but I guess it was too expensive to maintain, so it had to happen.
The Minitel systemi is slow, old and expensive, but it has one great redeeming quality that the internet doesn't have: it's basically a huge star-shaped network, with the only agent between the dumb terminal (the Minitel proper) and the service provider being France Telecom: FT operates the trunk lines, the last-mile lines (it's just the POTS) and the servers that manage the whole thing. So, what's great about that is, unless someone is tapping your phone line, or some well-placed FT employee is a thieve, there is no way in hell anybody can steal your personal information. As a result, it's an extremely secure way of doing business "online". What's more, you don't need a computer, Windows, anti-virus software and whatnot, so it's great for technophobic people.
But I should say "was", since it is no more. Too bad...
At the end of the day, this captcha is displayed on the screen as a colorful harder-to-read mumbo-jumbo, just like jpeg captchas, so all a bot has to do is use a html renderer to turn it into a regular image that can be processed. So the added complication is linking one of the existing captcha decoders and the gecko engine for example, maybe a half day's work. Not exactly uncrackable...
However, tracking other sorts of data on people, even when they have not been charged or convicted of anything, as the summary seems to suggest, is a whole different kettle of fish.
You know the saying amongt traffic patrol officers: "follow someone long enough and he's bound to commit a traffic violation". Well, same thing with OneDOJ: collect enough information about someone and you're bound to find something to incriminate this person eventually.
Incidentally (and cutting short the Godwin Law), this is exactly what the Gestapo was doing prior to, and during WW2: they collected huge masses of information about everybody, and it was well know that they could pull a jacket on almost anybody in Germany and find enough "evidence" to arrest that person.
If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
The problem is, taking into account inflation, in constant dollars, oil costs less today than it did 30 years ago. Yes, even at $4/gallon. So the project is still not worth doing.
As for the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, I don't think this country cares much about pollution, unless it affects people's way of life, which is doesn't (so far). A noble pursuit to be sure, but one Americans don't give a fuck about.
Smashing the chip is obviously just a political statement (one that I agree with mind you). If the guy only wanted to prevent the chip broadcasting data everywhere, it's easy enough to make a tinfoil-lined wallet for the passport, or carry it in an old cigarette case.
The other thing: if a US passport with a defective rfid chip is legal and valid, it won't stay that way for long.
These hardware review sites are awful, forcing you to tab through ten freaking pages just to get to the bottom line. Do they still get paid by the ad view rather than the click?
I'll let you in on a little secret: when you read a review like this, jump to the last page: you'll find the conclusion there, which is usually about the only thing interesting in the article. And in the case of this article, videos as well, which is even better.
What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad?
The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...
Just clone the fucking major OS X desktop APIs and UI elements and LET'S GET ON WITH MORE IMPORTANT THINGS. And then clone the major iApps.
And who will port the 20-so years of software development that have been made for X, Motif, tk, GTK or Qt? you?
Sure multiple GUI toolkits are a pain and a waste of resources, but so is throwing away perfectly good software on the ground that the newer OS doesn't support it anymore. Just ask Mac users...
Why is ESR so hellbent on taking over the world? We have a system that works, and that can play multimedia just fine, albeit illegally, why does it matter how many people use it? I, for one, don't see ESR wanting to take over the world as enough of a reason to cave in and use proprietary technologies...
You just gave the reason why we need more people adopting Linux: what you say is that Linux can play multimedia files just fine, only illegally (I'm assuming you're referring to the proprietary mplayer codecs here). Yet you see no reason to "cave in and use proprietary technologies"? Strange line of thought...
If, on the other hand, a significant number of people used OSS, they would have a lote more weight to lobby software manufacturers for more open-source codecs, native ports of their software to Linux, etc... making using Linux perfectly legal when those codecs are available on your favorite platform.
Ease of installation. Be it drivers that manufacturers don't bother providing for Linux, or applications that require configuring as root, etc... But the problem of drivers aside, there's a fundamental clash between ease of installation (i.e. something grandma can figure out herself) and security: if you make Linux as easy to use as Windows, then you need to discard the root/user distinction, and that would make Linux as bad as Windows. Yes, I know Windows has a superuser/normal user distinction too, but grandma doesn't use it, and those who do know it's a pain.
The real solution to make Linux more mainstream is to make users more computer litterate. That sort of plan is a 10 year plan at the very least, and requires educating people at school about basic computer security, and the dangers of being a computer idiot. No amount of tweaking will make a good secure OS an easy one.
Kids are clever these days. They'll soon realize they can turn their phones off to go places parents shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I forgot to recharge it! sorry...").
Heck, one of my friend's kid even uses an ultrasonic ringtone so his teacher at school can't tell the phone is ringing. Apparently, it's based on the fact that adults can't hear high frequencies children can. Kids are clever and have always been. If they want to do something, they will, and no amount of technology you can graft on them will change that.
cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity.
Meaning: we clench our teeth, say a prayer, and hope that the Novell/MS deal doesn't bury us, but we'd like our shareholders to believe that it might actually do us good.
Selling them to Microsoft means, hopefully, the end of the exploit and no more sales.
In an ideal world, with a software maker worth the name, yes. But with Microsoft, it seems there's never an end to bugfixing. Look at XP: it was touted as the most secure Windows ever (which isn't saying much really) when it was released, and yet look, in 2007, there are still exploits cropping up almost every day even with all the patches.
And when did these "hackers" become such sellouts? Way to ruin an art form...
The only thing they ruin is the term "hacker". But that's okay, this word has been deformed, mis- and overused for so long to mean "pirate" and "cracker" by stupid media people that it just doesn't matter anymore.
In reality, these guys aren't even worthy of the term "crackers" (which itself isn't worth much in the first place): they're just mafia, conmen, blackmail artists, forgers, thieves, robbers... whatever you choose to call it. They just happen to use a computer instead of a tommy gun, but the result is the same.
Obviously Microsoft is missing these holes in Vista in house. Maybe the biggest customer for these zero-day exploits should be.. Microsoft? $50,000 isn't that much compared to the other option IMHO. Just a thought.
It's a very valid thought, it's just the form that's bad: what you suggest is Microsoft pays black hats under the table to fix find flaws in their products for them. Quite a PR disaster, surely you'll agree. On the other hand, if they were smart, they would hire talented hackers *upstream*, i.e. during the development process, and offer them the same insane amounts of money on a per-exploit-found basis (at "black market rate" if you will), only these hackers would be working for MS perfectly legally: they would get the same money, trouble-free, and Microsoft could boast they subject their products to the most stringent tests before release.
Heck, MS could even offer these russians H1Bs/green cards, housing in the US, car and whatnot, that would be small change compared to how Microsoft stands to make out like a bandit on the semi-forced sale of their new OS...
Slashdot Mirror
but I guess it was too expensive to maintain, so it had to happen.
The Minitel systemi is slow, old and expensive, but it has one great redeeming quality that the internet doesn't have: it's basically a huge star-shaped network, with the only agent between the dumb terminal (the Minitel proper) and the service provider being France Telecom: FT operates the trunk lines, the last-mile lines (it's just the POTS) and the servers that manage the whole thing. So, what's great about that is, unless someone is tapping your phone line, or some well-placed FT employee is a thieve, there is no way in hell anybody can steal your personal information. As a result, it's an extremely secure way of doing business "online". What's more, you don't need a computer, Windows, anti-virus software and whatnot, so it's great for technophobic people.
But I should say "was", since it is no more. Too bad...
At the end of the day, this captcha is displayed on the screen as a colorful harder-to-read mumbo-jumbo, just like jpeg captchas, so all a bot has to do is use a html renderer to turn it into a regular image that can be processed. So the added complication is linking one of the existing captcha decoders and the gecko engine for example, maybe a half day's work. Not exactly uncrackable...
Linux gets a pool of lawyers and marketers. ... then dump piranhas and a couple of alligators in the pool.
that studies have found Linux ready for prime-time for 5 years now... *yawn*
'We need tons of it, mainly for working on technologies for diggers and wheels and machinery on the surface,'
Yeah right, they're pulling it off again...
Actually no, it's spies reading the content of a suspicious #chatzone IRC log file, only they don't quite get it. See for example this transcript:
C0016UY: 1337641: 69?
1337641: 637 1057!
However, tracking other sorts of data on people, even when they have not been charged or convicted of anything, as the summary seems to suggest, is a whole different kettle of fish.
You know the saying amongt traffic patrol officers: "follow someone long enough and he's bound to commit a traffic violation". Well, same thing with OneDOJ: collect enough information about someone and you're bound to find something to incriminate this person eventually.
Incidentally (and cutting short the Godwin Law), this is exactly what the Gestapo was doing prior to, and during WW2: they collected huge masses of information about everybody, and it was well know that they could pull a jacket on almost anybody in Germany and find enough "evidence" to arrest that person.
- Several web browsers (IE, FF, Opera...)
- Emacs of vi (depending on which side of the flame war you fight for)
- a W3 validation tool
If that was in 1998, then at should be very feasible with current petrol costs, especially taking into account the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
The problem is, taking into account inflation, in constant dollars, oil costs less today than it did 30 years ago. Yes, even at $4/gallon. So the project is still not worth doing.
As for the added value of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, I don't think this country cares much about pollution, unless it affects people's way of life, which is doesn't (so far). A noble pursuit to be sure, but one Americans don't give a fuck about.
Smashing the chip is obviously just a political statement (one that I agree with mind you). If the guy only wanted to prevent the chip broadcasting data everywhere, it's easy enough to make a tinfoil-lined wallet for the passport, or carry it in an old cigarette case.
The other thing: if a US passport with a defective rfid chip is legal and valid, it won't stay that way for long.
... so long as they yell "it's coming right for us!" before shooting.
These hardware review sites are awful, forcing you to tab through ten freaking pages just to get to the bottom line. Do they still get paid by the ad view rather than the click?
I'll let you in on a little secret: when you read a review like this, jump to the last page: you'll find the conclusion there, which is usually about the only thing interesting in the article. And in the case of this article, videos as well, which is even better.
The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.
Check out swsusp.
What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad?
The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...
Just clone the fucking major OS X desktop APIs and UI elements and LET'S GET ON WITH MORE IMPORTANT THINGS. And then clone the major iApps.
And who will port the 20-so years of software development that have been made for X, Motif, tk, GTK or Qt? you?
Sure multiple GUI toolkits are a pain and a waste of resources, but so is throwing away perfectly good software on the ground that the newer OS doesn't support it anymore. Just ask Mac users...
Why is ESR so hellbent on taking over the world? We have a system that works, and that can play multimedia just fine, albeit illegally, why does it matter how many people use it? I, for one, don't see ESR wanting to take over the world as enough of a reason to cave in and use proprietary technologies...
You just gave the reason why we need more people adopting Linux: what you say is that Linux can play multimedia files just fine, only illegally (I'm assuming you're referring to the proprietary mplayer codecs here). Yet you see no reason to "cave in and use proprietary technologies"? Strange line of thought...
If, on the other hand, a significant number of people used OSS, they would have a lote more weight to lobby software manufacturers for more open-source codecs, native ports of their software to Linux, etc... making using Linux perfectly legal when those codecs are available on your favorite platform.
Ease of installation. Be it drivers that manufacturers don't bother providing for Linux, or applications that require configuring as root, etc... But the problem of drivers aside, there's a fundamental clash between ease of installation (i.e. something grandma can figure out herself) and security: if you make Linux as easy to use as Windows, then you need to discard the root/user distinction, and that would make Linux as bad as Windows. Yes, I know Windows has a superuser/normal user distinction too, but grandma doesn't use it, and those who do know it's a pain.
The real solution to make Linux more mainstream is to make users more computer litterate. That sort of plan is a 10 year plan at the very least, and requires educating people at school about basic computer security, and the dangers of being a computer idiot. No amount of tweaking will make a good secure OS an easy one.
Martians will wonder who zoomshorts might be though...
Kids are clever these days. They'll soon realize they can turn their phones off to go places parents shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I forgot to recharge it! sorry...").
Heck, one of my friend's kid even uses an ultrasonic ringtone so his teacher at school can't tell the phone is ringing. Apparently, it's based on the fact that adults can't hear high frequencies children can. Kids are clever and have always been. If they want to do something, they will, and no amount of technology you can graft on them will change that.
You're two episodes behind. It was SCO, now it's Novell. You gotta stay focused man!
cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity.
Meaning: we clench our teeth, say a prayer, and hope that the Novell/MS deal doesn't bury us, but we'd like our shareholders to believe that it might actually do us good.
Selling them to Microsoft means, hopefully, the end of the exploit and no more sales.
In an ideal world, with a software maker worth the name, yes. But with Microsoft, it seems there's never an end to bugfixing. Look at XP: it was touted as the most secure Windows ever (which isn't saying much really) when it was released, and yet look, in 2007, there are still exploits cropping up almost every day even with all the patches.
And when did these "hackers" become such sellouts? Way to ruin an art form...
The only thing they ruin is the term "hacker". But that's okay, this word has been deformed, mis- and overused for so long to mean "pirate" and "cracker" by stupid media people that it just doesn't matter anymore.
In reality, these guys aren't even worthy of the term "crackers" (which itself isn't worth much in the first place): they're just mafia, conmen, blackmail artists, forgers, thieves, robbers... whatever you choose to call it. They just happen to use a computer instead of a tommy gun, but the result is the same.
Obviously Microsoft is missing these holes in Vista in house.
Maybe the biggest customer for these zero-day exploits should be.. Microsoft?
$50,000 isn't that much compared to the other option IMHO.
Just a thought.
It's a very valid thought, it's just the form that's bad: what you suggest is Microsoft pays black hats under the table to fix find flaws in their products for them. Quite a PR disaster, surely you'll agree. On the other hand, if they were smart, they would hire talented hackers *upstream*, i.e. during the development process, and offer them the same insane amounts of money on a per-exploit-found basis (at "black market rate" if you will), only these hackers would be working for MS perfectly legally: they would get the same money, trouble-free, and Microsoft could boast they subject their products to the most stringent tests before release.
Heck, MS could even offer these russians H1Bs/green cards, housing in the US, car and whatnot, that would be small change compared to how Microsoft stands to make out like a bandit on the semi-forced sale of their new OS...
I'm just wondering who would buy these at such a price.
Someone with $50,000 to spend as an investment, who expects to make more money out of it.
What is the real value of an exploit?
$50,000.