Instead of giving the computer to the police "internet experts", give it to the 85-year-old desk jockey who does everything on paper and has never seen a computer. Ask *him* which browser is the hardest to retrieve information from.
In Canada, we have a bunch of urban rescue teams ready to go - but nobody wants them.
Ditto for the Army's DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) - water purifiers (capable of producing 200,000 liters of water per day,) food, blankets, medical supplies, and other necessities. They've been offered. They're ready to go - they could have been there today. But apparently the US doesn't want them.
How about static device files in/dev? You know, like how the Linux world worked for years before people wanted to mimic FreeBSD?
I can live with/dev/sda being there even when my thumbdrive isn't connected. It doesn't bother me one whit.
The whole point of udev is that new devices do show up
Yes, and it's currently broken (at least in my experience.) That makes it rather pointless, no?
it sounds like you have some misconfiguration issue
That's entirely possible, however the fact that documentation is non-existant, and I don't have time to wade through mostly uncommented source code trying to understand how it works so that I can fix it means that I'll just stick with the status quo.
I run Slackware, and just started using 2.6 in production a couple of months ago (about when 2.6.12 came out.)
So far, I'd recommend staying away from udev - it's just way too flaky for words - it seems OK if your hardware doesn't change, but when you start hotplugging and the device nodes don't show up unless you "sudo/etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart", it gets old very quickly.
Stability-wise it's OK, I'm using it on two desktops, three servers and my laptop, and haven't had a crash or oops. (Although I've only been running it for a couple of months.)
General desktop performance (KDE) is OK - I saw no noticeable difference from 2.4.
NWN is noticeably slower however - there seems to be a lot more disk thrashing while playing, even though swap is unused and there is a ton of free RAM (I think I might need to tweak something in/sys/block/hda/queue.) For the time being, I've switched back to 2.4 for NWN.
some a$$hole spammer has decided to start using my domain as a from address in his spams
This is known as "joe jobbing." It's happened to me a couple of times.
Anyone got any good suggestions?
The bounce messages are typically coming from mailservers operated by brain-dead admins. These servers accept the email from trojaned machines, and then bounce it to you when they try to deliver it to the recipient.
As these servers are obviously misconfigured, block them so they have to deal with the bounce messages (it's the only way they'll get the message.) There's typically only a couple of dozen or so that are doing this. If possible, block mail from "Administrator@", MAILER-DAEMON, or null sender for those servers. (Note that blocking the null sender is a violation of applicable RFCs.. 2821, IIRC.)
I worked at a convenience store when I was younger - on one of the shelves we discovered a twinkee that was 6 years old. Still wrapped in plastic, the thing was as hard as a rock (literally.)
We threw it as hard as we could at the arborite countertop. The arborite chipped, but the twinkee was unscathed.
We hit it with a hammer. Repeatedly. It wouldn't break.
We debated selling them to the military as a new armor-piercing shell.
I heard of a tech at Freak Squad wiping a drive to fix the virus or whatever problem
That's nothing.
A (new) customer of ours brought their system in because it wouldn't connect to the internet (cablemodem.) They had a guy come "fix" it for them two weeks ago, but his diagnosis ("there is a virus in your network card") and his solution ("buy this new network card from me") only fixed the problem for a day or so.
Yes, he was (apparently) A+ certified, and no, I'm not making this up.
If you have physical access to the machine and can get to the boot prompt, it doesn't matter one whit about the "security" of your loader, you already have root access.
Even with a completely secure bootloader, it's not like you couldn't boot off a CDROM, floppy disk, or thubmdrive. Umm.. so that would mean that the *BIOS* is a bigger "security point of failure".
So you'd need a completely secure bootloader, *AND* a completely secure BIOS. Oh, but then you can just take the HD out and stick it in another machine, and *POOF* there goes your completely secure machine.
So what does this mean? It means that the *ARCHETECTURE* is the "security point of failure."
Fix that, then come talk to me about how insecure the bootloader is.
Looks like someone doesn't know very much about HTTP.
There are many more ways to discover (rather than having to guess) that 1513542 is the filename than guessing a password.
Besides the fact that most filenames are based on a logical sequence (so 1513542 would logically follow 1513541, and someone who has access to it might *MISTYPE* the filename, and thus get the wrong 'secure' document) how about pulling it out of a cache? Link referral (it's not inconceivable that if the file has a link, and is opened within a web browser, that the filename will be sent as part of the referrer(sic) header), or from proxy logs?
If you *really* think there is no difference between using a 'hidden' filename and using a password, then you have no clue about how HTTP works (or even security in general.)
I'm sure we have been actively attacking them from day one.
Yeah right! Everbody knows that the USA is the only place that actually invents anything - everybody else just a copycat.
From the lightbulb, AC power and the telephone, to radio, all the way to the WWW, the USA has and always will be the only country that invents anything. It's why the terrorists hate us!
We have no reason to attack other countries, because we have nothing to learn from them - don't you know anything? You should watch more Fox News.
While I agree with you that most spammers are in the US, that's not what the poster said.
He said that the IP addresses which send the most spam are in China. The fact that most spammers operate out of the US has no bearing on where they send their spam from.
Note that it doesn't mean that he's right, just that pointing out that most spammers are from the US doesn't prove that he's wrong.
DRM isn't a means to prevent an individual from using their music whereever they go, it is to reduce the redistribution to others that didn't pay for it.
No, actually. DRM is a way to give corporations more control than they have by law.
For example, Apple lets the same DRMed music be played on up to five computers.
Wow, that's very magnanimous of them, isn't it? "Allowing" their customers, who have paid them the ability to exercise their fair use rights a *whopping* five times!
And to think that some people don't feel *gratitude* that Apple doesn't restrict their rights even more! The ungrateful fools - why, I bet when they get mugged, they don't even thank the mugger profusely for not shooting them!
consider the coder who comes up with an idea for the next killer app. If they can't get startup funding to hire a few extra sets of brains and typing-fingers domestically, what are their options?
How about turning the idea into code, relasing it as Open Source and selling service?
You seem to be under the "software is a product" mindset - it doesn't have to be so.
Maybe they didn't *WANT* to pay money for disclosing it? Maybe they decided that it wasn't really patentable, and that it would be dishonest to try to patent it.
The mistake in your logic is that you believe that everybody who invents something is going to want to file a patent, and that everybody who files a patent has something that's honestly innovative (think about Amazon's "one click" BS.)
The very basis of DRM is that it's and end-run around fair use.
Because it's implemented by a machine, and machines cannot know the intent of someone using the material it protects, a DRM system cannot tell the difference between infringing and non-infringing uses. Therefore the only way for a DRM system to stop copyright infringement is to stop all copying, which stops the *legal* kind, as well as the *illegal* kind.
In short, it's objectionable because it screws people out of their rights.
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You took the words right out of my mouth!
There's nothing obscure about any of this.
Here's a test:
Instead of giving the computer to the police "internet experts", give it to the 85-year-old desk jockey who does everything on paper and has never seen a computer. Ask *him* which browser is the hardest to retrieve information from.
Umm... didn't they invent the orgy? :o)
It's not just that.
In Canada, we have a bunch of urban rescue teams ready to go - but nobody wants them.
Ditto for the Army's DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) - water purifiers (capable of producing 200,000 liters of water per day,) food, blankets, medical supplies, and other necessities. They've been offered. They're ready to go - they could have been there today. But apparently the US doesn't want them.
you'd suggest what as an alternative?
/dev? You know, like how the Linux world worked for years before people wanted to mimic FreeBSD?
/dev/sda being there even when my thumbdrive isn't connected. It doesn't bother me one whit.
How about static device files in
I can live with
The whole point of udev is that new devices do show up
Yes, and it's currently broken (at least in my experience.) That makes it rather pointless, no?
it sounds like you have some misconfiguration issue
That's entirely possible, however the fact that documentation is non-existant, and I don't have time to wade through mostly uncommented source code trying to understand how it works so that I can fix it means that I'll just stick with the status quo.
I run Slackware, and just started using 2.6 in production a couple of months ago (about when 2.6.12 came out.)
/etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart", it gets old very quickly.
/sys/block/hda/queue.) For the time being, I've switched back to 2.4 for NWN.
So far, I'd recommend staying away from udev - it's just way too flaky for words - it seems OK if your hardware doesn't change, but when you start hotplugging and the device nodes don't show up unless you "sudo
Stability-wise it's OK, I'm using it on two desktops, three servers and my laptop, and haven't had a crash or oops. (Although I've only been running it for a couple of months.)
General desktop performance (KDE) is OK - I saw no noticeable difference from 2.4.
NWN is noticeably slower however - there seems to be a lot more disk thrashing while playing, even though swap is unused and there is a ton of free RAM (I think I might need to tweak something in
some a$$hole spammer has decided to start using my domain as a from address in his spams
This is known as "joe jobbing." It's happened to me a couple of times.
Anyone got any good suggestions?
The bounce messages are typically coming from mailservers operated by brain-dead admins. These servers accept the email from trojaned machines, and then bounce it to you when they try to deliver it to the recipient.
As these servers are obviously misconfigured, block them so they have to deal with the bounce messages (it's the only way they'll get the message.) There's typically only a couple of dozen or so that are doing this. If possible, block mail from "Administrator@", MAILER-DAEMON, or null sender for those servers. (Note that blocking the null sender is a violation of applicable RFCs.. 2821, IIRC.)
Once the joe job is over, remove the block.
I worked at a convenience store when I was younger - on one of the shelves we discovered a twinkee that was 6 years old. Still wrapped in plastic, the thing was as hard as a rock (literally.)
We threw it as hard as we could at the arborite countertop. The arborite chipped, but the twinkee was unscathed.
We hit it with a hammer. Repeatedly. It wouldn't break.
We debated selling them to the military as a new armor-piercing shell.
I heard of a tech at Freak Squad wiping a drive to fix the virus or whatever problem
That's nothing.
A (new) customer of ours brought their system in because it wouldn't connect to the internet (cablemodem.) They had a guy come "fix" it for them two weeks ago, but his diagnosis ("there is a virus in your network card") and his solution ("buy this new network card from me") only fixed the problem for a day or so.
Yes, he was (apparently) A+ certified, and no, I'm not making this up.
You could buy a new $15 shredder at Walmart every week for the next 38+ years for that price!
You'd be buying them every day, not week. I don't know about you, but that's not a great way to spend my time.
And it *still* wouldn't take binders and CDs, unless you were buying them everyy 5 minutes.
My point was that a $15 disposable is *NOT* a bulk shredder.
there was a need for a bulk shredder
If there was a need for a bulk shredder, why did they use a $15 walmart piece of crap?
Those things aren't designed to run continuously - it's gonna burn out in less than a week.
Now this is a bulk shredder - it will take CD's VHS tapes, and even 3-ring binders (whole - including the rings.)
Boot loaders are a big security point of failure
Bullshit.
If you have physical access to the machine and can get to the boot prompt, it doesn't matter one whit about the "security" of your loader, you already have root access.
Even with a completely secure bootloader, it's not like you couldn't boot off a CDROM, floppy disk, or thubmdrive. Umm.. so that would mean that the *BIOS* is a bigger "security point of failure".
So you'd need a completely secure bootloader, *AND* a completely secure BIOS. Oh, but then you can just take the HD out and stick it in another machine, and *POOF* there goes your completely secure machine.
So what does this mean? It means that the *ARCHETECTURE* is the "security point of failure."
Fix that, then come talk to me about how insecure the bootloader is.
there is no difference between having to guess 15135342 in http://somesite.gov/secretdoc/15135342.doc and having to guess 15135342 as a password
Looks like someone doesn't know very much about HTTP.
There are many more ways to discover (rather than having to guess) that 1513542 is the filename than guessing a password.
Besides the fact that most filenames are based on a logical sequence (so 1513542 would logically follow 1513541, and someone who has access to it might *MISTYPE* the filename, and thus get the wrong 'secure' document) how about pulling it out of a cache? Link referral (it's not inconceivable that if the file has a link, and is opened within a web browser, that the filename will be sent as part of the referrer(sic) header), or from proxy logs?
If you *really* think there is no difference between using a 'hidden' filename and using a password, then you have no clue about how HTTP works (or even security in general.)
I'm sure we have been actively attacking them from day one.
Yeah right! Everbody knows that the USA is the only place that actually invents anything - everybody else just a copycat.
From the lightbulb, AC power and the telephone, to radio, all the way to the WWW, the USA has and always will be the only country that invents anything. It's why the terrorists hate us!
We have no reason to attack other countries, because we have nothing to learn from them - don't you know anything? You should watch more Fox News.
While I agree with you that most spammers are in the US, that's not what the poster said.
He said that the IP addresses which send the most spam are in China. The fact that most spammers operate out of the US has no bearing on where they send their spam from.
Note that it doesn't mean that he's right, just that pointing out that most spammers are from the US doesn't prove that he's wrong.
And how many machines can each admin handle?
The typical unix admin can handle many times the number of machines as a Windows admin.
So if you only need one Unix admin for every 10 Windows admins, then you've saved yourself $90,000 per year.
I *LOVE* Dovecot!
If only it did shared mailboxes, it'd be perfect.
I guess no-one expected you to want to do HTTPS in an interpreted language.
Why not? Roxen and Caudium both do it (Pike is interpreted), and (at last check) do it faster than Apache.
I am against [boobies] where little eyes could stumble across it.
Ahh, so you had your infant children blindfolded before they were fed, did you?
DRM isn't a means to prevent an individual from using their music whereever they go, it is to reduce the redistribution to others that didn't pay for it.
No, actually. DRM is a way to give corporations more control than they have by law.
For example, Apple lets the same DRMed music be played on up to five computers.
Wow, that's very magnanimous of them, isn't it? "Allowing" their customers, who have paid them the ability to exercise their fair use rights a *whopping* five times!
And to think that some people don't feel *gratitude* that Apple doesn't restrict their rights even more! The ungrateful fools - why, I bet when they get mugged, they don't even thank the mugger profusely for not shooting them!
the LCD display is all messed up.
Maybe it's a problem with the RAM memory?
we can't claim a perfect, 110% understanding of something
:o)
especially math, it would seem.
the smartcar isn't allowed in the U.S. is because it is utterly and entirely unsafe. The thing crashes at like 15mph and you're lucky to live
Yeah, that's why motorcycles are also not allowed on US roads.
consider the coder who comes up with an idea for the next killer app. If they can't get startup funding to hire a few extra sets of brains and typing-fingers domestically, what are their options?
How about turning the idea into code, relasing it as Open Source and selling service?
You seem to be under the "software is a product" mindset - it doesn't have to be so.
my question would be: what took them so long?
Maybe they didn't *WANT* to pay money for disclosing it? Maybe they decided that it wasn't really patentable, and that it would be dishonest to try to patent it.
The mistake in your logic is that you believe that everybody who invents something is going to want to file a patent, and that everybody who files a patent has something that's honestly innovative (think about Amazon's "one click" BS.)
The very basis of DRM is that it's and end-run around fair use.
Because it's implemented by a machine, and machines cannot know the intent of someone using the material it protects, a DRM system cannot tell the difference between infringing and non-infringing uses. Therefore the only way for a DRM system to stop copyright infringement is to stop all copying, which stops the *legal* kind, as well as the *illegal* kind.
In short, it's objectionable because it screws people out of their rights.