I can think of a few kidnapping uses
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 2
However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.
So when you go bust down the guy's door and it turns out he moved the kidnapped child to an abandoned warehouse down the street, and the child is killed because you violated their first demand ("No cops."), what then?
Wiretaps are just like any other evidence-gathering tool.
If your child was kidnapped, and you had a list of 2 people you think did it, wouldn't you want the cops to be able to tap phone lines to be able to tell for sure? With a wiretap they can collect information about the group's movements, plans, and *locations*.
Re:About "tapping" the Internet...
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 2
Court orders for line tapping are given out too frequently and with too broad of a spectrum of reasons.
Do you have any statistics on this?
I keep hearing the extremists (not that I'm saying you are one) shout this very same thing, but I have yet to see any concrete evidence of statistics backing this up.
It's almost as if these privacy folk are feeding off of each other's misinformation.
I'm not trying to say you all are nuts, I would just like to see some factual data so that I can make an informed decision. No offense.
I don't know what webcam *you're* looking at, but the one I see is pointed out at somebody's back yard and a body of water. If we're going to see anybody's house being blown away, it'll be the house of the people that set up this webcam in the first place.
I applaud them for allowing us to witness this spectacle of nature from the point of view of their home. I don't particularly think it's funny, but like most people, I consider it thrilling to be able to witness such a thing, even if it's not first-hand.
Can you or I do a single damn thing to stop this? No.
You're right; it isn't a game. It isn't "funny". We aren't taking pleasure in other people's misfortune.
We are commenting and "coolifying" the awesome forces of nature. After this is over, video footage taken of the hurricane will be all over TV programs, news reports and web sites and people will be saying things like, "Oooh, ahhh," because they're commenting on *nature*. You must think storm chasers are the scum of the earth, taking pleasure and even making a living off of forces that invariably ruin peoples lives! How dare they!
To say "stop saying nature is cool because people are going to get hurt!" is stupid. Stop whining. You're not helping anybody.
It would have been much cooler if they'd managed to set up a live RealVideo stream. I'm sure they could have found some rebroadcast providers (like that distributed RealNetworks "backbone" thing) to donate the bandwidth...
"Paging Dr. Daniels. Dr. Jack Daniels. Sense of humor needed for this John Doe -- STAT!"
Re:not necessarily a good idea
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 2
OK I'm going to go under the assumption that by "people like you" you are of course not literally referring to me. If I'm wrong in making that assumption, please let me know so that I can respond in a more direct fashion.
---
If they can't be bothered to learn about the software they want to use, we don't need them.
This is *not* the attitude to take. If we continue to cater only to the technically savvy, Linux will remain a niche operating system used only by the technically savvy. Its growth will slow, and fewer people will be interested in learning to use it.
The current trend for computers and operating systems is for intelligent, autonomous simplicity. Some people call it "dumbing the PC down", others call it "creating an intuitive user interface." The types of people that need these interfaces are going to be the types of people that have the hardest time manually editing configuration files and "learning" an operating system's internals. These are the consumers. These are the people that make up the vast, vast majority of the operating system market, and if these people are unable to make use of an operating system that is unable to present configuration options in an intelligent, simple way, that operating system will lose market share and remain in a niche market forever.
"Holographic" was the word used in the article I read. I don't remember the specifics (that's kinda why I was asking), but the light was either piped against or through the back of some holographic film, presumably to get an even, full and rich distribution of the light. I wish I could find a link to that...
Re:You've just described Linux Mandrake...
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
I've actually been interested in Mandrake for a while. I just hope their Linux distribution skills are a lot better than their grammar and spelling skills.:)
Re:You've just described Linux Mandrake...
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 2
I use 'autorpm' to keep stuff updated. For background updates, it works fine, e-mailing me progress reports, but the interactive mode it uses to install new packages is just horrible. I haven't looked at the Mandrake-update program, but I suspect it behaves similarly.
Additionally, it just uses RPM's upgrade facility. It would be very nice to have a global configuration mechanism so that one could configure a new package at install/upgrade time (or at least select from multiple pre-written configurations). There are already some efforts on global X-based configuration programs (dotfile I think might be one such effort), but it hasn't quite made its way into a large enough chunk of packages (it might not be flexible/powerful enough for large apps that have complex configuration systems, such as sendmail or Apache).
While not strictly relevant, I've read in the past of efforts to collect sunlight at the tops of buildings, pipe this light down to individual rooms using fiber-optics, and re-distribute it with holographic panels. In theory, the result would be pure sunlight radiated in a very natural pattern, much like a natural skylight.
Has anybody heard of any applications of this idea?
"Please continue to hold. A representative will be with you shortly. We apologize for the long wait time."
No you're not. If you were truly sorry for the annoying length of time I'm sitting here on hold, you would be spending money getting more people and/or upgrading your call center to see that it doesn't happen again.
Grr.. A simple "Thank you for holding" is sufficient.
Re:not necessarily a good idea
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 5
Would reading a few paragraphs kill anyone?
While reading the manuals is something we would *hope* everyone would do, time and experience has shown us that it just Won't Happen. We can't just say, "Well, dammit, you should have read the manual," over and over again. We have to build something that will work securely for those that *don't* read the manuals, because there will always be a significant percentage of users that simply won't.
No amount of screaming, shouting, pasting of banners and throttling will get everyone to "clue up" and read about what they're installing, so we have to adapt the distributions so that they will still function for these types of people.
The installation program I'd like to see
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 4
I really can't imagine this being terribly complicated, but I would personally love to see a nice, graphical (or at least curses-based) installation program that behaved basically like this:
1. Select a basic "personality" for this system: a. Server b. Workstation 2. Select a starting configuration for this system: a. Minimal (most secure) b. Standard c. Custom (for experienced users or administrators only)
You would then proceed to an application selection area, where you would pick some major configuration options (X Windows, Web Server, Mail Server, Games, etc.) and, if you picked Custom, an exhaustive sub-list of packages selectable with checkbox efficiency. Defaults would be pre-selected based on what "personality" you chose for the system.
Basic daemon configuration would be taken care of at this time as well. If you chose to install the telnet daemon, you would be presented with a warning and an option to automatically refuse connections (firewall? TCP wrappers?) from Internet hosts. Repeat this procedure for things like sendmail, httpd, whatever.
Daemon venders tend to like their packages shipped individually with everything "turned on", because in most cases, when the package is being installed, it's being installed by someone who's about to configure and *use* it. This is bad in the cases where someone is installing a new system, because they probably *won't* be jumping straight to the "configure and use" part. They'll install all of the packages and get to them "later." So, if we force them to make configuration decisions at *install* time, and build (or use pre-built) configuration files then, instead of the stock configuration files, the system ends up being much more secure with the user much more aware of what's been installed and how it's been set up.
Along a similar line of thought, and perhaps this already exists, an extension of this installation program could be a graphical "autorpm" of sorts. A program that retrieves from the 'Net a list of updated packages (such as RedHat's updates), and either automatically makes the updates or at least notifies the user that updates are available (a la Windows Update). If the package uses a new configuration file format, a packaged utility should be included and run to convert the old configuration to the new, otherwise the user should be presented with a configuration dialog again to be sure the new package is ideally configured for the system. I've been the victim of several instances where an RPM "upgrade" *overwrote* the existing configuration file (though it did save a backup). In cases where the "default" configuration only differs from the user-specified configuration in that the default configuration is much less secure, the change might not be noticed immediately (or ever).
I'd also like to see warnings where an installed/upgraded RPM is being installed on a machine that previously contained a self-installed copy of the same package. An example could be some HTTP daemon. A quick search for various httpd binaries could let the RPM's installation program know about previously installed copies of the package that weren't done via RPM's and warn the user (perhaps with the option of duplicating the old package's configuration files in the new setup).
Anyways, these are just a few of my ideas, and it seems like we're starting to move in these directions, but the setup programs I'm seeing are just baby steps. Instead of just dropping everything and writing a totally user-friendly setup *system*, we're spending time writing stuff "in between," and I just don't think that's a very efficient way to do it.
INT. HOSPITAL OPERATING ROOM DR. ADAMS is standing over the PATIENT with several NURSES and STUDENTS crowded around the operating table.
ADAMS: I'm sorry, nurse, what was your name again? NURSE 1: My name is Ann, Dr. Adams ADAMS: Oh, please, call me Bill. ANN smiles sweetly. ADAMS: Oh, Ann, could you please hand me the clamps, it looks like our patient is bleeding profusely. ANN: Certainly! Would you prefer the larger clamps or the smaller? ADAMS: Oh, whatever is most handy. PATIENT bleeds to death.
Cut to INT. ANOTHER HOSPITAL OPERATING ROOM An identical setup to the previous operating room, with DR. DOE
DOE: Nurse, clamps. NURSE 1 hands DR. DOE a large set of clamps. PATIENT is saved.
---
Actually, my original post was meant to be more humorous than an actual argument against social civility; I guess you missed the Borg references.
I'm not sure if this was just an "oops" in your message, but you're basically right: 0 K = absolute zero, 0 degrees C = freezing point of water. Aside from those starting points, the scales are the same.
They're probably just using the standard USB support already in the later 2.2 kernels... I can't imagine them developing something proprietary on the side and not even releasing it.
No offense, folks, but I'm seeing a lot of posts offering some rather obvious ideas for providing propulsion to these things.
Think about it: These guys are NASA engineers; I don't think a bunch of Slashdot posts are going to come up with anything they haven't thought of yet.:)
That's not to say I don't enjoy reading them, and I'd probably enjoy reading NASA's take on propulsion ideas more, but here on Slashdot, these ideas are all academic and, for the most part, either redundant or faulty.
You'd better bet there are laws against this kind of stuff. Firstly, there's the all-encompasing law prohibiting a device to cause harmful radio interference. Additionally, there are all sorts of federal laws prohibiting tampering with or disabling any sort of communications or electrical infrastructure equipment. I'm sure there are also dozens and dozens of other more specific laws that could be applied as well. Anyone caught doing stuff like this will *certainly* be put away for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
However, try as I might, I can't think of any situation in which a wiretap (which has to be placed on a known entity) would help locate a missing child. If you know who's got the kid...go get him.
So when you go bust down the guy's door and it turns out he moved the kidnapped child to an abandoned warehouse down the street, and the child is killed because you violated their first demand ("No cops."), what then?
Wiretaps are just like any other evidence-gathering tool.
If your child was kidnapped, and you had a list of 2 people you think did it, wouldn't you want the cops to be able to tap phone lines to be able to tell for sure? With a wiretap they can collect information about the group's movements, plans, and *locations*.
Court orders for line tapping are given out too frequently and with too broad of a spectrum of reasons.
Do you have any statistics on this?
I keep hearing the extremists (not that I'm saying you are one) shout this very same thing, but I have yet to see any concrete evidence of statistics backing this up.
It's almost as if these privacy folk are feeding off of each other's misinformation.
I'm not trying to say you all are nuts, I would just like to see some factual data so that I can make an informed decision. No offense.
It actually didn't seem that submurged.. mainly wet. But yah, you're right of course.
Could simply be normal tidal forces..
I don't know what webcam *you're* looking at, but the one I see is pointed out at somebody's back yard and a body of water. If we're going to see anybody's house being blown away, it'll be the house of the people that set up this webcam in the first place.
I applaud them for allowing us to witness this spectacle of nature from the point of view of their home. I don't particularly think it's funny, but like most people, I consider it thrilling to be able to witness such a thing, even if it's not first-hand.
Can you or I do a single damn thing to stop this? No.
You're right; it isn't a game. It isn't "funny". We aren't taking pleasure in other people's misfortune.
We are commenting and "coolifying" the awesome forces of nature. After this is over, video footage taken of the hurricane will be all over TV programs, news reports and web sites and people will be saying things like, "Oooh, ahhh," because they're commenting on *nature*. You must think storm chasers are the scum of the earth, taking pleasure and even making a living off of forces that invariably ruin peoples lives! How dare they!
To say "stop saying nature is cool because people are going to get hurt!" is stupid. Stop whining. You're not helping anybody.
This is brought up relatively frequently, but the problems still stand:
How do you plan on banning these people? Just ban the user account?
What about AC's? Ban them by IP? How will you deal with dynamic IP addresses, HTTP proxies and IP masquerading/NAT?
Yes, mirrors reflect IR light. White -> Red blocks also reflect a great deal of IR light, whereas Black -> Green blocks tend to absorb it.
It would have been much cooler if they'd managed to set up a live RealVideo stream. I'm sure they could have found some rebroadcast providers (like that distributed RealNetworks "backbone" thing) to donate the bandwidth...
"Paging Dr. Daniels. Dr. Jack Daniels. Sense of humor needed for this John Doe -- STAT!"
OK I'm going to go under the assumption that by "people like you" you are of course not literally referring to me. If I'm wrong in making that assumption, please let me know so that I can respond in a more direct fashion.
---
If they can't be bothered to learn about the software they want to use, we don't need them.
This is *not* the attitude to take. If we continue to cater only to the technically savvy, Linux will remain a niche operating system used only by the technically savvy. Its growth will slow, and fewer people will be interested in learning to use it.
The current trend for computers and operating systems is for intelligent, autonomous simplicity. Some people call it "dumbing the PC down", others call it "creating an intuitive user interface." The types of people that need these interfaces are going to be the types of people that have the hardest time manually editing configuration files and "learning" an operating system's internals. These are the consumers. These are the people that make up the vast, vast majority of the operating system market, and if these people are unable to make use of an operating system that is unable to present configuration options in an intelligent, simple way, that operating system will lose market share and remain in a niche market forever.
"Holographic" was the word used in the article I read. I don't remember the specifics (that's kinda why I was asking), but the light was either piped against or through the back of some holographic film, presumably to get an even, full and rich distribution of the light. I wish I could find a link to that...
I've actually been interested in Mandrake for a while. I just hope their Linux distribution skills are a lot better than their grammar and spelling skills. :)
I use 'autorpm' to keep stuff updated. For background updates, it works fine, e-mailing me progress reports, but the interactive mode it uses to install new packages is just horrible. I haven't looked at the Mandrake-update program, but I suspect it behaves similarly.
Additionally, it just uses RPM's upgrade facility. It would be very nice to have a global configuration mechanism so that one could configure a new package at install/upgrade time (or at least select from multiple pre-written configurations). There are already some efforts on global X-based configuration programs (dotfile I think might be one such effort), but it hasn't quite made its way into a large enough chunk of packages (it might not be flexible/powerful enough for large apps that have complex configuration systems, such as sendmail or Apache).
While not strictly relevant, I've read in the past of efforts to collect sunlight at the tops of buildings, pipe this light down to individual rooms using fiber-optics, and re-distribute it with holographic panels. In theory, the result would be pure sunlight radiated in a very natural pattern, much like a natural skylight.
Has anybody heard of any applications of this idea?
Joy is irrelevant. Self-esteem is irrelevant.
If social graces increase my chances of reproduction, then these graces will be emulated when required.
"Please continue to hold. A representative will be with you shortly. We apologize for the long wait time."
No you're not. If you were truly sorry for the annoying length of time I'm sitting here on hold, you would be spending money getting more people and/or upgrading your call center to see that it doesn't happen again.
Grr.. A simple "Thank you for holding" is sufficient.
Would reading a few paragraphs kill anyone?
While reading the manuals is something we would *hope* everyone would do, time and experience has shown us that it just Won't Happen. We can't just say, "Well, dammit, you should have read the manual," over and over again. We have to build something that will work securely for those that *don't* read the manuals, because there will always be a significant percentage of users that simply won't.
No amount of screaming, shouting, pasting of banners and throttling will get everyone to "clue up" and read about what they're installing, so we have to adapt the distributions so that they will still function for these types of people.
I really can't imagine this being terribly complicated, but I would personally love to see a nice, graphical (or at least curses-based) installation program that behaved basically like this:
1. Select a basic "personality" for this system:
a. Server
b. Workstation
2. Select a starting configuration for this system:
a. Minimal (most secure)
b. Standard
c. Custom (for experienced users or administrators only)
You would then proceed to an application selection area, where you would pick some major configuration options (X Windows, Web Server, Mail Server, Games, etc.) and, if you picked Custom, an exhaustive sub-list of packages selectable with checkbox efficiency. Defaults would be pre-selected based on what "personality" you chose for the system.
Basic daemon configuration would be taken care of at this time as well. If you chose to install the telnet daemon, you would be presented with a warning and an option to automatically refuse connections (firewall? TCP wrappers?) from Internet hosts. Repeat this procedure for things like sendmail, httpd, whatever.
Daemon venders tend to like their packages shipped individually with everything "turned on", because in most cases, when the package is being installed, it's being installed by someone who's about to configure and *use* it. This is bad in the cases where someone is installing a new system, because they probably *won't* be jumping straight to the "configure and use" part. They'll install all of the packages and get to them "later." So, if we force them to make configuration decisions at *install* time, and build (or use pre-built) configuration files then, instead of the stock configuration files, the system ends up being much more secure with the user much more aware of what's been installed and how it's been set up.
Along a similar line of thought, and perhaps this already exists, an extension of this installation program could be a graphical "autorpm" of sorts. A program that retrieves from the 'Net a list of updated packages (such as RedHat's updates), and either automatically makes the updates or at least notifies the user that updates are available (a la Windows Update). If the package uses a new configuration file format, a packaged utility should be included and run to convert the old configuration to the new, otherwise the user should be presented with a configuration dialog again to be sure the new package is ideally configured for the system. I've been the victim of several instances where an RPM "upgrade" *overwrote* the existing configuration file (though it did save a backup). In cases where the "default" configuration only differs from the user-specified configuration in that the default configuration is much less secure, the change might not be noticed immediately (or ever).
I'd also like to see warnings where an installed/upgraded RPM is being installed on a machine that previously contained a self-installed copy of the same package. An example could be some HTTP daemon. A quick search for various httpd binaries could let the RPM's installation program know about previously installed copies of the package that weren't done via RPM's and warn the user (perhaps with the option of duplicating the old package's configuration files in the new setup).
Anyways, these are just a few of my ideas, and it seems like we're starting to move in these directions, but the setup programs I'm seeing are just baby steps. Instead of just dropping everything and writing a totally user-friendly setup *system*, we're spending time writing stuff "in between," and I just don't think that's a very efficient way to do it.
INT. HOSPITAL OPERATING ROOM
DR. ADAMS is standing over the PATIENT with several NURSES and STUDENTS crowded around the operating table.
ADAMS: I'm sorry, nurse, what was your name again?
NURSE 1: My name is Ann, Dr. Adams
ADAMS: Oh, please, call me Bill.
ANN smiles sweetly.
ADAMS: Oh, Ann, could you please hand me the clamps, it looks like our patient is bleeding profusely.
ANN: Certainly! Would you prefer the larger clamps or the smaller?
ADAMS: Oh, whatever is most handy.
PATIENT bleeds to death.
Cut to INT. ANOTHER HOSPITAL OPERATING ROOM
An identical setup to the previous operating room, with DR. DOE
DOE: Nurse, clamps.
NURSE 1 hands DR. DOE a large set of clamps.
PATIENT is saved.
---
Actually, my original post was meant to be more humorous than an actual argument against social civility; I guess you missed the Borg references.
Cheers
1 Kelvin = -272 degrees Celsius
273 Kelvins = 0 degrees Celsius
I'm not sure if this was just an "oops" in your message, but you're basically right: 0 K = absolute zero, 0 degrees C = freezing point of water. Aside from those starting points, the scales are the same.
Social graces are irrelevant. Politeness and the expression and the care for emotions leads to inefficiency.
They're probably just using the standard USB support already in the later 2.2 kernels... I can't imagine them developing something proprietary on the side and not even releasing it.
No offense, folks, but I'm seeing a lot of posts offering some rather obvious ideas for providing propulsion to these things.
:)
Think about it: These guys are NASA engineers; I don't think a bunch of Slashdot posts are going to come up with anything they haven't thought of yet.
That's not to say I don't enjoy reading them, and I'd probably enjoy reading NASA's take on propulsion ideas more, but here on Slashdot, these ideas are all academic and, for the most part, either redundant or faulty.
You'd better bet there are laws against this kind of stuff. Firstly, there's the all-encompasing law prohibiting a device to cause harmful radio interference. Additionally, there are all sorts of federal laws prohibiting tampering with or disabling any sort of communications or electrical infrastructure equipment. I'm sure there are also dozens and dozens of other more specific laws that could be applied as well. Anyone caught doing stuff like this will *certainly* be put away for a long time.