Why do you need to disable Ctrl-Alt-F1? If the user doesn't have a user/password for the console, then that becomes useless. (Auto-login on GDM doesn't make the user account auto-login on console.)
If you're using a centralised system of managing logins, just cut the network off upon logging in, so they can't log in again (Hint: take the cable away!)
Just run the app off of a memory stick which you then pull out after executing, if the user tries to perform Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (or equivalent) then they can't get back into the testing app, so you'll know they terminated it. They also won't be able to log in.
Fundamentally, people deserve the fundamental choice of what they do/don't put in their bodies.... Requiring immunization is wrong for that reason.
In addition, the exact manufacturing processes, ingredients and modifications are not publicly documented and are not freely accessible. Given vaccines are injected into our body the majority of the time, being forced to take proprietary concoctions which are not fully documented is plain unfair. Whenever I've asked for all the information regarding a vaccine when at school, I wasn't even so much as shown paperwork noting the company who made the vaccine, instead only being provided with a generic list of possible side-effects...
Fundamentally, all vaccines should have full documentation including steps made during production, ingredients (complete with amounts and the real names of adjuvents, not proprietary code-names) and any modifications made to the raw strain of virus/bacteria (for clarity).
Until that happens, trusting vaccines is almost analogous to trusting that next week's set of McAfee VirusScan (your immune system) virus definitions (vaccine) won't screw your computer up due to unexpected side-effects.
Like the right of my child to be school/raised an as risk free environment as possible? Your kid doesn't get to go to my kids school unless you prove he/she is safe. I will do likewise and will provide certificates of immunization, will you match that?
Excuse me, but vaccines only protect the child that is vaccinated, not OTHER children.. Don't believe the bunk about "herd immunity" when we're talking about the standard vaccines most schools administer (MenC, TB) as they do NOT prevent people carrying/spreading. In the case of TB vaccine, you're left with a scar for life... for a vaccine which does very little, in the case of MenC, it only protects for a limited time period, making it worthless....
"Herd immunity" is a myth when it comes to the majority of vaccines:
I can give you two prominent examples of vaccines people stupidly claim provide "herd immunity": Tuberculosis and Meningitis C.
The former provides no such thing as herd immunity because it does not stop you from being a carrier, it also interferes with basic school screening tests which check if you're carrying or not, as the skin test can indicate one of three things: no immunity, partial immunity or full immunity. However, both former and existing carriers will also show as full immunity in many cases.
The latter lasts for a limited period of time and is thus completely worthless with regards to "herd immunity"....
So can people stop spouting crap about "herd immunity"... there are no social benefits to vaccines, there are only temporary or minor personal benefits.
The App Store is a bad attempt at adding a repository. Yet Apple made the n00bish mistake of thinking a whole monolithic blob called an "OS Upgrade" belongs in a repository as a single component.... and I thought Pat Volkerding was crazy!
How about the effect legalising drugs will have on drug users. Free market economics would drive down the costs as the gangs compete with pharma, after all, "street prices" rule the day in gangs, but if pharma tries to undercut them.....
The important parts (,) will remain, as the same codecs would be as vulnerable in WMP as they would be in IE on Windows. On Linux, we wouldn't care anyway as we have SELinux and AppArmor securing Chromium by default and Firefox (mozilla_t) on lockdown too. Mac OS X? Well that has never really been that secure anyway!
"UPDATE: I have received an email from Dr. Rabel, asserting that I have instigated people to write him emails, and claiming that some of those emails have been abusive, calling him a coward and so on. I did not of course ask readers to write any emails, nor did I provide any email addresses. But if you write to Rabel or Haught on your own initiative, please be polite! There is no point in name-calling in such emails; the issue is one of free inquiry, and if you expect to achieve a result (and you won’t anyway, I suspect), you have to be polite. Anyway, Rabel has threatened legal action against me, so don’t make it worse!"
FreeBSD variants of most features are inferior to Linux variants. Excluding ZFS, Grand Central Dispatch (and of course the friendly developers very willing to help end-users without flaming on official lists)... allow me to explain why I find FreeBSD completely inferior on the desktop:
Kernel namespaces are more flexible and are designed for individual apps as well as full containers. One can isolate in many different ways and on many more different levels with kernel namespaces. In addition, cgroups provide better granularity over scheduling and RAM use in a jailed environment, as well as for individual apps and such granularity may be nested;-)
Example 1: I want a separate network namespace but not filesystem isolation Example 2: I want to have a restricted/dev tree and my app to only see it's own PID (as PID 1) and have restricted CPU/RAM use but no filesystem isolation Example 3: I just want a separate set of virtual terminals, so I can run truly unprivileged SSH that can only login as one user, without screwing over permissions on my desktop VTs... Example 4: I want a jail with limited RAM, CPU, allow IPC safely, allow access to only a specific graphics card and per-user/tmp namespaces for added safety between users
None of this stuff can be done in a non-convoluted way with jails, when compared to the Linux equivalent.
Linux: CFS Scheduler FBSD: ULE Scheduler
Both are designed with desktop interactivity in mind on one level or another. But CFS supports cgroups, providing far more granular control over process priority than that of ULE, making it inferior on the desktop. Nesting of CPU limitations makes it possible for desktop applications to never lock-up the Xorg server via CPU usage, while on ULE, it is possible in my experience to lock-up the desktop with five or more unresponsive applications hogging CPU time.
Linux: CFQ FBSD: C-LOCK (elevator)
Welcome to I/O hell people. 2 apps using the HDD will lock up the desktop totally on FreeBSD, because the I/O scheduler is crap for desktop use. While on Linux, CFQ handles I/O far more gracefully, without totally locking up the desktop (until 8 or more apps hog the HDD with random write patterns). Ironically, Windows in my experience handles constant random write patterns the best... but I suspect some proprietary hackery in Windows elevates the priority of core system components to avoid lockups from being as noticeable.
Linux: ASLR FBSD: No ASLR
Address Space Layout Randomisation. Even Windows supports this for its wonderful protection against address-specific exploits when combined with No eXecute (NX).
Linux: KMS and/or UMS FBSD: Only UMS
Kernel Mode Setting is used by almost all modern 3D-supporting F/LOSS Xorg drivers. Without it FreeBSD can't run the latest graphics card drivers.
Linux: ext4 FBSD: UFS
Until recently (-CURRENT) background fsck would run, gobbling up tons of resources in the background post-crash (in -CURRENT, UFS cleans up any issues via journal, in addition to Soft Updates). As much as I like Soft Updates, ext4 is just so much better when it comes to overall I/O performance in my (admittedly, non-scientific) experience.
Linux: ALSA FBSD: OSS
On Linux, every onboard sound card i've come across has been way better supported than on FreeBSD. In addition, devices like my USB webcams have also always been way better supported. ALSA is also far more stable and with PulseAudio sitting on top, provides better per-app volume controls.
Here are the arguments favouring copying in general:
Copying is normal and natural in society, those very same performers copy other peoples works on a regular basis. For at least the last 30 years, the beats of most songs have been copied from prior generations' songs but with slight modifications. If it's fine for artists to copy from one another, it's fine for consumers to copy too. As consumers often become producers through copying, as it's how most people learn in the first place.....
This argument applies to video too. Every time a film makes use of a trope or stereotype, it has copied from somewhere.
Software is quite comprehensively the worst of all for copying. Just ask yourself what a DLL or Shared Object (SO) is......
Why is that even necessary? Remote libs could be loaded via FUSE/NFS (Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X) mounts or SMB/CIFS (Windows). Not hard to change with no loss of functionality for corporate needs...
There is no chance to be "raised up", the best college/university will get you is to the top of the social class you're already in (in this class-based society, which the not-so-well off try to forget). The more people who get a bachelor degree, the lesser it is valued. In order to compete, one needs to be above the rest. Therefore, loans will not help, the solution is to drive down the costs of getting that bachelor degree for those who are not-so-well off.
As an actual student living on below minimum wage and relying on the benefits system, I can tell you loans have never been and never will be the solution. Grants too will never be the solution - the solution is to make the system accessible to those on any income, by only inflating the costs only after graduate level. By having post-grads pay a small fee plus a percentage of their salary to fund those who have not yet graduated, the system would become fair regardless of income and social status - the only deciding factor would then be intellect and technical merits (entry requirements would be raised so as to prevent funds being wasted on idiots and lazy bums).
Re:Look at PS3 games for evidence of not being che
on
Who Killed Videogames?
·
· Score: 1
Which would have cost £40 or so if this was a few years ago. I brought MGS2 Substance and MGS3 Subsistance (which are both "special editions" of MGS2 SoL and MGS3 Snake Eater respectively) for £40 new in GAME.
I think it's ridiculous to pay £80 for a single game.
It might as well be called one. It's no different to the United States. It has a flag, a government, a set of federal laws (EU Acts), state laws (laws of each "member state") etc.
I'm sure the placement of European Union as a country is intentional, just as RMS keeps calling DRM "Digital Restrictions Management" and how people call the RIAA the Recording Industry Ass. of America!
just play the one that has that double-xp-weekend, that "get for free what you'd have to pay for" week or whatever other promotion running.
Buy one 10-bit get another absolutely free!
Look at PS3 games for evidence of not being cheap!
on
Who Killed Videogames?
·
· Score: 1
Until you look outside of the USA.
In the UK, there are £79.99 PS3 titles, something unheard of in past generations[1]. People are paying more than ever for games and publishers blame it on piracy, despite many of the expensive titles not being available on PC till years later. For many years, PlayStation games had a simple system, casual games were £33-£36, "real" games were £40 and both categories having sold enough would gain a "platinum" status and become £20, so no-one had to buy used games if the title is popular because the sales would become Sony-subsidised to benefit gamers, publishers and Sony themselves (same games, only cheaper? Why go anywhere else!?).
Now, we even suffer in the PC market, as companies like Blizzard charge for the installation media plus a subscription, plus costs for expansion packs, plus more subscription costs. Steam makes some games cheaper which are on promotion but promos are not guaranteed, waiting for them is a painful process if you really want a specific title; if you're a casual gamer you'll "just pick up" whatever games are cheap and play for a few hours to kill time - that's not the same thing...
Free-to-Play games are a dangerous business, because not only are you paying for a couple of variable changes in your game, you're paying for something that could just disappear, unlike traditional physical-media based games which you can install and play to your hearts content. However, if you only give time to those games, it's no more wasted time than playing any other game. Hint: Don't wanna get ripped off? Don't pay to play, stick to free areas.
DLC is another cancer, which could leave your game crippled if you reinstall, unless there's a way to burn to disc (90% of the time there isn't). Best hint there is only to pay if there's no DRM, a way to keep the DLC packs permanently on a form of backup media that works when reinstalling or if someone has pirated the DLCs for easy reinstalls. In short: Don't pay for crap! Pay for things you may keep even if the company goes bust!
Sod the "ethical circles", they keep changing their minds about what is right and wrong. Is full disclosure best or keeping things a secret? They change their mind on that 24/7.
It's a public website, so it's not straight up unauthorised access from a legal perspective as he had legitimate access to the site for a valid reason.
Section 308H requires an access control system to be in place. If there wasn't anything naturally stopping him from gaining access when he discovered the flaw, then the data was not "restricted" legally and thus he is not liable.
Section 478 appears to be repealed, so they appear to be full of bullshit in some of their legal threats..
Did he have the intent to gain any form of unauthorised access when he discovered the flaw? If the answer is no, he has a valid defense in court in terms of intent when it comes to most of the sections. Is he a security professional? Yes, therefore the argument of producing a proof-of-concept is also a valid defence based on intent.
This is true. I begrudgingly use Windows. Challenging interface. Not a big fan of the random bugs. With the last two versions I used, using any of my old hardware guarantees a crash. It's very unfortunate. I try to live with hope.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you need to disable Ctrl-Alt-F1? If the user doesn't have a user/password for the console, then that becomes useless. (Auto-login on GDM doesn't make the user account auto-login on console.)
If you're using a centralised system of managing logins, just cut the network off upon logging in, so they can't log in again (Hint: take the cable away!)
Just run the app off of a memory stick which you then pull out after executing, if the user tries to perform Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (or equivalent) then they can't get back into the testing app, so you'll know they terminated it. They also won't be able to log in.
Trapping window-switching combinations is possible with full-screen in Java anyway, so that's not an issue provided you have source code: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6127709/remove-the-possibility-of-using-alt-f4-and-alt-tab-in-java-gui
Except software hacks can unban hardware ;-)
Fundamentally, people deserve the fundamental choice of what they do/don't put in their bodies.... Requiring immunization is wrong for that reason.
In addition, the exact manufacturing processes, ingredients and modifications are not publicly documented and are not freely accessible. Given vaccines are injected into our body the majority of the time, being forced to take proprietary concoctions which are not fully documented is plain unfair. Whenever I've asked for all the information regarding a vaccine when at school, I wasn't even so much as shown paperwork noting the company who made the vaccine, instead only being provided with a generic list of possible side-effects...
Fundamentally, all vaccines should have full documentation including steps made during production, ingredients (complete with amounts and the real names of adjuvents, not proprietary code-names) and any modifications made to the raw strain of virus/bacteria (for clarity).
Until that happens, trusting vaccines is almost analogous to trusting that next week's set of McAfee VirusScan (your immune system) virus definitions (vaccine) won't screw your computer up due to unexpected side-effects.
Like the right of my child to be school/raised an as risk free environment as possible? Your kid doesn't get to go to my kids school unless you prove he/she is safe. I will do likewise and will provide certificates of immunization, will you match that?
Excuse me, but vaccines only protect the child that is vaccinated, not OTHER children.. Don't believe the bunk about "herd immunity" when we're talking about the standard vaccines most schools administer (MenC, TB) as they do NOT prevent people carrying/spreading. In the case of TB vaccine, you're left with a scar for life... for a vaccine which does very little, in the case of MenC, it only protects for a limited time period, making it worthless....
"Herd immunity" is a myth when it comes to the majority of vaccines:
I can give you two prominent examples of vaccines people stupidly claim provide "herd immunity": Tuberculosis and Meningitis C.
The former provides no such thing as herd immunity because it does not stop you from being a carrier, it also interferes with basic school screening tests which check if you're carrying or not, as the skin test can indicate one of three things: no immunity, partial immunity or full immunity. However, both former and existing carriers will also show as full immunity in many cases.
The latter lasts for a limited period of time and is thus completely worthless with regards to "herd immunity"....
So can people stop spouting crap about "herd immunity"... there are no social benefits to vaccines, there are only temporary or minor personal benefits.
The App Store is a bad attempt at adding a repository. Yet Apple made the n00bish mistake of thinking a whole monolithic blob called an "OS Upgrade" belongs in a repository as a single component.... and I thought Pat Volkerding was crazy!
How about the effect legalising drugs will have on drug users. Free market economics would drive down the costs as the gangs compete with pharma, after all, "street prices" rule the day in gangs, but if pharma tries to undercut them.....
Cheap weed that isn't brick weed, FTW! ;)
if(free_s)
{
return bugfix;
}
else
{
return profit;
}
"5 more steps and you will be a new person"
There already is, it's called a 3rd-party codec, DRM'ed WMV anyone? ;-)
The important parts (,) will remain, as the same codecs would be as vulnerable in WMP as they would be in IE on Windows. On Linux, we wouldn't care anyway as we have SELinux and AppArmor securing Chromium by default and Firefox (mozilla_t) on lockdown too. Mac OS X? Well that has never really been that secure anyway!
bankers will still upset the market on purpose for bribes, much like how politicians lie to (and upset) voters because of what amounts to bribery....
Read the update:
"UPDATE: I have received an email from Dr. Rabel, asserting that I have instigated people to write him emails, and claiming that some of those emails have been abusive, calling him a coward and so on. I did not of course ask readers to write any emails, nor did I provide any email addresses. But if you write to Rabel or Haught on your own initiative, please be polite! There is no point in name-calling in such emails; the issue is one of free inquiry, and if you expect to achieve a result (and you won’t anyway, I suspect), you have to be polite. Anyway, Rabel has threatened legal action against me, so don’t make it worse!"
FreeBSD variants of most features are inferior to Linux variants. Excluding ZFS, Grand Central Dispatch (and of course the friendly developers very willing to help end-users without flaming on official lists)... allow me to explain why I find FreeBSD completely inferior on the desktop:
Linux: Kernel Namespaces (with cgroups)
FBSD: Jails
Kernel namespaces are more flexible and are designed for individual apps as well as full containers. One can isolate in many different ways and on many more different levels with kernel namespaces. In addition, cgroups provide better granularity over scheduling and RAM use in a jailed environment, as well as for individual apps and such granularity may be nested ;-)
Example 1: I want a separate network namespace but not filesystem isolation /dev tree and my app to only see it's own PID (as PID 1) and have restricted CPU/RAM use but no filesystem isolation /tmp namespaces for added safety between users
Example 2: I want to have a restricted
Example 3: I just want a separate set of virtual terminals, so I can run truly unprivileged SSH that can only login as one user, without screwing over permissions on my desktop VTs...
Example 4: I want a jail with limited RAM, CPU, allow IPC safely, allow access to only a specific graphics card and per-user
None of this stuff can be done in a non-convoluted way with jails, when compared to the Linux equivalent.
Linux: CFS Scheduler
FBSD: ULE Scheduler
Both are designed with desktop interactivity in mind on one level or another. But CFS supports cgroups, providing far more granular control over process priority than that of ULE, making it inferior on the desktop. Nesting of CPU limitations makes it possible for desktop applications to never lock-up the Xorg server via CPU usage, while on ULE, it is possible in my experience to lock-up the desktop with five or more unresponsive applications hogging CPU time.
Linux: CFQ
FBSD: C-LOCK (elevator)
Welcome to I/O hell people. 2 apps using the HDD will lock up the desktop totally on FreeBSD, because the I/O scheduler is crap for desktop use. While on Linux, CFQ handles I/O far more gracefully, without totally locking up the desktop (until 8 or more apps hog the HDD with random write patterns). Ironically, Windows in my experience handles constant random write patterns the best... but I suspect some proprietary hackery in Windows elevates the priority of core system components to avoid lockups from being as noticeable.
Linux: ASLR
FBSD: No ASLR
Address Space Layout Randomisation. Even Windows supports this for its wonderful protection against address-specific exploits when combined with No eXecute (NX).
Linux: KMS and/or UMS
FBSD: Only UMS
Kernel Mode Setting is used by almost all modern 3D-supporting F/LOSS Xorg drivers. Without it FreeBSD can't run the latest graphics card drivers.
Linux: ext4
FBSD: UFS
Until recently (-CURRENT) background fsck would run, gobbling up tons of resources in the background post-crash (in -CURRENT, UFS cleans up any issues via journal, in addition to Soft Updates). As much as I like Soft Updates, ext4 is just so much better when it comes to overall I/O performance in my (admittedly, non-scientific) experience.
Linux: ALSA
FBSD: OSS
On Linux, every onboard sound card i've come across has been way better supported than on FreeBSD. In addition, devices like my USB webcams have also always been way better supported. ALSA is also far more stable and with PulseAudio sitting on top, provides better per-app volume controls.
Here are the arguments favouring copying in general:
Copying is normal and natural in society, those very same performers copy other peoples works on a regular basis. For at least the last 30 years, the beats of most songs have been copied from prior generations' songs but with slight modifications. If it's fine for artists to copy from one another, it's fine for consumers to copy too. As consumers often become producers through copying, as it's how most people learn in the first place.....
This argument applies to video too. Every time a film makes use of a trope or stereotype, it has copied from somewhere.
Software is quite comprehensively the worst of all for copying. Just ask yourself what a DLL or Shared Object (SO) is......
Why is that even necessary? Remote libs could be loaded via FUSE/NFS (Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X) mounts or SMB/CIFS (Windows). Not hard to change with no loss of functionality for corporate needs...
There is no chance to be "raised up", the best college/university will get you is to the top of the social class you're already in (in this class-based society, which the not-so-well off try to forget). The more people who get a bachelor degree, the lesser it is valued. In order to compete, one needs to be above the rest. Therefore, loans will not help, the solution is to drive down the costs of getting that bachelor degree for those who are not-so-well off.
As an actual student living on below minimum wage and relying on the benefits system, I can tell you loans have never been and never will be the solution. Grants too will never be the solution - the solution is to make the system accessible to those on any income, by only inflating the costs only after graduate level. By having post-grads pay a small fee plus a percentage of their salary to fund those who have not yet graduated, the system would become fair regardless of income and social status - the only deciding factor would then be intellect and technical merits (entry requirements would be raised so as to prevent funds being wasted on idiots and lazy bums).
Which would have cost £40 or so if this was a few years ago. I brought MGS2 Substance and MGS3 Subsistance (which are both "special editions" of MGS2 SoL and MGS3 Snake Eater respectively) for £40 new in GAME.
I think it's ridiculous to pay £80 for a single game.
It might as well be called one. It's no different to the United States. It has a flag, a government, a set of federal laws (EU Acts), state laws (laws of each "member state") etc.
I'm sure the placement of European Union as a country is intentional, just as RMS keeps calling DRM "Digital Restrictions Management" and how people call the RIAA the Recording Industry Ass. of America!
just play the one that has that double-xp-weekend, that "get for free what you'd have to pay for" week or whatever other promotion running.
Buy one 10-bit get another absolutely free!
Until you look outside of the USA.
In the UK, there are £79.99 PS3 titles, something unheard of in past generations[1]. People are paying more than ever for games and publishers blame it on piracy, despite many of the expensive titles not being available on PC till years later. For many years, PlayStation games had a simple system, casual games were £33-£36, "real" games were £40 and both categories having sold enough would gain a "platinum" status and become £20, so no-one had to buy used games if the title is popular because the sales would become Sony-subsidised to benefit gamers, publishers and Sony themselves (same games, only cheaper? Why go anywhere else!?).
Now, we even suffer in the PC market, as companies like Blizzard charge for the installation media plus a subscription, plus costs for expansion packs, plus more subscription costs. Steam makes some games cheaper which are on promotion but promos are not guaranteed, waiting for them is a painful process if you really want a specific title; if you're a casual gamer you'll "just pick up" whatever games are cheap and play for a few hours to kill time - that's not the same thing...
Free-to-Play games are a dangerous business, because not only are you paying for a couple of variable changes in your game, you're paying for something that could just disappear, unlike traditional physical-media based games which you can install and play to your hearts content. However, if you only give time to those games, it's no more wasted time than playing any other game. Hint: Don't wanna get ripped off? Don't pay to play, stick to free areas.
DLC is another cancer, which could leave your game crippled if you reinstall, unless there's a way to burn to disc (90% of the time there isn't). Best hint there is only to pay if there's no DRM, a way to keep the DLC packs permanently on a form of backup media that works when reinstalling or if someone has pirated the DLCs for easy reinstalls. In short: Don't pay for crap! Pay for things you may keep even if the company goes bust!
[1] http://www.game.co.uk/en/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-hardened-edition-149234?pageSize=20&categoryIdentifier=10225
Sod the "ethical circles", they keep changing their minds about what is right and wrong. Is full disclosure best or keeping things a secret? They change their mind on that 24/7.
It's a public website, so it's not straight up unauthorised access from a legal perspective as he had legitimate access to the site for a valid reason.
Section 308H requires an access control system to be in place. If there wasn't anything naturally stopping him from gaining access when he discovered the flaw, then the data was not "restricted" legally and thus he is not liable.
Section 478 appears to be repealed, so they appear to be full of bullshit in some of their legal threats..
Did he have the intent to gain any form of unauthorised access when he discovered the flaw? If the answer is no, he has a valid defense in court in terms of intent when it comes to most of the sections. Is he a security professional? Yes, therefore the argument of producing a proof-of-concept is also a valid defence based on intent.
[Disclaimer: IANAL.]
LibreOffice.org
Now we go full circle ;)
Which LibreOffice has had since day one. Even Base has an Access-like database.
I can't see why that wouldn't be in the port.
This is true. I begrudgingly use Windows. Challenging interface. Not a big fan of the random bugs. With the last two versions I used, using any of my old hardware guarantees a crash. It's very unfortunate. I try to live with hope.