You should have learned from the Lone Gunmen debacle not to post stories like this. Some of us are Tivo-ing the Arab Spring and don't want to see spoilers in the meantime.
The big question is, does it turn out to contain the plans for a teleporting device?
Undoubtedly it does, embedded somewhere in the sequence.
Also the text of every novel that will ever be written.
If you're referring to the notion that the decimal expansion of Pi contains every possible sequence of digits, this has not been proven. Certainly it's not true of every transcendental number — Liouville's constant is an obvious exception. For that matter it's not even known whether Pi is normal, that is whether each digit occurs as often as every other.
And to grandparent: the idea that Pi contains a message from the Creator is interesting, but Contact is fiction and just because it comes from Sagan is no reason to take it more seriously than any of the ideas put forth in the works of J.K. Rowling. It is tempting to think of Pi, being the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, as just like all the constants physicists know and love (G, e, c, lambda, et al.) only more fundamental and therefore more AWESOME! But Pi is not like those, as should be apparent from the fact that we know 5 trillion digits of Pi and only about a dozen of each the others. Pi is not really a physical constant at all; it's a mathematical constant, the limit of the infinite series 4*(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 +...), and hence a whole different beast entirely. It seems to me that the creator of the universe couldn't tailor the value of Pi any more easily than She could the value of 3.
[...] prompting a secretive effort by international governments and industry experts in recent weeks to prevent global disruptions of Web surfing, e-mails and instant messages.
Yeah, good to see we have our priorities straight...
Is fatal misnamed? Does it keep doing more stuff even though something really bad just happened? That would be really stupid
It kind of does. Seems that fatal() calls fatal_cleanup() [cf fatal.c], which runs thru a list of callback procedures before exiting. Somewhere in those callbacks the function buffer_free() [cf buffer.c] might be called on the offending buffer. That function does a memset(buffer->buf, 0, buffer->alloc), and there's your overrun.
Finally, we're seeing a technology that deserves to die getting killed off by interminable[1] patent wars.
[1] Here's hoping...
Re:the most important point of the article
on
Distributed Security
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I believe one of our ex-presidents (LBJ perhaps) has a quote where he expresses the same idea about laws.
This be the quote you're looking for:
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
Re:He really isn't a nut
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 1
>Easy: You move back in time by moving *SLOWER* than light. Just sit there and wait..;)
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
To me this whole idea doesn't even look too good on paper. I can see the benefits of merging many computers into one coherent system, but to merge ALL of them? Why would anybody want to do that?
Looks like the Gubmint is stealing another page from the old Soviet Union playbook. Begining with Stalin's regime (or possibly even Lenin's), an important part of the USSR's defense against invaders was that accurate maps were considered state secrets. All published maps were intentionally made inaccurate—by changing the locations of roads, towns, landmarks, etc., or adding new ones where none actually existed.
Time for me to go dig up that old 'Ask Slashdot' article about which country now most deserves the title "Land of the Free."
they wouldn't even know what was different. They'd just think it's cool that Windows 2003 seemed really stable.
One problem: the GPL. MS would have to put the GPL right next to its EULA. Maybe the Windows users wouldn't notice, but maybe they would. Also they'd have to offer the Linux-based sources with the binaries, which would be even more likely to attract attention.
Of course, I've got my own theory that MS is working on a Windows OS with a BSD core, to get the stability of BSD. Now that they've removed the advertising clause, it's possible that nobody would ever know...
Wow! This story actually made/. front page news, eh?
Erm.. do you mean, as opposed to page 6 of/. ?
Obviously this story isn't as important as, say, MPAA v. 2600 or the AOL/Time Warner merger, but stories on Slashdot are not (and should not be) ordered by importance.
To everyone who's bitching about how this story shouldn't be on Slashdot, standard CTFC (change the fucking channel) argument applies. Edit your preferences, and the story will magically disappear. But some of us want to read this.
Note that each of their seven claims has the client communicating with the server "via the telephone lines of a telephone network." So it doesn't apply to the internet, which uses packet switching networks rather than circuit switching networks. The best they could do is charge a license fee for BBS's. Assuming there are any of those left...
I learned three things about computers from that movie:
The proper action in case of a failed login is to kill the user.
Even if only four people can access a computer, and all of them are granted ultimate privilege and ultimate trust, the computer still needs a voice-print authentication system.
Mission-critical systems need not be tested for fault tolerance if they are too expensive.
But let's face it: whoever did the CGI of that martian crying should have their head placed on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations.
Ok. Does the MPAA not know that you don't need to crack CSS in order to copy a DVD? If I want to copy a DVD, all I have to do is copy it, bit for bit. The only benefit of cracking CSS is that I can now play my own DVD's without a licensed player.
Now, the DVD CAA can protest their right to a monopoly on DVD players (they'll lose, but they can protest), but the MPAA, which is only concerned with unlawful distribution of the information on the DVD's, is completely unaffected by the cracking of CSS.
To sum up, this suit is a load of dingos' kidneys.
Tell me again why I have to delete my Linux partition? Why can't I just free some space with Partition Magic and then install Windows on a separate partition? Will Win2k will not function unless it is the only OS on my computer?
The difficulty of applying 21 security fixes may be a bit of an issue (not that I find anything difficult about "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"), but that sure as hell doesn't justify ZD's decision not to apply the fixes. Applying the vendor's fixes is not optional, no matter what system you're running.
Do they think that if a business had its several-thousand-user network were compromised, the execs would accept the excuse that there were just too many vendor-supplied patches to apply?!
ITYM "modifying an existing MDA to utilize a database". The MTA's job is to recieve mail, and then hand it off to the MDA (Mail Delivery Agent), e.g./bin/mail or procmail. Sendmail doesn't care whether your mailboxes are in mbox format or DB format or Martian Swahili.
Slashdot Mirror
You should have learned from the Lone Gunmen debacle not to post stories like this. Some of us are Tivo-ing the Arab Spring and don't want to see spoilers in the meantime.
The big question is, does it turn out to contain the plans for a teleporting device?
Undoubtedly it does, embedded somewhere in the sequence.
Also the text of every novel that will ever be written.
If you're referring to the notion that the decimal expansion of Pi contains every possible sequence of digits, this has not been proven. Certainly it's not true of every transcendental number — Liouville's constant is an obvious exception. For that matter it's not even known whether Pi is normal, that is whether each digit occurs as often as every other.
And to grandparent: the idea that Pi contains a message from the Creator is interesting, but Contact is fiction and just because it comes from Sagan is no reason to take it more seriously than any of the ideas put forth in the works of J.K. Rowling. It is tempting to think of Pi, being the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, as just like all the constants physicists know and love (G, e, c, lambda, et al.) only more fundamental and therefore more AWESOME! But Pi is not like those, as should be apparent from the fact that we know 5 trillion digits of Pi and only about a dozen of each the others. Pi is not really a physical constant at all; it's a mathematical constant, the limit of the infinite series 4*(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...), and hence a whole different beast entirely. It seems to me that the creator of the universe couldn't tailor the value of Pi any more easily than She could the value of 3.
29 Mar 1988 + 17 years = 29 Mar 2005
The patent expires on Tuesday.
Quoth Kenneth Brown:
Gotta love how he makes the scrupulousness of the FOSS community sound like a bad thing.
The book was much better than the movie, IMHO.
Gotta love the lede on that Yahoo story:
Yeah, good to see we have our priorities straight...
It kind of does. Seems that fatal() calls fatal_cleanup() [cf fatal.c], which runs thru a list of callback procedures before exiting. Somewhere in those callbacks the function buffer_free() [cf buffer.c] might be called on the offending buffer. That function does a memset(buffer->buf, 0, buffer->alloc), and there's your overrun.
QED.
Finally, we're seeing a technology that deserves to die getting killed off by interminable[1] patent wars.
[1] Here's hoping...
I believe one of our ex-presidents (LBJ perhaps) has a quote where he expresses the same idea about laws.
This be the quote you're looking for:
Er.. it's not working...
To me this whole idea doesn't even look too good on paper. I can see the benefits of merging many computers into one coherent system, but to merge ALL of them? Why would anybody want to do that?
Time for me to go dig up that old 'Ask Slashdot' article about which country now most deserves the title "Land of the Free."
Kinda eerie, if you ask me...
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Of course, I've got my own theory that MS is working on a Windows OS with a BSD core, to get the stability of BSD. Now that they've removed the advertising clause, it's possible that nobody would ever know...
--
--
Erm.. do you mean, as opposed to page 6 of /. ?
Obviously this story isn't as important as, say, MPAA v. 2600 or the AOL/Time Warner merger, but stories on Slashdot are not (and should not be) ordered by importance.
To everyone who's bitching about how this story shouldn't be on Slashdot, standard CTFC (change the fucking channel) argument applies. Edit your preferences, and the story will magically disappear. But some of us want to read this.
--
--
- The proper action in case of a failed login is to kill the user.
- Even if only four people can access a computer, and all of them are granted ultimate privilege and ultimate trust, the computer still needs a voice-print authentication system.
- Mission-critical systems need not be tested for fault tolerance if they are too expensive.
But let's face it: whoever did the CGI of that martian crying should have their head placed on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations.--
--
--
Now, the DVD CAA can protest their right to a monopoly on DVD players (they'll lose, but they can protest), but the MPAA, which is only concerned with unlawful distribution of the information on the DVD's, is completely unaffected by the cracking of CSS.
To sum up, this suit is a load of dingos' kidneys.
Tell me again why I have to delete my Linux partition? Why can't I just free some space with Partition Magic and then install Windows on a separate partition? Will Win2k will not function unless it is the only OS on my computer?
Microsoft: This is where you will go today.
The difficulty of applying 21 security fixes may be a bit of an issue (not that I find anything difficult about "rpm -Uvh *.rpm"), but that sure as hell doesn't justify ZD's decision not to apply the fixes. Applying the vendor's fixes is not optional, no matter what system you're running.
Do they think that if a business had its several-thousand-user network were compromised, the execs would accept the excuse that there were just too many vendor-supplied patches to apply?!
--
If all we have to go on is a debugging symbol called "NSAKEY", we've got jack sh*t. In the mind of a programmer, NSA could stand for anything.
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ITYM "modifying an existing MDA to utilize a database". The MTA's job is to recieve mail, and then hand it off to the MDA (Mail Delivery Agent), e.g. /bin/mail or procmail. Sendmail doesn't care whether your mailboxes are in mbox format or DB format or Martian Swahili.
HTH,
-
-EtJ
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