Riiight... that explains why Clinton was ripped apart for a freakin' blowjob while Bush was the media darling even though he still hasn't presented convincing evidence for his decision to move in on Iraq; a decision which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, the complete destabilization of an entire nation, and all to the tune of hundreds billions of American taxpayer's dollars. And all this while the economy was crumbling and Bush was racking up the largest federal budgetary deficit in US history...
Oh yeah... the media sure favours the Democrats...
The point is that the UN takes into account many things which don't matter to your average citizen. Plus, these kinds of lists are inevitably affected by political motivations. Hell, Canada still has the longest life expectancy in the world. So we can't be that bad...
Now now... Michael Moore is incredibly biased, as is all the material he produces. But in this, he's no different than those who produce anti-drug commercials, hold pro-gun rallies, and so on. BUT, the fact that these people are biased doesn't mean they don't have real, valid points that should be considered.
Frankly, "Bowling for Columbine" explores from very interesting issues about the history of violence in American society. Does it depict a biased, skewed view of Canadian and American culture? Yes. But it still asks some very important questions. After all, a large part of "Bowling for Columbine" is spent presenting, and then disgarding, traditional explanations for the culture of violence which, you have to admit, is fairly prevalent in US society as compared to many other Western nations. This, to me, is a sign of a real, thoughtful piece of work, because he's not just repeating all the usual explanations (history of violence, more multicultural, etc, etc).
The problem is with people who aren't capable of viewing something like BfC with a critical eye. But, perhaps Moore is assuming that people will be intelligent enough to listen to and think about what he has to say rather than swallowing it whole. In this he's probably being a little naive.:)
Oh please... if the Canadian public chose to vote out Chretien or, in the likely future, Martin, then we'd have a different leader. The point is, we have that ability. The fact that there aren't any decent options in the first place is a completely different problem...
Oooh, there's also a fantastic brewpub in Regina Saskatchewan called Bushwackers that produces some killer brews... really nice, unique stuff, and all over the map. They have a fantastic porter, their ales are excellent, and they have a really nice chilli beer as well.:) I'll have to work through their lager selection next...
Umm... the guy *said* he was a fscking newbie! Now, do you really want to try and instruct a newbie on how to download, patch, and recompile a vital package like sshd? Hell, he probably doesn't even have all the devel packages necessary to compiled sshd by hand (openssl-dev, etc), since there's no reason Lindows would have them installed by default. So you'd have to instruct them on how to figure out which packages they need, AND how to install those packages... yeah, brilliant.
Moreover, if this person is a new Linux user, they probably haven't made use of the remote admin capabilities yet, meaning sshd is totally useless for them. So, why bother going through all the effort to rebuild when you can just uninstall the damned thing and move on?
Christ, there's nothing wrong with treating a newbie like a newbie... especially when it comes to vital issues like security. Better to give the simple, straightforward instructions than to try and get them to jump through hoops they aren't prepared to jump through yet.
Eh, who cares if it's a troll? Either way, it shows that there is, in fact, a percentage of the Slashdot crowd who's willing to provide helpful, friendly advice to newbies. This is a good thing... hey, maybe the Slashdot crowd is maturing a little!
Simple question: If it's Lindows, a) is it running sshd in the first place? And if so, b) *why* is it running sshd, since, in my estimation, an average Lindows user probably doesn't need sshd running. Of course, if you don't need sshd (since you don't access your box remotely), the obvious thing to do is kill and uninstall it (apt-get remove sshd), since it's just one more thing that could have a remote exploit in it.
Now, if you feel you need sshd, but can go without for a while, uninstall sshd in the short term and wait for an upgrade for your OS, at which point you can safely reinstall (it's a simple "apt-get install sshd").
Self-censorship: when a journalist, individual, whatever, chooses not to say something.
Forced self-censorhsip: When someone self-censors because they fear the repercussions from family, friends, colleagues, etc (ie, peer pressure). This is, clearly, something someone would "undergo". Does that make it clearer for you?
This is in contrast to someone saying something which is then censored by an outside individual (ie, in the case of journalism, an article isn't published because the higher-ups didn't like the content).
As for my reference to the current adminitration, this:
"vis-a-vis the current administration"
translates to:
"with respect to the current administration"
since "vis-a-vis" definitely does not mean "for example".
I think they'd be asking why most of the world doesn't have enough clean drinking water, while parts just dump it on the ground around their house.
Actually, what you cite is simply an example of poor wealth distribution. We have tons of cash, food, water, etc, etc, and other parts of the world don't. If we were willing to distribute wealth equally among all nations, things might be different...
Yeah, but I think the spectre of Naziism in Europe at least makes the censorship of Nazi-related materials understandable, if questionable from a civil rights standpoint. OTOH, the recent self-censorship most Americans (especially journalists) have had to undergo, vis-a-vis the current administration, is really quite bizarre (particularly if you remember the Clinton years). After all, free speech, IMHO, exists primarily as a tool for questioning the government... which is the exact form of speech that has been censored.
The President can influence the people spending money on the markets by showing them that he has the economy under control or by showing them that the economy is out of control and heading for record deficit levels.
Right PR.:) But the actual, economic effects of changes is taxation and spending will not be felt for months or years after the decisions are made. Hell, just look at the Reagan years. It took, what, the rest of his term for his tax cuts to actually kick in (assuming, of course, that that's what was responsible for the turn around in the 80's)? And the same goes with the effects on military spending... you really think the money spent there makes its way through the economy in six months? That's *very* hard to believe.
IMHO, any recent gains in the economy probably have little to do with the president's taxation and spending decisions, at least from an economic standpoint. OTOH, from a PR perspective, they've probably had massive effects (ie, a 600B deficit turn around decreasing investor confidence).
His point, though, is that during a given "reign" of a president, his/her (ideally:) actions do not, in fact, dictate the current health of the economy. In fact, you aren't likely to see the effects of a decision by the government (eg, tax increase/decrease, etc) for at least a year or two after the change, and probably longer.
Take Clinton, for example. During the Clinton years, the economy did great! But I would *never* claim that was Clinton's doing. He was just in the right place at the right time, and was able to take the credit for it. Basically, he lucked out and got the change to ride the dot-com boom. What he did right was doing, well, nothing at all.
Similarly, Bush is no more responsible for the lag in the US economy in recent years. After all, it's not like he created the dot-com crash. And the effect of his tax cuts *probably* hasn't been felt yet (assuming they do what he wants, of which I'm not convinced... I've never been a supply-sider). OTOH, his apparent inaction (aside from tax cuts) has likely caused a decrease in confidence in the US economy, as the government appears to be unwilling to work on the issue, focusing on things like "terrorism", Iraq, etc, etc, instead. So, Bush's mistake was doing, well, nothing at all.:)
So, really, the only thing a government can really do to affect the economy in the near-term is PR... after all, markets move quickly, even though money flows through the economy rather slowly. Heck, just look at interest rate adjustments... yes, they affect the economy in the long-term, but more importantly, they are a nice short-term PR move.
Wait, let me get this straight. You want to replace a system which supposedly "assures that those without economic means are forced into a system where success is unlikely" with a system where "someone without economic means" can't get an education AT ALL? Yes, that's *much* better...
Umm... you do realize that pretty well all browsers implement applets by interface with the JVM as a, you guessed it, plugin, right? So, yes, applets definitely count.
As for the patent coverage, just read the patent. It specifically mentions plugins in the context of hypertext-style documents, so no, plugins in other apps aren't covered.
Uhhh... they aren't planning on pulling out analog to the home. That's just plain ridiculous. They're replacing major backbone-type infrastructure with VoIP.
Too bad your link refers to corporations using VoIP on their LAN/WAN as an alternative to traditional telephony. What we're talking about here is telephone operators using IP as a backbone transport (as opposed to voice over ATM VCs, etc). For telephone providers, VoIP has some excellent advantages, the most notable being consolidation of existing infrastructure (ie, being able to use the same lines for both voice and data).
Okay, I'll revise my point slightly. All *desktop* machines should have incoming DCOM disabled (and no, I don't think regular users on corporate workstations should be allowed to open up network shares). Remote admin is a different thing... but how many corps do remote admin on desktop machines these days? Especially in a historically Windows shop where this option was never available in the past, and hence probably isn't taken advantage of now. And who wouldn't be willing to trade off this capability for enhanced security?
As for servers, yes, you need to keep DCOM open on those. However, limiting this to servers makes it far easier to manage, since there are fewer boxes to maintain at any given time, and you can control access to them more strictly.
'course, if you don't agree with this, then at least disable incoming DCOM on XP Home and other joe-user targetted OS products. They will likely never need this capability, and they are far more likely to get infected by RPC-exploiting worms (since they far less knowledgeable, and probably don't run a firewall).
Like the fact that the US DoD rejected the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, yet Bush keeps making it, and the people keep believing it for some absurd reason?
Yeah, because what they teach in school is so sooth, right? No revisionist history, bias, or propaganda there to make the US look the best possible, right? No desire to enforce the sense of "patriotism" that's instilled in Americans from the day they're born, right?
Seriously, be critical. Question. It's your duty as part of a free democracy. Frankly, I know I'm wholly uninformed regarding the intricacies of WWII, vis-a-vis the Pacific theatre, but I do know that believing every single thing I was taught in gradeschool is more than a little naive, especially with regards to history. After all, what do you think the textbooks would look like if Hitler had won?
You're missing the point. Those ports shouldn't be *open* to the network (ie, ready to accept connections) unless you explicitely enable it. This is equivalent to binding a socket to localhost by default. This would have stopped blaster, et al, in their tracks, since DCOM wouldn't be available for exploitation in the first place.
Which is why laptops should be quarantined before being allowed onto the corporate network again, or all laptops should be placed in a fenced off part of the network which is controlled by a firewall set up to filter our things like DCOM.
Slashdot Mirror
Riiight... that explains why Clinton was ripped apart for a freakin' blowjob while Bush was the media darling even though he still hasn't presented convincing evidence for his decision to move in on Iraq; a decision which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, the complete destabilization of an entire nation, and all to the tune of hundreds billions of American taxpayer's dollars. And all this while the economy was crumbling and Bush was racking up the largest federal budgetary deficit in US history...
Oh yeah... the media sure favours the Democrats...
Did you read the reasons why? Primary reasons:
1. Poor treatment of aboriginals
2. Change in metric regarding education
3. Reduction in GDP
The point is that the UN takes into account many things which don't matter to your average citizen. Plus, these kinds of lists are inevitably affected by political motivations. Hell, Canada still has the longest life expectancy in the world. So we can't be that bad...
Now now... Michael Moore is incredibly biased, as is all the material he produces. But in this, he's no different than those who produce anti-drug commercials, hold pro-gun rallies, and so on. BUT, the fact that these people are biased doesn't mean they don't have real, valid points that should be considered.
:)
Frankly, "Bowling for Columbine" explores from very interesting issues about the history of violence in American society. Does it depict a biased, skewed view of Canadian and American culture? Yes. But it still asks some very important questions. After all, a large part of "Bowling for Columbine" is spent presenting, and then disgarding, traditional explanations for the culture of violence which, you have to admit, is fairly prevalent in US society as compared to many other Western nations. This, to me, is a sign of a real, thoughtful piece of work, because he's not just repeating all the usual explanations (history of violence, more multicultural, etc, etc).
The problem is with people who aren't capable of viewing something like BfC with a critical eye. But, perhaps Moore is assuming that people will be intelligent enough to listen to and think about what he has to say rather than swallowing it whole. In this he's probably being a little naive.
Oh please... if the Canadian public chose to vote out Chretien or, in the likely future, Martin, then we'd have a different leader. The point is, we have that ability. The fact that there aren't any decent options in the first place is a completely different problem...
Oooh, there's also a fantastic brewpub in Regina Saskatchewan called Bushwackers that produces some killer brews... really nice, unique stuff, and all over the map. They have a fantastic porter, their ales are excellent, and they have a really nice chilli beer as well. :) I'll have to work through their lager selection next...
Umm... the guy *said* he was a fscking newbie! Now, do you really want to try and instruct a newbie on how to download, patch, and recompile a vital package like sshd? Hell, he probably doesn't even have all the devel packages necessary to compiled sshd by hand (openssl-dev, etc), since there's no reason Lindows would have them installed by default. So you'd have to instruct them on how to figure out which packages they need, AND how to install those packages... yeah, brilliant.
Moreover, if this person is a new Linux user, they probably haven't made use of the remote admin capabilities yet, meaning sshd is totally useless for them. So, why bother going through all the effort to rebuild when you can just uninstall the damned thing and move on?
Christ, there's nothing wrong with treating a newbie like a newbie... especially when it comes to vital issues like security. Better to give the simple, straightforward instructions than to try and get them to jump through hoops they aren't prepared to jump through yet.
Eh, who cares if it's a troll? Either way, it shows that there is, in fact, a percentage of the Slashdot crowd who's willing to provide helpful, friendly advice to newbies. This is a good thing... hey, maybe the Slashdot crowd is maturing a little!
:)
Naaah...
How 'bout this in bash:
/dev/null | hexdump -e '"%1o"'`.com;
while [ true ]; do
wget -r www.`dd if=/dev/random bs=8 count=1 2>
done
Simple question: If it's Lindows, a) is it running sshd in the first place? And if so, b) *why* is it running sshd, since, in my estimation, an average Lindows user probably doesn't need sshd running. Of course, if you don't need sshd (since you don't access your box remotely), the obvious thing to do is kill and uninstall it (apt-get remove sshd), since it's just one more thing that could have a remote exploit in it.
Now, if you feel you need sshd, but can go without for a while, uninstall sshd in the short term and wait for an upgrade for your OS, at which point you can safely reinstall (it's a simple "apt-get install sshd").
Wow, a wannabe grammar nazi... so cute.
Self-censorship: when a journalist, individual, whatever, chooses not to say something.
Forced self-censorhsip: When someone self-censors because they fear the repercussions from family, friends, colleagues, etc (ie, peer pressure). This is, clearly, something someone would "undergo". Does that make it clearer for you?
This is in contrast to someone saying something which is then censored by an outside individual (ie, in the case of journalism, an article isn't published because the higher-ups didn't like the content).
As for my reference to the current adminitration, this:
"vis-a-vis the current administration"
translates to:
"with respect to the current administration"
since "vis-a-vis" definitely does not mean "for example".
I think they'd be asking why most of the world doesn't have enough clean drinking water, while parts just dump it on the ground around their house.
Actually, what you cite is simply an example of poor wealth distribution. We have tons of cash, food, water, etc, etc, and other parts of the world don't. If we were willing to distribute wealth equally among all nations, things might be different...
It's eerie as hell.
Not at all. It's just the Red Scare replayed for the latest generation...
What's that saying about history repeating itself?
Yeah, but I think the spectre of Naziism in Europe at least makes the censorship of Nazi-related materials understandable, if questionable from a civil rights standpoint. OTOH, the recent self-censorship most Americans (especially journalists) have had to undergo, vis-a-vis the current administration, is really quite bizarre (particularly if you remember the Clinton years). After all, free speech, IMHO, exists primarily as a tool for questioning the government... which is the exact form of speech that has been censored.
The President can influence the people spending money on the markets by showing them that he has the economy under control or by showing them that the economy is out of control and heading for record deficit levels.
:) But the actual, economic effects of changes is taxation and spending will not be felt for months or years after the decisions are made. Hell, just look at the Reagan years. It took, what, the rest of his term for his tax cuts to actually kick in (assuming, of course, that that's what was responsible for the turn around in the 80's)? And the same goes with the effects on military spending... you really think the money spent there makes its way through the economy in six months? That's *very* hard to believe.
Right PR.
IMHO, any recent gains in the economy probably have little to do with the president's taxation and spending decisions, at least from an economic standpoint. OTOH, from a PR perspective, they've probably had massive effects (ie, a 600B deficit turn around decreasing investor confidence).
His point, though, is that during a given "reign" of a president, his/her (ideally :) actions do not, in fact, dictate the current health of the economy. In fact, you aren't likely to see the effects of a decision by the government (eg, tax increase/decrease, etc) for at least a year or two after the change, and probably longer.
:)
Take Clinton, for example. During the Clinton years, the economy did great! But I would *never* claim that was Clinton's doing. He was just in the right place at the right time, and was able to take the credit for it. Basically, he lucked out and got the change to ride the dot-com boom. What he did right was doing, well, nothing at all.
Similarly, Bush is no more responsible for the lag in the US economy in recent years. After all, it's not like he created the dot-com crash. And the effect of his tax cuts *probably* hasn't been felt yet (assuming they do what he wants, of which I'm not convinced... I've never been a supply-sider). OTOH, his apparent inaction (aside from tax cuts) has likely caused a decrease in confidence in the US economy, as the government appears to be unwilling to work on the issue, focusing on things like "terrorism", Iraq, etc, etc, instead. So, Bush's mistake was doing, well, nothing at all.
So, really, the only thing a government can really do to affect the economy in the near-term is PR... after all, markets move quickly, even though money flows through the economy rather slowly. Heck, just look at interest rate adjustments... yes, they affect the economy in the long-term, but more importantly, they are a nice short-term PR move.
Ouch! Nice one... :)
Wait, let me get this straight. You want to replace a system which supposedly "assures that those without economic means are forced into a system where success is unlikely" with a system where "someone without economic means" can't get an education AT ALL? Yes, that's *much* better...
Umm... you do realize that pretty well all browsers implement applets by interface with the JVM as a, you guessed it, plugin, right? So, yes, applets definitely count.
As for the patent coverage, just read the patent. It specifically mentions plugins in the context of hypertext-style documents, so no, plugins in other apps aren't covered.
Uhhh... they aren't planning on pulling out analog to the home. That's just plain ridiculous. They're replacing major backbone-type infrastructure with VoIP.
Too bad your link refers to corporations using VoIP on their LAN/WAN as an alternative to traditional telephony. What we're talking about here is telephone operators using IP as a backbone transport (as opposed to voice over ATM VCs, etc). For telephone providers, VoIP has some excellent advantages, the most notable being consolidation of existing infrastructure (ie, being able to use the same lines for both voice and data).
Okay, I'll revise my point slightly. All *desktop* machines should have incoming DCOM disabled (and no, I don't think regular users on corporate workstations should be allowed to open up network shares). Remote admin is a different thing... but how many corps do remote admin on desktop machines these days? Especially in a historically Windows shop where this option was never available in the past, and hence probably isn't taken advantage of now. And who wouldn't be willing to trade off this capability for enhanced security?
As for servers, yes, you need to keep DCOM open on those. However, limiting this to servers makes it far easier to manage, since there are fewer boxes to maintain at any given time, and you can control access to them more strictly.
'course, if you don't agree with this, then at least disable incoming DCOM on XP Home and other joe-user targetted OS products. They will likely never need this capability, and they are far more likely to get infected by RPC-exploiting worms (since they far less knowledgeable, and probably don't run a firewall).
Like the fact that the US DoD rejected the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, yet Bush keeps making it, and the people keep believing it for some absurd reason?
Yeah, because what they teach in school is so sooth, right? No revisionist history, bias, or propaganda there to make the US look the best possible, right? No desire to enforce the sense of "patriotism" that's instilled in Americans from the day they're born, right?
Seriously, be critical. Question. It's your duty as part of a free democracy. Frankly, I know I'm wholly uninformed regarding the intricacies of WWII, vis-a-vis the Pacific theatre, but I do know that believing every single thing I was taught in gradeschool is more than a little naive, especially with regards to history. After all, what do you think the textbooks would look like if Hitler had won?
You're missing the point. Those ports shouldn't be *open* to the network (ie, ready to accept connections) unless you explicitely enable it. This is equivalent to binding a socket to localhost by default. This would have stopped blaster, et al, in their tracks, since DCOM wouldn't be available for exploitation in the first place.
Which is why laptops should be quarantined before being allowed onto the corporate network again, or all laptops should be placed in a fenced off part of the network which is controlled by a firewall set up to filter our things like DCOM.