Some of the iRiver players support OGG Vorbis. iRiver is trying ahrd to get support on most of their players -- since most have upgradable flash memory.
The setup consists of two rackmount units connected by both optical and Ethernet cables.
So... do the boxes have to be close enough to run the optical cables directly? Can the signal be regenerated or amplified without disturbing the photons? (I doubt it.) How about sending the photon stream through a DWDM switch? (Again, I doubt it.)
If the pair of boxes has to be in the same building, that isn't going to be a big seller. Bob would just walk down and HAND Alice the data.
Nice PR stunt, though.
Oh, I really want to know what telco is finding multiple taps a week to their optical fibers. I really smell bullshit here.
Good to see the system works. You would wonder what would happen if said hacker was working for a company on a similar closed source program. Would it have been detected?
You mean like Borland's Interbase? The compiled in backdoor wasn't discovered until after the database opensourced.
My favorite quote from the advisory is:
"This vulnerability was not introduced by unauthorized modifications to the original vendor's source. It was introduced by maintainers of the code within Borland. The back door account password cannot be changed using normal operational commands, nor can the account be deleted from existing vulnerable servers [see References]."
How long was it in there? "These security holes affect all version of InterBase shipped since 1994, on all platforms."
I can't think of 2 people that -- honestly -- would NOT block ads and banners if it was just a click away.
Adding the function to let certain ad banners through because you want to "support" that site is stupid. It should be nominated for the most unused feature of a software program right up there with the "please send more spam" button.
I use the "block images from this server" in Mozilla on a regular basis. I block all cookies unless it breaks functionality on a site I want to access.
When it was suggested that TV-skip feature in a Tivo was "theft",/. readers were up in arms. How is this different?
When one TV exec went as far as to suggest an implicit contract with TV viewers compelling them to watch the ads, most people here laughed so hard their sides hurt. Rightfully so.
I'm sorry, but don't whine to me about supporting a poor business model. If you can't afford to run the site, don't -- or keep mention of it off of/., so your bandwidth bills don't kill you.
Use a "free" site, and let THEM worry about the ad-blocking software.
If the price is too high, then they'll be out of business. If the prices are low, they can make it up on volume.
"Make it up on volume" is a phrase that usually only applies to the manufacturing sector, where fixed overhead costs like rent, electricity, etc. combined with the fact it is much, much cheaper to run 3 shifts of the same product than stop and change the line to a different product; test; calibrate; retest; ramp up production...
The only way they will "make it up on volume" is if there is almost 0 downtime and 0 human-interaction. It will not only have to be fully automated, but 5-nines of reliable without the 5-nines normal cost.
How many times is this going to come up? It seems to be standard FUD towards RH.
What you are talking about applies to the RHN SERVICE, not the software.
Check out Appendix 1 of that document, specifically:
1. The Software. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Applications (the "Software") are either a modular operating system or application consisting of hundreds of software components. The end user license agreement for each component is located in the component's source code. With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 2 below, the license terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms. This agreement does not limit Customer's rights under, or grant Customer rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component.
The image files they're talking about are the Shadoman logo and Red Hat logo.
I didn't know that. My experience was with Amiga computers (A2000, A3000, A1200, A4000) and accelerators and they always worked fine.
Unless you went tried to integrate a different architecture altogether like adding PPC to an MC68K Amiga. But things like that add-in 80286 board (full PC on a card) worked great for me.
I can't agree with that. If the default behavior of all common mail programs so discourages people from executing attachments, I think the worm problem (at least as it exists today with things like sobig) would be effectively solved.
That's not to say that nobody will find a way to execute such a program. The problem with sobig, though, was that so *many* people ended up running it, because of how easy it is to do in mail programs.
Except many worms are spread through more than one means.
A real case I dealt with: the I LOVE YOU virus.
The ILY virus spread through local network shares and e-mail attachments. The parent office of a corp I worked for (2,000 PCs) was hammered with it. It took them two days to clean up.
Then, the next day, some idiot who originally *thought it was a real love note and saved the attachment to his desktop* executed it again -- out of the context of an e-mail attachment.
The shame and humiliation heaped upon him was enough to ensure he wouldn't ignore IT memos again. However, it brought the e-mail servers down a second day while it was fixed. Again.
"You don't need perfect code to avoid security problems. There are things we're doing that are making code closer to perfect, in terms of tools and security audits and things like that. But there are two other techniques: one is called firewalling and the other is called keeping the software up to date. None of these problems (viruses and worms) happened to people who did either one of those things."
The first sentence is correct -- or moot. The last is pure bullshit.
"Perfect" code is probably unattainable in complex applications. This is why things like firewalls, IDS, backups, etc. exist. Code should be made as good as possible, but dwelling on perfection will only pull your focus from other issues.
However, no virus or firewall in the world is gonna stop a cluleless user from clicking on an attachment and screwing their system. Virus scanners are mostly reactionary -- if it isn't in their list of malware, they can't find it. If it is a new way to screw users, and they click it...
EVEN if users have to jump through hoops like not executing from inside the mail program, saving it to the desktop, unzipping, scanning -- they'll screw something up. It is the nature of the beast.
Even with sandboxing -- good luck getting a user to execute the code in a sandbox first, every time.
Frontpage does more than just create quick web pages. It also handles website management, including permissions, collaboration, showing relationships between files, dead & broken link checking, file transfers, etc.
It also produces some of the most mangled, broken HTML code I've ever seen -- short of HTML exported from Excel or Word. I've spent more time cleaning up the HTML than saved on the quick layout features.
Actually, Quanta Plus does most, if not all, of that. Once 3.2 is released, it'll have a frames wizard, WYSIWYG editing and other features as well.
so you LEGALLY & with GPL's blessing rip the CD's from work or your friends or someone uploads them to alt.binaries.whatever...
Yup.
I obtained 2.1WS for home from my copies as work. When work updates to 3, then I'll make copies for use at home. I don't need paid support at home. It is nice to have at the office, though.
Since a discussion about RH's licenses with these seem to pop up every time they are mentioned on/., I thought I'd point out that source RPMs for RHEL 3 are located on Red Hat's FTP server..iso images are not available.
I used to work in a retail computer store specializing in Amiga computers. The A1200 was notorious for being difficult to install expansion boards into the trapdoor slot.
I had one accelerator try to be returned after the customer tried to install it themselves.
I looked at the unit and the pins connecting the card connector to the board were bent and there were chips out of the motherboard.
I told the customer that it looked like they took a screwdriver to the edge and used a hammer to try and pound the card into the slot.
I kid you not, the reply was "I did. So what? The manual didn't say *NOT* to hit it with a hammer and screwdriver".
We didn't accept the return. I explained that my supplier would laugh me out of business if I tried to return it with chisel marks.
$200 down the drain because the cheap bastard didn't want to spend the extra $10 to have us install it.
Unless you are running a small- to medium-sized business and your long distance phone bill runs in the thousands of dollars a month.
Since high-speed internet is a requirement at many places of business, you can piggyback the phone service onto your internet service. The increase in usage of the Internet is not $$ equivalent to the phone costs, so it is NOT cost shifting. Well, a little, but not equivalent cost shifting.
Offices in my area can get SDSL 1 Mb/1 Mb for $199 / month. That does wonders with SIP phones to remote offices and branches.
We have none, since all the components were purchased separately from different vendors.
Ah, that's the difference. I purchased complete systems from a local PC wholesaler, not piecemeal. I understand what you mean about getting separate pieces and building it yourself. I wasn't interested in PC assembly, and have had problems just like you mention when doing it that way.
Sorry, but I've never had a white-box PC die like that, and I've installed close to a hundred. They either die within the first 30 days, and are replaced by warranty, or last for years.
I've used both Dell Dimensions and whitebox PCs in a corporate LAN (60+ users) and had better TCO with the whitebox. If the Dell died, I had to ship it back and we were out that PC for a few days. If the whitebox died, I dropped it off with a copy of the receipt on my way home and picked up a replacement (or fixed unit) the next day.
In both cases, all user data was stored on network drives so nothing was lost -- just push the corporate image to the HD and it is ready to go back in service.
We also had spares, so neither case resulted in excessive downtime. Machines were swapped out with spares if they died. They were replaced on a 3 year refreshment cycle.
Since our MS MOLA was with a software vendor and not Dell, we got better deals getting PCs without OS & Office licenses from the whitebox vendor and using our MOLA licenses for the installs. Coming "pre-installed" from the vendor didn't help -- they didn't have our images.
In 4 years I had 3 PCs that needed warranty service. I had tons more problems with a bad batch (50) of APC UPS units that *ALL* had to go back, since 30+ failed in the first 14 days. I wish I had purchased them locally -- it would have been tons easier and cheaper to load them into a compay car and drive to CompUSA that ship 50 lead-acid battery units back to the vendor. Heavy and expensive.
Thank you! I'm so sick of everyone saying Macs are more expensive.
If you look into high-end laptops, Dell's are usually more expensive as well.
I wish that old "Macs are too pricey" line would just go away.
Sure you can pick up a cheap PC system for $350, but you get what you pay for, every single time....
MACS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE!
Because there IS NO $399 option for a Mac, you have to bump the specs of the PC up to what the Mac has.
For doing the basic tasks that 90% of the world does: e-mail, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and home banking a $299 - $499 PC does FINE!
Not everyone wants to edit audio and video, and not everyone needs 100 fps on the latest game. With that in mind MACS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE compared to generic x86 PCs.
The article advocates doing actual *STUDIES* to backup the call for diversity. It also calls for other methods that are basically best practices for a business: a disaster recovery plan, proper backups, firewalls & IDS and managed desktops.
There is nothing wrong with anything he advocated in this article. Getting supporting evidence and adding diversity to a proper BC/DR plan is 100% correct.
What he fails to acknowledge is that Microsoft has, for its entire history, made security an afterthought that always lost to convenience.
Windows 95, 98 & Me were designed as *consumer* OSes, not corporate clients. Consumer OSes had no need for all those network services and ports being open by default. These systems were designed for home users, not businesses. WinNT, 2000 and XP Pro are different animals and are designed to be used in LANs where many of those services are going to be needed.
The DUN 1.4 update should have patched those Win95/98 systems to lock down almost every incoming port short of DHCP, NTP and DNS returns.
While MS has made noise recently about an emphasis on security, their actions speak louder than words. WinXP, while more stable than Win98/Me, seems to be just as vulnerable to security problems as other versions of their OS.
Even though Win95 and Win98 are no longer officially supported, MS needs to release one last patch that locks many of those ports down.
Unfortunately, no patch in the world will stop clueless users from clicking attachments without looking.
Then are laws to guide human behavour away from those things that are determental to society and to cause the most desirable emergent or collective behavours?
Or are they to allow special interest groups and politicians to get what they want?
While the former is a possibility, sadly the latter more reflects reality.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the iRiver players support OGG Vorbis. iRiver is trying ahrd to get support on most of their players -- since most have upgradable flash memory.
Check out this link for more info.
The setup consists of two rackmount units connected by both optical and Ethernet cables.
So... do the boxes have to be close enough to run the optical cables directly? Can the signal be regenerated or amplified without disturbing the photons? (I doubt it.) How about sending the photon stream through a DWDM switch? (Again, I doubt it.)
If the pair of boxes has to be in the same building, that isn't going to be a big seller. Bob would just walk down and HAND Alice the data.
Nice PR stunt, though.
Oh, I really want to know what telco is finding multiple taps a week to their optical fibers. I really smell bullshit here.
Good to see the system works. You would wonder what would happen if said hacker was working for a company on a similar closed source program. Would it have been detected?
You mean like Borland's Interbase? The compiled in backdoor wasn't discovered until after the database opensourced.
My favorite quote from the advisory is:
"This vulnerability was not introduced by unauthorized modifications to the original vendor's source. It was introduced by maintainers of the code within Borland. The back door account password cannot be changed using normal operational commands, nor can the account be deleted from existing vulnerable servers [see References]."
How long was it in there? "These security holes affect all version of InterBase shipped since 1994, on all platforms."
The advisory dates from 2001 -- you do the math.
I can't think of 2 people that -- honestly -- would NOT block ads and banners if it was just a click away.
/. readers were up in arms. How is this different?
/., so your bandwidth bills don't kill you.
Adding the function to let certain ad banners through because you want to "support" that site is stupid. It should be nominated for the most unused feature of a software program right up there with the "please send more spam" button.
I use the "block images from this server" in Mozilla on a regular basis. I block all cookies unless it breaks functionality on a site I want to access.
When it was suggested that TV-skip feature in a Tivo was "theft",
When one TV exec went as far as to suggest an implicit contract with TV viewers compelling them to watch the ads, most people here laughed so hard their sides hurt. Rightfully so.
I'm sorry, but don't whine to me about supporting a poor business model. If you can't afford to run the site, don't -- or keep mention of it off of
Use a "free" site, and let THEM worry about the ad-blocking software.
If the price is too high, then they'll be out of business. If the prices are low, they can make it up on volume.
"Make it up on volume" is a phrase that usually only applies to the manufacturing sector, where fixed overhead costs like rent, electricity, etc. combined with the fact it is much, much cheaper to run 3 shifts of the same product than stop and change the line to a different product; test; calibrate; retest; ramp up production...
The only way they will "make it up on volume" is if there is almost 0 downtime and 0 human-interaction. It will not only have to be fully automated, but 5-nines of reliable without the 5-nines normal cost.
WRONG!
How many times is this going to come up? It seems to be standard FUD towards RH.
What you are talking about applies to the RHN SERVICE, not the software.
Check out Appendix 1 of that document, specifically:
1. The Software. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Applications (the "Software") are either a modular operating system or application consisting of hundreds of software components. The end user license agreement for each component is located in the component's source code. With the exception of certain image files identified in Section 2 below, the license terms for the components permit Customer to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms. This agreement does not limit Customer's rights under, or grant Customer rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component.
The image files they're talking about are the Shadoman logo and Red Hat logo.
Charles
I didn't know that. My experience was with Amiga computers (A2000, A3000, A1200, A4000) and accelerators and they always worked fine.
Unless you went tried to integrate a different architecture altogether like adding PPC to an MC68K Amiga. But things like that add-in 80286 board (full PC on a card) worked great for me.
Netcraft really needs to drop the NCSA line on the charts that don't stretch back before 2000.
The only thing that straight orange line at 0 does is give the Sun ONE guys something to point and laugh at. And it looks like they need it.
Are they not going to have backward compatibility? That seems like a big mistake in the game console market to me.
By the time the X2 comes out, Celeron 733s will probably be cheap enough to put on an add-on card and sell for $49.
That is the price of 1 game. Lot of people with existing X-Box titles would buy that.
1. Because it hasn't gotten anywhere near the airtime of MySQL/Postgres.
2. Because it is going away -- being merged into MySQL AB's product line as MaxDB.
http://www.sapdb.org/7.4/sapdb_mysql.htm
I can't agree with that. If the default behavior of all common mail programs so discourages people from executing attachments, I think the worm problem (at least as it exists today with things like sobig) would be effectively solved.
That's not to say that nobody will find a way to execute such a program. The problem with sobig, though, was that so *many* people ended up running it, because of how easy it is to do in mail programs.
Except many worms are spread through more than one means.
A real case I dealt with: the I LOVE YOU virus.
The ILY virus spread through local network shares and e-mail attachments. The parent office of a corp I worked for (2,000 PCs) was hammered with it. It took them two days to clean up.
Then, the next day, some idiot who originally *thought it was a real love note and saved the attachment to his desktop* executed it again -- out of the context of an e-mail attachment.
The shame and humiliation heaped upon him was enough to ensure he wouldn't ignore IT memos again. However, it brought the e-mail servers down a second day while it was fixed. Again.
In a LAN environment, all it takes is one idiot.
"You don't need perfect code to avoid security problems. There are things we're doing that are making code closer to perfect, in terms of tools and security audits and things like that. But there are two other techniques: one is called firewalling and the other is called keeping the software up to date. None of these problems (viruses and worms) happened to people who did either one of those things."
The first sentence is correct -- or moot. The last is pure bullshit.
"Perfect" code is probably unattainable in complex applications. This is why things like firewalls, IDS, backups, etc. exist. Code should be made as good as possible, but dwelling on perfection will only pull your focus from other issues.
However, no virus or firewall in the world is gonna stop a cluleless user from clicking on an attachment and screwing their system. Virus scanners are mostly reactionary -- if it isn't in their list of malware, they can't find it. If it is a new way to screw users, and they click it...
EVEN if users have to jump through hoops like not executing from inside the mail program, saving it to the desktop, unzipping, scanning -- they'll screw something up. It is the nature of the beast.
Even with sandboxing -- good luck getting a user to execute the code in a sandbox first, every time.
Frontpage does more than just create quick web pages. It also handles website management, including permissions, collaboration, showing relationships between files, dead & broken link checking, file transfers, etc.
It also produces some of the most mangled, broken HTML code I've ever seen -- short of HTML exported from Excel or Word. I've spent more time cleaning up the HTML than saved on the quick layout features.
Actually, Quanta Plus does most, if not all, of that. Once 3.2 is released, it'll have a frames wizard, WYSIWYG editing and other features as well.
...in VIA bringing their Nano-ITX motherboards (12cm x 12cm) affordably to market than the likes of Oqo, Nimble and this other group.
Combine that with their new, smaller Eden-N processor that runs at 1 GHz with 7 W of heat dissipation, and built-in AES 256-bit acceleration...
Considering their Mini-ITX boards run under $200, I don't think they'll have a tough time beating $3,700.
Exactly how does reading from a CD-ROM drive destroy the drive? Does it have to do with UDMA or what?
I haven't had software destroy hardware since a Commodore PET.
so you LEGALLY & with GPL's blessing rip the CD's from work or your friends or someone uploads them to alt.binaries.whatever...
Yup.
I obtained 2.1WS for home from my copies as work. When work updates to 3, then I'll make copies for use at home. I don't need paid support at home. It is nice to have at the office, though.
"Free as in speech" doesn't mean "download an iso".
The source RPMs are available on ftp.redhat.com for you to peruse, modify and compile at will.
Nothing says they have to hand it to you on a silver platter.
Since a discussion about RH's licenses with these seem to pop up every time they are mentioned on /., I thought I'd point out that source RPMs for RHEL 3 are located on Red Hat's FTP server. .iso images are not available.
No one said they had to make it EASY...
I used to work in a retail computer store specializing in Amiga computers. The A1200 was notorious for being difficult to install expansion boards into the trapdoor slot.
I had one accelerator try to be returned after the customer tried to install it themselves.
I looked at the unit and the pins connecting the card connector to the board were bent and there were chips out of the motherboard.
I told the customer that it looked like they took a screwdriver to the edge and used a hammer to try and pound the card into the slot.
I kid you not, the reply was "I did. So what? The manual didn't say *NOT* to hit it with a hammer and screwdriver".
We didn't accept the return. I explained that my supplier would laugh me out of business if I tried to return it with chisel marks.
$200 down the drain because the cheap bastard didn't want to spend the extra $10 to have us install it.
Unless you are running a small- to medium-sized business and your long distance phone bill runs in the thousands of dollars a month.
Since high-speed internet is a requirement at many places of business, you can piggyback the phone service onto your internet service. The increase in usage of the Internet is not $$ equivalent to the phone costs, so it is NOT cost shifting. Well, a little, but not equivalent cost shifting.
Offices in my area can get SDSL 1 Mb/1 Mb for $199 / month. That does wonders with SIP phones to remote offices and branches.
We have none, since all the components were purchased separately from different vendors.
Ah, that's the difference. I purchased complete systems from a local PC wholesaler, not piecemeal. I understand what you mean about getting separate pieces and building it yourself. I wasn't interested in PC assembly, and have had problems just like you mention when doing it that way.
http://www.unitedcomputer.com/Systems.htm
Sorry, but I've never had a white-box PC die like that, and I've installed close to a hundred. They either die within the first 30 days, and are replaced by warranty, or last for years.
I've used both Dell Dimensions and whitebox PCs in a corporate LAN (60+ users) and had better TCO with the whitebox. If the Dell died, I had to ship it back and we were out that PC for a few days. If the whitebox died, I dropped it off with a copy of the receipt on my way home and picked up a replacement (or fixed unit) the next day.
In both cases, all user data was stored on network drives so nothing was lost -- just push the corporate image to the HD and it is ready to go back in service.
We also had spares, so neither case resulted in excessive downtime. Machines were swapped out with spares if they died. They were replaced on a 3 year refreshment cycle.
Since our MS MOLA was with a software vendor and not Dell, we got better deals getting PCs without OS & Office licenses from the whitebox vendor and using our MOLA licenses for the installs. Coming "pre-installed" from the vendor didn't help -- they didn't have our images.
In 4 years I had 3 PCs that needed warranty service. I had tons more problems with a bad batch (50) of APC UPS units that *ALL* had to go back, since 30+ failed in the first 14 days. I wish I had purchased them locally -- it would have been tons easier and cheaper to load them into a compay car and drive to CompUSA that ship 50 lead-acid battery units back to the vendor. Heavy and expensive.
Thank you! I'm so sick of everyone saying Macs are more expensive.
If you look into high-end laptops, Dell's are usually more expensive as well.
I wish that old "Macs are too pricey" line would just go away.
Sure you can pick up a cheap PC system for $350, but you get what you pay for, every single time....
MACS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE!
Because there IS NO $399 option for a Mac, you have to bump the specs of the PC up to what the Mac has.
For doing the basic tasks that 90% of the world does: e-mail, web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and home banking a $299 - $499 PC does FINE!
Not everyone wants to edit audio and video, and not everyone needs 100 fps on the latest game. With that in mind MACS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE compared to generic x86 PCs.
The article advocates doing actual *STUDIES* to backup the call for diversity. It also calls for other methods that are basically best practices for a business: a disaster recovery plan, proper backups, firewalls & IDS and managed desktops.
There is nothing wrong with anything he advocated in this article. Getting supporting evidence and adding diversity to a proper BC/DR plan is 100% correct.
What he fails to acknowledge is that Microsoft has, for its entire history, made security an afterthought that always lost to convenience.
Windows 95, 98 & Me were designed as *consumer* OSes, not corporate clients. Consumer OSes had no need for all those network services and ports being open by default. These systems were designed for home users, not businesses. WinNT, 2000 and XP Pro are different animals and are designed to be used in LANs where many of those services are going to be needed.
The DUN 1.4 update should have patched those Win95/98 systems to lock down almost every incoming port short of DHCP, NTP and DNS returns.
While MS has made noise recently about an emphasis on security, their actions speak louder than words. WinXP, while more stable than Win98/Me, seems to be just as vulnerable to security problems as other versions of their OS.
Even though Win95 and Win98 are no longer officially supported, MS needs to release one last patch that locks many of those ports down.
Unfortunately, no patch in the world will stop clueless users from clicking attachments without looking.
Then are laws to guide human behavour away from those things that are determental to society and to cause the most desirable emergent or collective behavours?
Or are they to allow special interest groups and politicians to get what they want?
While the former is a possibility, sadly the latter more reflects reality.