So these kids were violating University policy. At most schools, there's a school-run judicial system. The school issues a fine, and it then proceeds through that system; in most cases, students just pay the fine. For more serious issues, penalties may include prohibitions from campus social events or suspension.
I assume OSU has such a system; correct me if this is wrong.
So why was that system not used? Usually colleges do all they can to keep their discipline issues in their own system, avoiding the added publicity and buerocracy that police involvement brings. Why not just issue a fine to the students to recover the unpaid access fees (and possibly a penalty fee)? Is this consistent with how OSU handles other discipline issues, or are they trying to make some sort of example here? If the latter, could that unfair application of the law be a defense in court?
When I was an undergrad, there wasn't much networking to speak of. Then I went to grad school at Dartmouth. The entire campus was networked. We had network ports in the privately-owned fraternaties, even. In that case, the fraternaties did pay for the hookup, but only to cover the physical connection, not a per-port fee.
Of course, at Dartmouth, everyone is required to have a computer, and professors expect to be able to use email for class assignments (even in the humanities), turning in papers, and such.
It's been like that for over ten years.
Now I'm surprised to hear about schools charging for Internet access. You would think they would be doing everything they could to encourage computer use as a basic part of the education, not treating it like some luxury.
Just reply to this post, but change the subject line to something like "Cheap State U charges $50/semester" or "Forward Thinking College; free." Then in the comment, you can elaborate if there's more to say. (Maybe this should be a poll.)
So what if someone installed wireless networking, such as the Apple AirPort? This would do the same thing, but it wouldn't leave any physical evidence. And unless the school specifically bans it, it would seem to fall under a presumption of fair use, assuming that it's also being used for laptop connections by the people in the room where it is connected.
I've done that, and I've taken it one step further. I installed a web server, and set it to respond with a 1x1 transparent gif to all requests. So most pages with ads show up with a blank space.
Of course, I did this on Linux, but it should work the same under Windows. I just set my 404 error document to be the transparent gif.
I suppose I should set the error document to be a redirect to http://localhost/null.gif, which would keep my web cache from getting so cluttered.
Now we just need a good comprehensive list of advertising sites that we can all use.
What we lose from bypassing X is the network transparency and multi-application windowing. Sure, you could create a non-X window manager, but I don't think that's what they're talking about here.
The network transparency of X is very useful if you're in an environment with multiple machines; I use it all the time. Of course, starting with the shared memory extensions, there has been an increasing push to go directly to the hardware, which improves performance, but breaks remote execution.
On the other hand, they're marketing this for embeded systems. Think of "embeded" as meaning "single application." In this case, you only want one thing on the screen, and you probably don't need remote execution, so X is just a big waste of memory. This could be really cool for a dedicated web browser (WebTV) or such.
I never bothered to set up junkbuster. I just added all the ad servers I've run into to my/etc/hosts pointing to 127.0.0.1. I then set up a web server that sends out a 1x1 transparent image no matter what the request. Slashdot's ad servers are anoying in that I have to use aliasing on my loopback device since they specify the IP numbers in the URL instead of a hostname.
There are a few sites left that have their ads on the same server as their content, but they are rare.
Interesting timing. VMware 2.0 was just released this past week.
VMware has figured out how to get around the aspects of the x86 architecture that don't virtualize properly. If Dosemu could do those same tricks, that would be truly cool.
Of course, there is the FreeMWare project, which aims to do just that. From a brief look, it seems that they have to scan the instructions before execution to find instructions that have to be emulated.
I think it would be most amusing to change the profane language to references to censorship. That would be much more appropriate than simply muting or toning down the language.
What really should be done is not expand the top level domains, but contract them. The existing.com,.org,.gov,.mil,.net, and.edu domains should be moved under the.us domain. Then the domain rules become a matter for each country to decide.
Even if we are keeping generic TLDs, we should at least move.gov and.mil under.us, as they are clearly United States domains.
This was simply the worst episode of the X Files ever. This demonstrates that they really should have ended it a season earlier. Ick.
Personally, I had been hoping that they would do a spinoff series based on the Lone Gunmen long before the rumors of it actually happening surfaced, but if this episode is any indication, I really hope those rumors are false. The characters are cool, but they desperately need some decent writing.
I think it's a shame that crypto is still a separate add-on module. With the relaxed US export restrictions, could it be included in the regular package? There could be a --nocrypto configure option for people building French distributions.
It just seems that it makes life easier for almost everyone if they're one package. (Imagine if the Linux kernel was distributed separately from all the device drivers...)
Uhm, this would make a really lame MP3 player if the sound quality is "telephone quality." Telephones have really lousy sound quality. That might be fine for 8Kbps mono MP3 files, but for anything sane, you'll need much better.
Now we're talking about a mere 18G drive, but I suspect that such speeds will probably be available on larger drives shortly. (I don't have any inside info on that, though.)
My main reason for wanting to bypass cable scrambling is so that I can get rid of that stupid converter box. I certainly don't want to have to get a box for every TV and computer.
I also find it interesting that cable companies try to charge an additional outlet fee (at least mine does). That sounds a lot like back when AT&T only let you use AT&T phones before they were broken up.
So they only have tools for detecting the multi-source denial of service program for Linux and Solaris? This would suggest to me that the current round of attacks are all based on compromised hosts running those OSs. This is the first technical information on this attack that I've run into. Everything else I've seen seems to be targeted to the non-geek crowd.
This was apparently a Multi-Source Denial Of Service (MS DOS) attack.
In other words, the attackers hacked into a bunch of other machines first, and then used them as a big distributed cluster to attack Yahoo. If it were harder to crack machines, this likely wouldn't have happened. It will be interesting to see what type of systems were used (Microsoft, Apple, or Unix). Regardless of the one used in this attack, all are potentially vulnerable, and significant attention to security is necessary.
On result of all of this is that Universities may need to look into setting up their networks more like corporations; i.e., using firewalls to protect from outside hacking (which will make running unofficial servers a huge pain).
CDE and Motif were developed by The Open Group. While TOG still sells them, they ceased all development back in the summer of 1998, at the same time they shut down X development and pretty much everything else other than licensing and branding.
Disclaimer: I am a former employee of The Open Group. I worked at the Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is now a much smaller operation in Woburn where the few engineers who didn't quit still work.
So the net result of this is good: Clemson backed down on Internet censoring, and in the process gave free publicity to the free long distance services. I'll be that many students who had never considered bypassing the traditional phone system are now exploring their options.
So let's avoid some of the ethical issues of messing with humans, and start out with animals (which has ethical issues, as well, but I'll ignore those). Imagine putting a real dog brain inside Abio. You could select from many different dog personalities, or, for an additional fee (probably a very large one), you could have your own dog's brain loaded into it. That would be great for someone whose dog is running out of dog years.
Of course, we could do some other interesting things, like use a dolphin brain, but give it the ability to produce human speech. Then see if they are as smart as people have claimed.
He has been indicted by his government. Criminal charges are generally filed by governments, civil charges may be filed by anyone. Of course, the government is undoubtedly acting at the prompting of the DVD CCA or some similar organization.
So while the government may call DVD CCA people as expert witnesses and consult with them on the case, it is ultimately the government's case. This means a government prosecutor, not a DVD CCA lawyer.
Of course, I might have it totally wrong, as I'm not a legal expert in Norway (or anywhere else, fo r that matter), but I'm pretty sure that's how it works in most western countries.
This means that Rivest, et. al. will have a great incentive to discredit RSA encryption in favor of their later technologies. They're clearly among the best of the private sector in the encryption field, so if a weakness can be found, they're likely to find it. Note that they've already found a minor weakness, so they're clearly looking to push people to newer patented technologies.
When there was a story for every kernel release, it was, indeed, too much. Now/. only reports every once in a while on minor releases. In this case, I think it gives us a good forum to discuss how stable the 2.3 branch is getting and what we might expect to run into if we switch over.
To be more specific, I'm considering playing with 2.3, and reading the responses to this story tells me that there are some networking problems that I would prefer to avoid and there might be some sound problems. Consequently, I'll hold off for a while longer.
I have a Raite 715, which plays MP3, VCD, SVCD, DVD, and CD. I bought it at egghead.com for under $150. They have another model that does Karaoke, too. One of the best things about this player is that you can upgrade the firmware by CD--just download, burn, and insert!
The problems with this player: Doesn't have random play for MP3s or CDs; the drive mechanism is relatively noisy.
Firmware issues: Is picky about filenames for MP3 files, and has trouble with VBR and files from certain encoders. I'm waiting for them to email me the latest firmware so I can see if that helps.
Other features: secret codes from the remote to disable region coding and macrovision.
Features I would like to see: Photo CD support. (Well, it will display an image associated with any given MP3 file, so you could use it as a slide show that way.)
Slashdot Mirror
So these kids were violating University policy. At most schools, there's a school-run judicial system. The school issues a fine, and it then proceeds through that system; in most cases, students just pay the fine. For more serious issues, penalties may include prohibitions from campus social events or suspension.
I assume OSU has such a system; correct me if this is wrong.
So why was that system not used? Usually colleges do all they can to keep their discipline issues in their own system, avoiding the added publicity and buerocracy that police involvement brings. Why not just issue a fine to the students to recover the unpaid access fees (and possibly a penalty fee)? Is this consistent with how OSU handles other discipline issues, or are they trying to make some sort of example here? If the latter, could that unfair application of the law be a defense in court?
When I was an undergrad, there wasn't much networking to speak of. Then I went to grad school at Dartmouth. The entire campus was networked. We had network ports in the privately-owned fraternaties, even. In that case, the fraternaties did pay for the hookup, but only to cover the physical connection, not a per-port fee.
Of course, at Dartmouth, everyone is required to have a computer, and professors expect to be able to use email for class assignments (even in the humanities), turning in papers, and such.
It's been like that for over ten years.
Now I'm surprised to hear about schools charging for Internet access. You would think they would be doing everything they could to encourage computer use as a basic part of the education, not treating it like some luxury.
Just reply to this post, but change the subject line to something like "Cheap State U charges $50/semester" or "Forward Thinking College; free." Then in the comment, you can elaborate if there's more to say. (Maybe this should be a poll.)
So what if someone installed wireless networking, such as the Apple AirPort? This would do the same thing, but it wouldn't leave any physical evidence. And unless the school specifically bans it, it would seem to fall under a presumption of fair use, assuming that it's also being used for laptop connections by the people in the room where it is connected.
I've done that, and I've taken it one step further. I installed a web server, and set it to respond with a 1x1 transparent gif to all requests. So most pages with ads show up with a blank space.
Of course, I did this on Linux, but it should work the same under Windows. I just set my 404 error document to be the transparent gif.
I suppose I should set the error document to be a redirect to http://localhost/null.gif, which would keep my web cache from getting so cluttered.
Now we just need a good comprehensive list of advertising sites that we can all use.
What we lose from bypassing X is the network transparency and multi-application windowing. Sure, you could create a non-X window manager, but I don't think that's what they're talking about here.
The network transparency of X is very useful if you're in an environment with multiple machines; I use it all the time. Of course, starting with the shared memory extensions, there has been an increasing push to go directly to the hardware, which improves performance, but breaks remote execution.
On the other hand, they're marketing this for embeded systems. Think of "embeded" as meaning "single application." In this case, you only want one thing on the screen, and you probably don't need remote execution, so X is just a big waste of memory. This could be really cool for a dedicated web browser (WebTV) or such.
I never bothered to set up junkbuster. I just added all the ad servers I've run into to my /etc/hosts pointing to 127.0.0.1. I then set up a web server that sends out a 1x1 transparent image no matter what the request. Slashdot's ad servers are anoying in that I have to use aliasing on my loopback device since they specify the IP numbers in the URL instead of a hostname.
There are a few sites left that have their ads on the same server as their content, but they are rare.
VMware has figured out how to get around the aspects of the x86 architecture that don't virtualize properly. If Dosemu could do those same tricks, that would be truly cool.
Of course, there is the FreeMWare project, which aims to do just that. From a brief look, it seems that they have to scan the instructions before execution to find instructions that have to be emulated.
I think it would be most amusing to change the profane language to references to censorship. That would be much more appropriate than simply muting or toning down the language.
What really should be done is not expand the top level domains, but contract them. The existing .com, .org, .gov, .mil, .net, and .edu domains should be moved under the .us domain. Then the domain rules become a matter for each country to decide.
.gov and .mil under .us, as they are clearly United States domains.
Even if we are keeping generic TLDs, we should at least move
This was simply the worst episode of the X Files ever. This demonstrates that they really should have ended it a season earlier. Ick.
Personally, I had been hoping that they would do a spinoff series based on the Lone Gunmen long before the rumors of it actually happening surfaced, but if this episode is any indication, I really hope those rumors are false. The characters are cool, but they desperately need some decent writing.
I think it's a shame that crypto is still a separate add-on module. With the relaxed US export restrictions, could it be included in the regular package? There could be a --nocrypto configure option for people building French distributions.
It just seems that it makes life easier for almost everyone if they're one package. (Imagine if the Linux kernel was distributed separately from all the device drivers...)
What's the deal here?
Uhm, this would make a really lame MP3 player if the sound quality is "telephone quality." Telephones have really lousy sound quality. That might be fine for 8Kbps mono MP3 files, but for anything sane, you'll need much better.
Now that's fast. I remember when 60ms was fast.
Now we're talking about a mere 18G drive, but I suspect that such speeds will probably be available on larger drives shortly. (I don't have any inside info on that, though.)
My main reason for wanting to bypass cable scrambling is so that I can get rid of that stupid converter box. I certainly don't want to have to get a box for every TV and computer.
I also find it interesting that cable companies try to charge an additional outlet fee (at least mine does). That sounds a lot like back when AT&T only let you use AT&T phones before they were broken up.
So they only have tools for detecting the multi-source denial of service program for Linux and Solaris? This would suggest to me that the current round of attacks are all based on compromised hosts running those OSs. This is the first technical information on this attack that I've run into. Everything else I've seen seems to be targeted to the non-geek crowd.
This was apparently a Multi-Source Denial Of Service (MS DOS) attack.
In other words, the attackers hacked into a bunch of other machines first, and then used them as a big distributed cluster to attack Yahoo. If it were harder to crack machines, this likely wouldn't have happened. It will be interesting to see what type of systems were used (Microsoft, Apple, or Unix). Regardless of the one used in this attack, all are potentially vulnerable, and significant attention to security is necessary.
On result of all of this is that Universities may need to look into setting up their networks more like corporations; i.e., using firewalls to protect from outside hacking (which will make running unofficial servers a huge pain).
CDE and Motif were developed by The Open Group. While TOG still sells them, they ceased all development back in the summer of 1998, at the same time they shut down X development and pretty much everything else other than licensing and branding.
Disclaimer: I am a former employee of The Open Group. I worked at the Research Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is now a much smaller operation in Woburn where the few engineers who didn't quit still work.
Most laptops these days have built-in modems, and most are winmodems. What's the deal with these Dell laptops when it comes to modems?
So the net result of this is good: Clemson backed down on Internet censoring, and in the process gave free publicity to the free long distance services. I'll be that many students who had never considered bypassing the traditional phone system are now exploring their options.
So let's avoid some of the ethical issues of messing with humans, and start out with animals (which has ethical issues, as well, but I'll ignore those). Imagine putting a real dog brain inside Abio. You could select from many different dog personalities, or, for an additional fee (probably a very large one), you could have your own dog's brain loaded into it. That would be great for someone whose dog is running out of dog years.
Of course, we could do some other interesting things, like use a dolphin brain, but give it the ability to produce human speech. Then see if they are as smart as people have claimed.
Just a technical detail:
He has been indicted by his government. Criminal charges are generally filed by governments, civil charges may be filed by anyone. Of course, the government is undoubtedly acting at the prompting of the DVD CCA or some similar organization.
So while the government may call DVD CCA people as expert witnesses and consult with them on the case, it is ultimately the government's case. This means a government prosecutor, not a DVD CCA lawyer.
Of course, I might have it totally wrong, as I'm not a legal expert in Norway (or anywhere else, fo r that matter), but I'm pretty sure that's how it works in most western countries.
This means that Rivest, et. al. will have a great incentive to discredit RSA encryption in favor of their later technologies. They're clearly among the best of the private sector in the encryption field, so if a weakness can be found, they're likely to find it. Note that they've already found a minor weakness, so they're clearly looking to push people to newer patented technologies.
When there was a story for every kernel release, it was, indeed, too much. Now /. only reports every once in a while on minor releases. In this case, I think it gives us a good forum to discuss how stable the 2.3 branch is getting and what we might expect to run into if we switch over.
To be more specific, I'm considering playing with 2.3, and reading the responses to this story tells me that there are some networking problems that I would prefer to avoid and there might be some sound problems. Consequently, I'll hold off for a while longer.
I have a Raite 715, which plays MP3, VCD, SVCD, DVD, and CD. I bought it at egghead.com for under $150. They have another model that does Karaoke, too. One of the best things about this player is that you can upgrade the firmware by CD--just download, burn, and insert!
The problems with this player: Doesn't have random play for MP3s or CDs; the drive mechanism is relatively noisy.
Firmware issues: Is picky about filenames for MP3 files, and has trouble with VBR and files from certain encoders. I'm waiting for them to email me the latest firmware so I can see if that helps.
Other features: secret codes from the remote to disable region coding and macrovision.
Features I would like to see: Photo CD support. (Well, it will display an image associated with any given MP3 file, so you could use it as a slide show that way.)