> Feel free to believe that 3D graphics hardware is the be all and > end all of systems programming though. You'd be wrong though.
I don't particularly want to play games on the damned thing. I said I'd even consider buying one if it had 2D that didn't suck ass. But video that is more on par with a plain VESA framebuffer just doesn't cut it.
So you can go play with the SPUs on that closed VM they give ya and when the box is eventually cracked I'll have another look... but by then it probbaly won't be 'all that' anymore.
> actively supports the installation of alternate operating systems
As long as you can live with a crippled virtual machine that only emulates a dumb framebuffer. No, I won't be buying a PS3 because they allow you to play in a sandbox. If I can't run accelerated 2D I wouldn't even ponder the notion. Notice that Xboxes make great MythTV frontends but the supposedly newer and 'Linux friendly' PS3 doesn't. And without full (3D) hardware access it isn't really an open platform.
> If you look at Apple's desktops, they operate in very niche markets.
Of course one reason they only operate in nice markets is because they only make products to fit odd market niches. If they sold a mainstream machine they just might find a mainstream audience for it. It's possible ya know.
Seriously. If Apple sold a mainstream desktop and sold it at close to a mainstream price (say $200 over a Dell/HP/etc) they just might up their market share a few points. Of course they have no intention of doint it so the question is purely academic.
They seem determined to stay in single digits in the total installed base count. I'm guessing they fear losing Microsoft Office if they ever break an unwritten deal they made iwth the devil. Or perhaps they fear losing the Apple Faithful if they ever 'sold out' and courted the great unwashed, i.e the Faithful wouldn't be special anymore and would find some other obscure fetish item to worship.
>..would indeed sell well - and take most of those sales away > from the higher margin Mac Pro.
Possibly, and that point is important if you work for Apple or own their stock. But for everyone else the takeaway point is that you, an Apple zealot, admit that most most people would be happy with a machine between the mini and pro and those customers either bend over and take it in the pooper because they drank Steve's Kool-Aid and believe they just have to have a Mac even if the only choice is several times as expensive as what they need.... or they become Dell's customer instead.
> wouldn't you rather get your money back than have a machine > that wont ever get another software update?
Dude, you would think Pystar invented the Hackintosh the way you talk about em. If Pystar loses their customers will get updates the same way every other hackintosh owner does, via the dark corners of the Internet.
> Vista 32 with 4 GB installed will reserve about 1 GB of RAM for the OS, GPU. etc.
> I would expect Vista 64 to do the same.
You might expect it, but you would be wrong. 32bit Microsoft OSes (desktop, not server) are strictly 32bit flat memory model, thus can only address 4GB, from which the area reserved for the PCI bus and other I/O must be deducted. Depending on chipset this can vary a little, but is normally at least 512MB.
Much the same way DOS could address 1024KB but because the top of the address space was claimed by BIOS, expansion ROMs, and video memory the typical DOS memory limit was 640KB. Didn't matter if you had MBs in the machine, DOS was a 16bit + 4bit segment program and the only use one could make of the additional memory was as XMS memory (or with emm386 loaded you could use XMS memory to emulate the older EMS memory). XMS memory was totally outside the control of DOS, it couldn't see it. BIOS still can't, which is why you need some care to bootstrap a modern OS.
If you have 4GB, you typically get a non-uniform memory map, thus:
0-3.5GB RAM 3.5GB-4GB PCI 4.0-4.5GB RAM
That last block of RAM is only visible to a 32bit OS through the use of the PAE CPU extensions. It works almost exactly like the old segment registers allowed a 16bit CPU like the 8086 to address more than 64KB. Linux (compile time option) can do it and the server NT kernel can do it, basic Windows can't.
> Psystar makes an interesting argument that Honda can't make you > sign a EULA telling you that you can only drive on Honda-approved roads
Bad analogy. A more fitting one would be if Honda attempted to say that if you bought a Honda engine as a replacement part that it had to go into a Honda vehicle. Or if they tried to say that you couldn't yank the engine out a Honda and stuff it into a Ford body.
Apple's problem is their business model is an illusion. They want people to believe that a Mac is different, when the reality is that it has been just another PC clone since the move to Intel chips. Unlike IBM they also actually make their OS so they believe they can simply refuse to sell it to anyone else. Yet they also want to sell boxed copies. Doesn't work.
And even if they yank the boxed copies from the shelves you could just buy a Mac Mini, keep the OS and turn the crappy little PC into a Linux file server and put they copy of OS X on the kind of hardware Apple doesn'y want you to have.
I know it will totally mess up their business model, but they don't have a constituitional right to a broken business model. Copyright only grants them a monopoly on selling copies, EULAs are just an illegal power grab and sooner or later we will get enough Supremes who can read to get sanity back.
So not only is that blog a lie cooked up by the vast right wing conspiracy, so are all of the links on it... So the US Coast Guard is in on it, as is Radio Canada, the Vancouver Maritime Museum, the BBC, etc. I bet you will bring up the CFR, the Rothchilds and perhaps the Freemasons before you admit that a piece of evidence supporting your religious beliefs is bogus.
News flash, big powerful enviromental groups have no monopoly on the truth, even the smallest blog can link to facts. But you wouldn't know about those, Faith trumps Reason after all. Behold the might Anonymous Coward, so certain in his Faith in Gaia that he posts snarky comments on slashdot but hasn't the stones to put his name to them. Gaia ain't going to let you into Heaven for that.
> Not a contradiction, even though it seems like one.
I'm not arguing that there isn't global warming. I'm not even arguing that human activity isn't influencing it. What I am arguing is that our science is nowhere near good enough to say a goddamned thing on the subject even if it were actually a scientific issue and not a political one.
How many computer models in the early 1990s predicted the ten years of flat/cooling we have been experiencing? Or better, point to a computer model that has shown accuracy and bet me $100 it's current prediction will be true in ten years. You would be a fool to attempt it. This is a very basic point, if you don't have reliable numbers it isn't science. Until we have models that can not only show the past, but make a prediction for the future that actually comes true we know zero. And one accurate prediction doesn't even come close to rising out of the error bars.
As for consensus, there ain't one and it wouldn't matter if there were, science doesn't work that way, politics does. If GW were about science Hansen would have been sacked the second he was proven to have cooked his numbers. But since this issue long ago crossed over to politics lies are par for the course, if we sacked every lying politician Washington DC and every state capitol would be depopulated.
Nah, the Internet was never just for porn. It was also for piracy. And for pirated porn!
Just like the VCR was mostly for porn at one time.. and piracy and piracy of porn for that matter. But eventually enough other uses appeared that while never going away the piracy and porn faded into the background.
Perhaps I'm just not seeing it, but I'm unclear what SL's eventual non porn purpose is and don't much of a piracy angle.
> not to mention, in 2007 that the northwest passage was completely ice free for the first time in recorded history.
Yea, right. Pull the other one. First time in recorded history huh? Except for 1906, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1985, 1988 and 2000 in wooden ships, catamarans, naval vessels, cruise ships, etc.
Stop beliving the propaganda and do some googling before you open yer piehole and up looking like a retard.
> Scientists are still examining possible causes..
Nah. If something gets warmer it is caused by Global Warming and the solution is to eliminate Western industrial civilization.
If something gets colder it is Global Climate Change and the solution is to eliminate Western industrial civilization.
If we have more hurricanes it is Global Warming. Fewer and it is Climate Change. More tornadoes? Global Warming. Floods caused by increased snowfall? Somehow that was also Global Warming, I'd have thought they would have went with Global Climate Change, but every rule seems to need an exception.
> It's all the avatar appearance and clothing and objects you own > and places you've built.
Nah, having the places be fixed isn't that bad. Not being able to move your avatar would be close to fatal but since the client has to pretty much have that stored within it is only a matter of someone adding a way to save all of the details and get it recreated on another server.
Objects will require some sort of central repository for portable objects because they can be scripted and the scripts stay on the server. But once the notion of world hopping becomes established any objects not being kept in artificial scarcity (i.e. sold) will migrate to whatever portable object format ends up becoming the standard.
Those are solvable. Portability of the Linden is a whole other kettle of fish. And that is where Linden sees longterm profits, in being bankers to the virtual universe. Not sure if they have realized yet they will need to be able to serve a multiverse and become so established that they become the next PayPal if they hope to prosper.
> Pedo-hysteria was running wild throughout SL, and then they banned gambling.
Because Linden Labs is based in a civilized country. Unless they totally relocate to some third world pesthole where they can just bribe people to look the other way (and good luck getting good connectivity and clearing credit cards) they have to live by meatspace laws. That leaves the kiddie fuckers banned pretty much everywhere. And since they are in the US they can't run online casinos either. Just sticking the word 'virtual' in front doesn't make it any less a casino than a webpage based online casino. Anybody with two working brain cells knew that wasn't going to last long.
> in a game primarily used for sexual gratification between human/animal hybrids.
SL actually has three primary user populations:
1. Perverts. I.e. people who stick with human avatars to simulate sex in perverted ways with other humans, or more often simulated children.
2. Furries. Not all furries are perverted, there appears to be a big effort to keep the furry and perverted furrys seperated. The non perverted furries are mentally unbalanced, duh, but want to do furry things with their avatars and construction projects.
3. Perverted furries. Nuff said.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain the attraction of SL. Looks like IRC meets the Sims. in that it seems to be a bunch of wankers building virtual homes and text chatting. And they actually PAY to be able to do this.
> The government just supplies a cheap alternative that people elect to use.
No my statist friend, we don't 'elect' to use the USPS if we can avoid it. But we don't have a choice in some cases because the US Government grants a monopoly on letter delivery. UPS and Fedex can deliver freight and because nobody thought it possible and thus Congress didn't forbid it in time, overnight letters. Notice how totally the private competitors dominate the postal service in those catagories? How many YEARS it took for the postal service to even attempt an overnight delivery service... that still only promises (as in refund you money for being late) 2-3 day delivery between most endpoints.
Do you really think UPS couldn't eat the postal service's lunch on 1st Class postage if they were allowed to compete? Of course they could, which is why the Postal Workers unions make damned sure Congress never even brings the subject up. They would probably have to adopt the same subsidy tactics as the USPS, i.e. use bulk mailers to subsidize 1st Class postage. But not being a government agency, once they demolished the USPS would restore actual market forces. So you would end up paying a bit more to send a letter AND get a bit more paper spam. But mail would flow quicker and with greater reliability.
> It sounds like Debian users are still okay, since there are > no official mirrors for security.debian.org.
Partly. As was implied in my original post, the only total solution is https hits to a trusted server. At least as of etch, Debian is only doing http connects to security.debian.org. But the trusted server solution won't scale without adding subscription fees, opening up the admission requirements to mirror or a major donor. Imagine if every Ubuntu user converted to debian and tell me it wouldn't break the current servers.
Without https you are still vulnerable to packet sniffing, dns poisioning and man in the middle attacks.
> One long term solution would be to sign package metadata and serve > it only from one central location, over https/sftp.
Even that won't help. The authors got so caught up in the complex exploiting they didn't notice the BIG implication of their work. The problem can't be fixed with tech, crypto or anything but https connects to known to be trusted mirror operators.
Follow along as I demonstrate. Spamgang wants zombies so they install a massive mirror farm for all of the major distros. They run it perfectly, fully updated with upstream as fast as their phat pipe can get it, perfectly signed metadata, packages and everything offered by http or https. Then they wait.
Sooner or later another remote root bug, in openssh for example, will hit and they are ready. Thousands of machines either automatically connect or their owners see the story here on/. and hit the update button. They download that signed, correct metadata and sure enough their machines realize they need that new openssh package and ask the mirror for it. And are 0wned a few milliseconds later.
Because in the act of requesting the package all those machines just told the spamgang that a specific IP is a) running openssh, b) it is the vulnerable version and c) that host is currently connected to the network and very likely has the vulnerable software running. So in the time it takes the updated package to transfer, unpack and install they have ample time to get in and install a rootkit. The beauty is that the victim will patch the hole and thus prevent anyone else from getting the zombie.
Wait a random time before beginning to use the new zombies to help prevent people from getting wise to what is happening and the spamgang could likely get away with it for years.
> The article actually discusses attacks that can be made by a malicious mirror...
Yes a mirror can keep you from getting a security update. But if you don't contact that mirror every day you will eventually get a good mirror and update, and since none of the package managers will downgrade automatically this is a mostly theoretical exploit.
Yes if a really BIG bug hits somebody could keep some subset of machines from updating, and since they would also KNOW the ip of each vulnerable host it could be very bad. That is the part that worries me, hell, they could even deliver the update from their perfectly up to date repo of signed packages, signed metadata AND perfectly in sync with the distro prime mirror.... and root your ass while the update is in flight. This gets to the real security vuln involved, telling an untrusted entity exactly which version (sorta) of a package you are running.
> How about vote to uphold the Consitution and the 4th Amendment:
Oh really. Please explain how wiretaps that cross international borders possibly violates the 4th? International mail has been searchable since forever and we tapped the hell out of international cables in WWII and even during the Cold War. There is a big difference between police activity and intelligence. No I don't think intelligence info should be (and generally isn't) admissable in court because spys ignore most of the safeguards to prevent tyranny but intelligence gathering isn't about arresting citizens.
> Just the threat of a filibuster from the Democratic nominee should > have been enough to kill the bill in the first place.
There were more than enough votes to invoke cloture. And video of Obambi trying to fillibuster would have been priceless come the fall, regardless of its success.
> He's not just a senator anymore -- he's a de facto party leader, > and gets as much press as he wants.
One problem. Democrats get into trouble when they clearly speak their core principles to a general audience a lot more than Republicans, especially on an issue like FISA. As a general rule Democrats succeed by convincing voters they liberals. Obambi is going to have serious trouble doing that in the fall when the massive number of voters who haven't paid much attention yet actually spend a few minutes examining Obama; he damned sure didn't need such an obvious givaway as fillibustering FISA for those less informed voters to find out in Google bowels.
> You = retard. Either specify that the energy cost is the problem or > the capital expenditure for the vehicle is the problem. Don't bitch > about my response because you can't get your fucking issues straight.
1. That 4c/mile number is bogus compared to gasoline. Yea you can push a cracker box a mile for 4c, but not the sort of real vehicles people would buy. Ya know, comfortable, safe, AIR CONDITIONED cars. You can probably sell a more expensive vehicle if the operating costs are really low, but electric isn't currently THAT much cheaper. Gas powered vehicles as puny as
2. Without the nuke plants any attempt to deploy plug in electric vehicles will overload the grid and raise the price of electricity.
3. While electric isn't practical NOW I'm hoping it could be by the time the crash program to build the nuke plants was done. But if it doesn't pan out (batteries was the big worry) we are still good if we have the nukes. Use the virtually limitless power to crack hydrogen and make that cheap enough to burn in our cars. You and that marketing piece claim electric is viable today, it isn't.
4. Your 4c/mile number isn't even in the linked piece, yea I grepped it for "4" and waded through the boatload of 4's just to be sure before calling you on it. Lots of questionable math and assumptions (I have a car older than nine years, but how many people will buy a nine year payout?) in that white paper as well. And anyway it talked about plug in hybrids, not total electric. Hybrids to me are just an overly complex boondoggle.
> The cost of electricity is already highly in favor of plug-in > electric vehicles (4 cents/mile).
No it isn't. What is total cost per mile including amortized vehicle cost? Oh. You see I didn't even need to follow the link, if it were actually less expensive large fleets would have converted already. UPS trucks still burn gas, thus I know electric isn't really less expensive. CNG isn't less expensive either. Hydrogen isn't less expensive.
Are there things we could do to push the cost of some of those alternatives down? Perhaps. And we had better be busting our humps figuring em out or we are so boned.
> The enviros will not simply stand by and permit private > interests to carpet the front range with propellers.
Yup, to the greens there is only one solution, eliminate industrial civilization, especially the American Way of Life. New energy sources, regardless how 'green' only alow evil Americans to continue to flaunt their high standard of living.
There are ALREADY greens opposing windmills. They oppose hydro. They even find objections to geothermal and solar. All of that stuff is great when it is greens doing impractical but feel good pilot projects to show how superior THEY are... more often than not spending the hard earned tax money of the 'lessor folk' they so despise. But as soon as an alternative energy source gets close to actual unsubsidized viability they objections start.
Don't believe me? Go back and observe how every fscking one of the enviros were gushing about biofuels only a few years ago. Anyone who wasn't in favor of pissing away money on pilot plants and forcing mandates, etc just had to be in league with the oil companies. Production finally gets ramped up to non-trivial levels and now it's horrible. Duh, why da ya think those of us with a brain thought it was a dumb idea to turn our food into fuel? On to switchgrass... until it starts actually producing fuel.
Slashdot Mirror
> Feel free to believe that 3D graphics hardware is the be all and
> end all of systems programming though. You'd be wrong though.
I don't particularly want to play games on the damned thing. I said I'd even consider buying one if it had 2D that didn't suck ass. But video that is more on par with a plain VESA framebuffer just doesn't cut it.
So you can go play with the SPUs on that closed VM they give ya and when the box is eventually cracked I'll have another look... but by then it probbaly won't be 'all that' anymore.
> actively supports the installation of alternate operating systems
As long as you can live with a crippled virtual machine that only emulates a dumb framebuffer. No, I won't be buying a PS3 because they allow you to play in a sandbox. If I can't run accelerated 2D I wouldn't even ponder the notion. Notice that Xboxes make great MythTV frontends but the supposedly newer and 'Linux friendly' PS3 doesn't. And without full (3D) hardware access it isn't really an open platform.
> If you look at Apple's desktops, they operate in very niche markets.
Of course one reason they only operate in nice markets is because they only make products to fit odd market niches. If they sold a mainstream machine they just might find a mainstream audience for it. It's possible ya know.
Seriously. If Apple sold a mainstream desktop and sold it at close to a mainstream price (say $200 over a Dell/HP/etc) they just might up their market share a few points. Of course they have no intention of doint it so the question is purely academic.
They seem determined to stay in single digits in the total installed base count. I'm guessing they fear losing Microsoft Office if they ever break an unwritten deal they made iwth the devil. Or perhaps they fear losing the Apple Faithful if they ever 'sold out' and courted the great unwashed, i.e the Faithful wouldn't be special anymore and would find some other obscure fetish item to worship.
> ..would indeed sell well - and take most of those sales away
> from the higher margin Mac Pro.
Possibly, and that point is important if you work for Apple or own their stock. But for everyone else the takeaway point is that you, an Apple zealot, admit that most most people would be happy with a machine between the mini and pro and those customers either bend over and take it in the pooper because they drank Steve's Kool-Aid and believe they just have to have a Mac even if the only choice is several times as expensive as what they need.... or they become Dell's customer instead.
> wouldn't you rather get your money back than have a machine
> that wont ever get another software update?
Dude, you would think Pystar invented the Hackintosh the way you talk about em. If Pystar loses their customers will get updates the same way every other hackintosh owner does, via the dark corners of the Internet.
> Vista 32 with 4 GB installed will reserve about 1 GB of RAM for the OS, GPU. etc.
> I would expect Vista 64 to do the same.
You might expect it, but you would be wrong. 32bit Microsoft OSes (desktop, not server) are strictly 32bit flat memory model, thus can only address 4GB, from which the area reserved for the PCI bus and other I/O must be deducted. Depending on chipset this can vary a little, but is normally at least 512MB.
Much the same way DOS could address 1024KB but because the top of the address space was claimed by BIOS, expansion ROMs, and video memory the typical DOS memory limit was 640KB. Didn't matter if you had MBs in the machine, DOS was a 16bit + 4bit segment program and the only use one could make of the additional memory was as XMS memory (or with emm386 loaded you could use XMS memory to emulate the older EMS memory). XMS memory was totally outside the control of DOS, it couldn't see it. BIOS still can't, which is why you need some care to bootstrap a modern OS.
If you have 4GB, you typically get a non-uniform memory map, thus:
0-3.5GB RAM
3.5GB-4GB PCI
4.0-4.5GB RAM
That last block of RAM is only visible to a 32bit OS through the use of the PAE CPU extensions. It works almost exactly like the old segment registers allowed a 16bit CPU like the 8086 to address more than 64KB. Linux (compile time option) can do it and the server NT kernel can do it, basic Windows can't.
> Psystar makes an interesting argument that Honda can't make you
> sign a EULA telling you that you can only drive on Honda-approved roads
Bad analogy. A more fitting one would be if Honda attempted to say that if you bought a Honda engine as a replacement part that it had to go into a Honda vehicle. Or if they tried to say that you couldn't yank the engine out a Honda and stuff it into a Ford body.
Apple's problem is their business model is an illusion. They want people to believe that a Mac is different, when the reality is that it has been just another PC clone since the move to Intel chips. Unlike IBM they also actually make their OS so they believe they can simply refuse to sell it to anyone else. Yet they also want to sell boxed copies. Doesn't work.
And even if they yank the boxed copies from the shelves you could just buy a Mac Mini, keep the OS and turn the crappy little PC into a Linux file server and put they copy of OS X on the kind of hardware Apple doesn'y want you to have.
I know it will totally mess up their business model, but they don't have a constituitional right to a broken business model. Copyright only grants them a monopoly on selling copies, EULAs are just an illegal power grab and sooner or later we will get enough Supremes who can read to get sanity back.
Sigh. This is what faith looks like, not reason.
So not only is that blog a lie cooked up by the vast right wing conspiracy, so are all of the links on it... So the US Coast Guard is in on it, as is Radio Canada, the Vancouver Maritime Museum, the BBC, etc. I bet you will bring up the CFR, the Rothchilds and perhaps the Freemasons before you admit that a piece of evidence supporting your religious beliefs is bogus.
News flash, big powerful enviromental groups have no monopoly on the truth, even the smallest blog can link to facts. But you wouldn't know about those, Faith trumps Reason after all. Behold the might Anonymous Coward, so certain in his Faith in Gaia that he posts snarky comments on slashdot but hasn't the stones to put his name to them. Gaia ain't going to let you into Heaven for that.
> Not a contradiction, even though it seems like one.
I'm not arguing that there isn't global warming. I'm not even arguing that human activity isn't influencing it. What I am arguing is that our science is nowhere near good enough to say a goddamned thing on the subject even if it were actually a scientific issue and not a political one.
How many computer models in the early 1990s predicted the ten years of flat/cooling we have been experiencing? Or better, point to a computer model that has shown accuracy and bet me $100 it's current prediction will be true in ten years. You would be a fool to attempt it. This is a very basic point, if you don't have reliable numbers it isn't science. Until we have models that can not only show the past, but make a prediction for the future that actually comes true we know zero. And one accurate prediction doesn't even come close to rising out of the error bars.
As for consensus, there ain't one and it wouldn't matter if there were, science doesn't work that way, politics does. If GW were about science Hansen would have been sacked the second he was proven to have cooked his numbers. But since this issue long ago crossed over to politics lies are par for the course, if we sacked every lying politician Washington DC and every state capitol would be depopulated.
Nah, the Internet was never just for porn. It was also for piracy. And for pirated porn!
Just like the VCR was mostly for porn at one time.. and piracy and piracy of porn for that matter. But eventually enough other uses appeared that while never going away the piracy and porn faded into the background.
Perhaps I'm just not seeing it, but I'm unclear what SL's eventual non porn purpose is and don't much of a piracy angle.
> not to mention, in 2007 that the northwest passage was completely ice free for the first time in recorded history.
Yea, right. Pull the other one. First time in recorded history huh? Except for 1906, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1985, 1988 and 2000 in wooden ships, catamarans, naval vessels, cruise ships, etc.
Stop beliving the propaganda and do some googling before you open yer piehole and up looking like a retard.
btw, here is the link I got from Google searching for "northwest passage ice free"
Classically Liberal: Bad reporting about the Northwest Passage issue
> Scientists are still examining possible causes..
Nah. If something gets warmer it is caused by Global Warming and the solution is to eliminate Western industrial civilization.
If something gets colder it is Global Climate Change and the solution is to eliminate Western industrial civilization.
If we have more hurricanes it is Global Warming. Fewer and it is Climate Change. More tornadoes? Global Warming. Floods caused by increased snowfall? Somehow that was also Global Warming, I'd have thought they would have went with Global Climate Change, but every rule seems to need an exception.
> It's all the avatar appearance and clothing and objects you own
> and places you've built.
Nah, having the places be fixed isn't that bad. Not being able to move your avatar would be close to fatal but since the client has to pretty much have that stored within it is only a matter of someone adding a way to save all of the details and get it recreated on another server.
Objects will require some sort of central repository for portable objects because they can be scripted and the scripts stay on the server. But once the notion of world hopping becomes established any objects not being kept in artificial scarcity (i.e. sold) will migrate to whatever portable object format ends up becoming the standard.
Those are solvable. Portability of the Linden is a whole other kettle of fish. And that is where Linden sees longterm profits, in being bankers to the virtual universe. Not sure if they have realized yet they will need to be able to serve a multiverse and become so established that they become the next PayPal if they hope to prosper.
> Pedo-hysteria was running wild throughout SL, and then they banned gambling.
Because Linden Labs is based in a civilized country. Unless they totally relocate to some third world pesthole where they can just bribe people to look the other way (and good luck getting good connectivity and clearing credit cards) they have to live by meatspace laws. That leaves the kiddie fuckers banned pretty much everywhere. And since they are in the US they can't run online casinos either. Just sticking the word 'virtual' in front doesn't make it any less a casino than a webpage based online casino. Anybody with two working brain cells knew that wasn't going to last long.
> in a game primarily used for sexual gratification between human/animal hybrids.
SL actually has three primary user populations:
1. Perverts. I.e. people who stick with human avatars to simulate sex in perverted ways with other humans, or more often simulated children.
2. Furries. Not all furries are perverted, there appears to be a big effort to keep the furry and perverted furrys seperated. The non perverted furries are mentally unbalanced, duh, but want to do furry things with their avatars and construction projects.
3. Perverted furries. Nuff said.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain the attraction of SL. Looks like IRC meets the Sims. in that it seems to be a bunch of wankers building virtual homes and text chatting. And they actually PAY to be able to do this.
> The government just supplies a cheap alternative that people elect to use.
No my statist friend, we don't 'elect' to use the USPS if we can avoid it. But we don't have a choice in some cases because the US Government grants a monopoly on letter delivery. UPS and Fedex can deliver freight and because nobody thought it possible and thus Congress didn't forbid it in time, overnight letters. Notice how totally the private competitors dominate the postal service in those catagories? How many YEARS it took for the postal service to even attempt an overnight delivery service... that still only promises (as in refund you money for being late) 2-3 day delivery between most endpoints.
Do you really think UPS couldn't eat the postal service's lunch on 1st Class postage if they were allowed to compete? Of course they could, which is why the Postal Workers unions make damned sure Congress never even brings the subject up. They would probably have to adopt the same subsidy tactics as the USPS, i.e. use bulk mailers to subsidize 1st Class postage. But not being a government agency, once they demolished the USPS would restore actual market forces. So you would end up paying a bit more to send a letter AND get a bit more paper spam. But mail would flow quicker and with greater reliability.
> It sounds like Debian users are still okay, since there are
> no official mirrors for security.debian.org.
Partly. As was implied in my original post, the only total solution is https hits to a trusted server. At least as of etch, Debian is only doing http connects to security.debian.org. But the trusted server solution won't scale without adding subscription fees, opening up the admission requirements to mirror or a major donor. Imagine if every Ubuntu user converted to debian and tell me it wouldn't break the current servers.
Without https you are still vulnerable to packet sniffing, dns poisioning and man in the middle attacks.
> One long term solution would be to sign package metadata and serve
> it only from one central location, over https/sftp.
Even that won't help. The authors got so caught up in the complex exploiting they didn't notice the BIG implication of their work. The problem can't be fixed with tech, crypto or anything but https connects to known to be trusted mirror operators.
Follow along as I demonstrate. Spamgang wants zombies so they install a massive mirror farm for all of the major distros. They run it perfectly, fully updated with upstream as fast as their phat pipe can get it, perfectly signed metadata, packages and everything offered by http or https. Then they wait.
Sooner or later another remote root bug, in openssh for example, will hit and they are ready. Thousands of machines either automatically connect or their owners see the story here on /. and hit the update button. They download that signed, correct metadata and sure enough their machines realize they need that new openssh package and ask the mirror for it. And are 0wned a few milliseconds later.
Because in the act of requesting the package all those machines just told the spamgang that a specific IP is a) running openssh, b) it is the vulnerable version and c) that host is currently connected to the network and very likely has the vulnerable software running. So in the time it takes the updated package to transfer, unpack and install they have ample time to get in and install a rootkit. The beauty is that the victim will patch the hole and thus prevent anyone else from getting the zombie.
Wait a random time before beginning to use the new zombies to help prevent people from getting wise to what is happening and the spamgang could likely get away with it for years.
> The article actually discusses attacks that can be made by a malicious mirror...
Yes a mirror can keep you from getting a security update. But if you don't contact that mirror every day you will eventually get a good mirror and update, and since none of the package managers will downgrade automatically this is a mostly theoretical exploit.
Yes if a really BIG bug hits somebody could keep some subset of machines from updating, and since they would also KNOW the ip of each vulnerable host it could be very bad. That is the part that worries me, hell, they could even deliver the update from their perfectly up to date repo of signed packages, signed metadata AND perfectly in sync with the distro prime mirror.... and root your ass while the update is in flight. This gets to the real security vuln involved, telling an untrusted entity exactly which version (sorta) of a package you are running.
> How about vote to uphold the Consitution and the 4th Amendment:
Oh really. Please explain how wiretaps that cross international borders possibly violates the 4th? International mail has been searchable since forever and we tapped the hell out of international cables in WWII and even during the Cold War. There is a big difference between police activity and intelligence. No I don't think intelligence info should be (and generally isn't) admissable in court because spys ignore most of the safeguards to prevent tyranny but intelligence gathering isn't about arresting citizens.
> Just the threat of a filibuster from the Democratic nominee should
> have been enough to kill the bill in the first place.
There were more than enough votes to invoke cloture. And video of Obambi trying to fillibuster would have been priceless come the fall, regardless of its success.
> He's not just a senator anymore -- he's a de facto party leader,
> and gets as much press as he wants.
One problem. Democrats get into trouble when they clearly speak their core principles to a general audience a lot more than Republicans, especially on an issue like FISA. As a general rule Democrats succeed by convincing voters they liberals. Obambi is going to have serious trouble doing that in the fall when the massive number of voters who haven't paid much attention yet actually spend a few minutes examining Obama; he damned sure didn't need such an obvious givaway as fillibustering FISA for those less informed voters to find out in Google bowels.
> You = retard. Either specify that the energy cost is the problem or
> the capital expenditure for the vehicle is the problem. Don't bitch
> about my response because you can't get your fucking issues straight.
1. That 4c/mile number is bogus compared to gasoline. Yea you can push a cracker box a mile for 4c, but not the sort of real vehicles people would buy. Ya know, comfortable, safe, AIR CONDITIONED cars. You can probably sell a more expensive vehicle if the operating costs are really low, but electric isn't currently THAT much cheaper. Gas powered vehicles as puny as
2. Without the nuke plants any attempt to deploy plug in electric vehicles will overload the grid and raise the price of electricity.
3. While electric isn't practical NOW I'm hoping it could be by the time the crash program to build the nuke plants was done. But if it doesn't pan out (batteries was the big worry) we are still good if we have the nukes. Use the virtually limitless power to crack hydrogen and make that cheap enough to burn in our cars. You and that marketing piece claim electric is viable today, it isn't.
4. Your 4c/mile number isn't even in the linked piece, yea I grepped it for "4" and waded through the boatload of 4's just to be sure before calling you on it. Lots of questionable math and assumptions (I have a car older than nine years, but how many people will buy a nine year payout?) in that white paper as well. And anyway it talked about plug in hybrids, not total electric. Hybrids to me are just an overly complex boondoggle.
> The cost of electricity is already highly in favor of plug-in
> electric vehicles (4 cents/mile).
No it isn't. What is total cost per mile including amortized vehicle cost? Oh. You see I didn't even need to follow the link, if it were actually less expensive large fleets would have converted already. UPS trucks still burn gas, thus I know electric isn't really less expensive. CNG isn't less expensive either. Hydrogen isn't less expensive.
Are there things we could do to push the cost of some of those alternatives down? Perhaps. And we had better be busting our humps figuring em out or we are so boned.
> The enviros will not simply stand by and permit private
> interests to carpet the front range with propellers.
Yup, to the greens there is only one solution, eliminate industrial civilization, especially the American Way of Life. New energy sources, regardless how 'green' only alow evil Americans to continue to flaunt their high standard of living.
There are ALREADY greens opposing windmills. They oppose hydro. They even find objections to geothermal and solar. All of that stuff is great when it is greens doing impractical but feel good pilot projects to show how superior THEY are... more often than not spending the hard earned tax money of the 'lessor folk' they so despise. But as soon as an alternative energy source gets close to actual unsubsidized viability they objections start.
Don't believe me? Go back and observe how every fscking one of the enviros were gushing about biofuels only a few years ago. Anyone who wasn't in favor of pissing away money on pilot plants and forcing mandates, etc just had to be in league with the oil companies. Production finally gets ramped up to non-trivial levels and now it's horrible. Duh, why da ya think those of us with a brain thought it was a dumb idea to turn our food into fuel? On to switchgrass... until it starts actually producing fuel.