If it's slow for you it's probably the intermediate hops and not the server. We have a 100Mbs connection to the internet here and an ftp.cdrom.com download can fill a large chunk of that. --
I had this experience too. The ftp install failed with a trip to the python debugger (apparently due to a problem with doing passive FTP over an IP-Masq connection). The HTTP install went further but died with a trip to the python debugger after one timeout (a timeout not suprising considering it is initiating hundreds of connections). I finally bit the bullet, burned a CD at school from the handy iso image on the FTP server. The CD install seemed pretty good. It boots into X which is cool, but the X configuration part itself still sucks. I ended up having to use a combination of Xconfigurator and hand editing to get the monitor/resolution/bitdepth combination I wanted as default.
I did try the custom and Gnome workstation installs of the CD both seemed to work ok, but I liked the old package chooser better.
My net assessment of the 6.1 install is that it is prettier and friendlier but less useful, and much less stable at net installs than 6.0, which was a big improvement over 5.2.
They are nearly always at or near the limit during normal US business hours, and are fairly near the limit at other times. If you log in, they will tell you you are user 4998 out of 5000 or what have you. --
I had a long response citing Reflections on Trusting Trust, the Ken Thomson article in which he describes trojaning the C compiler to trojan the C compiler to trojan login.c. But it vanished before my eyes (Damn you Microsoft...or was it the NSA...) So I'll try to be more brief.
In short, I don't think we need to worry about the source code generated by Linus, Alan et al. or even the asm for that matter. Peer review is great at picking out back doors. One should worry about every binary you installed on your computer and every binary that touched those binaries. Not to mention all the hardware. To be safe, I think one would have to boot the computer by hand (your computer does have a front panel with toggle switched right?) toggle in a compiler that you completely understand, then use that to compile an open source compiler, then use that compiler to compile every piece of software on your system. Even then you'd be only sort of safe. --
Your machine will probably be safe from a US$1e6 solution, after all, for US$1e6, I can break into your computer today (well ok, maybe next week, I'm kind of busy). This is true even if your computer is not connected to the network and has reasonably good physical and password security.
The real issue is not you at all, but large scale financial transactions. In 10 years I'd be surprised if less than US$1e12 in consumer transactions were conducted annually over the internet. If banks begin to use the internet for interbank transactions, that would probably be closer to US$1e14 per day. Now you can begin to see the advantages of spending a few billion to produce an encryption breaking machine. The money laundering applications alone (as opposed to direct stealing, which is more noticable) are probably worth that.
So I wouldn't be too concerned about you just yet, unless you're hearing odd clicks on your phone already. But I'd be a bit worried about your bank.
I don't quite understand the equivalence of software pirates and the NSA. A software pirate is violating my property in an oblique way whereas someone monitoring my activities is violating my privacy in a direct way. It would be closer to the truth to equate the NSA to a credit bureau or internet ad agency or medical insurance company, which all have the potential of invading my privacy in a direct and consequential manner. I think it is right and proper that we curb the abilities of all powerful corporations, government agencies, and individuals from invasion of privacy.
The difficulty of implementation of privacy controls is quite difficult once the data is collected and centralized, but there are large barriers and costs to collecting data, and presumably even if it is collected and centralized, there can be reasonable limits on it's use.
On the collection side, we need to resist the efforts to force telecommunications companies to build in taps on digital communications. We need to resist the introduction of large scale video monitoring systems. It is not that these systems are ineffective in reducing crime, but that their cost in terms of loss in privacy for law abiding citizens and opportunity cost in terms of the money that could have gone to proven solutions for reducing crime such as economic development and education. Most such large scale systems have not been implemented yet, so we have some time to allocate those resources more effectively to meet the goals of sucurity and privacy.
On the centralization side the largest danger is the merger and growth of large corporations, especially financial institutions, telecommunications corporations, and medical insurers, which have the power and desire to collect increasingly complete personal information. Unfortunately, much of this consolidation has already taken place. We are left with weak options for legislation and regulation. Much more than the government, the mega-corporation is the most immediate threat as a potential Big Brother, since their power trancends national borders and is largely closed to public review.
Unfortunately, the cost of opting out of such a system is more costly to me than the loss of privacy encurred by living in it. One can still live outside the system, even if that means leaving your nation of origin. I can only hold on to the glimmer of hope that with encryption, at least my private coorespondence can be fairly private. I do not expect my financial or medical privacy to be well kept. But that should not discourage me from fighting for every last safeguard. --
I stand corrected. It was a redundant post in that case since it brought nothing to the discussion by way of original thought. It probably deserves no moderation at all. --
The short answer is no. Collaborative weighting is not used, except in the macro sense. It is assumed that the sensibilites of Slashdot readers are fairly homogeneous and hence moderation is probably pretty close to what you would like. Or it will be after reading Slashdot for a while:-)
The best argument against the current system is that it tends to promote a dogmatic view of the world. If you toe the party line you are moderated up, thus increasing your chance of becoming a moderator. This is indeed a concern, but I have found that in most cases, well argued informed posts are moderated up, although too many uninformed party line posts are also moderated up. I'd love to see collaborative weights, but it would be a nightmare to implement efficiently enough to be used in such a high volume environment. There would also be a concern of the privacy of your personal weights, since they would be likely to make your potentially sensitive political views clear, even if you hadn't posted any comments espousing those views. --
IANAL, but I think it's perfectly reasonably to trademark the...For Dummies as a book title theme. It certainly wasn't in use in that context, and I'm fairly certain that context is an important part of trademark law. Ford Mattresses doesn't infringe on the trademark of Ford Automobiles. --
Copyright ends after the creators death + 70 years. Or 95 years from publication for corporate authors. We have Disney to thank for the most recent extension from 50 and 75 because the Mickey Mouse copyright was reaching the previous deadline in 2004. And we all know that a public domain Mickey would be the end of the world as we know it.
The idea of copyright is much different than trademark. Trademark is intended to allow brand differentiation and avoid consumer confusion. Copyright is intended to allow creators to benefit from creative work in exchange for eventually releasing that work to the public domain. Although at this rate it looks like 20th century works will never enter the public domain. Extentions have been made at an average rate of 1 year per year since 1962.
If anything, copyright terms should be going down, not up in this fast changing world. If you care about this issue read http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/what.html. It's an eyeopener. --
I'd agree with you if this were posted on a serious discussion, but an article like this deserves to be dealt with appropriate humor. While the post in question was trite and vulgar, it made me laugh out loud and was on topic at least, so it deserves a few points up IMHO.
I'd personally prefer being able to weight scores (or at least sorting) by which aspect was moderated up. Some days (or topics) I'd like to see only funny posts, some days only interesting/informative ones.
Oh well, all in all moderation is good. I tried reading without sorting by score or showing moderation points the other day. It was much worse. --
Maybe (overrated) would have been more appropriate. Too bad there isn't a (worthless) (vague) or (incomprehensible) moderation mode.
A 1 word opinion espousing a vague concept which does not have an immediate relationship with the subject at hand. Is, IMHO, offtopic. Apparently this was the moderator's humble opinion as well.
The post in question has since been raised to 0 again. --
There is apparently a bug of some kind, discovered by the German magazine c't, which affects the 733 MHz version of the Coppermine chip and causes the SPEC tests to compute a false result occasionally. (Sound familiar?)
But Intel Germany is blaming it on the i820 chipset, not the processor, which I guess is supposed to instill one with great confidence. --
Tracking Nauru banks is difficult, the State Department report said, because all "have the same post office box."
Damn, well I guess they can just use the CIA maps...no wait...yup we're screwed.
But seriously folks, banks don't launder money, people launder money. If you make offshore money havens a crime, only criminals will have offshore money havens.
That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one...let's see a Sun E10k, that's big iron, but as a desktop?, for one thing it's too high and too hot, not to mention expensive.
As for you main point, yes bloated office apps can make any computer slow, regardless of the OS. --
Perhaps felony is too strong of a word, but accessing a computer without permission is not something one would expect to be accepted gleefully by even enlightened sysadmins. When it comes down to it, most security systems in common use, from the lock on your front door to your root password are really more of a deterrent than an absolute barrier.
I can certainly understand the challenge and excitement, and even the relative harmlessness of entering a forbidden place. I have not hacked into computers as such, but I have climbed over barbed wired fences and "hacked" my way up microwave towers. The two are comparable, IMHO, in that there was at least an attempt at security but it was obviously not foolproof, I did it primarily for a thrill, and there was no permanent damage. I imagine that it would be a thrill to enter my neighbor's house while he was on vacation, or to "slim jim" open a car door to demonstrate the weak security. In the great scheme of things these are not major crimes, but to call them harmless is to ignore the very real concerns of the property holders.
I don't know what the proper balance is. Is a harmless breakin akin to just checking your neighbor's door to make sure he left it locked, or is in equivalent to coming in and checking out his dirty laundry, or is it, as Mr. IBM would suggest, tanamount to stealing his silver. As a sysadmin, I would like to be able to treat every unauthorized access as an illegal act because I can't always tell whether something was damaged. Clearly there is an onus on me to make sure my door is closed and I have a good inventory, but when I catch someone inside poking around I think it's reasonable to call the cops or at least the person's parents.
They were not written as such, they were interviews. And for once the respondents and the interviewer seemed to be fairly informed and reasonable although they had different perspectives. --
Slashdot Mirror
If it's slow for you it's probably the intermediate hops and not the server. We have a 100Mbs connection to the internet here and an ftp.cdrom.com download can fill a large chunk of that.
--
I had this experience too. The ftp install failed with a trip to the python debugger (apparently due to a problem with doing passive FTP over an IP-Masq connection). The HTTP install went further but died with a trip to the python debugger after one timeout (a timeout not suprising considering it is initiating hundreds of connections). I finally bit the bullet, burned a CD at school from the handy iso image on the FTP server. The CD install seemed pretty good. It boots into X which is cool, but the X configuration part itself still sucks. I ended up having to use a combination of Xconfigurator and hand editing to get the monitor/resolution/bitdepth combination I wanted as default.
I did try the custom and Gnome workstation installs of the CD both seemed to work ok, but I liked the old package chooser better.
My net assessment of the 6.1 install is that it is prettier and friendlier but less useful, and much less stable at net installs than 6.0, which was a big improvement over 5.2.
--
Is it just me, or did other people grok the expansion of BPI in this unfortunate manner.
--
Solaris (an otherwise good OS) has done this too.
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.5.1
2.6
7
not to mention that
SunOS 4.x == Solaris 1.x (retroactively)
Solaris 2.x == SunOS 5.x
Solaris 7 == SunOS 5.7
--
They are nearly always at or near the limit during normal US business hours, and are fairly near the limit at other times. If you log in, they will tell you you are user 4998 out of 5000 or what have you.
--
I had a long response citing Reflections on Trusting Trust, the Ken Thomson article in which he describes trojaning the C compiler to trojan the C compiler to trojan login.c. But it vanished before my eyes (Damn you Microsoft...or was it the NSA...) So I'll try to be more brief.
In short, I don't think we need to worry about the source code generated by Linus, Alan et al. or even the asm for that matter. Peer review is great at picking out back doors. One should worry about every binary you installed on your computer and every binary that touched those binaries. Not to mention all the hardware. To be safe, I think one would have to boot the computer by hand (your computer does have a front panel with toggle switched right?) toggle in a compiler that you completely understand, then use that to compile an open source compiler, then use that compiler to compile every piece of software on your system. Even then you'd be only sort of safe.
--
Your machine will probably be safe from a US$1e6 solution, after all, for US$1e6, I can break into your computer today (well ok, maybe next week, I'm kind of busy). This is true even if your computer is not connected to the network and has reasonably good physical and password security.
The real issue is not you at all, but large scale financial transactions. In 10 years I'd be surprised if less than US$1e12 in consumer transactions were conducted annually over the internet. If banks begin to use the internet for interbank transactions, that would probably be closer to US$1e14 per day. Now you can begin to see the advantages of spending a few billion to produce an encryption breaking machine. The money laundering applications alone (as opposed to direct stealing, which is more noticable) are probably worth that.
So I wouldn't be too concerned about you just yet, unless you're hearing odd clicks on your phone already. But I'd be a bit worried about your bank.
--
I don't quite understand the equivalence of software pirates and the NSA. A software pirate is violating my property in an oblique way whereas someone monitoring my activities is violating my privacy in a direct way. It would be closer to the truth to equate the NSA to a credit bureau or internet ad agency or medical insurance company, which all have the potential of invading my privacy in a direct and consequential manner. I think it is right and proper that we curb the abilities of all powerful corporations, government agencies, and individuals from invasion of privacy.
The difficulty of implementation of privacy controls is quite difficult once the data is collected and centralized, but there are large barriers and costs to collecting data, and presumably even if it is collected and centralized, there can be reasonable limits on it's use.
On the collection side, we need to resist the efforts to force telecommunications companies to build in taps on digital communications. We need to resist the introduction of large scale video monitoring systems. It is not that these systems are ineffective in reducing crime, but that their cost in terms of loss in privacy for law abiding citizens and opportunity cost in terms of the money that could have gone to proven solutions for reducing crime such as economic development and education. Most such large scale systems have not been implemented yet, so we have some time to allocate those resources more effectively to meet the goals of sucurity and privacy.
On the centralization side the largest danger is the merger and growth of large corporations, especially financial institutions, telecommunications corporations, and medical insurers, which have the power and desire to collect increasingly complete personal information. Unfortunately, much of this consolidation has already taken place. We are left with weak options for legislation and regulation. Much more than the government, the mega-corporation is the most immediate threat as a potential Big Brother, since their power trancends national borders and is largely closed to public review.
Unfortunately, the cost of opting out of such a system is more costly to me than the loss of privacy encurred by living in it. One can still live outside the system, even if that means leaving your nation of origin. I can only hold on to the glimmer of hope that with encryption, at least my private coorespondence can be fairly private. I do not expect my financial or medical privacy to be well kept. But that should not discourage me from fighting for every last safeguard.
--
(From "Here's the law in question" thread below)
Or was that above... That's the trouble with sorting by score. One never knows for sure.
(apologies to Dr. Who)
--
I stand corrected. It was a redundant post in that case since it brought nothing to the discussion by way of original thought. It probably deserves no moderation at all.
--
The short answer is no. Collaborative weighting is not used, except in the macro sense. It is assumed that the sensibilites of Slashdot readers are fairly homogeneous and hence moderation is probably pretty close to what you would like. Or it will be after reading Slashdot for a while :-)
The best argument against the current system is that it tends to promote a dogmatic view of the world. If you toe the party line you are moderated up, thus increasing your chance of becoming a moderator. This is indeed a concern, but I have found that in most cases, well argued informed posts are moderated up, although too many uninformed party line posts are also moderated up. I'd love to see collaborative weights, but it would be a nightmare to implement efficiently enough to be used in such a high volume environment. There would also be a concern of the privacy of your personal weights, since they would be likely to make your potentially sensitive political views clear, even if you hadn't posted any comments espousing those views.
--
IANAL, but I think it's perfectly reasonably to trademark the ...For Dummies as a book title theme. It certainly wasn't in use in that context, and I'm fairly certain that context is an important part of trademark law. Ford Mattresses doesn't infringe on the trademark of Ford Automobiles.
--
Copyright ends after the creators death + 70 years. Or 95 years from publication for corporate authors. We have Disney to thank for the most recent extension from 50 and 75 because the Mickey Mouse copyright was reaching the previous deadline in 2004. And we all know that a public domain Mickey would be the end of the world as we know it.
The idea of copyright is much different than trademark. Trademark is intended to allow brand differentiation and avoid consumer confusion. Copyright is intended to allow creators to benefit from creative work in exchange for eventually releasing that work to the public domain. Although at this rate it looks like 20th century works will never enter the public domain. Extentions have been made at an average rate of 1 year per year since 1962.
If anything, copyright terms should be going down, not up in this fast changing world. If you care about this issue read http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/what.html. It's an eyeopener.
--
I'm guessing it's something that comes straight out of one's @$$.
--
I'd agree with you if this were posted on a serious discussion, but an article like this deserves to be dealt with appropriate humor. While the post in question was trite and vulgar, it made me laugh out loud and was on topic at least, so it deserves a few points up IMHO.
I'd personally prefer being able to weight scores (or at least sorting) by which aspect was moderated up. Some days (or topics) I'd like to see only funny posts, some days only interesting/informative ones.
Oh well, all in all moderation is good. I tried reading without sorting by score or showing moderation points the other day. It was much worse.
--
Maybe (overrated) would have been more appropriate. Too bad there isn't a (worthless) (vague) or (incomprehensible) moderation mode.
A 1 word opinion espousing a vague concept which does not have an immediate relationship with the subject at hand. Is, IMHO, offtopic. Apparently this was the moderator's humble opinion as well.
The post in question has since been raised to 0 again.
--
That's http://www.theregister.co.uk/991026 -000001.html for the lazy.
There is apparently a bug of some kind, discovered by the German magazine c't, which affects the 733 MHz version of the Coppermine chip and causes the SPEC tests to compute a false result occasionally. (Sound familiar?)
But Intel Germany is blaming it on the i820 chipset, not the processor, which I guess is supposed to instill one with great confidence.
--
The average consumer only cares about:
--
Tracking Nauru banks is difficult, the State Department report said, because all "have the same post office box."
Damn, well I guess they can just use the CIA maps...no wait...yup we're screwed.
But seriously folks, banks don't launder money, people launder money. If you make offshore money havens a crime, only criminals will have offshore money havens.
Ok, I'm done now.
--
This one in the AIBO article. Only got a +4 but it's a decent first post.
--
They can probably blow some shit up.
--
That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one...let's see a Sun E10k, that's big iron, but as a desktop?, for one thing it's too high and too hot, not to mention expensive.
As for you main point, yes bloated office apps can make any computer slow, regardless of the OS.
--
Yes grasshopper, there is never a need to be rude, but did you realize the first /.-er was being sarcastic. :-)
--
Perhaps felony is too strong of a word, but accessing a computer without permission is not something one would expect to be accepted gleefully by even enlightened sysadmins. When it comes down to it, most security systems in common use, from the lock on your front door to your root password are really more of a deterrent than an absolute barrier.
I can certainly understand the challenge and excitement, and even the relative harmlessness of entering a forbidden place. I have not hacked into computers as such, but I have climbed over barbed wired fences and "hacked" my way up microwave towers. The two are comparable, IMHO, in that there was at least an attempt at security but it was obviously not foolproof, I did it primarily for a thrill, and there was no permanent damage. I imagine that it would be a thrill to enter my neighbor's house while he was on vacation, or to "slim jim" open a car door to demonstrate the weak security. In the great scheme of things these are not major crimes, but to call them harmless is to ignore the very real concerns of the property holders.
I don't know what the proper balance is. Is a harmless breakin akin to just checking your neighbor's door to make sure he left it locked, or is in equivalent to coming in and checking out his dirty laundry, or is it, as Mr. IBM would suggest, tanamount to stealing his silver. As a sysadmin, I would like to be able to treat every unauthorized access as an illegal act because I can't always tell whether something was damaged. Clearly there is an onus on me to make sure my door is closed and I have a good inventory, but when I catch someone inside poking around I think it's reasonable to call the cops or at least the person's parents.
--
Fine then, why don't you read the articles.
They were not written as such, they were interviews. And for once the respondents and the interviewer seemed to be fairly informed and reasonable although they had different perspectives.
--