Linux encrypted filesystems I know almost nothing about, but I've also never seen a distribution that supports it out of the box. There's probbably one out their, but it's not a mainstream linux feature.
I know for a fact that Mandrake supports an EFS out of the box. I haven't run the other "major" distros (RH, SuSE) in some time, so I can't speak to those. But, in a corporate environment, the Linux encrypted FS has limited use -- there is no recoverable key infrastructure (which is good in some ways), so the fs password has to be available to anyone who is allowed to initially mount that fs. Also, anyone who can gain rights to the box while the fs is mounted can read the data there -- there is no extra rights control for access to the EFS aside from mount-time password checking.
While I agree that the 'spiteful employee' arguement is largely bunk, the 'employee who quit, got fired, or otherwise left unexpectedly' arguement is not.
e.g. I am a sysadmin, and I store all the incident reports on a Win2k3 EFS box, encrypted to my key. These incident reports are important to whomever is doing my job -- no one needs to see them unless I leave unexpectedly. If I get trampled by a herd of malicious gnus on the way to work, the top-level admins will need access to my data, as will whoever replaces me.
There are two solutions to that -- share my key or use the EFS recoverable key system. Guess which I'd rather do?
how would you explain the prevalence of white models for cosmetics?
If you meant "in Asia", then it makes sense when you understand that Asian peoples have traditionally thought of fair skin as beautiful. You'll see many references in traditional Japanese poetry, for example, that describe beautiful women milk-toned skin. Look at geisha -- they whiten their faces, and they did so far before it was generally known that there was an entire race of white folk in Europe.
If you meant, "in the US", it's because white people have all the money. There are exceptions, of course, but racial minorities in the US also tend to make less money (a few popular exceptions, like Oprah or Snoop not withstanding). So, if you're a marketer trying to sell products that only sell if the customer believes they will be better-looking, you try to picture someone who will be as close as possible to the majority's concept of ideal beauty.
It's disgusting, but business doesn't care about much more than the bottom line.
Clearly there are limits. If a religious belief runs completely counter to the good of society, law can (and has) trumped it. For example, someone whose religion holds human sacrifice to be legal would still be tried for murder.
But, denying basic services to someone based on a harmless belief seems excessive. In this case, as I said above, it's only a matter of inconvenience, since these machines are clearly not the only way to buy stamps. Inconvenience isn't our problem, it's the problem of those with the religious beliefs.
I didn't say they had no good use -- they would, for example, help prevent vandalism of machines. From a business standpoint, that saves money in the long run. What I said was that I didn't feel there were nefarious uses for this.
With the power of digital photography and the ubiquity of postal self-service stamp machines, soon the US government -- nay, anyone with access to the machines -- will be able to determine that...
Someone who looks like you purchased stamps!.
I'm a huge privacy advocate and all, but it's not like this can be put to some nefarious use. The only two potential issues I can see:
The machines should clearly inform potential users that they will be photographed; people have a right to know if they are on camera.
This effectively denies access to these machines for any whose religious believes prohibit having a photograph taken.
The first is a policy matter, and writing to the appropriate Congresscritters and your local Postmaster will likely go a long way toward ensuring such a notice exists. The second is a matter of inconvenience, but since stamps are still available from third-party vendors and USPS counters, it shouldn't be a big issue.
Being fat is unhealthy. There is something wrong with being unhealthy.
I would agree with you, if it weren't for the fact that our current society has an unhealthy view of what constitutes being unhealthily fat. It even extends to the medical community in some cases.
If my "fatness" is so unhealthy, then why is it that my doctors always say "you're in perfect health" after my physical? And how come I'm rarely sick, always have more energy than my co-workers and friends, and so on... if being fat is so unhealthy?
Yes, being obese carries certain health risks. Merely being overweight may have health impacts, but I'm willing to bet that stress causes more health problems in this country than weight does. And, of course, a great many people experience more stress when they are fat because our society tells them that they are horrible people, and that "they have a problem" if they don't fit into some "beautiful person" mold.
And here is a very good link that will keep you from getting your pants in a bunch when people forget to link URLs.
As an aside, it's not that hard, people, just enclose your URL like this: <URL:http://your.url.here.com/>, and the magic of/. transforms it into http://your.url.here.com/
If laws were watertight and free of ambiguity, we wouldn't need Judges. The function of a Judge is to interpret the law and its applicability to a given set of circumstances surrounding the accused. That's why laws have a section on the intent of the law... to give Judges a guideline to decide when an act that might violate the letter of the law should be excused because it clearly does not violate its intent.
The classic example of this is a grade-school policy: "under no circumstance may a child be allowed in the hall without a pass; those caught without a pass will be suspended." Now, a kid is about to throw up and runs out to the restroom. On his way back, he's stopped without a pass. If the rule is interpreted by letter alone, the kid should be suspended -- but most reasonable people would see that the intent of the rule was not violated, and that the kid's actions were reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances.
Law is tricky. If we take law too literally, we must make a lot of laws, which only results in a lot of loopholes. If, on the other hand, we make the law too ambiguous, we give far too much power to the Judges who interpret it.
So, while colloquial English would probably be bad, you've created a false dichotomy in assuming that legalese and colloquial English are the only options. What about simply using formal written English? Most people would find that easier to understand, and meanings in formal written English don't change very rapidly.
Bacteria and... man would be eliminated naturally? Or did you mean viruses?
And what about "good" bacteria -- wouldn't those have been eliminated as well? Besides, there are plenty of dark, moist, warm places for bacteria to flourish, even if anything in direct sunlight died instantly.
So, how does it sound if you say to your next potential employer that you are one year out of college and you left your last job because they worked you too hard? Not a great sounding reason to leave, is it?
Maybe not, but if you say "I left my last job because I felt that my skills were not being adequately used." The interviewere will ask what you mean, and you can reply "it seemed to me that management was more interested in quantity rather than quality of work, to such an extent that their demands actually resulted in less real work getting done."
Or, you can do what I did when I burned out after 2 years of 70-hour weeks and no vacation: quit and work in a different industry. I served at a restaurant for two years, and it was incredible for my health and good for my career. When asked why that job, I told my interviewer that I had my own personal projects I wanted to persue, and I valued the flexible hours, but now I wanted to return to steady employment.
I'm now employed at a higher wage than I could have possibly attained through raises at my former firm.
I'm pretty sure there's a finite number of humans on the planet.
The reality is that there is no ultimate and reliable way to measure market share for something like Firefox. I inflate browser-detect logging numbers by using Firefox on several of my machines; but I deflate them by using an extention that reports Firefox as IE for some sites. I inflate download numbers because I've downloaded Firefox at home and at work: but I deflate them because I've since installed it for several friends who were IE users, without an additional download.
And that's just me.
The download count is probably a pretty good estimate, because I'd guess that for everyone who downloads an "extraneous" copy -- reinstalls, web-developer testing, etc. -- there's at least one person who got Firefox from a corporate intranet, proxy, or other uncounted resource.
It's statistically invalid, but if we must pick a metric, it seems the most reasonable choice.
I have this exact problem as well, but haven't seen it happen since installing the latest Adblock. My guess is malformed IFRAME elements for ads cause the malformed HTML that screws up Firefox.
Likely to get modded down, but I don't care, because I'd like some clarification on your sig:
[Godel says] "Philosophy as an exact theory should do to metaphysics as much as Newton did to physics." : Wang, p. 85
I find that quote odd, since Newton's model of physics is incomplete and in some cases inaccurate, if brilliant for his time. So, is that quote intended to suggest that Philosophy will explain metaphysics in an incomplete and inaccurate manner?
In other words, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by posting that quote. Care to elaborate?
Of course it doesn't bother me. I didn't say we invaded his country, now did I? Zarquawi would not be in Iraq, and would likely not be fighting US forces, if the US had not invaded Iraq. The Arab terrorist organizations that hate the US hate us because we do crap like this. If we didn't do stupid things like invade countries for no decent reason, then Zarquawi and bin Laden probably wouldn't attack the US.
And yes, I realize that there will always be terrorists, because someone will always hate the US as long as it is a political and economic superpower -- which it looks like it will be for a long time. And, as a result, there are things the country will need to get involved in, and not all of them will be popular. Those facts mean that we will always have to expend some effort to fight terrorism.
But that doesn't mean that we should increase our potential exposure to terrorist acts by stirring shit up whenever we get a chance. Seriously, I'm in no way a political or military mastermind, but even I saw this coming -- we invade a country on thin evidence of WMD programs, the inhabitants get pissed off, and terrorists from the surrounding Arab world have found a rallying point to get people angry enough to blow up some Americans.
This isn't rocket science: when you start poking a stick around in a hornet's nest, you expect to get stung. Don't get me wrong -- I love my country. But our government has been acting like a stupid, spoiled brat lately; and those actions are putting the country I love and the citizens who I share it with at greater risk. Pardon me if that irks me a bit.
I am sure Zarquawi would be a pig farmer had we not done anything, but well, he is a full bloomed terrorist now, and we are fighting him THERE, not here.
Zarquawi's response may not be admirable, but it is certainly understandable. We did invade the country, after all. I mean, you do realize that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, don't you?
You think Zarquawi would have been able to rise to any kind of power he couldn't rally the people of Iraq? You think those people could have been rallied if the US wasn't destroying their homes?
Look, I'm not saying the US is doing anything that's unreasonable in a war. But, we invaded the damned country, and then when people resist using whatever tactics they can muster, we brand them as "Evil Terrorists". In fact, they are doing exactly what we would do if some foreign power invaded our soil -- fighting back they only way they can.
The travesty is that we had no good reason to go there in the first place, and so all of this is wasted. We aren't "fighting him THERE, not here", we're fighting him there instead of not at all. Try looking at the propaganda with a modicum of critical-thinking skill, and you'll see that there is no good reason to be in Iraq.
Are you one of those types who think we "deserved" Sept. 11?
No. But we have justified a whole lot of killing on the grounds of "War on Terror." While it was certainly reasonable to invade Afghanistan to try and capture the confessed perpetrator of the mass-murder that was 9/11/2001, perhaps we should also be looking at what we might have done to provoke such an attack.
There is this propaganda-promoted belief that terrorists attacked this country because they hate McDonald's or because they are jealous of our freedom. Terrorists attacked this country because the US helped along -- or at least turned a blind eye to -- acts of war against others. Catching bin Laden might be perfectly acceptible (justice and all that), but unless we analyze our foreign policy as well, we will not be safer.
Of course, if you're willing to take the risk of retaliation because of our foreign policy, so be it -- but to imagine that we can subsidize wars in other countries with impunity is naive.
do you really believe that our soldiers kill innocent people on purpose?
I'm fairly certain that the service-men and women on the ground are not knowingly killing innocents. But I know enough about military strategy to realize that innocent civilians are all to easy to write off as "acceptable losses" by those making the decisions, and that our soldiers may be killing innocents as a result of those decisions.
Do you believe that 30,000 civilian lives (one of the more conservative estimates I've seen) are "acceptible losses" in a war that purports, in part, to be in retaliation to an attack that killed 8,000 people on US soil? Seems like a sad trade-off to me.
I wish that the Terrorists believed that war wasn't worth fighting. I also wish that they didn't believe that killing innocents was the best way to further their cause.
I wish the US hadn't done such stupid things to get people so angry at us that they feel their only recourse is to blow up buildings. Do you honestly believe the US never kills "innocents"? Do you buy the whole "War on Terror" rhetoric, as if we can wage war on a word?
Counterterrorism efforts are certainly worthwhile, but to imagine that our best response to terrorist attacks was to launch a $6.7 billion a month war in a country that had nothing to do with any terrorist attacks is insanity. I'd rather have seen such funds thrown at rebuilding the WTC towers as an illustration that the terror tactics didn't work.
You do realize that by having a fearful -- nay, terrified -- reaction to these kinds of attacks, we are contributing to their success?
>When I turn on the wireless antenna in the router, I get 56k speeds.
One of three things:
Your router is a cheap, stupid router that prioritizes wireless client traffic unreasonably high. This sometimes leads to slow connections from the hard-cable side of the router.
Your router is handling traffic from someone else who is reassociating to the built-in WAP. Double-check your WEP/WPA.
The router is picking a frequency set that interferes with the CAT-5 cable transmission. Try changing the "Channel" setting and/or using STP as opposed to UTP.
The advantages are twofold. One, this "rounding" method can be implemented without a Constitutional Ammendment. That means it has a much better chance of being done, and if it doesn't work, a much better chance of being repealed.
Second, it keeps the rules for how the elections are conducted firmly in the hands of the States. The last thing I want is a FEC that creates a "uniform voting method" for the whole country -- the potential abuses are staggering, and any flaw in the details will affect the entire nation rather than hosing one State. State government also moves more quickly than Federal, meaning they can work to fix flaws in the details at a much better pace, with a much better proportion of representation for citizens.
The Electoral College exists because the States are supposed to be relatively independant. It is the States that vote for the President, not the citizens. So, unless you want to radically change the framework upon which the US is predicated, we're stuck with the Electoral College.
The problem is that the College no longer represents the population. I would favor the splitting of Electors based on the results of each State's popular vote. For example, in a State with 20 electors (like Ohio), each 5% of the vote would certify an Elector, with any remaining elector going to the winner. So, if the last count I saw of 51% Bush, 49% Kerry is accurate for Ohio, Bush would get 10 Electors, Kerry 9. Since Bush won the popular vote, he'd get the last Elector for a total of 11.
Additionally, we need to expand the House (at minimum) to more fairly represent the population. In fact, it needs to be at least doubled in size. In that way, Electors will more fairly represent the will of the Citizens they are supposed to represent.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree that the 'spiteful employee' arguement is largely bunk, the 'employee who quit, got fired, or otherwise left unexpectedly' arguement is not.
e.g. I am a sysadmin, and I store all the incident reports on a Win2k3 EFS box, encrypted to my key. These incident reports are important to whomever is doing my job -- no one needs to see them unless I leave unexpectedly. If I get trampled by a herd of malicious gnus on the way to work, the top-level admins will need access to my data, as will whoever replaces me.
There are two solutions to that -- share my key or use the EFS recoverable key system. Guess which I'd rather do?
how would you explain the prevalence of white models for cosmetics?
If you meant "in Asia", then it makes sense when you understand that Asian peoples have traditionally thought of fair skin as beautiful. You'll see many references in traditional Japanese poetry, for example, that describe beautiful women milk-toned skin. Look at geisha -- they whiten their faces, and they did so far before it was generally known that there was an entire race of white folk in Europe.
If you meant, "in the US", it's because white people have all the money. There are exceptions, of course, but racial minorities in the US also tend to make less money (a few popular exceptions, like Oprah or Snoop not withstanding). So, if you're a marketer trying to sell products that only sell if the customer believes they will be better-looking, you try to picture someone who will be as close as possible to the majority's concept of ideal beauty.
It's disgusting, but business doesn't care about much more than the bottom line.
stouch (adj.) So staunch, it hurts.
Clearly there are limits. If a religious belief runs completely counter to the good of society, law can (and has) trumped it. For example, someone whose religion holds human sacrifice to be legal would still be tried for murder.
But, denying basic services to someone based on a harmless belief seems excessive. In this case, as I said above, it's only a matter of inconvenience, since these machines are clearly not the only way to buy stamps. Inconvenience isn't our problem, it's the problem of those with the religious beliefs.
I didn't say they had no good use -- they would, for example, help prevent vandalism of machines. From a business standpoint, that saves money in the long run. What I said was that I didn't feel there were nefarious uses for this.
Someone who looks like you purchased stamps!.
I'm a huge privacy advocate and all, but it's not like this can be put to some nefarious use. The only two potential issues I can see:
The first is a policy matter, and writing to the appropriate Congresscritters and your local Postmaster will likely go a long way toward ensuring such a notice exists. The second is a matter of inconvenience, but since stamps are still available from third-party vendors and USPS counters, it shouldn't be a big issue.
Being fat is unhealthy. There is something wrong with being unhealthy.
I would agree with you, if it weren't for the fact that our current society has an unhealthy view of what constitutes being unhealthily fat. It even extends to the medical community in some cases.
If my "fatness" is so unhealthy, then why is it that my doctors always say "you're in perfect health" after my physical? And how come I'm rarely sick, always have more energy than my co-workers and friends, and so on... if being fat is so unhealthy?
Yes, being obese carries certain health risks. Merely being overweight may have health impacts, but I'm willing to bet that stress causes more health problems in this country than weight does. And, of course, a great many people experience more stress when they are fat because our society tells them that they are horrible people, and that "they have a problem" if they don't fit into some "beautiful person" mold.
And here is a very good link that will keep you from getting your pants in a bunch when people forget to link URLs.
/. transforms it into http://your.url.here.com/
As an aside, it's not that hard, people, just enclose your URL like this: <URL:http://your.url.here.com/>, and the magic of
If laws were watertight and free of ambiguity, we wouldn't need Judges. The function of a Judge is to interpret the law and its applicability to a given set of circumstances surrounding the accused. That's why laws have a section on the intent of the law... to give Judges a guideline to decide when an act that might violate the letter of the law should be excused because it clearly does not violate its intent.
The classic example of this is a grade-school policy: "under no circumstance may a child be allowed in the hall without a pass; those caught without a pass will be suspended." Now, a kid is about to throw up and runs out to the restroom. On his way back, he's stopped without a pass. If the rule is interpreted by letter alone, the kid should be suspended -- but most reasonable people would see that the intent of the rule was not violated, and that the kid's actions were reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances.
Law is tricky. If we take law too literally, we must make a lot of laws, which only results in a lot of loopholes. If, on the other hand, we make the law too ambiguous, we give far too much power to the Judges who interpret it.
So, while colloquial English would probably be bad, you've created a false dichotomy in assuming that legalese and colloquial English are the only options. What about simply using formal written English? Most people would find that easier to understand, and meanings in formal written English don't change very rapidly.
bacteria and virii would be eliminated naturally.
Bacteria and... man would be eliminated naturally? Or did you mean viruses?
And what about "good" bacteria -- wouldn't those have been eliminated as well? Besides, there are plenty of dark, moist, warm places for bacteria to flourish, even if anything in direct sunlight died instantly.
Or, you can do what I did when I burned out after 2 years of 70-hour weeks and no vacation: quit and work in a different industry. I served at a restaurant for two years, and it was incredible for my health and good for my career. When asked why that job, I told my interviewer that I had my own personal projects I wanted to persue, and I valued the flexible hours, but now I wanted to return to steady employment.
I'm now employed at a higher wage than I could have possibly attained through raises at my former firm.
I'm pretty sure there's a finite number of humans on the planet.
The reality is that there is no ultimate and reliable way to measure market share for something like Firefox. I inflate browser-detect logging numbers by using Firefox on several of my machines; but I deflate them by using an extention that reports Firefox as IE for some sites. I inflate download numbers because I've downloaded Firefox at home and at work: but I deflate them because I've since installed it for several friends who were IE users, without an additional download.
And that's just me.
The download count is probably a pretty good estimate, because I'd guess that for everyone who downloads an "extraneous" copy -- reinstalls, web-developer testing, etc. -- there's at least one person who got Firefox from a corporate intranet, proxy, or other uncounted resource.
It's statistically invalid, but if we must pick a metric, it seems the most reasonable choice.
I have this exact problem as well, but haven't seen it happen since installing the latest Adblock. My guess is malformed IFRAME elements for ads cause the malformed HTML that screws up Firefox.
In other words, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by posting that quote. Care to elaborate?
Maybe Y!Search looks like Google search because Y!Search is Google search. Y! partnered with Google a long time ago...
We've ended marathon Risk games in fistfights, comparing each other to Hitler and Stalin. ... Bush voter and proud of it!
Wow, a story and and explanation!
Of course it doesn't bother me. I didn't say we invaded his country, now did I? Zarquawi would not be in Iraq, and would likely not be fighting US forces, if the US had not invaded Iraq. The Arab terrorist organizations that hate the US hate us because we do crap like this. If we didn't do stupid things like invade countries for no decent reason, then Zarquawi and bin Laden probably wouldn't attack the US.
And yes, I realize that there will always be terrorists, because someone will always hate the US as long as it is a political and economic superpower -- which it looks like it will be for a long time. And, as a result, there are things the country will need to get involved in, and not all of them will be popular. Those facts mean that we will always have to expend some effort to fight terrorism.
But that doesn't mean that we should increase our potential exposure to terrorist acts by stirring shit up whenever we get a chance. Seriously, I'm in no way a political or military mastermind, but even I saw this coming -- we invade a country on thin evidence of WMD programs, the inhabitants get pissed off, and terrorists from the surrounding Arab world have found a rallying point to get people angry enough to blow up some Americans.
This isn't rocket science: when you start poking a stick around in a hornet's nest, you expect to get stung. Don't get me wrong -- I love my country. But our government has been acting like a stupid, spoiled brat lately; and those actions are putting the country I love and the citizens who I share it with at greater risk. Pardon me if that irks me a bit.
You think Zarquawi would have been able to rise to any kind of power he couldn't rally the people of Iraq? You think those people could have been rallied if the US wasn't destroying their homes?
Look, I'm not saying the US is doing anything that's unreasonable in a war. But, we invaded the damned country, and then when people resist using whatever tactics they can muster, we brand them as "Evil Terrorists". In fact, they are doing exactly what we would do if some foreign power invaded our soil -- fighting back they only way they can.
The travesty is that we had no good reason to go there in the first place, and so all of this is wasted. We aren't "fighting him THERE, not here", we're fighting him there instead of not at all. Try looking at the propaganda with a modicum of critical-thinking skill, and you'll see that there is no good reason to be in Iraq.
There is this propaganda-promoted belief that terrorists attacked this country because they hate McDonald's or because they are jealous of our freedom. Terrorists attacked this country because the US helped along -- or at least turned a blind eye to -- acts of war against others. Catching bin Laden might be perfectly acceptible (justice and all that), but unless we analyze our foreign policy as well, we will not be safer.
Of course, if you're willing to take the risk of retaliation because of our foreign policy, so be it -- but to imagine that we can subsidize wars in other countries with impunity is naive.I'm fairly certain that the service-men and women on the ground are not knowingly killing innocents. But I know enough about military strategy to realize that innocent civilians are all to easy to write off as "acceptable losses" by those making the decisions, and that our soldiers may be killing innocents as a result of those decisions.
Do you believe that 30,000 civilian lives (one of the more conservative estimates I've seen) are "acceptible losses" in a war that purports, in part, to be in retaliation to an attack that killed 8,000 people on US soil? Seems like a sad trade-off to me.
Counterterrorism efforts are certainly worthwhile, but to imagine that our best response to terrorist attacks was to launch a $6.7 billion a month war in a country that had nothing to do with any terrorist attacks is insanity. I'd rather have seen such funds thrown at rebuilding the WTC towers as an illustration that the terror tactics didn't work.
You do realize that by having a fearful -- nay, terrified -- reaction to these kinds of attacks, we are contributing to their success?
>When I turn on the wireless antenna in the router, I get 56k speeds.
The advantages are twofold. One, this "rounding" method can be implemented without a Constitutional Ammendment. That means it has a much better chance of being done, and if it doesn't work, a much better chance of being repealed.
Second, it keeps the rules for how the elections are conducted firmly in the hands of the States. The last thing I want is a FEC that creates a "uniform voting method" for the whole country -- the potential abuses are staggering, and any flaw in the details will affect the entire nation rather than hosing one State. State government also moves more quickly than Federal, meaning they can work to fix flaws in the details at a much better pace, with a much better proportion of representation for citizens.
>The problem with doing this is that as the house gets more representatives it becomes harder to get things accomplished.
And that's a bad thing because...?
The Electoral College exists because the States are supposed to be relatively independant. It is the States that vote for the President, not the citizens. So, unless you want to radically change the framework upon which the US is predicated, we're stuck with the Electoral College.
The problem is that the College no longer represents the population. I would favor the splitting of Electors based on the results of each State's popular vote. For example, in a State with 20 electors (like Ohio), each 5% of the vote would certify an Elector, with any remaining elector going to the winner. So, if the last count I saw of 51% Bush, 49% Kerry is accurate for Ohio, Bush would get 10 Electors, Kerry 9. Since Bush won the popular vote, he'd get the last Elector for a total of 11.
Additionally, we need to expand the House (at minimum) to more fairly represent the population. In fact, it needs to be at least doubled in size. In that way, Electors will more fairly represent the will of the Citizens they are supposed to represent.