> I know if I were on the board of directors, I'd be asking for the head of the person who cost me this fine, and getting something signed in blood by the people who I can decapitate if it happens again.
If you were on the board you were probably aware of this long ago.
> Everyone should have moved on to a more standard and secure technology by now.
Indeed. I'd go further and state that they shouldn't have installed PPTP in the first place. However a great number of people don't have the time/inclination to change. The PPTP thing works and has become relied upon for operations and they/a manager/ some slightly misguided employee don't want it broken.
PPTP has been reasonably popular in the "MS-Shop" world as you got it for free with (some later version of) RRAS in NT so it's been around for a while and the setup is trivial and of course documented.
Also remember the "VPN Craze" a few years ago? Where you could hardly read a computer rag without an article on VPNs? I recall to main ideas that came out of that:
- VPNs are cool - Something about "a higher level of security"
In the company I previously worked for they wanted me to set up a VPN. It took me a while to explain why a VPN offers less security rather than more security if you're currently seriously restricting remote access. I had to write a report on that.
Agreed. In addition - as an employee of a company that develops and sells portfolio management software and distributes real-time stock data - I'd argue that it is _dangerous_ for a company to concentrate too much on inflating the stock price. What inevitably happens when the stock price is disproportionate to market cap, profit and revenue is a correction occurs: the traders decide "Hang on, maybe this company isn't going to be profitable after all" and they sell their stock cheaply, reducing the stock price drastically. Without a steady revenue flow the money runs out and the company suffers, often folding.
As someone who follows the stock market quite closely (mostly out of curiosity: I'm no gambler) I believe it is dangerous to list your company in the first place, let alone push out "Press Releases" and "Announcements" in order to inflate the stock price.
What companies need to do is concentrate on becoming a good company and focus on _steady_ growth. Not the sort of insanity we saw in the tech boom and inevitable correction. Problem is there's a lot of people (Venture Capitalists, Executive Management/Board, Investors) who profit greatly from a temporarily and artificially inflated stock price. They buy pre-IPO very cheap and sell almost as soon as the company lists.
Haha! *ring* *ring* "Good afternoon RedHat support, Stor Speaking, how may I help you?" "Hello! I'm having a problem with the cd player" "OK sure, what version of RedHat are you running there?" "KDE" "Ahh you have KDE, OK. That's the Desktop Environment. What version of RedHat are you running there?" "KDE" "OK."
Oh for sure there's _plenty_ of others, hence the cop-out "..." at the end 8)
I wouldn't attempt to create a comprehensive list. With any list like this I'd be bound to miss a few people who are just as valid as the ones who made "Stor's List of Great Aussie Open Source Contributors(tm)".
As you imply, Aussies working on Open Source/ Free Software are not rare.
Andrew Morton is an Australian... and IMNSHO he's the best thing that's happened to the Linux Kernel in the past few years. I could roll a few names off the top off my head: Keith Owens, Rusty Russell, Richard Gooch, Rasterman... Tridge is a way cool dude and I'm glad he received this award. Take a look around dude 8) You're surrounded by Australians!!! Nooo!!!!
This is a troll but I believe you would be referring to organised religion there rather than the more pure form of religion that other more insightful people here are referring to.
I appreciate the thought/. but reading some of the comments here I feel sick to my stomach. Maybe/. shouldn't post obituary-style articles?
I'm incredibly open-minded esp. when it comes to humour but a lot of the posts on this article are from really sick people who should get help. Don't give me some "It's just a web-based forum, lighten up!" crap. We're talking about people dying in a tragic accident here for godsake.
Let me please pass on my condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.
>Few people here realize that MS's products demonstrate evolved wonderfully evolved usability
I was pleasantly suprised by this: http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/1029905749 /index_ html
Quote: " We have drawn upon the success or failure of design aspects from many environments including GNOME itself, KDE, Mac OS, Java, and Windows, as well as our own observations. We are indebted to those environments and their respective style guides, as well as the countless people who have allowed us to observe them, or served as subjects in usability tests."
So some people are actually trying to meaningfully address these sorts of issues.
The actual HIG is here: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig /1.0/
They would also _humbly_ appreciate it if KDE developers would take a look at the HIG and hopefully give feedback/ comments. The idea seems to be to make it a shared document across both projects which would be very positive.
RFC1918 Addresses only give a meagre level of protection. That said, I use them (RFC1918 Adds) extenstively, in combination with a lot of other security measures such as not running telnetd.
IMNSHO Even half-decent security requires the administrator to try to secure down *every* service. Some things are difficult to secure but that doesn't mean you should neglect to fix the straight-forward stuff.
> if someone is used to linux, they'll never like Solaris
I can't agree with that statement. I really liked the Solaris enviroment coming from a Linux one. It's all SysV-style, very familiar. Running the "killall" command as root gave me a shock the first time I ran it in production though 8)
I went to www.sunfreeware.com to get some of the GNU utils because I found they have a lot more features than the Solaris equivalents and my shell scripts would "just work" again.
disksuite, though not very friendly, was nice to have out of the box.
There's two problems that have annoyed me with Solaris:
- I had problems with the Sun QFE card, especially since it's plugged into a Cisco switch. You really need to force duplex and speed negotiation using ndd in your initscripts. Otherwise it tends to go flaky and get into a wierd apparent autonegotiation loop. bounce bounce bounce. - It seems to take an inordinately long amount of time to flush the routing tables. This could have been my problem though: I *was* flushing the routing tables of a firewall that was in production.
I would recommend Linux-heads go check out Solaris: the learning curve is not that huge and I reckon you'd enjoy it. Plus if you ever hit a situation like "We need to run Oracle on a decent-sized (say a ~8-way) box" you'll be able to present some options.
> I doubt very much the executives themselves will be attempting any cracking of systems here, don't you?
Yes. However depending on the case that may not matter: being in a position of authority in a company that engages in these activities may be enough.
>Without a concerted effort from other Western nations (at a minimum), the closest thing this approximates is a soggy spitball and straw against a tank.
That's pretty asinine. There is no symbolic threat: this article is highlighting the potential ramifications in Australia if this US bill is passed.
Irrespective of that I'd say in the (frankly unrealistic) scenario of *ONE* American media exec being arrested in Australia for hacking, there would be noise.
This is all pretty speculative however. This whole scenario is based on "if" this bill gets passed, which despite my cynicism I can't see happening. It's just easier to say "No, you can't hack people's computers" and avoid facing all the consequences of this bill.
Slashdot Mirror
>>You, Confused, wonder who Example is. I am Enlightened. Pleased to meet you.
>But who's on first?!
Exactly!
Who throws it to Enlightened, Enlightened throws it to Example, Example throws it to Confused and Confused throws an exception. 8)
Cheers
Stor
It's a very simple word to spell too. Just think "definite" and add "ly".
Spelling Nazis sux0r but this particular word is misspelt a bit too often on Slashdot.
Cheers
Stor
>In an office with 100 users, you can expect the server to have zero users connected to it most of the time.
Not true if it's an IMAP server.
Cheers
Andy
Everyone knows that you're perfectly safe unless lightning strikes your (unmonitored of course) robot and it miraculously springs to life.
Cheers
Stor
Wouldn't automatically slowing down wheels while turning help here? I'd expect that could be quite effective with the electric design 8)
Cheers
Stor
> Debian doesn't have GUI configuration tools
The Gnome System Tools (now renamed from Ximian Setup Tools) are decent if GUI System Tools are what you're after:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/index.html
Cheers
Stor
> I know if I were on the board of directors, I'd be asking for the head of the person who cost me this fine, and getting something signed in blood by the people who I can decapitate if it happens again.
If you were on the board you were probably aware of this long ago.
Cheers
Stor
> Everyone should have moved on to a more standard and secure technology by now.
Indeed. I'd go further and state that they shouldn't have installed PPTP in the first place. However a great number of people don't have the time/inclination to change. The PPTP thing works and has become relied upon for operations and they/a manager/ some slightly misguided employee don't want it broken.
PPTP has been reasonably popular in the "MS-Shop" world as you got it for free with (some later version of) RRAS in NT so it's been around for a while and the setup is trivial and of course documented.
Also remember the "VPN Craze" a few years ago? Where you could hardly read a computer rag without an article on VPNs? I recall to main ideas that came out of that:
- VPNs are cool
- Something about "a higher level of security"
In the company I previously worked for they wanted me to set up a VPN. It took me a while to explain why a VPN offers less security rather than more security if you're currently seriously restricting remote access. I had to write a report on that.
Hopefully people will make the change though.
Cheers
Stor
Cheers
Stor
A Beowu*smack* ow.
Cheers
Stor
Agreed. In addition - as an employee of a company that develops and sells portfolio management software and distributes real-time stock data - I'd argue that it is _dangerous_ for a company to concentrate too much on inflating the stock price. What inevitably happens when the stock price is disproportionate to market cap, profit and revenue is a correction occurs: the traders decide "Hang on, maybe this company isn't going to be profitable after all" and they sell their stock cheaply, reducing the stock price drastically. Without a steady revenue flow the money runs out and the company suffers, often folding.
As someone who follows the stock market quite closely (mostly out of curiosity: I'm no gambler) I believe it is dangerous to list your company in the first place, let alone push out "Press Releases" and "Announcements" in order to inflate the stock price.
What companies need to do is concentrate on becoming a good company and focus on _steady_ growth. Not the sort of insanity we saw in the tech boom and inevitable correction. Problem is there's a lot of people (Venture Capitalists, Executive Management/Board, Investors) who profit greatly from a temporarily and artificially inflated stock price. They buy pre-IPO very cheap and sell almost as soon as the company lists.
Cheers
Stor
>You haven't done desktop support much, have you?
Haha!
*ring* *ring*
"Good afternoon RedHat support, Stor Speaking, how may I help you?"
"Hello! I'm having a problem with the cd player"
"OK sure, what version of RedHat are you running there?"
"KDE"
"Ahh you have KDE, OK. That's the Desktop Environment. What version of RedHat are you running there?"
"KDE"
"OK."
Cheers
Stor
It's really easy to just pick on people, innit?
Much more challenging is being constructive.
Cheers
Stor
Oh for sure there's _plenty_ of others, hence the cop-out "..." at the end 8)
I wouldn't attempt to create a comprehensive list. With any list like this I'd be bound to miss a few people who are just as valid as the ones who made "Stor's List of Great Aussie Open Source Contributors(tm)".
As you imply, Aussies working on Open Source/ Free Software are not rare.
Cheers
Stor
Andrew Morton is an Australian... and IMNSHO he's the best thing that's happened to the Linux Kernel in the past few years.
I could roll a few names off the top off my head: Keith Owens, Rusty Russell, Richard Gooch, Rasterman...
Tridge is a way cool dude and I'm glad he received this award.
Take a look around dude 8) You're surrounded by Australians!!! Nooo!!!!
Cheers
Stor
Proud Aussie
This is a troll but I believe you would be referring to organised religion there rather than the more pure form of religion that other more insightful people here are referring to.
Cheers
Stor
I appreciate the thought /. but reading some of the comments here I feel sick to my stomach. Maybe /. shouldn't post obituary-style articles?
I'm incredibly open-minded esp. when it comes to humour but a lot of the posts on this article are from really sick people who should get help.
Don't give me some "It's just a web-based forum, lighten up!" crap. We're talking about people dying in a tragic accident here for godsake.
Let me please pass on my condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.
Cheers
Stor
>Few people here realize that MS's products demonstrate evolved wonderfully evolved usability
9 /index_ html
g /1.0/
I was pleasantly suprised by this:
http://news.gnome.org/gnome-news/102990574
Quote: " We have drawn upon the success or failure of design aspects from many environments including GNOME itself, KDE, Mac OS, Java, and Windows, as well as our own observations. We are indebted to those environments and their respective style guides, as well as the countless people who have allowed us to observe them, or served as subjects in usability tests."
So some people are actually trying to meaningfully address these sorts of issues.
The actual HIG is here:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hi
They would also _humbly_ appreciate it if KDE developers would take a look at the HIG and hopefully give feedback/ comments. The idea seems to be to make it a shared document across both projects which would be very positive.
Cheers
Stor
Heh, a dude defending telnetd. Who'd a thunk it?
RFC1918 Addresses only give a meagre level of protection. That said, I use them (RFC1918 Adds) extenstively, in combination with a lot of other security measures such as not running telnetd.
IMNSHO Even half-decent security requires the administrator to try to secure down *every* service. Some things are difficult to secure but that doesn't mean you should neglect to fix the straight-forward stuff.
Cheers
Stor
We are the Borg
Resistance is futile
You will be educated
Cheers
Stor
> if someone is used to linux, they'll never like Solaris
I can't agree with that statement. I really liked the Solaris enviroment coming from a Linux one. It's all SysV-style, very familiar. Running the "killall" command as root gave me a shock the first time I ran it in production though 8)
I went to www.sunfreeware.com to get some of the GNU utils because I found they have a lot more features than the Solaris equivalents and my shell scripts would "just work" again.
disksuite, though not very friendly, was nice to have out of the box.
There's two problems that have annoyed me with Solaris:
- I had problems with the Sun QFE card, especially since it's plugged into a Cisco switch. You really need to force duplex and speed negotiation using ndd in your initscripts. Otherwise it tends to go flaky and get into a wierd apparent autonegotiation loop. bounce bounce bounce.
- It seems to take an inordinately long amount of time to flush the routing tables. This could have been my problem though: I *was* flushing the routing tables of a firewall that was in production.
I would recommend Linux-heads go check out Solaris: the learning curve is not that huge and I reckon you'd enjoy it. Plus if you ever hit a situation like "We need to run Oracle on a decent-sized (say a ~8-way) box" you'll be able to present some options.
Cheers
Stor
I think Matthew Wilcox's .signature is one of the better replies to this type of assertion:
"Revolutions do not require corporate support."
Cheers
Stor
Heh, I can't help imitating C3POs voice when reading that.
Cheers
Stor
G'day, Stor frum Oztraya 'ere.
Dunno what you boys are on about but I reckon we should do what we usually do and give 'em a mighty good kick up the bum, Simpson's style.
Cheers
Stor
> I doubt very much the executives themselves will be attempting any cracking of systems here, don't you?
Yes. However depending on the case that may not matter: being in a position of authority in a company that engages in these activities may be enough.
>Without a concerted effort from other Western nations (at a minimum), the closest thing this approximates is a soggy spitball and straw against a tank.
That's pretty asinine. There is no symbolic threat: this article is highlighting the potential ramifications in Australia if this US bill is passed.
Irrespective of that I'd say in the (frankly unrealistic) scenario of *ONE* American media exec being arrested in Australia for hacking, there would be noise.
This is all pretty speculative however. This whole scenario is based on "if" this bill gets passed, which despite my cynicism I can't see happening. It's just easier to say "No, you can't hack people's computers" and avoid facing all the consequences of this bill.
Cheers
Stor
An Aussie 8)