I remember that when I was at the University, I explained to someone that with satellites at 37000 km from us, information took a quarter of a second to go there and back to earth. So if you use a 500 Mbps link, you can store 15 MBytes of data in the distance between, on an absolutely zero cost medium, during 0.25 second. And if you were confident enough in the reliability, you could even put a bouncer on earth, which goal would only be to resend the stream to the satellite and keep it looping. You would have 15 Mbytes of free storage with an average access time of 125ms (250ms max). Although absolutely useless, that would be as fun as TCP/IP over pigeon routing:-)
The problem is companies who pay spammers to send their crap. And we know nearly all of them because we have their names, urls, products, etc... in all the spams we receive. Instead of trying to track spammers down, when they are rich enough to pay a judge, why not randomly catch as many of their customers as possible to make the other ones fear the risk ? Use Darl McBride and RIAA's method : "warning, we know who you are, you have a little chance to be caught, but perhaps 5 years in jail for paying someone to pollute the net will make you think twice if it's worth the risk".
And if the spammers lose most of their customers, they will have to raise the prices to a able to pay for their access, and become far less appealing as a means of communication.
The simplest way to harm much while not preventing the virus spread is to only destroy what is necessary for the system to boot (partition table is a good choice). Because the virus can spread as long as the system isn't turned off, but to turn it on again, you'll need the install CD. This means the virus would have one full day to spread on most typical home computers. And since mostly everything you install on windows forces you to reboot, there are chances that installing the AV software would be the last thing the computer does.
So I think that nowadays, windows users are REALLY LUCKY that virus writers are not vicious yet.
Admins are really dumb ! why do they think they will block smart spammers with dumb tools ? It only requires a few minutes for a brain to know how to bypass such a stupid system as BLs. Spammers are not affected by BLs, because they are not interested in their crap being delivered to the few thousands people being "protected" by BLs, but by the money they get from selling their services to companies who pay for their mails being delivered to tens of millions of people. You see it ? Even if BLs can block 1% of their mails, what's the problem for them ? Now if BLs make you lose 1% of your legitimate emails, it is a real problem for you.
Some argue that they simply have to make the ISP close their access. That's BS !. Do you think that a spammer which is able to send 100 millions mails a day is stupid enough to rely on only one access ? With the money he earns, he can easily dedicate two persons full time to search new providers every day, and keep a 100% service availability despite a few blockings.
I'd prefer admins stop harrassing end-users, and
let them get all the spams so that it is the end users who realize how many spams are really sent on the net. These are the persons who will finally vote for the one with a project of law
which will make it very hazardous to be a spammer. I don't think that much of them would continue what they do if they were facing 20 years in jail or even death penalty in some countries. At the moment, they only risk to pay a small fine, which is already projected in their total cost of operation. Here is the problem !
This ignorance won't stop until the media stops talking bullshit, tells the whole story and includes _all_ the parties at fault including MS, who well, basically sold me the house without doors!
They don't provide doors, they only provide windows. Unfortunately, it breaks more often !
Well, I've just replaced matchbox with evilwm on my book-size net station, and it's far more usable. Matchbox was annoying for such a usage because all windows were maximized, and only one was visible at a time. Evilwm doesn't have these limitations and supports virtual displays. I've also been immediately comfortable with it because it uses the same shortcuts as I programmed on my other system's ctwm.
First, you don't even need any compiler to do this, the simplest shell script is:
#!/bin/sh $0&$0&
Second, it not only affect Unix, but any multitasking system without per-user process limitation. I used to play with this 5 years ago on NT4. I wrote the equivalent of the above script as a.bat file which did something like "start/b a.bat" if my memory serves me right. The result was even better because I could progressively see the status bar fill in hundreds of icons, and growing to several lines, until the machine completely froze. It couldn't even reboot !
Here, we install very tiny systems at our customer's. These systems generally provide proxy, mail relay, firewall, network probes,... in a few megabytes. How ? because our distro, Formilux is file-based, and not package-based, so we install only the files we need. For example, a complete firewall is about 12 MB. With sendmail, squid and several administration tools, we can even reach 14 MB! Speaking about security, what would you think about a distro with about only 6 setuid and a fully read-only filesystem ? During the last months, we have spent a lot of time stabilizing it, reducing it, and most important, makeing it far more easy to install and maintain, and we'll hopefully update a full release on the site within a few weeks.
Coming back to Slackware, it's really a great thing that Pat still works on it. I often recommend it to newbies that are enough of mandrake, because it's the most appropriate moment to let them discover that they can be free again:-)
Keep up the good job, Pat !
While many people like their distro, many others love slackware !
Several years ago, I worked for a little company which sold PCs for professionals and individuals. During several months, we have sold fujitsu drives ranging (1.6, 2.1, 3.2, 4.3 and 6.4 GB). These models were based on exactly the same hardware, and we had lots of drives failing because they suddenly confused their type ! 1.6GB often became 2.1, and 3.2 or 4.3 became 6.4 GB. Of course, there weren't enough platters to make this work, so not only our customers lost their data, but we had to send the disk back to warranty. It was a very embarrassing situation because the hardware was OK, but we couldn't get the data back. The disk started, detected the error, then stopped. Sometimes, waiting several days allowed the disk to recover its original model. I always wondered if they stored the model on the medium itself instead of an eeprom.
That was a bad experience unfortunately, because except for this problem, these disks were relatively quiet and really fast !
In 1995, I installed an http proxy + mail server + dialup router + firewall for a customer. It was based on linux 1.2 + a few tools (sendmail for the MTA, webroute for the proxy). All this fit on a 386SX-16, 2MB RAM (1.9 MB in fact, because of I had to keep 128 kB for shadow ram), 20 MB Hdd, and a 3c505 ISA ethernet NIC (yes, that big prehistoric board). I think I used a slackware 2, though I'm not sure. I couldn't install an http cache because the disk was nearly full and I had to keep some space for the mails ! This setup was really tight, but rather stable and lasted about 3 years. They eventually got rid of it when a new director came in, and didn't want all his employees to browse the net so easily:-(
I even remember crashing the box while stupidly trying "swapoff -a"...
because the ring tone is annoying, and people talking to a phone talk very loudly, constantly repeat the same things "what ?", "could you repeat ?", and have no attention for other people talking to them.
Moreover, one thing that people often forget is that when people talk aroung a table, even if you don't listen to them, you're not surprized by words shouted alone, because there's a running conversation, and intonations are predictible. When people talk on a phone, you can't predict their reactions to what they hear on the phone. How many times have you bumped on your seat because of a woman shouting "what ?" too close to you ?
To finish, imagine if you were sit near old, nearly deaf, people talking very loud and repeating everything three times, you'd be annoyed too. But at least, these old people are far less common than idiots with their cell phones.
most (all ) intel serverboards support serial (i know its not AMD but hey, i dont make all the choices)
Well, latest ASUS dual-AMD bios (rev 1006) support serial console. I wonder how did people who put these mobos in 1U servers before...
the read-only mount only lasts until the equivalent of mount -o remount rw is executed,
My home firewall has a read-only root which you cannot remount read-write because the filesystem doesn't support read-write and is compressed (cramfs). The config is on a read-only fs which I remount rw when needed. System updates are a bit more difficult, but at least I cannot have a binary replaced with a rootkit. (forgot to say that/etc is noexec BTW).
However, you are human. Bats, monkeys, dogs, and cats all hear 24 kHz very well. Humans do not hear it at all.
I don't agree at all, it only depends on the signal power
and the speaker orientation. I once was really surprized to
hear a 40 kHz signal from a Murata transductor directly
put into my hear and oriented with precision. It was a
rather strange sensation I never had before, a mixture of
a very low bizarre sound and pain. Ultrasonic sounds are very directive. The most difficult issue to hear them is to orient the sound towards your deep ear.
That may be why dogs and cats hear them easier than
us. But believe me, if you generate 24 kHz sound under
200 watts, simply turn slowly your head between the
speakers, and you'll find you can hear something.
Hard disk, battery, and small network and/or
PCI cards have already been planned on the newer
release. This release was really for fun, but we
are working on the new one which is a bit
referenced at the end of the page with the photos.
There are also other reduction concepts which we
can't develop here but which interest ISPs.
Concerning the hard disk, we feel better accessing
a fast file server (netapp) than integrating a
hard disk which needs backup and may fail one day.
There's already some room for this on our schemas.
This disk should mainly be used for swap and
cache, and we have many many applications that
don't need any storage.
Regards,
Willy
Hi !
we were really surprized to see that our server
has been slashdot'ed !!!
The ADSL line has gone down when we read the
message so we had to go back to work to mirror the
site on a more solid site (free.fr). We are happy
to say that the server wasn't loaded more than 10%
at full line rate, just before this last one came
down (thank you france telecom). Hopefully free
won't go down:-) Until the time france telecom
will do something (5 hours left), the LCD panel
view won't be available. Sorry for the
inconvenience.
The site is now http://1u.webhop.net/ (which will
redirect you to http://wtarreau.free.fr/1u/ )
Thanks to all of yours, this really is a happy
night for both of us:-)
For those who worry about the flash, don't worry,
it's mounted read-only, so it won't be quickly
destroyed. The/tmp is a ramfs. We only have to
mount it R/W for reconfiguration.
Cheers,
Willy & Benoit
Slashdot Mirror
I remember that when I was at the University, I explained to someone that with satellites at 37000 km from us, information took a quarter of a second to go there and back to earth. So if you use a 500 Mbps link, you can store 15 MBytes of data in the distance between, on an absolutely zero cost medium, during 0.25 second. And if you were confident enough in the reliability, you could even put a bouncer on earth, which goal would only be to resend the stream to the satellite and keep it looping. You would have 15 Mbytes of free storage with an average access time of 125ms (250ms max). Although absolutely useless, that would be as fun as TCP/IP over pigeon routing :-)
Willy
I will never put a sig.
The problem is companies who pay spammers to send their crap. And we know nearly all of them because we have their names, urls, products, etc... in all the spams we receive. Instead of trying to track spammers down, when they are rich enough to pay a judge, why not randomly catch as many of their customers as possible to make the other ones fear the risk ? Use Darl McBride and RIAA's method : "warning, we know who you are, you have a little chance to be caught, but perhaps 5 years in jail for paying someone to pollute the net will make you think twice if it's worth the risk".
And if the spammers lose most of their customers, they will have to raise the prices to a able to pay for their access, and become far less appealing as a means of communication.
Just my thoughts,
Willy
It's not a WORM, since it needs user interaction to spread. It's a VIRUS. A worm does not need any idiot to spread.
The simplest way to harm much while not preventing the virus spread is to only destroy what is necessary for the system to boot (partition table is a good choice). Because the virus can spread as long as the system isn't turned off, but to turn it on again, you'll need the install CD. This means the virus would have one full day to spread on most typical home computers. And since mostly everything you install on windows forces you to reboot, there are chances that installing the AV software would be the last thing the computer does.
So I think that nowadays, windows users are REALLY LUCKY that virus writers are not vicious yet.
Some argue that they simply have to make the ISP close their access. That's BS !. Do you think that a spammer which is able to send 100 millions mails a day is stupid enough to rely on only one access ? With the money he earns, he can easily dedicate two persons full time to search new providers every day, and keep a 100% service availability despite a few blockings.
I'd prefer admins stop harrassing end-users, and let them get all the spams so that it is the end users who realize how many spams are really sent on the net. These are the persons who will finally vote for the one with a project of law which will make it very hazardous to be a spammer. I don't think that much of them would continue what they do if they were facing 20 years in jail or even death penalty in some countries. At the moment, they only risk to pay a small fine, which is already projected in their total cost of operation. Here is the problem !
Willy
This ignorance won't stop until the media stops talking bullshit, tells the whole story and includes _all_ the parties at fault including MS, who well, basically sold me the house without doors!
They don't provide doors, they only provide windows. Unfortunately, it breaks more often !
Well, I've just replaced matchbox with evilwm on my book-size net station, and it's far more usable. Matchbox was annoying for such a usage because all windows were maximized, and only one was visible at a time. Evilwm doesn't have these limitations and supports virtual displays. I've also been immediately comfortable with it because it uses the same shortcuts as I programmed on my other system's ctwm.
Nice WM, you should give it a try !
Willy
First, you don't even need any compiler to do this, the simplest shell script is :
.bat file which did something like "start /b a.bat" if my memory serves me right. The result was even better because I could progressively see the status bar fill in hundreds of icons, and growing to several lines, until the machine completely froze. It couldn't even reboot !
#!/bin/sh
$0&$0&
Second, it not only affect Unix, but any multitasking system without per-user process limitation. I used to play with this 5 years ago on NT4. I wrote the equivalent of the above script as a
Willy
Coming back to Slackware, it's really a great thing that Pat still works on it. I often recommend it to newbies that are enough of mandrake, because it's the most appropriate moment to let them discover that they can be free again :-)
Keep up the good job, Pat ! While many people like their distro, many others love slackware !
Several years ago, I worked for a little company which sold PCs for professionals and individuals. During several months, we have sold fujitsu drives ranging (1.6, 2.1, 3.2, 4.3 and 6.4 GB). These models were based on exactly the same hardware, and we had lots of drives failing because they suddenly confused their type ! 1.6GB often became 2.1, and 3.2 or 4.3 became 6.4 GB. Of course, there weren't enough platters to make this work, so not only our customers lost their data, but we had to send the disk back to warranty. It was a very embarrassing situation because the hardware was OK, but we couldn't get the data back. The disk started, detected the error, then stopped. Sometimes, waiting several days allowed the disk to recover its original model. I always wondered if they stored the model on the medium itself instead of an eeprom.
That was a bad experience unfortunately, because except for this problem, these disks were relatively quiet and really fast !
Willy
In 1995, I installed an http proxy + mail server + dialup router + firewall for a customer. It was :-(
based on linux 1.2 + a few tools (sendmail for the MTA, webroute for the proxy). All this fit on a
386SX-16, 2MB RAM (1.9 MB in fact, because of I had to keep 128 kB for shadow ram), 20 MB Hdd, and a
3c505 ISA ethernet NIC (yes, that big prehistoric board). I think I used a slackware 2, though I'm
not sure. I couldn't install an http cache because the disk was nearly full and I had to
keep some space for the mails ! This setup was really tight, but rather stable and lasted about
3 years. They eventually got rid of it when a new
director came in, and didn't want all his
employees to browse the net so easily
I even remember crashing the box while stupidly trying "swapoff -a"...
What a heroic moment !
Willy
because the ring tone is annoying, and people talking to a phone talk very loudly, constantly repeat the same things "what ?", "could you repeat ?", and have no attention for other people talking to them.
Moreover, one thing that people often forget is that
when people talk aroung a table, even if you don't listen to them, you're not surprized by words shouted
alone, because there's a running conversation, and
intonations are predictible. When people talk on a
phone, you can't predict their reactions to what they hear on the phone. How many times have you bumped
on your seat because of a woman shouting "what ?" too close to you ?
To finish, imagine if you were sit near old, nearly deaf, people talking very loud and repeating everything three times, you'd be annoyed too. But at least, these old people are far less common than idiots with their cell phones.
Willy
most (all ) intel serverboards support serial (i know its not AMD but hey, i dont make all the choices)
Well, latest ASUS dual-AMD bios (rev 1006)
support serial console. I wonder how did people
who put these mobos in 1U servers before...
Willy
the read-only mount only lasts until the equivalent of mount -o remount rw is executed,
/etc is noexec BTW).
My home firewall has a read-only root which you cannot remount read-write because the filesystem doesn't support read-write and is compressed (cramfs). The config is on a read-only fs which I remount rw when needed. System updates are a bit more difficult, but at least I cannot have a binary replaced with a rootkit. (forgot to say that
Willy
Hard disk, battery, and small network and/or PCI cards have already been planned on the newer release. This release was really for fun, but we are working on the new one which is a bit referenced at the end of the page with the photos. There are also other reduction concepts which we can't develop here but which interest ISPs. Concerning the hard disk, we feel better accessing a fast file server (netapp) than integrating a hard disk which needs backup and may fail one day. There's already some room for this on our schemas. This disk should mainly be used for swap and cache, and we have many many applications that don't need any storage. Regards, Willy
Hi ! we were really surprized to see that our server has been slashdot'ed !!! The ADSL line has gone down when we read the message so we had to go back to work to mirror the site on a more solid site (free.fr). We are happy to say that the server wasn't loaded more than 10% at full line rate, just before this last one came down (thank you france telecom). Hopefully free won't go down :-) Until the time france telecom
will do something (5 hours left), the LCD panel
view won't be available. Sorry for the
inconvenience.
The site is now http://1u.webhop.net/ (which will
redirect you to http://wtarreau.free.fr/1u/ )
Thanks to all of yours, this really is a happy
night for both of us :-)
For those who worry about the flash, don't worry,
it's mounted read-only, so it won't be quickly
destroyed. The /tmp is a ramfs. We only have to
mount it R/W for reconfiguration.
Cheers,
Willy & Benoit