Re:Creationism and Short Sightedness
on
Mule Gives Birth
·
· Score: 2
OK.. Blowing *my* chance to mod to set things straight..
"What you're saying amounts to people that used to bash Christopher Columbus for believing the world is round".
Actually, Queen Isabella knew *damned* well that (a) the world was round (b) the circumference was around 25,000 miles (c) that going east it was some 7,000 miles and (d) ships of the day didn't have the capacity to carry supplies for a trip of 18,000 miles the OTHER way. Chris Columbus thought the circumferences was 12,000 miles, and thought a ship could carry supplies for a 5,000 mile trip.
So Isabella finally shut him up by sending him off with 3 leaky ships crewed by prison scum, figuring if they never came back she'd not be sorry. And sure enough, 5,000 miles later Chris was running out of food when he found unexpected land. Fool that he was, he went to his deathbead truly convinced he *had* made it to the Orient.
Call Isabella the first of the high-risk venture capital financiers...:)
"It was estimated that 6 computers would be enough for the entire world".
Let's take that into context, shall we? What Watson actually *said* was that he thought the market for *that performance* machine, at *that price*, was about 6 systems. Now mind you, he was talking about the biggest iron ever made at the time.
What's the market for ASCI-White (http://www.top500.org/top5/2/) class machines? 8 thousand processors, 6 *TERA*bytes of *RAM*, 12.3 teraflops?
What Watson was worried about was being able to sink the R&D costs for 6 machines - IBM didn't get really good at amortizing the R&D costs across *LOTS* of machines till the S/360 series.
A photon has mass - it must have for it to be affected by gravity as per your following statement.
Actually, no. A photon has *energy* that has to be treated like mass for gravitational purposes - that's where the famous E=MC**2 comes from. However, rather than gaining or losing velocity going up or down a gravity well, it experiences a loss/gain in energy, and thus a change in wavelength.
Light is bent by strong gravitational fields.
Actually, no. The light follows a "straight" line through a curved space. Sort of like taking a boat across the Atlantic - the entire time you feel like you're going in a straight line, but once you get across, your local vertical is some 30 degrees off what it was on the other side.
If you feel it's important enough to download, please register. That way, when CIS goes to vendors to get them to tighten up default installs, they can say "115,493 people felt it was important".
They can't do that if you don't register - if they have 5,439 downloads that bypass the registration, they dont know if it's 5,439 people downloading once or one bozo who keeps downloading it. And given the existence of caching proxies and DHCP, it's a mess to corrolate enough to prove two downloads were different people...
* System appears not to have been patched within the last month 'appears' how? I recompiled gcc, libc, apache, xfree86 and more two weeks ago!
Well... OK. We cheated. We just check the mtime on the RPM databases. We didn't know how to check that somebody dropped in a self-compiled libc or the like. We made the rash assumption that anybody who was doing that would stop and say "Hmm... *have* there been any updates I've not applied in the last month"....
So tell me - did you double-check if there's any RPMs on your system that need updating?;)
Exactly. If you're clever enough to know how to make totally sure that you've gotten all the current stuff running without a reboot, feel free to do so.
However, considering that you've likely touched close to half the files in/etc, rebooting now MIGHT be a good idea, if for no other reason that to make sure you didn't scrog something.
You reboot now, you'll probably know why something breaks. You don't reboot till 6 weeks from now, you're going to be spinning your wheels.
I'm one of the culprits for both the Linux, Solaris, and related benchmarks. It seems that a lot of posters are managing to miss the messages.
1) There is *NO* expectation that a usable system will score a 10.0. I fully expect that having a usable system score over a 9.0 will require some work. The laptop I'm writing this on finally scored an 8.8 after much tweaking. However, I *KNOW* what 11 or 12 things didn't pass, and I know to keep an eye on them. As I said to one of the other people - "I tighten it down any more, my score will go up but I'll break something I need on a daily basis". *THAT* is the score we want everybody's machine to get.
2) A number of people have complained it checked/etc/ftpusers even if ftpd wasn't enabled. Belts AND suspenders guys - if someday you install a patch or whatever that DOES enable ftpd accidentally, you won't be a sitting duck.
3) Yes, we know there weren't any really stringent firewall tests. This was a point of MUCH contention during development - we had to balance the security aspect of every item against the likelyhood that it would Severely Screw Up somebody's machine if implemented. Note that even RedHat recognized that there's no "One Size Fits All" for firewalls, and provides 3 basic levels of paranoia.
4) There's a LOT of stuff (like firewalls) that are good security measures that are *NOT* appropriate for "almost every machine". These will hopefully be visited in a "Level 2" benchmark in the near future.
5) Yes, there's rough edges - if you find something annoying, *please* send a comment to the appropriate e-mail address.
Remember - these are *consensus* benchmarks. We *do* listen to user feedback. And no, you don't have to be a CIS member to send feedback.
Well.. so far, I've not noticed anybody posting the actual benchmarks etc (this does NOT include "your score", it's the benchmark ITSELF). So nobody's violating (e).
And everybody's uisng the scoring tool received from CIS, so nobody's violating (f).
The part about (f) basically means that you can't go saying "I scored a 5.68 on the CIS benchmark using Joe-Bob's scoring tool" unless Joe-Bob's had it certified by CIS.
Exactly. I'm rasonably aware of which texts each of the 3 major religions to come out of the Middle East use, and the basic precepts of each (although I do wish to thank 'Flakeloaf' for the reminder of the distinction between Mishna and gemara).
The Islamic world has had the divorce-via-email thing crop up at least twice that I know of.
The Christian world seems mostly concerned with the Internet as carrier of moral decay.
However, I have *NOT* heard of any recent discussion of similar religion-meets-technology from the Jewish world (at least not since "Is it OK to use a telephone on the Sabbath?")
We have already seen the Islamic religious authorities having to deal with the question of whether divorce via e-mail is binding. What do you see as the biggest and/or most interesting questions regarding Talmudic teaching as they apply to current/near-future technology?
Re:Doesn't the earth receive more?
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Yes, true, but where are the foundries to smelt the aluminum from rock, the oxygen to burn fuel to melt silicon into glass,"
Well... you bootstrap. Smelting aluminum is already well known to be an electricity-intensive process. And why are you bothering to burn fuel when the whole reason you're there is because you have lots of free energy? Use a magnifying glass, or set up a small array of solar panels and use an electric arc to melt your silicon.
Will mySQL+Linux effectively handle multi-terabyte databases? Remember to also consider backup/restore issues - IBM has demonstrated the ability to back up an entire 1T Oracle database in under 60 minutes, wipe it out, and restore it from tape in under 90 minutes.
People who say Linux is "formidable" have never looked at how truly huge IBM "big iron" boxes can be.
Specs for a maxed-out z900:
64G memory 16 CPUs 96 FICON Express channels - rated at 100Mbytes/sec and up to 7000 IO/sec *each*. And you can have 256 or so disks per channel - and there's the usual multi-path support. One of those channels is busy, the hardware will check one of the OTHER 4 or 8 paths to the disk and transfer the data that way instead.
Scsi cable restrictions? Not here - those FICON will go 100km (want to mirror your disks in another city? No problem...)
And if that's not enough, you can tightly couple 32 of them in a cluster.
Amen. Yes, IBM support contracts cost a bunch. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing where "we've crashed once" means "developer is calling you back within the hour, even if it's 3AM", and "we've crashed twice" means "two developers is on the phone to you, and another two are on their way to the airport..."
The hardware side is even more amazing - the support processor will phone home and ask for a CE to be dispatched along with relevant parts, to replace things showing a tendency to fail. So your first sign of problem is the guy showing up with parts.
And if you thought hot-swappable disk drives were cool, try hot-swapping a memory or CPU card.:)
As several people have noted, you still have a problem with battery size. Also, you have a minimum size for the speaker and microphone to produce a usable signal (the only reason in-the-ear headsets can be THAT small is because they ARE in your ear - to be heard from an inch away from your ear they need be bigger).
And was that guy in the other car flipping you the bird, or just extending his antenna?
Umm... You can? I just checked over at IBM. An RS6K 43P-150 with 250mz 604e, 128M, 9.1G disk is $3800. With 256M, 18G disk, a tape drive, amd a *low end* graphics card, $9,600. And that's for a 604e. We're talking Mac 7300 class processor here.
OK.. let's go look at their entry-level 64-bit box. A 44P-170 with 333mz PowerIII, 256M, and 9G disk is $8,000. You go for the 450mz part, with 1G memory, 2x18G disk, and a tape drive, you're looking at $26K.
The important thing to remember here is that IBM gear is *expensive*, but that's because it has different design goals than most commodity Intel boxes. One difference is that it's designed to live *forever*. We still have some old RS6k-550 boxes in production.
We got those boxes in 1990.
Why are they still in production? Because they're still getting their job done.
Another difference? They're designed to *start* performance wise where commodity gear tops out. The 44P-270 can go to 4 Power3 processors at 450mz, 16G of memory, and as much disk as you can fit into 5 media bays worth of scsi-3 (though I recommend going 3rd-party for that).
Needless to say, letting 4 CPUs, the I/O, and a graphics card all beat on memory at once without bottlenecking too much is NOT trivial. Nor is managing to cram all this into a deskside box without exceeding the power/cooling budget.
And that loaded 44P-270 will still be running in 2013 if you want it to.
1) It's fine to say "use a GeForce3" if you have one. However, the majority of us do NOT have a GeForce3. For some of us (like everybody who's not on an Intel-based system), a GeForce3 may not even be on option. Enlightenment 0.16.5 works fine on my AIX box - it even runs fine on my old home AIX box (a model 350 - a whole whopping 66mz Power chipset). Remember that Sun and SGI are both shipping Enlightenment now, and even in the Intel-based Linux world, I don't think it's safe to assume any more capability than 24-bit color. E17 shouldn't be assuming effects - it should be saying "use options if the X server (which may not be XFree86) says they are available". Last I checked, even XFree86 didn't have XRender extension support for all drivers yet.
2) There's a major distinction to be made between "looks nice" and "is productively useful". Yes, it's good if your window manager looks pretty (I'd like to thank Christian Kreibich for his Ganymede theme) but at least in *my* case, I get paid to get things done on the computer. As a result, I *want* my window manager to look pretty, but I *need* it to help me get things done quickly.
Now, some features are pretty easy to demonstrate why they'd be useful - for instance, it *would* be nice to have sane support for drop shadows. However, the reason for drop shadows isn't "because it's cool" - it's because it's additional visual information that helps you identify the edges of windows and the actual stacking order.
Now maybe there's a good HCI (human computer interaction) reason for supporting motion blur and bump mapping for the window manager. And if there is, I'll be happy to listen. But keep in mind that you're talking about *window manager* controlled screen real estate, not application windows. There seems to be a backlash by at least some users who feel window managers take too much screen space away (I'm one of these - my current theme has only 5 pixels on sides and bottom, and 25 or so in the titlebar). Not much you can *DO* with bump mapping or motion blur in a strip 5 pixels wide;)
Just keep in mind that "eye candy" and "usability" are not always synonymous....
Well.. if they were running a whorehouse, then they should be arrested for violating the prostitution laws.
All the court ruling said was that using the *ZONING* laws to deal with the problem was as silly (and for the SAME REASONS) as saying that you can't telecommute to your office because you live in an area zoned residential.
The legal basis for restrictive EULAs is that you have to make a copy of the software (in your computer's RAM) in order to use it. Copying is prohibited without explicit permission, and so, therefore, is use.
However, 17 USC 117 (a) specifically says:
* (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
* (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an
essential step in the utilization of the computer program in
conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other
manner, or
* (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes
only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that
continued possession of the computer program should cease to be
rightful.
Basically, (1) says that the copy in RAM you need to RUN it is legal, and (2) your backups are legal. As a result, you don't need to agree to anything else in order to do either of these, so that's not a good legal basis for an EULA.
The first step is POSIX 1003.1e 'capabilities', and is already partially supported in the current Linux kernel. Basically, it breaks the 'suser()' check for "are we running as root?" into lots of little checks: "are we allowed to open any file?" "are we allowed to use raw sockets?" "are we allowed to kill() other processes?" and so on. So instead of (for example) 'ping' being suid just so it can use a raw socket, it would have CAP_NET_RAW, and if subverted, the only thing the attacker gets is the ability to send raw packets (which may be leveragable, but makes it a LOT harder than just execve'in a root shell on the spot).
The other big move is to support ACLs - access control lists - so you can say "fred, george and harry can write this file, members of group foo are only able to read it, and members of group bar aren't able to do anytying with it".
SELinux, the LSM project, and the like, are the sort of thing we're aiming at....
It's probably a significant effect that limits the spread of *viruses* on Linux (although the fact that most binaries are not writable by users is probably a bigger factor). Viruses attach themselves to existing binaries.
Worms, on the other hand, are completely self-contained binaries - so if you're running a Linux 2.2.mumble or later kernel, and have anywhere near recent glibc installed, a worm should be able to run just fine. If you're still running a kernel so old you only have a.out support and not ELF, you're probably mostly safe, but have bigger problems;)
Yes, they smack their collective head and say "d'oh".
Remember - it's usually NOT the URL itself that causes the problem - it's when you start parsing it down, and you look for a '~username' to expand in a URL, and of COURSE since usernames are 8 chars or less, you have a 'char username[8];' declaration...
(and yes, there's an OBVIOUS bug in the example, the fact that you can be passed a username over 8 chars, and a SUBTLE bug too, left as an excersize for the reader.)
1. If you are so anti-Microsoft that you feel the need to create a site against it, isn't it a touch hypocrtical to be using a Microsoft product to do that? In other words, if Microsoft is so evil, why are you using their product? (I know some may say they have no choice. Why? For instance, if it is "your company's toolset," they probably don't want you creating an anti-anything site on thier dime)
Ahh... but you see - there's more to it than that. What if you used FrontPage to create a blogger or a message board, and somebody posts an anti-Microsoft comment on it? In that case, you're being told to censor your users or be in violation of your license.
And note that the users of your message board didn't agree to the terms of the license, you did.
Slashdot Mirror
OK.. Blowing *my* chance to mod to set things straight..
:)
"What you're saying amounts to people that used to bash Christopher Columbus for believing the world is round".
Actually, Queen Isabella knew *damned* well that (a) the world was round (b) the circumference was around 25,000 miles (c) that going east it was some 7,000 miles and (d) ships of the day didn't have the capacity to carry supplies for a trip of 18,000 miles the OTHER way. Chris Columbus thought the circumferences was 12,000 miles, and thought a ship could carry supplies for a 5,000 mile trip.
So Isabella finally shut him up by sending him off with 3 leaky ships crewed by prison scum, figuring if they never came back she'd not be sorry. And sure enough, 5,000 miles later Chris was running out of food when he found unexpected land. Fool that he was, he went to his deathbead truly convinced he *had* made it to the Orient.
Call Isabella the first of the high-risk venture capital financiers...
"It was estimated that 6 computers would be enough for the entire world".
Let's take that into context, shall we? What Watson actually *said* was that he thought the market for *that performance* machine, at *that price*, was about 6 systems. Now mind you, he was talking about the biggest iron ever made at the time.
What's the market for ASCI-White (http://www.top500.org/top5/2/) class machines? 8 thousand processors, 6 *TERA*bytes of *RAM*, 12.3 teraflops?
What Watson was worried about was being able to sink the R&D costs for 6 machines - IBM didn't get really good at amortizing the R&D costs across *LOTS* of machines till the S/360 series.
A photon has mass - it must have for it to be affected by gravity as per your following statement.
Actually, no. A photon has *energy* that has to be treated like mass for gravitational purposes - that's where the famous E=MC**2 comes from. However, rather than gaining or losing velocity going up or down a gravity well, it experiences a loss/gain in energy, and thus a change in wavelength.
Light is bent by strong gravitational fields.
Actually, no. The light follows a "straight" line through a curved space. Sort of like taking a boat across the Atlantic - the entire time you feel like you're going in a straight line, but once you get across, your local vertical is some 30 degrees off what it was on the other side.
Binary packages from your distribution vendor will be fine only if the perpetraror didn't manage to use the trojan to backdoor the build machine.
Think about it - use a blatant backdoor in OpenSSH to get in and drop a subtle backdoor into the build process.
Step 1: Read Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture "On Trusting Trust"
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
Step 2: Decide for yourself if you're ready for the tinfoil-helmet brigade.
Step 3: Type 'make world' if you dare.
And yes, YASSP was one of the things we used as input for what needed to be checked.
If you feel it's important enough to download, please register. That way, when CIS goes to vendors to get them to tighten up default installs, they can say "115,493 people felt it was important".
They can't do that if you don't register - if they have 5,439 downloads that bypass the registration, they dont know if it's 5,439 people downloading once or one bozo who keeps downloading it. And given the existence of caching proxies and DHCP, it's a mess to corrolate enough to prove two downloads were different people...
* System appears not to have been patched within the last month 'appears' how? I recompiled gcc, libc, apache, xfree86 and more two weeks ago!
;)
Well... OK. We cheated. We just check the mtime on the RPM databases. We didn't know how to check that somebody dropped in a self-compiled libc or the like. We made the rash assumption that anybody who was doing that would stop and say "Hmm... *have* there been any updates I've not applied in the last month"....
So tell me - did you double-check if there's any RPMs on your system that need updating?
Exactly. If you're clever enough to know how to make totally sure that you've gotten all the current stuff running without a reboot, feel free to do so.
/etc, rebooting now MIGHT be a good idea, if for no other reason that to make sure you didn't scrog something.
However, considering that you've likely touched close to half the files in
You reboot now, you'll probably know why something breaks. You don't reboot till 6 weeks from now, you're going to be spinning your wheels.
I'm one of the culprits for both the Linux, Solaris, and related benchmarks. It seems that a lot of posters are managing to miss the messages.
/etc/ftpusers even if ftpd wasn't enabled. Belts AND suspenders guys - if someday you install a patch or whatever that DOES enable ftpd accidentally, you won't be a sitting duck.
1) There is *NO* expectation that a usable system will score a 10.0. I fully expect that having a usable system score over a 9.0 will require some work. The laptop I'm writing this on finally scored an 8.8 after much tweaking. However, I *KNOW* what 11 or 12 things didn't pass, and I know to keep an eye on them. As I said to one of the other people - "I tighten it down any more, my score will go up but I'll break something I need on a daily basis". *THAT* is the score we want everybody's machine to get.
2) A number of people have complained it checked
3) Yes, we know there weren't any really stringent firewall tests. This was a point of MUCH contention during development - we had to balance the security aspect of every item against the likelyhood that it would Severely Screw Up somebody's machine if implemented. Note that even RedHat recognized that there's no "One Size Fits All" for firewalls, and provides 3 basic levels of paranoia.
4) There's a LOT of stuff (like firewalls) that are good security measures that are *NOT* appropriate for "almost every machine". These will hopefully be visited in a "Level 2" benchmark in the near future.
5) Yes, there's rough edges - if you find something annoying, *please* send a comment to the appropriate e-mail address.
Remember - these are *consensus* benchmarks. We *do* listen to user feedback. And no, you don't have to be a CIS member to send feedback.
Well.. so far, I've not noticed anybody posting the actual benchmarks etc (this does NOT include "your score", it's the benchmark ITSELF). So nobody's violating (e).
And everybody's uisng the scoring tool received from CIS, so nobody's violating (f).
The part about (f) basically means that you can't go saying "I scored a 5.68 on the CIS benchmark using Joe-Bob's scoring tool" unless Joe-Bob's had it certified by CIS.
Exactly. I'm rasonably aware of which texts each of the 3 major religions to come out of the Middle East use, and the basic precepts of each (although I do wish to thank 'Flakeloaf' for the reminder of the distinction between Mishna and gemara).
;)
The Islamic world has had the divorce-via-email thing crop up at least twice that I know of.
The Christian world seems mostly concerned with the Internet as carrier of moral decay.
However, I have *NOT* heard of any recent discussion of similar religion-meets-technology from the Jewish world (at least not since "Is it OK to use a telephone on the Sabbath?")
Seemed like Moshe would be *the* person to ask.
We have already seen the Islamic religious authorities having to deal with the question of whether divorce via e-mail is binding. What do you see as the biggest and/or most interesting questions regarding Talmudic teaching as they apply to current/near-future technology?
"Yes, true, but where are the foundries to smelt the aluminum from rock, the oxygen to burn fuel to melt silicon into glass,"
Well... you bootstrap. Smelting aluminum is already well known to be an electricity-intensive process. And why are you bothering to burn fuel when the whole reason you're there is because you have lots of free energy? Use a magnifying glass, or set up a small array of solar panels and use an electric arc to melt your silicon.
Will mySQL+Linux effectively handle multi-terabyte databases? Remember to also consider backup/restore issues - IBM has demonstrated the ability to back up an entire 1T Oracle database in under 60 minutes, wipe it out, and restore it from tape in under 90 minutes.
People who say Linux is "formidable" have never looked at how truly huge IBM "big iron" boxes can be.
Specs for a maxed-out z900:
64G memory
16 CPUs
96 FICON Express channels - rated at 100Mbytes/sec and up to 7000 IO/sec *each*. And you can have 256 or so disks per channel - and there's the usual multi-path support. One of those channels is busy, the hardware will check one of the OTHER 4 or 8 paths to the disk and transfer the data that way instead.
Scsi cable restrictions? Not here - those FICON will go 100km (want to mirror your disks in another city? No problem...)
And if that's not enough, you can tightly couple 32 of them in a cluster.
Full gory details are here
Full VERY gory details in PDF format are here
Amen. Yes, IBM support contracts cost a bunch. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing where "we've crashed once" means "developer is calling you back within the hour, even if it's 3AM", and "we've crashed twice" means "two developers is on the phone to you, and another two are on their way to the airport..."
:)
The hardware side is even more amazing - the support processor will phone home and ask for a CE to be dispatched along with relevant parts, to replace things showing a tendency to fail. So your first sign of problem is the guy showing up with parts.
And if you thought hot-swappable disk drives were cool, try hot-swapping a memory or CPU card.
As several people have noted, you still have a problem with battery size. Also, you have a minimum size for the speaker and microphone to produce a usable signal (the only reason in-the-ear headsets can be THAT small is because they ARE in your ear - to be heard from an inch away from your ear they need be bigger).
And was that guy in the other car flipping you the bird, or just extending his antenna?
Umm... You can? I just checked over at IBM. An RS6K 43P-150 with 250mz 604e, 128M, 9.1G disk is $3800. With 256M, 18G disk, a tape drive, amd a *low end* graphics card, $9,600. And that's for a 604e. We're talking Mac 7300 class processor here.
w are/entry/
OK.. let's go look at their entry-level 64-bit box. A 44P-170 with 333mz PowerIII, 256M, and 9G disk is $8,000. You go for the 450mz part, with 1G memory, 2x18G disk, and a tape drive, you're looking at $26K.
References: http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hard
The important thing to remember here is that IBM gear is *expensive*, but that's because it has different design goals than most commodity Intel boxes. One difference is that it's designed to live *forever*. We still have some old RS6k-550 boxes in production.
We got those boxes in 1990.
Why are they still in production? Because they're still getting their job done.
Another difference? They're designed to *start* performance wise where commodity gear tops out. The 44P-270 can go to 4 Power3 processors at 450mz, 16G of memory, and as much disk as you can fit into 5 media bays worth of scsi-3 (though I recommend going 3rd-party for that).
Needless to say, letting 4 CPUs, the I/O, and a graphics card all beat on memory at once without bottlenecking too much is NOT trivial. Nor is managing to cram all this into a deskside box without exceeding the power/cooling budget.
And that loaded 44P-270 will still be running in 2013 if you want it to.
But you aren't going to get 2 of them for $15K.
There's two major problems here:
;)
1) It's fine to say "use a GeForce3" if you have one. However, the majority of us do NOT have a GeForce3. For some of us (like everybody who's not on an Intel-based system), a GeForce3 may not even be on option. Enlightenment 0.16.5 works fine on my AIX box - it even runs fine on my old home AIX box (a model 350 - a whole whopping 66mz Power chipset). Remember that Sun and SGI are both shipping Enlightenment now, and even in the Intel-based Linux world, I don't think it's safe to assume any more capability than 24-bit color. E17 shouldn't be assuming effects - it should be saying "use options if the X server (which may not be XFree86) says they are available". Last I checked, even XFree86 didn't have XRender extension support for all drivers yet.
2) There's a major distinction to be made between "looks nice" and "is productively useful". Yes, it's good if your window manager looks pretty (I'd like to thank Christian Kreibich for his Ganymede theme) but at least in *my* case, I get paid to get things done on the computer. As a result, I *want* my window manager to look pretty, but I *need* it to help me get things done quickly.
Now, some features are pretty easy to demonstrate why they'd be useful - for instance, it *would* be nice to have sane support for drop shadows. However, the reason for drop shadows isn't "because it's cool" - it's because it's additional visual information that helps you identify the edges of windows and the actual stacking order.
Now maybe there's a good HCI (human computer interaction) reason for supporting motion blur and bump mapping for the window manager. And if there is, I'll be happy to listen. But keep in mind that you're talking about *window manager* controlled screen real estate, not application windows. There seems to be a backlash by at least some users who feel window managers take too much screen space away (I'm one of these - my current theme has only 5 pixels on sides and bottom, and 25 or so in the titlebar). Not much you can *DO* with bump mapping or motion blur in a strip 5 pixels wide
Just keep in mind that "eye candy" and "usability" are not always synonymous....
Well.. if they were running a whorehouse, then they should be arrested for violating the prostitution laws.
All the court ruling said was that using the *ZONING* laws to deal with the problem was as silly (and for the SAME REASONS) as saying that you can't telecommute to your office because you live in an area zoned residential.
However, 17 USC 117 (a) specifically says:
* (a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy. - Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: * (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or * (2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
Basically, (1) says that the copy in RAM you need to RUN it is legal, and (2) your backups are legal. As a result, you don't need to agree to anything else in order to do either of these, so that's not a good legal basis for an EULA.
The first step is POSIX 1003.1e 'capabilities', and is already partially supported in the current Linux kernel. Basically, it breaks the 'suser()' check for "are we running as root?" into lots of little checks: "are we allowed to open any file?" "are we allowed to use raw sockets?" "are we allowed to kill() other processes?" and so on. So instead of (for example) 'ping' being suid just so it can use a raw socket, it would have CAP_NET_RAW, and if subverted, the only thing the attacker gets is the ability to send raw packets (which may be leveragable, but makes it a LOT harder than just execve'in a root shell on the spot).
The other big move is to support ACLs - access control lists - so you can say "fred, george and harry can write this file, members of group foo are only able to read it, and members of group bar aren't able to do anytying with it".
SELinux, the LSM project, and the like, are the sort of thing we're aiming at....
It's probably a significant effect that limits the spread of *viruses* on Linux (although the fact that most binaries are not writable by users is probably a bigger factor). Viruses attach themselves to existing binaries.
;)
Worms, on the other hand, are completely self-contained binaries - so if you're running a Linux 2.2.mumble or later kernel, and have anywhere near recent glibc installed, a worm should be able to run just fine. If you're still running a kernel so old you only have a.out support and not ELF, you're probably mostly safe, but have bigger problems
Yes, they smack their collective head and say "d'oh".
Remember - it's usually NOT the URL itself that causes the problem - it's when you start parsing it down, and you look for a '~username' to expand in a URL, and of COURSE since usernames are 8 chars or less, you have a 'char username[8];' declaration...
(and yes, there's an OBVIOUS bug in the example, the fact that you can be passed a username over 8 chars, and a SUBTLE bug too, left as an excersize for the reader.)
Ahh... but you see - there's more to it than that. What if you used FrontPage to create a blogger or a message board, and somebody posts an anti-Microsoft comment on it? In that case, you're being told to censor your users or be in violation of your license.
And note that the users of your message board didn't agree to the terms of the license, you did.