Actually, the DMCA does explicitly state it's illegal to bypass an "effective means" of copy protection. Not even the most tech-clueless judge would consider suncomm's protection effective. It doesn't work on windows machines that just happen to have auto-run disabled, it doesn't work on machines where the user is properly running his machine under a non-administrative account that doesn't have permission to install software, it doesn't work on Linux or, for the most part the MAC, making this method particularly ineffective.
I have one of my two hacked HP48Gs sitting right in front of me right now, fancy that. One has 128k ram, the other 256k ram. The hack was published about 10 years ago, and involves soldering in a replacement memory chip or two. Took me one saturday afternoon, and my HP48G had enough memory to run SPICE, PIM, and dozen other applications.
The 48G rules, especially once you've expanded the memory to something reasonable.
Please note that the machines do not suddenly become vulnerable when the vulnerability is first reported. The vulnerability was there from the beginning, and may well have been exploited long before publication.
I.e. the fact that MS is fairly quick to patch doesn't get them a free right, the fact that they produce an OS with so many vulnerabilities means that someone, somewhere, right now, is being hacked via a vulnerability they don't know they have, and since MS OSes tend to have more than their fair share of remotely expoitable vulnerabilities, AND there are scads of those machines around, it is far more likely than not that the box being hacked as we speak, is a MS box.
Actually, I've been discussing the C part of ACID with one of the MySQL folks, and they're close, but I don't think they're quite there, and here's why.
Consistent means that when doing a transaction, the database should move from one consistent state to the next, with all constraints applied. This is according to the database theory college text book Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri and Navathe. Basically, the problem MySQL has is that you can apply constraints that are improperly processed. I.e. if you insert a number like 12345678.12 into a numeric (5,2) you'll get 999.99.
Since this "constraint" is conveniently ignored, you no longer are guaranteed a consistent database. Furthermore, you can't even apply constraints like "check id >1000 AND id
The fellow I was discussing this with at MySQL maintains that the C in ACID only applies to foreign keys, but hey, they ain't known for their indepth understanding of database theory, now are they?;^)
Why not put LDAP on an existing server? We tossed it onto our pre-existing apache/PHP/pgsql server, and it only takes up about 100 Megs or so of memory total after it's been up for a day or two (mostly for buffers of course.)
While our load numbers went up, they didn't shoot through the roof or anything.
LDAP tends to be a pretty small load for us. If we weren't providing authentication for a non-buffering external server (*COUGH people soft *COUGH) it's be no real load at all. As it is, providing a dozen or so logins a second, it's still only about 0.2 load factor or so on the box.
Any old PII-450 with 256 Meg of ram could handle OpenLDAP quite well.
Oh dear GOD! That was way back in January of 2000! No wonder you were having issues. You should realize there's been a lot of work done on Postgrsql since then, and it is MUCH more robust with respect to vacuuming and index growth.
I'd recommend testing it again. Real testing. You should hit it with millions and millions of updates, just like the live site, and see how it runs. It really is light years ahead of where it was back then.
Just wondering, did you tune Postgresql at all? Set effective_cache_size, shared_buffers, sort_mem, cpu_index_tuple_cost, cpu_tuple_cost etc... to appropriate values for your data set and load?
did you run analyze?
Did you have a vacuum job cronned up to run every X hours?
If it's been more than a year since you benchmarked Postgresql, you should really try one more time. there have been massive performance improvements in the 7.2/7.3 and 7.4 beta (soon to be rc) releases there.
Note that, much like db2, you have to tune it to your load to get best performance, but you could afford to buy a nice used E10k for less than the cost of the db2 licenses you had and run Postgresql there.
For tuning, go here: http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/ Tidbits/perf.html
Just wondering, but are you on an older flavor of Postgresql? Most of the issues you mention (i.e. vacuum slowing things down) have been fixed for quite some time.
Also, if you haven't bothered to tune your postgresql.conf file on an older install, it will run for shit. I.e. the default settings are for a small workgroup type setup, not enterprise class stuff.
Keep in mind, Afilias runs the.org and.info tlds on postgresql, so it can't be impossible to get 24/7 operation out of, or the.org domain would be offline several times a day.
Being able to call stored procs in that way isn't nearly as big a deal as the lack of packaging for postgresql. It's nice that in Oracle you can install and uninstall a package that has all that built in and ready to go, and that they can bascially live in their own name spaces.
with the introduction of schemas, it may be possible for someone to make a packaging system for Postgresql.
Oh, and just an additional point, postgresql supports way more than just the one stored proc language.
Stored procedures / user functions can be written in C, Python, Perl, PHP, PL/PGSQL, PL/SQL, Ruby, R, and a couple more I can't remember the name of right now.
QUOTE: Run a SQL Server farm on the back end if you cant afford an Oracle license. Don't be an OSS idealogue in the business world, you end up unemployed. UNQUOTE
You do know that afilias runs the.org and the.info domains in Postgresql using the erserver replication system?
Which means when you type in "http://ask.slashdot.org" your request is resolved by Postgresql using a (now) OSS solution for replication?
I haven't seen the.org or.info systems go down lately, seems to be working well enough.
No, McDonalds was being punished because they're already had 700 complaints filed against them for keeping their coffee too hot.
McDonalds was punished because the "Notice" on the side of the cup wasn't a "Warning" as it should have been.
McDonalds was punished because, in court, they made the argument that this lady's burns didn't matter because 700 cases of burns are statistically insignificant.
You realize it takes 20 seconds to cause third degree burns if the coffee is 140F, 6 seconds at 160, and 2 seconds at 180F? McDonalds at the time had a manual stating that coffee was to be kept at something like 185 to 190F. It's an exponential curve. How long was your hand in contact with the coffee? Less than two seconds? Then you likely didn't get worse than first or maybe second degree burns. If the coffee had been just 160 degrees, it may well have only caused 2nd degree burns for this lady.
They didn't drop the temp til after the trial, but they did long before the final settlement. I.e. Once they realized they weren't going to win the appeal, the went ahead and dropped the temp, since it would have hurt their case to drop the temp right in the middle of it and tacitly imply that they knew 180+ was too hot.
I'd always thought McDonalds coffee was way too hot, which is why I hardly ever drank it back in the 70s and 80s.
Exactly. The cups were weak, and when squeezed with very little force, would cause the lid to pop off. Combine this with vinyl seats like the one in the car the lady was driving, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
By the way, if you google a bit, you'll find only a few of the top of the line coffee making machines make coffee at 195F or above, most brew at about 180, with a burner that only heats to about 140 or so. Coffee that's kept at 180+F gets nasty and burnt tasting fast.
Quote from http://www.burnsurvivor.com/burn_types_third.html:
Third Degree Burns
"Third-degree burns affect the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, causing charring of skin or a translucent white color, with coagulated vessels visible just below the skin surface. "
You were saying? Maybe you should look into this case, in fact, the lady DID receive third degree burns, had to have skin grafts on her genitals, and was hospitalized for something like 6 months. All she asked McDonalds for was medical expenses, they refused, then she sued. While the initial settlement was in the millions, an appeal lowered it into the hundreds of thousands.
If you're going to debunk someone, you might want to actually know what you're talking about.
The difference between normal coffee (your home coffee maker and 7-11's both maintain coffee at about 140 degrees) and McDonalds coffee (180 degrees) is actually VERY high, as the heat energy contained in that 180 degree coffee can cause third degree burns within seconds, while 140 degree coffee takes quite a long time just to produce 1st degree burns.
Given your lack of knowledge of third degree burns, it's kinda hard to take your "knowledge" of how hot coffee should be served seriously.
Way back, over 10 years ago, I took Tae Kwon Do from a guy who was then a 5th degree grand master, and is now something like a 7th degree grand master. He said the average time to get a Black Belt from him was 3 to 5 years, and if you were really good maybe 2 or two and a half years, if you practiced 5 or more days a week.
He told us that if we wanted to go to tournaments, we could only go when we were yellow belts (9th kyup, second lowest belt, right after white.)
I never went to a tournament to fight, but after a year or so (I was up to 6th kyup by then) I went ot watch one, and realized why he wouldn't let us fight. There were black belts out there I could have taken apart.
In order to get our belts, we had to break boards that weren't held, just sitting sideways on a desk top, and you had to hit them fast enough to break them with speed alone.
I watched the black belts trying to break boards at the tournament at the exhibition before hand, and the guys holding the boards were holding them super strong, and still these guys had a problem breaking them. Still, it often took several attempts for them to break them. They weren't any thicker or stronger than the pine boards we used (6"x8"x1/2").
I realized at that tournament that most places that teach martial arts are just diploma mills, and never went to another tournament. They really held no interest for me after that.
The FACTS posted in Gpalaste's web site are just that, facts. If you can't rebut them by any other way than painting him as a biased liberal, then you are doing nothing but adhominem attacks. This reflects poorly on your reasoning skills.
No, you can't. I'm not a liberal, I'm an actual factual conservative. Unlike GW, his dad, or Ronald Reagan. Just because someone disagrees with a republican does not make them a liberal, and nowadays, it's a good bet they're a REAL conservative.
The last conservative Republican president was Teddy Roosevelt. After him, they're all just liberals in conservative clothing.
War On Drugs: liberal policy. Trickle down economics: liberal policy. Free rides for large corporations: liberal policy. Overthrowing other governments on flimsy / non-existant evidence: liberal policy. anti-immigration: liberal policy.
Please, identify one REAL conservative policy that GW Bush has implemented since coming to office.
Oh, I see. So the fact that he had FACTS, that are VERIFIABLE means nothing?
The fact that this story was published by several well respected magazines and newspapers means nothing?
I don't think you've actually READ anything Greg Palaste had to write. My guess is your mind is made up (GW is a saint, I'm a democrat, wrong on both counts buddy boy) and therefore this greg palaste guy must be some kind of kook.
The points he reported are verifiable as fact. The fact that you refuse to accept facts because they come from a biased perspective just shows how far into self denial you'll travel not to have to admit you're wrong/
And I notice you're still an AC. chickensh*t coward.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the DMCA does explicitly state it's illegal to bypass an "effective means" of copy protection. Not even the most tech-clueless judge would consider suncomm's protection effective. It doesn't work on windows machines that just happen to have auto-run disabled, it doesn't work on machines where the user is properly running his machine under a non-administrative account that doesn't have permission to install software, it doesn't work on Linux or, for the most part the MAC, making this method particularly ineffective.
The most important lesson from all this is to NEVER buy a service plan. They're a ripoff.
Their useless site only works with Flash 6, so blind people can't go there. they should be sued under the ADA for that.
haha.
These guys are morons. I don't know anyone who doesn't know how to disable auto-run on a PC. Even my mom can do it.
Also, pointing out that Linux and older MAC OSes are unaffected would technically be a violation of DMCA too according to these buffoons.
I have one of my two hacked HP48Gs sitting right in front of me right now, fancy that. One has 128k ram, the other 256k ram. The hack was published about 10 years ago, and involves soldering in a replacement memory chip or two. Took me one saturday afternoon, and my HP48G had enough memory to run SPICE, PIM, and dozen other applications.
The 48G rules, especially once you've expanded the memory to something reasonable.
Please note that the machines do not suddenly become vulnerable when the vulnerability is first reported. The vulnerability was there from the beginning, and may well have been exploited long before publication.
I.e. the fact that MS is fairly quick to patch doesn't get them a free right, the fact that they produce an OS with so many vulnerabilities means that someone, somewhere, right now, is being hacked via a vulnerability they don't know they have, and since MS OSes tend to have more than their fair share of remotely expoitable vulnerabilities, AND there are scads of those machines around, it is far more likely than not that the box being hacked as we speak, is a MS box.
Actually, I've been discussing the C part of ACID with one of the MySQL folks, and they're close, but I don't think they're quite there, and here's why.
Consistent means that when doing a transaction, the database should move from one consistent state to the next, with all constraints applied. This is according to the database theory college text book Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri and Navathe. Basically, the problem MySQL has is that you can apply constraints that are improperly processed. I.e. if you insert a number like 12345678.12 into a numeric (5,2) you'll get 999.99.
Since this "constraint" is conveniently ignored, you no longer are guaranteed a consistent database. Furthermore, you can't even apply constraints like "check id >1000 AND id
The fellow I was discussing this with at MySQL maintains that the C in ACID only applies to foreign keys, but hey, they ain't known for their indepth understanding of database theory, now are they? ;^)
Why not put LDAP on an existing server? We tossed it onto our pre-existing apache/PHP/pgsql server, and it only takes up about 100 Megs or so of memory total after it's been up for a day or two (mostly for buffers of course.)
While our load numbers went up, they didn't shoot through the roof or anything.
LDAP tends to be a pretty small load for us. If we weren't providing authentication for a non-buffering external server (*COUGH people soft *COUGH) it's be no real load at all. As it is, providing a dozen or so logins a second, it's still only about 0.2 load factor or so on the box.
Any old PII-450 with 256 Meg of ram could handle OpenLDAP quite well.
Oh dear GOD! That was way back in January of 2000! No wonder you were having issues. You should realize there's been a lot of work done on Postgrsql since then, and it is MUCH more robust with respect to vacuuming and index growth.
I'd recommend testing it again. Real testing. You should hit it with millions and millions of updates, just like the live site, and see how it runs. It really is light years ahead of where it was back then.
Let me guess, you forgot to vacuum, right?
Just wondering, did you tune Postgresql at all? Set effective_cache_size, shared_buffers, sort_mem, cpu_index_tuple_cost, cpu_tuple_cost etc... to appropriate values for your data set and load?
did you run analyze?
Did you have a vacuum job cronned up to run every X hours?
If it's been more than a year since you benchmarked Postgresql, you should really try one more time. there have been massive performance improvements in the 7.2/7.3 and 7.4 beta (soon to be rc) releases there.
/ Tidbits /perf.html
Note that, much like db2, you have to tune it to your load to get best performance, but you could afford to buy a nice used E10k for less than the cost of the db2 licenses you had and run Postgresql there.
For tuning, go here:
http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits
Just wondering, but are you on an older flavor of Postgresql? Most of the issues you mention (i.e. vacuum slowing things down) have been fixed for quite some time.
.org and .info tlds on postgresql, so it can't be impossible to get 24/7 operation out of, or the .org domain would be offline several times a day.
Also, if you haven't bothered to tune your postgresql.conf file on an older install, it will run for shit. I.e. the default settings are for a small workgroup type setup, not enterprise class stuff.
Keep in mind, Afilias runs the
Have you looked at Postgresql?
I wouldn't be surprised to see OSDL submit a TPC test in the next couple years.
Gee, how about the .org and .info TLDs. They both run on Postgresql using ERServer for replication.
:-)
that big / critical / high performance enough for ya?
Being able to call stored procs in that way isn't nearly as big a deal as the lack of packaging for postgresql. It's nice that in Oracle you can install and uninstall a package that has all that built in and ready to go, and that they can bascially live in their own name spaces.
with the introduction of schemas, it may be possible for someone to make a packaging system for Postgresql.
Oh, and just an additional point, postgresql supports way more than just the one stored proc language.
Stored procedures / user functions can be written in C, Python, Perl, PHP, PL/PGSQL, PL/SQL, Ruby, R, and a couple more I can't remember the name of right now.
QUOTE:
.org and the .info domains in Postgresql using the erserver replication system?
.org or .info systems go down lately, seems to be working well enough.
Run a SQL Server farm on the back end if you cant afford an Oracle license. Don't be an OSS idealogue in the business world, you end up unemployed.
UNQUOTE
You do know that afilias runs the
Which means when you type in "http://ask.slashdot.org" your request is resolved by Postgresql using a (now) OSS solution for replication?
I haven't seen the
No, McDonalds was being punished because they're already had 700 complaints filed against them for keeping their coffee too hot.
McDonalds was punished because the "Notice" on the side of the cup wasn't a "Warning" as it should have been.
McDonalds was punished because, in court, they made the argument that this lady's burns didn't matter because 700 cases of burns are statistically insignificant.
You realize it takes 20 seconds to cause third degree burns if the coffee is 140F, 6 seconds at 160, and 2 seconds at 180F? McDonalds at the time had a manual stating that coffee was to be kept at something like 185 to 190F. It's an exponential curve. How long was your hand in contact with the coffee? Less than two seconds? Then you likely didn't get worse than first or maybe second degree burns. If the coffee had been just 160 degrees, it may well have only caused 2nd degree burns for this lady.
They didn't drop the temp til after the trial, but they did long before the final settlement. I.e. Once they realized they weren't going to win the appeal, the went ahead and dropped the temp, since it would have hurt their case to drop the temp right in the middle of it and tacitly imply that they knew 180+ was too hot.
I'd always thought McDonalds coffee was way too hot, which is why I hardly ever drank it back in the 70s and 80s.
Ummm. Actually, it's my understanding that long before the case was settled, McD's had already dropped the temp.
But try this:
sit on a vinyl folding chair.
Pour your 180F coffee in your lap.
sit for 90 seconds.
That's what happened to the old lady.
Exactly. The cups were weak, and when squeezed with very little force, would cause the lid to pop off. Combine this with vinyl seats like the one in the car the lady was driving, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
By the way, if you google a bit, you'll find only a few of the top of the line coffee making machines make coffee at 195F or above, most brew at about 180, with a burner that only heats to about 140 or so. Coffee that's kept at 180+F gets nasty and burnt tasting fast.
Quote from http://www.burnsurvivor.com/burn_types_third.html:
Third Degree Burns
"Third-degree burns affect the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, causing charring of skin or a translucent white color, with coagulated vessels visible just below the skin surface. "
You were saying? Maybe you should look into this case, in fact, the lady DID receive third degree burns, had to have skin grafts on her genitals, and was hospitalized for something like 6 months. All she asked McDonalds for was medical expenses, they refused, then she sued. While the initial settlement was in the millions, an appeal lowered it into the hundreds of thousands.
If you're going to debunk someone, you might want to actually know what you're talking about.
The difference between normal coffee (your home coffee maker and 7-11's both maintain coffee at about 140 degrees) and McDonalds coffee (180 degrees) is actually VERY high, as the heat energy contained in that 180 degree coffee can cause third degree burns within seconds, while 140 degree coffee takes quite a long time just to produce 1st degree burns.
Given your lack of knowledge of third degree burns, it's kinda hard to take your "knowledge" of how hot coffee should be served seriously.
Way back, over 10 years ago, I took Tae Kwon Do from a guy who was then a 5th degree grand master, and is now something like a 7th degree grand master. He said the average time to get a Black Belt from him was 3 to 5 years, and if you were really good maybe 2 or two and a half years, if you practiced 5 or more days a week.
He told us that if we wanted to go to tournaments, we could only go when we were yellow belts (9th kyup, second lowest belt, right after white.)
I never went to a tournament to fight, but after a year or so (I was up to 6th kyup by then) I went ot watch one, and realized why he wouldn't let us fight. There were black belts out there I could have taken apart.
In order to get our belts, we had to break boards that weren't held, just sitting sideways on a desk top, and you had to hit them fast enough to break them with speed alone.
I watched the black belts trying to break boards at the tournament at the exhibition before hand, and the guys holding the boards were holding them super strong, and still these guys had a problem breaking them. Still, it often took several attempts for them to break them. They weren't any thicker or stronger than the pine boards we used (6"x8"x1/2").
I realized at that tournament that most places that teach martial arts are just diploma mills, and never went to another tournament. They really held no interest for me after that.
" Can you possibly rebut a single FACT I've posted?"
If you would ever bother to post one, I would.
Here's my original FACTS that you obviously haven't read:
That over 80,000 names are known to have been removed that should not have, and the majority of these were democrats?
Rebut it. Prove it wrong. you can't. It happened, and it's documented.
Can you possibly rebut a single FACT I've posted?
The FACTS posted in Gpalaste's web site are just that, facts. If you can't rebut them by any other way than painting him as a biased liberal, then you are doing nothing but adhominem attacks. This reflects poorly on your reasoning skills.
No, you can't. I'm not a liberal, I'm an actual factual conservative. Unlike GW, his dad, or Ronald Reagan. Just because someone disagrees with a republican does not make them a liberal, and nowadays, it's a good bet they're a REAL conservative.
The last conservative Republican president was Teddy Roosevelt. After him, they're all just liberals in conservative clothing.
War On Drugs: liberal policy.
Trickle down economics: liberal policy.
Free rides for large corporations: liberal policy.
Overthrowing other governments on flimsy / non-existant evidence: liberal policy.
anti-immigration: liberal policy.
Please, identify one REAL conservative policy that GW Bush has implemented since coming to office.
Oh, I see. So the fact that he had FACTS, that are VERIFIABLE means nothing?
The fact that this story was published by several well respected magazines and newspapers means nothing?
I don't think you've actually READ anything Greg Palaste had to write. My guess is your mind is made up (GW is a saint, I'm a democrat, wrong on both counts buddy boy) and therefore this greg palaste guy must be some kind of kook.
The points he reported are verifiable as fact. The fact that you refuse to accept facts because they come from a biased perspective just shows how far into self denial you'll travel not to have to admit you're wrong/
And I notice you're still an AC. chickensh*t coward.