Of course you'd probably then want an OS that implements some form of relevant Mandatory Access Control / POSIX.1e (e.g. LIDS for Linux, Trusted Solaris, or Argus Pitbull (Linux/Solaris)) to help prevent the intruder from interfering with Tripwire itself.
Contrary to what you protest, I think you are engaging in significant contortion to attempt to support your arguments.
Personally, I am not impressed by the touting of privilege separation nor chroot jails, nor protected memory as these are not new ideas developed by the OpenBSD team. Privilege separation is not a new concept (though the common use of the phrase is more recent), it's simply good software design for applications handling sensitive data, chroot jails date back to FreeBSD in the 80's and memory protection certainly isn't new.
I'm not impressed by OpenBSD 'code audits' either, because for the OpenBSD team this is focused at the core software in the distribution (which not the case with Debian auditing, for example, which has a much wider scope). This not helped by oddities like the most recent version of Apache dating back to 2003, because of a refusal by the OpenBSD team to update it over a licensing quibble, which mean you have to go outside the distribution to run something as simple as a recent version of Apache (one not covered by the 'code audit').
Do you give no merit to a priv seperated and revoked service which is also protected by a multitude of active memory protection mechanisms, etc, which confine those services to themselves and their own associated files? Services which get killed if they step out of bounds?
I don't find that (as the OpenBSD team do), that the orange book specifications are not worth implementing (or even importing - patches have been made available in the past) or you can fudge sufficient functionality with privilege separation and revocation alone.
I fundamentally think that the privileges granted to processes should not be simply tied to user accounts (especially nothing with the power of root) and that the OpenBSD team are wrong not to want to incorporate these features.
I don't know what you see in Theo De Ratt, but it's apparently not what other people see (it seems an RDF is operation).
When I attempt to read from a raw disk device as a non privileged user, I get "access denied". Can you be more specific and provide links or proof that this is the current state of affairs with OpenBSD?
I see you deliberly cut my sentence off at a convenient point. I suggest that if you genuinely want to know more about what it means to control access to devices and files using MAC (including for software run as root, i.e. via expolits) I refer you to software such as L.I.D.S. and Pitbull.
Put simply:
On a system providing live services in real world scenarios (such as web, mail, ftp, ldap, samba, database software etc.) it's inherently less secure than a trusted operating system or one that at least partically impliments MAC, POSIX.1e, or that otherwise places restrictions such as on what specific software is allowed to perform privileged operations such as bind to a given port, or access a given file (etc) no matter what user the software in question it's run as (i.e. code run via software exploits, this means you).
I realise that OpenBSD does not have all worthy modern security features, but to say that OpenBSD security is just hype which boils down to OpenSSH and switched off services is just not right. It's not like all these things that you have failed to mention are useless.
I didn't say they were 'just hype', you seem to be trying quite hard to twist my words. However, I certainly stand by my assertion it's association with being a 'secure' OS is primarily based on those two factors, it's certainly not based on it's feature support. Despite how much Theo De Ratt belittles and misrepresents the work of others from a professional security standpoint OpenBSD's feature set really isn't that impressive compared to other free and commercial alternatives, including what can be done with Linux or even compared with features in newer versions of FreeBSD.
Re: OpenSSH on other platforms:
Can you back this up with a link? I find it a little hard to believe given his absolute freedom stance. Especially since OpenSSH is everywhere nowdays.
Theo's statement that he they were not interested in providing OpenSSH for any platform other than OpenBSD was how the whole argument with Alex de Joode started. See my previous post above, the Slashdot archives, or Google, for a link.
This appears to be carefully worded. I guess what you are saying here is that OpenBSD is a secure platform, but less than useful? Sure, it is not the most useful system out there, but for what it does well, it does very well.
Any OS will all it's network services turned off by default, is secure from remote exploits. However (and this is the reason I was choosing my words carefully) if you actually intended to run services (such as Web, Mail or FTP) on that system or allow local user accounts then OpenBSD is not what I would consider a particularly secure platform and there are certainly far superior alternatives (both free and commercial), that are far more deserving of credit and consideration.
Theo's often false derision (and deliberate misrepresentation) of the efforts of other OS vendors is something I find utterly unpalatable.
This is not intended in any way as a troll (merely informative to other readers who may not have come across him yet and wonder what we are talking about), but I take it from the UID you do this with the full knowledge that Theo is, on all apparent evidence, a bit of a nutter, a bullshitter (with reference to his utter bollocks about 'Linuxes'), and that rather than OpenBSD being founded out of some earnest devotion to security of his[1], it was because his access to the NetBSD CVS repository was pulled, on the grounds that he was being a class jerk to both users and other developers (not a exactly an isolated incident).
[1] In fact, he originally intended it to be called NextBSD, because he seemed he was basically intent on running his own show all along (which seems to me to be due to him 'not playing well with others').
While the development of OpenSSH remains a much valued contribution, from a security standpoint OpenBSD really has a long way to go to catch up to Linux as far as meaningful features go (the security hype being primarily based on (a) the contribution of OpenSSH - which Theo said he didn't want to make for any OS other than OpenBSD! - and (b) simply having all the services turned off on a default installation).
Specifically (and unlike Linux) OpenBSD doesn't support MAC (Mandatory Access Control) restriction on files, nor does it allow the restriction of access to raw devices, memory or sockets for any user (including processes executed as root), hell it doesn't even have ACL's (Access Control Lists) support without a 3rd party patch (e.g. with patches based on FreeBSD 5's implementation), and they don't seem to 'get' why anyone would want it. In fact, they have *actively* decided not to even attempt to implement POSIX.1e (according to this book, endorsed by Theo).
These are features that have been supported by Linux for years. If (and I honestly think it's going to be 'if' rather than 'when' now), OpenBSD begins work to implement these features, then it might start to be considered useful as a secure platform. Until then, it's very lacking in meaningful features indeed. In fact, other BSD variants are already ahead of OpenBSD in so far as implementing them (such as FreeBSD and TrustedBSD).
I realise it's considered easier to criticise than give due credit by some, but in the case of Theo De Ratt I can't see that the amount of credit he gets from some quarters is warranted.
In conclusion, this is why I find the inference that he is 'very wise and well intentioned' at best riotously amusing.;-)
To clear up some misconceptions, yes the vast majority of commonly used functions do have equivalent operations (rather unsurprisingly, as they are fundamentally doing exactly the same operations much of the time, by necessity) and no I don't think your assertion this is otherwise is true at all.
I would also point out that very few game developers take advantage of these bleeding edge functions period (you just have to look at the results of the hardware profiles from the Steam survey to see why), and I certainly can't think of ANY titles since the RAVE/3DFX days that are actually vendor specific (that is, that require a card from $vendor to run).
My comment about a team writing a wrapper was a regarding a team of engineers from MIT (IIRC), which allowed the DX9 nVidia 'Dawn' demo to run faster on a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB GDDR II than on the native nVidia 5800 for which the demo was intended. Certainly hard evidence that plausible emulation is quite possible.
But I digress....
This is all rather irrelevant - rather than actually emulating a specific card, I'm suggesting they are more likely to take an approach comparable to the one as VPC 3 did for 3DFX PCI cards, essentially 'passing though' commands, representing the graphics card installed in the Mac (either nVidia or ATI) directly in the host operating system (so if you have a Radeon 9700 mobility on your PowerBook, that would be what you'd see on your Windows system in VPC).
Obviously they couldn't do this/exactly/ in the same way as the 3DFX cards (as they host OS will be sharing the VRAM for one), so they might choose a half way house by doing something like representing a fixed 'entry level' DirectX 8.0 GPU from each vendor depending on your actual hardware (e.g. 5200 or 9200/9600) and provide pass-though functionality that way (so if you have a Radeon 9800 w/ 256 VRAM or a 9700 w/ 128 MB VRAM, it always represents something like a Radeon 9600 with 64 MB VRAM in the host OS - though that's probably a rather optimistic card).
It's certainly possible they may decided to have the abstraction done by a 'special' driver written exclusively for the host operating system, and simply optimise it to take better advantage of the native hardware (i.e. much like the way things currently work, with but with improved acceleration, i.e. converting DirectX routines to appropriate Quartz/GL routines). I imagine you could get some quick gains with this sort of approach, but it doesn't seem a particularly maintainable or as widely compatible approach at first hand (and while it would make Windows operations seem much more responsive, it would sadly rule out using VPC for gaming I should think, but perhaps they are not building it with games in mind, just enhanced GUI performance).
I forgot to also mention, the original Xbox has a Nvidia GPU, and the 360 has an ATI, so yes, the will have to emulate everything.
Actually, the neat thing about this is, especially with a DirectX style abstraction layer, they can wrap a lot of the instructions and just perform equivolent operations on the ATI card, without a huge performance hit (as most of the operations will have exact equivolent functions on the ATI card).
This sort of thing has even been done before by hobbists, to allow nVidia specific demos to run on ATI hardware (and amusingly, run/faster/ than they did on the then top end nVidia cards the demo was meant for).
Actually yes, I think it's safe to say yes it may very well (in around about way) improve VPC on Mac OS X...
VPC 3 (when it was still owned by Connectix) supported certain graphics cards, specifically 3DFX cards, natively. Meaning you could play 'Windows' games that supported the 3DFX Glide driver in real time (because the actual CPU load from games like Quake and Tomb Raider was relaatively low).
Sadly 3DFX imploded, and the feature was dropped from Virtual PC 4 (and subsequent releases), apparently too much trouble to maintain.
Microsoft *were* going to add this type of functionality back into VPC 7 (the current release, their first since purchasing it from Connectix) but they stated on their web site this was dropped and will be in a future release.
Apparently this is because they had to rework the code for the 64 Bit G5 CPU's, as the the existing VPC code relied on reverse endian support - a feature of the G4 range, but not the G5 range, as I understand it.
Fortunately, Microsoft's Mac team seem fairly committed to re-visiting this feature, which is fantastic news. Given that these days it's essencially the same range of ATI and nVidia graphics cards in both the Wintel world and in Apple systems, it should allow a whole number of Windows games to be playable on Mac OS X at reasonable speeds (I'm particularly thinking of MMOG's and RTS games, and perhaps FPS games on the level of say Halo and CoD).
This of course leads on to the intreging possibility of them selling a quick and dirty porting SDK to game developers (can't help thinking it's unlikely, but it would be cool).
The best thing about rumours, is of being smug and in-gracious when your assertions are proved correct.
I shall now burn karma and indulge myself (if you don't want to see this, you may look away now).
I didn't predict that the XBox 2 would have 'backwards compatibility', I merely pointed out that it was certainly eminently possible on the hardware given the specifications announced to developers and given pertinent information (such as the then recent purchase of the VPC x86 on PPC emulator from Connectix by Microsoft). In fact I *insisted* it was possible, even the face of occasionally rabid argument stating emphatically otherwise.
I recently came across a thread with a user in which I had just this discussion, it was started by the user "king-manic" under the heading:
"reasons MS can't be backwards compatible" "1- they changed CPU architectures. 2- They changed GPU's and the previous GPU is hevaily heavily copyrighted. 3- they have only 5-10 games worth playing on Xbox 4- Emu of 3d graphics w/o glitches is a dream. Even ps2 had glitches and it included the god damn hardware."
I set about taking this apart (admittedly rather harshly, but fairly), to be met with "king-manic" replying with:
Is seems you've been well rebutted. I stand by my assessment and add the fact that there is no HD as one of your repliers mentions. Have you run emulation latley? for 20 year old games, they run flawlessly. on 15 year old games, almost perfect. on the last decade of game, their shit. it'll take another 5-10 years of emu for a pc to play an xbox game full speed via emu.
At last, it seems we can now bring this matter to a close.
*commence dancing*
In closing, I look forward to all the future smug dancing I'll be doing when the PS3 is released, we discover the KillZone pre-rendered movie is very clearly just that and that not only is PS3 not able to do that by a LONG shot, but in fact the performance of the PS3 is behind that of the 360 in practice (dispite hyped specs) as it turns out (again) that Sony built something that's considerably more difficult for developers to use and as a consquence few games are able to exploit the hardware to the same degree.
It was a completely dry environment as far as I am aware. I don't think I had anything that would have leaked in their, or that the bag was wet, but that's possible.
It certainly looked like electroplating, and although before I posted, I tried to read up on it to see what might have happened, I couldn't find a better definition/explanation (though I'd welcome one). It may actually have been a completely different process at work that I'm not aware of.
FWIW, it was prevolent primarily at the points where the coins touched each other and the batteries.
I know I have the coins round here somewhere, but I have lots of banks of coins around the place, I'll look more closely at them if I can find them.
They have to divide us up into "dumb but hot" or "smart but ugly".
Most of us can't get so much as a date with women who are "dumb but hot" OR "smart but ugly" (due to coming across as "weird and creepy").
Women who are "hot AND smart" arn't considered by the community because they are clearly out of our league, which is perhaps why that category come up very often (except for those of us with an excessive amount of hubris, or for those with an excessive bank balance).
I rather suspect that members of the opposite sex who are "dumb and ugly" are probably the top end of what most/.'ers can hope to achieve (or at least, approach and attempt communication with, without mutating into incoherent, sweaty, bundles of nerves).
I should point out for the benefit of anyone reading that that isn't the current Gentoo installer, and in fact it has not had an alpha release yet. To my knowledge the current release has not so much as an ncurses installer (which would require all of a long weekend to implement).
Certainly, the screen shots look good and are a step in the right direction, and it seems to be designed well enough, but this is the sort of stuff that's reasonably trivial to do (having been done umpteen times already, so there are plenty of points of reference).
Though, it still utterly misses the point that all the work needed to turn Gentoo into something as practical as Debian, SuSE, Slackware, Red Hat or Mandrake (etc) is all together very significant, and by the time it's complete you'd find you have a mature distribution which bears little resemblance to the current Gentoo distribution.
From my perspective, it's all so ten years ago, but so many of it's users didn't seem to be Linux users back then (going by the forums a significant majority of them still seem to be in school right now, so I'm not surprised and that's not intended as a troll) that they are reinventing the wheel, and labour under the impression that Gentoo is something different.
It strikes me as especially odd, as Slackware is still plodding around and is just as good an introduction in that vein as ever, if that's what your looking for (you don't need a whole new *distribution* to start using CFLAGS or compiling software FFS). Gentoo is *really* doing nothing new, it's just doing stuff people use to do, but no longer do in the same way, for good reason.
Actually, that's a lie, it doesn't strike me as odd, because I know that it's largely to do with being much cooler to start 'your own thing' or take part in the 'latest craze' than help with an existing project that doesn't seem as 'cool' (even though it would have been a far better starting point).
One thing that out of whack with reality is that Gentoo developers apparently think that a FreeBSD ports system is "innovative" (to quote from the Gentoo site). Well, to be fair, it's much less logical to maintain that FreeBSD's ports tree is (due to someone who doesn't know how to write software with sensible command syntax coming up with emerge), but I'm not sure that's truly in the spirit of the word 'innovative' in my book.
Never the less, much is made of the fact that the Gentoo developers don't consider *other* distributions 'innovative', without detailing what *specific* 'innovations' Gentoo has brought to the table, or aims to bring (neither 'ports system' or 'compiler flags' fall into this category, sorry). I find this rather ironic, given how much distributions like Red Hat have actually contributed - probably to an extent that Gentoo will never parallel either.
I shudder to think why anyone would waste time (and, in a commercial environment, money) working out bugs to due bizzare machine specific installs (a side effect of not having real package management) or spending *days* building software that runs no faster than native 686 binary packages. I can't say I'd be impressed spoting a core component was previously compiled with --ffast-math and --funroll-loops by some overzealous speed freak, and that's what's been causing the system to crash and burn.
Unless you are writing Linux kernel device drivers for x86 (or your RMS or have other similar moral objections to 'proprietary' software) my advice is leave 1995 behind and if you can afford it buy a PowerBook with Mac OS X (which has a ports system, apt-get (for.DEB), as well as a GNU toolchain with GCC provided out-of-the-box) and watch your productivity sky rocket. Thanks to both free and inexpensive commercial x86 emulators, developing software for x86 systems is still a breeze too (something I do on mine from time to time), if that's an issue.
This happend to me when, during a flight, I stuffed an open box of 12 AA batteries and a large selection of US coins together in the front pocket of a rucksack on a trip to the states. This was quite some time ago, when the 32 MB AA powered RIO was the first portable MP3 player and I was using an AA powered PDA, hense the battery supply.
Here in the UK most of our coin currency isn't nearly as conductive so it's not something I'd given a second thought to.
However, when I was getting up to disembark from the plane and picked up my luggage from the overhead storage, it was *very* hot indeed (uncomfortably so, even though the rucksack) and I was very freaked out. I had to wrap something around the metal zip just so I could open the thing comfortably.
Most of the batteries had lined up in the same direction, in a rather unlikely manner, and the quarters (IIRC) had lined up on top of them touching either end of the chain of batteries, completing a circut. The result of this was several electroplated coins (not just the two at either end, but others connected to them too) and 12 dead batteries, I still have the coins.
Smart move IMO. Don't forget Gentoo is for ricers!. Seriously though, I love Gentoo users, they're funny.
Personally, I'd rather install a GNU tool chain on a FreeBSD, Solaris or Mac OS X box and cross compile a network enabled kernel, a shell, some core utilities and then just download anything else I need from the appropriate location than ever again waste time with the retarded horror that is Gentoo and it's 'non-installer'.
It's as if whoever came up with their recommended 'install proceedure' did it specifically in ways designed to utterly waste your time. Due to largely pointless overhead the whole install proceedure and portage system is markedly less efficent than using curl to pull down packages from a local gnu.org mirror alone, in so far as man hours required to actually achive the objective of getting a system that does what you want it to do, IME.
At some point, the penny will hopefully drop and someone will realise the the vast majority of the installation process can in fact (if they had a clue) be automated and wrapped in, at worst, an ncurses display, and that having the end user manually piss about untar'ing files makes the likes of Slackware and MkLinux (circa 1995) seem/polished/.
The entry in the FAQ refers to Slashdot having no plans to localise content, not about "smacking down on dumb furrnin people who can't speak merkin".
In addition, nowhere does it grant immunity from correction to those Americans who misunderstand how to use the English language in anything but a provincial setting and yet still choose to go around incorrectly asserting other people don't know how to use the language, even when they are using it quite correctly.
Even better, not only can you get them by the shovel full via eBay or the likes of Lik Sang, but you can get them here in London in the high street (PSP avalible on Tottenham Court Road, primary home in London to gadgets and imported electronics gadgetry). Several people in the office have considered getting one, but all assumed it would be released in the UK within a month or two. I was going to wait till ~June to get a localised one, but if they are not going to bother to ship til Steptember I'll just pop down and get an import one at the weekend and order a stack of import games off the net.
It's bad enough with hardware, but it's even worse when it happens with software. I remember chipping my Dreamcast to play the superb Sega GT Import version from Japan, 80% of which was in English anyway (and everything else that wasn't was immediately obvious). A year or so later, when a UK version did arrive, I was horrifed to see it contained a fraction of the content, with all the interesting stuff (that actually made it a good title) stripped out in favour of being turned into a tedious clone. Unsurprisingly, few people even heard of it in the UK. There was really no reason to fuck with the game *at all*, yet they did and they totally buggered it up.
Sometimes, large amounts of drugs appear to be the only logical explanation for the actions of some companies in the games industry (yes DS, I'm looking at you - not one decent display in a sleek smark case, but two crappy low res screens, WTF? That after the embarrasment origional GBA screen that was so poorly lit that some titles were not playable anywhere except in a cupboard. At night. Under a blanket. Good greif.).
Sony are presumably holding off (despite doing lots of subtle marketing to nobble sales of the DS) so they can make as much moolah as possible in one big push in September. I expect there is some merit in this, and I expect they have done homework. However, I am also fairly sure that by then a lot of potential customers will have gotten over it and even forgotten about it, having read about it all in April, and they will go blow their money on some other toy instead (the PSP being 'old news' by then, and they will be getting all sweaty over things like the X-Box 2). And for a device that's too expensive for kids to buy, and where the perfect audience is gadget fans with plenty of disposable income that will mean a lot of missed games sales - which, at typical 15-20% of the revenue going to the console vendor (i.e. Sony) is where the real money is to be made.
When it eventually does come out here and the people still interested do buy it, I expect a lot of those people will buy a very small number of titles (perhaps 2 or 3), and will have stashed it in a drawer long before Xmas. True, Semptember is not too far away from the Xmas holiday period - short enough away to allow for it end up in kids Xmas stockings - and so could make up some headway there, but then kids just don't by that many games (YMMV, but ~80-90% of the people I see buying games in Virgin/HMV/GAME are 20-30somethings who appear to be shopping for themselves).
If (as it seems to me the original poster was suggesting) you take two files that are the same (from different sources, e.g. one from you, one from someone else), and diff them then you will be able to remove the wartermarking that uniquely identifies you as the owner.
You could even build the ability to have this wartermarking removed automatically by P2P software (even without having to transfer the entire file to a given user at any point, e.g. just by comparing info of various random segments of the file), if you were that way inclined.
If someone did use the same identifier for multiple users, then they can't trace it down to a specific user, so even if they are left in, those bits are effectively worthless.
I was prepared to continue this (and had a rather long post), but it feels like I'm having a battle of wits with an unarmed man (which is both pointless and frustrating, given the basic misunderstanding of the words being used here).
Suffice to say, why is it Americans (not exclusively, but in particular) rarely seem to grok that the words "England" and "Britain" are not interchangeable, no matter how many times it's explained (this includes rather well [read: expensively] educated relatives of mine I would add)?
It's not like we'd ever confuse 'North America' with 'The United States of America', though I have had this pointed out to me - and laughed out loud at the persumption someone over the age of about 10 wouldn't know the difference.[1]
You did not point out an inaccuracy, at best you pointed out an incorrectly 'perceived inaccuracy'. You said "Northern Ireland isn't part of Britian [sic]", making the assertion that I had misused the term 'Britain'. Not only did you incorrectly spell the word you assert was being used incorrectly, the entire assertion that I misused the word is simply wrong.
My usage is backed up by neumerous verifiable sources, not just the UK Government and Wikipedia as mentioned, but also by Dictionary.com, Merrian Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Cambridge English Dictionary and Encarta (to quote 'United Kingdom, UK, and Britain are all proper terms for the entire nation').
Or it would be, but I'm willing to be there's some wanker out there who'll shit a brick over the idea that Americans have had the gall to fork 'his' precious language
Personally, if I forked something I'd have the decency to give it a unique name from the parent (I certainly wouldn't take the name and start refering to the origional by another name).
To an American or anyone who was taught the American version of English, the word "English" doesn't refer to the British version of the language.
I can't say I'd be surprised to find an American automatically assuming something to be American unless they had specific reason to think otherwise, I'm not sure it's an attitude it's wise to be entirely complacent about though.
I think you find "Britain" in fact means "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (people with a [dangerously IMO] over inflated sense of national identity and bored people looking to pick fight aside), the specific meaning being context sensitive. Both the offical government appointed tourism agency and the Wikipedia entry seem quite happy with this short hand.
God forbid it should not be the complete title in it's entirity every single time, lest the IRA get over excited about it and decide to blowup some [more] children. Thanks but I'll stick with using 'Britain' (and 'UK' when I'm feeling like being particularly terse).
I think we've had enough disagreement and killing over it, and we could officialy rename the entire country Earwig , or 'nation fourty four' (after the country code) for all I care.
is it just that the Scottish accent is considered different enough to write in this way? cause i'm not sure it is.
I think there is sufficient evidence to support that there is more to just Scots English than that, though undoubtedly it's come to more closely resemble standard English over time. It does have truly different grammar structures too. Google brings up some relatively compelling evidence IMO (YMMV). In trvivial cases it is merely word substitution, but there are also quite a few examples of how the grammar structure itself differs (not something I'd ever thought of, till I started reading about it).
I think the primary difference from simple regional variation is that it has unique influences such as Scots Gaelic (which is, so I've read, where the differing grammar structure comes from) and traditional ('Robert Burns' style) Scots (the source of a lot of the certainly uniquely Scottish words). That is to say, the difference is more than just a few unique words or phrases here and there as you'd find within a single country. While there has always been trade, England and Scotland were genuinely separate nations historically, with different ethnic groups of people (who arrived in the UK at different times and had entirely unique cultures).
I'm Scottish and work in London and have done for the last 5+ years and I still inadvertently use words and phrases in meetings that cause people to burst out loud laughing (and make them look confused, much to my surprise not realising they are uniquely Scottish), and I speak pretty formal Standard English (I actually used to get teased about this at school, because classmates thought I sounded 'English' and not 'Scottish', for which BBC radio is largely responsible).
IMO, I think a lot of people have certainly tried to over milk it though, across the whole of UK and indeed Europe. The same is true not just in Wales and Ireland with Welsh/Irish Gaelic as well (which are certainly entirely distinct from English of course) but I'm referring to places like the North of England, where strong dialects and unique regional words are dying out of everyday use so they are trying to boosts it's status rather artificially (I've offended some Yorkshireman now I bet). In fairness sometimes the lines are a bit blurry though.
This is no small part due to cultural funding - the European Union gives huge amounts of funding to such regional causes, as does the UK government these days. That is, for example, one reason you see so many road signs in Gaelic in Scotland, even though very few people speak it (I should think there is no one alive now that only speaks Scots Gaelic, though I'm fairly sure wasn't the case when I was younger, and I'm only in my mid 20's). Business also buys into it, because it helps promote Scotland for tourism and commerce (there is - believe it or not - such as thing as 'Scotland - the brand', which is an official logo for use on goods produced in Scotland, it's a bit OTT and slightly naff IMO, but I gather it goes down well with the tourists).
Or are there just Scottish writers who feel it necessary to display there Scottish-ness at every chance?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually you can get this functionality already in a long standing Unix utility called Tripwire.
http://www.tripwire.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire/
There is even a Mac OS X version now it seems:
http://www.macguru.net/~frodo/Tripwire-osx.html
Of course you'd probably then want an OS that implements some form of relevant Mandatory Access Control / POSIX.1e (e.g. LIDS for Linux, Trusted Solaris, or Argus Pitbull (Linux/Solaris)) to help prevent the intruder from interfering with Tripwire itself.
Contrary to what you protest, I think you are engaging in significant contortion to attempt to support your arguments.
Personally, I am not impressed by the touting of privilege separation nor chroot jails, nor protected memory as these are not new ideas developed by the OpenBSD team. Privilege separation is not a new concept (though the common use of the phrase is more recent), it's simply good software design for applications handling sensitive data, chroot jails date back to FreeBSD in the 80's and memory protection certainly isn't new.
I'm not impressed by OpenBSD 'code audits' either, because for the OpenBSD team this is focused at the core software in the distribution (which not the case with Debian auditing, for example, which has a much wider scope). This not helped by oddities like the most recent version of Apache dating back to 2003, because of a refusal by the OpenBSD team to update it over a licensing quibble, which mean you have to go outside the distribution to run something as simple as a recent version of Apache (one not covered by the 'code audit').
Do you give no merit to a priv seperated and revoked service which is also protected by a multitude of active memory protection mechanisms, etc, which confine those services to themselves and their own associated files? Services which get killed if they step out of bounds?
I don't find that (as the OpenBSD team do), that the orange book specifications are not worth implementing (or even importing - patches have been made available in the past) or you can fudge sufficient functionality with privilege separation and revocation alone.
I fundamentally think that the privileges granted to processes should not be simply tied to user accounts (especially nothing with the power of root) and that the OpenBSD team are wrong not to want to incorporate these features.
I don't know what you see in Theo De Ratt, but it's apparently not what other people see (it seems an RDF is operation).
When I attempt to read from a raw disk device as a non privileged user, I get "access denied". Can you be more specific and provide links or proof that this is the current state of affairs with OpenBSD?
I see you deliberly cut my sentence off at a convenient point. I suggest that if you genuinely want to know more about what it means to control access to devices and files using MAC (including for software run as root, i.e. via expolits) I refer you to software such as L.I.D.S. and Pitbull.
Put simply:
On a system providing live services in real world scenarios (such as web, mail, ftp, ldap, samba, database software etc.) it's inherently less secure than a trusted operating system or one that at least partically impliments MAC, POSIX.1e, or that otherwise places restrictions such as on what specific software is allowed to perform privileged operations such as bind to a given port, or access a given file (etc) no matter what user the software in question it's run as (i.e. code run via software exploits, this means you).
I realise that OpenBSD does not have all worthy modern security features, but to say that OpenBSD security is just hype which boils down to OpenSSH and switched off services is just not right. It's not like all these things that you have failed to mention are useless.
I didn't say they were 'just hype', you seem to be trying quite hard to twist my words. However, I certainly stand by my assertion it's association with being a 'secure' OS is primarily based on those two factors, it's certainly not based on it's feature support. Despite how much Theo De Ratt belittles and misrepresents the work of others from a professional security standpoint OpenBSD's feature set really isn't that impressive compared to other free and commercial alternatives, including what can be done with Linux or even compared with features in newer versions of FreeBSD.
Re: OpenSSH on other platforms:
Can you back this up with a link? I find it a little hard to believe given his absolute freedom stance. Especially since OpenSSH is everywhere nowdays.
Theo's statement that he they were not interested in providing OpenSSH for any platform other than OpenBSD was how the whole argument with Alex de Joode started. See my previous post above, the Slashdot archives, or Google, for a link.
This appears to be carefully worded. I guess what you are saying here is that OpenBSD is a secure platform, but less than useful? Sure, it is not the most useful system out there, but for what it does well, it does very well.
Any OS will all it's network services turned off by default, is secure from remote exploits. However (and this is the reason I was choosing my words carefully) if you actually intended to run services (such as Web, Mail or FTP) on that system or allow local user accounts then OpenBSD is not what I would consider a particularly secure platform and there are certainly far superior alternatives (both free and commercial), that are far more deserving of credit and consideration.
Theo's often false derision (and deliberate misrepresentation) of the efforts of other OS vendors is something I find utterly unpalatable.
This is not intended in any way as a troll (merely informative to other readers who may not have come across him yet and wonder what we are talking about), but I take it from the UID you do this with the full knowledge that Theo is, on all apparent evidence, a bit of a nutter, a bullshitter (with reference to his utter bollocks about 'Linuxes'), and that rather than OpenBSD being founded out of some earnest devotion to security of his[1], it was because his access to the NetBSD CVS repository was pulled, on the grounds that he was being a class jerk to both users and other developers (not a exactly an isolated incident).
;-)
:)
[1] In fact, he originally intended it to be called NextBSD, because he seemed he was basically intent on running his own show all along (which seems to me to be due to him 'not playing well with others').
While the development of OpenSSH remains a much valued contribution, from a security standpoint OpenBSD really has a long way to go to catch up to Linux as far as meaningful features go (the security hype being primarily based on (a) the contribution of OpenSSH - which Theo said he didn't want to make for any OS other than OpenBSD! - and (b) simply having all the services turned off on a default installation).
Specifically (and unlike Linux) OpenBSD doesn't support MAC (Mandatory Access Control) restriction on files, nor does it allow the restriction of access to raw devices, memory or sockets for any user (including processes executed as root), hell it doesn't even have ACL's (Access Control Lists) support without a 3rd party patch (e.g. with patches based on FreeBSD 5's implementation), and they don't seem to 'get' why anyone would want it. In fact, they have *actively* decided not to even attempt to implement POSIX.1e (according to this book, endorsed by Theo).
These are features that have been supported by Linux for years. If (and I honestly think it's going to be 'if' rather than 'when' now), OpenBSD begins work to implement these features, then it might start to be considered useful as a secure platform. Until then, it's very lacking in meaningful features indeed. In fact, other BSD variants are already ahead of OpenBSD in so far as implementing them (such as FreeBSD and TrustedBSD).
I realise it's considered easier to criticise than give due credit by some, but in the case of Theo De Ratt I can't see that the amount of credit he gets from some quarters is warranted.
In conclusion, this is why I find the inference that he is 'very wise and well intentioned' at best riotously amusing.
( YMMV.
Dictatorships are great if the dictator is very wise and well intentioned. I am glad that OpenBSD has a dictator like Theo de Raadt.
*blinks*
*blinks again*
To clear up some misconceptions, yes the vast majority of commonly used functions do have equivalent operations (rather unsurprisingly, as they are fundamentally doing exactly the same operations much of the time, by necessity) and no I don't think your assertion this is otherwise is true at all.
/exactly/ in the same way as the 3DFX cards (as they host OS will be sharing the VRAM for one), so they might choose a half way house by doing something like representing a fixed 'entry level' DirectX 8.0 GPU from each vendor depending on your actual hardware (e.g. 5200 or 9200/9600) and provide pass-though functionality that way (so if you have a Radeon 9800 w/ 256 VRAM or a 9700 w/ 128 MB VRAM, it always represents something like a Radeon 9600 with 64 MB VRAM in the host OS - though that's probably a rather optimistic card).
I would also point out that very few game developers take advantage of these bleeding edge functions period (you just have to look at the results of the hardware profiles from the Steam survey to see why), and I certainly can't think of ANY titles since the RAVE/3DFX days that are actually vendor specific (that is, that require a card from $vendor to run).
My comment about a team writing a wrapper was a regarding a team of engineers from MIT (IIRC), which allowed the DX9 nVidia 'Dawn' demo to run faster on a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB GDDR II than on the native nVidia 5800 for which the demo was intended. Certainly hard evidence that plausible emulation is quite possible.
But I digress....
This is all rather irrelevant - rather than actually emulating a specific card, I'm suggesting they are more likely to take an approach comparable to the one as VPC 3 did for 3DFX PCI cards, essentially 'passing though' commands, representing the graphics card installed in the Mac (either nVidia or ATI) directly in the host operating system (so if you have a Radeon 9700 mobility on your PowerBook, that would be what you'd see on your Windows system in VPC).
Obviously they couldn't do this
It's certainly possible they may decided to have the abstraction done by a 'special' driver written exclusively for the host operating system, and simply optimise it to take better advantage of the native hardware (i.e. much like the way things currently work, with but with improved acceleration, i.e. converting DirectX routines to appropriate Quartz/GL routines). I imagine you could get some quick gains with this sort of approach, but it doesn't seem a particularly maintainable or as widely compatible approach at first hand (and while it would make Windows operations seem much more responsive, it would sadly rule out using VPC for gaming I should think, but perhaps they are not building it with games in mind, just enhanced GUI performance).
I forgot to also mention, the original Xbox has a Nvidia GPU, and the 360 has an ATI, so yes, the will have to emulate everything.
/faster/ than they did on the then top end nVidia cards the demo was meant for).
Actually, the neat thing about this is, especially with a DirectX style abstraction layer, they can wrap a lot of the instructions and just perform equivolent operations on the ATI card, without a huge performance hit (as most of the operations will have exact equivolent functions on the ATI card).
This sort of thing has even been done before by hobbists, to allow nVidia specific demos to run on ATI hardware (and amusingly, run
Actually yes, I think it's safe to say yes it may very well (in around about way) improve VPC on Mac OS X...
VPC 3 (when it was still owned by Connectix) supported certain graphics cards, specifically 3DFX cards, natively. Meaning you could play 'Windows' games that supported the 3DFX Glide driver in real time (because the actual CPU load from games like Quake and Tomb Raider was relaatively low).
Sadly 3DFX imploded, and the feature was dropped from Virtual PC 4 (and subsequent releases), apparently too much trouble to maintain.
Microsoft *were* going to add this type of functionality back into VPC 7 (the current release, their first since purchasing it from Connectix) but they stated on their web site this was dropped and will be in a future release.
Apparently this is because they had to rework the code for the 64 Bit G5 CPU's, as the the existing VPC code relied on reverse endian support - a feature of the G4 range, but not the G5 range, as I understand it.
Fortunately, Microsoft's Mac team seem fairly committed to re-visiting this feature, which is fantastic news. Given that these days it's essencially the same range of ATI and nVidia graphics cards in both the Wintel world and in Apple systems, it should allow a whole number of Windows games to be playable on Mac OS X at reasonable speeds (I'm particularly thinking of MMOG's and RTS games, and perhaps FPS games on the level of say Halo and CoD).
This of course leads on to the intreging possibility of them selling a quick and dirty porting SDK to game developers (can't help thinking it's unlikely, but it would be cool).
The best thing about rumours, is of being smug and in-gracious when your assertions are proved correct.
I shall now burn karma and indulge myself (if you don't want to see this, you may look away now).
I didn't predict that the XBox 2 would have 'backwards compatibility', I merely pointed out that it was certainly eminently possible on the hardware given the specifications announced to developers and given pertinent information (such as the then recent purchase of the VPC x86 on PPC emulator from Connectix by Microsoft). In fact I *insisted* it was possible, even the face of occasionally rabid argument stating emphatically otherwise.
I recently came across a thread with a user in which I had just this discussion, it was started by the user "king-manic" under the heading:
"reasons MS can't be backwards compatible"
"1- they changed CPU architectures.
2- They changed GPU's and the previous GPU is hevaily heavily copyrighted.
3- they have only 5-10 games worth playing on Xbox
4- Emu of 3d graphics w/o glitches is a dream. Even ps2 had glitches and it included the god damn hardware."
I set about taking this apart (admittedly rather harshly, but fairly), to be met with "king-manic" replying with:
Is seems you've been well rebutted. I stand by my assessment and add the fact that there is no HD as one of your repliers mentions. Have you run emulation latley? for 20 year old games, they run flawlessly. on 15 year old games, almost perfect. on the last decade of game, their shit. it'll take another 5-10 years of emu for a pc to play an xbox game full speed via emu.
And so on (you get the idea).
At last, it seems we can now bring this matter to a close.
*commence dancing*
In closing, I look forward to all the future smug dancing I'll be doing when the PS3 is released, we discover the KillZone pre-rendered movie is very clearly just that and that not only is PS3 not able to do that by a LONG shot, but in fact the performance of the PS3 is behind that of the 360 in practice (dispite hyped specs) as it turns out (again) that Sony built something that's considerably more difficult for developers to use and as a consquence few games are able to exploit the hardware to the same degree.
No, no I really *am* that great, honest! \o/
#include <rdf/field.h>
Not really no, but then I'm able to be pretty charming when I can be bothered, and I'm an all round pretty fantastic guy if I do say so myself.
electroplated? in a dry environment?
It was a completely dry environment as far as I am aware. I don't think I had anything that would have leaked in their, or that the bag was wet, but that's possible.
It certainly looked like electroplating, and although before I posted, I tried to read up on it to see what might have happened, I couldn't find a better definition/explanation (though I'd welcome one). It may actually have been a completely different process at work that I'm not aware of.
FWIW, it was prevolent primarily at the points where the coins touched each other and the batteries.
I know I have the coins round here somewhere, but I have lots of banks of coins around the place, I'll look more closely at them if I can find them.
They have to divide us up into "dumb but hot" or "smart but ugly".
/.'ers can hope to achieve (or at least, approach and attempt communication with, without mutating into incoherent, sweaty, bundles of nerves).
Most of us can't get so much as a date with women who are "dumb but hot" OR "smart but ugly" (due to coming across as "weird and creepy").
Women who are "hot AND smart" arn't considered by the community because they are clearly out of our league, which is perhaps why that category come up very often (except for those of us with an excessive amount of hubris, or for those with an excessive bank balance).
I rather suspect that members of the opposite sex who are "dumb and ugly" are probably the top end of what most
I should point out for the benefit of anyone reading that that isn't the current Gentoo installer, and in fact it has not had an alpha release yet. To my knowledge the current release has not so much as an ncurses installer (which would require all of a long weekend to implement).
.DEB), as well as a GNU toolchain with GCC provided out-of-the-box) and watch your productivity sky rocket. Thanks to both free and inexpensive commercial x86 emulators, developing software for x86 systems is still a breeze too (something I do on mine from time to time), if that's an issue.
Certainly, the screen shots look good and are a step in the right direction, and it seems to be designed well enough, but this is the sort of stuff that's reasonably trivial to do (having been done umpteen times already, so there are plenty of points of reference).
Though, it still utterly misses the point that all the work needed to turn Gentoo into something as practical as Debian, SuSE, Slackware, Red Hat or Mandrake (etc) is all together very significant, and by the time it's complete you'd find you have a mature distribution which bears little resemblance to the current Gentoo distribution.
From my perspective, it's all so ten years ago, but so many of it's users didn't seem to be Linux users back then (going by the forums a significant majority of them still seem to be in school right now, so I'm not surprised and that's not intended as a troll) that they are reinventing the wheel, and labour under the impression that Gentoo is something different.
It strikes me as especially odd, as Slackware is still plodding around and is just as good an introduction in that vein as ever, if that's what your looking for (you don't need a whole new *distribution* to start using CFLAGS or compiling software FFS). Gentoo is *really* doing nothing new, it's just doing stuff people use to do, but no longer do in the same way, for good reason.
Actually, that's a lie, it doesn't strike me as odd, because I know that it's largely to do with being much cooler to start 'your own thing' or take part in the 'latest craze' than help with an existing project that doesn't seem as 'cool' (even though it would have been a far better starting point).
One thing that out of whack with reality is that Gentoo developers apparently think that a FreeBSD ports system is "innovative" (to quote from the Gentoo site). Well, to be fair, it's much less logical to maintain that FreeBSD's ports tree is (due to someone who doesn't know how to write software with sensible command syntax coming up with emerge), but I'm not sure that's truly in the spirit of the word 'innovative' in my book.
Never the less, much is made of the fact that the Gentoo developers don't consider *other* distributions 'innovative', without detailing what *specific* 'innovations' Gentoo has brought to the table, or aims to bring (neither 'ports system' or 'compiler flags' fall into this category, sorry). I find this rather ironic, given how much distributions like Red Hat have actually contributed - probably to an extent that Gentoo will never parallel either.
I shudder to think why anyone would waste time (and, in a commercial environment, money) working out bugs to due bizzare machine specific installs (a side effect of not having real package management) or spending *days* building software that runs no faster than native 686 binary packages. I can't say I'd be impressed spoting a core component was previously compiled with --ffast-math and --funroll-loops by some overzealous speed freak, and that's what's been causing the system to crash and burn.
Unless you are writing Linux kernel device drivers for x86 (or your RMS or have other similar moral objections to 'proprietary' software) my advice is leave 1995 behind and if you can afford it buy a PowerBook with Mac OS X (which has a ports system, apt-get (for
Commercial Software & Solution Developer
UNIX (Linux, BSD, Solaris, Other.)
This happend to me when, during a flight, I stuffed an open box of 12 AA batteries and a large selection of US coins together in the front pocket of a rucksack on a trip to the states. This was quite some time ago, when the 32 MB AA powered RIO was the first portable MP3 player and I was using an AA powered PDA, hense the battery supply.
Here in the UK most of our coin currency isn't nearly as conductive so it's not something I'd given a second thought to.
However, when I was getting up to disembark from the plane and picked up my luggage from the overhead storage, it was *very* hot indeed (uncomfortably so, even though the rucksack) and I was very freaked out. I had to wrap something around the metal zip just so I could open the thing comfortably.
Most of the batteries had lined up in the same direction, in a rather unlikely manner, and the quarters (IIRC) had lined up on top of them touching either end of the chain of batteries, completing a circut. The result of this was several electroplated coins (not just the two at either end, but others connected to them too) and 12 dead batteries, I still have the coins.
Smart move IMO. Don't forget Gentoo is for ricers!. Seriously though, I love Gentoo users, they're funny.
/polished/.
Personally, I'd rather install a GNU tool chain on a FreeBSD, Solaris or Mac OS X box and cross compile a network enabled kernel, a shell, some core utilities and then just download anything else I need from the appropriate location than ever again waste time with the retarded horror that is Gentoo and it's 'non-installer'.
It's as if whoever came up with their recommended 'install proceedure' did it specifically in ways designed to utterly waste your time. Due to largely pointless overhead the whole install proceedure and portage system is markedly less efficent than using curl to pull down packages from a local gnu.org mirror alone, in so far as man hours required to actually achive the objective of getting a system that does what you want it to do, IME.
At some point, the penny will hopefully drop and someone will realise the the vast majority of the installation process can in fact (if they had a clue) be automated and wrapped in, at worst, an ncurses display, and that having the end user manually piss about untar'ing files makes the likes of Slackware and MkLinux (circa 1995) seem
The entry in the FAQ refers to Slashdot having no plans to localise content, not about "smacking down on dumb furrnin people who can't speak merkin".
In addition, nowhere does it grant immunity from correction to those Americans who misunderstand how to use the English language in anything but a provincial setting and yet still choose to go around incorrectly asserting other people don't know how to use the language, even when they are using it quite correctly.
Even better, not only can you get them by the shovel full via eBay or the likes of Lik Sang, but you can get them here in London in the high street (PSP avalible on Tottenham Court Road, primary home in London to gadgets and imported electronics gadgetry). Several people in the office have considered getting one, but all assumed it would be released in the UK within a month or two. I was going to wait till ~June to get a localised one, but if they are not going to bother to ship til Steptember I'll just pop down and get an import one at the weekend and order a stack of import games off the net.
It's bad enough with hardware, but it's even worse when it happens with software. I remember chipping my Dreamcast to play the superb Sega GT Import version from Japan, 80% of which was in English anyway (and everything else that wasn't was immediately obvious). A year or so later, when a UK version did arrive, I was horrifed to see it contained a fraction of the content, with all the interesting stuff (that actually made it a good title) stripped out in favour of being turned into a tedious clone. Unsurprisingly, few people even heard of it in the UK. There was really no reason to fuck with the game *at all*, yet they did and they totally buggered it up.
Sometimes, large amounts of drugs appear to be the only logical explanation for the actions of some companies in the games industry (yes DS, I'm looking at you - not one decent display in a sleek smark case, but two crappy low res screens, WTF? That after the embarrasment origional GBA screen that was so poorly lit that some titles were not playable anywhere except in a cupboard. At night. Under a blanket. Good greif.).
Sony are presumably holding off (despite doing lots of subtle marketing to nobble sales of the DS) so they can make as much moolah as possible in one big push in September. I expect there is some merit in this, and I expect they have done homework. However, I am also fairly sure that by then a lot of potential customers will have gotten over it and even forgotten about it, having read about it all in April, and they will go blow their money on some other toy instead (the PSP being 'old news' by then, and they will be getting all sweaty over things like the X-Box 2). And for a device that's too expensive for kids to buy, and where the perfect audience is gadget fans with plenty of disposable income that will mean a lot of missed games sales - which, at typical 15-20% of the revenue going to the console vendor (i.e. Sony) is where the real money is to be made.
When it eventually does come out here and the people still interested do buy it, I expect a lot of those people will buy a very small number of titles (perhaps 2 or 3), and will have stashed it in a drawer long before Xmas. True, Semptember is not too far away from the Xmas holiday period - short enough away to allow for it end up in kids Xmas stockings - and so could make up some headway there, but then kids just don't by that many games (YMMV, but ~80-90% of the people I see buying games in Virgin/HMV/GAME are 20-30somethings who appear to be shopping for themselves).
If (as it seems to me the original poster was suggesting) you take two files that are the same (from different sources, e.g. one from you, one from someone else), and diff them then you will be able to remove the wartermarking that uniquely identifies you as the owner.
You could even build the ability to have this wartermarking removed automatically by P2P software (even without having to transfer the entire file to a given user at any point, e.g. just by comparing info of various random segments of the file), if you were that way inclined.
If someone did use the same identifier for multiple users, then they can't trace it down to a specific user, so even if they are left in, those bits are effectively worthless.
I was prepared to continue this (and had a rather long post), but it feels like I'm having a battle of wits with an unarmed man (which is both pointless and frustrating, given the basic misunderstanding of the words being used here).
Suffice to say, why is it Americans (not exclusively, but in particular) rarely seem to grok that the words "England" and "Britain" are not interchangeable, no matter how many times it's explained (this includes rather well [read: expensively] educated relatives of mine I would add)?
It's not like we'd ever confuse 'North America' with 'The United States of America', though I have had this pointed out to me - and laughed out loud at the persumption someone over the age of about 10 wouldn't know the difference.[1]
[1] Oiks not included.
You did not point out an inaccuracy, at best you pointed out an incorrectly 'perceived inaccuracy'. You said "Northern Ireland isn't part of Britian [sic]", making the assertion that I had misused the term 'Britain'. Not only did you incorrectly spell the word you assert was being used incorrectly, the entire assertion that I misused the word is simply wrong.
My usage is backed up by neumerous verifiable sources, not just the UK Government and Wikipedia as mentioned, but also by Dictionary.com, Merrian Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Cambridge English Dictionary and Encarta (to quote 'United Kingdom, UK, and Britain are all proper terms for the entire nation').
Or it would be, but I'm willing to be there's some wanker out there who'll shit a brick over the idea that Americans have had the gall to fork 'his' precious language
Personally, if I forked something I'd have the decency to give it a unique name from the parent (I certainly wouldn't take the name and start refering to the origional by another name).
To an American or anyone who was taught the American version of English, the word "English" doesn't refer to the British version of the language.
I can't say I'd be surprised to find an American automatically assuming something to be American unless they had specific reason to think otherwise, I'm not sure it's an attitude it's wise to be entirely complacent about though.
I think you find "Britain" in fact means "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (people with a [dangerously IMO] over inflated sense of national identity and bored people looking to pick fight aside), the specific meaning being context sensitive. Both the offical government appointed tourism agency and the Wikipedia entry seem quite happy with this short hand.
God forbid it should not be the complete title in it's entirity every single time, lest the IRA get over excited about it and decide to blowup some [more] children. Thanks but I'll stick with using 'Britain' (and 'UK' when I'm feeling like being particularly terse).
I think we've had enough disagreement and killing over it, and we could officialy rename the entire country Earwig , or 'nation fourty four' (after the country code) for all I care.
is it just that the Scottish accent is considered different enough to write in this way? cause i'm not sure it is.
I think there is sufficient evidence to support that there is more to just Scots English than that, though undoubtedly it's come to more closely resemble standard English over time. It does have truly different grammar structures too. Google brings up some relatively compelling evidence IMO (YMMV). In trvivial cases it is merely word substitution, but there are also quite a few examples of how the grammar structure itself differs (not something I'd ever thought of, till I started reading about it).
I think the primary difference from simple regional variation is that it has unique influences such as Scots Gaelic (which is, so I've read, where the differing grammar structure comes from) and traditional ('Robert Burns' style) Scots (the source of a lot of the certainly uniquely Scottish words). That is to say, the difference is more than just a few unique words or phrases here and there as you'd find within a single country. While there has always been trade, England and Scotland were genuinely separate nations historically, with different ethnic groups of people (who arrived in the UK at different times and had entirely unique cultures).
I'm Scottish and work in London and have done for the last 5+ years and I still inadvertently use words and phrases in meetings that cause people to burst out loud laughing (and make them look confused, much to my surprise not realising they are uniquely Scottish), and I speak pretty formal Standard English (I actually used to get teased about this at school, because classmates thought I sounded 'English' and not 'Scottish', for which BBC radio is largely responsible).
IMO, I think a lot of people have certainly tried to over milk it though, across the whole of UK and indeed Europe. The same is true not just in Wales and Ireland with Welsh/Irish Gaelic as well (which are certainly entirely distinct from English of course) but I'm referring to places like the North of England, where strong dialects and unique regional words are dying out of everyday use so they are trying to boosts it's status rather artificially (I've offended some Yorkshireman now I bet). In fairness sometimes the lines are a bit blurry though.
This is no small part due to cultural funding - the European Union gives huge amounts of funding to such regional causes, as does the UK government these days. That is, for example, one reason you see so many road signs in Gaelic in Scotland, even though very few people speak it (I should think there is no one alive now that only speaks Scots Gaelic, though I'm fairly sure wasn't the case when I was younger, and I'm only in my mid 20's). Business also buys into it, because it helps promote Scotland for tourism and commerce (there is - believe it or not - such as thing as 'Scotland - the brand', which is an official logo for use on goods produced in Scotland, it's a bit OTT and slightly naff IMO, but I gather it goes down well with the tourists).
Or are there just Scottish writers who feel it necessary to display there Scottish-ness at every chance?
There may be truth in that...
Chiz! Shirly it's 'mafs', short for 'mafimatiks', as any fule kno!