Good grief! I'm sorry, but the Wikipedia has got to be one of the biggest banes and blows to knowledge that this world has ever seen. There is absolutely nothing worse, than inaccuracy.. and that's what the Wikipedia is best at.
Yes, some of the core articles.. some.. the ones that are utterly and completely non-political and non-debated.. almost become quality, usable articles. However, every article with any political, and scientific, and religious.. any point of contention... turns into a constant slugfest for the King of the Idiots reward.
How many idiotic urban legends have you heard in your life? How many moronic statements to people make, based upon emotion? How many times have you hear people state things as fact, because "it makes sense to them", not because they know it is fact? How many people listen to everything they hear around themselves, such as news articles or what some bubble gum chewing blonde says, and take it for fact?
I hate to say it, but the average man is a freaking MORON. The average man is best slated to dig a ditch, and hasn't the brains or the knowledge base to comment on virtually anything. Unfortunately, being a common dolt doesn't prevent you from editing the Wikipedia.. in fact, it seems to call to said persons.
So what, you think? Everyone knows that the Wikipedia is not authoritiative. Take everything you read there as tainted, right? Well then, if everything you read on the Wikipedia is "untrusted" (as it should be), then guess what, it's utterly useless.
Knowledge isn't like a current in the breeze. It should not shift and shimmer and be an elusive and ever changing thing. Knowledge should be carved in stone, and only modified when sufficient proof is available for change.
Not because Sir Average Moron heard something 12 years ago, and thinks that the article is wrong.
BAH!!!!!!!
Am I pissed? Yes... and that's because even though everything you read, everything you hear, every bit of knowledge you absorb should be verified as much as possible, at least many traditional encyclopedias try to verify in such a manner. Verification with years of static articles that have very minor touchups to correct occasional errors.
Does that sound like the Wikipedia to you? Do articles that are completely different every time you look at them, seem accurate? After all, if the previous article was accurate, and the new article is sufficiently different... then it or the previous was wrong!
BAH.. I'm too pissed off to continue. Library of Alexandria my ass!
No, I don't agree to the MS EULA. I buy some software, it's mine (yes, it is, I own that copy under the law). I take it home and open it, and some stupid prompt stops me from using my LEGALLY OWNED COPY OF SOFTWARE unless I click "yes".
It's extortion, and quite invalid. Only if I sign away my rights _before_ purchase, are such agreements valid.
No, it's part of the server market. The server is purchased, and that can be an IBM server. The bandwidth is purchased. The disks, ram, etc. Heck, even purchased instead of free software, can be purchased and used on Debian.
Merely because the OS is free, does not mean all the additionals go out the window. This is a MASSIVE mistake that software/hardware vendors are making in the server market.
Example:
- 90% of all Linux installs, according to sales figures, are Redhat or SuSE - however, that only accounts for 5% of distros running servers out there
Therefore, by designing your software to _tightly_ co-exist with say... Redhat, you are alienating over 95% of the Linux server market. Worse, since this same market is comprised of individuals that will engineer and develop code around such issues, you could find your product quickly replaced by a _free_ variant, if you don't make it easy to use your commercial variant.
Again, biiiig mistake, especially since there is absolutely no VALID reason to tie into on distro or another.
Of course, the above is not as serious as hardware vendors that release binary only drivers, that only work on one release of Redhat from 2002.;P
But that's really the point, isn't it? There is no "real" business world. You sell, you buy, you run a company from your home or a billion dollar enterprise, you're in business. IBM and others tend to act elitist, as if you must do $x in sales per month to count in such a world.
Frankly, a single server in some guy's basement, selling porn on Debian stable, is still a server. That is part of the server market. Someone with two boxes in a colo and a supermotherboard system -- servers. IBM didn't specify "only fortune 500" or "500+ server installation sites"... and that is the error in question.
It is not an accurate look at the "server" market.
Over 90% of the Linux Server MARKET, eh? Well, first, define server? Is that only a nice IBM piece of hardware, or some other big player piece of hardware? What about SuperMicro, and the middle ground players?
As well, define market? What part of the marketplace does Debian have? None, really, not if you define marketplace as something you can track via sales.
I believe these specifications are out of whack. 90%? From where I sit, it's 90% _non_ Redhat or SuSE....
As per this 5 year old bug, proper mouse button support would be nice. Hacks are not very user friendly, as the whole POINT of KDE is that an end user isn't going to have to monkey with something like imwheel. Heck, 7 button support has been in Window Managers like Sawfish for 7+ _YEARS_. I'm not quite sure why this isn't implemented, but it sure as hell isn't because of QT.
I wonder about a recent bug I found.. about three months ago, about applications not showing on iconification when also shaded, in the tasklist. The bug report I found was about three years old.
My point? Usability means that perhaps you should deal with usability bugs. I have KDE set up for my parents. Trust me, when they iconify an app that happened to be shaded, they don't know to use ps to find it and kill it. They don't know about alt-tab. They just think it crashed.
Yes, people can be "punished" for this, in civil court. Once could sue based upon personal distress, as well as a few other things. It is not a _criminal_ matter, but considering that in-game commodities are gained through personal labour, one could sue.
1) Someone mentioned that stealing monopoly money is not a crime. Yes, it is. It is theft. Yes, the outcome in a court case would be tiny for that theft. 2) someone mentioned that taking a puzzle after it was assembled would not be a crime. Yes, it would, it is theft. As well, one could sue for the return of the completed puzzle, or compensation required to rebuild the completed puzzle, and if it had intrinsic value, sue on that basis.
Here's the long and short of it. One does not have to be charged with a crime, in order to be sued in civil court and assessed damages and reparation. This can come in many means, including return of the lost whatever-it-be, and punative damages (a con-job would certainly include punative damages).
So yes, someone COULD be sued for such acts... and frankly, someone could win such a suit!
No country needs to ever allow any citizen of another to enter its borders.
Is there paranoia? Yes, and idiocy, and just plain silliness. However, I am much more concerned about
1) whether or not someone is tortured or harmed in some way, instead of merely delayed or ejected when entering another country 2) how the citizens of a country, when entering their own country, are treated
Note that while this incident was just plain silly, no one was imprisioned, or tortured, or thrown into a concentration camp. Further, the author was not a citizen of the country in question.
An _average_ of 5? Come on, even mode average isn't going to realistically account for this, I don't buy it. They must be looking at only those familes that have cash laying around, there are families that can't even afford cable and a computer, for crying out loud!
Ear plugs are not a reasonable recourse. It prevents hearing the phone ring, from hearing your house being broken into, and any other reason you may need to be woken up for a legitimate noisy reason.
Well, I live in English speaking Canada.. and the spelling is not that cited by Wikipedia. It is not something I would call authortitative, but something as a starter point. On the flip side, the article specifically states that the spelling has NOT been the same in the United States.. but started out one way, and changed. There is a suggested reason as to why, as well.
Quote:
"The United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However, in 1892 Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, despite using the -ium spelling in all of his patents filed between 1886 and 1903. It has consequently been suggested that the spelling on the flier was a simple spelling mistake rather than a deliberate choice to use the -um spelling. Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version."
Anyhow, the above does state no certainly. Words like "suggested" are not the same as "proven".
It could certainly be a spelling difference to change pronounciation. Definitely, words like sulfer and sulpher do match how they are pronounced. I write sulpher, and pronounce sulpher. Sulfer is not the same sounding word.. an 'f' and 'ph' do _NOT_ sound the same in my variant of the English language.
This is what I am referring to. Aluminum and aluminium are not pronounced the same. Heck, color and colour are not, as an example. I pronounce the "our" in colour... it is not the same sound as simply an "or" at the end.
You're missing the point. You're not spelling it the way it sounds, you're spelling it the way it sounds *to you*.. which is a colloquial sound and spelling. You've changed the word's spelling, after changing the word's sound....
There is no proof that any Viking, however, spread his seed. From the Wikipedia:
"According to Norse sagas, the native skraelings responded so ferociously that the newcomers eventually withdrew and apparently gave up their original intentions to settle."
Sure, it's _probable_ that genetic material made it from Vikings to Native offspring, but definitely not a positive. Apparently the natives as a group were extremely hostile. Further, one never knows what would happen if rape occured. Would the baby be killed by the mother? Did the mother die in childbirth? Was the offspring ostracized and therefore did not mate and died?
Of course, a few days of rape does not equate pregnancy as well. The woman in question must be fertile.
What about disease? It is also probable that Vikings carried deadly disease, just as European settlers did. Too much contact may have resulted in almost the entire tribe being wiped out! Perhaps that was the reason behind the angry response? Perhaps the natives thought the newcomers were "tainted"?
Regardless, people being in a place does not always guarantee offspring... even if rape occured.;)
The same goes for people drifting in on a piece of wood, a lost sailor or the like. Just showing up in an isolated community does not mean you will be able to mate. Religious taboos, you name it.. and of course "killing the stranger" are all reasons why existing in a new place does not equate offspring.
Frankly, they were con artists. SOWs, unless they are 20 pages long, tend to lay out the principal of work involved. They tend to indicate what the desired outcome is. LinuxCare thinks that a two page SoW (for $100k of work) is a contract, not a statement of work. They think that unless every specific piece of work and coding is listed there, they did not agree to perform said work. This is regardless of verbal meetings prior to the SoW that back up said work.
Just how, for example, can one design an authentication system for a web application, without a usable, working login prompt? How can someone provide an authetincation system, without a means to manage it (add users, etc)? These things were all discussed during meetings, but not on paper.. although the spirit was.
For example, if I hire someone to provide me with a car.. and we have verbal meetings about what type of car, and how I want to use the car to drive 100 miles every day.. providing me with the parts of the car is usless, yes?
Thanks LinuxCare. I hope you crash and burn.
(and I hope anyone supporting LinuxCare because they are an "open source" company.. and "part of the movement", keep in mind that in that context.. so was SCO)
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but my personal experiences were all normal motherboards, with VIA chipsets (not cpus) on board. DMA issues effect motherboards and VIA chipsets, desktop or otherwise.
My recommendation, stay away from VIA until they clean up their act a bit.
I have had, and know so many Linux users that have had, problem with VIA chipsets. DMA issues, issues with lockups, VIA unwilling to communicate with Linux developers on resolving them.
Most recently an Asus board I owned last year, locked up as solid as a monkey if any heavy DMA activity occured. Worse, after doing hours of Google searches, I managed to find info stating that Windows drivers disabled various chip functions, so that the chipset could run in a stable function.
Apparently, from the slant of posts that I read, it was taken as fact that VIA often had issues with chipsets, and merely patched those issues with drivers. Typically, one buying a VIA board in Windows would end up with degradation of their chipset via drivers. Linux users were, however, not so lucky. VIA would ignore all pleas and requests about issues with their chipset, and the belief was that they did not want such issues with their chips to "make it to the press". Acknowledging that they had reduced chipset performance with drivers, would obviously not go over well. Chipsets are marketed to certain specs, and using drivers to "make it work", but not deliver those specs is clearly opening liability.
After reading this, I looked at issues I'd had over the years with graphic cards causing hardware lockups, boxes that would randomly reboot and the like. In almost all cases it tended to be with system that contained VIA chipsets. Further, I also found posts from many Myth users, complaining about DMA issues with their mini-itx boards.
VIA? I'd recommened everyone stay away.... I sure the heck do! Time isn't worth the $20 you save by walking away from an Intel or SiS chipset. Sure, these chipsets have issues, but Intel and SiS both seem a little more talkative with Linux developers.. and tend to produce a better product. VIA seems produce these flaws in almost _all_ of their chipsets.
My experience, sure. You'll have to make up your own mind. All I know is that $20 in savings is peanuts over 20 hours of debugging.. when the debugging is a useless task.
There was no link, and the text in bold was very oddly phrased with spelling errors. There is no superiority complex, simply a dislike for unreferenced material that seems very questionable.
Anyhow, aside from this, freeadvice.com definitely seems to be... disconcerting. I wouldn't trust the information contained therein, simple on the basis of spelling and grammar alone. Please note that while I can understand spelling and grammatical errors creeping into every day life, I find it unacceptable in newspapers, or information sites like the above. Errors can (especially when present in legal advise) change the entire meaning of a phrase or sentence. Any lawyer worth his weight should be very diligent in terms of both of these things.
You might be able to, but that's not really the point. I was willing to setup a "scheduled task" for Norton updates as an admin, but once it got to having to think about writing batch files.. well, that was that.
I don't like touching Windows to begin with, and my client does not like having to pay extra $$$ to have solutions engineered each year to fix problems with his virus software. A switch was made, immediately, to another product.
Because you have to run Norton as the administrator, if you want updates. You *used* to be able to get around this, by installing Norton as an admin, then setting up a cron (scheduled tasks:P ) to do the updates. However, Norton actually *disabled* the ability to do this in its latest versions. For the last year or so, you MUST run Norton as the administrator to get updates. Put another way, you have to log in once a day as administrator, or you never receive virus updates.
Lame? Yes, it is. Their techincal support staff find nothing odd about this, and their sales staff try to sell you an inordinately expensive "professional" product which does allow you to run as a normal user, and have updates occur without logging in as admin every 5 minutes. This is just sad. Every XP user should be running as a non-admin. Norton should be *encouraging* that.
I thought these people were trying to *help* security? The last thing I want anyone to do, is run as administrator on an XP box. Sure, you don't get the same level of security that you do under Linux, when one runs as a normal user, but it's still *very preferable* to run as a non-admin user for your day to day tasks, under XP.
There are so many "business" class products that don't understand such a simple concept. I've seen income tax software that must be run as the admin user under XP. Anti-virus software though??! That's just absurd.
I spend a significant amount of time EVERY DAY to ferret out fake data. I have several automated processes that search for and remove any data that does not fit certain criteria. I take this site, and the data integrity very seriously, so I take personal offense to your offhand, unfounded, and ignorant comments.
Interesting.
First of all, you claim to have an automated process that removes data that does not fit a certain criteria. You do not know if the data is invalid, that is removed, only that it fits a certain criterion. There clearly could be data removed that was valid, and very clearly there is invalid data that sneaks by you.
You can not prevent someone from calling a friend with a serial number. You can not prevent someone from using their work machine, and entering an address that is a thousand miles away. IP blocks are assignable, ARIN is not always up to date, and even if you spend big bugs for IP location services, it is not always perfect.. just most of the time so. Heck, you can't even determine if someone with wiped cookies and a dynamic ip address is entering the same bill twice!
Regardless of all your attempts to make data secure, researchers using that data for a study.. and then claiming that this study will help predict the movements of individuals during the next RED ALERT EMERGENCY PLAGUE that comes our way, is just irresponsible.
You, as a webmaster, are providing a FUN service. That's great, and it sounds like you are trying to take some steps to mitigate funny business. However, these researchers are using data that is extremely untrustworthy. There is literally no way to validate any of this data. _NOT_ _ANY_ _WAY_. Further, people that tend to enter serial numbers on your website, have a distinct personality profile. They have a specific economic position in society. They have a specific skill set which is, for one, the ability to use a computer. For example, I do not believe that the elderly would use your site much, as computer use in the elderly is less than the rest of the population. The poor with no computer at home or at work might be less likely to use such a service. All of these population sections might be more likely to spread a plague.. the poor for lack of money to afford masks, the necessity to continue to work when sick, when others can take time off. The elderly being more susceptible, and perhaps visiting relatives during a holiday season.
My whole point here, is that while your data is reliable to be used on a website that is only entertainment based, it is not reliable for any sort of scientific study. _Any_ sort of scientific study. It's not a cross section of society, and it is also not reliable for such a purpose.
If you take offence to that, you're off your rocker.
So you are proposing that the internet should be policed as well or more so than real life? For one, that would either pull police off the streets, or incure massive expense in training people to police the internet.
Yes, I said specifically that. Policing needs to be done. For some odd reason, I don't see you compaining about policing the water, the air or the streets. I don't see you complaining that it costs to have judges and courts and the manpower to bring criminals to them.
This is the _same_. Computer crime must be policed just as any other. It must have people trained to deal with it. End of story.
Secondly, it's an international network. One country's laws end with their borders, but the internet does not. Trying to get every internet-capable nation on Earth to agree to a common set of laws and have them share the burden of monitoring is (and do so fairly), IMHO, next to impossible.
International crime is a big deal. It's been going on since the concept of nationhood existed. We've spent thousands of years, building up an entire framework of extradition treaties and other associated laws, to handle just this. I've stated above, which you conviently ignored, that we will need more of these.
Third, it's the internet, you cannot physically use it to commit a violent crime. Computers are easily backed up and restored, and security patches are created fairly quickly, so crackers should be a nuisance, not a realy threat. If they are a real threat then the system they are a threat to shouldn't be on the internet (this is true whether their actions are illegal or not). As for DDOS attacks, they should be easy enough to stop by making a call to your ISP (if this kind of attack weren't illegal then the free market should favor any ISP that is able to quickly to stop one).
You are differentiating "violent crime", from crime, by using the word "violent". This implies that there are other crimes. Internet based crimes are one of those other crimes. We prosecute many crimes, many that are not violent.
It is not violent to break into a store that is vacant at night. There is no violence against people, and lock picking (as an example) is subtle. Your paragraph above basically states that "everyone should have locks, and tough if they are broken". Is that your stance? Your stance is that if your home, your car, anything is broken into, it was your fault that the locks weren't good enough? This is what you illude to, when you refer to patching your system. You are trying to shift the blame to the victim.
The victim is not at fault. Crime is crime. Period.
Back to the specific crime, if the company had a proper backup system in place then the actual data loss should have been minimal/non-existant and the account easily restored. Since a physical break in did NOT take place, no physical damage occured, and if proper backups had been kept then nothing would have been lost. I do agree that this guy's actions were immature, but I don't think it warranted the penalty. I just don't believe computer crimes merit much, if any, punishment because they don't directly cause any tangible damage.
Loss of money is damage. With today's privacy laws (at least in this country), companies must complete FULL AUDITS of all associated systems when a physical or electronic breakin occurs. As well, this individual broke in a number of times over the years, likely requiring an audit of greater scope.
What is incredibly funny is that some of you think that people would simply restore a backup, after a hostile action that an ex-employee took. This individually is already mentally decifient in some fashion, and his act shows that. What other deviant act did he perform? Did he place a time bomb somewhere, in a rarely used executable? Did he compromise the system in some other fashion?
Frankly, the only responsible resolution in this case is a complete reinstall of all effected systems, and then hand picked restoration of
This was a crime, hands down. Period. End of story.
If you read the article, there were multiple breakins, on multiple days, over a period of years.
The last likely removed files between backups, resulting in time lost for the employee. It doesn't speak of what was done during previous raids by this crook, but it is quite possible other costs were attributed to previous breakins.
Crimes like this should be punished, and harshly. This crook should receive a couple of years, for something like this. Perhaps more.
Why so harsh, you ask? It's simple. We need to start attributing _real_ penalties to crime on the internet. Sony, for example, should have seen criminal charges levied against the employees, management and all that had anything to do with that back door. Fines should have been in the billions. Yes, billions, as they should have received several thousands in fines per count. Employees must be treated harsely as well, after all, they can not legally claim they are just "following orders".
If you know your employer is doing something illegal, you are BREAKING THE LAW if you do not report such an act! If you work with the employer, helping to break the law, guess what! It's jail time for you!
We need (well, actually.. needed to, past tense) lock down crime on the internet a long time ago. We really have two choices here. We pay for police presence on the internet, judges that understand the crimes being committed.. or we leave the internet open and lawless.. and see horrid restrictions come down as a result.
People won't put up with cracking all over the place. The public will demand security. The public is indeed, starting to. It can come from laws and police enforcement of those laws.. or draconian laws that restrict rights and freedom on the net (DRM).
Which do you choose? DRM all over the place, locked down bioses and operating systems, logging so intense that ISPs keep a year of detailed backlogs, or realistic laws and paid for strong police presence on the net?
Police all over the world are crying out that they are overburdened with crimes on the net. They are claiming that they don't have the ability to catch crooks, because they need new laws. It's happening right here, in Canada. It's happening, because police _don't_ have the manpower to handle crime on the net, by tracking down crime in the standard fashion. The answer, to them, is increased logging and wiretaps/net taps without warrents. I say, that democracy costs.
To that end, we need to train judges and police to specifically handle computer crime. We need to enact treaties with out countries, and make sure that extradition is a possiblilty. We need to make sure that the police do not have unlimited ability to spy, but that there are judges in place that can issue warrants when the cause is evident. Fund the police, or allow DRM. Again, that is the choice we have.
Anyhow, back to this particular case. A case like this, should be treated as if a physical breakin occurred, sentence wise. This guy KNEW he was breaking the law. He KNEW he was being an asshole. Being employed by someone does not entitle you to smash things in a temper tantrum, years after you've been fired or outsourced.
Slashdot Mirror
Great Library of Alexandria?!
Good grief! I'm sorry, but the Wikipedia has got to be one of the biggest banes and blows to knowledge that this world has ever seen. There is absolutely nothing worse, than inaccuracy.. and that's what the Wikipedia is best at.
Yes, some of the core articles.. some.. the ones that are utterly and completely non-political and non-debated.. almost become quality, usable articles. However, every article with any political, and scientific, and religious.. any point of contention... turns into a constant slugfest for the King of the Idiots reward.
How many idiotic urban legends have you heard in your life? How many moronic statements to people make, based upon emotion? How many times have you hear people state things as fact, because "it makes sense to them", not because they know it is fact? How many people listen to everything they hear around themselves, such as news articles or what some bubble gum chewing blonde says, and take it for fact?
I hate to say it, but the average man is a freaking MORON. The average man is best slated to dig a ditch, and hasn't the brains or the knowledge base to comment on virtually anything. Unfortunately, being a common dolt doesn't prevent you from editing the Wikipedia.. in fact, it seems to call to said persons.
So what, you think? Everyone knows that the Wikipedia is not authoritiative. Take everything you read there as tainted, right? Well then, if everything you read on the Wikipedia is "untrusted" (as it should be), then guess what, it's utterly useless.
Knowledge isn't like a current in the breeze. It should not shift and shimmer and be an elusive and ever changing thing. Knowledge should be carved in stone, and only modified when sufficient proof is available for change.
Not because Sir Average Moron heard something 12 years ago, and thinks that the article is wrong.
BAH!!!!!!!
Am I pissed? Yes... and that's because even though everything you read, everything you hear, every bit of knowledge you absorb should be verified as much as possible, at least many traditional encyclopedias try to verify in such a manner. Verification with years of static articles that have very minor touchups to correct occasional errors.
Does that sound like the Wikipedia to you? Do articles that are completely different every time you look at them, seem accurate? After all, if the previous article was accurate, and the new article is sufficiently different... then it or the previous was wrong!
BAH.. I'm too pissed off to continue. Library of Alexandria my ass!
No, I don't agree to the MS EULA. I buy some software, it's mine (yes, it is, I own that copy under the law). I take it home and open it, and some stupid prompt stops me from using my LEGALLY OWNED COPY OF SOFTWARE unless I click "yes".
It's extortion, and quite invalid. Only if I sign away my rights _before_ purchase, are such agreements valid.
No, it's part of the server market. The server is purchased, and that can be an IBM server. The bandwidth is purchased. The disks, ram, etc. Heck, even purchased instead of free software, can be purchased and used on Debian.
;P
Merely because the OS is free, does not mean all the additionals go out the window. This is a MASSIVE mistake that software/hardware vendors are making in the server market.
Example:
- 90% of all Linux installs, according to sales figures, are Redhat or SuSE
- however, that only accounts for 5% of distros running servers out there
Therefore, by designing your software to _tightly_ co-exist with say... Redhat, you are alienating over 95% of the Linux server market. Worse, since this same market is comprised of individuals that will engineer and develop code around such issues, you could find your product quickly replaced by a _free_ variant, if you don't make it easy to use your commercial variant.
Again, biiiig mistake, especially since there is absolutely no VALID reason to tie into on distro or another.
Of course, the above is not as serious as hardware vendors that release binary only drivers, that only work on one release of Redhat from 2002.
Get with the program, guys!
Precisely.
But that's really the point, isn't it? There is no "real" business world. You sell, you buy, you run a company from your home or a billion dollar enterprise, you're in business. IBM and others tend to act elitist, as if you must do $x in sales per month to count in such a world.
Frankly, a single server in some guy's basement, selling porn on Debian stable, is still a server. That is part of the server market. Someone with two boxes in a colo and a supermotherboard system -- servers. IBM didn't specify "only fortune 500" or "500+ server installation sites"... and that is the error in question.
It is not an accurate look at the "server" market.
Over 90% of the Linux Server MARKET, eh? Well, first, define server? Is that only a nice IBM piece of hardware, or some other big player piece of hardware? What about SuperMicro, and the middle ground players?
As well, define market? What part of the marketplace does Debian have? None, really, not if you define marketplace as something you can track via sales.
I believe these specifications are out of whack. 90%? From where I sit, it's 90% _non_ Redhat or SuSE....
As per this 5 year old bug, proper mouse button support would be nice. Hacks are not very user friendly, as the whole POINT of KDE is that an end user isn't going to have to monkey with something like imwheel. Heck, 7 button support has been in Window Managers like Sawfish for 7+ _YEARS_. I'm not quite sure why this isn't implemented, but it sure as hell isn't because of QT.
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34362
I wonder about a recent bug I found.. about three months ago, about applications not showing on iconification when also shaded, in the tasklist. The bug report I found was about three years old.
My point? Usability means that perhaps you should deal with usability bugs. I have KDE set up for my parents. Trust me, when they iconify an app that happened to be shaded, they don't know to use ps to find it and kill it. They don't know about alt-tab. They just think it crashed.
Yes, people can be "punished" for this, in civil court. Once could sue based upon personal distress, as well as a few other things. It is not a _criminal_ matter, but considering that in-game commodities are gained through personal labour, one could sue.
1) Someone mentioned that stealing monopoly money is not a crime. Yes, it is. It is theft. Yes, the outcome in a court case would be tiny for that theft.
2) someone mentioned that taking a puzzle after it was assembled would not be a crime. Yes, it would, it is theft. As well, one could sue for the return of the completed puzzle, or compensation required to rebuild the completed puzzle, and if it had intrinsic value, sue on that basis.
Here's the long and short of it. One does not have to be charged with a crime, in order to be sued in civil court and assessed damages and reparation. This can come in many means, including return of the lost whatever-it-be, and punative damages (a con-job would certainly include punative damages).
So yes, someone COULD be sued for such acts... and frankly, someone could win such a suit!
I will say one thing here.
No country needs to ever allow any citizen of another to enter its borders.
Is there paranoia? Yes, and idiocy, and just plain silliness. However, I am much more concerned about
1) whether or not someone is tortured or harmed in some way, instead of merely delayed or ejected when entering another country
2) how the citizens of a country, when entering their own country, are treated
Note that while this incident was just plain silly, no one was imprisioned, or tortured, or thrown into a concentration camp. Further, the author was not a citizen of the country in question.
An _average_ of 5? Come on, even mode average isn't going to realistically account for this, I don't buy it. They must be looking at only those familes that have cash laying around, there are families that can't even afford cable and a computer, for crying out loud!
Boneheads!
Ear plugs are not a reasonable recourse. It prevents hearing the phone ring, from hearing your house being broken into, and any other reason you may need to be woken up for a legitimate noisy reason.
Well, I live in English speaking Canada.. and the spelling is not that cited by Wikipedia. It is not something I would call authortitative, but something as a starter point. On the flip side, the article specifically states that the spelling has NOT been the same in the United States.. but started out one way, and changed. There is a suggested reason as to why, as well.
Quote:
"The United States adopted the -ium for most of the 19th century with aluminium appearing in Webster's Dictionary of 1828. However, in 1892 Charles Martin Hall used the -um spelling in an advertising handbill for his new efficient electrolytic method for the production of aluminium, despite using the -ium spelling in all of his patents filed between 1886 and 1903. It has consequently been suggested that the spelling on the flier was a simple spelling mistake rather than a deliberate choice to use the -um spelling. Hall's domination of production of the metal ensured that the spelling aluminum became the standard in North America, even though the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913 continued to use the -ium version."
Anyhow, the above does state no certainly. Words like "suggested" are not the same as "proven".
It could certainly be a spelling difference to change pronounciation. Definitely, words like sulfer and sulpher do match how they are pronounced. I write sulpher, and pronounce sulpher. Sulfer is not the same sounding word.. an 'f' and 'ph' do _NOT_ sound the same in my variant of the English language.
This is what I am referring to. Aluminum and aluminium are not pronounced the same. Heck, color and colour are not, as an example. I pronounce the "our" in colour... it is not the same sound as simply an "or" at the end.
Erm.
You're missing the point. You're not spelling it the way it sounds, you're spelling it the way it sounds *to you*.. which is a colloquial sound and spelling. You've changed the word's spelling, after changing the word's sound....
Chickens can fly, they just have their wings clipped to prevent this.
e ns&cat=Chicken%20Care&sub=wing%20clipping
http://www.omlet.co.uk/guide/guide.php?view=Chick
There is no proof that any Viking, however, spread his seed. From the Wikipedia:
;)
"According to Norse sagas, the native skraelings responded so ferociously that the newcomers eventually withdrew and apparently gave up their original intentions to settle."
Sure, it's _probable_ that genetic material made it from Vikings to Native offspring, but definitely not a positive. Apparently the natives as a group were extremely hostile. Further, one never knows what would happen if rape occured. Would the baby be killed by the mother? Did the mother die in childbirth? Was the offspring ostracized and therefore did not mate and died?
Of course, a few days of rape does not equate pregnancy as well. The woman in question must be fertile.
What about disease? It is also probable that Vikings carried deadly disease, just as European settlers did. Too much contact may have resulted in almost the entire tribe being wiped out! Perhaps that was the reason behind the angry response? Perhaps the natives thought the newcomers were "tainted"?
Regardless, people being in a place does not always guarantee offspring... even if rape occured.
The same goes for people drifting in on a piece of wood, a lost sailor or the like. Just showing up in an isolated community does not mean you will be able to mate. Religious taboos, you name it.. and of course "killing the stranger" are all reasons why existing in a new place does not equate offspring.
Oh, it's their fault they fell apart.
Why?
Frankly, they were con artists. SOWs, unless they are 20 pages long, tend to lay out the principal of work involved. They tend to indicate what the desired outcome is. LinuxCare thinks that a two page SoW (for $100k of work) is a contract, not a statement of work. They think that unless every specific piece of work and coding is listed there, they did not agree to perform said work. This is regardless of verbal meetings prior to the SoW that back up said work.
Just how, for example, can one design an authentication system for a web application, without a usable, working login prompt? How can someone provide an authetincation system, without a means to manage it (add users, etc)? These things were all discussed during meetings, but not on paper.. although the spirit was.
For example, if I hire someone to provide me with a car.. and we have verbal meetings about what type of car, and how I want to use the car to drive 100 miles every day.. providing me with the parts of the car is usless, yes?
Thanks LinuxCare. I hope you crash and burn.
(and I hope anyone supporting LinuxCare because they are an "open source" company.. and "part of the movement", keep in mind that in that context.. so was SCO)
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but my personal experiences were all normal motherboards, with VIA chipsets (not cpus) on board. DMA issues effect motherboards and VIA chipsets, desktop or otherwise.
My recommendation, stay away from VIA until they clean up their act a bit.
I have had, and know so many Linux users that have had, problem with VIA chipsets. DMA issues, issues with lockups, VIA unwilling to communicate with Linux developers on resolving them.
Most recently an Asus board I owned last year, locked up as solid as a monkey if any heavy DMA activity occured. Worse, after doing hours of Google searches, I managed to find info stating that Windows drivers disabled various chip functions, so that the chipset could run in a stable function.
Apparently, from the slant of posts that I read, it was taken as fact that VIA often had issues with chipsets, and merely patched those issues with drivers. Typically, one buying a VIA board in Windows would end up with degradation of their chipset via drivers. Linux users were, however, not so lucky. VIA would ignore all pleas and requests about issues with their chipset, and the belief was that they did not want such issues with their chips to "make it to the press". Acknowledging that they had reduced chipset performance with drivers, would obviously not go over well. Chipsets are marketed to certain specs, and using drivers to "make it work", but not deliver those specs is clearly opening liability.
After reading this, I looked at issues I'd had over the years with graphic cards causing hardware lockups, boxes that would randomly reboot and the like. In almost all cases it tended to be with system that contained VIA chipsets. Further, I also found posts from many Myth users, complaining about DMA issues with their mini-itx boards.
VIA? I'd recommened everyone stay away.... I sure the heck do! Time isn't worth the $20 you save by walking away from an Intel or SiS chipset. Sure, these chipsets have issues, but Intel and SiS both seem a little more talkative with Linux developers.. and tend to produce a better product. VIA seems produce these flaws in almost _all_ of their chipsets.
My experience, sure. You'll have to make up your own mind. All I know is that $20 in savings is peanuts over 20 hours of debugging.. when the debugging is a useless task.
There was no link, and the text in bold was very oddly phrased with spelling errors. There is no superiority complex, simply a dislike for unreferenced material that seems very questionable.
Anyhow, aside from this, freeadvice.com definitely seems to be
Interesting.
The text I see above doesn't really seem to read professional.. especially the lower case "u.s." as well as some of the phrasing.
Does putting your words in bold, or random words off of a some strange website you found, make you think people will feel they are more legitimate?
You might be able to, but that's not really the point. I was willing to setup a "scheduled task" for Norton updates as an admin, but once it got to having to think about writing batch files.. well, that was that.
I don't like touching Windows to begin with, and my client does not like having to pay extra $$$ to have solutions engineered each year to fix problems with his virus software. A switch was made, immediately, to another product.
Why?
Because you have to run Norton as the administrator, if you want updates. You *used* to be able to get around this, by installing Norton as an admin, then setting up a cron (scheduled tasks
Lame? Yes, it is. Their techincal support staff find nothing odd about this, and their sales staff try to sell you an inordinately expensive "professional" product which does allow you to run as a normal user, and have updates occur without logging in as admin every 5 minutes. This is just sad. Every XP user should be running as a non-admin. Norton should be *encouraging* that.
I thought these people were trying to *help* security? The last thing I want anyone to do, is run as administrator on an XP box. Sure, you don't get the same level of security that you do under Linux, when one runs as a normal user, but it's still *very preferable* to run as a non-admin user for your day to day tasks, under XP.
There are so many "business" class products that don't understand such a simple concept. I've seen income tax software that must be run as the admin user under XP. Anti-virus software though??! That's just absurd.
I spend a significant amount of time EVERY DAY to ferret out fake data. I have several automated processes that search for and remove any data that does not fit certain criteria. I take this site, and the data integrity very seriously, so I take personal offense to your offhand, unfounded, and ignorant comments.
.. and then claiming that this study will help predict the movements of individuals during the next RED ALERT EMERGENCY PLAGUE that comes our way, is just irresponsible.
Interesting.
First of all, you claim to have an automated process that removes data that does not fit a certain criteria. You do not know if the data is invalid, that is removed, only that it fits a certain criterion. There clearly could be data removed that was valid, and very clearly there is invalid data that sneaks by you.
You can not prevent someone from calling a friend with a serial number. You can not prevent someone from using their work machine, and entering an address that is a thousand miles away. IP blocks are assignable, ARIN is not always up to date, and even if you spend big bugs for IP location services, it is not always perfect.. just most of the time so. Heck, you can't even determine if someone with wiped cookies and a dynamic ip address is entering the same bill twice!
Regardless of all your attempts to make data secure, researchers using that data for a study
You, as a webmaster, are providing a FUN service. That's great, and it sounds like you are trying to take some steps to mitigate funny business. However, these researchers are using data that is extremely untrustworthy. There is literally no way to validate any of this data. _NOT_ _ANY_ _WAY_. Further, people that tend to enter serial numbers on your website, have a distinct personality profile. They have a specific economic position in society. They have a specific skill set which is, for one, the ability to use a computer. For example, I do not believe that the elderly would use your site much, as computer use in the elderly is less than the rest of the population. The poor with no computer at home or at work might be less likely to use such a service. All of these population sections might be more likely to spread a plague.. the poor for lack of money to afford masks, the necessity to continue to work when sick, when others can take time off. The elderly being more susceptible, and perhaps visiting relatives during a holiday season.
My whole point here, is that while your data is reliable to be used on a website that is only entertainment based, it is not reliable for any sort of scientific study. _Any_ sort of scientific study. It's not a cross section of society, and it is also not reliable for such a purpose.
If you take offence to that, you're off your rocker.
So you are proposing that the internet should be policed as well or more so than real life? For one, that would either pull police off the streets, or incure massive expense in training people to police the internet.
Yes, I said specifically that. Policing needs to be done. For some odd reason, I don't see you compaining about policing the water, the air or the streets. I don't see you complaining that it costs to have judges and courts and the manpower to bring criminals to them.
This is the _same_. Computer crime must be policed just as any other. It must have people trained to deal with it. End of story.
Secondly, it's an international network. One country's laws end with their borders, but the internet does not. Trying to get every internet-capable nation on Earth to agree to a common set of laws and have them share the burden of monitoring is (and do so fairly), IMHO, next to impossible.
International crime is a big deal. It's been going on since the concept of nationhood existed. We've spent thousands of years, building up an entire framework of extradition treaties and other associated laws, to handle just this. I've stated above, which you conviently ignored, that we will need more of these.
Third, it's the internet, you cannot physically use it to commit a violent crime. Computers are easily backed up and restored, and security patches are created fairly quickly, so crackers should be a nuisance, not a realy threat. If they are a real threat then the system they are a threat to shouldn't be on the internet (this is true whether their actions are illegal or not). As for DDOS attacks, they should be easy enough to stop by making a call to your ISP (if this kind of attack weren't illegal then the free market should favor any ISP that is able to quickly to stop one).
You are differentiating "violent crime", from crime, by using the word "violent". This implies that there are other crimes. Internet based crimes are one of those other crimes. We prosecute many crimes, many that are not violent.
It is not violent to break into a store that is vacant at night. There is no violence against people, and lock picking (as an example) is subtle. Your paragraph above basically states that "everyone should have locks, and tough if they are broken". Is that your stance? Your stance is that if your home, your car, anything is broken into, it was your fault that the locks weren't good enough? This is what you illude to, when you refer to patching your system. You are trying to shift the blame to the victim.
The victim is not at fault. Crime is crime. Period.
Back to the specific crime, if the company had a proper backup system in place then the actual data loss should have been minimal/non-existant and the account easily restored. Since a physical break in did NOT take place, no physical damage occured, and if proper backups had been kept then nothing would have been lost. I do agree that this guy's actions were immature, but I don't think it warranted the penalty. I just don't believe computer crimes merit much, if any, punishment because they don't directly cause any tangible damage.
Loss of money is damage. With today's privacy laws (at least in this country), companies must complete FULL AUDITS of all associated systems when a physical or electronic breakin occurs. As well, this individual broke in a number of times over the years, likely requiring an audit of greater scope.
What is incredibly funny is that some of you think that people would simply restore a backup, after a hostile action that an ex-employee took. This individually is already mentally decifient in some fashion, and his act shows that. What other deviant act did he perform? Did he place a time bomb somewhere, in a rarely used executable? Did he compromise the system in some other fashion?
Frankly, the only responsible resolution in this case is a complete reinstall of all effected systems, and then hand picked restoration of
This was a crime, hands down. Period. End of story.
If you read the article, there were multiple breakins, on multiple days, over a period of years.
The last likely removed files between backups, resulting in time lost for the employee. It doesn't speak of what was done during previous raids by this crook, but it is quite possible other costs were attributed to previous breakins.
Crimes like this should be punished, and harshly. This crook should receive a couple of years, for something like this. Perhaps more.
Why so harsh, you ask? It's simple. We need to start attributing _real_ penalties to crime on the internet. Sony, for example, should have seen criminal charges levied against the employees, management and all that had anything to do with that back door. Fines should have been in the billions. Yes, billions, as they should have received several thousands in fines per count. Employees must be treated harsely as well, after all, they can not legally claim they are just "following orders".
If you know your employer is doing something illegal, you are BREAKING THE LAW if you do not report such an act! If you work with the employer, helping to break the law, guess what! It's jail time for you!
We need (well, actually.. needed to, past tense) lock down crime on the internet a long time ago. We really have two choices here. We pay for police presence on the internet, judges that understand the crimes being committed.. or we leave the internet open and lawless.. and see horrid restrictions come down as a result.
People won't put up with cracking all over the place. The public will demand security. The public is indeed, starting to. It can come from laws and police enforcement of those laws.. or draconian laws that restrict rights and freedom on the net (DRM).
Which do you choose? DRM all over the place, locked down bioses and operating systems, logging so intense that ISPs keep a year of detailed backlogs, or realistic laws and paid for strong police presence on the net?
Police all over the world are crying out that they are overburdened with crimes on the net. They are claiming that they don't have the ability to catch crooks, because they need new laws. It's happening right here, in Canada. It's happening, because police _don't_ have the manpower to handle crime on the net, by tracking down crime in the standard fashion. The answer, to them, is increased logging and wiretaps/net taps without warrents. I say, that democracy costs.
To that end, we need to train judges and police to specifically handle computer crime. We need to enact treaties with out countries, and make sure that extradition is a possiblilty. We need to make sure that the police do not have unlimited ability to spy, but that there are judges in place that can issue warrants when the cause is evident. Fund the police, or allow DRM. Again, that is the choice we have.
Anyhow, back to this particular case. A case like this, should be treated as if a physical breakin occurred, sentence wise. This guy KNEW he was breaking the law. He KNEW he was being an asshole. Being employed by someone does not entitle you to smash things in a temper tantrum, years after you've been fired or outsourced.
Bleh.