1. We didn't bomb S. Africa because while Apartheid was atrocious, it was NOT a threat to the U.S. The Iraqi regeim was. In fact, S. Africa is the only "member" of the nuclear club to have been verified as disposing of and halting pursuit of nuclear weapons. They DID have the bomb, but got rid of it. [http://web.mit.edu/ssp/spring01/albright.htm]
Looking at history, America has violent responses in two major causes: mass attacks on civilians/non-combatants, and threats to national security.
Blow up a plane over Lockerbie -- we bomb Libya. Blow up the U.S.S. Cole, a couple of Embassies and nothing. (Okay, one factory in Sudan and one cruise missile into Afghanistan.) Blow up the Twin Towers, we invade Afghanistan and Iraq. We aren't perfect (Guatamala is a good example of how the CIA went overboard).
As far as hide-and-seek, and Iraqi disarmarment -- we'll conduct a thorough search once things are in firm control. They HAVE found instructions for protection against chemical weapons; missles that are capable of longer ranges than allowed [though many were suqsequently destroyed]; unaccounted for chemical warheads [empty, but not reported].
Personally, I believe Iraq *does* have chemical weapons. However, I also believe that they are meant for exclusive use on the Kurds and possibly Iranians. Sadly, that is a very paranoid part of the world.
You seem to be ignoring the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, along with several Federal Elections Laws. State Laws and the rulings of State Supreme Courts are NOT allowed to over rule or trump the U.S. Constitution. Thus, the SCOTUS is the final authority, above SCOF.
I was all a mess, though. Rather pathetic, actually.
Well, the whole inspection thing was botched from the start. It wasn't one extra month that was the problem, it was the 10+ YEARS. Hell, CLINTON told the Iraqi gov't several times "this is your last chance" and look where "just wait one more month" got them.
Keep in mind, Iraq was a conquered nation after 1991. The terms of surrender included disarming and inspections. There should have been no kicking out of inspectors, nor asking about where and when to go. Inspectors go where and when they want, backed by a few platoons of troops if necessary. Do that and this would have been over back in 1992 or so.
It would have stretched on forever -- as it was doing. The UN has no spine, or they would have done it that way.
Enough was enough. Crazies has shown the world on 9/11/2001 that they were willing to kill thousands of non-combatants to make a point. They were/are willing to hide themselves among innocent civilians and use those people, their schools and hospitals as shields from reprisals. Those same crazies have not only expressed the willingness to use WMD on civilian populations, but have attempted to acquire WMDs.
WMDs are usually only available to governments, due to the resources required. Iraq was pursuing WMD -- and had proven to have and USE them in the past. The gov't of Iraq was believed to be the most likely source for WMDs to get into the hands of the crazies. Iraq had given refuge to major terrorists in the past (Abu Nidal was one). Afghanistan was the biggest nest.
If Iraq refused to live up to the terms of surrender by playing hide-and-seek with inspectors, etc. then it is time to force the issue.
As far as potential civilian deaths due to the war -- there will be far fewer Iraqi civilians killed by the Coalition forces than have been by Saddam Hussein's forces over the years. The Coalition will allow the Red Cross to visit POWs, not torture then execute them.
But isn't that exactly what they did? I remember them declaring a victor. Since the recounts were stopped, how did they know except through ESP? Or is it ESP when you look at a single ballot but not when you decide for an entire state?
No, it isn't what they did. They used the data from the recounts that had already taken place. The votes were counted numerous times.
Several States were very close. Yes, Oregon and New Mexico were outweighed by Florida, but add Iowa or one of the other close, small States and it would have been a different story.
The Governor of Florida was doing his job. All those items you mention were his responsibility as Gov. What would you have him do? At least he didn't shirk his duty. What would I have people do? Its more like what I would have them NOT do -- whine and preted G.W. Bush isn't President. It is the whining and sour grapes that gets to me.
The system needs reformed -- not the Electoral College, but rather the campaign funding and campaigning laws in general. Also, the press needs to act better. STOP CALLING ELECTIONS ad just report the returns! Many States have multiple time zones, and people are still voting. Stop exit polling!
I've spent a lot of time in Texas and have Libertarian friends there. I'm aware of the headaches. The only thing I can say is start local and work up.
So, you would have favored simply recounting and recounting until the vote turned out how you like it?
There are RULES to an election -- including deadlines and not trying to have the counters use ESP to guess what people intended.
As a Florida resident (at that time), and Libertarian who voted for neither Gore nor Bush, I've had enough of ignorant people bitching about the election.
1. The "Butterfly Ballot" was chosen by an experienced DEMOCRAT; used successfully, without incident, in several other areas of the country; was published beforehand in the local newspaper; passed a review of BOTH parties without challenge.
2. "Hanging Chads" were the best. Finally, Florida counties will get rid of the antiquated systems and get something a bit less prone to human error and manipulation. Voting is't tough, and there were people there to assist. Multiple rehandlings of paper punch ballots damage the ballots, skewing the actual vote. More recounts would have meat more UNCOUNTED votes as the ballots would have been damaged beyond proper use.
3. "More People Voted For Gore". Actually, I think the majority of Americans DIDN'T VOTE AT ALL! For those that DID vote, this ISN'T A PURE DEMOCRACY aka MOB RULE. This is a Republic, and the electoral system is much harder to manipulate than pure majority vote. It isn't the first time it happened, and it won't be the last time that a President was elected with less than a majority.
GET OVER IT! Both major political parties (Democrats & Republicans) are lying, sniviling, cheating, vote-whoring, ballot-stuffing scum.
Don't like it? Look at the maps where the votes were close (Oregon, Iowa, Florida, etc.) and organize voter education, registration and participation there. There IS another election coming up...
Check out http://www.lp.org/ for an alternative to the 2-party bullshit.
1. The non-digital example. The "fix" for the flaw in the child seat is something ANYONE can address by replacing the seat. Software frequently isn't able to be "fixed" that easily, much less by 100% of the user base. An app is one thing, something buried in the OS...
2. The worst case is NOT that anyone else but you may know about it. The worst case is everyone and their dog can use the hack with the click of a button. Look at your weblogs some time. What hacks are being attempted? The simple ones that everyone can download a 1-click exploit for.
Yes, you're patched for those but the worst case is zero-day 1-click hacks. You find out when a hundred script kiddies hammer your server just because you have port 80 or 21 open.
My vote is for 21-30 days advance notice to the VENDOR. They can share with whom they want, such as their big customers. After the 21-30 day grace period, full disclosure. Heck, it could be 7-14 days depending on how "trivial" the fix is.
It is so thin and light because it doesn't have any drives -- no CD/DVD and no floppy. Fine, but if I want to do that, I'll get that Lindows laptop that has about the same specs (Via C3 processor @ 933 MHz) for 1/2 the price ($799 vs $1,499)
Fans are usually removed for this sort of thing. I've seen quite a bit of this with extreme overclockers. The idea is to fill a tank, like a styrofoam cooler, with oil. Drop in a fluid pump, like one for a fish tank. Pump the non-conductive oil OUT of the container, letting it spill over the cooling unit of a stripped window air conditioner, flowing back into the cooler. You can also add a filter to the process to help keep the oil clean.
It takes care of cooling the system -- they can get down to absurd cold temperatures.
There shouldn't be enough pressure for the oil to push itself under the contacts -- unless you immerse the motherboard down a few meters or so.
Ideally, if this isn't a web server and just an AP, they don't need a hard drive. They should switch to a 512 Mb compact flash drive or something with no moving parts.
5 CDs/2 DVDs is about 3.2 Gb of ISOs, assuming the second DVD doesn't contain extras not on the CDs. Actually, with DVDs being 4.7 Gb, there must be something else...
Multiply that by every/.er who hits the mirrors -- they'd probably owe their souls to DT (or whoever supplies their bandwidth) by Monday.
Because batteries deliver the charge over a long period of time, whereas capacitors deliver it in a quick burst.
Yes, "ultracapacitors", too. The company you linked to is trying to market their product as an adjunt to batteries -- to deliver the surge of power needed for certain operations like startup, burst writets, etc. They aren't a replacement for batteries.
The confusion is the phrase "last up to 10 times as long" -- meaning their total lifetime is longer than the batteries, but not while delivering constant power.
Form a coop, lease some resellable bandwidth like a Fractional-T1, slap wireless nodes everywhere. "Mesh" networks seem to be the latest buzzword. Use them to route around the broken segment -- aka "phone company".
That is the sort of information I was looking for. Can I cross-post your response as a response to my original post on SecurityFocus? Verbatim, cut & paste?
This gives me flashbacks to Statistics classes in college. Specifically a problem where a hypothetical bus company wanted to raise prices, but for each increase they lost riders. The result was to curves and the intersection was where the "optimum" result was.
I can envision that same graph in MS, where "security" and "compalints/bad PR" are the two curves...
Fortunately for those of us in the know, they'll have to crack your admin account first. By default, you can only boot to an XP Recovery Console if you can supply the administrator password. You can turn this behavior off via a local security policy, if you wish, but I wouldn't suggest it:)
Is that the same with a Win2K Recovery Console? The idea was to use a Win2K disk on a WinXP box and the Win2K thinks it is a "corrupt" install.
So what do you recommend for encrypting laptop HDDs? PGPdisk?
Actually, EFS *might* be fine. And, PGPDisk *might* have the same problem, if implemented the same way.
What I recommend is the same thing the PGP/GPG people recommend -- keep your secret key on a removable device. For a laptop, something like a removable USB key. They are starting to get cheap, and you don't need a ton of memory. You can get a 32 Mb "pen drive" at BestBuy for $30.
And if you're not part of a Domain, but rather a Workgroup?
I haven't tried this, so I am curious. The actual claim was made by a security consultant from Ayava -- "If the system is a member of a workgroup and not a domain, you can just change the user's password that the file was encrypted under," (Ken) Pfeil said. "Then you can log on as that user having access to the encrypted file."
Reread the original article -- the password for EFS eencrypted files is tied to the user's password. If a user is part of a Workgroup, not a domain (think "laptop, remote user") then you can change the password locally and unencrypt the files.
If Avaya's security consultant Ken Pfeil is correct when he said:
"If the system is a member of a workgroup and not a domain, you can just change the user's password that the file was encrypted under," Pfeil said. "Then you can log on as that user having access to the encrypted file."
Then EFS is useless in the standard configuration for protecting hard drives. Specifically, hard drives on LAPTOPS, which frequently get stolen.
Most likely this is an IMPLEMENTATION issue, though, and NOT a "hole" in XP. It sounds like the certificate/key used for EFS is stored on the drive, and the password for it is tied to the Workgroup/Domain password. The certificate/key really needs to be stored on a USB key or other removable media, so it can be kept separate from the system.
Encrypting files/folders/partitions on hard drives is supposed to guard against exposure EVEN WHEN CONTROL OF THE SYSTEM IS COMPROMISED!
Case in point -- laptops. What is the point encrypting data on the drives if when stolen, the machine can be consoled and the password changed, opening all the files?
I do not know if you can move the certificate/key off to removable media. If you can, like I suspect, then it is an implementation issue and not a "hole". If not...
You are right in that it was overplayed as a major catastrophy, though. For almost all other cases, if you've lost control of the hardware, you're screwed.
When I was in High School (mid 80s), every two years the school arranged a "career week" where different companies/people came in and gave talks, demonstrations, and answered questions about what it is they did for work.
They gave out descriptions of jobs entailed, the official job descriptions and answered all sorts of questions. They were actually pretty honest and not just "rah! rah! We are the greatest to work for!"
Anybody who believes Hollywood's portrayal of ANYTHING without doing their own homework deserves what they get.
I'm more worried about my kids getting their HISTORY from Hollywood (i.e. - Pearl Harbor) than their job descriptions.
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1. We didn't bomb S. Africa because while Apartheid was atrocious, it was NOT a threat to the U.S. The Iraqi regeim was. In fact, S. Africa is the only "member" of the nuclear club to have been verified as disposing of and halting pursuit of nuclear weapons. They DID have the bomb, but got rid of it. [http://web.mit.edu/ssp/spring01/albright.htm]
Looking at history, America has violent responses in two major causes: mass attacks on civilians/non-combatants, and threats to national security.
Blow up a plane over Lockerbie -- we bomb Libya. Blow up the U.S.S. Cole, a couple of Embassies and nothing. (Okay, one factory in Sudan and one cruise missile into Afghanistan.) Blow up the Twin Towers, we invade Afghanistan and Iraq. We aren't perfect (Guatamala is a good example of how the CIA went overboard).
As far as hide-and-seek, and Iraqi disarmarment -- we'll conduct a thorough search once things are in firm control. They HAVE found instructions for protection against chemical weapons; missles that are capable of longer ranges than allowed [though many were suqsequently destroyed]; unaccounted for chemical warheads [empty, but not reported].
Personally, I believe Iraq *does* have chemical weapons. However, I also believe that they are meant for exclusive use on the Kurds and possibly Iranians. Sadly, that is a very paranoid part of the world.
Thanks for the good discussion.
-Charles
You seem to be ignoring the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, along with several Federal Elections Laws. State Laws and the rulings of State Supreme Courts are NOT allowed to over rule or trump the U.S. Constitution. Thus, the SCOTUS is the final authority, above SCOF.
I was all a mess, though. Rather pathetic, actually.
Well, the whole inspection thing was botched from the start. It wasn't one extra month that was the problem, it was the 10+ YEARS. Hell, CLINTON told the Iraqi gov't several times "this is your last chance" and look where "just wait one more month" got them.
Keep in mind, Iraq was a conquered nation after 1991. The terms of surrender included disarming and inspections. There should have been no kicking out of inspectors, nor asking about where and when to go. Inspectors go where and when they want, backed by a few platoons of troops if necessary. Do that and this would have been over back in 1992 or so.
It would have stretched on forever -- as it was doing. The UN has no spine, or they would have done it that way.
Enough was enough. Crazies has shown the world on 9/11/2001 that they were willing to kill thousands of non-combatants to make a point. They were/are willing to hide themselves among innocent civilians and use those people, their schools and hospitals as shields from reprisals. Those same crazies have not only expressed the willingness to use WMD on civilian populations, but have attempted to acquire WMDs.
WMDs are usually only available to governments, due to the resources required. Iraq was pursuing WMD -- and had proven to have and USE them in the past. The gov't of Iraq was believed to be the most likely source for WMDs to get into the hands of the crazies. Iraq had given refuge to major terrorists in the past (Abu Nidal was one). Afghanistan was the biggest nest.
If Iraq refused to live up to the terms of surrender by playing hide-and-seek with inspectors, etc. then it is time to force the issue.
As far as potential civilian deaths due to the war -- there will be far fewer Iraqi civilians killed by the Coalition forces than have been by Saddam Hussein's forces over the years. The Coalition will allow the Red Cross to visit POWs, not torture then execute them.
No, it isn't what they did. They used the data from the recounts that had already taken place. The votes were counted numerous times.
Several States were very close. Yes, Oregon and New Mexico were outweighed by Florida, but add Iowa or one of the other close, small States and it would have been a different story.
The Governor of Florida was doing his job. All those items you mention were his responsibility as Gov. What would you have him do? At least he didn't shirk his duty. What would I have people do? Its more like what I would have them NOT do -- whine and preted G.W. Bush isn't President. It is the whining and sour grapes that gets to me.
The system needs reformed -- not the Electoral College, but rather the campaign funding and campaigning laws in general. Also, the press needs to act better. STOP CALLING ELECTIONS ad just report the returns! Many States have multiple time zones, and people are still voting. Stop exit polling!
I've spent a lot of time in Texas and have Libertarian friends there. I'm aware of the headaches. The only thing I can say is start local and work up.
So, you would have favored simply recounting and recounting until the vote turned out how you like it?
There are RULES to an election -- including deadlines and not trying to have the counters use ESP to guess what people intended.
As a Florida resident (at that time), and Libertarian who voted for neither Gore nor Bush, I've had enough of ignorant people bitching about the election.
1. The "Butterfly Ballot" was chosen by an experienced DEMOCRAT; used successfully, without incident, in several other areas of the country; was published beforehand in the local newspaper; passed a review of BOTH parties without challenge.
2. "Hanging Chads" were the best. Finally, Florida counties will get rid of the antiquated systems and get something a bit less prone to human error and manipulation. Voting is't tough, and there were people there to assist. Multiple rehandlings of paper punch ballots damage the ballots, skewing the actual vote. More recounts would have meat more UNCOUNTED votes as the ballots would have been damaged beyond proper use.
3. "More People Voted For Gore". Actually, I think the majority of Americans DIDN'T VOTE AT ALL! For those that DID vote, this ISN'T A PURE DEMOCRACY aka MOB RULE. This is a Republic, and the electoral system is much harder to manipulate than pure majority vote. It isn't the first time it happened, and it won't be the last time that a President was elected with less than a majority.
GET OVER IT! Both major political parties (Democrats & Republicans) are lying, sniviling, cheating, vote-whoring, ballot-stuffing scum.
Don't like it? Look at the maps where the votes were close (Oregon, Iowa, Florida, etc.) and organize voter education, registration and participation there. There IS another election coming up...
Check out http://www.lp.org/ for an alternative to the 2-party bullshit.
Two problems with your proposed method:
1. The non-digital example. The "fix" for the flaw in the child seat is something ANYONE can address by replacing the seat. Software frequently isn't able to be "fixed" that easily, much less by 100% of the user base. An app is one thing, something buried in the OS...
2. The worst case is NOT that anyone else but you may know about it. The worst case is everyone and their dog can use the hack with the click of a button. Look at your weblogs some time. What hacks are being attempted? The simple ones that everyone can download a 1-click exploit for.
Yes, you're patched for those but the worst case is zero-day 1-click hacks. You find out when a hundred script kiddies hammer your server just because you have port 80 or 21 open.
My vote is for 21-30 days advance notice to the VENDOR. They can share with whom they want, such as their big customers. After the 21-30 day grace period, full disclosure. Heck, it could be 7-14 days depending on how "trivial" the fix is.
I saw this but considered the following...
It is so thin and light because it doesn't have any drives -- no CD/DVD and no floppy. Fine, but if I want to do that, I'll get that Lindows laptop that has about the same specs (Via C3 processor @ 933 MHz) for 1/2 the price ($799 vs $1,499)
Fans are usually removed for this sort of thing. I've seen quite a bit of this with extreme overclockers. The idea is to fill a tank, like a styrofoam cooler, with oil. Drop in a fluid pump, like one for a fish tank. Pump the non-conductive oil OUT of the container, letting it spill over the cooling unit of a stripped window air conditioner, flowing back into the cooler. You can also add a filter to the process to help keep the oil clean.
It takes care of cooling the system -- they can get down to absurd cold temperatures.
There shouldn't be enough pressure for the oil to push itself under the contacts -- unless you immerse the motherboard down a few meters or so.
Ideally, if this isn't a web server and just an AP, they don't need a hard drive. They should switch to a 512 Mb compact flash drive or something with no moving parts.
1. Beach resort
2. Evaporate it for salt
3. Water fights
4. Endless discussion about life on Mars
5. Experiments to see if fish could live on Mars
You forgot...
6. Profit!!!
How long before they find the first Martian Starbucks? Probably right next to the McDonald's and Walmart.
Or revenue to pay for bandwith...
/.er who hits the mirrors -- they'd probably owe their souls to DT (or whoever supplies their bandwidth) by Monday.
.iso images...
5 CDs/2 DVDs is about 3.2 Gb of ISOs, assuming the second DVD doesn't contain extras not on the CDs. Actually, with DVDs being 4.7 Gb, there must be something else...
Multiply that by every
I can see why they don't do full
If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em. What a wonderful philosophy.
Because batteries deliver the charge over a long period of time, whereas capacitors deliver it in a quick burst.
Yes, "ultracapacitors", too. The company you linked to is trying to market their product as an adjunt to batteries -- to deliver the surge of power needed for certain operations like startup, burst writets, etc. They aren't a replacement for batteries.
The confusion is the phrase "last up to 10 times as long" -- meaning their total lifetime is longer than the batteries, but not while delivering constant power.
Who here (or anywhere) is surprised at this?
Form a coop, lease some resellable bandwidth like a Fractional-T1, slap wireless nodes everywhere. "Mesh" networks seem to be the latest buzzword. Use them to route around the broken segment -- aka "phone company".
Actually... check out the 220 MHz accelerator for the Newton 2000/2100.
New ATA drivers allow the use of ATA-style PCMCIA cards, so you can add 1 Gb of storage if you really want.
Since there are 2 PCMCIA slots on the 2000/2100 you can slap a network (wired/wireless) in the other socket.
For as old as they are, Newton's are quite capable devices.
Thank you!
That is the sort of information I was looking for. Can I cross-post your response as a response to my original post on SecurityFocus? Verbatim, cut & paste?
Wow, and with this story still on the front page?
This gives me flashbacks to Statistics classes in college. Specifically a problem where a hypothetical bus company wanted to raise prices, but for each increase they lost riders. The result was to curves and the intersection was where the "optimum" result was.
I can envision that same graph in MS, where "security" and "compalints/bad PR" are the two curves...
Fortunately for those of us in the know, they'll have to crack your admin account first. By default, you can only boot to an XP Recovery Console if you can supply the administrator password. You can turn this behavior off via a local security policy, if you wish, but I wouldn't suggest it :)
Is that the same with a Win2K Recovery Console? The idea was to use a Win2K disk on a WinXP box and the Win2K thinks it is a "corrupt" install.
So what do you recommend for encrypting laptop HDDs? PGPdisk?
Actually, EFS *might* be fine. And, PGPDisk *might* have the same problem, if implemented the same way.
What I recommend is the same thing the PGP/GPG people recommend -- keep your secret key on a removable device. For a laptop, something like a removable USB key. They are starting to get cheap, and you don't need a ton of memory. You can get a 32 Mb "pen drive" at BestBuy for $30.
And if you're not part of a Domain, but rather a Workgroup?
I haven't tried this, so I am curious. The actual claim was made by a security consultant from Ayava -- "If the system is a member of a workgroup and not a domain, you can just change the user's password that the file was encrypted under," (Ken) Pfeil said. "Then you can log on as that user having access to the encrypted file."
Reread the original article -- the password for EFS eencrypted files is tied to the user's password. If a user is part of a Workgroup, not a domain (think "laptop, remote user") then you can change the password locally and unencrypt the files.
[I posted this on SecurityFocus.]
Actually, it is CRITICAL in one aspect.
If Avaya's security consultant Ken Pfeil is correct when he said:
"If the system is a member of a workgroup and not a domain, you can just change the user's password that the file was encrypted under," Pfeil said. "Then you can log on as that user having access to the encrypted file."
Then EFS is useless in the standard configuration for protecting hard drives. Specifically, hard drives on LAPTOPS, which frequently get stolen.
Most likely this is an IMPLEMENTATION issue, though, and NOT a "hole" in XP. It sounds like the certificate/key used for EFS is stored on the drive, and the password for it is tied to the Workgroup/Domain password. The certificate/key really needs to be stored on a USB key or other removable media, so it can be kept separate from the system.
Encrypting files/folders/partitions on hard drives is supposed to guard against exposure EVEN WHEN CONTROL OF THE SYSTEM IS COMPROMISED!
Case in point -- laptops. What is the point encrypting data on the drives if when stolen, the machine can be consoled and the password changed, opening all the files?
I do not know if you can move the certificate/key off to removable media. If you can, like I suspect, then it is an implementation issue and not a "hole". If not...
You are right in that it was overplayed as a major catastrophy, though. For almost all other cases, if you've lost control of the hardware, you're screwed.
-Charles Hill
What happened to Career Day in school?
When I was in High School (mid 80s), every two years the school arranged a "career week" where different companies/people came in and gave talks, demonstrations, and answered questions about what it is they did for work.
They gave out descriptions of jobs entailed, the official job descriptions and answered all sorts of questions. They were actually pretty honest and not just "rah! rah! We are the greatest to work for!"
Anybody who believes Hollywood's portrayal of ANYTHING without doing their own homework deserves what they get.
I'm more worried about my kids getting their HISTORY from Hollywood (i.e. - Pearl Harbor) than their job descriptions.
Wouldn't a decent implementation of QoS help this situation?
Instead of a router choosing the fasted or least-congested route for a packet, it could also factor in things like what type of packet/service it is.
NNTP, e-mail, and other non-interactive, non-realtime packets could be shunted down secondary pipes -- you'd never notice most of it anyway.
QoS on IPv4 doesn't really have the granularity for this, and it seems most routers on the 'net ignore those bits anyway.
I believe this was one of the things that IPv6 was supposed to address.
I was in Best Buy the other day and they had a 3-pack DVD set of: Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and Dragon's Lair 2.
The box claimed they were playable on PS2 and XBOX and, I believe, a regular DVD player.
With the way the games were played, they should translate to DVD games without much of a hitch.