You cannot stop spam without also stopping free speech, since both use the same methods to get their payload delivered. And at its heart, spam is just speech you don't want to hear, much like dissent is speech the government doesn't want to hear.
Yes, it is a difference.
Free speech is legal, but breaking in to New York Times printing shop to print your opinion is illegal. Paying them for it is legal. Using other peoples computers for sending spam without consent is illegal. Using your ISP's paid pipe for spam is breech of TOS, and they are in their right to terminate your service.
I do however not know any free speech advocates doing mnass mailings where 80-90% of the people report it as spam...
There is no way for a computer to reliably distinguish the two, and the only people who can are also biased and have a vested interest in their own agenda.
Yes, there is. Bayesian filters is doing a quite good job, and it is also fairly simple to guess that a customer suddenly sending a few thousand emails, all containing hyperlinks is spam. Traffic analysis is a good trick here; if the customer normally sends five, and suddenly sends thousand, check them against other rules.
so this would put the value of each person's live at ~$9B
zero tolerence of risk just doesn't work
As a mindset, I'm tempted to disagree. It works when used as a goal, because for every fatal accident, you will have a lot of near-fatal-accidents. Often it is trivial mistakes, and by investigating the near-accidents to find the cause, you can mitigate the risks.
The norwegian oil industry has been working towards zero accidents for years, and is way safer than Gulf of Mexico. In Norway, we investigate those near-accidents to find the cause, and implement precautions to avoid it to happen again - potentially with a much more lethal outcome.
I am aware this is not the same as zero risk tolerance; we are tolerating the risk, but aiming to reduce it as much as possible through targeted work.
Cookie white list, allows you to block cookies by default and only allow where you really want to. Turns out that it's not many sites.. I have approx. 50 sites in the white list, and you can white-list allowing only for session cookies or forever.
The tools are there for those who want. And it doesn't take much work to use them.
It's not defective, RMS et al: it's a CHOICE. You purport to like choice, but no one believes you anymore. Many consumers don't care, and even LIKE, the idea of being locked in to the App Store, because it introduces a significant amount of safety.
In a ideal world where the buyer realised the impact of the restrictions, and were able to make a fully informed choice, I'd agree with you. But as it is now Apple don't mention this in their marketing as far as I'm aware. They don't mention the restrictions:
Only Apple-approved software
No multitasking with non-Apple-apps
No plugins for web browsing
Kill switch for apps
...and probably more I've not mentioned.
Most of those restrictions is artificial. Give people a choice whetever to allow non-approved apps, and tell them about the added risk of non-approved apps. Give people multitasking, but warn them against slower response. Give people the CHOICE of using the device as one wants.
As it is now the device is practically crippled if apple wants it to be crippled. On the other hand, my netbook from Asus works perfectly fine with whatever software I want, and I really don't care if asus decides to go bankrupt. It still works as it did when I bought it. With apple devices you don't know that.
The problem is that people do not realise the limitations when buying, and thus is unable to make a informed decision.
You violating copyright shouldn't be the end of your financial life or freedom. A fine, certainly but the magnitudes that have always been in place are ridiculous.
You were not able to break copyright rules around 1900 by accident. You don't copy a book without being pretty deliberate about it, and you certainly don't give copies of a book away for free.
So in 1900 it was a fair assumption that copyright breach of any scale to speak of was commercial by nature. Today, that argument is no longer true. So stiff legal punishment was way more in place in 1900 than it is today.
have no problem with DRM until it stops me from being able to use my media legally as I see fit. If a DRM scheme somehow prevented me from giving a file to my friends, but let me listen to the song on my ipod, Sansa, or Zune as I wished, that'd be perfectly okay.
That system can't excist. If you are able to play back content with the player of your own choice, you can surely just use a open source one and dump audio to disk again after the DRM is dealt with? Or you could simply strip away the DRM straight away.
That's the inherit problem with DRM: It tries to give you access to content whilst at the same time restricting access to the very same content. It can't be done. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. There won't be a DRM system that ever lets you use media as you see fit.
So, they've made a vaccine, but in what quanta? As far as I know, vaccines are made in chicken eggs, and takes some time to produce. Will they be able to supply a proportion of the world with this vaccine in time? And more important, who'll get it. I bet the rich countries, with medical care will get it, since they can pay. But do they need it most? After all, countries in Europe and North America typically has a functioning health care system that can treat symptoms quite much better than most African countries...
So sadly, I don't think it'll really matter.
Intel e1000e bug fixed?
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This bug could've been a showstopper. It essentially ruined your intel e1000e ethernet card, by overwriting the firmware. They've not patched it, according to LWN:
It is worth noting that, as of this writing, 2.6.27 does not contain a fix for the e1000e hardware corruption bug. What it does contain, though, is a series of patches which will prevent that bug from actually damaging the hardware. That makes the kernel safer to run, which is an important step in the right direction.
What does that mean? Obviously, it should not ruin your ethernet card anymore, but will e1000e work very well with this kernel? Or what?
Since this is a pretty high-profile bug it's strange it ain't mentioned in the summary. E1000e is a very popular gigabit ethernet chip from Intel, and actual hardware corruption is serious and (luckily) rare.
I run a small norwegian forum, and we use SSL. Since our income is around 100USD a year, which is donated by members, it would be very unfair to spend all of that on a SSL cert.
However, how can one explain that there is no security risk involved in creating an exception when the browser so fiercly states that it is a huge security risk?
It would be better if you just got a warning like "This site is probably not your bank"...
If you don't like GPL terms, don't use GPL software. How much simpler can it be?
You don't have to agree to use GPL'd software. GPL only bothers with distribution, and does not have a single word about my usage. In short, I can use gpl'd code in whatever way I want. I don't have to abide by GPL, I don't have to give away my code if I don't want to. However, *if* I distribute it, I'm bound by GPL.
And yes, you can sell GPL'd software, at whatever price you like, but you have to provide a source code, and can't deny others the right to do what they want with the software, as long as they abide the GPL.
People in here should *REALLY* read the GPL FAQ's!
Nothing new, and the author has apparently not used any other distros than the Redhat based ones. Nor has he heard about lilo or syslinux.
First page of article looks like the man page of grub, listing the format for the menu.lst file of grub. Since it mentions selinux and redhat, I bet most of that page is copied more or less in verbatim from Redhat's manual.
And since such a short article is split over 3 pages, and last page is laden with icons for digg, slashdot etc. I believe this is just an attempt to get some readers...
Just don't bother to RTFA!
I've used Class Fronter since around 2004. Thats...uhm...*counts on fingers*..for three years.
Class Fronter (or fronter in shorthand) has file uploading space. It got hand-in folders which blocks uploads after a specific date. It got chat. It got games. It got integrated multiple-choice tests. In short; it's a locker with some damn nice features. So why the heck is this on slashdot? I mean, Learning Management Systems, or a "Locker" is nothing new at all. It is at least 10 years old I guess.
A while ago I saw a study from google that said disks running at 40C was most reliable. Cooler drives died faster, and warmer drives died faster.
So why does the manufacturer try to cool 'em? Seems to me that reliability increases if you don't keep 'em at 20C like many people do. And 40C is the temperature my 7200RPM disks reach in a normal cabinet (well, actually 35-38C)...
Even if you don't have encrypted transfer, session cookies can be easily secured by associating them with a certain IP address. The attacker who captures the cookies has a differnt IP address so the cookie is rejected as invalid.
More often than not, all users of a wireless net is behind a NAT device, which makes all the devices have the same official IP. The same applies to most domestic, workplace and school wlans, so really, that would make little or no difference.
Now, in a IPv6 world, it would make a difference, since everyone has a unique IP there...
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
The kernel does specify GPLv2, but most code does not, and will thus be availvable under GPLv3.
Balmer: Get me a chair. Quick Security: Yes sir... Balmer: It's those fucking blue idiots. After creating our market with the PS/2, they want to take away or god-given right! *Smashes chair*
The EM-SEC Coating System is clearly the most secure option aside from stringing out the CAT5, and can be safely used to protect wireless networks in business and government facilities."
Yeah, really. Fiber is about as secure as cat5, and so is a net which only provides a media for transporting a VPN-tunnel.
A paint able to stop one kind of RF-communication will stop all other kinds of RF-communication, like cell phones, FM/AM radio, TV and such.
Imagine any business trying to explain why phones stop working when inside the building...
Let's think for a moment. What if I sit down to write a utterly new language, and create dictionaries, an alphabet, a syntax and everything, and publishes it... I've been doing a creative task, which I should be able to claim copyright for. Can I then stop others from using that language without paying me royalties? I guess so, since I've used my creativity, which is essential to be able to claim copyright in the us...
In europe, the mere 'sweat of the brow' is enough...
How many people use the nVidia cards in their servers? None, I guess. nVidia, and most 3D-cards is used on personal systems, with one user, which is usually root. If that user can use a root exploit to become root - so what! Remember that you have to be able to control the X11 display server to take advantage of this, which means you *have* to be logged in locally or be root.
Whilst I agree with the principle, I don't think this bug will have *any* impact, as most home boxes have no accounts accessible from the internet, that is able to run X11. If they have, they probably have bigger problems. Same goes for people running untrusted code that can execute this: it could as well provide a shell, or whatever. Yet, the problem is then *untrusted* code. A person that runs untrusted code can probably be coerced into running that as root as well.
Even though in many cases this might be true, and product prices are increased because of it, weak encryption is a lot better than no encryption at all. There are many people out there who might go as far as casual data theft (eg; taking someone at their school's USB memory stick), but even a weak layer of encryption will stop all but those who know what encryption is and where to start breaking it.
If you don't think, you'll agree that weak crypto is better than none crypto. The problem is if you believe the crypto to be strong crypto, and behaves careless. If you imagine something is uncrackable, like pgp pretty much is, but in reality is ROT13, and trivial to crack, you can get a serious backslash.
You would normally not carry the credit card number and all details with you on a usb drive. But what if you used ACME MegaCrypt v2.0 for it? Woudnt you feel safe? Then what if it was not safe? You could end up without a single cent. Even though you had it encrypted...
THat is the problem. Weak encryption might be sufficient if you *know* it is weak encryption and judge it to be enough. If you, however, believe your encryption is foolproof, whilst it is not, then you have a big gaping problem.
Imagine if Wikipedia said "OK, Asia only gets one Wikipedia; Europe only gets one Wikipedia."
Yeah, right...like that would fly.
UK and US shares one wiki, the english. It is shared with all english speaking countries, and all english speakers across the world. Country-based wikis is not needed IMHO, but naturally you'll need one for every language.
The blurb even discusses a specific language, so thus your comment is not rooted in the article: It is neverthless an important notice, because we tend to forget.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it is a difference. Free speech is legal, but breaking in to New York Times printing shop to print your opinion is illegal. Paying them for it is legal. Using other peoples computers for sending spam without consent is illegal. Using your ISP's paid pipe for spam is breech of TOS, and they are in their right to terminate your service. I do however not know any free speech advocates doing mnass mailings where 80-90% of the people report it as spam...
Yes, there is. Bayesian filters is doing a quite good job, and it is also fairly simple to guess that a customer suddenly sending a few thousand emails, all containing hyperlinks is spam. Traffic analysis is a good trick here; if the customer normally sends five, and suddenly sends thousand, check them against other rules.
As a mindset, I'm tempted to disagree. It works when used as a goal, because for every fatal accident, you will have a lot of near-fatal-accidents. Often it is trivial mistakes, and by investigating the near-accidents to find the cause, you can mitigate the risks. The norwegian oil industry has been working towards zero accidents for years, and is way safer than Gulf of Mexico. In Norway, we investigate those near-accidents to find the cause, and implement precautions to avoid it to happen again - potentially with a much more lethal outcome. I am aware this is not the same as zero risk tolerance; we are tolerating the risk, but aiming to reduce it as much as possible through targeted work.
The tools are there for those who want. And it doesn't take much work to use them.
In a ideal world where the buyer realised the impact of the restrictions, and were able to make a fully informed choice, I'd agree with you. But as it is now Apple don't mention this in their marketing as far as I'm aware. They don't mention the restrictions:
Most of those restrictions is artificial. Give people a choice whetever to allow non-approved apps, and tell them about the added risk of non-approved apps. Give people multitasking, but warn them against slower response. Give people the CHOICE of using the device as one wants.
As it is now the device is practically crippled if apple wants it to be crippled. On the other hand, my netbook from Asus works perfectly fine with whatever software I want, and I really don't care if asus decides to go bankrupt. It still works as it did when I bought it. With apple devices you don't know that.
The problem is that people do not realise the limitations when buying, and thus is unable to make a informed decision.
You were not able to break copyright rules around 1900 by accident. You don't copy a book without being pretty deliberate about it, and you certainly don't give copies of a book away for free.
So in 1900 it was a fair assumption that copyright breach of any scale to speak of was commercial by nature. Today, that argument is no longer true. So stiff legal punishment was way more in place in 1900 than it is today.
That system can't excist. If you are able to play back content with the player of your own choice, you can surely just use a open source one and dump audio to disk again after the DRM is dealt with? Or you could simply strip away the DRM straight away.
That's the inherit problem with DRM: It tries to give you access to content whilst at the same time restricting access to the very same content. It can't be done. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. There won't be a DRM system that ever lets you use media as you see fit.
So, they've made a vaccine, but in what quanta? As far as I know, vaccines are made in chicken eggs, and takes some time to produce. Will they be able to supply a proportion of the world with this vaccine in time? And more important, who'll get it. I bet the rich countries, with medical care will get it, since they can pay. But do they need it most? After all, countries in Europe and North America typically has a functioning health care system that can treat symptoms quite much better than most African countries...
So sadly, I don't think it'll really matter.
This bug could've been a showstopper. It essentially ruined your intel e1000e ethernet card, by overwriting the firmware. They've not patched it, according to LWN:
What does that mean? Obviously, it should not ruin your ethernet card anymore, but will e1000e work very well with this kernel? Or what?
Since this is a pretty high-profile bug it's strange it ain't mentioned in the summary. E1000e is a very popular gigabit ethernet chip from Intel, and actual hardware corruption is serious and (luckily) rare.
I run a small norwegian forum, and we use SSL. Since our income is around 100USD a year, which is donated by members, it would be very unfair to spend all of that on a SSL cert. However, how can one explain that there is no security risk involved in creating an exception when the browser so fiercly states that it is a huge security risk? It would be better if you just got a warning like "This site is probably not your bank"...
http://digg.com/politics/Diebold_Posts_Image_of_Master_Key_to_Website_Hackers_Make_Real_Master_Key http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1113 It's about one year old. And I'm sure that I've seen it on slashdot quite a while ago.
You must be kidding
And yet the article claimsThe article won't help, however... It is not nearly detailed enough for learning anything.
Nothing new, and the author has apparently not used any other distros than the Redhat based ones. Nor has he heard about lilo or syslinux. First page of article looks like the man page of grub, listing the format for the menu.lst file of grub. Since it mentions selinux and redhat, I bet most of that page is copied more or less in verbatim from Redhat's manual. And since such a short article is split over 3 pages, and last page is laden with icons for digg, slashdot etc. I believe this is just an attempt to get some readers... Just don't bother to RTFA!
I've used Class Fronter since around 2004. Thats...uhm...*counts on fingers*..for three years.
Class Fronter (or fronter in shorthand) has file uploading space. It got hand-in folders which blocks uploads after a specific date. It got chat. It got games. It got integrated multiple-choice tests. In short; it's a locker with some damn nice features. So why the heck is this on slashdot? I mean, Learning Management Systems, or a "Locker" is nothing new at all. It is at least 10 years old I guess.
A while ago I saw a study from google that said disks running at 40C was most reliable. Cooler drives died faster, and warmer drives died faster. So why does the manufacturer try to cool 'em? Seems to me that reliability increases if you don't keep 'em at 20C like many people do. And 40C is the temperature my 7200RPM disks reach in a normal cabinet (well, actually 35-38C)...
Yes, a couple of years old invention seems about right. At least, it was on slashdot back in 2005...
Balmer: Get me a chair. Quick
Security: Yes sir...
Balmer: It's those fucking blue idiots. After creating our market with the PS/2, they want to take away or god-given right!
*Smashes chair*
Let's think for a moment. What if I sit down to write a utterly new language, and create dictionaries, an alphabet, a syntax and everything, and publishes it... I've been doing a creative task, which I should be able to claim copyright for. Can I then stop others from using that language without paying me royalties? I guess so, since I've used my creativity, which is essential to be able to claim copyright in the us... In europe, the mere 'sweat of the brow' is enough...
How many people use the nVidia cards in their servers? None, I guess. nVidia, and most 3D-cards is used on personal systems, with one user, which is usually root. If that user can use a root exploit to become root - so what! Remember that you have to be able to control the X11 display server to take advantage of this, which means you *have* to be logged in locally or be root.
Whilst I agree with the principle, I don't think this bug will have *any* impact, as most home boxes have no accounts accessible from the internet, that is able to run X11. If they have, they probably have bigger problems. Same goes for people running untrusted code that can execute this: it could as well provide a shell, or whatever. Yet, the problem is then *untrusted* code. A person that runs untrusted code can probably be coerced into running that as root as well.
So my guess: zero impact!
If you don't think, you'll agree that weak crypto is better than none crypto. The problem is if you believe the crypto to be strong crypto, and behaves careless. If you imagine something is uncrackable, like pgp pretty much is, but in reality is ROT13, and trivial to crack, you can get a serious backslash.
You would normally not carry the credit card number and all details with you on a usb drive. But what if you used ACME MegaCrypt v2.0 for it? Woudnt you feel safe? Then what if it was not safe? You could end up without a single cent. Even though you had it encrypted...
THat is the problem. Weak encryption might be sufficient if you *know* it is weak encryption and judge it to be enough. If you, however, believe your encryption is foolproof, whilst it is not, then you have a big gaping problem.
UK and US shares one wiki, the english. It is shared with all english speaking countries, and all english speakers across the world. Country-based wikis is not needed IMHO, but naturally you'll need one for every language.
The blurb even discusses a specific language, so thus your comment is not rooted in the article: It is neverthless an important notice, because we tend to forget.