Yes! I really like xmms (and KDE), so this is good news.
On another note; I skimmed the readme's and changelogs, this is an awesome beta-release; the ISO image install feature is such a cool idea. A GUI-kickstart generator is a very good idea too,and kernel 2.4, and better Xfree configuration, and quick-and-dirty personal firewall, and PXE boot images (sounds very interesting), and KDE 2.1, and, and, and...
The only worrying feature is BIND 9.10. It may be more secure and have nice features like DNSSEC/TSIG, but it is rather new, and could lead to some upgrade trouble? Besides bugfixing, this more noisy, and public beta test, will at least make this BIND upgrade known to people before the final release (=less suprises).
In short, this beta release, shows that RH really has listenend to its users (and costumers), eg; no superflous deamon running, after workstation install). And kudos to RH for that.
Just upgraded to KDE 2.1b2. I think it is really zippy, it is way more responsive and faster than MS-Windows (on my faster box) and KDE1.
I run it on an old PPro 200Mhz, with a old and slow Cirrus Logic 1MB pci video card, but KDE seems really fast. The box has lots of RAM though, and runs kernel 2.4.0. And I have disabled system sounds, -that seemed to speed up the previous release of KDE. (And I just _hate_ all kinds of system sound schemes, -especially the funny ones, grumph!)
Just installed the beta, and discovered a new app, called Pixie Image Mangement System (PMS). It is among other things, a thumbnail, image cataloger and viewer.
Now this is a critical new desktop application, for all of us who has large collections of pr0n^H^H scientific NASA images to manage.
"Eye-candy" says some, but sometimes you just want to see some flesh^H^H^H flashy pictures of huge boo^H^H binary star systems.
>Okay, I know this'll instantly be modded down as >flamebait,
No, your standard appeal to the moderaters worked;-)
>but I just don't understand you people. You Linux
> zealots are constantly complaining about how
>horrible and unstable Windows is,
Come on. Win9x really _is_ prone to crashing. Even MS advertisment (for Win2KPro) stress that fact.
Win9x may have many merrits, but stability is not one of them. WinNT until SP3 (some say SP6a) wasn't so hot either.
> but then you turn around and try and make your
>so-called superior operating system to look and
>act as much like Windows as possible.
The reason why Linux is so stable is the kernel. Yes, win9x/WinNT has a kernel too, but not in the same leauge as Linux. The WINE project is not about "importing" the unstable Win9x kernel into Linux (thank god for that), but letting some WinXX _applications_ run under the (stable) linux kernel. These applications may suck, or not. That is not the issue.
> You even go so far as to use Microsoft's.dll
>and.vxd files to help you since you apparently
>can't figure out how to write your own drivers.
Are you trolling, or using the term "drivers" in a rather bizarre way??.
> Why don't you just save yourself the trouble,
>wipe your hard disk and install Win2K.
On my 3 servers?: Apache, Squid-proxy, Qmail, Sqwebmail, MRTG, Midgaard(CMS), Phorum, Netsaint, ProFTP, OpenSSH, Samba, BRU, XNTP, MySQL. Not to mention the Firewall (soon to be statefull) and IDS systems. No way. They serve a small site (only 4-6 gigabytes a day), but they need to be up 24 hours a day. Linux really delivers on that. And remote managment is really, really good too.
> Oh, and quit whining.
Relax. Try installing a Linux distro one day. You may like it. Even if you don't have the need for a Linux server or desktop, Linux experience will give you much insight, into how computers work.
And its fun too!
Yes. This is something that a lot of people miss about unions; the legal protectection against abuse.
Here i Denmark, the IT-workers has a rather good union called PROSA. When you have to sign a new contract, NDA or noncompete, you just take it to the unions lawyers first, so they can look it over. Since these lawyers are experts on their field, they can give you good advice,like; "this is standard stuff, you can sign it." or "take the contract back, and make them change this line, because..." or "This is a lousy contract, but you can sign it anyway, because if they try to enforce it, we will take it to court, and win."
Especially noncompetes, can be really, really bad for your career. Why learn that the hard way?
I know, smart US IT workers take their contracts to a lawyer too. But if push comes to shove, it is really nice to have a union behind you. It seems that a lot of US citizens, often prefer to drop to take any action against really unfair work treatment, even though they have a really good winning case, simply because, the thought of a long, legal struggle, would grind people down, or that the slight chance of losing the case, would mean personal ruin. So people swallow their defeat, and humiliation.
But if the union is behind you, the picture might change; The corperation can't play the "we grind you down in a long lasting legal struggle" card, since they now deal with an organization.
The employer can't intimidate the worker, with a bunch of lawyers, telling him lies, since the union got lawyers who knows the law.
And the union cover the legal cost too.
Most cases are standard stuff, but if a case is really unjust, the union can throw all its weight behind it. Something you can't get, when it is just you and your lawyer, against a perhaps large company.
>I think protection of this sort will cut
>down most on small to medium businesses pirating
>MS products and that's a damn good thing.
[snip about legal biz, who do Piracy]
Perhaps, until an "easy to apply" crack is made.
But it looks like this licensing scheme would mean higher maintance cost for those who legally buys MS software. Just think of the overhead of (re)installing a pc, where all the software has to be "approved" by a central repository.
And is this goodby to unattended mass installs? The only sane way to manage pc's is by using imaging software like "Ghost" (Symantec/MS).
Like all "piracy preventing" measures, this scheme look likes it will hurt legitemit costumers.
I really, really pity those poor souls, who has to maintain a MS-Windows based business machine park in the future; running around doing mindless drone work, just to do such a simple thing as installing software. The current "seriel numbers from hell" scheme, is allready so bad, that only the insane don't ignore it. This new scheme, together with CPRM or whatever devilish thing the future will bring, will make maintaning Wintel machines, totally inflexible, expensive and cumbersome.
But I agree with you, on those companies who earns loads of money, but refuse to pay for the software. That sucks. Everyone should have their licenses in order.
If costs of software purchase was a parameter in the private households (instead of just Warezing), then I wonder whether MS-Office, would be so popular.
Oh why, oh why, does the the software, and now the hardware industry too, seem to be engaged in a conspiracy to make the lifes of Sysadmins, consultants and legitimate buisness users, miserably beyond belief?
Any kind of low level hardware copy protection, is a recipe for distress and disaster, especially in real life enviroments, with mixed legacy hardware and software, upgrades, and hardware failures.
I don't care whether such protection schemes can be broken more or less easily; I deal (and have dealt) with buisness who actually tries to be legal licensvice. Installing modded harddisks, or cracking software, is not really an option on a server, where an hour of downtime, cost more than 10.000$.
And hardware do break down; Sure, the reliability of harddisks have increased tremendously over the years, few people experience hd-failures (and therefore don't do backups), on their own private pc's. But with everything computer related, the perspective changes dramatically with size: with 100 pc's, a hd-failures is something one has do deal with once in a while. With 1000 pc's you might as well have some spare hd's lying around.
Some experiences where copy protection may have been a major hindrance:
1. A lawyer came to us in distress: his laptop was broken and wouldn't boot Windows. The problem was, that he had more than 6 years of bills, bankstatements, accounts, letters, etc on it, without a backup of course. The hd was making funny clanking noises, so speed was of essence, and failure not an option. We managed to transfer the _whole_ content of the hd to another machine, and from there, we could begin to manually recover the data.
2. A server was brought to us in a civil court case; there was suspecion, that someone had tampered with the data on it. Since the machine could wind up in court as materiel evidence, one could not muck around on the hd. So the entire hd, was Ghosted (now a Symantec product) to another machine, and from there we could inspect the data, without compromizing the evidence.
3. Upgrades: An upgrade from WinNT to NT SB edition, or to a new edition of MS Exchange, may go well, or it may not. We have had a few cases of corruption of MS Exchange data when upgrading.
If the costumer has RAID, then one can make an easy rollback in case the upgrade goes wrong (breaking the mirror before upgrading), but if not, having a Ghosted image of the disk system may be a nice substitute. Reinstalling the OS, and restoring data from tape backup, is really the very last option, since it is very slow and errorprone. (We have encountered several instances of "Write only backup tapes" = The log says everything is fine, but it just won't restore).
4. Everyday maintance; employees come and go, pc's break down, Windows get corrupted and must be reinstalled, new pc's are bought, and old ones are handed down the company food chain.
The only sane way of dealing with this, is with some kind hd-image copying software. Not only does it speed up the process, but it ensures some kind of homegenity of the installations.
Installing a pc from scratch (and in the right way) may be trivial for/.'ers, but not for ordinary employees. And it is time consuming; Windows, drivers, getting it networked, Service Packs, hot-patches, Explorer, MS-office, accounting software or whatever, and the extremely annoying reboots in between, not to mention the registration numbers from hell.
Since small (and smart) companies rely on extern consultantfirms, the cost and time savings from using Ghost, is significant. If this copyprotection scheme renders such hd imaging software useless, their IT-expenses for mundane tasks like this, may easily trippel.
5. Restoring an entire office from scratch: One of our costumers had their servers (2) and client pc's stolen (25). We managed not only to get new hardware the very same day, but restoring the entire office to functionality during the night. Only one day of downtime. Totally impossible to do without Ghost.
Just interferring with such a fundamental thing as copying is wrong. And how will this copy protection scheme function? What about; Hardware and software RAID, servers with two disk systems; one with, and one without cp-protection. Performance; checking every read and write, even if done in hardware, much incur some overhead. Theft or failure of hardware, then what about keys etc. What about viruses; could one set a permanent "don't copy" bit on a system. What about expanding a logical volume on a server (when adding new disks etc); will this "trivial" task come to a grinding halt, and crash the process. Even if it don't, will bought and paid software, suddenly stop working, just because the disklayout is changed. When called to a computerdisaster, how can one determine, whether the system will allow copying of essential files? Etc., etc.
Maybe some of my fears are ungrounded. Maybe this copy protection scheme will actually work most of the time. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It _will_ mean, that the _entire_ IT-industry around the globe, and everyone involved in it, will have to read up, maintain long extra list of what is doable or not, and how this scheme work or not. Not to mention the gazzillions line of code that (perhaps) would have to be changed. This is the "dreadfull dongle-problem" on a truly massive scale.
This scheme means an entire new class of serious IT-problems, suddenly have appeared. And this without any gain for the costumers. This is a guarantee for higher IT-cost, without any productivity added, not exactly what people need.
This is not is not a slippery slope...
on
Nazis on Napster
·
· Score: 1
I live in a country just north of Germany (Denmark).
I do understand the german postion, although my own country has a completely different position. But there is also a completly, vastly different, historic backgrund; The 3. Reich instigated a truly massive genocide; something like 25% (one in four) polaks died during the occupation, around 9 million people was killed in the KZ-camp systems. The whole eastern campaign was a systematic genocidal annihilation war (about 20 milions russians died).
Then, the Third Reich suddenly collapsed in May 1945, leaving Germany as a physically and morally devasted country. How on earth was Germany, and the german people, ever going to return to the civilized company of other states?
The simply had to start from ground zero, building up a democratic state and constitution, but without the benefit of a "clean sheet". The historic burden was massive. (Oh, yaeh: remember this was only 55 years ago, some of the nazi butchers, are still alive)
Among one of the things the new German state did, was to outlaw Nazi-parties and their propaganda, and to incorperate this in their democratic constitution; The germans that took over the power, would not chance a nazi-regime come-back.
But even if the germans themselves, would not have wanted this, their occupaters (incl. usa), would probably have enforced such a law.
But this is my point; The BMG/Napster/nazi controversy, is _not_ a slippery slope down censorship alley. Read the article; it is the german Verfassungsschutz (The bureau for protection of the constitution), who is instigating this matter.
It is not a random surge of "We-must-protect-the-children" censorship (who often seems to have so many other hidden agendas behind their campaigns).
The Verfassungsschutz is enacting on basis of their constitution, and they do this, because the German state firmly believes in democracy.
For all what I know of Germany, this controversy, is not the first step, of increasing censorship.
Well, I remember something about a "Potato-Powered Web Server" (It was a nifty hoax). It got some coverage by the "serious" press, and was on Slashdot too. I was posted under "funny, laugh", but there was no clue in the story, about it being a hoax. So it was somewhat unclear, whether the funny thing was, that one could actually run a webserver by electricity producing potatos, or Slashdot was taking its reader for a ride.
The recent "Sadam is stockpiling PS2's" was of course, a blatant, astroturfing, Sony marketing ploy. (See The Register). But at least the submitter, said he was unsure whether the story was true or not.
But it wasn't posted under, "funny, laugh"...
Imagine a network based on pneumatic tube technologi;
You would pack 150 cdroms into a tubeshaped cannister, and then send the round, screaming down the Tube. Sure, latency would be a bitch, but what bandwith!
Pneumatic devices would not only drive the cannisters, but help them deaccelerate, while regaining some of the energy.
Of course, such a tubenetwork could not be based on a optimistisc protocol, like TCP/IP, since 'packet' collisions would be rather messy. So some kind of Token Ring (Broken Ring/or Token Tube) based protocol would rule.
Such a Token Tube system, should be implemented with reliable old style, electrical relays (and preferable valves/tubes too). One could of course place an automatic watch on each cannister, as a primitive form of network time protocol replacement; their self-winding nature, would fit
perfectly with a rugged tube ride.
Packet, or rather, cannister sniffing would be hard to do, but experienced network admins, could
press their ears to the tube, listen to the 'clickety-clicks', and muffled 'whoooumphhh's, and say "Thar she blows. I know that sound; thats the spring edition of Dead Rat 2010, being rolled out."
New breathtaking TLA's like T2T(Tube-to-Tube) technologi, would emerge. Users would send wax-cylinders to each other, on private tubes.
Wax-tubes would be easy to reuse (RWT= Rewriteable Wax Tubes): smother the wax, and cut a new track on it, by using their Amigas (Which, would probably rule as a sound wax-cutter too). Buissness men could use the the RWT as dictation systems (preferably using a ribbon mic), and send it by tube to the secretary, who could type the memo, using Wordstar 2000.
Zeppelins? Well, there would probably be problems sending cannisters across the atlantic. So Zeppelins would be an obvious long distance carrier choice; just haul some tons of DLT tapes in it, and send it away.
Trans atlantic network propagandation would be like some extremely slow, extremely high bandwith version of UUCP. (The Zeppelin navigators, would of course use slide-rulers)
Ok, so I like a little eye-candy, but a good UI, does help me getting the most from program.
It really doesn't hurt, that a program has a decent UI, and screenshots may tell me if it has.
'Everybody' likes screenshots, so I don't know why so few commercial Windows vendors, have screenshot URL's on their web-sites.
Another thing is, that when I shop around on eg. freshmeat, I do so, because I already have an idea about what I want. Having seen and tried so many programs over the years, just seeing the screenshots gives me a pretty good idea, whether the program fullfill my 'mental specifications'.
We don't have X on our servers, so screenhots doesn't help me that much, when I got a SysAdmin itch to scratch. (Well, I do like ncurses based UI's). So binaries, especially RPM's, since we run Red Hat, works for me, as the mighty, mighty CLI's equivivalence of screenshots.
It is not that source is hard to compile or install (usually), but it is easier for me to browse the RPM, to see, what goes where, and what kind of pre- and post-install scripts are executed, than looking through the makefile.
In short; binaries, makes it fast and effecient for me, to test, whether a program is
suited for me or not.
But in the end, the developer(s) has the final word; not releasing binaries, and expliciting saying so, gives everybody a clear message.
Some projects does seem to have a phase, where releasing binaries is a bad idea.
A binary becomes a fix-point, and if the project has potential, people _will_ start using it, and
then they start to to ask questions, on how and why, and etc.
On the other hand, if people have a good project, releasing binaries, may propagate it:
Word of mouth, or usenet recommendations are powerfull advertising tools. And a strong userbase, usually means, that some people will contribute back to the project, in form of patches etc.
I think it is a great benefit for developers and users, that there only exist one source tree.
If harddisk capacity is so scarse, that you have to delete the source tree, then make temporary room by deleting eg. some savegames. Reinstall the source tree from your linux distro, download the patch, apply the patch, recompile kernel, and then delete the source tree again.
The kernel patches are usually rather small (around 100-500k's). The latest 2.2.18 is around 2.4mb though, it must be the backporting of the USB-stuff, that makes it so comparetivly large.
Well, first of all, this isn't a security kernel release.So no need to upgrade for that reason.
But speaking of security updates; there really isn't any difference between running Linux and MS-windows servers, regarding security updates. In both cases, the sysadmin has to subscribe to his vendors security lists, read them, and apply the patches.
It is very easy, to apply new patches to eg. a Red Hat Linux box: get the files as described in the security mail. Instructions are provided in the mail, but in most cases, one just do a 'rpm -Fvh [filename]' This will update the system, if the program is installed.
There is even a program, that automatically fetch and update all the needed rpms for you.(this may require some setting up).
And if you want really easy upgrades, then pay a minor amount, and get priority access,web instructions and a nice graphical userinterface, for automatic security upgrades (Red Hat Network). As an ordinary web-surfer, this would basically mean, that you can forget about following security lists.
Regarding the hacking as described in:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/122
"It's a story of great incompetence," said the hacker, a 25-year-old Dutch man who calls himself "Kane." "All the data taken from these computers was taken over the Internet. All the machines were exposed without any firewalls of any kind."
This has less to do, with security upgrades, than sheer incompetent network designing, and administration. Really basic stuff, like NAT/Masquerading, firewalls etc, would likely have prevented that hack.
We run a floppy based firewall for the reasons that you give. But furthermore; a floppy disk based firewall, will automagically be restored to a sane state in case of a powerfailure.
It seems very difficult to obtain the same characteristics from a harddisk (or flash ram); I don't know how to physically prevent writing on a standard IDE hd. And if you use the hd just to load the FW into ram, and "hot-swap" it out, then it won't come back up, after powerfailure (even UPS's have their limits).
Floppy disk reliability is not much of an issue, i think, since the floppy isn't used to as a long term storage medium. Remember your friend dd:
"$ dd if=/dev/fd0H1440 of=floppy-image
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$ dd if=floppy-image of=/dev/fd0H1440
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$ The first dd makes an exact image of the floppy to the file floppy-image, the second one writes the image to the floppy." (SAG v. 0.6.2)
(And of course, one can always mount the dd-image; "mount -t ext2 -o loop")
So you develop, maintain and store, the actual FW information on another box, then write the image to a floppy (and making a backup fd image on the development box). All the floppy has to do, is to survive the initial boot. It may have to survive reboots, caused by powerfailure, but even if it does not (harddisks may fail too), a disaster recovery plan is part of the floppy disk based FW scheme; just write a new image, and boot. How many hd-based FW's has a spare harddisk, with a synced and updated system on it?
If you just have a slight suspecion, that the FW is compromized, then a reboot will flush out any trojans and root kits. The firewall may still contain som sort of security hole, but rebooting may give you time to discover what the hole was, and deploy a new FW.
Floppy based firewall is a very cool thing. It doesn't fit everybodies need, but it may be a viable solution to a great many.
Cdroms may offer similar advantages, but they may be slightly more difficult and expensive to develop and maintain.
In short; Firewalls on write protected media, seems to be a very good idea.
Slashdot is not a Linux support forum. Besides, since we both post below 2+, it is likely, that nobody watches;-)
>not 100% native mode:will probe irqs later
That is ok.
>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
>ide0 at 0x14c0-0x14c7,0x14b6 on irq 11
It looks like you forgot to make the secondary harddisk (ide1) a slave. Check the jumpers on it.
Oh, watch your Windows partition; do have a backup ready, or at least at windows boot disk ready (with fdisk on it, in case you need to do a fdisk/mbr, if you place the bootmanager (lilo) in
the wrong place.)
This Linux user did.
We bought Estinc's rather excellent BRU backup software, for our servers.Estinc also have a GPL-ed utility called CRU; with this, and a tape-drive that supports OBDC (One Button Disaster Recovery, mostly a HP's thing), you can actually boot from the tape-drive, and restore the entire server, partitions and everything, in one go.
Nice, and it works too.
I am not a consultant anymore, but believe me, there is a potentiel huge Linux market in the small buisness area (on the serverside). But a killer app is missing; accounting software. Acc. software is the life and blood of SB's.
Acc. standards vary from country to country, is slightly boring, and therefore an unlikely project for the general OSS community.
A good piece of Linux Acc. software, with windows clients, would be a serious thing.
Next; Something to replace MS-Exchange; Those PHB's and their secretaries, _wants_ MS-Outlook, but they don't give a damn about the serverside.
I know, HP's OpenMail, but it is bloody expensive.
Then; Something to replace MS-Outlook
Finally; World domination (at least among Small Buisnesses)
A good mixture of OSS, and old fashionend pay-ware, would really be a boon for SB's; they cannot afford good IT-staff, or retain them, if they got them. But they can out-source the difficult IT-stuf, like designing the network, securety, server upgrading, and retained controll over the simple, everyday tasks, like adding new users (with a nice WebMin interface), checking the backup-log etc.
The buisness people are freed up to do, what they do best, and the IT-people likewise.
Linux is extremely nice to administrate remotly (by SSH and by the nature of the CLI), something I would have really, really liked, when I was a NT-consultant. (I know VNC for NT, cool, but Linux+SSH is way cooler).
The counsulting firm I worked for, was MS-centristic. But if Linux could offer them, what their costumer wanted, they would switch.
I think that it is extremely likely that MS scrutinizes Linux and BSD code; They probably steal good ideas, and such, but they are very stupid, if they directly cut&paste code sections.
(Stealing Stacker source code and integrating it in Win95 did cost them some money)
MS probably read the kernel list very intensly too. It was rumoured a while a go on that list, that some suggestions and code snips, had seeped into "Whistler".
Only MS knows for sure, how much linux technology has seeped into their products. But it is extremely likely that some amount has. I mean, openly "stealing" overt features from the competition, has always been MS's default behavior, so why not be "inspired" by Linux core technology?
I think, that MS views Linux and OSS, as a giant, free, R&D lab. The Xerox parc of the new millenium.
"It pays to have a good press agent. Printing actually goes back to about 800 AD in China and Korea."
J. Gutenbergs great invention was the use of removable types, or rather; the actual invention of a practical printing press, using removable types.
Other people had toyed with the idea of removeable types (I believe that Leonardo Da Vinci had designed a somewhat similar device, but he only made drawings of this idea). But Gutenbergs basic principles behind his printing press, were so good, they remained unchanged for 3-4 centuries.
There is a quantum leap of difference between the old block-printing process (as practiced by e.g. the chinese), and the Gutenberg printing press.
Within decades of the the invention of the Gutenberg press, tens of thousand different works, was printed in millions of copies.
The impact of this technique in Europe was significant; only those languages who had their own printing press, and their own translation of the best seller the bible, survived. The rest was oblitterated.
It had (and has) a deep impact on every language it came into contact with. E.g.: When the first brittish publisher, W. Caxton started printing english books, he effectivly put the english grammar (and spelling) in a deep freeze. His preference for a english dialect spoken north of London, was the foundation of "The Queens English". In germany, M. Luthers german translation of the bible into Hoch-deutsch (instead of fx. Plat-deutsch), made that particular dialect the normative language.
I think your are right about, that most people, me included, can't hear much above 15kHz.
But that is not the whole story; the problem as I remember it, is, that the _filtering_ required to cut of the frequencies above eg. 20kHz, may have a large influence, on the sound and frequencies below.
So it should be better to shoot the cut-off point, as far as possible, into the upper spectrum part.
The price qouted; 2500$ for a 1st generation SACD player, isn't bad considering what a 1st gen. Phillips cd-player (Model 102?) costed in the start 80'ies. And those cd-players were clearly inferior, compared to any decent analog record-player. But a lot of people bought them anyway.
In this case, Denmark is dropping the 'beauty contest' criteria, and opts for an auctioning of the bandwith. And as a danish citizen, I think this is a very good idea, since the spectrum, after all, belongs to the public, and since the buyers of the spectrum slices are going to make _a lot of money_.
It really makes me laugh, when the telco's starts telling sob stories, on how cruel and unfair, such an auctioning system is, and how they only wants the spectrum to serve the public good, etc. I really understand them, when try to get the spectrum for free, but why should they?
Of course are they going to pass the bill to the consumers. But competition ensures, that the price of service, stays within the limits of what the consumers want's to pay. And only those citizens, who actually uses and benefits of the spectrum, will pay, whether _all_ citizens gain the benefit from the auction, which I think is a fair deal.
There is one other thing, that I like with the auctioning system; and that is, that it is a transparant system for everybody; The public gets to know exactly what they got, for their commen property, instead of a murky kludge of semi political deals, and overhead of controlling those deals. And the companies are free to do their investments and R&D, where they think they get the best deals, instead of where forced to do it, because of political deals.
There is a fortune to be made in the wireless marked, and thats why the telcos pay so comparativly much money.
This patent, which is mine, propose a _innovative_ device, called Preemptive Content Generator(PCG) that:
combines all
a) know letters, and or phonetic expressions, digits, and or any kind of character, as found in; books, electronic texts, and or any other physical, and or electronic, and or transendental medium,
into randomly generated "texts" (as defined in a) of arbitrary length, by means of a
b) electronic computational device, whether a turing-complete machine, and or
c) quantum based, and or
d) any other computational device, which, in one form or another, using any form of elementary particles, and or force fields, like electrons, and or light (whether particles, and or waves) as aid in any form, in its computations.
Since this device will generate any; book, text (as defined in a)) and any expression, verbal or oral expression, expressed in, but not limited to; any medium, whether physical, and or electronic, and or transcendental, and or any form of physical temporary storage, like soundwaves, and or storage by means of biological devices, like neurons (eg brains), that;
e) has ever existed
f) exist now
g) will ever exist
Of e), and f)
Since eg. all known books is a result of a premeditated, coffeine intake based act, known as "writing", performed by biological entities (human, simian or otherwise), whether the content created by my device, is done by an entirely different _electronic_ device (as defined by b), c), d)), it logically follows that;
That content created by my device, is an entirely new creation, entirely different from any existing content, even though they may appear to be entirely identical, just as "One-Click-Shopping" is entirely different from anything similar, like shopping in a normal store, since both "One-Click-Shopping", and my device (PCG), is entirely different since they are implemented in _electronic_ form.
I will hereby, be automatically granted the publishing rights to any existing work or text, in its PCG generated form.
Of g)
Since my device (PCG), will create any form of expression, text, and book, that will ever exist in the future. All authors and publishing houses, should automagically grant me any rights beforehand, since they cannot write or publish anything, that isn't within the reach of my device.
This is the case, even though the device (PCG), may not have actually generated these particular texts yet, since any future writing will be a _potential_ violation of my copyrights, just like any purchase of a computer without Microsoft Windows (tm), is _piracy_. (Lex "The Windows Tax, patent pending).
This patent differs from "The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)", as defined in rfc2795.
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2795.txt)
Since:
1)IMPS is entirely Simian based, in its generation of content, whether my patent is impelemtented as defined in; b), c), d).
2)IMPS is entirely dedicated to the random recreation, of an _allready known_ bards particular plays.
To secure the succes of this patent, I hereby deny the USPTO the right, to use any form of expression (as defined by a) and f)), that doesn't grant me this patent.
It depends; If it is an OEM version of Win9X, then the license follows the machine. Even a large hardware upgrade, like new motherboard and harddisk, may be illigal to do with a OEM license.
However, _you_ can (still) buy a non-OEM version of Win9x. The licence costs twice as much, but you are entitled to move this license to any new machine.
"Very few novice Redhat 6 users, myself included, actively monitor the security problems addressed at bugtraq or securityfocus"
You don't really have to (if you don't run any servers, or server services). You do have to follow your distributors security advices however, but that is the case with Microsoft too.
With Red Hat, just subscribe to their security mail list, and get the appropriate bugfixes from a local mirror. (just like anybody should do if they run Windows)
"DO NOT post exploits to the general public; insist that securityfocus, bugtraq, and others only allow legitimate developers to view them."
It is very hard to describe a security problem in words, without, at the same time, giving the recipe for abusing the security hole. Personally I really don't think, that the posted exploits makes any real difference; The stupid Skript Kiddies probably don't use them much, since they prefer "ready-made" exploit & root-kits (hence their name). The smart hackers really don't need them either.
The routine on BugTraq stems from decades of experience, in dealing with security issues and major software vendors; the problem was, that the vendors _ignored_ security issues, hence the public pressure. Microsoft allegedly have denied a security issue, with the statement, that "it was only a hypothetical security hole", an attitude, that help explains the release of exploits.
But the point is, that BugTraq actually is on the side of the endusers; Without Bugtraq the skript kiddies would roam free on the unknowing publics computers, and the vendor wouldn't really care.
Check BugTraq out for fun, and se how most bugreports and exploits, is accompanied by a patch or a work-around solution. Read their FAQ too, to see more about "full disclosure".
"Realize the useability and security go hand in hand"
No they don't, and that is the problem (and the reason why the Melissa and ILOVEYOU virus spread like wildfire). Security means restrictions, and people don't like that.
A lot of the problematic default services in eg. RH linux, stems from historic reasons; people running Linux, where likely to use it, as a server on a intern LAN. But the Linux landscape has changed a lot; the majority af linux-boxes now runs as a desktop pc, with either dial-up, or xDSL. And I wholeheartedly agree, that all the (Linux) vendors, start to make their distros more secure by default, for this large segment.
Most animals becomes instinct, because the enviroment they live in, is destroyed by man.
The great Panda is already instinct; sure a dwindling wild population still exist, but for all purposes, it is instinct, and I have a hard time imagining that there ever will be a sustainable population in the wild again. The Tiger and Chimpanzee too; chances are, that You will survive them.
Sure, such extinct animals will be displayed on "freak shows" like Zoo's and tv-programmes. And people will therefore continue live in the illusion, that these animals aren't instinct. But I say they are; those sad survivers are staged props.
I really dislike such projects, like this "gaur" cloning;
They don't address or change the real issue.
It is most likely just a commercial cloning-camp for the mighty freakshow.
Such project never seem to target non-cute animals, like slimy frogs, who, from a biological viewpoint, are just as interesting.
In short, I think such projects are waste of money and energy. The financial resources for preserving already existing wildlife, are scarse enough. And often it doesn't take much money to make a huge difference; just stopping draining every little muddy waterhole, stopping unnecessary pesticide spraying and cutting of plants at the roadsides etc, will give some wildlife, a sporting chance to survive on their own.
"The Russians didn't have as much steal as the US does. This means that they had to get their metal some where else."
I don't think that that is right. The USSR had an incredible amount raw material, and steel production had been a high priority since Stalin assumed power. Eg. the USSR produced more than 50.000 tanks of all types, until WWII ended. The postwar production was at least on the same scale.
I think a better explanation would be the fact, that the USSR had the worlds largest reserve/amount af titanium.
On a related note; The USSR civilian production system, and economy had been collapsing since the 30'ies. That meant that factories would need barter with other factories to get the rawmaterials they needed. A russian teacher I knew, claimed, that at one point, a showel-factory ended up with a huge amount of titanium. So of course they started a production of titanium showels, selling them for the ordinary fixed price of showels. Alledgedly, this happenend in the 70'ies, when titanium was still an outragious exotic material in the west.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! I really like xmms (and KDE), so this is good news.
On another note; I skimmed the readme's and changelogs, this is an awesome beta-release; the ISO image install feature is such a cool idea. A GUI-kickstart generator is a very good idea too,and kernel 2.4, and better Xfree configuration, and quick-and-dirty personal firewall, and PXE boot images (sounds very interesting), and KDE 2.1, and, and, and...
The only worrying feature is BIND 9.10. It may be more secure and have nice features like DNSSEC/TSIG, but it is rather new, and could lead to some upgrade trouble? Besides bugfixing, this more noisy, and public beta test, will at least make this BIND upgrade known to people before the final release (=less suprises).
In short, this beta release, shows that RH really has listenend to its users (and costumers), eg; no superflous deamon running, after workstation install). And kudos to RH for that.
Just upgraded to KDE 2.1b2. I think it is really zippy, it is way more responsive and faster than MS-Windows (on my faster box) and KDE1.
I run it on an old PPro 200Mhz, with a old and slow Cirrus Logic 1MB pci video card, but KDE seems really fast. The box has lots of RAM though, and runs kernel 2.4.0. And I have disabled system sounds, -that seemed to speed up the previous release of KDE. (And I just _hate_ all kinds of system sound schemes, -especially the funny ones, grumph!)
Regards
Peter H.S.
Just installed the beta, and discovered a new app, called Pixie Image Mangement System (PMS). It is among other things, a thumbnail, image cataloger and viewer.
Now this is a critical new desktop application, for all of us who has large collections of pr0n^H^H scientific NASA images to manage.
"Eye-candy" says some, but sometimes you just want to see some flesh^H^H^H flashy pictures of huge boo^H^H binary star systems.
>Okay, I know this'll instantly be modded down as >flamebait,
.dll
.vxd files to help you since you apparently
No, your standard appeal to the moderaters worked;-)
>but I just don't understand you people. You Linux
> zealots are constantly complaining about how
>horrible and unstable Windows is,
Come on. Win9x really _is_ prone to crashing. Even MS advertisment (for Win2KPro) stress that fact.
Win9x may have many merrits, but stability is not one of them. WinNT until SP3 (some say SP6a) wasn't so hot either.
> but then you turn around and try and make your
>so-called superior operating system to look and
>act as much like Windows as possible.
The reason why Linux is so stable is the kernel. Yes, win9x/WinNT has a kernel too, but not in the same leauge as Linux. The WINE project is not about "importing" the unstable Win9x kernel into Linux (thank god for that), but letting some WinXX _applications_ run under the (stable) linux kernel. These applications may suck, or not. That is not the issue.
> You even go so far as to use Microsoft's
>and
>can't figure out how to write your own drivers.
Are you trolling, or using the term "drivers" in a rather bizarre way??.
> Why don't you just save yourself the trouble,
>wipe your hard disk and install Win2K.
On my 3 servers?: Apache, Squid-proxy, Qmail, Sqwebmail, MRTG, Midgaard(CMS), Phorum, Netsaint, ProFTP, OpenSSH, Samba, BRU, XNTP, MySQL. Not to mention the Firewall (soon to be statefull) and IDS systems. No way. They serve a small site (only 4-6 gigabytes a day), but they need to be up 24 hours a day. Linux really delivers on that. And remote managment is really, really good too.
> Oh, and quit whining.
Relax. Try installing a Linux distro one day. You may like it. Even if you don't have the need for a Linux server or desktop, Linux experience will give you much insight, into how computers work.
And its fun too!
Regards
Peter H.S.
Yes. This is something that a lot of people miss about unions; the legal protectection against abuse.
Here i Denmark, the IT-workers has a rather good union called PROSA. When you have to sign a new contract, NDA or noncompete, you just take it to the unions lawyers first, so they can look it over. Since these lawyers are experts on their field, they can give you good advice,like; "this is standard stuff, you can sign it." or "take the contract back, and make them change this line, because..." or "This is a lousy contract, but you can sign it anyway, because if they try to enforce it, we will take it to court, and win."
Especially noncompetes, can be really, really bad for your career. Why learn that the hard way?
I know, smart US IT workers take their contracts to a lawyer too. But if push comes to shove, it is really nice to have a union behind you. It seems that a lot of US citizens, often prefer to drop to take any action against really unfair work treatment, even though they have a really good winning case, simply because, the thought of a long, legal struggle, would grind people down, or that the slight chance of losing the case, would mean personal ruin. So people swallow their defeat, and humiliation.
But if the union is behind you, the picture might change; The corperation can't play the "we grind you down in a long lasting legal struggle" card, since they now deal with an organization.
The employer can't intimidate the worker, with a bunch of lawyers, telling him lies, since the union got lawyers who knows the law.
And the union cover the legal cost too.
Most cases are standard stuff, but if a case is really unjust, the union can throw all its weight behind it. Something you can't get, when it is just you and your lawyer, against a perhaps large company.
>I think protection of this sort will cut
>down most on small to medium businesses pirating
>MS products and that's a damn good thing.
[snip about legal biz, who do Piracy]
Perhaps, until an "easy to apply" crack is made.
But it looks like this licensing scheme would mean higher maintance cost for those who legally buys MS software. Just think of the overhead of (re)installing a pc, where all the software has to be "approved" by a central repository.
And is this goodby to unattended mass installs? The only sane way to manage pc's is by using imaging software like "Ghost" (Symantec/MS).
Like all "piracy preventing" measures, this scheme look likes it will hurt legitemit costumers.
I really, really pity those poor souls, who has to maintain a MS-Windows based business machine park in the future; running around doing mindless drone work, just to do such a simple thing as installing software. The current "seriel numbers from hell" scheme, is allready so bad, that only the insane don't ignore it. This new scheme, together with CPRM or whatever devilish thing the future will bring, will make maintaning Wintel machines, totally inflexible, expensive and cumbersome.
But I agree with you, on those companies who earns loads of money, but refuse to pay for the software. That sucks. Everyone should have their licenses in order.
If costs of software purchase was a parameter in the private households (instead of just Warezing), then I wonder whether MS-Office, would be so popular.
Oh why, oh why, does the the software, and now the hardware industry too, seem to be engaged in a conspiracy to make the lifes of Sysadmins, consultants and legitimate buisness users, miserably beyond belief?
/.'ers, but not for ordinary employees. And it is time consuming; Windows, drivers, getting it networked, Service Packs, hot-patches, Explorer, MS-office, accounting software or whatever, and the extremely annoying reboots in between, not to mention the registration numbers from hell.
Any kind of low level hardware copy protection, is a recipe for distress and disaster, especially in real life enviroments, with mixed legacy hardware and software, upgrades, and hardware failures.
I don't care whether such protection schemes can be broken more or less easily; I deal (and have dealt) with buisness who actually tries to be legal licensvice. Installing modded harddisks, or cracking software, is not really an option on a server, where an hour of downtime, cost more than 10.000$.
And hardware do break down; Sure, the reliability of harddisks have increased tremendously over the years, few people experience hd-failures (and therefore don't do backups), on their own private pc's. But with everything computer related, the perspective changes dramatically with size: with 100 pc's, a hd-failures is something one has do deal with once in a while. With 1000 pc's you might as well have some spare hd's lying around.
Some experiences where copy protection may have been a major hindrance:
1. A lawyer came to us in distress: his laptop was broken and wouldn't boot Windows. The problem was, that he had more than 6 years of bills, bankstatements, accounts, letters, etc on it, without a backup of course. The hd was making funny clanking noises, so speed was of essence, and failure not an option. We managed to transfer the _whole_ content of the hd to another machine, and from there, we could begin to manually recover the data.
2. A server was brought to us in a civil court case; there was suspecion, that someone had tampered with the data on it. Since the machine could wind up in court as materiel evidence, one could not muck around on the hd. So the entire hd, was Ghosted (now a Symantec product) to another machine, and from there we could inspect the data, without compromizing the evidence.
3. Upgrades: An upgrade from WinNT to NT SB edition, or to a new edition of MS Exchange, may go well, or it may not. We have had a few cases of corruption of MS Exchange data when upgrading.
If the costumer has RAID, then one can make an easy rollback in case the upgrade goes wrong (breaking the mirror before upgrading), but if not, having a Ghosted image of the disk system may be a nice substitute. Reinstalling the OS, and restoring data from tape backup, is really the very last option, since it is very slow and errorprone. (We have encountered several instances of "Write only backup tapes" = The log says everything is fine, but it just won't restore).
4. Everyday maintance; employees come and go, pc's break down, Windows get corrupted and must be reinstalled, new pc's are bought, and old ones are handed down the company food chain.
The only sane way of dealing with this, is with some kind hd-image copying software. Not only does it speed up the process, but it ensures some kind of homegenity of the installations.
Installing a pc from scratch (and in the right way) may be trivial for
Since small (and smart) companies rely on extern consultantfirms, the cost and time savings from using Ghost, is significant. If this copyprotection scheme renders such hd imaging software useless, their IT-expenses for mundane tasks like this, may easily trippel.
5. Restoring an entire office from scratch: One of our costumers had their servers (2) and client pc's stolen (25). We managed not only to get new hardware the very same day, but restoring the entire office to functionality during the night. Only one day of downtime. Totally impossible to do without Ghost.
Just interferring with such a fundamental thing as copying is wrong. And how will this copy protection scheme function? What about; Hardware and software RAID, servers with two disk systems; one with, and one without cp-protection. Performance; checking every read and write, even if done in hardware, much incur some overhead. Theft or failure of hardware, then what about keys etc. What about viruses; could one set a permanent "don't copy" bit on a system. What about expanding a logical volume on a server (when adding new disks etc); will this "trivial" task come to a grinding halt, and crash the process. Even if it don't, will bought and paid software, suddenly stop working, just because the disklayout is changed. When called to a computerdisaster, how can one determine, whether the system will allow copying of essential files? Etc., etc.
Maybe some of my fears are ungrounded. Maybe this copy protection scheme will actually work most of the time. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It _will_ mean, that the _entire_ IT-industry around the globe, and everyone involved in it, will have to read up, maintain long extra list of what is doable or not, and how this scheme work or not. Not to mention the gazzillions line of code that (perhaps) would have to be changed. This is the "dreadfull dongle-problem" on a truly massive scale.
This scheme means an entire new class of serious IT-problems, suddenly have appeared. And this without any gain for the costumers. This is a guarantee for higher IT-cost, without any productivity added, not exactly what people need.
I live in a country just north of Germany (Denmark).
/Napster /nazi controversy, is _not_ a slippery slope down censorship alley. Read the article; it is the german Verfassungsschutz (The bureau for protection of the constitution), who is instigating this matter.
I do understand the german postion, although my own country has a completely different position. But there is also a completly, vastly different, historic backgrund; The 3. Reich instigated a truly massive genocide; something like 25% (one in four) polaks died during the occupation, around 9 million people was killed in the KZ-camp systems. The whole eastern campaign was a systematic genocidal annihilation war (about 20 milions russians died).
Then, the Third Reich suddenly collapsed in May 1945, leaving Germany as a physically and morally devasted country. How on earth was Germany, and the german people, ever going to return to the civilized company of other states?
The simply had to start from ground zero, building up a democratic state and constitution, but without the benefit of a "clean sheet". The historic burden was massive. (Oh, yaeh: remember this was only 55 years ago, some of the nazi butchers, are still alive)
Among one of the things the new German state did, was to outlaw Nazi-parties and their propaganda, and to incorperate this in their democratic constitution; The germans that took over the power, would not chance a nazi-regime come-back.
But even if the germans themselves, would not have wanted this, their occupaters (incl. usa), would probably have enforced such a law.
But this is my point; The BMG
It is not a random surge of "We-must-protect-the-children" censorship (who often seems to have so many other hidden agendas behind their campaigns).
The Verfassungsschutz is enacting on basis of their constitution, and they do this, because the German state firmly believes in democracy.
For all what I know of Germany, this controversy, is not the first step, of increasing censorship.
Well, I remember something about a "Potato-Powered Web Server" (It was a nifty hoax). It got some coverage by the "serious" press, and was on Slashdot too. I was posted under "funny, laugh", but there was no clue in the story, about it being a hoax. So it was somewhat unclear, whether the funny thing was, that one could actually run a webserver by electricity producing potatos, or Slashdot was taking its reader for a ride.
The recent "Sadam is stockpiling PS2's" was of course, a blatant, astroturfing, Sony marketing ploy. (See The Register). But at least the submitter, said he was unsure whether the story was true or not.
But it wasn't posted under, "funny, laugh"...
Imagine a network based on pneumatic tube technologi;
/or Token Tube) based protocol would rule.
You would pack 150 cdroms into a tubeshaped cannister, and then send the round, screaming down the Tube. Sure, latency would be a bitch, but what bandwith!
Pneumatic devices would not only drive the cannisters, but help them deaccelerate, while regaining some of the energy.
Of course, such a tubenetwork could not be based on a optimistisc protocol, like TCP/IP, since 'packet' collisions would be rather messy. So some kind of Token Ring (Broken Ring
Such a Token Tube system, should be implemented with reliable old style, electrical relays (and preferable valves/tubes too). One could of course place an automatic watch on each cannister, as a primitive form of network time protocol replacement; their self-winding nature, would fit
perfectly with a rugged tube ride.
Packet, or rather, cannister sniffing would be hard to do, but experienced network admins, could
press their ears to the tube, listen to the 'clickety-clicks', and muffled 'whoooumphhh's, and say "Thar she blows. I know that sound; thats the spring edition of Dead Rat 2010, being rolled out."
New breathtaking TLA's like T2T(Tube-to-Tube) technologi, would emerge. Users would send wax-cylinders to each other, on private tubes.
Wax-tubes would be easy to reuse (RWT= Rewriteable Wax Tubes): smother the wax, and cut a new track on it, by using their Amigas (Which, would probably rule as a sound wax-cutter too). Buissness men could use the the RWT as dictation systems (preferably using a ribbon mic), and send it by tube to the secretary, who could type the memo, using Wordstar 2000.
Zeppelins? Well, there would probably be problems sending cannisters across the atlantic. So Zeppelins would be an obvious long distance carrier choice; just haul some tons of DLT tapes in it, and send it away.
Trans atlantic network propagandation would be like some extremely slow, extremely high bandwith version of UUCP. (The Zeppelin navigators, would of course use slide-rulers)
Ok, so I like a little eye-candy, but a good UI, does help me getting the most from program.
It really doesn't hurt, that a program has a decent UI, and screenshots may tell me if it has.
'Everybody' likes screenshots, so I don't know why so few commercial Windows vendors, have screenshot URL's on their web-sites.
Another thing is, that when I shop around on eg. freshmeat, I do so, because I already have an idea about what I want. Having seen and tried so many programs over the years, just seeing the screenshots gives me a pretty good idea, whether the program fullfill my 'mental specifications'.
We don't have X on our servers, so screenhots doesn't help me that much, when I got a SysAdmin itch to scratch. (Well, I do like ncurses based UI's). So binaries, especially RPM's, since we run Red Hat, works for me, as the mighty, mighty CLI's equivivalence of screenshots.
It is not that source is hard to compile or install (usually), but it is easier for me to browse the RPM, to see, what goes where, and what kind of pre- and post-install scripts are executed, than looking through the makefile.
In short; binaries, makes it fast and effecient for me, to test, whether a program is
suited for me or not.
But in the end, the developer(s) has the final word; not releasing binaries, and expliciting saying so, gives everybody a clear message.
Some projects does seem to have a phase, where releasing binaries is a bad idea.
A binary becomes a fix-point, and if the project has potential, people _will_ start using it, and
then they start to to ask questions, on how and why, and etc.
On the other hand, if people have a good project, releasing binaries, may propagate it:
Word of mouth, or usenet recommendations are powerfull advertising tools. And a strong userbase, usually means, that some people will contribute back to the project, in form of patches etc.
I think it is a great benefit for developers and users, that there only exist one source tree.
If harddisk capacity is so scarse, that you have to delete the source tree, then make temporary room by deleting eg. some savegames. Reinstall the source tree from your linux distro, download the patch, apply the patch, recompile kernel, and then delete the source tree again.
The kernel patches are usually rather small (around 100-500k's). The latest 2.2.18 is around 2.4mb though, it must be the backporting of the USB-stuff, that makes it so comparetivly large.
Well, first of all, this isn't a security kernel release.So no need to upgrade for that reason.
But speaking of security updates; there really isn't any difference between running Linux and MS-windows servers, regarding security updates. In both cases, the sysadmin has to subscribe to his vendors security lists, read them, and apply the patches.
It is very easy, to apply new patches to eg. a Red Hat Linux box: get the files as described in the security mail. Instructions are provided in the mail, but in most cases, one just do a 'rpm -Fvh [filename]' This will update the system, if the program is installed.
There is even a program, that automatically fetch and update all the needed rpms for you.(this may require some setting up).
And if you want really easy upgrades, then pay a minor amount, and get priority access,web instructions and a nice graphical userinterface, for automatic security upgrades (Red Hat Network). As an ordinary web-surfer, this would basically mean, that you can forget about following security lists.
Regarding the hacking as described in:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/122
"It's a story of great incompetence," said the hacker, a 25-year-old Dutch man who calls himself "Kane." "All the data taken from these computers was taken over the Internet. All the machines were exposed without any firewalls of any kind."
This has less to do, with security upgrades, than sheer incompetent network designing, and administration. Really basic stuff, like NAT/Masquerading, firewalls etc, would likely have prevented that hack.
We run a floppy based firewall for the reasons that you give. But furthermore; a floppy disk based firewall, will automagically be restored to a sane state in case of a powerfailure.
It seems very difficult to obtain the same characteristics from a harddisk (or flash ram); I don't know how to physically prevent writing on a standard IDE hd. And if you use the hd just to load the FW into ram, and "hot-swap" it out, then it won't come back up, after powerfailure (even UPS's have their limits).
Floppy disk reliability is not much of an issue, i think, since the floppy isn't used to as a long term storage medium. Remember your friend dd:
"$ dd if=/dev/fd0H1440 of=floppy-image
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$ dd if=floppy-image of=/dev/fd0H1440
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$ The first dd makes an exact image of the floppy to the file floppy-image, the second one writes the image to the floppy." (SAG v. 0.6.2)
(And of course, one can always mount the dd-image; "mount -t ext2 -o loop")
So you develop, maintain and store, the actual FW information on another box, then write the image to a floppy (and making a backup fd image on the development box). All the floppy has to do, is to survive the initial boot. It may have to survive reboots, caused by powerfailure, but even if it does not (harddisks may fail too), a disaster recovery plan is part of the floppy disk based FW scheme; just write a new image, and boot. How many hd-based FW's has a spare harddisk, with a synced and updated system on it?
If you just have a slight suspecion, that the FW is compromized, then a reboot will flush out any trojans and root kits. The firewall may still contain som sort of security hole, but rebooting may give you time to discover what the hole was, and deploy a new FW.
Floppy based firewall is a very cool thing. It doesn't fit everybodies need, but it may be a viable solution to a great many.
Cdroms may offer similar advantages, but they may be slightly more difficult and expensive to develop and maintain.
In short; Firewalls on write protected media, seems to be a very good idea.
Slashdot is not a Linux support forum. Besides, since we both post below 2+, it is likely, that nobody watches;-)
>not 100% native mode:will probe irqs later
That is ok.
>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
>ide0 at 0x14c0-0x14c7,0x14b6 on irq 11
It looks like you forgot to make the secondary harddisk (ide1) a slave. Check the jumpers on it.
Oh, watch your Windows partition; do have a backup ready, or at least at windows boot disk ready (with fdisk on it, in case you need to do a fdisk/mbr, if you place the bootmanager (lilo) in
the wrong place.)
This Linux user did.
We bought Estinc's rather excellent BRU backup software, for our servers.Estinc also have a GPL-ed utility called CRU; with this, and a tape-drive that supports OBDC (One Button Disaster Recovery, mostly a HP's thing), you can actually boot from the tape-drive, and restore the entire server, partitions and everything, in one go.
Nice, and it works too.
I am not a consultant anymore, but believe me, there is a potentiel huge Linux market in the small buisness area (on the serverside). But a killer app is missing; accounting software. Acc. software is the life and blood of SB's.
Acc. standards vary from country to country, is slightly boring, and therefore an unlikely project for the general OSS community.
A good piece of Linux Acc. software, with windows clients, would be a serious thing.
Next; Something to replace MS-Exchange; Those PHB's and their secretaries, _wants_ MS-Outlook, but they don't give a damn about the serverside.
I know, HP's OpenMail, but it is bloody expensive.
Then; Something to replace MS-Outlook
Finally; World domination (at least among Small Buisnesses)
A good mixture of OSS, and old fashionend pay-ware, would really be a boon for SB's; they cannot afford good IT-staff, or retain them, if they got them. But they can out-source the difficult IT-stuf, like designing the network, securety, server upgrading, and retained controll over the simple, everyday tasks, like adding new users (with a nice WebMin interface), checking the backup-log etc.
The buisness people are freed up to do, what they do best, and the IT-people likewise.
Linux is extremely nice to administrate remotly (by SSH and by the nature of the CLI), something I would have really, really liked, when I was a NT-consultant. (I know VNC for NT, cool, but Linux+SSH is way cooler).
The counsulting firm I worked for, was MS-centristic. But if Linux could offer them, what their costumer wanted, they would switch.
I think that it is extremely likely that MS scrutinizes Linux and BSD code; They probably steal good ideas, and such, but they are very stupid, if they directly cut&paste code sections.
(Stealing Stacker source code and integrating it in Win95 did cost them some money)
MS probably read the kernel list very intensly too. It was rumoured a while a go on that list, that some suggestions and code snips, had seeped into "Whistler".
Only MS knows for sure, how much linux technology has seeped into their products. But it is extremely likely that some amount has. I mean, openly "stealing" overt features from the competition, has always been MS's default behavior, so why not be "inspired" by Linux core technology?
I think, that MS views Linux and OSS, as a giant, free, R&D lab. The Xerox parc of the new millenium.
"It pays to have a good press agent. Printing actually goes back to about 800 AD in China and Korea."
J. Gutenbergs great invention was the use of removable types, or rather; the actual invention of a practical printing press, using removable types.
Other people had toyed with the idea of removeable types (I believe that Leonardo Da Vinci had designed a somewhat similar device, but he only made drawings of this idea). But Gutenbergs basic principles behind his printing press, were so good, they remained unchanged for 3-4 centuries.
There is a quantum leap of difference between the old block-printing process (as practiced by e.g. the chinese), and the Gutenberg printing press.
Within decades of the the invention of the Gutenberg press, tens of thousand different works, was printed in millions of copies.
The impact of this technique in Europe was significant; only those languages who had their own printing press, and their own translation of the best seller the bible, survived. The rest was oblitterated.
It had (and has) a deep impact on every language it came into contact with. E.g.: When the first brittish publisher, W. Caxton started printing english books, he effectivly put the english grammar (and spelling) in a deep freeze. His preference for a english dialect spoken north of London, was the foundation of "The Queens English". In germany, M. Luthers german translation of the bible into Hoch-deutsch (instead of fx. Plat-deutsch), made that particular dialect the normative language.
I think your are right about, that most people, me included, can't hear much above 15kHz.
But that is not the whole story; the problem as I remember it, is, that the _filtering_ required to cut of the frequencies above eg. 20kHz, may have a large influence, on the sound and frequencies below.
So it should be better to shoot the cut-off point, as far as possible, into the upper spectrum part.
The price qouted; 2500$ for a 1st generation SACD player, isn't bad considering what a 1st gen. Phillips cd-player (Model 102?) costed in the start 80'ies. And those cd-players were clearly inferior, compared to any decent analog record-player. But a lot of people bought them anyway.
In this case, Denmark is dropping the 'beauty contest' criteria, and opts for an auctioning of the bandwith. And as a danish citizen, I think this is a very good idea, since the spectrum, after all, belongs to the public, and since the buyers of the spectrum slices are going to make _a lot of money_.
It really makes me laugh, when the telco's starts telling sob stories, on how cruel and unfair, such an auctioning system is, and how they only wants the spectrum to serve the public good, etc. I really understand them, when try to get the spectrum for free, but why should they?
Of course are they going to pass the bill to the consumers. But competition ensures, that the price of service, stays within the limits of what the consumers want's to pay. And only those citizens, who actually uses and benefits of the spectrum, will pay, whether _all_ citizens gain the benefit from the auction, which I think is a fair deal.
There is one other thing, that I like with the auctioning system; and that is, that it is a transparant system for everybody; The public gets to know exactly what they got, for their commen property, instead of a murky kludge of semi political deals, and overhead of controlling those deals. And the companies are free to do their investments and R&D, where they think they get the best deals, instead of where forced to do it, because of political deals.
There is a fortune to be made in the wireless marked, and thats why the telcos pay so comparativly much money.
This patent, which is mine, propose a _innovative_ device, called Preemptive Content Generator(PCG) that:
combines all
a) know letters, and or phonetic expressions, digits, and or any kind of character, as found in; books, electronic texts, and or any other physical, and or electronic, and or transendental medium,
into randomly generated "texts" (as defined in a) of arbitrary length, by means of a
b) electronic computational device, whether a turing-complete machine, and or
c) quantum based, and or
d) any other computational device, which, in one form or another, using any form of elementary particles, and or force fields, like electrons, and or light (whether particles, and or waves) as aid in any form, in its computations.
Since this device will generate any; book, text (as defined in a)) and any expression, verbal or oral expression, expressed in, but not limited to; any medium, whether physical, and or electronic, and or transcendental, and or any form of physical temporary storage, like soundwaves, and or storage by means of biological devices, like neurons (eg brains), that;
e) has ever existed
f) exist now
g) will ever exist
Of e), and f)
Since eg. all known books is a result of a premeditated, coffeine intake based act, known as "writing", performed by biological entities (human, simian or otherwise), whether the content created by my device, is done by an entirely different _electronic_ device (as defined by b), c), d)), it logically follows that;
That content created by my device, is an entirely new creation, entirely different from any existing content, even though they may appear to be entirely identical, just as "One-Click-Shopping" is entirely different from anything similar, like shopping in a normal store, since both "One-Click-Shopping", and my device (PCG), is entirely different since they are implemented in _electronic_ form.
I will hereby, be automatically granted the publishing rights to any existing work or text, in its PCG generated form.
Of g)
Since my device (PCG), will create any form of expression, text, and book, that will ever exist in the future. All authors and publishing houses, should automagically grant me any rights beforehand, since they cannot write or publish anything, that isn't within the reach of my device.
This is the case, even though the device (PCG), may not have actually generated these particular texts yet, since any future writing will be a _potential_ violation of my copyrights, just like any purchase of a computer without Microsoft Windows (tm), is _piracy_. (Lex "The Windows Tax, patent pending).
This patent differs from "The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)", as defined in rfc2795.
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2795.txt)
Since:
1)IMPS is entirely Simian based, in its generation of content, whether my patent is impelemtented as defined in; b), c), d).
2)IMPS is entirely dedicated to the random recreation, of an _allready known_ bards particular plays.
To secure the succes of this patent, I hereby deny the USPTO the right, to use any form of expression (as defined by a) and f)), that doesn't grant me this patent.
Regards
Peter H.S., CEO - PCG inc.
It depends; If it is an OEM version of Win9X, then the license follows the machine. Even a large hardware upgrade, like new motherboard and harddisk, may be illigal to do with a OEM license.
However, _you_ can (still) buy a non-OEM version of Win9x. The licence costs twice as much, but you are entitled to move this license to any new machine.
"Very few novice Redhat 6 users, myself included, actively monitor the security problems addressed at bugtraq or securityfocus"
You don't really have to (if you don't run any servers, or server services). You do have to follow your distributors security advices however, but that is the case with Microsoft too.
With Red Hat, just subscribe to their security mail list, and get the appropriate bugfixes from a local mirror. (just like anybody should do if they run Windows)
"DO NOT post exploits to the general public; insist that securityfocus, bugtraq, and others only allow legitimate developers to view them."
It is very hard to describe a security problem in words, without, at the same time, giving the recipe for abusing the security hole. Personally I really don't think, that the posted exploits makes any real difference; The stupid Skript Kiddies probably don't use them much, since they prefer "ready-made" exploit & root-kits (hence their name). The smart hackers really don't need them either.
The routine on BugTraq stems from decades of experience, in dealing with security issues and major software vendors; the problem was, that the vendors _ignored_ security issues, hence the public pressure. Microsoft allegedly have denied a security issue, with the statement, that "it was only a hypothetical security hole", an attitude, that help explains the release of exploits.
But the point is, that BugTraq actually is on the side of the endusers; Without Bugtraq the skript kiddies would roam free on the unknowing publics computers, and the vendor wouldn't really care.
Check BugTraq out for fun, and se how most bugreports and exploits, is accompanied by a patch or a work-around solution. Read their FAQ too, to see more about "full disclosure".
"Realize the useability and security go hand in hand"
No they don't, and that is the problem (and the reason why the Melissa and ILOVEYOU virus spread like wildfire). Security means restrictions, and people don't like that.
A lot of the problematic default services in eg. RH linux, stems from historic reasons; people running Linux, where likely to use it, as a server on a intern LAN. But the Linux landscape has changed a lot; the majority af linux-boxes now runs as a desktop pc, with either dial-up, or xDSL. And I wholeheartedly agree, that all the (Linux) vendors, start to make their distros more secure by default, for this large segment.
Most animals becomes instinct, because the enviroment they live in, is destroyed by man.
The great Panda is already instinct; sure a dwindling wild population still exist, but for all purposes, it is instinct, and I have a hard time imagining that there ever will be a sustainable population in the wild again. The Tiger and Chimpanzee too; chances are, that You will survive them.
Sure, such extinct animals will be displayed on "freak shows" like Zoo's and tv-programmes. And people will therefore continue live in the illusion, that these animals aren't instinct. But I say they are; those sad survivers are staged props.
I really dislike such projects, like this "gaur" cloning;
They don't address or change the real issue.
It is most likely just a commercial cloning-camp for the mighty freakshow.
Such project never seem to target non-cute animals, like slimy frogs, who, from a biological viewpoint, are just as interesting.
In short, I think such projects are waste of money and energy. The financial resources for preserving already existing wildlife, are scarse enough. And often it doesn't take much money to make a huge difference; just stopping draining every little muddy waterhole, stopping unnecessary pesticide spraying and cutting of plants at the roadsides etc, will give some wildlife, a sporting chance to survive on their own.
"The Russians didn't have as much steal as the US does. This means that they had to get their metal some where else."
I don't think that that is right. The USSR had an incredible amount raw material, and steel production had been a high priority since Stalin assumed power. Eg. the USSR produced more than 50.000 tanks of all types, until WWII ended. The postwar production was at least on the same scale.
I think a better explanation would be the fact, that the USSR had the worlds largest reserve/amount af titanium.
On a related note; The USSR civilian production system, and economy had been collapsing since the 30'ies. That meant that factories would need barter with other factories to get the rawmaterials they needed. A russian teacher I knew, claimed, that at one point, a showel-factory ended up with a huge amount of titanium. So of course they started a production of titanium showels, selling them for the ordinary fixed price of showels. Alledgedly, this happenend in the 70'ies, when titanium was still an outragious exotic material in the west.