A successful buffer overflow against sendmail is going to allow arbitrary remote code execution anyway.
Sure, but the point is a buffer overflow in sendmail may only get you local, non-privileged access (obviously this depends on your configuration... OTOH, I would *hope* you're smart enough to have your public-facing services running as non-privileged users). But once you're there, all you need is a local privilege escalation bug for your box to be fully compromised.
Of course, it's up to you to judge the odds of this happening. But the idea that a local compromise is only a danger if you can gain access to the console is simply naive.
There's no reason to patch for local security issues on a mail server that only allows hardware terminal access (Aside from SMTP).
Well that's just silly. All you need is one remote exploit that gives a user access to a non-privileged shell, and you're boned. Local exploits are only local as long as there are no remote exploits...
He might be a crackpot, but the idea isn't. Google on MOND [wikipedia.org].
Google on the Bullet Cluster. Then Google about why MOND-style theories can't explain it without conceding that there must be at least *some* non-visible matter out there.
The machine came with Vista which, surprise surprise, takes longer to do the same thing and occasionally hangs.
Weird. I have a T61, and suspend/wakeup absolutely works more or less flawlessly under Ubuntu, but it's definitely a *lot* faster under Vista. Like, sleep in 2-3 seconds tops (Ubuntu is probably closer to 5) and near-instant wakeup (though you have to wiggle the mouse to get the screen to activate... why, I don't know, maybe a screeensaver setting somewhere). 'course, don't get me wrong, Vista is dog slow otherwise (immediately after booting it can take many minutes for the machine to settle down, and it never really does... and this is with 2GB of RAM), but when it comes to suspend/wakeup, it's still significantly quicker and more responsive than Ubuntu.
I am more distracted by people in the car because I tend to look at them when we are talking.
Then don't fucking do that. It's a stupid idea, and you are apparently aware of it. Your passenger will understand if you don't make eye contact.
OTOH, if you suddenly find yourself in a stressful situation while speaking on a cellphone, the person on the other side of the call may continue rambling on, providing a constant distraction, while a person physically in the passenger seat will probably STFU until the situation has passed.
Of course, the situation is only made worse if you aren't bright enough to use a handsfree device. In that case, there's a whole additional level of effect caused by simply having to hold the phone to the ear, thus driving without both hands on the wheel, etc. But you aren't *that* stupid, are you?
No one anywhere ever should have to make concessions for another person.
You mean like my conceding my movie-going experience because some jackass can't turn off his goddamned cell phone?
Or, maybe you should just say what you mean: you believe you are more important than me. You believe that your right to a night out while on call is more important than my right to enjoy the product or service I've paid for.
I've always blamed the rude person and not the technology.
Ditto. The problem is, when there's no social solution to a problem (and, given my experience, there isn't... a jackass yammering away on a phone in a theatre typically isn't interested in my asking them to shut up or leave), the next step is to take technological measures.
The legality of RF shielding is not cut and dry. The rights of the propietor are also not absolute
You're absolutely right. But only in very specific cases involving other people's rights. Racial discrimination, as you say, is one of those situations. I *highly* doubt cell phone use qualifies, though.
In addition the shielding of your property may block the reception to an adjacent property or a public street.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. I can only assume you've never heard of multipathing. It's the reason you can get cellphone reception in an area surrounded by tall skyscrapers.
Finally, most businesses lease rather than own the land and building, which brings up issues of who pays for the shielding.
And I have *no* idea what this has to do with the legality of shielding. If the building owners installed shielding, that's their business. Period. End of story.
One other aspect of blocking cell phone use is that the propietor now becomes responsible for emergency communication
Pure, utter bullshit. You're telling me that if I can't get reception in the basement floor of a parking garage, it's the building's responsibility to ensure I have emergency communication? Sorry, no way in hell. I strongly suspect you just made that up.
The facts are this: nothing makes passive shielding illegal. There's nothing gray about it. It's legal. Plain and simple. Hell, crappy reception inside large concrete buildings has been a problem since cellphones were invented, and there's clearly nothing illegal about them. Active jamming, however, is illegal, but not because cell phone service is some kind of inalienable right, but rather because RF jamming of any kind on commercial bands is illegal due to FCC regulations limiting transmission on those bands.
This actually touches on #1 as well, as sometimes doctors are on call for months at a time and I don't think we can ask doctors to simply give up elements of their life like that.
Fuck that, yes we can. a) if the hospital has doctors on call for months at a time, there's a problem. Rotation should be more frequent than that, and if they can't, it's a staffing problem.
b) Being a doctor means making sacrifices. Long years of education, often deep debt, and so forth. On the other hand, they are compensated accordingly. One of those sacrifices is being on call. If that means they have to sacrifice some of their time, that's their choice. But they are being paid accordingly.
. If they're at normal volume, and the person isn't directly positioned to address me, it's pretty obvious that they're not talking to me, and I've never found a reason to assume otherwise.
Ugh, it's not that you are consciously trying to understand the conversation. You're right, that would be stupid. The problem is that the human brain, as it's processing audio, has a harder time filtering out one-sided conversations. This has been demonstrated in scientific studies (see other comments to the GP), so it's not something to simply dismiss, unless, of course, you're only interested in believing what you want to believe, instead of the actual facts of the situation.
Electricity has had a demonstrable, significant impact on quality of life for the human race. The same most certainly cannot be said for cell phones (okay, that's not really true for the developing world, but that's not the focus of the article). They're a convenience. That's all.
And I'm sure you're company is thrilled that you're doing TWO jobs for the same pay.
Well, I see you've missed the point. Here, let me clarify: the old job *wasn't* a whole job. It was, at best, probably a tenth of a job. Maybe. But they had a full-time salary allocated to do it. The OP demonstrated that the job was, in fact, trivial, and didn't warrant a new full-time employee. That's called optimization, and he should be commended (and, I hope, rewarded) for it. IOW, he's not left doing two jobs, he's left doing one job plus a couple extra tasks, while another was cheerfully eliminated.
Geez, you'd think such scientific thinking people would know a flawed comparison when the typed it.
You're telling me forcing scientific knowledge upon people, which may contradict their personal faith, isn't essentially equivalent to forcing a government, or a morality, on someone else? Really?
And deciding the difference between Good and Evil is of course a matter of perspective.
Well that can't be right. You just said:
Good always has a reluctance to use force, but will when necissary.
So as long as I'm using force reluctantly, I must be good, correct?
And ignoring that obvious contradiction in your post, all you're advocating is moral relativism, which is fine when dealing with non-absolutes like whether it's right or wrong to, say, marry your cousin.
But science is objective knowledge, plain and simple. There is nothing relative about it. For example, the world is >6,000 years old. That is fact. That cannot be disputed (well, you could contend that god created the world to look like it was >6,000 years old... but I could contend the universe was vomited, whole, from the mouth of a giant turtle... both ideas are equally insane and equally unproveable). And I believe it can never be evil to expose people to knowledge, and to fight ignorance.
do i know enough about this subject matter to make this decision?
no?
You're assuming the leader in question knows enough to realize they don't know enough. Someone sufficiently ignorant (such as the current president) may not even understand that much. Worse, in order to select those who you would delegate to (which is, BTW, also the job of the president and his executive), you have to be educated enough to identify sufficiently qualified candidates. Again, the current administration is an excellent example of those who *can't* do this effectively (most appointments are politically motivated, rather than selecting those who would be most qualified for the job... the previous NASA administrator being a classic example).
Hence why at least a basic understanding of the issues is important. Need they be an expert at all things? No, of course not, and I never once said that, despite your insistence to the contrary. But I do expect the leader of a nation to have a basic understanding of: core K-12 subjects such as math, science, and english (which, BTW, you *grossly* fail at), along with economics, international politics, basic management skills, and so forth.
But, apparently I expect more from a leader than you do.
you lose
You're telling me... it was I who wasted all this time trying to coax meaning from your endless (and poorly punctuated) ramblings, only now realizing that there is, apparently, little point in bothering...
you don't know every detail of tcp/ip protocols at the phd level. therefore, i find you unsuitable for posting on slashdot...that's basically the same as what you just said about the presidency and science
No, what I said would be equivalent to putting me in charge of making the big decisions on how to design IPv6 without said credentials. Only an idiot would consider that a good idea.
Regardless, you have demonstrated one thing: most analogies suck.
that someone has to meet your random arbitrary and meaningless minimum requirements of scientific knowledge in order to lead a country
Huh? There's nothing random, arbitrary, or meaningless about it. It takes very little create a simple, unbiased examination to determine if an individual has a basic understanding of science.
no, he just has to be a good leader
Pure and utter bullshit. Put someone behind the wheel of a car, and I think it's reasonable to expect they've taken a few driving lessons. Put the president in charge of scientific policy of the executive branch (which he is), and I would expect him to have a reasonable, working knowledge of science. Why do you consider this so unreasonable?
and being a good leader naturally includes delegating questions properly. questions involving legal minutaie
Are you simply ignorant of what an executive order is? You must be, otherwise you'd understand that, fundamentally, this isn't how the presidency works. He may delegate the responsibility for researching topics to those below him (typically those idealogically aligned with him), but the president has the final say. Period.
that's the exact same sort of "standards" you wish to think matter
Are you done beating that strawman, yet, or should I leave you two alone?
i'm saying that the president need not know any science
those are two different subject matters
You think I'm attacking Bush. I'm not.
I'm saying the president has all the tools in his hands to severely curtail scientific progress in the US, and so it is *necessary* for the president to understand those issues, if he's going to exercise that power.
the problem with bush is not that he doesn't know any science, but that he happily panders to his fundamentalist christian political base by advancing their agenda
You seem awfully sure of that. How do you know without asking him? Say, in a debate?
the exact same logic applies with science. the president doesn't need to know ANY science
Except, of course, that the president is responsible for issuing executive orders, which dictate how various branches of the government operate. And it's these very executive orders that result in things like banning of all but abstinence-only sexual education, the censoring or altering of scientific results from government branches such as NOAA, NASA, and others, and so forth. Further, the president can happily veto bills, such as budgets, to ensure they include funding for "faith-based initiatives", and so on.
So, no, the same logic doesn't apply. In fact, it's complete BS.
Yeah. *Scientists* disagree. And how do they go about it? By invalidating each others theories with evidence, and then providing alternative theories. But that *doesn't* make it acceptable (in the sense that we should passively accept) for a layman to take a position which contradicts our current knowledge, unless they can provide experimental evidence to back their position.
Put another way, I'm not going to simply accept some idiot convincing people that the earth is 6,000 years old just because he says so. Provide evidence, or quit misinforming people. It's not just unproductive, it's actually damaging, as it breeds ignorance.
Dogma has no place in science.
Who said anything about dogma? The current accepted theory about the origin of life on earth evolution. The majority of scientists accept this view. Does that make it dogma? No. It just means that's the current state of the art, and it will remain so until someone provides evidence which is unexplainable in the framework of the current theory.
Forcing science on everyone is just as disrespectful as forcing religion on everyone. After all, if both sides intend to employ coercion as their means, are they really that different?
Is it okay to force our idea of government on the middle east? Is it okay to force our morality regarding human rights on those who would oppress others?
It is the single hierarchy that makes things brittle
Really? Why?
Very un-unix.
Huh? Unix had hierarchies since it's inception. They're called subdirectories.
gconf is, in fact, exactly like/etc, except it mandates a file format (which can be nothing but a step forward... the vast number of config file formats is a major administrative headache), and provides an API for accessing the settings within (again, a very nice thing for developers). That's it, that's all.
Well, there's your problem. Email isn't supposed to be used to ship around multi-megabyte files. Stop doing that, dumbass. Seriously. Set up a damn web server and post the images there. If you're worried about security, set up usernames and passwords. Regardless, email is the wrong tool for the job.
Meanwhile, I actually applaud Comcast blocking outbound port 25. Spam is a problem at the best of times, and those kinds of measures can actually do something about the problem, given a large amount of spam comes from zombie PCs running on regular, residential internet connections (I used to run an SMTP server of my own, and I just routed my email through my ISP's server... never had a problem).
Slashdot Mirror
A successful buffer overflow against sendmail is going to allow arbitrary remote code execution anyway.
Sure, but the point is a buffer overflow in sendmail may only get you local, non-privileged access (obviously this depends on your configuration... OTOH, I would *hope* you're smart enough to have your public-facing services running as non-privileged users). But once you're there, all you need is a local privilege escalation bug for your box to be fully compromised.
Of course, it's up to you to judge the odds of this happening. But the idea that a local compromise is only a danger if you can gain access to the console is simply naive.
There's no reason to patch for local security issues on a mail server that only allows hardware terminal access (Aside from SMTP).
Well that's just silly. All you need is one remote exploit that gives a user access to a non-privileged shell, and you're boned. Local exploits are only local as long as there are no remote exploits...
He might be a crackpot, but the idea isn't. Google on MOND [wikipedia.org].
Google on the Bullet Cluster. Then Google about why MOND-style theories can't explain it without conceding that there must be at least *some* non-visible matter out there.
OK, I agree, but simply mashing together some technologies does not an engineer make.
Did anyone say that? No. Nice strawman, though. You knocked it down valiantly.
I, however, can only assume you are, yourself, an engineer. And evidently a rather defensive one...
The machine came with Vista which, surprise surprise, takes longer to do the same thing and occasionally hangs.
Weird. I have a T61, and suspend/wakeup absolutely works more or less flawlessly under Ubuntu, but it's definitely a *lot* faster under Vista. Like, sleep in 2-3 seconds tops (Ubuntu is probably closer to 5) and near-instant wakeup (though you have to wiggle the mouse to get the screen to activate... why, I don't know, maybe a screeensaver setting somewhere). 'course, don't get me wrong, Vista is dog slow otherwise (immediately after booting it can take many minutes for the machine to settle down, and it never really does... and this is with 2GB of RAM), but when it comes to suspend/wakeup, it's still significantly quicker and more responsive than Ubuntu.
I am more distracted by people in the car because I tend to look at them when we are talking.
Then don't fucking do that. It's a stupid idea, and you are apparently aware of it. Your passenger will understand if you don't make eye contact.
OTOH, if you suddenly find yourself in a stressful situation while speaking on a cellphone, the person on the other side of the call may continue rambling on, providing a constant distraction, while a person physically in the passenger seat will probably STFU until the situation has passed.
Of course, the situation is only made worse if you aren't bright enough to use a handsfree device. In that case, there's a whole additional level of effect caused by simply having to hold the phone to the ear, thus driving without both hands on the wheel, etc. But you aren't *that* stupid, are you?
No one anywhere ever should have to make concessions for another person.
You mean like my conceding my movie-going experience because some jackass can't turn off his goddamned cell phone?
Or, maybe you should just say what you mean: you believe you are more important than me. You believe that your right to a night out while on call is more important than my right to enjoy the product or service I've paid for.
I've always blamed the rude person and not the technology.
Ditto. The problem is, when there's no social solution to a problem (and, given my experience, there isn't... a jackass yammering away on a phone in a theatre typically isn't interested in my asking them to shut up or leave), the next step is to take technological measures.
The legality of RF shielding is not cut and dry. The rights of the propietor are also not absolute
You're absolutely right. But only in very specific cases involving other people's rights. Racial discrimination, as you say, is one of those situations. I *highly* doubt cell phone use qualifies, though.
In addition the shielding of your property may block the reception to an adjacent property or a public street.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. I can only assume you've never heard of multipathing. It's the reason you can get cellphone reception in an area surrounded by tall skyscrapers.
Finally, most businesses lease rather than own the land and building, which brings up issues of who pays for the shielding.
And I have *no* idea what this has to do with the legality of shielding. If the building owners installed shielding, that's their business. Period. End of story.
One other aspect of blocking cell phone use is that the propietor now becomes responsible for emergency communication
Pure, utter bullshit. You're telling me that if I can't get reception in the basement floor of a parking garage, it's the building's responsibility to ensure I have emergency communication? Sorry, no way in hell. I strongly suspect you just made that up.
The facts are this: nothing makes passive shielding illegal. There's nothing gray about it. It's legal. Plain and simple. Hell, crappy reception inside large concrete buildings has been a problem since cellphones were invented, and there's clearly nothing illegal about them. Active jamming, however, is illegal, but not because cell phone service is some kind of inalienable right, but rather because RF jamming of any kind on commercial bands is illegal due to FCC regulations limiting transmission on those bands.
This actually touches on #1 as well, as sometimes doctors are on call for months at a time and I don't think we can ask doctors to simply give up elements of their life like that.
Fuck that, yes we can. a) if the hospital has doctors on call for months at a time, there's a problem. Rotation should be more frequent than that, and if they can't, it's a staffing problem.
b) Being a doctor means making sacrifices. Long years of education, often deep debt, and so forth. On the other hand, they are compensated accordingly. One of those sacrifices is being on call. If that means they have to sacrifice some of their time, that's their choice. But they are being paid accordingly.
. If they're at normal volume, and the person isn't directly positioned to address me, it's pretty obvious that they're not talking to me, and I've never found a reason to assume otherwise.
Ugh, it's not that you are consciously trying to understand the conversation. You're right, that would be stupid. The problem is that the human brain, as it's processing audio, has a harder time filtering out one-sided conversations. This has been demonstrated in scientific studies (see other comments to the GP), so it's not something to simply dismiss, unless, of course, you're only interested in believing what you want to believe, instead of the actual facts of the situation.
Electricity has had a demonstrable, significant impact on quality of life for the human race. The same most certainly cannot be said for cell phones (okay, that's not really true for the developing world, but that's not the focus of the article). They're a convenience. That's all.
And I'm sure you're company is thrilled that you're doing TWO jobs for the same pay.
Well, I see you've missed the point. Here, let me clarify: the old job *wasn't* a whole job. It was, at best, probably a tenth of a job. Maybe. But they had a full-time salary allocated to do it. The OP demonstrated that the job was, in fact, trivial, and didn't warrant a new full-time employee. That's called optimization, and he should be commended (and, I hope, rewarded) for it. IOW, he's not left doing two jobs, he's left doing one job plus a couple extra tasks, while another was cheerfully eliminated.
Geez, you'd think such scientific thinking people would know a flawed comparison when the typed it.
You're telling me forcing scientific knowledge upon people, which may contradict their personal faith, isn't essentially equivalent to forcing a government, or a morality, on someone else? Really?
And deciding the difference between Good and Evil is of course a matter of perspective.
Well that can't be right. You just said:
Good always has a reluctance to use force, but will when necissary.
So as long as I'm using force reluctantly, I must be good, correct?
And ignoring that obvious contradiction in your post, all you're advocating is moral relativism, which is fine when dealing with non-absolutes like whether it's right or wrong to, say, marry your cousin.
But science is objective knowledge, plain and simple. There is nothing relative about it. For example, the world is >6,000 years old. That is fact. That cannot be disputed (well, you could contend that god created the world to look like it was >6,000 years old... but I could contend the universe was vomited, whole, from the mouth of a giant turtle... both ideas are equally insane and equally unproveable). And I believe it can never be evil to expose people to knowledge, and to fight ignorance.
Yes, you're absolutely correct, I misstated, my apologies.
do i know enough about this subject matter to make this decision?
no?
You're assuming the leader in question knows enough to realize they don't know enough. Someone sufficiently ignorant (such as the current president) may not even understand that much. Worse, in order to select those who you would delegate to (which is, BTW, also the job of the president and his executive), you have to be educated enough to identify sufficiently qualified candidates. Again, the current administration is an excellent example of those who *can't* do this effectively (most appointments are politically motivated, rather than selecting those who would be most qualified for the job... the previous NASA administrator being a classic example).
Hence why at least a basic understanding of the issues is important. Need they be an expert at all things? No, of course not, and I never once said that, despite your insistence to the contrary. But I do expect the leader of a nation to have a basic understanding of: core K-12 subjects such as math, science, and english (which, BTW, you *grossly* fail at), along with economics, international politics, basic management skills, and so forth.
But, apparently I expect more from a leader than you do.
you lose
You're telling me... it was I who wasted all this time trying to coax meaning from your endless (and poorly punctuated) ramblings, only now realizing that there is, apparently, little point in bothering...
you don't know every detail of tcp/ip protocols at the phd level. therefore, i find you unsuitable for posting on slashdot ...that's basically the same as what you just said about the presidency and science
No, what I said would be equivalent to putting me in charge of making the big decisions on how to design IPv6 without said credentials. Only an idiot would consider that a good idea.
Regardless, you have demonstrated one thing: most analogies suck.
that someone has to meet your random arbitrary and meaningless minimum requirements of scientific knowledge in order to lead a country
Huh? There's nothing random, arbitrary, or meaningless about it. It takes very little create a simple, unbiased examination to determine if an individual has a basic understanding of science.
no, he just has to be a good leader
Pure and utter bullshit. Put someone behind the wheel of a car, and I think it's reasonable to expect they've taken a few driving lessons. Put the president in charge of scientific policy of the executive branch (which he is), and I would expect him to have a reasonable, working knowledge of science. Why do you consider this so unreasonable?
and being a good leader naturally includes delegating questions properly. questions involving legal minutaie
Are you simply ignorant of what an executive order is? You must be, otherwise you'd understand that, fundamentally, this isn't how the presidency works. He may delegate the responsibility for researching topics to those below him (typically those idealogically aligned with him), but the president has the final say. Period.
that's the exact same sort of "standards" you wish to think matter
Are you done beating that strawman, yet, or should I leave you two alone?
you think i'm defending bush. i'm not
i'm saying that the president need not know any science
those are two different subject matters
You think I'm attacking Bush. I'm not.
I'm saying the president has all the tools in his hands to severely curtail scientific progress in the US, and so it is *necessary* for the president to understand those issues, if he's going to exercise that power.
the problem with bush is not that he doesn't know any science, but that he happily panders to his fundamentalist christian political base by advancing their agenda
You seem awfully sure of that. How do you know without asking him? Say, in a debate?
the exact same logic applies with science. the president doesn't need to know ANY science
Except, of course, that the president is responsible for issuing executive orders, which dictate how various branches of the government operate. And it's these very executive orders that result in things like banning of all but abstinence-only sexual education, the censoring or altering of scientific results from government branches such as NOAA, NASA, and others, and so forth. Further, the president can happily veto bills, such as budgets, to ensure they include funding for "faith-based initiatives", and so on.
So, no, the same logic doesn't apply. In fact, it's complete BS.
Just an FYI -- the Bible says that the soul of man is ~6,000 years old
So, prior to 6,000 years ago, all those Homo Sapiens walking around had no souls? Huh... poor bastards...
Scientists disagree about things all the time
Yeah. *Scientists* disagree. And how do they go about it? By invalidating each others theories with evidence, and then providing alternative theories. But that *doesn't* make it acceptable (in the sense that we should passively accept) for a layman to take a position which contradicts our current knowledge, unless they can provide experimental evidence to back their position.
Put another way, I'm not going to simply accept some idiot convincing people that the earth is 6,000 years old just because he says so. Provide evidence, or quit misinforming people. It's not just unproductive, it's actually damaging, as it breeds ignorance.
Dogma has no place in science.
Who said anything about dogma? The current accepted theory about the origin of life on earth evolution. The majority of scientists accept this view. Does that make it dogma? No. It just means that's the current state of the art, and it will remain so until someone provides evidence which is unexplainable in the framework of the current theory.
Forcing science on everyone is just as disrespectful as forcing religion on everyone. After all, if both sides intend to employ coercion as their means, are they really that different?
Is it okay to force our idea of government on the middle east? Is it okay to force our morality regarding human rights on those who would oppress others?
Getting OT here, but the war in Iraq is not lost.
Well, given no one has defined what it means to "win", that's a pretty empty statement.
It is the single hierarchy that makes things brittle
/etc, except it mandates a file format (which can be nothing but a step forward... the vast number of config file formats is a major administrative headache), and provides an API for accessing the settings within (again, a very nice thing for developers). That's it, that's all.
Really? Why?
Very un-unix.
Huh? Unix had hierarchies since it's inception. They're called subdirectories.
gconf is, in fact, exactly like
sending large files (5-10Mb).
Well, there's your problem. Email isn't supposed to be used to ship around multi-megabyte files. Stop doing that, dumbass. Seriously. Set up a damn web server and post the images there. If you're worried about security, set up usernames and passwords. Regardless, email is the wrong tool for the job.
Meanwhile, I actually applaud Comcast blocking outbound port 25. Spam is a problem at the best of times, and those kinds of measures can actually do something about the problem, given a large amount of spam comes from zombie PCs running on regular, residential internet connections (I used to run an SMTP server of my own, and I just routed my email through my ISP's server... never had a problem).