Linus isn't important anymore... there's a dozen people who could take over for him if he decided to go sit on a mountaintop for the rest of his days. While he has been influential in getting us where we are today, his control over the kernel is not important in the big picture. Linux is no longer about creating a functional system; we have that, thanks to Linus.
The exciting open source projects are now predominantly in application development, and while the kernel maintenance and development is interesting, it isn't important for most users of Linux anymore.
Also, how can a DRM be open? An open DRM would be unprotectable, which sort of defeats the point! It'd be nice if the Big Boys were that dumb. Maybe you mean licensed, so other media players could play FairPlay protected files? Right now, the only system I have that can't play iTunes purchases (without circumventing the DRM) is Linux.
You actually are incorrect on this one. Many things are open, and secure. In fact, if the security of the system depends on the mechanism being secret, then it is security-by-obscurity and not very secure at all.
For example, all modern encryption systems are based on open algorithms, where the mechanism of the encryption is open to scrutiny by anyone. However, it is still secure, as the security of the encryption doesn't depend on the secrecy of how the encryption is done.
An open DRM solution is completely possible, and would allow public trust in the mechanism. Of course, the public may hate DRM and push back on those using it. I think that it goes against everything that has pushed media technology forward over the past 75 years, and that the public isn't going to accept limitations on the media they buy, but maybe I'm over-optimistic about the energy expended on thinking about media purchases by the general populace.
I recently built a house and thought a lot about this stuff. I decided that I wanted efficiency, flexibility, safety and comfort as my highest priorities. Some of the things I got, some I didn't since I didn't have unlimited budget, and my builder declined to do a few things. But here they are:
- data wiring everywhere, and all data wires should be placed in conduit for easy upgrade/replacement in the future. - patch based wiring control - amplified video distribution throughout the house, with multiple inputs including camera mounts outside, etc - multizone HVAC (minimum 3 zones for basement/main/upstairs) with heat/cool, humidity control. - fire protection: spun basalt insulation in all walls/floors, minimize combustible material where possible - sound proofing: why should i have to choose to have the tv volume where I want it vs wake up the kid? Spun basalt acoustic batt in all walls/floors/ceilings, metal stud construction walls with double-layer gypsum board, ceilings hung on acoustic flex rails and only connected to walls by acoustic sealant, solid core doors with self-sealing accoustic sweeps and seals, possibly super-dense acoustic sheeting included in the walls/ceilings. - continuous, on-demand hot water (no hot water tank) - super-efficiency low-e windows
From there there were some toy requests: - multizone whole house audio - lighting automation - snazzy appliances - place to construct infinite-baffle subwoofer - server and wiring closet - tv in the ensuite so I can watch in the jacuzzi... the wife had some input on the timing of doing most of that stuff, so I just had them built with future projects in mind on most of real toy stuff:)
I walked up to my bank machine a couple months ago and found it was buggered, sitting at the OS/2 boot splash screen with an error. I was intrigued and did a bit more reading, and it really is still the dominant OS for ATMs. Honestly, that use alone is probably enough to ensure support into the future, someone will pick it up, either a bank or a bank service provider, because the risk to change these things is large...
This won't ever happen because it's well-documented that people spend more or less y dollars for every x minutes you spend in store. This leads to things like... Mushroom and tomato soups (most popular varieties) on the bottom shelf; thus, you are
a) more likely to walk past them, and have to come back later and b) required to visually scan the other soup flavours in order to find what you're looking for, leading to more views of the branding on the can, and making you more likely to make an impulse purchase of a flavour that catches your eye.
Getting you out of the store more quickly is absolutely not going to be something grocery stores are going to want to work towards. If anything, they want you to enjoy your time so much that you'll want to be there longer.
Everyone seems to think that "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." is connected by a logical AND, but it's really a logical OR. Stop the whinging, you'll be alright.
Responding even though AC here has obviously been living under the bridge a bit too long and is rather off-topic to boot.
Load levelling/failover such as your speaking of in Windows Datacenter is definitely possible in linux. Please visit http://linux-ha.org/ if you're interested in learning more about some of those types of applications.
I'm not sure what your point is with hardware. Quality hardware is available from many vendors, including hardware which supports Linux. Yes, IBM, Sun, etc have systems which provide good hardware redundancy and replaceability, but so does Dell.
Your point about comparing a load leveled Windows Datacenter cluster to a beowulf cluster is comparing apples to oranges. The Windows Datacenter is a cluster of machines providing redundancy of service for each other, the beowulf is a cluster of machines acting as a single large processing unit. Completely different balls of wax.
I guarantee you that I could build with Linux and Dell a cluster that would be just as reliable as your windows datacenter, plus it would cost less and probably perform better.
Feel free to visit again. Careful though, I hear there's heretics around who don't religiously praise ANY hardware or ANY software at all!
These dictionary attacks are pretty commonplace actually, and people run them against *much* smaller domains than hotmail.com... I have logs of 15000+ connects attempting delivery to domains I host with all the attempted usernames in alphabetical order... adm@mydomain, admin@mydomain, adel@mydomain etc etc...
If I see that level of aggressive mail farming on my wee domains, imagine what kind of resources spammers would put into hotmail farming... I bet people would have no trouble dedicating a couple weeks of heavy-duty computing time to build a dictionary to farm hotmail with with literally millions and millions of combinations of names, or even just random characters... aaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaab...
I bet the rewards would be worthwhile for them to put that sort of effort in.
I wouldn't run a full replica on a webhost, for various reasons... a lot of the data may not be relevant, thus it's a waste of disk, security concerns, etc.
Depending on your application, you might find nscd (name service caching daemon) to be useful, we certainly did in our largish institution. In our application we're primarily using LDAP for authentication on the web servers, and nscd is the perfect tool for caching that data... here's a quick excerpt from 'man nscd':
Nscd provides cacheing for the passwd(5), group(5) and hosts(5) databases through standard libc interfaces, such as getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), getgrnam(3), getgrgid(3), gethostbyname(3) and others.
Anyway, with pam auth and nscd, it's no trouble to run TLS for all transactions, since the nscd cache keeps the overhead to a reasonable amount. In terms of replication, we have a master for all writes, then read-only replica for all queries from each major network division (two major networks plus dmz in our case) so that query traffic doesn't have to cross the firewall.
This scales pretty well in our case, and the idea is pretty extensible if your primary application is authentication type info.
If you can, try to track down some video of this guy... I've seen some on a crazy-things-people-do type video show... it was very interesting.
This guy used big swinging logs to nail himself in the chest hard enough to throw him back a good 20 feet while wearing the suit, repeatedly stood in front of a jeep driving at him at 45mph or so and just let it cream him, multiple people beating him with bats as hard as they could... very entertaining stuff... he was perfectly safe, but the version of the suit he was using was so heavy that he couldn't really get up after he was knocked down.
ONLY ONE OF THE USAGE METHODS results in blackholing all ip traffic, that is the Subscription via BGP. This option is only available to larger networks with routers which have an ASN (see whatis.com if you don't know what an ASN is.)
I know of very very few networks which use RBL in this manner. There must be a few, but it seems like a pain in the ass, and there are negative effects of doing it, as indicated on the RBL description of the service.
Anyone choosing to implement such an esoteric blackholing system for all ip traffic from RBL-listed hosts is likely FULLY AWARE that they will be dropping some hosts, and must consider that an acceptable risk. If you are a client of such an organization, and don't buy into that, then leave. My guess would be that most that have successful implementations of BGP RBL subscription had buy-in from their clients before they set it up.
My guess is that 95% or more of RBL subscribers use the "Direct usage via DNS lookup by mailserver" method of applying RBL blocking. This method has ZERO IMPACT on http, ftp, dns, ICMP, or any other type of traffic other than SMTP.
This Slashdot article was written by someone who does not understand the nature of the Internet and the RBL on a detailed level, and who is obviously dipping into conspiracy theories a bit... his little diatribe on above.net sounds like the manifesto of a lunatic. To the author: Get over it, sir. You don't understand the technology, and you don't understand the decisions made by ISPs who implement the RBL. I wish you well in your career, but this isn't going to be the ground-breaking story you thought it was. Feel free to write me if you'd like to speak to me further.
Sincerely,
~Acheron
Re:ORBS is a hostile system
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 1
I wouldn't put it past ORBS to be selling open relays, perhaps their entire black hole list, to spammers. They've proven to be those kind of people in the past, and still are.
They don't sell the database to spammers, they give the whole thing to them, anything that has been there 30 days.
Just head to their site and check out the whats int he database section... now just write a nice little cgi to pull from the database exactly which envelope lines you need to relay off each of those servers, and voila, you have a nearly inexhaustable supply of abusable mail servers.
The problem isn't that scan... it's the fact that they list all the open relays in one convenient multi-format database, which is INTENDED FOR USE BY SPAMMERS. The only thing orbs does is ensure that when fully open relays become rarer, the spammers will have a SINGLE source to go to hwere they can find ALL the info on where to go to find partial open relays, and EXACTLY the envelope needed to relay off them.
Are you driving an electric car? I'm certainly not...
I'm also not wearing a nuclear fission-powered jetpack to work... probably because the technology hasn't advanced to the point that it could be considered "great techology" at all.
Theres a fundamental problem with creating any new type of distribution media:
In order for content-creators (big labels, studios and distribution companies) to publish stuff on your new medium, they have to believe it's going to be relatively secure, or else there has to be massive consumer support behind the format such that there would be large losses in profits if they weren't to publish in the new format.
In order for consumers to want to use a new medium, and give up their investment in their current collection of 78s, LP, 8-tracks, cassettes, VHS tapes, etc, they have to believe there is reasonable likelihood that publishers will produce content in the new format.
Furthermore, consumers require that there be a COMPELLING ADVANTAGE TO THE NEW FORMAT. One researcher figures it has to be a factor of ten times better in order for consumers to take the plunge... ten times better quality, ten times more portable, ten times cheaper...
These three things are played out constantly in the marketplace. Right now, we're seeing a push by the publishers to prevent a massive move towards the more portable, and cheaper-to-produce MP3 format (the quality issue I'll leave for the audiophiles amongst us).
It's my opinion that traditional mediums such as CD have, reached the limit of quality that the market will bear. Since a significant portion of music-listeners can't hear the difference between CD quality and DAT quality for most applications, no one is going to successfully market a new format with 10 times better quality than CD. That leaves portability (MP3 has excellent portability) and cost (MP3 distribution can be very inexpensive compared to moving crates of CDs).
MP3 is thus the most competitive format to come along since the advent of CDs, IMO. I suspect that either MP3 or another digital format will exist alongside CD for quite a while. Consumers WANT to be able to copy things though, and that will definitely have an impact on which digital format will make it with buyers.
Of course, the really interesting stuff to watch won't be in audio at all, but in video...
Re:WANTED! 8086 to run Windows 1.0!
on
High Tech Junk
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· Score: 1
Hehe... I have a working PS/2 Model 25 here. It has a hard drive though...
I think it will be a terminal or something.. I like the nice all-in-one design and the fact that the bloody thing weighs about 40 pounds. Or if I fail at that, maybe a fishbowl...
Well, my network hinges on 486s. My main baby, galadriel, is a 486DX2-80 with 24 megs of RAM (could use a bit more, but hey, no X and she's fine) running a heavily upgraded Slackware 3.2. She routes my subnet, runs dns for about 6 or 8 domains, hosts 3 domains for web and mail, has about 2-4 shells going most of the time. Galadriel had her head removed a while back and replaced with an IBM 3151 green glass terminal, and has been chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much.
Celeborn is the second 486 on the network. He's a PS/2 77 running Debian. He also holds my monitor off my desk. His primary real task is to do backup DNS, but the visible part of his task is as a monitor of the real world (tm). He runs X/Windowmaker at 640x400 as that's all that the IBM 8513 monitor he's got will handle, and a number of little dockapps watch things for me like the weather from the local airport, the time and date here, the time in about 10 other timezones that I care about from time to time, and miscellaneous things like the phases of the moon, etc.
Although she's not in the closet, galadriel might as well be... the dust gets awfully thick down there in the corner. I've recently bought a 19" 3' tall rack to get her off the carpet. I also need to take her down and reboot a few times to find out what's going to happen at new years. I'm not looking forward to it though... her uptime is my pride and joy.
This seminal FAQ is one of the documents that has changed the internet for the better: hundreds of thousands of stupid arguments never occured because someone read this first and THOUGHT before they posted.
1. Someone's been in your machine. They may have replaced only that index.html file, in which case, you're going to rebuild the machine for nothing. On the other hand... you don't know what they did. They might have replaced cron with a toaster-control server app. They might have replaced su with a little script that posts whatever you type after Password: on Slashdot, along with your ip and boss' home phone number. They might just have patched things up so that all credit card numbers coming into your ecommerce form are automatically mailed to 3l33th4xors@yahoo.com and carbon copied to your client with a big ascii-art image that says FSCK U. Or perhaps they simply reconfigured sendmail so that whenever the mail queue runs, it bundles up all the mailbox files on the server and forwards them as PGP encoded attachments to the FBI.
It's not the security hole that you are worried about after its been exploited. You could fix the security hole. But you'll never know what they did AFTER they exploited it, and that's the big concern...
2. If your 100k hit/day webserver is so important, you'll have a clone to dump in its spot during the rebuild, right?
You don't know what they did. You MUST rebuild it.
In regards to the legal action recently initiated on your behalf against Gus Lopez, owner of the internet domain name toysrgus.com, by the legal firm Darby & Darby, I wish to state that I find your company's actions in the matter reprehensible.
The site in question was a resource for collectors of Star Wars memorabilia and has been in operation for nearly five years. It is my opinion that toy collectors have long supported your company, and that in this case your actions have repaid their passion for toys with legal threats.
Please note that the name of the site is a reflection on the owner's first name, Gus, and that, to the best of my knowledge, there was no intention of using this domain to attempt to compete with your company, or to confuse readers of the site into thinking they were reading a web page created by Toys'R'Us.
As a side note, I find the recent great increase in the aggressiveness of large corporations in taking legal action against small website operators to be disturbing. For examples, please see recent actions against the holders of ajax.org and veronica.org. Your company has been very active in this field, making truly bizarre claims such as that the site at rru.com might be mistaken for your company. In the case at hand, regarding toysrgus.com, if you truly feel that the destruction of a long-standing website resource for toy collectors will increase good will towards your company, then carry on. However, I urge you to consider alternatives.
Perhaps an arrangement could be made in which Mr. Lopez would clearly identify on the first page of his site that he is not a representative of your company, and provide a link to your site from that first page. This would allow both clients of yours who have mistyped your domain name, and the toy collectors who regularly visit his site to quickly and easily reach your site for more information on your products and services.
Your company (along with many others) is relatively new to the internet. I believe it is high time that large companies realized that this is an international medium, and that it is an individualized medium. I urge you to take the time to understand how it works and the nature of the internet community before you take similar actions in the future.
I have been a regular and happy customer of Toys'R'Us for many years. However, I feel strongly enough about this issue that I will be finding alternative vendors for toys I purchase in the future if this action is not brought to a civilized end.
Although unimaginable to the desktop user, Linux can now work even better on systems that do not actually include any sort of video device....it is now possible to redirect all the kernel messages... to a serial device.
Not so unimaginable... my primary Linux has no monitor, and the console is accessable only via the IBM3151 text terminal attached to it, or via ssh from somwhere else. I've got all the hardware to add my other 3151 terminal using a couple of adapters and a CAT5 cable, so maybe I'll compile 2.2 for that machine and setup the spare on my bedtable. Then again maybe not... hate to mess with a 70 day uptime, and my wife might not appreciate the beeps at 3 in the morning when I need to read my mail.:P
Another thing that rocks is the MCA support: this means that I'll almost certainly be able to use a distro other than slackware on my PS/2 77, and maybe i'll even be able to get X running on the XGA-2 adapter.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus isn't important anymore... there's a dozen people who could take over for him if he decided to go sit on a mountaintop for the rest of his days. While he has been influential in getting us where we are today, his control over the kernel is not important in the big picture. Linux is no longer about creating a functional system; we have that, thanks to Linus.
The exciting open source projects are now predominantly in application development, and while the kernel maintenance and development is interesting, it isn't important for most users of Linux anymore.
You actually are incorrect on this one. Many things are open, and secure. In fact, if the security of the system depends on the mechanism being secret, then it is security-by-obscurity and not very secure at all.
For example, all modern encryption systems are based on open algorithms, where the mechanism of the encryption is open to scrutiny by anyone. However, it is still secure, as the security of the encryption doesn't depend on the secrecy of how the encryption is done.
An open DRM solution is completely possible, and would allow public trust in the mechanism. Of course, the public may hate DRM and push back on those using it. I think that it goes against everything that has pushed media technology forward over the past 75 years, and that the public isn't going to accept limitations on the media they buy, but maybe I'm over-optimistic about the energy expended on thinking about media purchases by the general populace.
I recently built a house and thought a lot about this stuff. I decided that I wanted efficiency, flexibility, safety and comfort as my highest priorities. Some of the things I got, some I didn't since I didn't have unlimited budget, and my builder declined to do a few things. But here they are:
... the wife had some input on the timing of doing most of that stuff, so I just had them built with future projects in mind on most of real toy stuff :)
- data wiring everywhere, and all data wires should be placed in conduit for easy upgrade/replacement in the future.
- patch based wiring control
- amplified video distribution throughout the house, with multiple inputs including camera mounts outside, etc
- multizone HVAC (minimum 3 zones for basement/main/upstairs) with heat/cool, humidity control.
- fire protection: spun basalt insulation in all walls/floors, minimize combustible material where possible
- sound proofing: why should i have to choose to have the tv volume where I want it vs wake up the kid? Spun basalt acoustic batt in all walls/floors/ceilings, metal stud construction walls with double-layer gypsum board, ceilings hung on acoustic flex rails and only connected to walls by acoustic sealant, solid core doors with self-sealing accoustic sweeps and seals, possibly super-dense acoustic sheeting included in the walls/ceilings.
- continuous, on-demand hot water (no hot water tank)
- super-efficiency low-e windows
From there there were some toy requests:
- multizone whole house audio
- lighting automation
- snazzy appliances
- place to construct infinite-baffle subwoofer
- server and wiring closet
- tv in the ensuite so I can watch in the jacuzzi
I walked up to my bank machine a couple months ago and found it was buggered, sitting at the OS/2 boot splash screen with an error. I was intrigued and did a bit more reading, and it really is still the dominant OS for ATMs. Honestly, that use alone is probably enough to ensure support into the future, someone will pick it up, either a bank or a bank service provider, because the risk to change these things is large...
This won't ever happen because it's well-documented that people spend more or less y dollars for every x minutes you spend in store. This leads to things like... Mushroom and tomato soups (most popular varieties) on the bottom shelf; thus, you are
a) more likely to walk past them, and have to come back later and
b) required to visually scan the other soup flavours in order to find what you're looking for, leading to more views of the branding on the can, and making you more likely to make an impulse purchase of a flavour that catches your eye.
Getting you out of the store more quickly is absolutely not going to be something grocery stores are going to want to work towards. If anything, they want you to enjoy your time so much that you'll want to be there longer.
Everyone seems to think that "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." is connected by a logical AND, but it's really a logical OR. Stop the whinging, you'll be alright.
Responding even though AC here has obviously been living under the bridge a bit too long and is rather off-topic to boot.
Load levelling/failover such as your speaking of in Windows Datacenter is definitely possible in linux. Please visit http://linux-ha.org/ if you're interested in learning more about some of those types of applications.
I'm not sure what your point is with hardware. Quality hardware is available from many vendors, including hardware which supports Linux. Yes, IBM, Sun, etc have systems which provide good hardware redundancy and replaceability, but so does Dell.
Your point about comparing a load leveled Windows Datacenter cluster to a beowulf cluster is comparing apples to oranges. The Windows Datacenter is a cluster of machines providing redundancy of service for each other, the beowulf is a cluster of machines acting as a single large processing unit. Completely different balls of wax.
I guarantee you that I could build with Linux and Dell a cluster that would be just as reliable as your windows datacenter, plus it would cost less and probably perform better.
Feel free to visit again. Careful though, I hear there's heretics around who don't religiously praise ANY hardware or ANY software at all!
These dictionary attacks are pretty commonplace actually, and people run them against *much* smaller domains than hotmail.com... I have logs of 15000+ connects attempting delivery to domains I host with all the attempted usernames in alphabetical order... adm@mydomain, admin@mydomain, adel@mydomain etc etc...
If I see that level of aggressive mail farming on my wee domains, imagine what kind of resources spammers would put into hotmail farming... I bet people would have no trouble dedicating a couple weeks of heavy-duty computing time to build a dictionary to farm hotmail with with literally millions and millions of combinations of names, or even just random characters... aaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaab...
I bet the rewards would be worthwhile for them to put that sort of effort in.
I wouldn't run a full replica on a webhost, for various reasons... a lot of the data may not be relevant, thus it's a waste of disk, security concerns, etc.
Depending on your application, you might find nscd (name service caching daemon) to be useful, we certainly did in our largish institution. In our application we're primarily using LDAP for authentication on the web servers, and nscd is the perfect tool for caching that data... here's a quick excerpt from 'man nscd':
Nscd provides cacheing for the passwd(5), group(5) and hosts(5) databases through standard libc interfaces, such as getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), getgrnam(3), getgrgid(3), gethostbyname(3) and others.
Anyway, with pam auth and nscd, it's no trouble to run TLS for all transactions, since the nscd cache keeps the overhead to a reasonable amount. In terms of replication, we have a master for all writes, then read-only replica for all queries from each major network division (two major networks plus dmz in our case) so that query traffic doesn't have to cross the firewall.
This scales pretty well in our case, and the idea is pretty extensible if your primary application is authentication type info.
~Acheron
Thank goodness.
With the help of this company, we'll all be able to use lynx (or one of the other text browsers) to effectively surf again!
Viva!
~Acheron
If you can, try to track down some video of this guy... I've seen some on a crazy-things-people-do type video show... it was very interesting.
This guy used big swinging logs to nail himself in the chest hard enough to throw him back a good 20 feet while wearing the suit, repeatedly stood in front of a jeep driving at him at 45mph or so and just let it cream him, multiple people beating him with bats as hard as they could... very entertaining stuff... he was perfectly safe, but the version of the suit he was using was so heavy that he couldn't really get up after he was knocked down.
There are three ways that RBL may be used, listed at this address:
http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/usage.html
ONLY ONE OF THE USAGE METHODS results in blackholing all ip traffic, that is the Subscription via BGP. This option is only available to larger networks with routers which have an ASN (see whatis.com if you don't know what an ASN is.)
I know of very very few networks which use RBL in this manner. There must be a few, but it seems like a pain in the ass, and there are negative effects of doing it, as indicated on the RBL description of the service.
Anyone choosing to implement such an esoteric blackholing system for all ip traffic from RBL-listed hosts is likely FULLY AWARE that they will be dropping some hosts, and must consider that an acceptable risk. If you are a client of such an organization, and don't buy into that, then leave. My guess would be that most that have successful implementations of BGP RBL subscription had buy-in from their clients before they set it up.
My guess is that 95% or more of RBL subscribers use the "Direct usage via DNS lookup by mailserver" method of applying RBL blocking. This method has ZERO IMPACT on http, ftp, dns, ICMP, or any other type of traffic other than SMTP.
This Slashdot article was written by someone who does not understand the nature of the Internet and the RBL on a detailed level, and who is obviously dipping into conspiracy theories a bit... his little diatribe on above.net sounds like the manifesto of a lunatic. To the author: Get over it, sir. You don't understand the technology, and you don't understand the decisions made by ISPs who implement the RBL. I wish you well in your career, but this isn't going to be the ground-breaking story you thought it was. Feel free to write me if you'd like to speak to me further.
Sincerely,
~Acheron
I wouldn't put it past ORBS to be selling open relays, perhaps their entire black hole list, to spammers. They've proven to be those kind of people in the past, and still are.
They don't sell the database to spammers, they give the whole thing to them, anything that has been there 30 days.
Just head to their site and check out the whats int he database section... now just write a nice little cgi to pull from the database exactly which envelope lines you need to relay off each of those servers, and voila, you have a nearly inexhaustable supply of abusable mail servers.
It's inexcusable, if you ask me.
The problem isn't that scan... it's the fact that they list all the open relays in one convenient multi-format database, which is INTENDED FOR USE BY SPAMMERS. The only thing orbs does is ensure that when fully open relays become rarer, the spammers will have a SINGLE source to go to hwere they can find ALL the info on where to go to find partial open relays, and EXACTLY the envelope needed to relay off them.
Are you driving an electric car? I'm certainly not...
I'm also not wearing a nuclear fission-powered jetpack to work... probably because the technology hasn't advanced to the point that it could be considered "great techology" at all.
~Acheron
Theres a fundamental problem with creating any new type of distribution media:
These three things are played out constantly in the marketplace. Right now, we're seeing a push by the publishers to prevent a massive move towards the more portable, and cheaper-to-produce MP3 format (the quality issue I'll leave for the audiophiles amongst us).
It's my opinion that traditional mediums such as CD have, reached the limit of quality that the market will bear. Since a significant portion of music-listeners can't hear the difference between CD quality and DAT quality for most applications, no one is going to successfully market a new format with 10 times better quality than CD. That leaves portability (MP3 has excellent portability) and cost (MP3 distribution can be very inexpensive compared to moving crates of CDs).
MP3 is thus the most competitive format to come along since the advent of CDs, IMO. I suspect that either MP3 or another digital format will exist alongside CD for quite a while. Consumers WANT to be able to copy things though, and that will definitely have an impact on which digital format will make it with buyers.
Of course, the really interesting stuff to watch won't be in audio at all, but in video...
~Acheron
11000010 10001001 10100011 10000011 10001000
Hehe... I have a working PS/2 Model 25 here. It has a hard drive though...
I think it will be a terminal or something.. I like the nice all-in-one design and the fact that the bloody thing weighs about 40 pounds. Or if I fail at that, maybe a fishbowl...
~Acheron
Well, my network hinges on 486s. My main baby, galadriel, is a 486DX2-80 with 24 megs of RAM (could use a bit more, but hey, no X and she's fine) running a heavily upgraded Slackware 3.2. She routes my subnet, runs dns for about 6 or 8 domains, hosts 3 domains for web and mail, has about 2-4 shells going most of the time. Galadriel had her head removed a while back and replaced with an IBM 3151 green glass terminal, and has been chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much.
Celeborn is the second 486 on the network. He's a PS/2 77 running Debian. He also holds my monitor off my desk. His primary real task is to do backup DNS, but the visible part of his task is as a monitor of the real world (tm). He runs X/Windowmaker at 640x400 as that's all that the IBM 8513 monitor he's got will handle, and a number of little dockapps watch things for me like the weather from the local airport, the time and date here, the time in about 10 other timezones that I care about from time to time, and miscellaneous things like the phases of the moon, etc.
Although she's not in the closet, galadriel might as well be... the dust gets awfully thick down there in the corner. I've recently bought a 19" 3' tall rack to get her off the carpet. I also need to take her down and reboot a few times to find out what's going to happen at new years. I'm not looking forward to it though... her uptime is my pride and joy.
Oh well... it'll have to happen someday soon...
~acheron
This seminal FAQ is one of the documents that has changed the internet for the better: hundreds of thousands of stupid arguments never occured because someone read this first and THOUGHT before they posted.
Lets see...
1. Someone's been in your machine. They may have replaced only that index.html file, in which case, you're going to rebuild the machine for nothing. On the other hand... you don't know what they did. They might have replaced cron with a toaster-control server app. They might have replaced su with a little script that posts whatever you type after Password: on Slashdot, along with your ip and boss' home phone number. They might just have patched things up so that all credit card numbers coming into your ecommerce form are automatically mailed to 3l33th4xors@yahoo.com and carbon copied to your client with a big ascii-art image that says FSCK U. Or perhaps they simply reconfigured sendmail so that whenever the mail queue runs, it bundles up all the mailbox files on the server and forwards them as PGP encoded attachments to the FBI.
It's not the security hole that you are worried about after its been exploited. You could fix the security hole. But you'll never know what they did AFTER they exploited it, and that's the big concern...
2. If your 100k hit/day webserver is so important, you'll have a clone to dump in its spot during the rebuild, right?
You don't know what they did. You MUST rebuild it.
~Acheron
No, this isn't a joke. nasa.com is really owned by the people who own suck.org Here's the whois entry:
Owner:
The Epicenter Network
Address:
1344 Broadway, Suite 211
Hewlett, New York 11557
US
Last Updated:
August 18, 1997
Administrative Contact:
SUCK-Domain Holdings (HNH2-ORG) operations@SUCK.ORG
800-697-2437
Fax- - 800-697-2437
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
SUCK-Auditing (HNA-ORG) audit@SUCK.ORG
800-697-2437
Fax- - 800-697-2437
Billing Contact:
SUCK-Domain Billing (HNB-ORG) payables@SUCK.ORG
800-697-2437
Fax- - 800-697-2437
Name Servers:
NS1.SUCK.ORG 205.166.250.23
NS2.SUCK.ORG 205.166.250.33
In regards to the legal action recently initiated on your behalf against Gus Lopez, owner of the internet domain name toysrgus.com, by the legal firm Darby & Darby, I wish to state that I find your company's actions in the matter reprehensible.
The site in question was a resource for collectors of Star Wars memorabilia and has been in operation for nearly five years. It is my opinion that toy collectors have long supported your company, and that in this case your actions have repaid their passion for toys with legal threats.
Please note that the name of the site is a reflection on the owner's first name, Gus, and that, to the best of my knowledge, there was no intention of using this domain to attempt to compete with your company, or to confuse readers of the site into thinking they were reading a web page created by Toys'R'Us.
As a side note, I find the recent great increase in the aggressiveness of large corporations in taking legal action against small website operators to be disturbing. For examples, please see recent actions against the holders of ajax.org and veronica.org. Your company has been very active in this field, making truly bizarre claims such as that the site at rru.com might be mistaken for your company. In the case at hand, regarding toysrgus.com, if you truly feel that the destruction of a long-standing website resource for toy collectors will increase good will towards your company, then carry on. However, I urge you to consider alternatives.
Perhaps an arrangement could be made in which Mr. Lopez would clearly identify on the first page of his site that he is not a representative of your company, and provide a link to your site from that first page. This would allow both clients of yours who have mistyped your domain name, and the toy collectors who regularly visit his site to quickly and easily reach your site for more information on your products and services.
Your company (along with many others) is relatively new to the internet. I believe it is high time that large companies realized that this is an international medium, and that it is an individualized medium. I urge you to take the time to understand how it works and the nature of the internet community before you take similar actions in the future.
I have been a regular and happy customer of Toys'R'Us for many years. However, I feel strongly enough about this issue that I will be finding alternative vendors for toys I purchase in the future if this action is not brought to a civilized end.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Stade
acheron@mnj.ml.org
Another thing that rocks is the MCA support: this means that I'll almost certainly be able to use a distro other than slackware on my PS/2 77, and maybe i'll even be able to get X running on the XGA-2 adapter.
I think I'll be a busy fellow for a while...