that we would be crying bloody murder if IANA cum ICAAN were to decide that the US government no longer had control over.us and instead by fiat gave gov.us to Grand Old Vines of Napa CA...
throwing out the "white man's burden" of taking care of.za so the "silly ignorant government of South Africa" doesn't screw it up seems quite ass-backwards... If they do fuck it up, fine. So be it. We decided that ccTLDs would exist. They should exist equally and COUNTRIES should have control over their own ccTLDs...
just tried browsing at +2, and realized, this comment makes no sense unless you read at at least +0. Oh well
it is a response to someone bitching about Linux advocates, challenging that since apparently the only reason to dislike windows is its crashability, when the NT core is used in the mainstream version of Windows, will we all go back.
Not all of us came from there, and if one did (as I did), well...
sometimes there is no going back, obviously for more reasons than I listed, others include
security remote useability CLI power (vs NT CLI weakness)
and more We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
windows _and_ NT suck because: the metaphor provided to interact with basic OS internals is only a programmatic API. This means that one cannot interact in any meaningful way with the OS w/o programming, and w/o using MS Dev, as any other IDE does not have the APIs precoded, and there is no decent documentation for using those APIs (compare the win32 books to Adv Prog in the Unix Env by Stevens)
The lack of a metaphor like the Unix file representation also means that there is no consistancy to the interaction w/ the OS. Elegance is the only way to describe the ease with which one can interact with core OS internals in a Unix Environment. To be able to `cat/proc/net/tcp` and get not just a text readout of the network activity of the computer, but the actual kernel's understanding of that activity, is amazing. To be able to `echo 1 >/proc/net/foo/bar` to enable some feature of the networking stack, is pure ease. (yes these are Linuxisms, so sue me)
Does the open-source nature of Linux mean I read kernel source. Well actually I do from time to time, but leave that aside. Say I don't. I still get the benefit of documentation provided by people who have _who are not the programmers involved_. People always understand their own code too much to document it well.
Why like windows NT? Because its not based on Unix, a 20+ year old technology? You are right, its not. Its based on _VMS_ the precursor to Unix, a 30+ year old technology, but unlike UNIX, one that was retired (for good reason).
Apps and ISV support are not a reason to prefer an OS. Perhaps one to use it, but not prefer it.
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
IIRC thinkgeek is its own company, headquartered somewhere in Northern Virginia We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
the dd method is ancient, the cp functionality is fairly recent...
oh, and matt, we have an officers' meeting tomorrow (I guess its today now);-) We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I know this is counterintuitive, but I usually get faster responces from their secure server. Try https://sourceforge.net We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
all of these can be done is open source as well, leaving you to fork or to try to make everyone not upgrade...
people can choose not to upgrade to close source as well, leaving the only difference being the fork... We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I like GPL, but X is traditionally under the X license (basically BSD w/o adverizing clause)
this is why most windowmanagers are under the X license... they could go GPL at any time, but most respect the wishes of the XFree folks (and the X consortium folks above them...)
just because it is legal doesn't mean we should do it, and oh, BTW, forking X is a HORRIBLE idea... something that complex should not start having compatibility issues!
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
keep in mind they are allowing the drivers to be opensource, just asking that the information used to create those drivers not be distributed. It _is_ a reasonable request, as even the driver code exposes them to some risk... We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
but that is the great thing, the binaries are OS-independant, iow a Linux-i386 one will work on *BSD, Solaris-i386 etc.
the question is whether the cpu-dependancies are just an issue of endianness and bits-per-word or what, as if so, perhaps a post-processor could be developed that reverse-compiled them, and then recompiled them for a new platform... not much in the way of hardware secrets is given away by changing the endianness of bytes....
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Yeah but try getting any geographic data (satellite imagery (Landsat TM scenes)or ground-validated GIS stuff) out of NASA's DAACs... I used to work at an ESIP, and the entire reason we were being funded was that this sort of data was not conveniantly available (nor cheap) for researchers to obtain.
What was really twisted is that we were being funded by NASA, and most of our budget went into buying such data sets from NASA DAACs...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Social Contract Theory my friend, in order to protect the freedoms of all, all must have some limitation to their freedoms.
In an anarchy, people are free until any conflict arises, in which case the strongest wins.
In a social-contract-ordered liberal society, when rights conflict, they are evaluated in tabla rosa without the particular people involved being the decision-making criteria, allowing for a consistant set of rights to be afforded to all.
In English
w/o limitations on freedoms, the strong are free and the weak are fscked. With some consensual limitations, all are equally free.
w/o the GPL, I cannot hope to fight a commercial ISV. w/o the GPL, no ISV will release source on the grounds that it will be immediately used by a compeditor (a one-way value exchange) as opposed to being used and then in doing so, providing value back to the original ISV...
pragmatic political philosophy
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
The crash of a stock market can foreshadow a recession, like it did in 1987, but the 1920s were different:
a) the run on banks caused the near-shutdown of all economic activity. FDIC not only means that the banks are harder to break, but that the public is less worried about insolvency, and is less likely to try.
b) the commersurate reduction of economic activity was solely due to the decline in consumer confidence (a run on the bank will do that to you)
THIS is the index to watch, and their confidence is high. Many areas of our economy rely on consensual self-perpetuating illusions, and along with Wall Street this is one of them. So long as customers confidently spend dollars, it does nto matter what is happening on Wall Street, we are set, money is rolling in, paying wages, that are being spent, all is good.
yes, a crash on Wall Street may lower confidence, hence the possibility of a recession, but w/o banks failing, and an ecological disaster at the same time, and a complete idiot for a president (the 20s were baaaad in terms of our Glorious Leaders) we are not going to suffer your predicted disaster...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
umm I am as unhappy about the website stickup as anyone, but you are wrong here.
All our rights are limited, as there NEEDS to be a balance between individual rights and societal rights, as well as between two individuals' rights
for example, society as a whole must respect your right to speak, but need not condone your saying it at 500 decibles, or right in front of my house...
a journalist can print whatever he likes, but not the proceedings of an ongoing court case (if the judge seals it) (here the accused's due process trumps the 1st amendment)
the whole issue is whether there exists a "compelling interest"
the government has a compelling interest in listening in on criminal phonecalls; hence why, with court permission, they can tap phones...
the government can ignore FOIAs if they request "classified data" because the court (and most normal folk) recognize that the government has a compelling interest in keeping military data out of newspapers
the tenth amendment is enforced, but the fed gets around it in legal ways (for ends that at least I think are valid, ie the FDA, the EPA, etc) by either invoking interstate commerce regulation or by getting state gov'ts to pass laws by dangling money in front of them.
This is legal, and allows the fed to do things we need done that 18th century merchants did not forsee...
the government is not supposed to live inside the spirit of any document; if it did, we would not need a constitution (the British method would be ideal if we trusted the spirit of anything, as then you get flexibility and ideals)
our premise for out government is no-trust power balancing... the popular phrase is seperation of powers...
now in this case nothing illegal has occurred... he was not charged with anything, the FBI _asked_ the ISP to take down the site, the ISP prob had a clause in the contract that allowed them to do so at anytime, provided they handed back that month's money or whatever... and that is what happened.
It is legal to be controvertial/against mainstream... But it is plain stupid to expect it to be as easy as conforming. You have no right to the gov't not asking companies to cooperate. The gov't represents the majority of Americans, who generally fear terrorists more than weak encryption, and would say to the disenfrachised website owner "just because you can publish that, why _should_ you"
now I personally dont have a prob with that website, the way it was described, but I do take issue to ACs who slept through civics, but think they know enough to comment on the rather complex reasons that our legal system is the way it is... We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I was under the impression that SSH had originally been developed inside the US, (perhaps by Mr Ylonen) and then when time came to incorporate, they moved overseas...
then again, maybe I am full of shit;-) We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
no, if you install ssh1 and then ssh2 on a server, ssh1 clients will be able to connect to the server transparently, on *BSD or Linux or any other *nix...
_however_ if one does a pure SSH2 install, the ssh1 client cannot connect... all I meant was that the protocols are mutually incompatible...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
This is a good thing. There's still alot of plaintext authentication on the net, and I'd be happy to see less of it. POP3, FTP, and telnet are all commonly used, for example.
Join the IETF working-group mailing lists for these protocols! Most working groups (at least the one I am on) while not requiring an actual consensus, try for general agreement before making a decision, so if you have a good idea for a protocol, join up and let everyone know about it. You will be surprised what the ratio of corporate-sponsored members to random folk are on these WGs (heavily in the commercial folk favor) try to even it a bit.;-)
Additionally, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the IETF needs two independent implementations of a protocol before it can progress towards being an official standard.
I am pretty sure this is correct, I remember seeing it on the (commercial) ssh webpage of all places;-)
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
DISCLAIMER: I do not support this law, I just want to explain it.
Seriously, why does the US even bother with cryptographic export laws when many other countries can ship products that contain the same strength encryption as they are trying to keep locked up?
the theory goes, that much of the crypto (and generally, much of the research in areas restricted by this law) reseach in this country is sponsored at least partly by the federal government, the development of crypto entirely in the private sector is a new developement (as opposed to simply implementing it, which has been private sector for a while)
The federal government did not want to fund research that could come back to haunt them in terms of inhibiting SIGINT obtained overseas from being useable.
Realize that this is an old law, and the crypto battle between the Soviets and the US was very active for much of the last 50 years.
Even now, the US government has an interest in trying to prevent strong crypto from existing outside this country, and in point of fact, most currently existing crypto DOES originate from inside US borders (SSH included)
the only caveat is that the US Judicial branch has ruled that the federal government had better have a very compelling reason to inhibit written speach. To legislate prior restraint is almost impossible...
to keep the law constitutional, written algorithms were exempted from the law.
That is how PGP got outside the US, and how OpenSSH was able to exist.
Even if some crypto is leaking out, the USG has a compelling interest in trying to read foreign SIGINT.
I think they should just invest more money in finding ways to break the codes, as that is likely to be more effective, but I fault them more for their methods than their motives...
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
SSH2 clients cannot talk to SSH1 servers. This was by design in an attempt to drive people to upgrade to the new protocol. SSH1 clients are able to talk to SSH2 servers.
I must disagree, if one compiles ssh1 and then ssh2, ssh2 autodetects its existence, and compiles both the ssh2 daemon and client such that it can accept connections from ssh1 clients, and connect to ssh1 servers.
ssh1 clients cannot connect to ssh2 servers w/o this, as the protocols are completely non-interoperable.
FWIW, the SSH2 protocol is actually better
Given the incompatibility of the clients, upgrading from SSH1 to SSH2 requires a flag day upon which day every client and server must be simultaneously upgraded to SSH2. Trying to upgrade in stages results in those with SSH2 unable to connect to SSH1 servers.
again this is incorrect, a "proper" installation of ssh2 over ssh1 will not have this problem unless you specifically compile ssh2 to not have compatibility (which would truely be foolish)
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I have to admit I have issues with the OpenBSD folks who are maintaining OpenSSH.
Their code is very BSD oriented, makes no attempt to be portable. (this is not inherently a huge sin, I am sure it was tiring writing the thing in the first place;-) ) So some guy in Australia ports it to Linux/autoconf-automake so it will compile on Linux and other *nixs...
Along the way, he introduces PAM (which is a *nix standard, OpenBSD just chooses not to use it) and in general improves the code (I don't have the rest of the feature list handy)
instead of allowing him to merge it back into the code tree, or even offering to host it, www.openssh.com takes credit for it by adding a link labeled "Linux/Solaris" and links directly to the ftp location. No acknowledgements, no link to the web page.
This sort of snottiness may or may not be endemic to the *BSD community, such a generalization would be unfair. HOWEVER it _does_ worsen their reputation, not to mention fly in the face of the commonly accepted code of ethics that accompany the open source concept.
I do not mean this as a flame of anyone other than those from the OpenSSH project who were actually involved in the decision to ignore the compatibility initiative. The rest have my unequivocal admiration and gratitude, as the product itself (OpenSSH) is very impressive, and we all should thank them for volunteering their time to provide us with it.
And for the record, other than admiring him and his work, I have no relation to that chap from Australia nor his port of OpenSSH to Linux...
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Here is the situation: I have two monitors, and two computers, and in 6 months will have two more;
What I want to do is to be able to (for the time being) have one monitor/keyboard/mouse set infront of me, and another two the side, and be able to swap which console connects to which computer easily.
It would be nice, but is not required, that I be able to have the two consoles connect to any two of n computers, and be able to set this in an intelligent fashion...
any ideas/products? We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
actually most professors/teachers I have ever had to write papers for that involved value-judgements had no problem with mine (or any other students') differing very strongly from their own. Its when those judgements are made without decent support that one gets graded down...
a final exam like this would thrill the shit out of me...
-RS We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Slashdot Mirror
that we would be crying bloody murder if IANA cum ICAAN were to decide that the US government no longer had control over .us and instead by fiat gave gov.us to Grand Old Vines of Napa CA...
.za so the "silly ignorant government of South Africa" doesn't screw it up seems quite ass-backwards... If they do fuck it up, fine. So be it. We decided that ccTLDs would exist. They should exist equally and COUNTRIES should have control over their own ccTLDs...
throwing out the "white man's burden" of taking care of
hmmm
just tried browsing at +2, and realized, this comment makes no sense unless you read at at least +0. Oh well
it is a response to someone bitching about Linux advocates, challenging that since apparently the only reason to dislike windows is its crashability, when the NT core is used in the mainstream version of Windows, will we all go back.
Not all of us came from there, and if one did (as I did), well...
sometimes there is no going back, obviously for more reasons than I listed, others include
security
remote useability
CLI power (vs NT CLI weakness)
and more
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
prob is, thats not the only reason it sucks
/proc/net/tcp` and get not just a text readout of the network activity of the computer, but the actual kernel's understanding of that activity, is amazing. To be able to `echo 1 > /proc/net/foo/bar` to enable some feature of the networking stack, is pure ease. (yes these are Linuxisms, so sue me)
windows _and_ NT suck because:
the metaphor provided to interact with basic OS internals is only a programmatic API. This means that one cannot interact in any meaningful way with the OS w/o programming, and w/o using MS Dev, as any other IDE does not have the APIs precoded, and there is no decent documentation for using those APIs (compare the win32 books to Adv Prog in the Unix Env by Stevens)
The lack of a metaphor like the Unix file representation also means that there is no consistancy to the interaction w/ the OS. Elegance is the only way to describe the ease with which one can interact with core OS internals in a Unix Environment. To be able to `cat
Does the open-source nature of Linux mean I read kernel source. Well actually I do from time to time, but leave that aside. Say I don't. I still get the benefit of documentation provided by people who have _who are not the programmers involved_. People always understand their own code too much to document it well.
Why like windows NT? Because its not based on Unix, a 20+ year old technology? You are right, its not. Its based on _VMS_ the precursor to Unix, a 30+ year old technology, but unlike UNIX, one that was retired (for good reason).
Apps and ISV support are not a reason to prefer an OS. Perhaps one to use it, but not prefer it.
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
IIRC thinkgeek is its own company, headquartered somewhere in Northern Virginia
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
IIRC that functionality was not always there.
;-)
the dd method is ancient, the cp functionality is fairly recent...
oh, and matt, we have an officers' meeting tomorrow (I guess its today now)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
no support for shared libraries
all your foo.so files are ELF, as are the executables that use them
.a files IIRC are pre-compiled statically linkable binaries, in a.out format
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I know this is counterintuitive, but I usually get faster responces from their secure server. Try https://sourceforge.net
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
all of these can be done is open source as well, leaving you to fork or to try to make everyone not upgrade...
people can choose not to upgrade to close source as well, leaving the only difference being the fork...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
X is not closed source.
I like GPL, but X is traditionally under the X license (basically BSD w/o adverizing clause)
this is why most windowmanagers are under the X license... they could go GPL at any time, but most respect the wishes of the XFree folks (and the X consortium folks above them...)
just because it is legal doesn't mean we should do it, and oh, BTW, forking X is a HORRIBLE idea... something that complex should not start having compatibility issues!
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
keep in mind they are allowing the drivers to be opensource, just asking that the information used to create those drivers not be distributed. It _is_ a reasonable request, as even the driver code exposes them to some risk...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
but that is the great thing, the binaries are OS-independant, iow a Linux-i386 one will work on *BSD, Solaris-i386 etc.
the question is whether the cpu-dependancies are just an issue of endianness and bits-per-word or what, as if so, perhaps a post-processor could be developed that reverse-compiled them, and then recompiled them for a new platform... not much in the way of hardware secrets is given away by changing the endianness of bytes....
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Yeah but try getting any geographic data (satellite imagery (Landsat TM scenes)or ground-validated GIS stuff) out of NASA's DAACs... I used to work at an ESIP, and the entire reason we were being funded was that this sort of data was not conveniantly available (nor cheap) for researchers to obtain.
What was really twisted is that we were being funded by NASA, and most of our budget went into buying such data sets from NASA DAACs...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Social Contract Theory my friend, in order to protect the freedoms of all, all must have some limitation to their freedoms.
In an anarchy, people are free until any conflict arises, in which case the strongest wins.
In a social-contract-ordered liberal society, when rights conflict, they are evaluated in tabla rosa without the particular people involved being the decision-making criteria, allowing for a consistant set of rights to be afforded to all.
In English
w/o limitations on freedoms, the strong are free and the weak are fscked. With some consensual limitations, all are equally free.
w/o the GPL, I cannot hope to fight a commercial ISV. w/o the GPL, no ISV will release source on the grounds that it will be immediately used by a compeditor (a one-way value exchange) as opposed to being used and then in doing so, providing value back to the original ISV...
pragmatic political philosophy
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Umm one problem with your stellar analysis...
Banks.
The crash of a stock market can foreshadow a recession, like it did in 1987, but the 1920s were different:
a) the run on banks caused the near-shutdown of all economic activity. FDIC not only means that the banks are harder to break, but that the public is less worried about insolvency, and is less likely to try.
b) the commersurate reduction of economic activity was solely due to the decline in consumer confidence (a run on the bank will do that to you)
THIS is the index to watch, and their confidence is high. Many areas of our economy rely on consensual self-perpetuating illusions, and along with Wall Street this is one of them. So long as customers confidently spend dollars, it does nto matter what is happening on Wall Street, we are set, money is rolling in, paying wages, that are being spent, all is good.
yes, a crash on Wall Street may lower confidence, hence the possibility of a recession, but w/o banks failing, and an ecological disaster at the same time, and a complete idiot for a president (the 20s were baaaad in terms of our Glorious Leaders) we are not going to suffer your predicted disaster...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
umm I am as unhappy about the website stickup as anyone, but you are wrong here.
All our rights are limited, as there NEEDS to be a balance between individual rights and societal rights, as well as between two individuals' rights
for example, society as a whole must respect your right to speak, but need not condone your saying it at 500 decibles, or right in front of my house...
a journalist can print whatever he likes, but not the proceedings of an ongoing court case (if the judge seals it)
(here the accused's due process trumps the 1st amendment)
the whole issue is whether there exists a "compelling interest"
the government has a compelling interest in listening in on criminal phonecalls; hence why, with court permission, they can tap phones...
the government can ignore FOIAs if they request "classified data" because the court (and most normal folk) recognize that the government has a compelling interest in keeping military data out of newspapers
the tenth amendment is enforced, but the fed gets around it in legal ways (for ends that at least I think are valid, ie the FDA, the EPA, etc) by either invoking interstate commerce regulation or by getting state gov'ts to pass laws by dangling money in front of them.
This is legal, and allows the fed to do things we need done that 18th century merchants did not forsee...
the government is not supposed to live inside the spirit of any document; if it did, we would not need a constitution (the British method would be ideal if we trusted the spirit of anything, as then you get flexibility and ideals)
our premise for out government is no-trust power balancing... the popular phrase is seperation of powers...
now in this case nothing illegal has occurred... he was not charged with anything, the FBI _asked_ the ISP to take down the site, the ISP prob had a clause in the contract that allowed them to do so at anytime, provided they handed back that month's money or whatever... and that is what happened.
It is legal to be controvertial/against mainstream... But it is plain stupid to expect it to be as easy as conforming. You have no right to the gov't not asking companies to cooperate. The gov't represents the majority of Americans, who generally fear terrorists more than weak encryption, and would say to the disenfrachised website owner "just because you can publish that, why _should_ you"
now I personally dont have a prob with that website, the way it was described, but I do take issue to ACs who slept through civics, but think they know enough to comment on the rather complex reasons that our legal system is the way it is...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
port forward to a dedicated POP server... its not so bad ;-)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I was under the impression that SSH had originally been developed inside the US, (perhaps by Mr Ylonen) and then when time came to incorporate, they moved overseas...
;-)
then again, maybe I am full of shit
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
no, if you install ssh1 and then ssh2 on a server, ssh1 clients will be able to connect to the server transparently, on *BSD or Linux or any other *nix...
_however_ if one does a pure SSH2 install, the ssh1 client cannot connect... all I meant was that the protocols are mutually incompatible...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
This is a good thing.
;-)
;-)
There's still alot of plaintext authentication on the net, and I'd be happy to see less of it. POP3, FTP, and telnet are all commonly used, for
example.
Join the IETF working-group mailing lists for these protocols! Most working groups (at least the one I am on) while not requiring an actual consensus, try for general agreement before making a decision, so if you have a good idea for a protocol, join up and let everyone know about it. You will be surprised what the ratio of corporate-sponsored members to random folk are on these WGs (heavily in the commercial folk favor) try to even it a bit.
Additionally, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the IETF needs two independent implementations of a protocol before it can progress
towards being an official standard.
I am pretty sure this is correct, I remember seeing it on the (commercial) ssh webpage of all places
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
DISCLAIMER: I do not support this law, I just want to explain it.
Seriously, why does the US even bother with cryptographic export laws when many other countries can ship products that contain the same
strength encryption as they are trying to keep locked up?
the theory goes, that much of the crypto (and generally, much of the research in areas restricted by this law) reseach in this country is sponsored at least partly by the federal government, the development of crypto entirely in the private sector is a new developement (as opposed to simply implementing it, which has been private sector for a while)
The federal government did not want to fund research that could come back to haunt them in terms of inhibiting SIGINT obtained overseas from being useable.
Realize that this is an old law, and the crypto battle between the Soviets and the US was very active for much of the last 50 years.
Even now, the US government has an interest in trying to prevent strong crypto from existing outside this country, and in point of fact, most currently existing crypto DOES originate from inside US borders (SSH included)
the only caveat is that the US Judicial branch has ruled that the federal government had better have a very compelling reason to inhibit written speach. To legislate prior restraint is almost impossible...
to keep the law constitutional, written algorithms were exempted from the law.
That is how PGP got outside the US, and how OpenSSH was able to exist.
Even if some crypto is leaking out, the USG has a compelling interest in trying to read foreign SIGINT.
I think they should just invest more money in finding ways to break the codes, as that is likely to be more effective, but I fault them more for their methods than their motives...
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Compatibility
SSH2 clients cannot talk to SSH1 servers. This was by design in an attempt to drive people to upgrade to the new protocol. SSH1
clients are able to talk to SSH2 servers.
I must disagree, if one compiles ssh1 and then ssh2, ssh2 autodetects its existence, and compiles both the ssh2 daemon and client such that it can accept connections from ssh1 clients, and connect to ssh1 servers.
ssh1 clients cannot connect to ssh2 servers w/o this, as the protocols are completely non-interoperable.
FWIW, the SSH2 protocol is actually better
Given the incompatibility of the clients, upgrading from SSH1 to SSH2 requires a flag day upon which day every client and server must be
simultaneously upgraded to SSH2. Trying to upgrade in stages results in those with SSH2 unable to connect to SSH1 servers.
again this is incorrect, a "proper" installation of ssh2 over ssh1 will not have this problem unless you specifically compile ssh2 to not have compatibility (which would truely be foolish)
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
I have to admit I have issues with the OpenBSD folks who are maintaining OpenSSH.
;-) ) So some guy in Australia ports it to Linux/autoconf-automake so it will compile on Linux and other *nixs...
Their code is very BSD oriented, makes no attempt to be portable. (this is not inherently a huge sin, I am sure it was tiring writing the thing in the first place
Along the way, he introduces PAM (which is a *nix standard, OpenBSD just chooses not to use it) and in general improves the code (I don't have the rest of the feature list handy)
instead of allowing him to merge it back into the code tree, or even offering to host it, www.openssh.com takes credit for it by adding a link labeled "Linux/Solaris" and links directly to the ftp location. No acknowledgements, no link to the web page.
This sort of snottiness may or may not be endemic to the *BSD community, such a generalization would be unfair. HOWEVER it _does_ worsen their reputation, not to mention fly in the face of the commonly accepted code of ethics that accompany the open source concept.
I do not mean this as a flame of anyone other than those from the OpenSSH project who were actually involved in the decision to ignore the compatibility initiative. The rest have my unequivocal admiration and gratitude, as the product itself (OpenSSH) is very impressive, and we all should thank them for volunteering their time to provide us with it.
And for the record, other than admiring him and his work, I have no relation to that chap from Australia nor his port of OpenSSH to Linux...
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
oh btw the heads would be 19in monitors, running 1600x1200 ideally
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
Here is the situation:
I have two monitors, and two computers, and in 6 months will have two more;
What I want to do is to be able to (for the time being) have one monitor/keyboard/mouse set infront of me, and another two the side, and be able to swap which console connects to which computer easily.
It would be nice, but is not required, that I be able to have the two consoles connect to any two of n computers, and be able to set this in an intelligent fashion...
any ideas/products?
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde
actually most professors/teachers I have ever had to write papers for that involved value-judgements had no problem with mine (or any other students') differing very strongly from their own. Its when those judgements are made without decent support that one gets graded down...
a final exam like this would thrill the shit out of me...
-RS
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars --Oscar Wilde