Actually Easter is one of the most blatantly pagan of the major holidays. While the 'official' intent is to celebrate Christ's return, look at the primary symbolism: rabbits, eggs, and flowers.
Rabbits are the very model of prolific breeding, and springtime is when they really ramp up. Eggs are important because chickens generally don't start producing eggs until the daylight is longer than night - i.e. after the spring equinox. The only reason we have eggs year-round is due to artificial lighting. And flowers are self-explanatory.
There's also the timing: Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the first day of Spring. Aside from the nominal 'Sunday' addition, this is one of the most 'naturalistic' ways possible to derive a holiday.
The current celebration is highly religious, but it's a far cry from 'legitimately Christian'.
It's about perceived superiority. There's an inherent tendency to be dismissive of others we perceive to be 'inferior' in some way - whether the differentiator is wealth, intelligence, physical prowess, popularity, or even moral righteousness (which is likely to be higher among Prius owners). It takes a fair amount of empathy and moral awareness to overcome this inclination, and the common perception is that these 'softer' skills are much less common among the highly wealthy - so they become the standard-bearers for this dynamic.
Over the last five years, I've encountered a surprising variety of server naming schemes... a handful are extremely common (South Park, Simpsons, planets, cars) but there have been some very interesting themes:
Sadly, clever themes are dying out as data centers scale up... the result is that the 'old-school' core systems maintain their personalities but new server/desktop builds have a derived hostname (userid, core function, platform, etc).
This really is an unfortunate loss, since (similar to conference room names) you can learn a lot about the company culture by the way they identify their resources.
What I find interesting is the potential for this type of distribution to be the vector for a zero-day exploit.
Imagine the scenario: an unscrupulous individual happens across an unannounced vulnerability, and develops an exploit. Rather than building it into a worm/botnet replication mechanism, he finds a way to load it onto a consumer electronics device (mp3 player, flash drive, camera, etc) and lets the well-established merchandise distribution network take it from there. Weeks/months later, at a predetermined time, an attack can be launched simultaneously from hundreds/thousands of locations, and we have a nasty problem on our hands.
Okay, fair enough - let me restate a bit more clearly:
The transition from one step to the next, viewed independently of any other step, is considered valid algebra.
The point of the comment was to avoid people questioning the factorization of conjugates, or the ability to subtract the same value from both sides of an equation... it's surprising how many people forget the basics after a few years. Obviously there's something illegal - the challenge is thinking abstractly and identifying it.
You may be shocked to know how often files change on your system... without a good policy defining the scope of your monitoring, you're asking for a world of hurt. As @madeus mentions, there is an OS X build of Tripwire which gives you a good deal of this functionality. Two caveats, however:
- Tripwire is not a real-time service, it's scheduled to run at specific (user-defined) times.
- Tripwire does not prevent anyone from making changes - it merely ensures that any changes to the OS are recorded and made visible to you.
That said, Tripwire is a very functional tool with excellent scripting and integration potential. Plus, it has a good amount of internal security - unless you know the relevant passphrases, you cannot subvert the product. If you root the box you can always uninstall it, but you can't tamper with the database or policy to hide your changes or trick Tripwire into sending a false 'all clear' message.
As with all such tools, it's best to check it out and evaluate it for yourself to see how it works for you.
For reference - these changes were captured by the OpenSource build of Tripwire, patched for Mac OS X. It's pretty likely that any changes captured on your system will differ in a few ways, but the basic theme should be consistent.
Is there any word on what other changes have been made? Aside from AirTunes, everything else on their site matches the 4.5 feature set. Plus, it was a previous 'minor enhancement' that changed the licensing terms of already-purchased music via the iTMS (to the significant apprehension of many people).
Although there have been several attempts at online music services in the past, I find it very interesting that the only 'viable' and well-publicized services today can be considered derivatives of the iTMS.
The same is true for the iPod - there were several HD-based MP3 players on the market before its launch, and more than a few released after. However, virtually all 'modern' portables seem to take several chapters from the iPod playbook, and some are far less subtle.
I won't believe that Apple is the only company with the talent to conceive and release groundbreaking products, but they may very well be one of the few companies with the courage to do so. I find this to be very disheartening.
The one response you'd never expect from a commercial company that was just (superficially) trumped by a platform vendor: Gratitude. Kudos to Mr. Case for recognizing the long term potential and not griping about 'being cut off at the knees' or other shortsighted objections.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually Easter is one of the most blatantly pagan of the major holidays. While the 'official' intent is to celebrate Christ's return, look at the primary symbolism: rabbits, eggs, and flowers.
Rabbits are the very model of prolific breeding, and springtime is when they really ramp up. Eggs are important because chickens generally don't start producing eggs until the daylight is longer than night - i.e. after the spring equinox. The only reason we have eggs year-round is due to artificial lighting. And flowers are self-explanatory.
There's also the timing: Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the first day of Spring. Aside from the nominal 'Sunday' addition, this is one of the most 'naturalistic' ways possible to derive a holiday.
The current celebration is highly religious, but it's a far cry from 'legitimately Christian'.
It's about perceived superiority. There's an inherent tendency to be dismissive of others we perceive to be 'inferior' in some way - whether the differentiator is wealth, intelligence, physical prowess, popularity, or even moral righteousness (which is likely to be higher among Prius owners). It takes a fair amount of empathy and moral awareness to overcome this inclination, and the common perception is that these 'softer' skills are much less common among the highly wealthy - so they become the standard-bearers for this dynamic.
You could say a simile is *like* a metaphor, in that they're both analogies.... Oblig xkcd.
There is always, of course, another angle to be explored...
I disagree... My install completed a few minutes ago, and it's definitely much snappier!
You just have to admire Slashdot... where else can comments like these be modded 'Insightful'?
Over the last five years, I've encountered a surprising variety of server naming schemes... a handful are extremely common (South Park, Simpsons, planets, cars) but there have been some very interesting themes:
- Mountains (Rushmore, Hood, K2, Adams, McKinley...)
- Presidents
- Muppets (Beaker, Dr Teeth, Statler and Waldorf [db cluster]...)
- Disasters (Tsumani, Andrew, Rita...)
- Zodiac
- Grateful Dead songs (Sugar Magnolia, Tennessee Jed, Ramblin Rose...)
- Local Breweries (Steelhead, Full Sail, Rogue...)
- ATF (AK-47, Moonshine, JimBeam...)
- Norse Pantheon (Odin, Thor, Loki...)
Sadly, clever themes are dying out as data centers scale up... the result is that the 'old-school' core systems maintain their personalities but new server/desktop builds have a derived hostname (userid, core function, platform, etc).
This really is an unfortunate loss, since (similar to conference room names) you can learn a lot about the company culture by the way they identify their resources.
Rationalizing an image as Photoshopped is easy, but try it in real life!
http://xkcd.com/331/
What I find interesting is the potential for this type of distribution to be the vector for a zero-day exploit.
Imagine the scenario: an unscrupulous individual happens across an unannounced vulnerability, and develops an exploit. Rather than building it into a worm/botnet replication mechanism, he finds a way to load it onto a consumer electronics device (mp3 player, flash drive, camera, etc) and lets the well-established merchandise distribution network take it from there. Weeks/months later, at a predetermined time, an attack can be launched simultaneously from hundreds/thousands of locations, and we have a nasty problem on our hands.
Okay, fair enough - let me restate a bit more clearly:
The transition from one step to the next, viewed independently of any other step, is considered valid algebra.
The point of the comment was to avoid people questioning the factorization of conjugates, or the ability to subtract the same value from both sides of an equation... it's surprising how many people forget the basics after a few years. Obviously there's something illegal - the challenge is thinking abstractly and identifying it.
This is one of my favorites - it has stumped many self-professed math geeks, yet high school freshmen have spotted the solution immediately.
x=y
x^2=xy
x^2-y^2=xy-y^2
(x+y)(x-y)=y(x-y)
x+y=y
2y=y
2=1
Every step uses perfectly valid algebra, yet something is obviously very wrong somewhere.
Enjoy...
You may be shocked to know how often files change on your system... without a good policy defining the scope of your monitoring, you're asking for a world of hurt. As @madeus mentions, there is an OS X build of Tripwire which gives you a good deal of this functionality. Two caveats, however:
- Tripwire is not a real-time service, it's scheduled to run at specific (user-defined) times.
- Tripwire does not prevent anyone from making changes - it merely ensures that any changes to the OS are recorded and made visible to you.
That said, Tripwire is a very functional tool with excellent scripting and integration potential. Plus, it has a good amount of internal security - unless you know the relevant passphrases, you cannot subvert the product. If you root the box you can always uninstall it, but you can't tamper with the database or policy to hide your changes or trick Tripwire into sending a false 'all clear' message.
As with all such tools, it's best to check it out and evaluate it for yourself to see how it works for you.
The 10.4.1 Update changes approximately 500 file system objects, not counting files modified only by prebinding.
The summary:
476 changes
16 additions
0 removals
Detailed list of modifications is available here.
For reference - these changes were captured by the OpenSource build of Tripwire, patched for Mac OS X. It's pretty likely that any changes captured on your system will differ in a few ways, but the basic theme should be consistent.
Jason
Is there any word on what other changes have been made? Aside from AirTunes, everything else on their site matches the 4.5 feature set. Plus, it was a previous 'minor enhancement' that changed the licensing terms of already-purchased music via the iTMS (to the significant apprehension of many people).
Although there have been several attempts at online music services in the past, I find it very interesting that the only 'viable' and well-publicized services today can be considered derivatives of the iTMS.
The same is true for the iPod - there were several HD-based MP3 players on the market before its launch, and more than a few released after. However, virtually all 'modern' portables seem to take several chapters from the iPod playbook, and some are far less subtle.
I won't believe that Apple is the only company with the talent to conceive and release groundbreaking products, but they may very well be one of the few companies with the courage to do so. I find this to be very disheartening.
The one response you'd never expect from a commercial company that was just (superficially) trumped by a platform vendor: Gratitude. Kudos to Mr. Case for recognizing the long term potential and not griping about 'being cut off at the knees' or other shortsighted objections.
Has it occurred to no one that they may just be very shy and don't like having their picture taken? Maybe it's just blushing that got carried away...
-------------