at least so far in canada they can not detain you indefinitely without even disclosing your name or access to a lawyer because they think you might have some links to terrorism (i.e. because your skin happens to be too dark).
...with a pda in my pocket that keeps the electrical potential of my skin oscillating at a carrier frequecy of 10mhz, i guess i can stop worrying about having my cellphone in the back pocket of my jeans, the high voltage lines over my house and the high power radar at the airport in sight;-)
one of the first things i tell new linux users whom i help installing their system is that they'll have to keep their distribution up to date. there's an important reason for that: many people have heard that linux is more secure than windows. in fact, it's a reason for switching i've heard many times. i'm not going to argue if this is true or not because i believe that there is an infinite number of factors that can make any system more secure or insecure for windows and linux alike. the real problem, though is the attitude; many new linux users religiously believe in an imaginary inherent security of linux while they are usually very aware of the risks linked to running a windows system. and that's why so many people sleep well while someone is hacking their computer that's running a two years old version of qpopper, apache or sendmail. not to mention that these users probably never used any of these servers, they just got installed by default and the user doesn't even know they're running.
for windows as well as for open source products, the exploits normally show up long after a hole has been fixed. so while i completely agree that it's a good thing that holes are found faster and fixed faster as well in open source software, it's not going to help if the users don't take advantage of it because they are too cool to upgrade.
it's really time to wake up for the linux community, otherwise linux will lose its reputation of reliability that most of us take for granted.
voltage regulators are not a good plan for this purpose - if i'm not mistaken, a modern pc will draw something around 20A at 5V - now, apart from the waste of energy (you come in with 12V*20A=240W and out with 5V*20A=100W), the waste energy has to go somewhere - that's a lot of heat. DC to DC converters are a far better idea, even if they cost a little more, they are far more efficient and produce much less heat.
not the app patches are too slow, the users / sysadmins are. it's probably mainly an attitude problem - "i'm running linux, linux is secure"; yeah right. and it could be so simple: an entry for security.debian.org in/etc/apt/sources.list and regular apt-get update; apt-get upgrade certainly protects me from "well known" vulnerabilities. even if it sometimes takes a couple of days for the new versions to show up after the vulnerability was published they're normally there before exploits get widely available. other than that: run the services you need and not even one more.
biologists have been able to insert additional genes and knock out genes in organisms for quite a while. while this is the first time they've completely synthesized a virus, as real geeks of course you know that reinventing the wheel might be a good exercise but is hardly ever the most efficient way of reaching a goal - a bioterrorist / military would therefore never build a virus from scratch to use it as a biological weapon but use a perfectly working virus from the wild that already has the ability to infect human cells and maybe alter it to reach the "desired" effect. the techniques needed for that have been the microbiologists' bread and butter for years.
now it's the "cyberbuffs" that want special and new laws for new technology? i think it's the other way - the world would be so beautiful for us geeks if old principles like "fair use" would not be undermined, if the same copyright laws that apply to print media would apply to the internet as well. and of course if censorship would be as illegal on the internet as it is in the "normal" world. the most prominent example of a special technology law is certainly the dmca: the result of massive industry lobbying.
Boeing calculates that a BWB seating 480 passengers would use 32 percent less fuel than the proposed A380-700 [...] The plane would weigh 19 percent less, suggesting that it
would cost less to build. And it would need 19 percent less thrust, saving on engine manufacturing and maintenance costs.
We at Boeing have the solution you are waiting for. Yes, our 747 is outdated and someone else is making a better product. We don't have an alternative to show but if you hold off buying your new big planes just another few years we'll supply you with a cheaper, better and more efficient product.
Now, why exactly does this all sound so terribly familiar to most of us?
the automotive industry is concerned about the growing retail presence of used-car dealers and number of private used car sales. the industry worries that the expanding used-market is cannibalizing the new-car sales.
one proposed remedy being debated by the industry executives is federal legislation requiring used-car retailers to pay royalties on secondary sales of cars.
only that most people have their fat partition mounted on boot. plus the virus could easily infect linux binaries (while windows is running) that get executed as root during linux boot - you don't have to go to extremes and infect init to do this. not logging in as root won't protect you then.
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so which one is the police state now?
... canada.
...with a pda in my pocket that keeps the electrical potential of my skin oscillating at a carrier frequecy of 10mhz, i guess i can stop worrying about having my cellphone in the back pocket of my jeans, the high voltage lines over my house and the high power radar at the airport in sight ;-)
while Zugspitze is actually correct, the name of the other mountail should read Westliche Karwendelspitze.
one of the first things i tell new linux users whom i help installing their system is that they'll have to keep their distribution up to date. there's an important reason for that: many people have heard that linux is more secure than windows. in fact, it's a reason for switching i've heard many times. i'm not going to argue if this is true or not because i believe that there is an infinite number of factors that can make any system more secure or insecure for windows and linux alike. the real problem, though is the attitude; many new linux users religiously believe in an imaginary inherent security of linux while they are usually very aware of the risks linked to running a windows system. and that's why so many people sleep well while someone is hacking their computer that's running a two years old version of qpopper, apache or sendmail. not to mention that these users probably never used any of these servers, they just got installed by default and the user doesn't even know they're running.
for windows as well as for open source products, the exploits normally show up long after a hole has been fixed. so while i completely agree that it's a good thing that holes are found faster and fixed faster as well in open source software, it's not going to help if the users don't take advantage of it because they are too cool to upgrade.
it's really time to wake up for the linux community, otherwise linux will lose its reputation of reliability that most of us take for granted.
voltage regulators are not a good plan for this purpose - if i'm not mistaken, a modern pc will draw something around 20A at 5V - now, apart from the waste of energy (you come in with 12V*20A=240W and out with 5V*20A=100W), the waste energy has to go somewhere - that's a lot of heat. DC to DC converters are a far better idea, even if they cost a little more, they are far more efficient and produce much less heat.
not the app patches are too slow, the users / sysadmins are. it's probably mainly an attitude problem - "i'm running linux, linux is secure"; yeah right. and it could be so simple: an entry for security.debian.org in /etc/apt/sources.list and regular apt-get update; apt-get upgrade certainly protects me from "well known" vulnerabilities. even if it sometimes takes a couple of days for the new versions to show up after the vulnerability was published they're normally there before exploits get widely available. other than that: run the services you need and not even one more.
the price of IT security is eternal vigilance.
biologists have been able to insert additional genes and knock out genes in organisms for quite a while. while this is the first time they've completely synthesized a virus, as real geeks of course you know that reinventing the wheel might be a good exercise but is hardly ever the most efficient way of reaching a goal - a bioterrorist / military would therefore never build a virus from scratch to use it as a biological weapon but use a perfectly working virus from the wild that already has the ability to infect human cells and maybe alter it to reach the "desired" effect. the techniques needed for that have been the microbiologists' bread and butter for years.
somehow it just doesn't sound all that cool if i brag that my new car can go 1.85*10^(-7)c - that is, if i had a new car...
now it's the "cyberbuffs" that want special and new laws for new technology? i think it's the other way - the world would be so beautiful for us geeks if old principles like "fair use" would not be undermined, if the same copyright laws that apply to print media would apply to the internet as well. and of course if censorship would be as illegal on the internet as it is in the "normal" world. the most prominent example of a special technology law is certainly the dmca: the result of massive industry lobbying.
Boeing calculates that a BWB seating 480 passengers would use 32 percent less fuel than the proposed A380-700 [...] The plane would weigh 19 percent less, suggesting that it would cost less to build. And it would need 19 percent less thrust, saving on engine manufacturing and maintenance costs.
We at Boeing have the solution you are waiting for. Yes, our 747 is outdated and someone else is making a better product. We don't have an alternative to show but if you hold off buying your new big planes just another few years we'll supply you with a cheaper, better and more efficient product.
Now, why exactly does this all sound so terribly familiar to most of us?
the automotive industry is concerned about the growing retail presence of used-car dealers and number of private used car sales. the industry worries that the expanding used-market is cannibalizing the new-car sales.
one proposed remedy being debated by the industry executives is federal legislation requiring used-car retailers to pay royalties on secondary sales of cars.
only that most people have their fat partition mounted on boot. plus the virus could easily infect linux binaries (while windows is running) that get executed as root during linux boot - you don't have to go to extremes and infect init to do this. not logging in as root won't protect you then.
at least for printing there is gcms, the generic colour management system... check out http://gcms.sourceforge.net