It's simple, really. The "genius rocket scientists" have lots of regulations and rules in order to minimize the risk of an accident.
Now think what'll happen if a shuttle goes KABOOM for any reason. Shall the investigation show some engineer to give a go signal even with known problem, s/he will be in deep a trouble. Never mind even if the problem was not the cause for the accident.
In addition, losing Columbia was almost a death strike to the NASA. Another high-profile catastrophe might very well put the manned flights on permanen hold. That is, untill the EU / Russia / China / whatnot are building Star Fortresses all over the Lagrange 4 & 5:-)
One Cable to rule them all, one Cable to find them, one Cable to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.
-P
Re:EULAs for console games are printed ON the box
on
Sony vs Modchips
·
· Score: 1
Except the EULA...
As an European, I wonder how come US courts haven't already rejected the DMCA. A simple analogy for the modchips would be like Ford selling new cars with a clause you buy only Shell gas. And making it illegal to tune your engine to accept gas sold on Chevron and Exxon stations. Everybody would just laugh their asses off, if Fomoco did that.
And for the region control, a simple Joe Sixpack friendly example would be a simple one. Gas sold in TX has some extra indegrient that prevents AZ registred cars using it and vice versa. That sounds ridiculous? You bet!
So, EFF, I hope these analogs are some use for you...
Time to wake up, this is old news indeed.This bug attacks dBase files and corrupts them. dBase was quite a popular database in late 80's, IIRC.
The nasty thing is that the bug is able to hide in memory and reverse the damage to the.dbf file when dBase loads it. Therefore file corruption is not noticed at once. Unsuspecting user will make proper backups of the damaged file. After a while the file is wasted, and the corrupted backups are good for nothing.
You can't tell me what I can and cannot do with an item after I bought it
Actually I can. I am willing to sell the product to you only under a condition that forbids reselling. Therefore, you buy - you agree to the conditions. If you don't - you take your business elsewhere.
Since there is no contract signed in the record shop, it is questonable whether this contract could be enforced or not. Doesn't still make it impossible but CDs are easy to move around to avoid any problems.
Another example: I'll sell you some property in a business block. It currently is an book shop of quality books. We agree on a condition that you will not establish a porn / tobacco / licquir shop in the property as I wouldn't like to support such industry. This sounds reasonable, doesn't it? If you do establish an adult shop you violate the trade agreement, don't you?
Hell, most of the English paperbacks in the local library (I live in Finland) have this fine print forbidding renting, resale, loaning etc. But the library will pay some money to the publishing company for right to borrow the book to the public as library users actually could cause loss of income to the publishers. Then again, I first borrowed the Lord of the Rings from local library at age of 12. Afterwards I have bought two copies of LotR (a Finnish hard-cover edition and English paperback later on.)
without napster I have no way of finding new music that I might be interested in.
So, how did you come up with new music before Napster? Or was it only Napster that made you to listen to music? I certainly don't think so.
How about the old-fashioned way? Go to a record shop and look for new albums and trying them in shop? Or visiting your friends and digging through their CD collection? Or reading some magazines / web sites about music of your taste? Browsing through the catalog of local record shop? All of these are still valid options.
As the game publishing companies have discovered a long ago any security system can be cracked given enough time
Hmm... How about Blizzard and their famous Battle.net key system? There are tons of key generators suitable for single player sessions, but none seem to work against BNet key authorization. Seems pretty fool-proof as the BNet players must contact a Blizzard server in order to play.
What if MS does something like that too? Imagine about tieing product key security so that for every bootup where network connection is detected Windows goes and asks for authorization from a MS server..?
one is a criminal after one breaks into someone else's property, not before
So, if I lie on a roof with a Dragunov sniper rifle and take aim on people down on the street, I shouldn't be arested? Mind you, if I am on a roof, most of my acquired targets will not notice me, and clearly I am not threatening them..?
If I write a script that just says: "rm -rf ~ && rm -rf/" and I call it "runme.sh" and email it to somebody, is that a virus?
Mais pas. Jargon: "Virus (n) - A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan horses". What you are describing is a simple Trojan.
Is telnet a scanner? I can use it to check if certain ports are listening or not. Does a program only count as a scanner if it checks multiple ports at once
I'd say that a scanner needs to have some kind of automation involved. Thus, a shell script calling Telnet to different ports would be a scanner.
The people who write these laws are totally oblivious to their implications.
So, what else is new?
How would something like this be enforced?
Probably they wouldn't be used as such, but would be envolved as additional evidence or excuse. A bit like a drug pusher would recieve additional charges for posessing an illegal firearm even if he manages to flush all the coke before DEA raid. This would make it easier to bust script kiddies and other lame-ass crackers: No evidence about actual cracking / DOS / whatever is needed, they could be wasted for having just the right tools. Remember, Al Capone was nailed for tax evasion, not for booze dealing or other mob activities.
press the windows key, and the taskbar will appear at the bottom of your screen
Actually, Ctrl+Esc does just the same thing. I know a lot of people who go to the task manager in WinNT with C-A-D and then click Task Manager with mouse. Argh! And the context menu is opened by Shift-F10.
Sometimes I think the Win-E (Exploder) is useful a feature, but more often it is not that important.
-P --
Second. Define 'proper support for BLOBs'. Stored in-row? Dumbass. Imagine trying the DB trying to scan a table with variable size up-to-2-gig BLOBs in the way.
Who in their right mind would store large binary objects into a database anyway? Wouldn't it be much more efficient to have the filesystem to mind about large files and just save filenames and pathes into the DB?
-P
--
if this alien is from a race that has mastered intergalactic space travel, I doubt that he will care very much about our immigration laws
If these aliens have space travel, ray guns and stuff, I'd think the humans should be worried about their very own human rights.
Basically, there is but one right: might. The society grants you something called as "human rights", but these are by no means natural or universal. Only by force, or by its threat, we have any rights. Someone violates your right of, say, freedom by enslaving you. He has all the power -- and thus the right -- to do that, so be it. But the society has (hopefully) even more power. Police and army can be used to your protection. Should the need arise, then your society-granted right of freedom is given by use or threat of use of violence.
Its an inperfect world and the mankind is imperfect, foolish, greedy, self-centered and generally just moronic as well. Idea of universal solidarity and human rights are just nice ideas from guys with thick beards and notebooks, sitting in nice Parisian street cafés next to the Seine river. Sigh.
20 seconds with Google gave an hack to read-only ext2 utility for Win9x. Sure, it does not allow you to write an ext2. Still, moving from ro to rw is not a big problem.
I see this as a grave problem. Now that "the OSS community" does not respect even one of its heroes request, the corporate drones have all the reason to recommend patenting and trademarking everything. All the lawyer drones have a reason to go crazy: "You see, they are like wolves, they eat even their own, (C) and (R) is our only protection agianst these commie-hippie-OSS-freaks."
Would it be too much to ask that we give Tatu a hand for his great contribution?
On the other hand, if Tatu hadn't wrote SSH, someone else would have figured it out sooner or later. Maybe a big corp, and you know what that would mean. Kerberos is already contaminated by a certain corporate...
We know if CU did tests on M$ products and compared them to Linux/Unix products; and that M$ came out significantly ahead, then there would be some misinformation going around.
This is not going to happen. Consumer unions are interested about consumers and consumer products. SQLServer is not a consumer product, thus CUs have no interest on that. How may of you store your MP3 catalog in a db? Relational db? Commerical heavy-duty db (Oracle, Informix, MSSQL, Solid).
I hate to sound clueless and naive, but what are real time kernels used for, anyway?
Better ask and be ignorant no more, than keep quiet and remain as one.
Fundamentally every OS is a real-time OS. This means, they exist and run in synch with real time where humans exist. The OSes are divided to two categories:
-Hard RT
-Soft RT
The difference is, in soft RT systems timing is not of great importance. If a process finishes 200us later than it should have, it is no end of the world. In hard RT systems it could be...
As soft RT systems are all aound us, we do not usually call them as such, but call just the hard RT systems as RT systems.
Let's have a few examples of soft/hard operations:
-Print job is sent to the fancy HP Laserjet. In this case, it does not matter if you got all the 12 pages in one minute or 2 minutes. Sure, one is irriated if printing takes time, but no harm occurs for a slight delay.
-AH-64D is cruising across hostile territory and detects an incoming laser targeting beam. The copper takes immediate evasive action! Now, if the flight computer does not finish evaluating threat analyisis in, say, 500ms, the SAM might very well hit the copter and kill the crew. Now, it really matters if the system can finish its job in set limit.
-A industrial assembly robot is welding two pieces of steel together. Two other robots pass the parts to the welder one. If one of these robots misses its schedule, the welder will weld an invalid part: maybe there are no parts when welding happens, or maybe only one part is welded. One can clearly see, there is a possibility of great damage here if the schedules are missed, so this calls for a hard RT system.
A DSP point of view:
-In a real-time DSP process, the analyzed (input) and/or generated (output) samples (whether they are grouped together in large segments or processed individually) can be processed (or generated) continuously in the time it takes to input and/or output the same set of samples independent of the processing delay.
There is a nice FAQ about the RT systems, available at http://www.landfield.com/faqs/realtime-computing/f aq/ for the goatsex paranoids (including me.)
I'm just wondering how many 14 or 15 year olds have sort of ID
It is just like in a pub: No ID, no beer - No ID, no Quake:)
What happens when Mom/Dad/Uncle/etc. buys the game
Who knows what happens, when mom/pop buys booze/tobacco/guns/whatever for the kids? At least the grown-ups know what kids are about to. Not though I would buy beer for my under-age baby brother... But Quake? Sure, any day.
-P --
In Finland we already have had a law for that. It has been enfrorced since 1/1/2001.
There is some infromation (English too) in the web page of Finnish Board of Film Classification (www.vet.fi for Goatsex paranoids). The system is based on idea that the importers have the responsibility of setting the age limits.
There are five categories: Everyone, 7+ years, 11+, 15+ and 18. Now, only 18 is an *absolute* limit (BTW: it is as well the drinking/driving/voting limit here too). The 18 marking means that no-one under 18 is allowed to *buy* such a game and stores are not allowed to sell them for minors. The other limits are only recommendations.
The BoFC will not supervise activly the age limits, but can call a game for checking and enforce a limit. If the Board sets a limit, it will become absolute too. E.g. If the Board sets a limit of 15 years, the shops can not sell the ame for persons under 15.
Some recent age limits are: Mechwarrior 4: 11, 1/2-life 15, Q3: 15 years. Not too bad, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
The ADL press release is dated back in January, 1997. Even Merriam-Webster gives more or less the same alternative explanation nowadays:
b : one who is likened to a German Nazi : a harshly domineering, dictatorial, or intolerant person
It's simple, really. The "genius rocket scientists" have lots of regulations and rules in order to minimize the risk of an accident.
:-)
Now think what'll happen if a shuttle goes KABOOM for any reason. Shall the investigation show some engineer to give a go signal even with known problem, s/he will be in deep a trouble. Never mind even if the problem was not the cause for the accident.
In addition, losing Columbia was almost a death strike to the NASA. Another high-profile catastrophe might very well put the manned flights on permanen hold. That is, untill the EU / Russia / China / whatnot are building Star Fortresses all over the Lagrange 4 & 5
Use Coral proxy to avoid slashdotting the poor site.
-P
Obligatory lame-ass LotR rip-off to follow:
Ash Cable durbatulûk, ash Cable gimbatul, ash Cable thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
One Cable to rule them all, one Cable to find them, one Cable to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.
-P
Except the EULA...
As an European, I wonder how come US courts haven't already rejected the DMCA. A simple analogy for the modchips would be like Ford selling new cars with a clause you buy only Shell gas. And making it illegal to tune your engine to accept gas sold on Chevron and Exxon stations. Everybody would just laugh their asses off, if Fomoco did that.
And for the region control, a simple Joe Sixpack friendly example would be a simple one. Gas sold in TX has some extra indegrient that prevents AZ registred cars using it and vice versa. That sounds ridiculous? You bet!
So, EFF, I hope these analogs are some use for you...
-P
Can you pass command-line arguments to the WinNT kernel? What would they do?
Well, in the Boot.ini, there are a few things. Check it right out of the horse's mouth.
-P
The nasty thing is that the bug is able to hide in memory and reverse the damage to the .dbf file when dBase loads it. Therefore file corruption is not noticed at once. Unsuspecting user will make proper backups of the damaged file. After a while the file is wasted, and the corrupted backups are good for nothing.
-PBattery is just another energy drink, quite popular in Finland. Especially when you mix it with Vodka: that's called Battery acid.
Actually I can. I am willing to sell the product to you only under a condition that forbids reselling. Therefore, you buy - you agree to the conditions. If you don't - you take your business elsewhere.
Since there is no contract signed in the record shop, it is questonable whether this contract could be enforced or not. Doesn't still make it impossible but CDs are easy to move around to avoid any problems.
Another example: I'll sell you some property in a business block. It currently is an book shop of quality books. We agree on a condition that you will not establish a porn / tobacco / licquir shop in the property as I wouldn't like to support such industry. This sounds reasonable, doesn't it? If you do establish an adult shop you violate the trade agreement, don't you?
Hell, most of the English paperbacks in the local library (I live in Finland) have this fine print forbidding renting, resale, loaning etc. But the library will pay some money to the publishing company for right to borrow the book to the public as library users actually could cause loss of income to the publishers. Then again, I first borrowed the Lord of the Rings from local library at age of 12. Afterwards I have bought two copies of LotR (a Finnish hard-cover edition and English paperback later on.)
-P--
So, how did you come up with new music before Napster? Or was it only Napster that made you to listen to music? I certainly don't think so.
How about the old-fashioned way? Go to a record shop and look for new albums and trying them in shop? Or visiting your friends and digging through their CD collection? Or reading some magazines / web sites about music of your taste? Browsing through the catalog of local record shop? All of these are still valid options.
-P--
How about KINKY (Killustrator Is Not King Yet)?-) -P
--
Maybe this works better. -P
--
Hmm... How about Blizzard and their famous Battle.net key system? There are tons of key generators suitable for single player sessions, but none seem to work against BNet key authorization. Seems pretty fool-proof as the BNet players must contact a Blizzard server in order to play.
What if MS does something like that too? Imagine about tieing product key security so that for every bootup where network connection is detected Windows goes and asks for authorization from a MS server..?
-P--
So, if I lie on a roof with a Dragunov sniper rifle and take aim on people down on the street, I shouldn't be arested? Mind you, if I am on a roof, most of my acquired targets will not notice me, and clearly I am not threatening them..?
-P--
Mais pas. Jargon: "Virus (n) - A cracker program that searches out other programs and `infects' them by embedding a copy of itself in them, so that they become Trojan horses". What you are describing is a simple Trojan.
I'd say that a scanner needs to have some kind of automation involved. Thus, a shell script calling Telnet to different ports would be a scanner.
So, what else is new?
Probably they wouldn't be used as such, but would be envolved as additional evidence or excuse. A bit like a drug pusher would recieve additional charges for posessing an illegal firearm even if he manages to flush all the coke before DEA raid. This would make it easier to bust script kiddies and other lame-ass crackers: No evidence about actual cracking / DOS / whatever is needed, they could be wasted for having just the right tools. Remember, Al Capone was nailed for tax evasion, not for booze dealing or other mob activities.
-P--
What is the current exchange rate of Euros to dollars
As of today, 1 Euro == 0.8455 USD.
-P
--
--
--
If these aliens have space travel, ray guns and stuff, I'd think the humans should be worried about their very own human rights.
Basically, there is but one right: might. The society grants you something called as "human rights", but these are by no means natural or universal. Only by force, or by its threat, we have any rights. Someone violates your right of, say, freedom by enslaving you. He has all the power -- and thus the right -- to do that, so be it. But the society has (hopefully) even more power. Police and army can be used to your protection. Should the need arise, then your society-granted right of freedom is given by use or threat of use of violence.
Its an inperfect world and the mankind is imperfect, foolish, greedy, self-centered and generally just moronic as well. Idea of universal solidarity and human rights are just nice ideas from guys with thick beards and notebooks, sitting in nice Parisian street cafés next to the Seine river. Sigh.
-P--
20 seconds with Google gave an hack to read-only ext2 utility for Win9x. Sure, it does not allow you to write an ext2. Still, moving from ro to rw is not a big problem.
Check it out: http://www.yipton.demon.co.uk/
-P--
I see this as a grave problem. Now that "the OSS community" does not respect even one of its heroes request, the corporate drones have all the reason to recommend patenting and trademarking everything. All the lawyer drones have a reason to go crazy: "You see, they are like wolves, they eat even their own, (C) and (R) is our only protection agianst these commie-hippie-OSS-freaks."
Would it be too much to ask that we give Tatu a hand for his great contribution?
On the other hand, if Tatu hadn't wrote SSH, someone else would have figured it out sooner or later. Maybe a big corp, and you know what that would mean. Kerberos is already contaminated by a certain corporate...
-P--
We know if CU did tests on M$ products and compared them to Linux/Unix products; and that M$ came out significantly ahead, then there would be some misinformation going around.
This is not going to happen. Consumer unions are interested about consumers and consumer products. SQLServer is not a consumer product, thus CUs have no interest on that. How may of you store your MP3 catalog in a db? Relational db? Commerical heavy-duty db (Oracle, Informix, MSSQL, Solid).
-P--
Better ask and be ignorant no more, than keep quiet and remain as one.
Fundamentally every OS is a real-time OS. This means, they exist and run in synch with real time where humans exist. The OSes are divided to two categories:
-Hard RT
-Soft RT
The difference is, in soft RT systems timing is not of great importance. If a process finishes 200us later than it should have, it is no end of the world. In hard RT systems it could be...
As soft RT systems are all aound us, we do not usually call them as such, but call just the hard RT systems as RT systems.
Let's have a few examples of soft/hard operations:
A DSP point of view:-Print job is sent to the fancy HP Laserjet. In this case, it does not matter if you got all the 12 pages in one minute or 2 minutes. Sure, one is irriated if printing takes time, but no harm occurs for a slight delay.
-AH-64D is cruising across hostile territory and detects an incoming laser targeting beam. The copper takes immediate evasive action! Now, if the flight computer does not finish evaluating threat analyisis in, say, 500ms, the SAM might very well hit the copter and kill the crew. Now, it really matters if the system can finish its job in set limit.
-A industrial assembly robot is welding two pieces of steel together. Two other robots pass the parts to the welder one. If one of these robots misses its schedule, the welder will weld an invalid part: maybe there are no parts when welding happens, or maybe only one part is welded. One can clearly see, there is a possibility of great damage here if the schedules are missed, so this calls for a hard RT system.
-In a real-time DSP process, the analyzed (input) and/or generated (output) samples (whether they are grouped together in large segments or processed individually) can be processed (or generated) continuously in the time it takes to input and/or output the same set of samples independent of the processing delay.
There is a nice FAQ about the RT systems, available at http://www.landfield.com/faqs/realtime-computing/f aq/ for the goatsex paranoids (including me.)
-P--
It is just like in a pub: No ID, no beer - No ID, no Quake :)
What happens when Mom/Dad/Uncle/etc. buys the game Who knows what happens, when mom/pop buys booze/tobacco/guns/whatever for the kids? At least the grown-ups know what kids are about to. Not though I would buy beer for my under-age baby brother... But Quake? Sure, any day. -P--
There is some infromation (English too) in the web page of Finnish Board of Film Classification (www.vet.fi for Goatsex paranoids). The system is based on idea that the importers have the responsibility of setting the age limits.
There are five categories: Everyone, 7+ years, 11+, 15+ and 18. Now, only 18 is an *absolute* limit (BTW: it is as well the drinking/driving/voting limit here too). The 18 marking means that no-one under 18 is allowed to *buy* such a game and stores are not allowed to sell them for minors. The other limits are only recommendations.
The BoFC will not supervise activly the age limits, but can call a game for checking and enforce a limit. If the Board sets a limit, it will become absolute too. E.g. If the Board sets a limit of 15 years, the shops can not sell the ame for persons under 15.
Some recent age limits are: Mechwarrior 4: 11, 1/2-life 15, Q3: 15 years. Not too bad, IMHO.
-P