The moon not being a geo-stationary object, how are they planning on effectively beaming the energy down? By targeting a few selected base stations? And missing?
Everytime a story comes around about a security hole i hear the "you had it coming, you shouldn't have run it anyway". And it's starting to get on my nerves.
So people shouldn't run telnetd, because it's unsafe, now should they? So "it's ok to have a bug there, don't blame Unix"? Well they shouldn't run IIS either, because it's unsafe, so it must be ok to have a bug in IIS too...
Stop the double standards. We'll never be taken seriously as a community of free-thinking, mature, Unix/open_source/whatever believers until we start acting like mature people in the first place.
It's a bug, and it's bad. It's been posted in October and Sun is taking ages to fix it, and so is IBM. That is _real_ bad. So face it.
Yes, this is different from the Microsoft/IIS/Outlook exploits. But you have to KNOW the difference before you can TELL the difference. And the difference is THIS IS A BUG, MICROSOFT PROBLEMS ARE USUALLY FLAWS.
THAT is the main difference, THAT is what sets Unix apart from Windows. Both have problems occasionally. One because it couldn't help it, the other because it didn't care. Now that's a world of a difference.
You can't really know what pages are pointing to you by looking at referral headers.
Referrals only tell you what people came to your site _from_ a said site, not if a link exists or where the link is.
Think about:
- use of a link redirection page by a site (usual in corporate sites, etc)
- links that exist but aren't followed
- people that surf with referrals turned off (lots of software allow this)
The link system is effectively one-way only.
Two-way links were proposed in the original Xanadu system, but no provision exists under the current www scheme. Except, of course, for google...:)
The real problem about free software is that the message we send isn't clear!
We cannot complain that people don't take our products seriously and at the same time tell them we can't offer tech support!
When you buy commercial, you get a few things in return: the software, someone to complain when it doesn't work, someone to call over and make it work, somewhere to go for training, and so on.
When you choose non-commercial, you get the software. Until we have the rest of the package, we will never be considered a serious option by corporate buyers.
Incedently, I really like the Windows XP driver protection thing. To sum it up, if you attempt to install a non-certified driver, a dialog essentially tells you that 'installing this driver may f**k up your computer. Install anyway?"
Actually, that is a bit like your car having no seatbelts and instead politely letting you know "Driving this car and crashing may cause injuries of some kind, possibly death".
It's just a warning, and it doesn't help me much. What I'd like to see would be a system to perform the change in a controlled, reversible manner, a standard test-suite for drivers, in fact, some way to solve my problem, instead of just letting me know I have one.
Until they do that, it's just a dialog box, really.
If software runs in my computer without my knowledge and for any purpose other than serving my needs, I don't want it.
"Virus" scanners have been know to detect things like Back Orifice for ages, and nobody seems to complain. What is the difference between BO and any other FBI-or-not-sanctioned spyware? None.
It may strike you as odd, but from a user's perspective, getting shot in the head by a robber isn't any different from getting shot in the head by a policeman.
I quite agree with you, but I'd like to comment that newsgroups seem to me as a bad idea. Not all carriers cater tham, and you can never be sure if your message is going to be replicated across servers in a proper amount of time...
"By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision." -- Hugo Gernsback, in "Amazing Stories" (April 1926)
What are we doing to proper classification of things? I do know there are no exact lines between parts of reality, but aren't we going a bit too far? Harry Potter books are very nice, but they are definitely not Science Fiction as we know it.
So what does that mean? That the Hugo award doesn't mean anything anymore? What are these people doing? Selecting novels based on popular demand? Maybe next year they'll choose Barbara Cartland...
So for my money, PalmOS is my choice over WinCE. Maybe a Linux based handheld in the future though, just because it would be cooler than hell and be more like my desktop...:-)
Now this is the root of most of the mediocrity in the software/hardware industry!
Let me ask you: what for? More like your desktop why? Would you think that is good? Don't just answer back, think about it.
Would you like your oven to be more like your washing machine? Would you like your car to be more like yout TV? Would you like your dog to be more like your stereo? Would you like your girlfriend to be more like your mother? Please... Man and most species evolved (also) through specialization. Same thing with interfaces. If I wanted my PDA/cellphone/whatever to look more like my old typewriter I would have stuck with it in the first place... -----
How can we fix this kind of stuff once and for all? Any ideas?
I don't really have the time for testing, I'm a think-er, not a do-er, but let me know what you think.
The problem we have is that the browser/email client/whatever is in effect a shell.
This is a problem with Windows, but it's also a problem if you some day use Emacs to surf the Web and read your email. Not saying it would be a problem, just saying it could be a problem.
Now for the fixing part:
Can we run the browser as SUID nobody? Can we run the browser chrooted? Can we do the same for an email client? (I'm just talking UN*X, here)
Ok, now the new micro-soft operating system actually has permissions on the filesystem, doesn't it? And you can actually do an equivalent of setuid, can't you?
Not sure about chroot, but then...
So why don't we create a user mailo, with very low permissions, no Write outside the mail client dirs, no Read either (except where mandatory), and run the email client as setuid mailo?
Can this be a starting point for something? Or did I have one drink too many last night?
Remember, we're engineers, we're supposed to fix stuff, not bitch about it...
Do any of you still watch TV? Before 199x, I used to turn on the TV for news or entertainment; now I get most of my news from the net or printed media (yes, Sally, I've gone back to reading newspapers) and for entertainment I turn to games or other forms of interactive amusement. Better still, I do most of all that with other people, and the good thing about surfing the web with friends (in the same room) is that you don't get the "shut up, I'm trying to listen to the TV" stuff...
So really... TV is taking another step to its ultimate demise. Stand back and applaud. -----
From my experience, some kind of diagramming syntax rules are needed as soon as you get more than two people designing the same piece of software.
The main reason for UML is its wide adoption by the software community (at least, it's more widely accepted than any other notation). That helps people to be able to understand others' design when they see it, not having to learn (and misunderstand) a new design notation for every project they work on or team they work with. -----
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! Doesn that mean we'll get rings, like Saturn? Great!
If you consider getting a commercial product, try Xerox's Docushare.
It's web based, features access controls and revisions, HTML rendering of Office documents, and a lot of other nice things.
Best simple document management system I've seen that scales from small teams to large groups.
Or does everyone else get the feeling that some people have too much free time on their hands?
Are we actually paying people to come up with these ideas?
LiftOff'96 Session
The moon not being a geo-stationary object, how are they planning on effectively beaming the energy down? By targeting a few selected base stations? And missing?
Everytime a story comes around about a security hole i hear the "you had it coming, you shouldn't have run it anyway". And it's starting to get on my nerves.
So people shouldn't run telnetd, because it's unsafe, now should they? So "it's ok to have a bug there, don't blame Unix"? Well they shouldn't run IIS either, because it's unsafe, so it must be ok to have a bug in IIS too...
Stop the double standards. We'll never be taken seriously as a community of free-thinking, mature, Unix/open_source/whatever believers until we start acting like mature people in the first place.
It's a bug, and it's bad. It's been posted in October and Sun is taking ages to fix it, and so is IBM. That is _real_ bad. So face it.
Yes, this is different from the Microsoft/IIS/Outlook exploits. But you have to KNOW the difference before you can TELL the difference. And the difference is THIS IS A BUG, MICROSOFT PROBLEMS ARE USUALLY FLAWS.
THAT is the main difference, THAT is what sets Unix apart from Windows. Both have problems occasionally. One because it couldn't help it, the other because it didn't care. Now that's a world of a difference.
You can't really know what pages are pointing to you by looking at referral headers.
:)
Referrals only tell you what people came to your site _from_ a said site, not if a link exists or where the link is.
Think about:
- use of a link redirection page by a site (usual in corporate sites, etc)
- links that exist but aren't followed
- people that surf with referrals turned off (lots of software allow this)
The link system is effectively one-way only.
Two-way links were proposed in the original Xanadu system, but no provision exists under the current www scheme. Except, of course, for google...
We cannot complain that people don't take our products seriously and at the same time tell them we can't offer tech support!
When you buy commercial, you get a few things in return: the software, someone to complain when it doesn't work, someone to call over and make it work, somewhere to go for training, and so on.
When you choose non-commercial, you get the software. Until we have the rest of the package, we will never be considered a serious option by corporate buyers.
One word for you: Playstation
Actually, that is a bit like your car having no seatbelts and instead politely letting you know "Driving this car and crashing may cause injuries of some kind, possibly death".
It's just a warning, and it doesn't help me much. What I'd like to see would be a system to perform the change in a controlled, reversible manner, a standard test-suite for drivers, in fact, some way to solve my problem, instead of just letting me know I have one.
Until they do that, it's just a dialog box, really.
Let me break the news to you:
If software runs in my computer without my knowledge and for any purpose other than serving my needs, I don't want it.
"Virus" scanners have been know to detect things like Back Orifice for ages, and nobody seems to complain. What is the difference between BO and any other FBI-or-not-sanctioned spyware? None.
It may strike you as odd, but from a user's perspective, getting shot in the head by a robber isn't any different from getting shot in the head by a policeman.
I quite agree with you, but I'd like to comment that newsgroups seem to me as a bad idea. Not all carriers cater tham, and you can never be sure if your message is going to be replicated across servers in a proper amount of time...
I'd go for geocities sites any day.
Think about it...
Porn... Palm...
Palms have been used together with porn for ages, if you know what I mean...
Hmmm. just commenting on your .sig
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
They stole your network adapter? Over the internet?? What are those darn hackerz going to pull off next???
You're right... having half a brain can also prevent spread ;)
They should have made this the default, other wise it's useless. Anyone smart enough to find the option is also smart enough to know better.
I wish I had read that before I posted, but the Hugo Award Rules appear to be non-existant :\
But doesn't the majority of readers associate the Hugo with hard sci-fi? Are they trying to dilute the meaning of award?
Well, you can read the definitions here. I wish the jury had read this little page before they voted.
What is sci-fi?
Quoting the very man the award was named after:
"By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision." -- Hugo Gernsback, in "Amazing Stories" (April 1926)
What are we doing to proper classification of things? I do know there are no exact lines between parts of reality, but aren't we going a bit too far? Harry Potter books are very nice, but they are definitely not Science Fiction as we know it.
So what does that mean? That the Hugo award doesn't mean anything anymore? What are these people doing? Selecting novels based on popular demand? Maybe next year they'll choose Barbara Cartland...
Hmmm...
Wouldn't your computer/network/etc go down during a blackout anyway?
Somehow, I don't think that is a major concern to me.
Now this is the root of most of the mediocrity in the software/hardware industry!
Let me ask you: what for? More like your desktop why? Would you think that is good? Don't just answer back, think about it.
Would you like your oven to be more like your washing machine? Would you like your car to be more like yout TV? Would you like your dog to be more like your stereo? Would you like your girlfriend to be more like your mother? Please...
Man and most species evolved (also) through specialization. Same thing with interfaces. If I wanted my PDA/cellphone/whatever to look more like my old typewriter I would have stuck with it in the first place...
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No way! I was hating him long before the first Linux kernel ever shipped...
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I don't really have the time for testing, I'm a think-er, not a do-er, but let me know what you think.
The problem we have is that the browser/email client/whatever is in effect a shell.
This is a problem with Windows, but it's also a problem if you some day use Emacs to surf the Web and read your email. Not saying it would be a problem, just saying it could be a problem.
Now for the fixing part: Can we run the browser as SUID nobody? Can we run the browser chrooted? Can we do the same for an email client? (I'm just talking UN*X, here)
Ok, now the new micro-soft operating system actually has permissions on the filesystem, doesn't it? And you can actually do an equivalent of setuid, can't you?
Not sure about chroot, but then...
So why don't we create a user mailo, with very low permissions, no Write outside the mail client dirs, no Read either (except where mandatory), and run the email client as setuid mailo?
Can this be a starting point for something? Or did I have one drink too many last night?
Remember, we're engineers, we're supposed to fix stuff, not bitch about it...
-----
Do any of you still watch TV? Before 199x, I used to turn on the TV for news or entertainment; now I get most of my news from the net or printed media (yes, Sally, I've gone back to reading newspapers) and for entertainment I turn to games or other forms of interactive amusement. Better still, I do most of all that with other people, and the good thing about surfing the web with friends (in the same room) is that you don't get the "shut up, I'm trying to listen to the TV" stuff...
So really... TV is taking another step to its ultimate demise. Stand back and applaud.
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The main reason for UML is its wide adoption by the software community (at least, it's more widely accepted than any other notation). That helps people to be able to understand others' design when they see it, not having to learn (and misunderstand) a new design notation for every project they work on or team they work with.
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<irony>Well... few of the people I know are using Netscape 5, for that matter...</irony>
But i agree with you. And what's the standards-and-open-source community response to the current state of things? Mozilla?
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