I've just had a browse, but I can't find an equivalent to the Nagios overview map (the network layout map). Maybe I need to install it to check (not found in screenshots). Without that map it won't work for us..
There were specific reasons to go for this laptop, otherwise I would have agreed with you and looked around. They look interesting, but they're not where I live..
Besides, the Sony VGN-SZ4(bla) DOES work with Ubuntu (all my systems dual boot - until I have time to VMWare the Windows partition).. It positively flies, even the camera is now accessible (no idea about the finger print reader yet - don't like biometrics that much).
If Dubya had an AOL account (which wouldn't surprise me, but I digress) and some company started to use his address book and send email pretending they originate from him I think there would be a certain lack of enthusiasm by Dubya.
The crux is not that your address book gets abused - sure, it happens and if you don't want that don't put it on a public service. What I question is the sending of email endorsements as if they originate from a specific user (i.e. alleging the user endorses the service). That would abuse my personal reputation (if I had one) for their gain, without my permission.
There is no way I would allow a company to use my name or email address to send email on my behalf. This is misrepresentation and is simply illegal. To put this in perspective, what do you think would happen if you sent an email in the name of George Bush to the FBI?
In this case it's certainly worth reading the Terms & Conditions - if that 'feature' isn't in there you ought to be able to sue the hell out of them.
I specifically asked the Sony Centre this before I bought a new laptop, and I got a "no, never heard of a refund" answer. Worse, they couldn't offer me a laptop with XP installed either, it's all Vista or nothing now, even when I explained to them that this would mean we could no longer buy Sony (as I set a groupwide ban on buying Vista unless we either have answers on DRM or have completed our Ubuntu tests).
I needed a laptop there and then so I bought it, imaged the Vista off the machine and Ubuntu on it.
I'll resume that battle some other time, they take advantage of the fact that it takes time and effort to fight idiocy..
Would there be a way to force this disclosure? Or maybe something to start some detective work on? In my experience, anything a malign force is trying to hide is worth a bit of sunshine.
In any case, this has now set TWO precedents the RIAA campaign could have done without. Not only did the defendant win, cost recovery was also granted (countering the usual blackmail of prosecuting someone dry).
Well done. I'm not for breaches of copyright, but I'm also not for abuse of the law. Somehow we ended up with an ever increasing gap between law and justice so it's nice to see something that goes against the trend:-)
OK, let me give you a little bit of argument why the guy may have at least some basis for asking questions. So far, all the global warming folks have been going after the industrial world and car drivers (noddy summary:-).
So why is NOBODY looking at the global warming costs of meat production? I'm not a veggie, but I was shocked to discover that about 27% (yes, over a quarter) of the global warming problem originates in meat production. How do you think a cow fart (methane) gets so much energy?
The issue here, however, is political. Farming is already ridiculously oversubsidised, and it's ironic that the subsidies have resulted in creating quite a power block (i.e. with your tax money), and not just in France. It's thus much easier to go after car drivers because they're easy to target and have nowhere to go (example: London, with the costliest public transport system per mile in the world). And they don't cost that many votes because they've already been made to feel guilty for causing the worlds' ills.
Another little idea for you: I would suggest you start checking how much income the Government gets from your gas bill. I don't think you're so naive to think any Government is going to cut off a major revenue stream to please some greenies, not without finding another path to claw back that income (i.e. again your own money).
I'm not really in the mood for digging out the matching facts for you (sorry, I know it's an easy way out but it's late) but it may be some consolation that I believed the original arguments as well, without asking extra questions.
That was, until I had the pleasure to meet one of the people on their way to speak at Davos. This specific guy gets invited every year precisely because he doesn't swallow the original arguments either and he isn't shy to ask the questions everyone else is trying to avoid (to the point of upsetting the UK delegate who started to take it personally:-). It's not going to be dealt with sufficiently by nibbling at the margins only.
Worse, it deludes us in thinking we're dealing with the problem.
PS: note that I don't argue with the fact that Gloabl Warming is taking place, only with that our beloved politicians are too wedded to their votes to really deal with the key issues. I prefer clarity and transparancy, and this means debate and tough questions. Hounding someone because (s)he stimulates debate shows there's a couple of things we're not being told, and it's worth examining that. I can remember a similar attitude when some people questioned WMD evidence..
No, not for pr0n (grin), for banking and crypto apps. In the UK there's a law called Regulation of Investigative Powers Act which will eventually allow the Gov to ask for data under warrant, but without any obligation on their part to keep it safe.
I've come up with a solution for that, but setting up a company in Canada may be another approach. And you speak more languages:-)
I've dealt with a fair number of Canadians and found them very pleasant (and their English accent is in most cases superb:-).
Even then it was a viable alternative - once you had USB printing stable. But yes, Ubuntu is awesome. Even Knoppix doesn't recognise hardware that well..
"Let's make this country the #1 democracy in the world all over again. Let everyone know that feasible voting solutions exist in the here and now and are solved with current technology!"
What? And waste all that money that was invested in rigging the system? It's a capitalist dream investment - pay enough and you get to write the laws that will provide a very juicy return on investment.
Face it - you're as much a democracy as the UK (i.e. not at all). And even the UK is only slowly starting to admit that publicly.
If you analyse what you actually do when you "join the FON community" it's quite an audacious intelligence grab. You are given "for free" a wireless access point that offers a public as well as a "private" segment.
Only, it isn't really for free and it's not really all that private either.
It's not for free because you are serving your own (paid) bandwidth up to people who pass by, in exchange for the ability to do so elsewhere (in other words, you run the potential to offer bandwidth for many in order to get some bandwidth elsewhere). I'm OK with the communal idea of that. However, you don't get a penny from the profit the alleged "community" collectively makes for the company running it by enabling their global calling plan.
It's not exactly private either, for two reasons. First, the access point has an exact geographic location. Fair enough, rather hard to make this idea work otherwise and you can ask them to make the location a but less precise. But the map also shows activity, which implies a highly active feedback loop between the device and FON. Secondly, you have little opportunity to adjust the device. Although Linux inside, it's locked down and can be updated at any time by FON without your permission or knowledge of what the device actually does. Given the article above and the current staggering damage to privacy, it is really so inconceivable to see the US part of FON get a visit of a nice man in a dark suit with a briefcase asking them to give them access to a worldwide WiFi version of Echelon?
Maybe it's simply better to pay for an Internet cafe (using TOR).
I agree that using the one or the other service to host email wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't for the lock-in. They are forcing the whole population of students into a proprietary setup that should not exist in this day and age where POP3, IMAP and SMTP are known to most people that have been near a computer.
There's only one reason to prevent remote access, and that is blatant lock in - THAT is what should be avoided at all costs. Unless, of course, the Uni is also prepared to pay the students the costs of migrating to Windows, keeping anti-virus up to date, support etc for all those that do not use Windows and thus don't have virus problems. In other words, the Uni be prepared to cough up for the liabilities it is creating for the students, and that could get VERY ugly.
(1) DRM. As DRM is a serial chain of single points of failure you end up with three problems. Firstly, the MTBF of that chain is the MTBF of the weakest component. Secondly, the probability of failure increases with the number of components involved - with Vista this move from being a probability to being a likelihood (even ignoring the fact that it's an MS product which ups the ante even more). Thirdly, to that likelihood of failure you have to add that all DRM components are version 1, hardware as well of software - in the Microsoft world this is in principle a public beta. In summary, catastrophic failure and data loss is as good as guaranteed. Go ahead, implement this on a corporate scale..
(2) The 'advanced' GUI. I've been using Compiz and Beryl on Linux long enough to have played with eye candy and you know what? I switched it off. It slows my UI down, not because of computing power (plenty available) but because all that fancy stuff needs time to show itself. Opening a window that zooms or rolls or whatever takes longer than one that just appears on the screen, for example, and there's plenty of it. It gets in the way, period. The only thing I use in Beryl is a slightly transparent cube so I can see where things are because I can have quite a windows and desktops on the go.
(3) The licensing problems. I've been fighting the misnamed 'Genuine Advantage' on other systems which were as genuine as they come and, frankly, I've had enough. From what I've read Vista has even more of that nonsense in, and that, coupled with my unwillingness for any system to be allowed to 'phone home' without me knowing what details it sends is enough for me not to use it. I have client information I need to keep confidential and I have nil trust in systems that do things without me knowing. Apart from that, I get very little for the money - I rather spend it sponsoring an Open Source project that creates value for me and others.
(4) The eternal upgrade cycle, but that's more based on my experience with XP. I installed a couple of new systems 3 weeks ago, and I set it up so I have to authorise patches and updates. Well, it happens on a daily basis. Worse, one of the patches bluescreened one of the box to the point of me having to restore it from backup. I've only ever had that with Linux, 6 years ago, when a kernel patch went wrong - and that is easy to recover from.
(5) As with any version of Windows, the absolute dependency on the GUI for it to work. If there's a modal window somewhere hidden under the stack of others on your desktop it will stop the machine and actively prevent you from getting to the window. And you can't cancel the task because you need the GUI for that too. That leads me to another HUGE and related annoyance: if I say 'shut down' I want a machine to SHUT DOWN, no if, buts and maybes. It needs a shutdown that simply does what it says, no further questions asked.
And I don't buy into the 'hope cycle' that the next version will at last fix all the problems. Realistically, MS will NEVER willingly make such a version.
At a sufficiently high level, a security check is not something you 'fail' or 'pass' - it's simply a risk assessment that clarifies to those that are planning to use your services which areas of risk they need to manage. It's not a tick box process that HR does over lunch - it takes months of investigative work. There is a simple way to get through that: do. not. lie.
I started with electronics in that way (at age 11), in the days when we'd only just started to leave the radio lamp era behind (yeah, I'm/that/ old but I refuse to grow up:-)
The manuals tend to tell you how to put things together and how to move from the schematics to the physical side of things, but few of them even have the most basic theory in.
Putting designs together is good to start with, and changing components to see what happens is also educational (as long as you stay with low voltage battery power or you get other effects of a more permanent nature:-), but the real education took place when I started talking to the guy who ran the nearest electronics shop and who was kind enough to make time to explain the basics to a curious 11 year old (who cycled an hour to get to his shop:-). Learning about resistors, capacitors and how thy behave under AC and DC conditions, how a transistor works and things like NAND gates - all that is interesting but not always captured in kit manuals.
Conclusion: the kits are good because they give you the tools, but don't expect the insight to come from there - either local help or other beginners books may be better. Maybe How It Works on the Net may help, and I think there was a program called Crocodile Clips which did a similar thing on a virtual, on-screen board. No idea if it's still around.
(1) the splash to stay 'Ubuntu' even though I use Kubuntu' - why can't I choose? (2) a decent server. I tried Fedora but found the interface inconsistent (maybe I should have read more docs), OpenSuSE does the job with Yast but to get cups to server printing to a couple of Windows boxes is a pain but it's so far the quickest to setup re. serving Samba, Apache, MySQL for people like me that have not so much time to plough through man pages and docs (though I'm not exactly a stranger to CLI - I've been using Linux since it came on floppies and X was an option:-). I really like what the Ubuntu guys are doing so as soon as they come up with a usable server I'll be using it.
Now, if someone has a web way to set up Postfix + IMAP with a couple of domains and aliases I'd be interested, but that's a new question which I haven't researched yet myself:-). I guess it's time to find webmin again..
It's a painful thing to have your deficiencies exposed in public.
However, the RIGHT thing would have been to engage those people and see what could be improved. The WRONG thing to do is to abuse the legal system to prevent a public presentation - it simply draws more attention to the flaws and, more importantly, it offers a crystal clear illustration of the companies' attitude to a breach: they run away.
Or, let me translate this: their action spells in bright letters not to even THINK of relying on HID to help you if the system is breached, and product improvement also seems wishful thinking.
With that attitude they're off my books - and thus of the clients I advise.
Hmm, I just wonder what sort of lawsuits would follow if someone bought a legit key but made a mistake in entering it, or the registry entry gets corrupted (something that obviously never happens..).
This is a simple breach of virtually any computer related laws I can think of. If you have a problem with piracy you're welcome to stop the program from working - you have, however, no right to act as judge and jury and become a vigilante, nor do you have right of access to the computing resources and information your code is near.
In short, if you do that you're no better than a virus author and thus deserve the same treatment.
You can't even plead temporary insanity (well, OK, maybe permanent insanity:-).
There is already a reasonable system to assure identity (reasonable totally trustworthy): the Web of Trust scheme from Thawte (the reason Mark Shuttleworth could collect airmiles in a more spectacular way:-). The WOT idea uses a points system and ID cross checks to give people certificates.
I should know because I was one of the people authenticated into the system by Mark, but I must log in and update my data..
Your'e creating a single attack vector for multiple sites - any site who uses the scheme will show up in a log as a site your ID/password gives access to, and a compromise of teh core service (or the section you use) will thus screw you for all those sites in one go. Not to mention the risk if someone comes up with an idea to intercept/divert the authentication traffic.
Maybe my standards are too high, but it doesn't feel like a very good idea to me other than for very low value sites (i.e. those with no money or reputational risks involved).
I admire the dispersed nature of the whole idea, but I fail to see the point if a logon doesn't carry a degree of associated trust. If anything, it goes against any trust model as there are too many uncontrolled parties involved who may or may not have an interest in your browsing habits. It's a bit like a store card where you get some peanut reward for given the shop/chain the ability to analyse your shopping habits in minute detail.
So you've got nothing to hide? Fine, would you appreciate being followed by someone taking careful note of everything you buy? No? Well, the only difference is that the stalker is invisible.
Slashdot Mirror
I've just had a browse, but I can't find an equivalent to the Nagios overview map (the network layout map). Maybe I need to install it to check (not found in screenshots). Without that map it won't work for us..
There were specific reasons to go for this laptop, otherwise I would have agreed with you and looked around. They look interesting, but they're not where I live..
:-).
Besides, the Sony VGN-SZ4(bla) DOES work with Ubuntu (all my systems dual boot - until I have time to VMWare the Windows partition).. It positively flies, even the camera is now accessible (no idea about the finger print reader yet - don't like biometrics that much).
And it runs Beryl just fine too
If Dubya had an AOL account (which wouldn't surprise me, but I digress) and some company started to use his address book and send email pretending they originate from him I think there would be a certain lack of enthusiasm by Dubya.
The crux is not that your address book gets abused - sure, it happens and if you don't want that don't put it on a public service. What I question is the sending of email endorsements as if they originate from a specific user (i.e. alleging the user endorses the service). That would abuse my personal reputation (if I had one) for their gain, without my permission.
There is no way I would allow a company to use my name or email address to send email on my behalf. This is misrepresentation and is simply illegal. To put this in perspective, what do you think would happen if you sent an email in the name of George Bush to the FBI?
In this case it's certainly worth reading the Terms & Conditions - if that 'feature' isn't in there you ought to be able to sue the hell out of them.
I specifically asked the Sony Centre this before I bought a new laptop, and I got a "no, never heard of a refund" answer. Worse, they couldn't offer me a laptop with XP installed either, it's all Vista or nothing now, even when I explained to them that this would mean we could no longer buy Sony (as I set a groupwide ban on buying Vista unless we either have answers on DRM or have completed our Ubuntu tests).
I needed a laptop there and then so I bought it, imaged the Vista off the machine and Ubuntu on it.
I'll resume that battle some other time, they take advantage of the fact that it takes time and effort to fight idiocy..
Would there be a way to force this disclosure? Or maybe something to start some detective work on? In my experience, anything a malign force is trying to hide is worth a bit of sunshine.
:-)
In any case, this has now set TWO precedents the RIAA campaign could have done without. Not only did the defendant win, cost recovery was also granted (countering the usual blackmail of prosecuting someone dry).
Well done. I'm not for breaches of copyright, but I'm also not for abuse of the law. Somehow we ended up with an ever increasing gap between law and justice so it's nice to see something that goes against the trend
OK, let me give you a little bit of argument why the guy may have at least some basis for asking questions. So far, all the global warming folks have been going after the industrial world and car drivers (noddy summary :-).
:-). It's not going to be dealt with sufficiently by nibbling at the margins only.
So why is NOBODY looking at the global warming costs of meat production? I'm not a veggie, but I was shocked to discover that about 27% (yes, over a quarter) of the global warming problem originates in meat production. How do you think a cow fart (methane) gets so much energy?
The issue here, however, is political. Farming is already ridiculously oversubsidised, and it's ironic that the subsidies have resulted in creating quite a power block (i.e. with your tax money), and not just in France. It's thus much easier to go after car drivers because they're easy to target and have nowhere to go (example: London, with the costliest public transport system per mile in the world). And they don't cost that many votes because they've already been made to feel guilty for causing the worlds' ills.
Another little idea for you: I would suggest you start checking how much income the Government gets from your gas bill. I don't think you're so naive to think any Government is going to cut off a major revenue stream to please some greenies, not without finding another path to claw back that income (i.e. again your own money).
I'm not really in the mood for digging out the matching facts for you (sorry, I know it's an easy way out but it's late) but it may be some consolation that I believed the original arguments as well, without asking extra questions.
That was, until I had the pleasure to meet one of the people on their way to speak at Davos. This specific guy gets invited every year precisely because he doesn't swallow the original arguments either and he isn't shy to ask the questions everyone else is trying to avoid (to the point of upsetting the UK delegate who started to take it personally
Worse, it deludes us in thinking we're dealing with the problem.
PS: note that I don't argue with the fact that Gloabl Warming is taking place, only with that our beloved politicians are too wedded to their votes to really deal with the key issues. I prefer clarity and transparancy, and this means debate and tough questions. Hounding someone because (s)he stimulates debate shows there's a couple of things we're not being told, and it's worth examining that. I can remember a similar attitude when some people questioned WMD evidence..
Ask questions - because they don't want you to..
The guy may have misunderstood the term :-)
No, not for pr0n (grin), for banking and crypto apps. In the UK there's a law called Regulation of Investigative Powers Act which will eventually allow the Gov to ask for data under warrant, but without any obligation on their part to keep it safe.
:-)
:-).
I've come up with a solution for that, but setting up a company in Canada may be another approach. And you speak more languages
I've dealt with a fair number of Canadians and found them very pleasant (and their English accent is in most cases superb
The stranglehold is in the calendaring AFAIK.
Even then it was a viable alternative - once you had USB printing stable. But yes, Ubuntu is awesome. Even Knoppix doesn't recognise hardware that well..
It must be a very good hack if it keeps Windows up for that long :-)
"Let's make this country the #1 democracy in the world all over again. Let everyone know that feasible voting solutions exist in the here and now and are solved with current technology!"
What? And waste all that money that was invested in rigging the system? It's a capitalist dream investment - pay enough and you get to write the laws that will provide a very juicy return on investment.
Face it - you're as much a democracy as the UK (i.e. not at all). And even the UK is only slowly starting to admit that publicly.
If you analyse what you actually do when you "join the FON community" it's quite an audacious intelligence grab. You are given "for free" a wireless access point that offers a public as well as a "private" segment.
Only, it isn't really for free and it's not really all that private either.
It's not for free because you are serving your own (paid) bandwidth up to people who pass by, in exchange for the ability to do so elsewhere (in other words, you run the potential to offer bandwidth for many in order to get some bandwidth elsewhere). I'm OK with the communal idea of that. However, you don't get a penny from the profit the alleged "community" collectively makes for the company running it by enabling their global calling plan.
It's not exactly private either, for two reasons. First, the access point has an exact geographic location. Fair enough, rather hard to make this idea work otherwise and you can ask them to make the location a but less precise. But the map also shows activity, which implies a highly active feedback loop between the device and FON. Secondly, you have little opportunity to adjust the device. Although Linux inside, it's locked down and can be updated at any time by FON without your permission or knowledge of what the device actually does. Given the article above and the current staggering damage to privacy, it is really so inconceivable to see the US part of FON get a visit of a nice man in a dark suit with a briefcase asking them to give them access to a worldwide WiFi version of Echelon?
Maybe it's simply better to pay for an Internet cafe (using TOR).
In cash..
I agree that using the one or the other service to host email wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't for the lock-in. They are forcing the whole population of students into a proprietary setup that should not exist in this day and age where POP3, IMAP and SMTP are known to most people that have been near a computer.
There's only one reason to prevent remote access, and that is blatant lock in - THAT is what should be avoided at all costs. Unless, of course, the Uni is also prepared to pay the students the costs of migrating to Windows, keeping anti-virus up to date, support etc for all those that do not use Windows and thus don't have virus problems. In other words, the Uni be prepared to cough up for the liabilities it is creating for the students, and that could get VERY ugly.
(1) DRM. As DRM is a serial chain of single points of failure you end up with three problems. Firstly, the MTBF of that chain is the MTBF of the weakest component. Secondly, the probability of failure increases with the number of components involved - with Vista this move from being a probability to being a likelihood (even ignoring the fact that it's an MS product which ups the ante even more). Thirdly, to that likelihood of failure you have to add that all DRM components are version 1, hardware as well of software - in the Microsoft world this is in principle a public beta. In summary, catastrophic failure and data loss is as good as guaranteed. Go ahead, implement this on a corporate scale..
(2) The 'advanced' GUI. I've been using Compiz and Beryl on Linux long enough to have played with eye candy and you know what? I switched it off. It slows my UI down, not because of computing power (plenty available) but because all that fancy stuff needs time to show itself. Opening a window that zooms or rolls or whatever takes longer than one that just appears on the screen, for example, and there's plenty of it. It gets in the way, period. The only thing I use in Beryl is a slightly transparent cube so I can see where things are because I can have quite a windows and desktops on the go.
(3) The licensing problems. I've been fighting the misnamed 'Genuine Advantage' on other systems which were as genuine as they come and, frankly, I've had enough. From what I've read Vista has even more of that nonsense in, and that, coupled with my unwillingness for any system to be allowed to 'phone home' without me knowing what details it sends is enough for me not to use it. I have client information I need to keep confidential and I have nil trust in systems that do things without me knowing. Apart from that, I get very little for the money - I rather spend it sponsoring an Open Source project that creates value for me and others.
(4) The eternal upgrade cycle, but that's more based on my experience with XP. I installed a couple of new systems 3 weeks ago, and I set it up so I have to authorise patches and updates. Well, it happens on a daily basis. Worse, one of the patches bluescreened one of the box to the point of me having to restore it from backup. I've only ever had that with Linux, 6 years ago, when a kernel patch went wrong - and that is easy to recover from.
(5) As with any version of Windows, the absolute dependency on the GUI for it to work. If there's a modal window somewhere hidden under the stack of others on your desktop it will stop the machine and actively prevent you from getting to the window. And you can't cancel the task because you need the GUI for that too. That leads me to another HUGE and related annoyance: if I say 'shut down' I want a machine to SHUT DOWN, no if, buts and maybes. It needs a shutdown that simply does what it says, no further questions asked.
And I don't buy into the 'hope cycle' that the next version will at last fix all the problems. Realistically, MS will NEVER willingly make such a version.
Who would buy the update?
At a sufficiently high level, a security check is not something you 'fail' or 'pass' - it's simply a risk assessment that clarifies to those that are planning to use your services which areas of risk they need to manage. It's not a tick box process that HR does over lunch - it takes months of investigative work. There is a simple way to get through that: do. not. lie.
I started with electronics in that way (at age 11), in the days when we'd only just started to leave the radio lamp era behind (yeah, I'm /that/ old but I refuse to grow up :-)
:-), but the real education took place when I started talking to the guy who ran the nearest electronics shop and who was kind enough to make time to explain the basics to a curious 11 year old (who cycled an hour to get to his shop :-). Learning about resistors, capacitors and how thy behave under AC and DC conditions, how a transistor works and things like NAND gates - all that is interesting but not always captured in kit manuals.
The manuals tend to tell you how to put things together and how to move from the schematics to the physical side of things, but few of them even have the most basic theory in.
Putting designs together is good to start with, and changing components to see what happens is also educational (as long as you stay with low voltage battery power or you get other effects of a more permanent nature
Conclusion: the kits are good because they give you the tools, but don't expect the insight to come from there - either local help or other beginners books may be better. Maybe How It Works on the Net may help, and I think there was a program called Crocodile Clips which did a similar thing on a virtual, on-screen board. No idea if it's still around.
Good luck, it's an interesting hobby.
(1) the splash to stay 'Ubuntu' even though I use Kubuntu' - why can't I choose? :-). I really like what the Ubuntu guys are doing so as soon as they come up with a usable server I'll be using it.
:-). I guess it's time to find webmin again..
(2) a decent server. I tried Fedora but found the interface inconsistent (maybe I should have read more docs), OpenSuSE does the job with Yast but to get cups to server printing to a couple of Windows boxes is a pain but it's so far the quickest to setup re. serving Samba, Apache, MySQL for people like me that have not so much time to plough through man pages and docs (though I'm not exactly a stranger to CLI - I've been using Linux since it came on floppies and X was an option
Now, if someone has a web way to set up Postfix + IMAP with a couple of domains and aliases I'd be interested, but that's a new question which I haven't researched yet myself
Ubuntu: intelligent freedom..
It's a painful thing to have your deficiencies exposed in public.
However, the RIGHT thing would have been to engage those people and see what could be improved. The WRONG thing to do is to abuse the legal system to prevent a public presentation - it simply draws more attention to the flaws and, more importantly, it offers a crystal clear illustration of the companies' attitude to a breach: they run away.
Or, let me translate this: their action spells in bright letters not to even THINK of relying on HID to help you if the system is breached, and product improvement also seems wishful thinking.
With that attitude they're off my books - and thus of the clients I advise.
Simple..
Maybe they're planning to stop supplying MS SQL Server but don't want to give revenue away to MySQL?
No idea of the profit for SQL Server, but it would make sense to chop it if it didn't make the 20000% margin Office and Windows make.
(/sarcasm)
Hmm, I just wonder what sort of lawsuits would follow if someone bought a legit key but made a mistake in entering it, or the registry entry gets corrupted (something that obviously never happens..).
:-).
This is a simple breach of virtually any computer related laws I can think of. If you have a problem with piracy you're welcome to stop the program from working - you have, however, no right to act as judge and jury and become a vigilante, nor do you have right of access to the computing resources and information your code is near.
In short, if you do that you're no better than a virus author and thus deserve the same treatment.
You can't even plead temporary insanity (well, OK, maybe permanent insanity
There is already a reasonable system to assure identity (reasonable totally trustworthy): the Web of Trust scheme from Thawte (the reason Mark Shuttleworth could collect airmiles in a more spectacular way :-). The WOT idea uses a points system and ID cross checks to give people certificates.
..
I should know because I was one of the people authenticated into the system by Mark, but I must log in and update my data
Your'e creating a single attack vector for multiple sites - any site who uses the scheme will show up in a log as a site your ID/password gives access to, and a compromise of teh core service (or the section you use) will thus screw you for all those sites in one go. Not to mention the risk if someone comes up with an idea to intercept/divert the authentication traffic.
Maybe my standards are too high, but it doesn't feel like a very good idea to me other than for very low value sites (i.e. those with no money or reputational risks involved).
I admire the dispersed nature of the whole idea, but I fail to see the point if a logon doesn't carry a degree of associated trust. If anything, it goes against any trust model as there are too many uncontrolled parties involved who may or may not have an interest in your browsing habits. It's a bit like a store card where you get some peanut reward for given the shop/chain the ability to analyse your shopping habits in minute detail.
So you've got nothing to hide? Fine, would you appreciate being followed by someone taking careful note of everything you buy? No? Well, the only difference is that the stalker is invisible.
No thanks.