers and workstations.
The big changes have been from 3.1 to Win95 with the switch from 16 bit mostly 32 bit.
Then from Win9x to Win2K with the final removal of DOS. (Yeah, if you were on NT you already had that, I know).
Since then, there hasn't been anything really compelling from an end-user stand point. Crappy apps are still crappy apps. Good apps are still good apps. Most people still login as "admin" with all the associated problems (and for all the perceived benefits).
98% (stat pulled out of my butt) of the home users would be perfectly happy with Win2K if it would run their current apps (and mostly, it will).
Hint to Larry (and IBM, HP, Novell, etc): Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft. Commoditize the OS and make your money providing services and software on top of it.
You don't even have to work together. Just identify the items that would prevent YOUR company from migrating to Linux and work with various teams focused on those areas to bring them up to where YOU would feel comfortable deploying it.
If you're too tied to MS Office then contact the OpenOffice.org people and help with that.
If the desktop isn't 100% the way you want it, then contact the GNOME or KDE people and help with that.
You get the results you want at a FRACTION of the price of "buying" a whole distribution.
Stay agnostic. Focus on the apps/functionality YOU need. Don't focus on a specific distribution or distributor.
Personally, I think that it would be a bad move for Oracle to attempt to expand into the desktop OS/app market. They don't have the experience at that level.
Slashdot Mirror
Fascinating.So
Machines can only be infected by:
Worms
Viruses
Trojans
Worms spread via open ports. If Macs have no open ports by default, then the worm threat should be near zero for Macs.
But you say that it is just because there aren't a lot of Macs out there. So
Fascinating.
Newsflash: They aren't.Did you miss the first attack on the World Trade Center?
That certainly wasn't "substance-free posturing".So, we managed to catch terrorists in this country before, without all these secret requests
There are instances where secrecy is necessary. But those instance need to be linked to results.
If we aren't capturing terrorists with these secret requests, then we need to get back to protecting the civil rights of our people. And that means checking the validity of those requests more closely.
Exim4 w/SpamAssassin protecting a GroupWise installation.
The only complaint I have is that GroupWise does not make the email nicknames available via LDAP. Exim itself rocks! SpamAssassin rocks!
Would it be possible to route your incoming/outgoing email through a smart host?
If that is an option, then you have a lot more products to choose from.
Personally, I run Exim4 w/SpamAssassin as the smart host for out ancient GroupWise 5.5ep installation.
And it is un-fucking-believably fantastic.
Marlin was constantly talking and segue'ing into ads for them.
But when you need it
So repetition is what the advertisers want.
The trick is to make the repetition less boring so people don't fast forward through the commercial and you lose that repetition.
But the writers have enough trouble making a 20 minute show interesting enough just once a week for a season. Asking them to make the commercials interesting
Seriously, since you know Mom wouldn't send you that, it's obvious that Mom's machine has been infected.
So you either go over and fix Mom's machine or (if you're less technically competent) you tell Mom you'll take her computer to one of the computer cleaning companies.
Problem solved. Maybe solved forever if Mom gets a different email client (fix email client exploits) or firewall (fix worms) or some education (maybe fix trojans).
Some of those hijackers had LEGITIMATE ID with their REAL NAMES and paid for the tickets with credit cards issued to those names.
We can't even stop known bad guys using ID we've issued in their real names.
There is no way we can stop bad guys from getting fake ID's and using that. And the more "national" an ID card is, the LESS it will be questioned.
The ENTIRE system hinges on the worst idiot working in the issuing office being 100% resistant to bribes and threats.
Our drivers licenses are about the only photo ID that any of our people have. Some have passports, but not many people carry them day to day.
If you're cashing a check or using a credit card, you are sometimes asked for photo ID. So we show our drivers license.
But our employment laws specifically state what types of ID are needed for employment and a drivers license is just one option.
And I'm okay with that.
That is not the only instance.
Go ahead and try to buy a house without providing all kinds of details about yourself. Even if you are NOT going through a bank for a loan.
Or to travel. Even if you drive yourself.
Sure, it is possible in theory to travel without involving the government. But in the Real World, it just doesn't happen.If the government makes demands of me
The fact that this is even under discussion shows how many of our Rights we've given up and how we've accepted the "protection" of the Government.
Fuck that.
The government can issue 1 card that can be used whenever I apply for any government hand-out and most of the sheep will accept that and even DEFEND it.
But it's one step from issuing that 1 card to requiring that you have it and present it for upon demand.
As long as there isn't a single card, there's no chance that the government will require everyone to have a medi-care card and to present it upon demand by the police.
There's no need from a Civil Rights standpoint to demand a single card. So all of you defending it can go fuck yourselves.
The GP obviously does NOT understand what a "national" ID is.
In California there are lots and lots of illegal immigrants who seem to have no problem getting a job, living quarters and such despite the fact that they shouldn't be able to get a CA drivers license.
So, having one item that can be used for identification purposes is not the same as having one item that DOES identify you.
I was wondering that when I was reading the article.
... so what?
If you (correctly) configure your systems, you'll have 3 different DNS boxes on 3 different networks so any single problem won't take all of them out.
Okay, that does mean that you've just increased your attack visibility by 3x, but
And yes, if an attacker can get control of 1 of those boxes and DDoS the other 2 then he can redirect those queries to whatever box he wants to.
There are objectives that you would like to see achieved and there are avenues to achieve those objectives.
So the question becomes, what objectives will the LSB achieve and whether you believe those objectives should be achieved.
The LSB was, originally, an attempt to make it easier for ISV's to port their apps to a "standard" that would run on any Linux box that was LSB "compliant".
One problem was that one "compliant" box did not have the same libraries and such as another "compliant" box.
Another problem was that the various distributions had more financial incentive to push their own partnerships with ISV's rather than wait for the bugs to be worked out of the LSB. Which is why Red Hat and Oracle work so well together.
The third problem is that the LSB does not set a standard. It merely documents what some of the distributions are doing. In effect, they write down what the "de facto" standard was from 6 months ago and publish it 6 months from today.
Eventually (maybe), Linux (the kernel and all apps including desktops) will have matured sufficiently that there will not be such a difference in a year. Until then, the LSB isn't going to be much use.
It's the Linux app ISV's who need to write their apps to this "standard".
So far, that isn't happening.
In both cases, it seems that the receiving servers are refusing to receive the message at SMTP time.
They do not seem to be accepting the messages and then deleting them.
In my opinion, while it is stupid of Verizon to reject email from Google, they are following the best practice of rejecting the messages at SMTP time so that the gmail user will get a notice saying that their message was rejected.
It's the fact that there is nothing to distinguish his email server from any of the hundreds (thousands?) of zombies on that same network.
In cases such as this, the best solution is for the home user to over-comply. And that means learning about relaying and getting a relay account on a server that does not look like a zombie.This is not about anyone being an idiot.
This is about making it as easy as possible for the other competent email admins to see that you are not a zombie.
The more concessions you expect from all of them, the more problems you'll face.
All that tells me is that that atom has as much or more influence in the choices made as the portion of the brain that they are studying.Again, that tells me that a 2 degree difference in the room tempurature has as much or more of an effect than the portion of the brain they are studying.
That's why my initial post was titled "Continuum".
If you don't include the extremes (hot, cold, starving, psychotic, etc), then their findings should (if valid) be able to predict what one monkey will choose because it has a similar brain pattern to a known monkey.
Otherwise, they're only identifying the portions of the brain used to make general choices. Not specific choices. And because it is not about specific choices, then the other discussions of freewill and such don't matter in this instance.
If this is valid, then the animals with the same neurological structure would make the same choices, right?
So far, all that's been shown is that damaging an area of the brain results in failures to react to certain distinguishing features.
Do monkeys with brain pattern X always choose apple juice? But monkeys with brain pattern Y always choose grape juice? And monkeys with brain pattern Z always choose orange juice?
The same with choosing to gamble. Why does someone choose ponies over blackjack?
The only problem with SpamAssassin is that it is ALMOST perfect.
Most of my users have setup rules so that the stuff SpamAssassin tags is automatically dumped into their trash. But they don't bother checking their trash much any more. They expect the system to always be right.
Which still leads to the situation where someone thinks you've received their message but you haven't read it because it scored just over the spam level and it's sitting in your trash can.
I would prefer a system that rejected messages at the SMTP connection time rather than one that tags suspected spam after accepting it. I run Exim4 at work and it does pretty good. Of course, I still run the messages through SpamAssassin. We're down from 80% of all accepted email being spam to only 5%.
The home user who connects to his/her ISP and downloads his/her email with POP3 and sends via the ISP's host has different needs than
Your method works great for the home user who occasionally gets email from new addresses. And, as you've noted, it doesn't scale very well.
It's useless to search for THE Ultimate Solution to ALL spam. Instead, look at ways to better handle segments. And realize that the solution that works for a small company may not be applicable for a company based on selling over the Internet.
But with Ubuntu, I can install a "server" version and skip the GUI.
Or I can do a regular install and get a nice GUI. This is great for workstations.
With Ubuntu, you no longer need to choose between "stable system" and "nice GUI". You get them BOTH.The benefits of switching depend upon the platform you are switching from.
Red Hat to Ubuntu gives one set of benefits.
Debian to Ubuntu gives a different set of benefits.
SuSE to Ubuntu gives another set of benefits.
There isn't one single "best" distribution. The closest we can get is the most "popular" distribution.If you're looking at converting Windows users, then using an interface that they're familiar with is an easy first step.
Once they're a bit more comfortable, you can make Ubuntu look a lot like OS X. Nice eye-candy.But there is no real reason for them to. I use Ubuntu because, for me, Ubuntu gives me the most of what I want and use with the minumum of what I dislike.
If you're running Red Hat because of the Oracle support, then Ubuntu isn't a good choice for you
It all comes down to individual choices based on their desires and dislikes.
I was running Debian on my servers. I've been migrating them because I now use Ubuntu on the desktop. My desktop needs are different from my server needs, but Ubuntu gave me everything that Debian had on the server, and I could save a bit of work by using it on servers and workstations.
The big changes have been from 3.1 to Win95 with the switch from 16 bit mostly 32 bit.
Then from Win9x to Win2K with the final removal of DOS. (Yeah, if you were on NT you already had that, I know).
Since then, there hasn't been anything really compelling from an end-user stand point. Crappy apps are still crappy apps. Good apps are still good apps. Most people still login as "admin" with all the associated problems (and for all the perceived benefits).
98% (stat pulled out of my butt) of the home users would be perfectly happy with Win2K if it would run their current apps (and mostly, it will).
If you're too tied to MS Office then contact the OpenOffice.org people and help with that.
If the desktop isn't 100% the way you want it, then contact the GNOME or KDE people and help with that.
You get the results you want at a FRACTION of the price of "buying" a whole distribution.
Stay agnostic. Focus on the apps/functionality YOU need. Don't focus on a specific distribution or distributor.
Oracle on NetWare beens out for a while now.
http://www.orafaq.com/faqnetwr.htm
Personally, I think that it would be a bad move for Oracle to attempt to expand into the desktop OS/app market. They don't have the experience at that level.
Bunnies, baby chicks, eggs. All fertility symbols linked to the new life seen in Spring.
Even the name of the "Easter".