Damn right. All that does is to increase the junk that's already around the globe. Although Corona isn't a space weapon per-se, they certainly didn't send a train monkey into space to snap pictures on the Soviet Union. What makes anyone think that space-weapons will promote human occupancy is beyond me. And I won't be surprised if the some of the Corona satellites are still up there, orbiting around doing nothing after it has sent the capsules back.
Agreed. And I don't get her example about how they need to analyze risks, and therefore holding the patches. If they find that this particular version's got a bug, put the patch on the net while analyzing other versions at the same time. At least those who are really diligent can choose to patch the system. Heck if they're worried about update costs of the customer, let the patch to be removable. Someone could patch the program now, and then if there's a better one, they can install that instead. The fact is that they have been slow, and the time she spent writing that piece of PR could be better spent in fixing more bugs. I don't blame them for having bugs (heck I recall all those nights spend debuggin my assignments, and these aren't production software), but man some of these fixes are so late that I'm not surprised that their clients are being attacked at the very same time they're "analyzing" the vulnerability
I scanned it rather quickly, but it is apparently this guy understands very little. He discredits Linux and Mac's security based on obscurity, stating that because these two OS has little market share, there's little incentive to write malware targeting such platforms. Both operating systems (at least I know there exist viruses pre-OSX) have had some minor viruses, but they are hard to spread. And his notion that Linux needs a kernel recompile for changing one piece of hardware is so kernel 2.0. If you're using a hardware modem, switching the modem is no problem. If you're using a soft-modem, most likely you only need the kernel headers and the source code for those modules. Most retail Desktop Linux have support for the linmodems, and free software purists have accused company like Madriva and SuSE of selling out by bundling close source driver with restrictive licensing. He also claims that Microsoft brought the computer to the masses. Microsoft bought DOS from someone else and stuck it on the IBM PC, and IBM had put together the PC so quickly so that only the BIOS wasn't off the shelf and Compaq was the first to reverse engineer to make the PC clone. Who's the innovator here? Windows is arguably a rip off from Mac OS, heck even the name explorer is rather a pun on Finder. And Steve Jobs took the GUI idea from Xerox's Alto. So who's the innovator? Microsoft have shown to be a follower in technology and strong arms it into the user. The typical users here won't know if there are alternative software out there (even if they do they're too lazy to try out the others) if their crappy IE and Windows Media Player is bundled together. Their security is still horrendous, despite the recent emphesis on security. There isn't a single Windows that doesn't yield a default Administrative user, and the end user hardly knows that they're not supposed to be running with Admin rights, and wonder why the heck they're getting all the malware infected deeply into Windows. Malware manages to corrupt even Windows DLLs. Linux, is admittedly, not very user friendly, but at least it is very predictable. Most of the errors I've come across can be attributed to my misconfiguration. Mac OSX, despite having a vocabulary that I'm not comfortable with, is predictable, unobtrusive, and knows when escalation of priviledge is necessary, and prompts the user then. If he wants to sit around fixing Windows deeply infected with malware, then Windows is prefect for him and therefore should be loved. I intend to stay the heck away from Windows if I can.
Well said. I think the Thetan (the guy that asked Slashdot) missed the qualitative differences between the information wanting to be free, and information wanted to be private; and the differences between the conservative's opposition to abortion and their support of the death penality. He merely equate them by ignoring the obvious differences and of course it seems contrarian. (Not that my comments are based on my partisanship.)
"I hope to god our country isn't so tainted that they truly believe corporations should be allowed to endange the general public because it may hurt their bottom line to fix the problems..." They already have. Look at McDonalds for example - their food is so drenched in oil and sugar and all those things that would cause obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, etc... but they don't really try to do better. Their Chicken salad has the same caloric value as a Big Mac, and their yogurt parfait with Granolas is just another Sundae. You can also look at the oil industry. They've got enough money to invest in cleaner energy (and frankly that would be a PR revolution), but they don't. Along comes with all the problems of burning oil. Heck I was seeing ads advocating using coal as a power source.
Before you all think that I've got my tinfoil suit on, I think even disregarding the journalistic side of this idea, there's a lot to worry about. The message itself may be encrypted, and hard to break, but if enough ISP/Server Admins get subpoenaed, it can correlated back to the computer that the message is sent. Whistleblowers and anonymous sources aren't exactly security professionals, and even if they cared to learn GPG, they might be silly enough to send the message that can be easily traced back. Even if he went to an internet cafe, the operators of that cafe may be questioned as to who may have come. Assuming that these folks won't know to forge IPs and stuff (not to mention that many of the mail servers they use aren't open relays), they may have to tunnel their message to an off-shore, secure computer, and have that sent to whomever they need it to be sent to. And frankly (wearing the tin-foil suit), if the government needs to know bad enough, they might just consult ECHELON.
In Vancouver it's pretty hard to find an independent book/mag retailer that isn't Indigo/Chapters/Coles, often there's only one bookstore left in a mall and it's the conglomerate. Indeed they're basically censoring things if they don't sell certain book/magazine. They did shot at a building, but using something relatively small, I think it was a.22. No one was hurt.
Simon, I won't see you saying that if you have to face a user who tried to demand to have admin rights on his windows workstation behind my back by asking me to install the software, and when I proceed to sit down and install the software (and didn't give him admin rights), went and ask my superior for admin rights. Since everything is a mess, and this guy is a SOB who wouldn't mind taking you out with him (he's as lowe on the ladder as you can get), and plus we don't have a written policy on that yet (gasp), he told me to grant it to him. Sometimes it people don't feel great not because they think they're god and all the others above them are stupid. Like my situation, the two guys above me, not counting my superior, are pretty good at databases and the Microsoft environment, both of which I'm not exactly proficient - I was too lazy to set up anything database related and I ain't going to spend the time and headaches to set up a mock Microsoft server in my home. I don't think I'm always better than them, but my boss asks me about stuff on Linux, we're the Linux folks in this IT team. I realize that. My supervisor offhandedly mentioned to his superiors that he worries about hiring another guy and have to train them because I'm heading back to school, and they're busy migrating accounting packages. That makes me feel kinda good - someone noticed that I'm pretty good at fixing these old clunkers and various software problems. But it's the annoying users at the end that makes me feel pretty miserable (especially when I'm dealing with that pompous dimwit asking for admin rights), and I'm thinking that maybe IT workers are simply mixing misery from another front with whether the company values them.
Well... The IT department here considered SCO because before Microsoft Exchange 2003 Small Business upped the limit from 16GB to >70GB, it was the alternative that they know (from a consultant... *shudder*) Now we've tried the outlook connector they've provided. It's still in beta (I argue in alpha). Some of the settings in the web management can bring the server crashing down. The whole thing is a mess, as I predicted as soon as I heard that we were going for SCO OpenServer. So now given that the migration isn't complete at all, the guy up top is going to try and refund the money and go for Linux and Scalix as a exchange replacement. I never thought that I'd say something like this, but if you're only given a choice between Microsoft and SCO, take Microsoft.
If he was quoted properly, that practically means that turning the browser into a kernel facing the Internet. Given that the kernel on a computer aren't bug free, I'd like to keep my browser doing its intended job, browsing, thank you.
I can't remember whether I saw this from the Outer Limits or some other Sci-Fi series, but it was about a guy who discovered that cold-fusion bombs were feasible, and built one. Eventually he was killed, but at the end, some other person also stumble upon the same solution. I much rather have the security flaw be exposed, and they get to scrambled into a more heightened mode and fix the problem then let it be silent. He discovered the problem publicly, but that doesn't prevent other hackers from knowing the exact same thing.
Even when I was getting paid I didn't buy many CDs. Problem isn't income in my opinion, but it's in the quality of the music. I'm perfectly willing to pay for a CD if it's worth it, but I don't see why anyone should limit what I can do by putting some stupid DRM that locks me out from playing the CDs properly ahd making them out of spec. Downloading MP3s are like previewing to many, and this is something that most music store doesn't do adequately. They only have like the top hits, and for the CDs that aren't in a preview player, you're out of luck. You can't listen to it, and have to buy it, and you can't return it if it stinks. Until they figured that people like me bought far more CDs when Napster was around (yes yes I know they've gone into a pay service, but it's NOT the same thing), they're going to find that I'm hard to sell a CD to.
Re:The Dumbing-Down of America...part XXVII
on
VoIP Security
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Perhaps he was thinking the article would be more secure by using illegibility through obfuscation...
Puppy Linux is quite neat. In Live-CD form once everything is loaded, you could remove the CD and use the CDROM. Also as a USB Linux Distro it's quite responsive even when used with USB 1 computers (those would probably require some other method of booting). I would've kept the computer in Linux, if only we don't have to use bloody Outlook for email, and I have to help test the new server.
Good argument, except for number 6. It might nto et a "critical desktop mass", but there are many user-friendlier distros that you don't have to compile anything. In fact, they have so many things done for the user that they're uninteresting for me because I don't get to choose and I don't get to understand it. But for a user that just want a computer to work, it's great. I might try and install Ubuntu on my dad's computer, and see whether he could get adjusted to it. I'm tired of dealing with Windows misbehaving on his computer.
Not necessarily. People who may have home brewed a RAID array serving people using a journaling file system may eventually be able to offload the journal to one of these HW RAM disk (basically what the commercial NAS are doing). Remember that journals still needs to be written in sync into the system in order to at least make sure the metadata is in check. The RAM disk (at least the developement version reviewed by another site) can last about 10-12 hours on battery alone, so that could be useful in a server setup. Also for people who need a lot of cache/temp space, this could be useful. Motherboards, especially the home/enthusiast variety, only comes with so much RAM slots, and these non-persistant data can be written into the i-RAM. I'm sure soon enough, there will be more manufacturers making these things, and as people upgrade and free up DDR RAM, they can reuse them in these HW RAM Disks.
I saw an earlier review like 2 weeks ago, a link from the Inquirer to a Chinese site. I went and made a rough translation, but I guess that's for nothing. I wonder what interesting uses people would come up with. I've heard of comments from people that I know that heavy bittorrent users can kill the HD. Anyone has experienced that?
Maybe someone would be smart enough to write a mini-proxy that would simply replace the ads with 15 second blank screen. A blank screen is much more bearable than 95% of the crap that Hollywood spews out nowadays.
Using water cooling often permits you to use large, slower spinning fan. The larger fan allows more air to be moved, without the high pitched whine. A 120mm Panaflo at 30dBA will move about 68CFM, while the old style 60mm Delta (not used much now because of the noise) moves 38CFM at 46.5dBA. If I still remember my computer music stuff right, every 3 dB increase results in doubling of the sound power. You do the math. Also, the crazier among us could attempt to put the radiator outside the window, thus reducing the noise.
Somehow your comparison is also valid between a book store and Chapters/Indigo, well maybe except for number 2. They had stopped selling magazines like Soldier of Fortune or any of the knife or gun related magazines. But no one seems to be complaining...
But anyways, when I'm back into Vancouver (they also provide ADSL in Vancouver), I'm either going to see a huge backlash from the left in the population, or I'm going to see that Telus lift their stupid ban. In either case they're making an even bigger stink than they already have. Their customer service is so bad that someone drove by and shot at their building about a year ago.
Not really. Practitioners of Guerilla Warfare exploit their weakness. My only problem is whether the weakness is that politicians are the ones willing to give up civil liberties, or merely the proles don't know what the heck is going on.
I'm sure you've heard of proxy and NAT... In fact that's one of the easiest ways to try and cover you tracks. If you're going to try to track someone behind a proxy/nat, you'll have to convince the guy running the proxy/nat to work with you.
I certainly hope that it won't end up that everyone gets implanted with stuff like this since birth... It would be like conditioned to take Soma a la Brave New World.
Merely the exception to prove the rule. I don't recall anything that Disney's spewing out for the last 5 years is original in any way. With the exception of the Anime that they're merely marketing and slapping an American voice (some of them are horrible for the role, and not to mention the lines are pretty bad at times), all their stuff that I've recall seeing on TV are either bad sequels, or DVDs for old videos, or remakes.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn right.
All that does is to increase the junk that's already around the globe.
Although Corona isn't a space weapon per-se, they certainly didn't send a train monkey into space to snap pictures on the Soviet Union. What makes anyone think that space-weapons will promote human occupancy is beyond me. And I won't be surprised if the some of the Corona satellites are still up there, orbiting around doing nothing after it has sent the capsules back.
Agreed.
And I don't get her example about how they need to analyze risks, and therefore holding the patches.
If they find that this particular version's got a bug, put the patch on the net while analyzing other versions at the same time.
At least those who are really diligent can choose to patch the system.
Heck if they're worried about update costs of the customer, let the patch to be removable. Someone could patch the program now, and then if there's a better one, they can install that instead.
The fact is that they have been slow, and the time she spent writing that piece of PR could be better spent in fixing more bugs. I don't blame them for having bugs (heck I recall all those nights spend debuggin my assignments, and these aren't production software), but man some of these fixes are so late that I'm not surprised that their clients are being attacked at the very same time they're "analyzing" the vulnerability
I scanned it rather quickly, but it is apparently this guy understands very little.
He discredits Linux and Mac's security based on obscurity, stating that because these two OS has little market share, there's little incentive to write malware targeting such platforms. Both operating systems (at least I know there exist viruses pre-OSX) have had some minor viruses, but they are hard to spread.
And his notion that Linux needs a kernel recompile for changing one piece of hardware is so kernel 2.0. If you're using a hardware modem, switching the modem is no problem. If you're using a soft-modem, most likely you only need the kernel headers and the source code for those modules. Most retail Desktop Linux have support for the linmodems, and free software purists have accused company like Madriva and SuSE of selling out by bundling close source driver with restrictive licensing.
He also claims that Microsoft brought the computer to the masses. Microsoft bought DOS from someone else and stuck it on the IBM PC, and IBM had put together the PC so quickly so that only the BIOS wasn't off the shelf and Compaq was the first to reverse engineer to make the PC clone. Who's the innovator here? Windows is arguably a rip off from Mac OS, heck even the name explorer is rather a pun on Finder. And Steve Jobs took the GUI idea from Xerox's Alto. So who's the innovator?
Microsoft have shown to be a follower in technology and strong arms it into the user. The typical users here won't know if there are alternative software out there (even if they do they're too lazy to try out the others) if their crappy IE and Windows Media Player is bundled together. Their security is still horrendous, despite the recent emphesis on security. There isn't a single Windows that doesn't yield a default Administrative user, and the end user hardly knows that they're not supposed to be running with Admin rights, and wonder why the heck they're getting all the malware infected deeply into Windows. Malware manages to corrupt even Windows DLLs.
Linux, is admittedly, not very user friendly, but at least it is very predictable. Most of the errors I've come across can be attributed to my misconfiguration.
Mac OSX, despite having a vocabulary that I'm not comfortable with, is predictable, unobtrusive, and knows when escalation of priviledge is necessary, and prompts the user then.
If he wants to sit around fixing Windows deeply infected with malware, then Windows is prefect for him and therefore should be loved. I intend to stay the heck away from Windows if I can.
Well said.
I think the Thetan (the guy that asked Slashdot) missed the qualitative differences between the information wanting to be free, and information wanted to be private; and the differences between the conservative's opposition to abortion and their support of the death penality. He merely equate them by ignoring the obvious differences and of course it seems contrarian. (Not that my comments are based on my partisanship.)
"I hope to god our country isn't so tainted that they truly believe corporations should be allowed to endange the general public because it may hurt their bottom line to fix the problems..."
They already have.
Look at McDonalds for example - their food is so drenched in oil and sugar and all those things that would cause obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, etc... but they don't really try to do better. Their Chicken salad has the same caloric value as a Big Mac, and their yogurt parfait with Granolas is just another Sundae.
You can also look at the oil industry. They've got enough money to invest in cleaner energy (and frankly that would be a PR revolution), but they don't. Along comes with all the problems of burning oil. Heck I was seeing ads advocating using coal as a power source.
Before you all think that I've got my tinfoil suit on, I think even disregarding the journalistic side of this idea, there's a lot to worry about.
The message itself may be encrypted, and hard to break, but if enough ISP/Server Admins get subpoenaed, it can correlated back to the computer that the message is sent. Whistleblowers and anonymous sources aren't exactly security professionals, and even if they cared to learn GPG, they might be silly enough to send the message that can be easily traced back. Even if he went to an internet cafe, the operators of that cafe may be questioned as to who may have come.
Assuming that these folks won't know to forge IPs and stuff (not to mention that many of the mail servers they use aren't open relays), they may have to tunnel their message to an off-shore, secure computer, and have that sent to whomever they need it to be sent to.
And frankly (wearing the tin-foil suit), if the government needs to know bad enough, they might just consult ECHELON.
In Vancouver it's pretty hard to find an independent book/mag retailer that isn't Indigo/Chapters/Coles, often there's only one bookstore left in a mall and it's the conglomerate. Indeed they're basically censoring things if they don't sell certain book/magazine. .22. No one was hurt.
They did shot at a building, but using something relatively small, I think it was a
Simon, I won't see you saying that if you have to face a user who tried to demand to have admin rights on his windows workstation behind my back by asking me to install the software, and when I proceed to sit down and install the software (and didn't give him admin rights), went and ask my superior for admin rights.
Since everything is a mess, and this guy is a SOB who wouldn't mind taking you out with him (he's as lowe on the ladder as you can get), and plus we don't have a written policy on that yet (gasp), he told me to grant it to him.
Sometimes it people don't feel great not because they think they're god and all the others above them are stupid. Like my situation, the two guys above me, not counting my superior, are pretty good at databases and the Microsoft environment, both of which I'm not exactly proficient - I was too lazy to set up anything database related and I ain't going to spend the time and headaches to set up a mock Microsoft server in my home. I don't think I'm always better than them, but my boss asks me about stuff on Linux, we're the Linux folks in this IT team. I realize that.
My supervisor offhandedly mentioned to his superiors that he worries about hiring another guy and have to train them because I'm heading back to school, and they're busy migrating accounting packages. That makes me feel kinda good - someone noticed that I'm pretty good at fixing these old clunkers and various software problems.
But it's the annoying users at the end that makes me feel pretty miserable (especially when I'm dealing with that pompous dimwit asking for admin rights), and I'm thinking that maybe IT workers are simply mixing misery from another front with whether the company values them.
Well...
The IT department here considered SCO because before Microsoft Exchange 2003 Small Business upped the limit from 16GB to >70GB, it was the alternative that they know (from a consultant... *shudder*)
Now we've tried the outlook connector they've provided. It's still in beta (I argue in alpha). Some of the settings in the web management can bring the server crashing down.
The whole thing is a mess, as I predicted as soon as I heard that we were going for SCO OpenServer.
So now given that the migration isn't complete at all, the guy up top is going to try and refund the money and go for Linux and Scalix as a exchange replacement.
I never thought that I'd say something like this, but if you're only given a choice between Microsoft and SCO, take Microsoft.
If he was quoted properly, that practically means that turning the browser into a kernel facing the Internet.
Given that the kernel on a computer aren't bug free, I'd like to keep my browser doing its intended job, browsing, thank you.
I can't remember whether I saw this from the Outer Limits or some other Sci-Fi series, but it was about a guy who discovered that cold-fusion bombs were feasible, and built one. Eventually he was killed, but at the end, some other person also stumble upon the same solution.
I much rather have the security flaw be exposed, and they get to scrambled into a more heightened mode and fix the problem then let it be silent. He discovered the problem publicly, but that doesn't prevent other hackers from knowing the exact same thing.
Even when I was getting paid I didn't buy many CDs. Problem isn't income in my opinion, but it's in the quality of the music.
I'm perfectly willing to pay for a CD if it's worth it, but I don't see why anyone should limit what I can do by putting some stupid DRM that locks me out from playing the CDs properly ahd making them out of spec.
Downloading MP3s are like previewing to many, and this is something that most music store doesn't do adequately. They only have like the top hits, and for the CDs that aren't in a preview player, you're out of luck. You can't listen to it, and have to buy it, and you can't return it if it stinks.
Until they figured that people like me bought far more CDs when Napster was around (yes yes I know they've gone into a pay service, but it's NOT the same thing), they're going to find that I'm hard to sell a CD to.
Perhaps he was thinking the article would be more secure by using illegibility through obfuscation...
Puppy Linux is quite neat. In Live-CD form once everything is loaded, you could remove the CD and use the CDROM. Also as a USB Linux Distro it's quite responsive even when used with USB 1 computers (those would probably require some other method of booting).
I would've kept the computer in Linux, if only we don't have to use bloody Outlook for email, and I have to help test the new server.
Good argument, except for number 6. It might nto et a "critical desktop mass", but there are many user-friendlier distros that you don't have to compile anything. In fact, they have so many things done for the user that they're uninteresting for me because I don't get to choose and I don't get to understand it. But for a user that just want a computer to work, it's great.
I might try and install Ubuntu on my dad's computer, and see whether he could get adjusted to it. I'm tired of dealing with Windows misbehaving on his computer.
Not necessarily. People who may have home brewed a RAID array serving people using a journaling file system may eventually be able to offload the journal to one of these HW RAM disk (basically what the commercial NAS are doing). Remember that journals still needs to be written in sync into the system in order to at least make sure the metadata is in check. The RAM disk (at least the developement version reviewed by another site) can last about 10-12 hours on battery alone, so that could be useful in a server setup.
Also for people who need a lot of cache/temp space, this could be useful. Motherboards, especially the home/enthusiast variety, only comes with so much RAM slots, and these non-persistant data can be written into the i-RAM.
I'm sure soon enough, there will be more manufacturers making these things, and as people upgrade and free up DDR RAM, they can reuse them in these HW RAM Disks.
I saw an earlier review like 2 weeks ago, a link from the Inquirer to a Chinese site. I went and made a rough translation, but I guess that's for nothing.
I wonder what interesting uses people would come up with. I've heard of comments from people that I know that heavy bittorrent users can kill the HD. Anyone has experienced that?
Maybe someone would be smart enough to write a mini-proxy that would simply replace the ads with 15 second blank screen. A blank screen is much more bearable than 95% of the crap that Hollywood spews out nowadays.
Using water cooling often permits you to use large, slower spinning fan. The larger fan allows more air to be moved, without the high pitched whine.
A 120mm Panaflo at 30dBA will move about 68CFM, while the old style 60mm Delta (not used much now because of the noise) moves 38CFM at 46.5dBA.
If I still remember my computer music stuff right, every 3 dB increase results in doubling of the sound power. You do the math.
Also, the crazier among us could attempt to put the radiator outside the window, thus reducing the noise.
Somehow your comparison is also valid between a book store and Chapters/Indigo, well maybe except for number 2.
They had stopped selling magazines like Soldier of Fortune or any of the knife or gun related magazines.
But no one seems to be complaining...
But anyways, when I'm back into Vancouver (they also provide ADSL in Vancouver), I'm either going to see a huge backlash from the left in the population, or I'm going to see that Telus lift their stupid ban. In either case they're making an even bigger stink than they already have. Their customer service is so bad that someone drove by and shot at their building about a year ago.
Not really.
Practitioners of Guerilla Warfare exploit their weakness.
My only problem is whether the weakness is that politicians are the ones willing to give up civil liberties, or merely the proles don't know what the heck is going on.
I'm sure you've heard of proxy and NAT...
In fact that's one of the easiest ways to try and cover you tracks. If you're going to try to track someone behind a proxy/nat, you'll have to convince the guy running the proxy/nat to work with you.
I certainly hope that it won't end up that everyone gets implanted with stuff like this since birth... It would be like conditioned to take Soma a la Brave New World.
A very good point, but care to convince some ISP and some hardware vendor to donate the bandwidth and servers needed for instantaneous updates?
Merely the exception to prove the rule.
I don't recall anything that Disney's spewing out for the last 5 years is original in any way. With the exception of the Anime that they're merely marketing and slapping an American voice (some of them are horrible for the role, and not to mention the lines are pretty bad at times), all their stuff that I've recall seeing on TV are either bad sequels, or DVDs for old videos, or remakes.