Thanks! I sure hope that more slashdotters will do the same. For once, the Slashdot effect can be used to save a thriving technology and medium, and not bring down a webserver!:-)
One of the biggest grassroots movement right now is run by Voice of Webcasters, who're running a campaign to save Internet Radio by sending one million faxes to Congress. It would be a shame to see a fledging technology like Internet Radio go to/dev/null. If you truly care about Internet Radio technology, I urge you to send a free fax to Congress right now. The US House of Representatives go on Summer Recess on July 26th, while the Senate goes August 2nd. If we don't do anything now, a LOT of non-commercial and small Internet Radio stations will be gone by September!
Even if you don't listen to Net Radio now, you might in the future. Sending a free fax doesn't cost you anything, apart from two minutes of your time.
So I urge you. Please. Prove this article wrong. Show that the grassroots movement is definitely still there.
paradesign, thanks for pointing out something that has been irritating me for years.
In my opinion, every single person who posts anything on the web should never post something online in *.ps.gz format ever, ever again! *.ps.gz format used to be fine a long time ago, when researchers and academics exchange papers using UNIX boxes. *.ps.gz is terribly Windows unfriendly. More than that, it's Web-unfriendly. Nothing is a bigger turn off than encountering a interesting document/paper in the archaic.ps or.ps.gz format.
Even if somebody posts a Postscript file or gzipped Postscript file online, they could at the very least put up a PDF version too. If they can produce a Postscript file and gzip it, they definitely have the technical ability to produce a PDF file from Ghostscript's ps2pdf or Acrobat.
Now before you think I'm a Windows-only person, who have no clue about using Winzip or installing Ghostscript, let me assure you that I'm not. I use Linux all the time.. but I still prefer my files in PDF. There are a few occassions when I use Windows, such as when I'm at a friend's place or the like. And when I encounter a.ps.gz file, it's a big hassle to install Ghostview and Ghostscript and all that. If it was provided in PDF in the first place, all this unnecessary hassle could have been avoided from the very start.
Of course, the typical geek excuse (or advice depending on how you see it) would be to say "you can always install Winzip, Ghostscript and Ghostview, or some Postscript viewer browser plugin." Please. Users would want their files opened right away. No hassles, no messing around with weird programs, and no installing megabytes worth of stuff just to view a single file.
And even if PDF files are provided, there are many occassions when the PDF files have jagged fonts which don't display well on Acrobat Reader.. especially if they've been produced by LaTeX. There are ways to solve that, but that's a different story.
So paradesign, thanks once again for bringing this up.
Moderators, remember that moderation is not a measure of how much you agree with somebody's post.
There has to be a more mature approach to vulnerability disclosure. We can't always just disclose a serious vulnerability without a fix available in place, especially if it involves a large number of systems.
I think Theo and the OpenSSH team are being responsible, and it shows that they've grown up. The right approach should be to disclose to the appropriate parties first, get a fix done QUICK, and then followed by a full disclosure.
Full disclosure at the premature time is naive and only leads to wide-scale insecurity, NOT security.
Yes the first Apache chunked encoding exploit released by Gobbles was targeted at OpenBSD. Grants you remote access but not root. To get root you still have to run a local kernel exploit. But Apache is not enabled by default in OpenBSD.
I think the difference is that the vending machine cost of $350 million is a one-time cost, while $45 million (or more) of counterfeiting happens every year.
So we should all switch to rotary phones because some tourists might use them in the homeland? Screw that
I think the difference here is that it's not just "some tourists" who're affected by this. AFAIK almost all countries in the world have different colored currency notes.
Well you've got to be kidding me
on
Greenbacks No More
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· Score: 2, Redundant
It looks as though you've never travelled or lived outside the U.S. in your entire life.
Having different colors does make a huge difference for a lot of people. I've lived in four countries (including the U.S. now) and I definitely think that colored foreign currency notes are much easier to handle compared to boring green U.S. notes.
Re:I wonder what happened to FreeBSD 5.0
on
FreeBSD 4.6
·
· Score: 2
But buying the cd's helps the FreeBSD project, and really isn't that expensive.
That depends on where you come from. Of course, $39.95 isn't that expensive in North America, but in many other places in the world, $39.95 is a huge deal. For example, where I come from, $39.95 would be more than $150 in local currency.
"Me, my salvation, my personal goals." It sounds a bit self-centered, don't you think?
Well, then it is. But that's just me and how I am.
My question made you feel like getting into a debate? Why are you so defensive?
Aren't all the comments here on Slashdot, especially on stories like this, a huge debate? It's neither right nor wrong, and no one knows for sure. You might think that I'm being defensive, but actually I'm just being frank and letting you know that I'm not interested in discussions which I think will lead nowhere. You're more than welcome to have different views.
I think this statement really demonstrates the flaw in your thinking. I'm not looking for "the answer" and I certainly don't think it's going to be found in the bible. I can argue capably and scripturally that the bible raises many more questions than it answers. What I was asking for were opinions from Christians, not answers. You don't have "the truth" and you are not obligated to give "God's answer" any time a question comes up. All I really wanted was opinions.
I'm not saying that that site has *the* answer and all that. In a way, the guy who wrote that site is also just stating his opinion. It's just that he probably made up his opinion based on more research than I did, so I just wanted to point it out to you. As for me, I'd rather form my own opinion only after doing the proper research, and not believe anything just because other people "say so." But this issue is something I'm not particularly interested in, so I'm not going to spend my time and energy researching this. So my opinion is: I don't believe in aliens out there, but I don't really care. But again, that's just me.
Unlike many atheists you may have met, I respect the dignity, inherent worth, and thoughts of Christians. I believe it's called, "Hate the Christianity, love the Christian.";)
I appreciate that. There are many atheists out there who absolutely do not want to have anything to do with Christians or Christianity. But I did not consider you to be one of those at all when I read your post. In fact, I don't have problems with atheists and non-Christians. I'm not one of those who'll push Christianity down your throat. I treat everyone fairly. Even if a Christian asked a similar question to yours (the follow-up question I mean, where you let me know that the site is not what you're looking for), I would've answered the same way.
It may be interesting to you, but it's not to me. You might be interested in certain TV shows which I'm not interested in. Same here.
I did not say that it's meaningless, I just said it's uninteresting to me. I'd rather spend my time and energy exploring things that are interesting to me... things which I believe in.
You can go ahead and spend your life examining alien life if you want, I've no problem with you doing that. I'm just not interested in participating.
Yes, I'm a Christian. And, to be frank, I don't really care whether there are aliens out there. Whether or not they are out there is not going to affect me, my salvation, and my personal goals here on Earth.
I personally don't believe that there are aliens, but I'm not going to prove that to you in any way. Why? Because I don't have the time to start researching the evidence about something that doesn't interest me. So I'm not going to get into a debate that will go nowhere. I do think that NASA and a lot of people are wasting too much money and time looking for aliens, when those resources could've been more usefully spent on things that will benefit humankind.
I just saw your post and thought that site might be helpful.
I agree with you totally. I'm a big opensource freak and I consider myself a power user and probably in Roblimo's "smart" category, but I will never, ever force Linux or down anybody's throat. I've seen too many geeks pushing Linux-ish stuff down Windows users' throats, like proposing stuff like LaTeX for secretaries (!!!), vi for non-UNIX users, and the like. People will definitely be put off by such behavior.
I respect Windows users and their wishes. Although I won't use it much myself, if others would like to use Windows, I've no problem with that.
Another bad attitude among the open source community is to assume that everyone has enough time for everything. "Normal" users are used to "click, click, click, it's installed".. not "./configure; make.. oh wait, something stuffed, hold on.. vi file.c.. darn, wget http://new-version, etc etc".
And even as a Linux user, I do get "pushed" by other Linux users to use a certain app too. Once I was trying to draw a diagram in a hurry, and because I wasn't familiar with Linux diagramming tools, I used Smartdraw for Windows. A fellow Linux user came by, scoffed at the fact I was using some Windows software, and pushed me to use xfig. Of all things! xfig is so bloody primitive and totally not the right tool for the job. He then recommended Dia which was not up to the job too. I could've produced the same diagram, but it would take probably 2 to 3 times the time I would've taken using Smartdraw. So I can imagine how those Windows users would've felt.
No one wants to hear "Ewww!! You're using Windows?! That piece of junk??" anymore than we want to hear "Eww! You're using Linux?! That piece of junk??" So, please. Respect the wishes of other users. If they wanna use Windows, let them. If they wanna use a Mac, let them. If you like to drive with a manual transmission, you don't want to be forced to drive an auto, right?
I think you're making things unnecessarily complicated. When I say "Linux", we all understand that I implicitly refer to a complete OS with the kernel, and that includes Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, etc. That's done for convenience. Regular Slashdotters should know this by now. I'm not gonna waste my time saying Red Hat Linux just to mean a complete Linux system.. and I don't wanna waste time going into another rather pointless RMS-style "Linux is just a kernel, but there are tools and apps around it" debate.
Sure, conceptually some other OS may be more secure. But administrator skills are still really important. Let's take NSA Security-Enhanced Linux for example. Unlike normal Linux systems, it uses Mandatory Access Control (MAC) instead of Discretionary Access Control (DAC). If you're not happy with me using a "linux-kernel based system" as an example, well, the Flask operating system which SELinux is based on will do too. Ok, now using MAC makes it conceptually "more secure", as you say. However, let's say the administrator uses a root password, "hello". Now, even if it has the best MAC mechanisms in the world, your OS is gonna be rooted. And if the admin does not define your MAC policy accurately because of lack of skill, there goes your OS as well.
How about OpenBSD? OpenBSD is known for its security.. default install and such. I really love OpenBSD and I use it for production systems, but I'm still cautious about what services I open and what I don't. Let's say an admin happily opens up a few services. And, due to lack of skill, the admin does not monitor security alerts and stuff like that regularly. So one of the services has a remote hole, and boom, there goes your ultra-secure OpenBSD box.
So it's either you're thinking in a narrow-minded way, or you're getting the concept and context of a secure OS entirely wrong in the first place. An OS may be theoretically secure, but we must always consider the practical aspects of any system. Otherwise it would just be unrealistic.
I don't think we can say if one OS is more secure than another. It all depends on its purpose and what it's set up for. Administrator skills come into play as well.
A badly configured Linux box can be as insecure as a unpatched Windows box with default settings. In contrast, a Windows box can be made more secure than a Red Hat Linux box with default settings.
In addition, you got to take into account the purpose of the box, the environment in which the box is running, the security policy, and what security mechanisms are in place.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks! I sure hope that more slashdotters will do the same. For once, the Slashdot effect can be used to save a thriving technology and medium, and not bring down a webserver! :-)
One of the biggest grassroots movement right now is run by Voice of Webcasters, who're running a campaign to save Internet Radio by sending one million faxes to Congress. It would be a shame to see a fledging technology like Internet Radio go to /dev/null. If you truly care about Internet Radio technology, I urge you to send a free fax to Congress right now. The US House of Representatives go on Summer Recess on July 26th, while the Senate goes August 2nd. If we don't do anything now, a LOT of non-commercial and small Internet Radio stations will be gone by September!
Even if you don't listen to Net Radio now, you might in the future. Sending a free fax doesn't cost you anything, apart from two minutes of your time.
So I urge you. Please. Prove this article wrong. Show that the grassroots movement is definitely still there.
Please, I urge you all to send a fax to Congress regarding this matter. It's simple and straightforward, and it's free.
SomaFM has a very convenient portal here.
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Real comment:
Hey isn't that a copyright violation on Dilbert?
When your BSD-related story gets submitted and approved, "BSD is dying" posts suddenly appear.
paradesign, thanks for pointing out something that has been irritating me for years.
.ps or .ps.gz format.
.ps.gz file, it's a big hassle to install Ghostview and Ghostscript and all that. If it was provided in PDF in the first place, all this unnecessary hassle could have been avoided from the very start.
In my opinion, every single person who posts anything on the web should never post something online in *.ps.gz format ever, ever again! *.ps.gz format used to be fine a long time ago, when researchers and academics exchange papers using UNIX boxes. *.ps.gz is terribly Windows unfriendly. More than that, it's Web-unfriendly. Nothing is a bigger turn off than encountering a interesting document/paper in the archaic
Even if somebody posts a Postscript file or gzipped Postscript file online, they could at the very least put up a PDF version too. If they can produce a Postscript file and gzip it, they definitely have the technical ability to produce a PDF file from Ghostscript's ps2pdf or Acrobat.
Now before you think I'm a Windows-only person, who have no clue about using Winzip or installing Ghostscript, let me assure you that I'm not. I use Linux all the time.. but I still prefer my files in PDF. There are a few occassions when I use Windows, such as when I'm at a friend's place or the like. And when I encounter a
Of course, the typical geek excuse (or advice depending on how you see it) would be to say "you can always install Winzip, Ghostscript and Ghostview, or some Postscript viewer browser plugin." Please. Users would want their files opened right away. No hassles, no messing around with weird programs, and no installing megabytes worth of stuff just to view a single file.
And even if PDF files are provided, there are many occassions when the PDF files have jagged fonts which don't display well on Acrobat Reader.. especially if they've been produced by LaTeX. There are ways to solve that, but that's a different story.
So paradesign, thanks once again for bringing this up.
Moderators, remember that moderation is not a measure of how much you agree with somebody's post.
There has to be a more mature approach to vulnerability disclosure. We can't always just disclose a serious vulnerability without a fix available in place, especially if it involves a large number of systems.
I think Theo and the OpenSSH team are being responsible, and it shows that they've grown up. The right approach should be to disclose to the appropriate parties first, get a fix done QUICK, and then followed by a full disclosure.
Full disclosure at the premature time is naive and only leads to wide-scale insecurity, NOT security.
Yes the first Apache chunked encoding exploit released by Gobbles was targeted at OpenBSD. Grants you remote access but not root. To get root you still have to run a local kernel exploit. But Apache is not enabled by default in OpenBSD.
..O'Reilly money!
I think the difference is that the vending machine cost of $350 million is a one-time cost, while $45 million (or more) of counterfeiting happens every year.
Yes I agree.. plastic bills are the best. You don't have to worry about them tearing and all that. Singapore has plastic bills too!
So we should all switch to rotary phones because some tourists might use them in the homeland? Screw that
I think the difference here is that it's not just "some tourists" who're affected by this. AFAIK almost all countries in the world have different colored currency notes.
It looks as though you've never travelled or lived outside the U.S. in your entire life.
Having different colors does make a huge difference for a lot of people. I've lived in four countries (including the U.S. now) and I definitely think that colored foreign currency notes are much easier to handle compared to boring green U.S. notes.
But buying the cd's helps the FreeBSD project, and really isn't that expensive.
That depends on where you come from. Of course, $39.95 isn't that expensive in North America, but in many other places in the world, $39.95 is a huge deal. For example, where I come from, $39.95 would be more than $150 in local currency.
how far do you expect MS to go?
Well that depends. Since MS is the one taking us for a ride, it depends on where we want to go today.
"Me, my salvation, my personal goals." It sounds a bit self-centered, don't you think?
;)
Well, then it is. But that's just me and how I am.
My question made you feel like getting into a debate? Why are you so defensive?
Aren't all the comments here on Slashdot, especially on stories like this, a huge debate? It's neither right nor wrong, and no one knows for sure. You might think that I'm being defensive, but actually I'm just being frank and letting you know that I'm not interested in discussions which I think will lead nowhere. You're more than welcome to have different views.
I think this statement really demonstrates the flaw in your thinking. I'm not looking for "the answer" and I certainly don't think it's going to be found in the bible. I can argue capably and scripturally that the bible raises many more questions than it answers. What I was asking for were opinions from Christians, not answers. You don't have "the truth" and you are not obligated to give "God's answer" any time a question comes up. All I really wanted was opinions.
I'm not saying that that site has *the* answer and all that. In a way, the guy who wrote that site is also just stating his opinion. It's just that he probably made up his opinion based on more research than I did, so I just wanted to point it out to you. As for me, I'd rather form my own opinion only after doing the proper research, and not believe anything just because other people "say so." But this issue is something I'm not particularly interested in, so I'm not going to spend my time and energy researching this. So my opinion is: I don't believe in aliens out there, but I don't really care. But again, that's just me.
Unlike many atheists you may have met, I respect the dignity, inherent worth, and thoughts of Christians. I believe it's called, "Hate the Christianity, love the Christian."
I appreciate that. There are many atheists out there who absolutely do not want to have anything to do with Christians or Christianity. But I did not consider you to be one of those at all when I read your post. In fact, I don't have problems with atheists and non-Christians. I'm not one of those who'll push Christianity down your throat. I treat everyone fairly. Even if a Christian asked a similar question to yours (the follow-up question I mean, where you let me know that the site is not what you're looking for), I would've answered the same way.
It may be interesting to you, but it's not to me. You might be interested in certain TV shows which I'm not interested in. Same here.
I did not say that it's meaningless, I just said it's uninteresting to me. I'd rather spend my time and energy exploring things that are interesting to me... things which I believe in.
You can go ahead and spend your life examining alien life if you want, I've no problem with you doing that. I'm just not interested in participating.
Yes, I'm a Christian. And, to be frank, I don't really care whether there are aliens out there. Whether or not they are out there is not going to affect me, my salvation, and my personal goals here on Earth.
I personally don't believe that there are aliens, but I'm not going to prove that to you in any way. Why? Because I don't have the time to start researching the evidence about something that doesn't interest me. So I'm not going to get into a debate that will go nowhere. I do think that NASA and a lot of people are wasting too much money and time looking for aliens, when those resources could've been more usefully spent on things that will benefit humankind.
I just saw your post and thought that site might be helpful.
Perhaps this link may be helpful to you:
What does the Bible say about intelligent life on other planets?
...we'll have to start calling the company GNU/Industrial Light and Magic. :-)
I agree with you totally. I'm a big opensource freak and I consider myself a power user and probably in Roblimo's "smart" category, but I will never, ever force Linux or down anybody's throat. I've seen too many geeks pushing Linux-ish stuff down Windows users' throats, like proposing stuff like LaTeX for secretaries (!!!), vi for non-UNIX users, and the like. People will definitely be put off by such behavior.
I respect Windows users and their wishes. Although I won't use it much myself, if others would like to use Windows, I've no problem with that.
Another bad attitude among the open source community is to assume that everyone has enough time for everything. "Normal" users are used to "click, click, click, it's installed".. not "./configure; make.. oh wait, something stuffed, hold on.. vi file.c.. darn, wget http://new-version, etc etc".
And even as a Linux user, I do get "pushed" by other Linux users to use a certain app too. Once I was trying to draw a diagram in a hurry, and because I wasn't familiar with Linux diagramming tools, I used Smartdraw for Windows. A fellow Linux user came by, scoffed at the fact I was using some Windows software, and pushed me to use xfig. Of all things! xfig is so bloody primitive and totally not the right tool for the job. He then recommended Dia which was not up to the job too. I could've produced the same diagram, but it would take probably 2 to 3 times the time I would've taken using Smartdraw. So I can imagine how those Windows users would've felt.
No one wants to hear "Ewww!! You're using Windows?! That piece of junk??" anymore than we want to hear "Eww! You're using Linux?! That piece of junk??" So, please. Respect the wishes of other users. If they wanna use Windows, let them. If they wanna use a Mac, let them. If you like to drive with a manual transmission, you don't want to be forced to drive an auto, right?
I think you're making things unnecessarily complicated. When I say "Linux", we all understand that I implicitly refer to a complete OS with the kernel, and that includes Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, etc. That's done for convenience. Regular Slashdotters should know this by now. I'm not gonna waste my time saying Red Hat Linux just to mean a complete Linux system.. and I don't wanna waste time going into another rather pointless RMS-style "Linux is just a kernel, but there are tools and apps around it" debate.
Sure, conceptually some other OS may be more secure. But administrator skills are still really important. Let's take NSA Security-Enhanced Linux for example. Unlike normal Linux systems, it uses Mandatory Access Control (MAC) instead of Discretionary Access Control (DAC). If you're not happy with me using a "linux-kernel based system" as an example, well, the Flask operating system which SELinux is based on will do too. Ok, now using MAC makes it conceptually "more secure", as you say. However, let's say the administrator uses a root password, "hello". Now, even if it has the best MAC mechanisms in the world, your OS is gonna be rooted. And if the admin does not define your MAC policy accurately because of lack of skill, there goes your OS as well.
How about OpenBSD? OpenBSD is known for its security.. default install and such. I really love OpenBSD and I use it for production systems, but I'm still cautious about what services I open and what I don't. Let's say an admin happily opens up a few services. And, due to lack of skill, the admin does not monitor security alerts and stuff like that regularly. So one of the services has a remote hole, and boom, there goes your ultra-secure OpenBSD box.
So it's either you're thinking in a narrow-minded way, or you're getting the concept and context of a secure OS entirely wrong in the first place. An OS may be theoretically secure, but we must always consider the practical aspects of any system. Otherwise it would just be unrealistic.
I don't think we can say if one OS is more secure than another. It all depends on its purpose and what it's set up for. Administrator skills come into play as well.
A badly configured Linux box can be as insecure as a unpatched Windows box with default settings. In contrast, a Windows box can be made more secure than a Red Hat Linux box with default settings.
In addition, you got to take into account the purpose of the box, the environment in which the box is running, the security policy, and what security mechanisms are in place.
No, the Mozilla port on OpenBSD is still broken at the moment. It has been like that for a pretty long time.
This book chapter from O'Reilly's OpenSources book captures the spirit of Mozilla really well:
Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla