What is with this guy? Keep the PC turned around so if you know if there's a keylogger installed? 50 character passwords? Surfing from a VMWare box? What's he got on his network that he thinks is so important? I wonder if he checks his precious email with POP-S or if he just transmits his PW over the wire in plaintext? Is he worried about financial data getting out? It's easier to set up a computer not connected to the network which houses sensitive information than it is do deal with these ridiculous security whims. What is the point of having password strings that large? Brute force password attacks are very slow, noticable, and hardly ever used except by admins with a passwd dump who are doing a strength test. A 6-8 character alphanumeric with a couple of Shift-number characters thrown in is very adequate protection, IMHO.
Additionally, the fact of the matter is that most of the network attacks out there are being done by script kiddies looking for an easy system to break into so they can set up a warez server or make it part of their zombie network. If you are on some wuss home network you'll never have to worry about port scans as long as you've got a firewall and no exploitable holes exposed to the outside.
If you are being specifically TARGETED for an attack, it's a slightly different story, but even then the chances are pretty good no one's going to waste their time trying to brute force your password. Most likely they'll just send an email trojan via email to somebody inside your network that phones home right through however many layers of firewall you just happen to have. A fat lot of good a big password will do you then....
And speaking of being targeted, this guy just put a bullseye on his forehead. I have a feeling quite a few people are going to take this article to task and find out how good this guys security REALLY is.
Yeah you're right. I was just thinking that if you had millions of users you could put a lid on a lot of DNS traffic just by ignoring TTLs. Maybe rather than bandwidth, it would have been better for me to say it would ease the load on the DNS servers.
I'd say so. If you are running a huge ISP, the bandwidth savings you'd get from caching DNS entries longer could be significant. It's a double edged sword, though...It'd certainly raise hell with dynamic DNS hosts, or networks that were in the process of changing ISPs and purposefully reduced their TTL to a very short time period to facilitate the switchover.
But then, if you are a huge ISP, you probably don't care much about such things. As always, money trumps common courtesy.:-/
My opinion about that? *NIX programmers in the Windows environment don't like to reinvent the wheel, which is understandable. But they are also fish out of water. The result is that programs like Apache and PHP are patched up just enough to run, but the config files are pretty much all the same. The upshot of this is that it allows decent portability between platforms. You want to take your Apache Windows server and move it to Linux? No problem, just copy the config file and htdocs. But what that means is that regardless of the platform you still have to read through pages of docs to find out what all the options in the config file do. There is guesswork at times and syntax errors can be oh so fun to hunt down. And graphical frontends are not perfect...There's always the chance they'll munge your config file or blow out some of your custom stuff.
Now overall, the security and reliability of *NIX servers are worth the hassle for me, but let's just say I can get a Windows server up and running a lot faster, and without having to deal with arcane config file syntax.
I think the one thing that's really slowing Linux on the desktop uptake are all the dependency nightmares and package inconsistencies. Yeah, things like yum, apt-get, emerge, et al have made things a lot easier, but they are not perfect. Last night I was trying to apt-get (I hate yum with a passion) proftpd on my FC3 box and no matter what I tried in the config, users could not authenticate - I kept getting "bad password" in the logs. I ended up compiling from source and guess what, it started working. Apparently the binary package had something funky going on with its UNIX auth module.
And then there's this thing that happened yesterday. I'm experimenting with groupware and picked up Conflux. My boss walks in and sees me looking at the demo site they have, and says "that looks cool, install it". It was winding down to the end of the day, and I say "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow", to which he says "You just can't click on the "Install" icon?"
That's when I told him the tale of how I had to get the following operational on the system first: apache2, python, mod_python, postgres, and a smattering of other libraries. Then I had to write the config files to make it all work together. And I've never worked with postgres, so I don't even know how to define users or a database in it yet.
The moral of this story is that installing software on any flavor of Linux is still a royal pain that Joe user won't tolerate. Without a unified base distro and a universal package management system, that will never change.
The computer-generated scores count for about a third to a quarter of students' final grade for Brent's class. Students have challenged the scores, but if they don't use the right lingo in their papers, they're out of luck. "In sociology, we want them to learn the terms," Brent said.
It disturbs me that this program was actually approved for school wide use. Yes, yes. Never mind the content or the thoughts expressed in the paper. We just want you to use buzzwords.
This automatic grading business is not the only thing that bugs me. I have friends in college who are afraid to express their true opinion in their writing for classes because their professors have been known to flunk papers that don't agree with their personal views.
Can someone please explain to me why college is important again?
I don't think respect is really an issue, especially for paid consultants in a business environment. If you are a professional who fixes problems, no one is going to address you as "Hey, dumbass".
Even if you are a prick, most people will just grind their teeth about it rather than confront you. But it's unlikely that you'll be called back.
Keep in mind that this is Austrailia, though. Lately the Austrailian government has been bending over backwards to make the US happy, especially on intellectual property matters. God knows why this is, though...
That's fine if you're a renter, but if you are a homeowner they can put a lien on your house and get the money when you sell. If you fit that description, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise when you move. I would check with your county recorder's office if I were you to see if this is the case.
Haha, speak of the devil. Last night I was at a customers house doing the swap-out-the-computer-with-a-new-one thing and found his granddaugheter's collection of Eminem songs. I turned to her and said "Eminem is not allowed on your new computer". The grandfather reinforced my new stipulation by adding "Yes, only Perry Como is allowed".
No, they are not worth paying for...I can't explain their popularity, except to say that they are perhaps used to express ones "originality".
Here's why I use them: Since I don't keep my phone attached to my belt at all times, and my phone has the abiliy to play different ringtones based on who calls, I use them as a way to identify who is calling without having to see the phone. Being me, I tend to use rather whimsical mnemonics...My sister gets the "jaws" theme, my dad gets the "Grinch" theme, my girlfriend gets "Roxanne" from the Police...Which she doesn't appreciate for some reason, and so on. I get them by grabbing sound clips of the 'Net, editing them, and loading them in as MIDI files or, if they are digital sound, MP3.
I refuse to pay for ringtones. You go on these sites and most of them are crap anyway. For the large part they are just sound clips from the latest teen gangsta sensation. And they charge, what, $5 a pop for this garbage?
I have a Motorola v551 which is able to interpret general MIDI files and MP3s. Adding ringtones is as simple as jumping on a MIDI archive or ripping one of my CDs, truncating the song down to the part I want, and transferring them to the phone with the data cable.
Buying ringtones is right up there with paying for pr0n in my book.
Do we have any more substantial information than a small blurb at the top of a emu website?
Even if it is real, he has no hope of winning. Trademarks need not be registered to be protected, and I think there is more than enough evidence out there to prove conclusively that the logo belongs to the MAME developers.
I don't know man...The last story I heard about a DeFry grad was from a phone engineer who had to deal with one of them trying to punch down fiber into a type 110 panel. He kept retrying the punches so much that it shortend the run to the point where they had to pull it again.
So who gets the advertising revenue? A network decides whether a show lives or dies based on what they can pull in from advertising vs what it costs them to make. So if the fans give the networks a "free" show to run, is it fair that the networks get to soak up all the money from it?
I say screw the networks. Put the show on the 'Net. Allow ads to help pay for it. If this fan-funded project works, it could usher in an entirely new paradigm for the financing and distribution of entertainment.
I have in front of me the sleeve of Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set, circa 1984. On the back is says the following:
ABOUT OUR COMPANY: We're an association of electronic artists who share a common goal. We want to fulfill the potential of personal computing. That's a tall order. But with enough imagination and enthusiasm we thing there's a good chance for success. Our products, like this progra, are evidence of our intent. If you'd like to get involved, please write us at:
Electronic Arts 2755 Campus Drive San Mateo, CA 94403
It sucks what happens when the f'ing suits take over. Oh how I long for the golden days...
Slashdot Mirror
What is with this guy? Keep the PC turned around so if you know if there's a keylogger installed? 50 character passwords? Surfing from a VMWare box? What's he got on his network that he thinks is so important? I wonder if he checks his precious email with POP-S or if he just transmits his PW over the wire in plaintext? Is he worried about financial data getting out? It's easier to set up a computer not connected to the network which houses sensitive information than it is do deal with these ridiculous security whims. What is the point of having password strings that large? Brute force password attacks are very slow, noticable, and hardly ever used except by admins with a passwd dump who are doing a strength test. A 6-8 character alphanumeric with a couple of Shift-number characters thrown in is very adequate protection, IMHO.
Additionally, the fact of the matter is that most of the network attacks out there are being done by script kiddies looking for an easy system to break into so they can set up a warez server or make it part of their zombie network. If you are on some wuss home network you'll never have to worry about port scans as long as you've got a firewall and no exploitable holes exposed to the outside.
If you are being specifically TARGETED for an attack, it's a slightly different story, but even then the chances are pretty good no one's going to waste their time trying to brute force your password. Most likely they'll just send an email trojan via email to somebody inside your network that phones home right through however many layers of firewall you just happen to have. A fat lot of good a big password will do you then....
And speaking of being targeted, this guy just put a bullseye on his forehead. I have a feeling quite a few people are going to take this article to task and find out how good this guys security REALLY is.
Yeah you're right. I was just thinking that if you had millions of users you could put a lid on a lot of DNS traffic just by ignoring TTLs. Maybe rather than bandwidth, it would have been better for me to say it would ease the load on the DNS servers.
I'd say so. If you are running a huge ISP, the bandwidth savings you'd get from caching DNS entries longer could be significant. It's a double edged sword, though...It'd certainly raise hell with dynamic DNS hosts, or networks that were in the process of changing ISPs and purposefully reduced their TTL to a very short time period to facilitate the switchover.
:-/
But then, if you are a huge ISP, you probably don't care much about such things. As always, money trumps common courtesy.
My opinion about that? *NIX programmers in the Windows environment don't like to reinvent the wheel, which is understandable. But they are also fish out of water. The result is that programs like Apache and PHP are patched up just enough to run, but the config files are pretty much all the same. The upshot of this is that it allows decent portability between platforms. You want to take your Apache Windows server and move it to Linux? No problem, just copy the config file and htdocs. But what that means is that regardless of the platform you still have to read through pages of docs to find out what all the options in the config file do. There is guesswork at times and syntax errors can be oh so fun to hunt down. And graphical frontends are not perfect...There's always the chance they'll munge your config file or blow out some of your custom stuff.
Now overall, the security and reliability of *NIX servers are worth the hassle for me, but let's just say I can get a Windows server up and running a lot faster, and without having to deal with arcane config file syntax.
I think the one thing that's really slowing Linux on the desktop uptake are all the dependency nightmares and package inconsistencies. Yeah, things like yum, apt-get, emerge, et al have made things a lot easier, but they are not perfect. Last night I was trying to apt-get (I hate yum with a passion) proftpd on my FC3 box and no matter what I tried in the config, users could not authenticate - I kept getting "bad password" in the logs. I ended up compiling from source and guess what, it started working. Apparently the binary package had something funky going on with its UNIX auth module.
And then there's this thing that happened yesterday. I'm experimenting with groupware and picked up Conflux. My boss walks in and sees me looking at the demo site they have, and says "that looks cool, install it". It was winding down to the end of the day, and I say "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow", to which he says "You just can't click on the "Install" icon?"
That's when I told him the tale of how I had to get the following operational on the system first: apache2, python, mod_python, postgres, and a smattering of other libraries. Then I had to write the config files to make it all work together. And I've never worked with postgres, so I don't even know how to define users or a database in it yet.
The moral of this story is that installing software on any flavor of Linux is still a royal pain that Joe user won't tolerate. Without a unified base distro and a universal package management system, that will never change.
The computer-generated scores count for about a third to a quarter of students' final grade for Brent's class. Students have challenged the scores, but if they don't use the right lingo in their papers, they're out of luck. "In sociology, we want them to learn the terms," Brent said.
It disturbs me that this program was actually approved for school wide use. Yes, yes. Never mind the content or the thoughts expressed in the paper. We just want you to use buzzwords.
This automatic grading business is not the only thing that bugs me. I have friends in college who are afraid to express their true opinion in their writing for classes because their professors have been known to flunk papers that don't agree with their personal views.
Can someone please explain to me why college is important again?
How about we drop daylight savings alltogether?
I don't think respect is really an issue, especially for paid consultants in a business environment. If you are a professional who fixes problems, no one is going to address you as "Hey, dumbass".
Even if you are a prick, most people will just grind their teeth about it rather than confront you. But it's unlikely that you'll be called back.
In addition it could also possibly pose an interesting safety issue, since a pedestrian or motorist would not hear it coming.
Haven't these guys ever heard of the cardboard in the spokes trick?
Keep in mind that this is Austrailia, though. Lately the Austrailian government has been bending over backwards to make the US happy, especially on intellectual property matters. God knows why this is, though...
That's fine if you're a renter, but if you are a homeowner they can put a lien on your house and get the money when you sell. If you fit that description, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise when you move. I would check with your county recorder's office if I were you to see if this is the case.
Would you really want THESE guys in charge of national security?
You might want to keep in mind that English is not the primary language of a lot of Slashdotters.
I would have RMS preside over the ceremony.
Careful with that sword there, boy.
It's quite possible if a Perry Como trifecta is in the cards.
Haha, speak of the devil. Last night I was at a customers house doing the swap-out-the-computer-with-a-new-one thing and found his granddaugheter's collection of Eminem songs. I turned to her and said "Eminem is not allowed on your new computer". The grandfather reinforced my new stipulation by adding "Yes, only Perry Como is allowed".
Are you the guy that's been following me?
No, they are not worth paying for...I can't explain their popularity, except to say that they are perhaps used to express ones "originality".
Here's why I use them: Since I don't keep my phone attached to my belt at all times, and my phone has the abiliy to play different ringtones based on who calls, I use them as a way to identify who is calling without having to see the phone. Being me, I tend to use rather whimsical mnemonics...My sister gets the "jaws" theme, my dad gets the "Grinch" theme, my girlfriend gets "Roxanne" from the Police...Which she doesn't appreciate for some reason, and so on. I get them by grabbing sound clips of the 'Net, editing them, and loading them in as MIDI files or, if they are digital sound, MP3.
I refuse to pay for ringtones. You go on these sites and most of them are crap anyway. For the large part they are just sound clips from the latest teen gangsta sensation. And they charge, what, $5 a pop for this garbage?
I have a Motorola v551 which is able to interpret general MIDI files and MP3s. Adding ringtones is as simple as jumping on a MIDI archive or ripping one of my CDs, truncating the song down to the part I want, and transferring them to the phone with the data cable.
Buying ringtones is right up there with paying for pr0n in my book.
Speak for yourself. I love my job.
how best can one prepare for the advent of the broadcast flag?"
Stop watching TV. It CAN be done!
Do we have any more substantial information than a small blurb at the top of a emu website?
Even if it is real, he has no hope of winning. Trademarks need not be registered to be protected, and I think there is more than enough evidence out there to prove conclusively that the logo belongs to the MAME developers.
I don't know man...The last story I heard about a DeFry grad was from a phone engineer who had to deal with one of them trying to punch down fiber into a type 110 panel. He kept retrying the punches so much that it shortend the run to the point where they had to pull it again.
So who gets the advertising revenue? A network decides whether a show lives or dies based on what they can pull in from advertising vs what it costs them to make. So if the fans give the networks a "free" show to run, is it fair that the networks get to soak up all the money from it?
I say screw the networks. Put the show on the 'Net. Allow ads to help pay for it. If this fan-funded project works, it could usher in an entirely new paradigm for the financing and distribution of entertainment.
It's just Monopoly except the first rule says it must be pitch black in the room before you start playing.
I have in front of me the sleeve of Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set, circa 1984. On the back is says the following:
ABOUT OUR COMPANY: We're an association of electronic artists who share a common goal. We want to fulfill the potential of personal computing. That's a tall order. But with enough imagination and enthusiasm we thing there's a good chance for success. Our products, like this progra, are evidence of our intent. If you'd like to get involved, please write us at:
Electronic Arts
2755 Campus Drive
San Mateo, CA 94403
It sucks what happens when the f'ing suits take over. Oh how I long for the golden days...