The question you should be asking yourself is why organizations like
the NSA and DARPA, which are after all dedicated to eavesdropping and
intelligence gathering, would want to spend time and resources making
the computer systems of target nations more secure.
I would say it's a strech to call the Defence Advanced Research
Projects Agency an organization dedicated to eavesdropping and intelligence
gathering. Their entire purpose is simply to research things that might be
useful to the Department of Defence; however, I will grant you that a large
part of what the DoD does is intelligence gathering and eavesdropping -- but
it's part of their job, and they don't really shy away from telling the
citizens that. On top of all that, if you're going to be so overly paranoid
about government involvement in public projects, then why in the hell are
you using the internet anyways? It began its life as a DARPA project, as
research into self-healing networks.
Also, the NSA isn't dedicated to eavesdropping or intelligence
gathering. If you read their original charter, it seems that it was
originally created to help organize and distribute intelligence information
gathered from the various intelligence agencies working for the US. That
isn't all they do either, as this country has changed and their existence
become more widely known, their role has changed somehwat as well.
Specifically, they also play a role in securing this country (meaning it's
citizens, businesses and government) from foreign attack, espionage, and
intelligence gathering/manipulation. They are, after all, the
National Security Agency.
So, as part of the ideal of securing the nation, they decided
that it would be a good idea to make a highly securable operating system
available to the public (meaning it's citizens, businesses and government)
for free. Given that, it's not too hard to see why they chose Linux as
their candidate: It's already available freely, it's already somewhat
securely designed, and already implements a unix-style user-based security
model. Not only that, but they realized for the system to be truly
secure, that it's source code and thus it's development also had to be
open to the public and freely available.
I don't think there is any doubt that the NSA has been entirely
up front with everyone on this. If it weren't the case, there is no
way that the SELinux security model would be included in Linux today,
and I don't see any directives from the Ministry Of Coding demanding
it's implementation. On the other point, the DARPA was just throwing
around some research money (it's what they do best) and decided that
this project might turn out something useful; they were wrong, but
it didn't really seem as if they had any opportunity for misdirection
anyways.
The goal of the Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to
build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from
free software.
I thought we were already doing that? Or at least, isn't Debian
already doing that? Is there a more lofty goal here I'm missing?
However, I was thinking that this would be a very interesting
site to host a data haven. It's naturually shielded in it's
physical location, has it's own source of power, was
previously secured by the NSA as a *spy station*, it has
(according to the article) the best fiber-optic cable
available run all over the place, carpet welded to the floor
to help prevent static buildup, and even shielding against
extraneous radiation from the lights! I suppose the big problem
would be working up a secureable link into the internet from that
location; perhaps the satallite dishes could've even been used to
that end.
*sighs* I guess I just get kinda wistful at the idea of heavily
secured, well connected, and self-contained former U.S. spy outposts.
Again, maybe it's just me..
It's mostly semantic, but conversely, can you imagine
how many legitamate Buchanon voters are going to jump
ship and place their vote for Bush? Holding a re-election in
this county would be absolutely tragic.
Actually, IPv5 had nothing to do with being a successor to IPv4. It is
a separate protocol called: Internet Stream Protocol (ST or ST-II for
version 2). The only things that these protocols have in common is that
they operate on the same level (which I've commonly heard refered to as
the "Internet Protocol Level"), and they're both required to use the
first four bits in each packet to denote their Internet Protocol
Version (see link below).
This can cause a good amount of confusion, as I'm not even sure if the
protocol was named for the level or the level was named for the first
wide-spread protocol to operate at that level (which was IPv4, or
Internet Protocol Version 4). To add to this confusion, they decided to
open up the first protocol at version 4 and leave versions 1-3 unassigned.
The list of assigned "Internet Protocol" versions is available from
IANA's Protocol/Number Assignments Directory.
Re:As if I needed an excuse to avoid GNOME 1.2.0
on
Gnome 1.2.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but WTF..
I actually use Slackware's package facilities quite often. Everytime I compile a new piece of software from scratch (which is usually the only route for slackware users), the first thing I do is to create a corresponding slackware.tgz package and place it in my package archives.
I do this for a lot of reasons. Uninstalling (and sometimes upgrading) software on slackware can be a major pain in the ass. Also, after my system breaks, I have an easy way to get most of my system back in a fairly decent amount of time providing I don't loose the package archive.
Oh, LinuxMafia Package Central has a decent amount of 3rd party slackware packages. In most generic cases, if I can find something there first, I'll end up using it. Gnome 1.2.0 isn't available there yet, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it showed up there soon.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say it's a strech to call the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency an organization dedicated to eavesdropping and intelligence gathering. Their entire purpose is simply to research things that might be useful to the Department of Defence; however, I will grant you that a large part of what the DoD does is intelligence gathering and eavesdropping -- but it's part of their job, and they don't really shy away from telling the citizens that. On top of all that, if you're going to be so overly paranoid about government involvement in public projects, then why in the hell are you using the internet anyways? It began its life as a DARPA project, as research into self-healing networks.
Also, the NSA isn't dedicated to eavesdropping or intelligence gathering. If you read their original charter, it seems that it was originally created to help organize and distribute intelligence information gathered from the various intelligence agencies working for the US. That isn't all they do either, as this country has changed and their existence become more widely known, their role has changed somehwat as well. Specifically, they also play a role in securing this country (meaning it's citizens, businesses and government) from foreign attack, espionage, and intelligence gathering/manipulation. They are, after all, the National Security Agency.
So, as part of the ideal of securing the nation, they decided that it would be a good idea to make a highly securable operating system available to the public (meaning it's citizens, businesses and government) for free. Given that, it's not too hard to see why they chose Linux as their candidate: It's already available freely, it's already somewhat securely designed, and already implements a unix-style user-based security model. Not only that, but they realized for the system to be truly secure, that it's source code and thus it's development also had to be open to the public and freely available.
I don't think there is any doubt that the NSA has been entirely up front with everyone on this. If it weren't the case, there is no way that the SELinux security model would be included in Linux today, and I don't see any directives from the Ministry Of Coding demanding it's implementation. On the other point, the DARPA was just throwing around some research money (it's what they do best) and decided that this project might turn out something useful; they were wrong, but it didn't really seem as if they had any opportunity for misdirection anyways.
It begs the question: Why mention that he's a retired clown?
I always thought Ron Popeil kinda looked like
Bob Woodward.
*sighs* I guess I just get kinda wistful at the idea of heavily secured, well connected, and self-contained former U.S. spy outposts. Again, maybe it's just me..
It's mostly semantic, but conversely, can you imagine
how many legitamate Buchanon voters are going to jump
ship and place their vote for Bush? Holding a re-election in
this county would be absolutely tragic.
Well, if you put any stock in Tecumseh's curse, I would rather see a republican elected in a year that ends with zero. ;)
This can cause a good amount of confusion, as I'm not even sure if the protocol was named for the level or the level was named for the first wide-spread protocol to operate at that level (which was IPv4, or Internet Protocol Version 4). To add to this confusion, they decided to open up the first protocol at version 4 and leave versions 1-3 unassigned. The list of assigned "Internet Protocol" versions is available from IANA's Protocol/Number Assignments Directory.
I actually use Slackware's package facilities quite often. Everytime I compile a new piece of software from scratch (which is usually the only route for slackware users), the first thing I do is to create a corresponding slackware .tgz package and place it in my package archives.
I do this for a lot of reasons. Uninstalling (and sometimes upgrading) software on slackware can be a major pain in the ass. Also, after my system breaks, I have an easy way to get most of my system back in a fairly decent amount of time providing I don't loose the package archive.
Oh, LinuxMafia Package Central has a decent amount of 3rd party slackware packages. In most generic cases, if I can find something there first, I'll end up using it. Gnome 1.2.0 isn't available there yet, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it showed up there soon.