The Gates Foundation has recently been found lobbying for biotech-patents. Doesn't surprise, since it has investments in a load of the big pharmacy-companies: Pfizer, Merck, J & J, Wyeth, Abbott Labs.
Fascinating Facts #3: Incidentally, this system was used through the whole middle ages, through whole europe. In germany it was 240 Pfennig = 20 Schilling = 1 Pfund (Silver, that is).
Well, if I take a look at IT from the perspective of a user, I of course get the impression some so-called "IT professionals" are big idiots as well.
Take web-pages. With most web-pages I am the user. And obviously, those self-declared "webmasters" can't get anything right. Most pages not only fail to validate the easiest test whether they're actually html according to the definition, but also defy any law of user-friendly design. "No, you should not use that back-button on MY page". "If you don't like your browser full size, you will need to scroll sideways". "the font is big enough for ME", "No, you can't resize that, I did it exactly to the size I want it seen", "no flash? no navigation!" and so on.
If you're unlucky enough, you as a professional can enjoy yourself with the product of some company whose idiot-professionals think "click to focus" must be your way of working too, and insist on copy/paste with the keyboard, tough it could be done with the mouse just as well. You work with a system obviously produced by idiots who think presenting you with "Error 0xdeadbeef" (or something like that) is more comprehensive than giving you the error "550 wrong username or password" received from the server.
And now, you as an IT professional stand between the idiots who don't grok windows, and between the idiots who don't understand how to program windows (but did it anyway), and you probably can't do a thing about it. Nice perspective.
Absolutely, what a lot of people here on slashdot mark as "not safe for work" isn't actually a problem where I am working.
Sure, they don't want me to watch porn (or read whole cartoon-archives from 1998 upwards) when I should be working, but just a few pictures of half-nude people doesn't even qualify as porn here. And goatse.cx is just gross, but my boss wouldn't care.
The most "not safe for work" is actually slashdot itself, keeping me from working, not some links marked as such. (Well, BoingBoing would be "EXTREMELY not safe for work").
Well, at least you've got the last point straight.
As a long-time security chief of an ISP I can pretty much tell you what the ISP can and can't:
* We can associate an IP to a given time to an account, and in case of a dialup/ISDN or xDSL-line, to a specific phone number.
And we can do that with absolute certainity. The only point is, does the judge believe it? Does he believe it wasn't tampered with? By us or by some hacker? A logfile is a logfile, and altough I may be sure its not compromised, and I could document and show exactly how the record is obtained from that logfile (with notarial oversight), it could still leave doubts of it having been tampered beforehand, however unlikely.
And of course, the second point is:
* We may know the line and customer where the IP belonged to, but we have no idea what happend behind that line, at the place of the alleged "filesharer". There could be an arbitrary number of computers and users, there could be an internet-cafe, there could be an open WLAN, dozens of the usual hacked windows-machines, a hacked router with a proxy, whatever.
On the other hand, there are some things we don't have, and only may have if there is a criminal investigation running, and we've gotten an order by a judge:
* We don't know what data the customer was transferring, and when. We only know the volume and protocol (tcp, udp, icmp..) by time. Nothing else. Except if he was accessing our own servers, then we know more, but if he was communicating with some other server, we have no idea he did and with whom.
What a monopoly a company must have if it can introduce it's own stupid keys on the keyboard, and everyone copies them, in effect, making it impossible to buy a 102-key keyboard? When this happened I wanted to nuke Microsoft, eradicate that bunch of assholes off the earth.
Of course, they did a lot of other bullshit, shoddy products, idiot implementations of good ideas (ACLs), idiot implementations of idiot ideas (PPTP) idiot details (backslash as directory delimiter? Obviously they've never programmed C) and so on, but a lot of these don't concern me, since I can easily evade it by using Unix/Linux. But the 105-key Keyboard I can't.
Plus, on the non-technical side, they behaved like the assholes they are. Bullies.
we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia).
Why would anyone do so? Its says "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991" in the Licence.
Of course, the gaia-team has received a cease-and-desist letter, but there is no reason for other people not to continue on it until they get a cease-and-desist letter as well and so on..
So, when a private person or company gets to a certain arbitrary size in terms of assets, then the government is allowed to use force to take property from them? That sounds soooo enlightened.
Nono. If a company gets to a certain arbitrary size where it distorts the market, the government is allowed to use force to stop this anti-free-market behaviour. And if the company does not comply, it gets fined.
If I were running Microsoft, I would stop all shipments of all products to Europe (which is within their rights), and vigorously prosecute all copyright infrigment. That'll teach the government to mess with private property.
Stop all shipments? Of course Microsoft is fully within its rights to do that. However, given the market size, MS won't do that.
But "prosecute all copyright infrigment" -- well, who gave them those limited monopoly rights on the publication of their software? Yes, the governments.
And it's not "private property"; its "copyright", and copyright is spelled "limited monopoly rights on publication and dissemination of works".
not only was his message centrist enough to appeal (lets face it, the Greens and the Libertarians are extremist)
You've got yourself a really queer weltbild. Here in Europe, Ross Perot was considered a right wing extremist, neo-nazi and everything. The green are everywhere in the governements (usually left-centrists), and the libertarians form pirate parties.
If Ross Perot is "centrist", then god have mercy on you. Better start building weapon caches for the next necessary liberation.
A bit bigger than that, but I've got me a http://pcengines.ch/ WRAP, 3x100MBit, 1xSerial, 233Mhz Pentium-I-compatible processor, 128MB Ram, MiniPCI-slot and a Compact-Flash slot. Make a perfect firewall.
Don't filter by RBL. Use them to give scores to Spamassassin, but don't reject mail on basis that some host is in some RBL.
* There are RBLs nearly impossible to get out from, and you might actually get an IP assigned months earlier to somebody who never requested a removal. * False positives. Mails misidentified as spam (typically: newsletters which the signed up person no longer wants, vacation-mails in foreign languages) might bring you onto an RBL. * Collateral damage. A shared server with 1000 users and 2000 domains might turn up in an RBL because one of those users had an inscecure formmail running a night long. And even after removal by the sysadmins in the morning, 1499 users can't mail you the next 18 hours. * Spurious criterions for getting listed. Like "unsolicited bounces" or "sent mail to secret spamtrap"
So while RBLs are really a useful tools for deciding whether a mail might be spam, using them as THE ONLY reference on whether something is spam or not is just foolish.
Slashdot Mirror
The Gates Foundation has recently been found lobbying for biotech-patents. Doesn't surprise, since it has investments in a load of the big pharmacy-companies: Pfizer, Merck, J & J, Wyeth, Abbott Labs.
See also: http://100777.com/node/1331
As soon as they implement a package management which earsn the name "package management". Will take some years, I guess.
Yes! I love pirate movies, I've only got a dozen, so where's the rest?
All in all, if 18 year olds didn't drive, there wouldn't be a reason to restrict alcohol consumption...
Well, they do, and they drink too. Drinking age in most of the world is 16. Sometimes only for beer, wine and cider, and 18 for spirits.
Fascinating Facts #3: Incidentally, this system was used through the whole middle ages, through whole europe. In germany it was 240 Pfennig = 20 Schilling = 1 Pfund (Silver, that is).
Well, if I take a look at IT from the perspective of a user, I of course get the impression some so-called "IT professionals" are big idiots as well.
Take web-pages. With most web-pages I am the user. And obviously, those self-declared "webmasters" can't get anything right. Most pages not only fail to validate the easiest test whether they're actually html according to the definition, but also defy any law of user-friendly design. "No, you should not use that back-button on MY page". "If you don't like your browser full size, you will need to scroll sideways". "the font is big enough for ME", "No, you can't resize that, I did it exactly to the size I want it seen", "no flash? no navigation!" and so on.
If you're unlucky enough, you as a professional can enjoy yourself with the product of some company whose idiot-professionals think "click to focus" must be your way of working too, and insist on copy/paste with the keyboard, tough it could be done with the mouse just as well. You work with a system obviously produced by idiots who think presenting you with "Error 0xdeadbeef" (or something like that) is more comprehensive than giving you the error "550 wrong username or password" received from the server.
And now, you as an IT professional stand between the idiots who don't grok windows, and between the idiots who don't understand how to program windows (but did it anyway), and you probably can't do a thing about it. Nice perspective.
csup(1) integrated cvsup client now included
This is SOOO cool, now I don't need to compile the Modula-3 compiler anymore to compile this essential piece of software.
2004? I have a Linux-desktop since 1994! And at work, since 1996. Alas, I happen to work as Unix-Sysadmin since 1996...
Absolutely, what a lot of people here on slashdot mark as "not safe for work" isn't actually a problem where I am working.
Sure, they don't want me to watch porn (or read whole cartoon-archives from 1998 upwards) when I should be working, but just a few pictures of half-nude people doesn't even qualify as porn here. And goatse.cx is just gross, but my boss wouldn't care.
The most "not safe for work" is actually slashdot itself, keeping me from working, not some links marked as such. (Well, BoingBoing would be "EXTREMELY not safe for work").
Well, at least you've got the last point straight.
As a long-time security chief of an ISP I can pretty much tell you what the ISP can and can't:
* We can associate an IP to a given time to an account, and in case of a dialup/ISDN or xDSL-line, to a specific phone number.
And we can do that with absolute certainity. The only point is, does the judge believe it? Does he believe it wasn't tampered with? By us or by some hacker? A logfile is a logfile, and altough I may be sure its not compromised, and I could document and show exactly how the record is obtained from that logfile (with notarial oversight), it could still leave doubts of it having been tampered beforehand, however unlikely.
And of course, the second point is:
* We may know the line and customer where the IP belonged to, but we have no idea what happend behind that line, at the place of the alleged "filesharer". There could be an arbitrary number of computers and users, there could be an internet-cafe, there could be an open WLAN, dozens of the usual hacked windows-machines, a hacked router with a proxy, whatever.
On the other hand, there are some things we don't have, and only may have if there is a criminal investigation running, and we've gotten an order by a judge:
* We don't know what data the customer was transferring, and when. We only know the volume and protocol (tcp, udp, icmp..) by time. Nothing else. Except if he was accessing our own servers, then we know more, but if he was communicating with some other server, we have no idea he did and with whom.
Porting does first and foremost make sense from a "bugfixing" point of view. It's one of the best things quality assurance can do.
What a monopoly a company must have if it can introduce it's own stupid keys on the keyboard, and everyone copies them, in effect, making it impossible to buy a 102-key keyboard? When this happened I wanted to nuke Microsoft, eradicate that bunch of assholes off the earth.
Of course, they did a lot of other bullshit, shoddy products, idiot implementations of good ideas (ACLs), idiot implementations of idiot ideas (PPTP) idiot details (backslash as directory delimiter? Obviously they've never programmed C) and so on, but a lot of these don't concern me, since I can easily evade it by using Unix/Linux. But the 105-key Keyboard I can't.
Plus, on the non-technical side, they behaved like the assholes they are. Bullies.
"Well, this Digital Restriction Management System should not be held by that company, but by a different one".
Well, sure, other game companies stupid enough to buy into that would profit from it, but the end result would be the same: Customer fucked.
My goddess, ist that anal. Drinking age 18. Here in Europe its mostly 16 (for beer and wine, 18 for spirits).
we ask everybody who have ever downloaded gaia 0.1.0 and prior versions to delete all files concerned with the project, which include source code, binary files and image cache (~/.gaia).
Why would anyone do so? Its says "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991" in the Licence.
Of course, the gaia-team has received a cease-and-desist letter, but there is no reason for other people not to continue on it until they get a cease-and-desist letter as well and so on..
So, when a private person or company gets to a certain arbitrary size in terms of assets, then the government is allowed to use force to take property from them? That sounds soooo enlightened.
Nono. If a company gets to a certain arbitrary size where it distorts the market, the government is allowed to use force to stop this anti-free-market behaviour. And if the company does not comply, it gets fined.
If I were running Microsoft, I would stop all shipments of all products to Europe (which is within their rights), and vigorously prosecute all copyright infrigment. That'll teach the government to mess with private property.
Stop all shipments? Of course Microsoft is fully within its rights to do that. However, given the market size, MS won't do that.
But "prosecute all copyright infrigment" -- well, who gave them those limited monopoly rights on the publication of their software? Yes, the governments.
And it's not "private property"; its "copyright", and copyright is spelled "limited monopoly rights on publication and dissemination of works".
As a practicing Zen Agnostic (and Discordian) I merely do not believe in anything; and I vehemently even dispute that I do not believe in anything.
Watch cretins beat the holy fuck out of neanderthals! See them battle dinosaurs, history and common sense! Soon also in a church near you.
A Hippopotamus.
21 Under the lotus plants he lies,
hidden among the reeds in the marsh.
22 The lotuses conceal him in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround him.
23 When the river rages, he is not alarmed;
he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth.
You asked, you got an answer.
Well, I tought it was perfectly normal that an operating system does not need an antivirus unless its completely fucked up.
Welcome Microsoft, if whats Allchin said is true, then you've just produced the first Windows which is not an utter screw-up.
Guess what, we've got the Americas Cup and America hasn't, and neither have the New-Zealanders ;))
not only was his message centrist enough to appeal (lets face it, the Greens and the Libertarians are extremist)
You've got yourself a really queer weltbild. Here in Europe, Ross Perot was considered a right wing extremist, neo-nazi and everything. The green are everywhere in the governements (usually left-centrists), and the libertarians form pirate parties.
If Ross Perot is "centrist", then god have mercy on you. Better start building weapon caches for the next necessary liberation.
A bit bigger than that, but I've got me a http://pcengines.ch/ WRAP, 3x100MBit, 1xSerial, 233Mhz Pentium-I-compatible processor, 128MB Ram, MiniPCI-slot and a Compact-Flash slot. Make a perfect firewall.
Give em 30 days at least.
r osoft_and_f.html
Why? MS has proven it can fix a hole which allows reading of its DRMd content in 3 days.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/mic
Don't filter by RBL. Use them to give scores to Spamassassin, but don't reject mail on basis that some host is in some RBL.
* There are RBLs nearly impossible to get out from, and you might actually get an IP assigned months earlier to somebody who never requested a removal.
* False positives. Mails misidentified as spam (typically: newsletters which the signed up person no longer wants, vacation-mails in foreign languages) might bring you onto an RBL.
* Collateral damage. A shared server with 1000 users and 2000 domains might turn up in an RBL because one of those users had an inscecure formmail running a night long. And even after removal by the sysadmins in the morning, 1499 users can't mail you the next 18 hours.
* Spurious criterions for getting listed. Like "unsolicited bounces" or "sent mail to secret spamtrap"
So while RBLs are really a useful tools for deciding whether a mail might be spam, using them as THE ONLY reference on whether something is spam or not is just foolish.