A 2.2 kernel does not a major distro release make.
Oh, but doesn't it? If you think about it, all of the tools and system utilities released with RH5.x were designed to work with the 2.0.x kernel. A great many of those are going to need to be upgraded/replaced to work with 2.2 (ipfwadm -> ipchains, for example, along with whatever GUI front-end they use, if any). As a result, I would expect version numbers of RPM's included in 6.0 to differ a lot more from 5.2 than 5.2 did from 5.1.
I do hope that RH takes it a bit further, though, and doesn't just upgrade the programs that need to be upgraded to work with 2.2. It should "feel" like a new major version.
For the shrinkwrapped bundles, you usually have the EULA attached or visible through the shrinkwrap. Opening all of that up supposedly implies agreement with the EULA.
For pre-installed software, however, the EULA appears on-screen before you're allowed to do anything. (I believe.) Pressing "I agree" (or whatever) indicates your acceptance of the EULA. There should be a printed version included, however.
If you tend to learn by example, try to avoid a lot of the public domain code. 90% of the Perl code I come across is written so horribly and inconsistently that I tend to pull *ideas* from it and re-code it from scratch. I'm not trying to knock all of the Perl developers by saying that (I used to code pretty bad Perl myself when I was learning), but do try to find examples written by experienced programmers instead of novices. An O'Reilley book wouldn't hurt, either (and has examples of good examples!).
Perl syntax is extremely flexible, which is why it might seem confusing. Once you figure it out, though, you'll find Perl to be extremely flexible and efficient.
I am biased a bit here (being a Perl guy), and haven't used any of the competing languages, but I think Perl is the most widespread and general-purpose (though it's excellent when it comes to CGI and text processing).
Um... Try adjusting your viewing threshold
on
Join the NetSlaves!
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· Score: 1
Moderators can't *delete* comments. If you adjust your viewing threshold down a notch or two you will see everything.
The fact is, there simply were no comments made. Perhaps that tells more about the quality of the article than the supposed fascism of the evil moderators.
With VB, you click on a button, drag it where you want it, double-click it to open a code window, and write a line of code that pops up a message box saying, "You've clicked the button!".
That requires about one line of code.
Can you do that with Python or Tkinter? I'm not complete familiar with either of them, but do they even HAVE a GUI builder where you can do these simple things? I don't think Perl does.
That's what I meant by ease of use and suitability for the general (read: programming-dumb) population. It's pretty easy for someone who doesn't really know much BASIC to write a very simple program complete with a nice GUI interface.
Most other languages like Perl and Python I think require you to do all of the GUI stuff using program code, which makes the task considerably more difficult for those that don't do much programming.
VB was written for Windows, which makes it very easy to write little GUI programs.
While I love Perl to death, its GUI abilities are a bit more complex than VB's, and Perl isn't always the best solution for those that don't wish to give out their source code.
A lot of these comments are saying the same things: An implant that functions as a readily-available proximity ID badge is stupid!
That's not the point, folks. Of course there are better ways of doing that. This experiment serves to show that implants that perform more advanced functions can be done. People hearing about what he's done will start seeing that useful implants are right there on the horizon, hopefully furthering research into the area and helping people overcome the psychological issues surrounding the use of such things.
Imagine an implant reporting your medical status (blood sugar, blood pressure, perhaps heart rate, respiration, chemistry, etc.) at regular intervals. Information gathered this way could be immensely useful to you and your doctors.
Also, like stated in the article, implants could be used to augment or work with your nervous system to control prosthetics and devices in the external world (like computers, lights, doors, etc.).
There are hundreds and thousands of potential uses for this technology. Just because he's just using it as an ID badge doesn't mean the technology is worthless. Look at the big picture here, guys. This experiment just shows that computerized implants are realistic and feasible.
If the figures in the article are correct, you would need to purchase and utilize about 684,291 30GB hard drives to store every conceivable 8-character-or-less password.
You'd have to more than double that number in order to fit the encrypted versions in there as well.
My calculations were very basic and quick, but the end result should be in the right ballpark.
And of course, where SALTs are used (all Unix systems) or anything that can affect the encrypted output (most systems), you will need to multiply this number by a few orders of magnitude.
As soon as it's feasible, I plan on putting the PC in the back of my closet somewhere and just having a nice big LCD panel, wireless keyboard and mouse in my living room.
I don't use floppy disks but once every few months, and I can easily put the CD-ROMs I use regularly (usually just my Starcraft CD-ROM) in one of those ATAPI changers...
Won't have to worry about cases, then, at all.
And for those lovely occasions where a hard reset is required (my head is Win98, though I have a Linux box on the LAN), it shouldn't be hard to use some telephone wire and wire up the reset pins on the motherboard and/or power switch to one of those cool key-operated safety pushbutton switches in my living room.
As for lawyers not saying "you can make more, stick 'em where it hurts", they do exactly that. I have known several people that hired lawyers for various reasons after being in some sort of accident, and without exception they were advised by their lawyers to exaggerate the extent of their injuries (or in one case to claim one that didn't exist) for the purposes of a larger settlement. Note that I have no more respect for the people who followed this advice than I do for the attorneys themselves, but the general consensus among them was that this is normal procedure and everyone accepts it as such.
Did the lawyer just volunteer that information, or did the client ask them how they could get the most possible money out of it?
The two lawyers I've dealt with were relatively honest and fair about things... If sickens me to think that this practice is considered normal procedure. If my lawyer started telling me all these ways to cheat my way into getting more money out of a case, I really don't think I would want to take advantage of that. In fact, I'm tempted to say now that I would fire a lawyer who behaved like that.
I just think that's very unethical.
To address this, the school instituted a program whereby if the student would sign a contract that said they would only do certain types of work (public defender, non-profit orgs, etc) and limit their income to $35,000 per year for the first x number of years after graduation (it was either 3 or 5), the school would give them their education for free. Note that this was all inclusive - tuition, board, etc. In the two years the program had been in effect (and all incoming students are made the offer) not one single person had signed on. Not one.
That just seems insane to me. I think I could live relatively comfortably on 35k/year. Free tuition? I would certainly want to take advantage of that.
Maybe there's something else in the plan that's making the offer less appealing?
From: president@nvidia.com To: engineer-jim@nvidia.com Subject: Increased e-mail activity
Jim, the amount of e-mail we've been receiving this week has jumped up an order of magnitude. Moreover, the messages all appear to be angry letters from the Linux community regarding our involvement with Linux development.
Whatever you're doing, STOP IT!
--- From: engineer-jim@nvidia.com To: president@nvidia.com Subject: Re: Increased e-mail activity
It doesn't take a clever person to get a shell password from someone off of IRC, telnet to it, and run "./smurf victim.com". The "clever" part of the attack (spoofing IP addresses, the attack itself) is all built into the pre-packaged DoS program for the convenience of idiots everywhere.
Though I do agree that actually tracking down people doing the smurfing is difficult, but it isn't impossible.
You simply need to have the swift, clueful cooperation of every Internet provider at every hop the spoofed packet takes before it arrives at one of the reflector networks. So long as they're willing to help you out and provide you with information about what uplink *they're* receiving the spoofed packets from, you can track it back to the source. If the attack lasts long enough, this can be achieved.
The pentagon attack *was* browser-based
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Cyber Vigilantes
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I sent the story to slashdot when it happened, but it was apparently deemed unimportant.
Basically, a group of people wrote a Java applet that allowed their friends/members to use their browsers to constantly load pages from the Pentagon servers. They could just start up this applet and go eat dinner while their computer helped in this massive collaborative DoS effort.
The Pentagon, in response, put a Java applet on their own page that detected when visitors were using the attacking applet. When detected, the Pentagon's applet would then start spawning windows uncontrollably until the attacking PC's resources were eaten up.
I thought it was a rather clever response. I don't feel they were being very "vigilante" about it at all. It was actually pretty amusing, and neutralized the attack very effectively.
Script kiddies typically aren't law savvy
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Cyber Vigilantes
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· Score: 1
Most of the kids doing these attacks don't just target one company. They tend to be repeat offenders and attack anyone and everyone that pisses them off. They are deluded into thinking they're untouchable behind that computer screen and for that reason, none of them would think about setting up video surveillance as you described.
Typically, they're nothing more than your average adolescent anti-social IRC script kiddie. If they were really anything more (any sort of threat to corporate thugs), they would be doing something better with their time.
I totally agree that breaking into homes and (even threatening) assault shouldn't be done, but I do sympathize with the companies who are victims of this type of Internet abuse. They usually have little (if any) affordable legal option.
The group that originally organized the attack against the Pentagon utilized Java applets on a page someplace. They had all of their buddies/members load the page and let the Java applet there perform the actual attack (I believe by spawning one or more windows pointing to the Pentagon site and having them continuously refresh).
When the Pentagon put their "counter-attack" applet up (which detected the presence of the attacking applet and then started spawning new browser windows uncontrollably), it basically caused all of the attacking computers to run out of resources.
It's really rather amusing. I don't really consider it a "vigilante" type of attack. In my opinion it was very effective and neutralized the attack.
As far as I understand it, trademark law requires the holder to take legal steps necessary to defend a granted trademark. If other organizations begin using your trademark to the point where it becomes diluted, your rights to that trademark are substantially diminished.
If you don't show that you're taking steps to defend your trademark, you lose it.
I do agree that in this case, "Yahooka" and "Yahoo" are different enough that it's unlikely Yahoo will win a real court case, unless Yahooka simply relents under pressure.
Though I'm starting to get kind of annoyed by all of the lawyer bashing going on here. Most of the time, these lawyers are following instructions given to them by their boss. Something like: "Hey, this marijuana site is using a domain that looks like ours. Stop them." While an ethical lawyer might object and say there's no real case here, they're still employees of the company, serving "the company's" will. If all lawyers suddenly became compassionate, unwilling to hurt the "little guy", allowing anyone to have a field day with their company's trademarks, what do you think would happen? They would get taken advantage of. "Little guys" would step up, take advantage of that "kindness" and profit from The Company's work. Companies like this HAVE to be a little overprotective, because, let's face it, if they're winning every single case in their efforts to protect their trademarks, perhaps they could be doing a little more? The fact that they take on cases and lose a manageable percentage tells me that they're working right on the line, and doing everything they can to ensure their company's wellbeing. If they were to lose a significant number, then I would say they're being a bit overprotective and overzealous. That line between winning and losing is set by the judicial system and their interpretation of the legislation. If you have a complaint there, take it up with those branches of the government.
So when cases like this come up, and you think "damn they're picking on the Little Guy again," try and look at it from the company's point of view. Perhaps write them a letter or an e-mail and ask for their side of the story. Suggest to them any alternatives you can think of. If nothing else, tell them you hate them and will never use their product if they continue to push the issue. (This can work!) If, after they respond (assuming they do) you still think the whole situation sucks, don't be so quick to blame all of the Evil Lawyers and stick it where it belongs: The Company. Now, if the evil company actually WINS the case, and you STILL think it sucks despite the judge's reasoning behind his ruling, that's when you go complaining to your legislature.
Will you still think all lawyers suck when your child is hit by a car and you're forced to sue for damages? Lawyers are working for their clients. They aren't saying, "Hey, man, you can easily double the amount of money you're asking.. let's stick 'em where it hurts!"
Slashdot Mirror
Homes on asteroids are just SO passé...
I'm all for declassifying Pluto as a planet. I don't feel it fits the bill.
A 2.2 kernel does not a major distro release make.
Oh, but doesn't it? If you think about it, all of the tools and system utilities released with RH5.x were designed to work with the 2.0.x kernel. A great many of those are going to need to be upgraded/replaced to work with 2.2 (ipfwadm -> ipchains, for example, along with whatever GUI front-end they use, if any). As a result, I would expect version numbers of RPM's included in 6.0 to differ a lot more from 5.2 than 5.2 did from 5.1.
I do hope that RH takes it a bit further, though, and doesn't just upgrade the programs that need to be upgraded to work with 2.2. It should "feel" like a new major version.
I like their rack mounted systems.
I'd have written it like:
:)
next unless $x && $y;
I think that's a bit clearer. No offense, but "if (!$x || !$y)" doesn't seem very "well-written" to me.
...probably.
There is the whole principle of the matter, but still...
For the shrinkwrapped bundles, you usually have the EULA attached or visible through the shrinkwrap. Opening all of that up supposedly implies agreement with the EULA.
For pre-installed software, however, the EULA appears on-screen before you're allowed to do anything. (I believe.) Pressing "I agree" (or whatever) indicates your acceptance of the EULA. There should be a printed version included, however.
If you tend to learn by example, try to avoid a lot of the public domain code. 90% of the Perl code I come across is written so horribly and inconsistently that I tend to pull *ideas* from it and re-code it from scratch. I'm not trying to knock all of the Perl developers by saying that (I used to code pretty bad Perl myself when I was learning), but do try to find examples written by experienced programmers instead of novices. An O'Reilley book wouldn't hurt, either (and has examples of good examples!).
Perl syntax is extremely flexible, which is why it might seem confusing. Once you figure it out, though, you'll find Perl to be extremely flexible and efficient.
I am biased a bit here (being a Perl guy), and haven't used any of the competing languages, but I think Perl is the most widespread and general-purpose (though it's excellent when it comes to CGI and text processing).
Moderators can't *delete* comments. If you adjust your viewing threshold down a notch or two you will see everything.
The fact is, there simply were no comments made. Perhaps that tells more about the quality of the article than the supposed fascism of the evil moderators.
I wonder how much money this little slashdot plug is going to cost them...
Probably so, but are they *as* easy as VB?
With VB, you click on a button, drag it where you want it, double-click it to open a code window, and write a line of code that pops up a message box saying, "You've clicked the button!".
That requires about one line of code.
Can you do that with Python or Tkinter? I'm not complete familiar with either of them, but do they even HAVE a GUI builder where you can do these simple things? I don't think Perl does.
That's what I meant by ease of use and suitability for the general (read: programming-dumb) population. It's pretty easy for someone who doesn't really know much BASIC to write a very simple program complete with a nice GUI interface.
Most other languages like Perl and Python I think require you to do all of the GUI stuff using program code, which makes the task considerably more difficult for those that don't do much programming.
VB was written for Windows, which makes it very easy to write little GUI programs.
While I love Perl to death, its GUI abilities are a bit more complex than VB's, and Perl isn't always the best solution for those that don't wish to give out their source code.
I don't particularly care for VB, only because it's not suited for my tasks.
Just because a product or language isn't well suited for the things you want/need to do doesn't mean it's automatically inferior.
A lot of these comments are saying the same things: An implant that functions as a readily-available proximity ID badge is stupid!
That's not the point, folks. Of course there are better ways of doing that. This experiment serves to show that implants that perform more advanced functions can be done. People hearing about what he's done will start seeing that useful implants are right there on the horizon, hopefully furthering research into the area and helping people overcome the psychological issues surrounding the use of such things.
Imagine an implant reporting your medical status (blood sugar, blood pressure, perhaps heart rate, respiration, chemistry, etc.) at regular intervals. Information gathered this way could be immensely useful to you and your doctors.
Also, like stated in the article, implants could be used to augment or work with your nervous system to control prosthetics and devices in the external world (like computers, lights, doors, etc.).
There are hundreds and thousands of potential uses for this technology. Just because he's just using it as an ID badge doesn't mean the technology is worthless. Look at the big picture here, guys. This experiment just shows that computerized implants are realistic and feasible.
If the figures in the article are correct, you would need to purchase and utilize about 684,291 30GB hard drives to store every conceivable 8-character-or-less password.
You'd have to more than double that number in order to fit the encrypted versions in there as well.
My calculations were very basic and quick, but the end result should be in the right ballpark.
And of course, where SALTs are used (all Unix systems) or anything that can affect the encrypted output (most systems), you will need to multiply this number by a few orders of magnitude.
Of course I might be missing something here...
As soon as it's feasible, I plan on putting the PC in the back of my closet somewhere and just having a nice big LCD panel, wireless keyboard and mouse in my living room.
I don't use floppy disks but once every few months, and I can easily put the CD-ROMs I use regularly (usually just my Starcraft CD-ROM) in one of those ATAPI changers...
Won't have to worry about cases, then, at all.
And for those lovely occasions where a hard reset is required (my head is Win98, though I have a Linux box on the LAN), it shouldn't be hard to use some telephone wire and wire up the reset pins on the motherboard and/or power switch to one of those cool key-operated safety pushbutton switches in my living room.
As for lawyers not saying "you can make more, stick 'em where it hurts", they do exactly that. I have known several people that hired lawyers for various reasons after being in some sort of accident, and without exception they were advised by their lawyers to exaggerate the extent of their injuries (or in one case to claim one that didn't exist) for the purposes of a larger settlement. Note that I have no more respect for the people who followed this advice than I do for the attorneys themselves, but the general consensus among them was that this is normal procedure and everyone accepts it as such.
Did the lawyer just volunteer that information, or did the client ask them how they could get the most possible money out of it?
The two lawyers I've dealt with were relatively honest and fair about things... If sickens me to think that this practice is considered normal procedure. If my lawyer started telling me all these ways to cheat my way into getting more money out of a case, I really don't think I would want to take advantage of that. In fact, I'm tempted to say now that I would fire a lawyer who behaved like that.
I just think that's very unethical.
To address this, the school instituted a program whereby if the student would sign a contract that said they would only do certain types of work (public defender, non-profit orgs, etc) and limit their income to $35,000 per year for the first x number of years after graduation (it was either 3 or 5), the school would give them their education for free. Note that this was all inclusive - tuition, board, etc. In the two years the program had been in effect (and all incoming students are made the offer) not one single person had signed on. Not one.
That just seems insane to me. I think I could live relatively comfortably on 35k/year. Free tuition? I would certainly want to take advantage of that.
Maybe there's something else in the plan that's making the offer less appealing?
From: president@nvidia.com
To: engineer-jim@nvidia.com
Subject: Increased e-mail activity
Jim, the amount of e-mail we've been receiving this week has jumped up an order of magnitude. Moreover, the messages all appear to be angry letters from the Linux community regarding our involvement with Linux development.
Whatever you're doing, STOP IT!
---
From: engineer-jim@nvidia.com
To: president@nvidia.com
Subject: Re: Increased e-mail activity
> Whatever you're doing, STOP IT!
Yes sir.
It doesn't take a clever person to get a shell password from someone off of IRC, telnet to it, and run "./smurf victim.com". The "clever" part of the attack (spoofing IP addresses, the attack itself) is all built into the pre-packaged DoS program for the convenience of idiots everywhere.
Though I do agree that actually tracking down people doing the smurfing is difficult, but it isn't impossible.
You simply need to have the swift, clueful cooperation of every Internet provider at every hop the spoofed packet takes before it arrives at one of the reflector networks. So long as they're willing to help you out and provide you with information about what uplink *they're* receiving the spoofed packets from, you can track it back to the source. If the attack lasts long enough, this can be achieved.
I sent the story to slashdot when it happened, but it was apparently deemed unimportant.
Basically, a group of people wrote a Java applet that allowed their friends/members to use their browsers to constantly load pages from the Pentagon servers. They could just start up this applet and go eat dinner while their computer helped in this massive collaborative DoS effort.
The Pentagon, in response, put a Java applet on their own page that detected when visitors were using the attacking applet. When detected, the Pentagon's applet would then start spawning windows uncontrollably until the attacking PC's resources were eaten up.
I thought it was a rather clever response. I don't feel they were being very "vigilante" about it at all. It was actually pretty amusing, and neutralized the attack very effectively.
Most of the kids doing these attacks don't just target one company. They tend to be repeat offenders and attack anyone and everyone that pisses them off. They are deluded into thinking they're untouchable behind that computer screen and for that reason, none of them would think about setting up video surveillance as you described.
Typically, they're nothing more than your average adolescent anti-social IRC script kiddie. If they were really anything more (any sort of threat to corporate thugs), they would be doing something better with their time.
I totally agree that breaking into homes and (even threatening) assault shouldn't be done, but I do sympathize with the companies who are victims of this type of Internet abuse. They usually have little (if any) affordable legal option.
The group that originally organized the attack against the Pentagon utilized Java applets on a page someplace. They had all of their buddies/members load the page and let the Java applet there perform the actual attack (I believe by spawning one or more windows pointing to the Pentagon site and having them continuously refresh).
When the Pentagon put their "counter-attack" applet up (which detected the presence of the attacking applet and then started spawning new browser windows uncontrollably), it basically caused all of the attacking computers to run out of resources.
It's really rather amusing. I don't really consider it a "vigilante" type of attack. In my opinion it was very effective and neutralized the attack.
As far as I understand it, trademark law requires the holder to take legal steps necessary to defend a granted trademark. If other organizations begin using your trademark to the point where it becomes diluted, your rights to that trademark are substantially diminished.
If you don't show that you're taking steps to defend your trademark, you lose it.
I do agree that in this case, "Yahooka" and "Yahoo" are different enough that it's unlikely Yahoo will win a real court case, unless Yahooka simply relents under pressure.
Though I'm starting to get kind of annoyed by all of the lawyer bashing going on here. Most of the time, these lawyers are following instructions given to them by their boss. Something like: "Hey, this marijuana site is using a domain that looks like ours. Stop them." While an ethical lawyer might object and say there's no real case here, they're still employees of the company, serving "the company's" will. If all lawyers suddenly became compassionate, unwilling to hurt the "little guy", allowing anyone to have a field day with their company's trademarks, what do you think would happen? They would get taken advantage of. "Little guys" would step up, take advantage of that "kindness" and profit from The Company's work. Companies like this HAVE to be a little overprotective, because, let's face it, if they're winning every single case in their efforts to protect their trademarks, perhaps they could be doing a little more? The fact that they take on cases and lose a manageable percentage tells me that they're working right on the line, and doing everything they can to ensure their company's wellbeing. If they were to lose a significant number, then I would say they're being a bit overprotective and overzealous. That line between winning and losing is set by the judicial system and their interpretation of the legislation. If you have a complaint there, take it up with those branches of the government.
So when cases like this come up, and you think "damn they're picking on the Little Guy again," try and look at it from the company's point of view. Perhaps write them a letter or an e-mail and ask for their side of the story. Suggest to them any alternatives you can think of. If nothing else, tell them you hate them and will never use their product if they continue to push the issue. (This can work!) If, after they respond (assuming they do) you still think the whole situation sucks, don't be so quick to blame all of the Evil Lawyers and stick it where it belongs: The Company. Now, if the evil company actually WINS the case, and you STILL think it sucks despite the judge's reasoning behind his ruling, that's when you go complaining to your legislature.
Will you still think all lawyers suck when your child is hit by a car and you're forced to sue for damages? Lawyers are working for their clients. They aren't saying, "Hey, man, you can easily double the amount of money you're asking.. let's stick 'em where it hurts!"
http://www.phobe.com/furby/guts.html
If you hadn't actually had some real, on-topic and/or relevant content in your post, it would have disappeared already.
I see no huge reason why your post should be moderated down, even though half of it is junk.