The still-excellent l0pht once informed the world that Microsoft had a serious security problem in a product.MS responded with the famous "That vulnerability is purely theoretical.". So, l0pht released a real exploit for the vulnerability.
Apologies, it's hard to find the original links since l0pht got up in the morning, put on a suit, and became @stake
Hello. Wake up. Theoretical vulnerabilites become real, nasty, exploited vulnerabilites very fast. I assume you read comp.risks?
Looks like it isn't very likely to succeed
LOOKS LIKE? It's a done deal. Somebody has exploited a widely-distribited scripting engine. The people who did it as a "proof-of-concept" have proven that the interpreter for this language is wide-open and gagging for a jolly good rogering. I wonder how many unchecked buffers there are in that code. I wonder how it handles multi-byte characters. I desperately hope it wasn't written in C.
I sit here as a smug old Unix hacker, secure in the knowledge that lisp and Smalltalk programs are unlikely to be attacked in the same way that C programs are.
It takes three years to get a degree (minimum). Do you honestly want to be poor for three years?
If you are currently hacking in C++, you are probably paid quite well. Trust me, you don't want to be poor again.
I had a similar problem. Went to university to do maths, ended up doing astrophysics, ran out of money, had to get a real job.
A few years later, I discovered you couldn't get a job without a first degree. So, I enrolled with the Open University. I signed on for the MSc in Computing for Commerce and Industry program. I can't speak highly enough about this course.
If you *really* want, you could get the MSc in three years. That would leave you no spare time whatsoever. Four years is attainable. Five years is the most usual.
The great thing is, you don't have to stop working. The hard thing is, it takes 1-3 hours a day of deep concentration.
You don't need a first degree before you start.
It is a *real* postgradute qualification. It's hard. You'll learn about operating systems, software engineering and programming in ways you hadn't thought about. You can do modules in anything from business and marketing to telecoms switching.
It's fun and demanding. At the end you get an MSc from a University that is highly respected globally for it's teaching.
It costs about $9000 over five years.
The best bit is, you can say to a prospective employer "I'm currently working for my Master's degree. Any chance of you helping with money/time?". This defuses the "Why haven't you got a degree?" question.
If you do the Objects couse, you get to learn Smalltalk as well. What more could you want?
Yes. Of course it would affect the momentum. But if the leak is slow enough for the vapour to remain close to the spacecraft for it to condense in large enough amounts to obscure a lens, I doubt that the velocity of the escape is enough to have much effect on a six-tonne spacecraft.
The source of contamination *has* to be the spacecraft itself.
If the contamination were external, it would have had a signifigant (measurable) effect on the momentum of the spacecraft. The space through which it is travelling is pretty much completely empty anyway.
That leaves one plausible possibility: Cassini is leaking something that is condensing on the cold (*very* cold) bits. The most likely cause is a small propellant leak. As far as I know, the spacecraft has three propellants on board, N2O4, N2H4 an monomethyl hydrazine. I'm too lazy to look up the charecteristics of these, but their boiling points differ.
A heating cycle of the lens seems to have helped. I would be *very* surprised if the data from the heating cycle didn't give them a good clue as to the exact contaminant by looking at the amount removed by a known heat input (latent heat of vapourisation)
The big worry is that the leak will leave the spacecraft with insufficient fuel for orbital insertion (unlikely - it's almost entirely a gravity-assist trajectory) or for manoeuvering. That would be bad.
Otherwise, we'd all be sailing gaff cutters. The gaff rig is *much* prettier than a bermudan. Unfortunately, it's less efficient, more expensive and takes a lot more effort to use.
In the fast dinghy/sailboard arena, this could sell *because* it's new and unusual. For Eris' sake, sailboarders have been known to use dayglo pink sailcloth.
I'm sticking with my high-aspect fractional rig while the class rules require it...
We understand that you are planning to embark on certain legislation that will require the invocation of section eight of the document known as "The Constitution of the United States", specifically the clause that reads:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
We wish to remind you that this text is covered by modern copyright law. Should you find it necessary to refer to this clause, or any clause of the document, in your pleadings to the court we will require that you pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This fee will reflect the value of the document to the United States.
We trust that you will contact us before use or publication of our copyrighted material.
I'm drunk.
IBM, Digital (sorry, Compaq) and HP can happily toast the pants off Sun in any benchmark there is.
Total bragging rights go to the PowerPC4, the Alpha, the PA-RISC.
So, why does Sun have so much market share?
Two simple reasons. It's reliable, and it's cheap.
OK, I'll justify that. When you buy a box from Sun, you give it a power cable, a network cable, you fire it up and it works. (OK, this magic is done by a sysadmin. But it's a commodity sysadmin. Because *everybody* knows how to make a Solaris box work) So, It's reliable.
It's also cheap. Sun sold you a box. They didn't *give* you a box in return for unspecified (but expensive) "services". You're not tied in for years. Companies don't like being tied to multi-billion dollar bullies.
Here's a test: Ask Sun to sell you an E450. Then, ask HP to sell you an L-series. Once you've bought it, I *bet* you get fewer solicitations from Sun for "consultancy" than you get from HP/IBM/...
Sun build reliable, fast, affordable kit. Then, they support it. That's all they do,
IBM/HP/Compaq/ make faster, more expensive, less affordable kit. Then they nail your management to the floor with incessant 'Services' crap.
Before you all correct me, *yes* I do know about real computers. I work with the things. And I'd happily trade CPU performance for bus throughput any day.
I assume you know that *all* flight training is currently banned in the USA? Yes, that's right. If you are a flying instructor, currently *you cannot* train students.
Well, you won't go to jail. But the FAA will take your pilot's license away. If you are a pilot, that's nasty. Check out news://rec.aviation.pilots for more.
Without passing a law, without recourse to a *single* elected person, thousands of US citizens have had their source of income removed.
You seem to be making several different and to my mind, unrelated points here. In other words you've lumped everything you hate about operating systems into one rant.
Yup. My excuse is that I was drunk when I posted:-)
Sorry. I am a sad old hacker. An OS *is* the kernel.
Filesystems? There is *no reason whatsoever* why a filesystem can't exist in userland (except performance). In fact, most computers have no concept of a filesystem. Engine managaement systems, Elevator control systems, Dishwashers, Televisions, mobile phones. All contain computers. Very few have filesystems.
Networking? How much networking does your digital wristwatch do? (no, don't answer that). OK. Your toaster?
If you are talking about the all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza that costs $1000 from Dell, then, yes. I'd be pretty pissed off it shipped without a usable shell. But the shell isn't part of the operating system. It's an application.
For 50 extra credits, write a userland FS for Linux....
If people just wanted to browse the web and do email, WebTV would have gone over better.
Damn straight. A *huge* proportion of people just want to surf the web, do email. Occasionally, they want to write a letter. They don't *want* to know about the fun and pleasure you can get from hacking on a complex system. They *certainly* don't want to be bothered by an operating system.
And I do *not* want my car to stop working and start spitting out smoke. But you know what? It happens.
Sure. It happens. That's why we have roadside recovery organizations. *All* engineered systems can fail. The user of the system doesn't want to know how or why it failed. They want to be taken home. Then, they start complaining.
Just because we know how to balance carburettors, tune exhaust systems, goof around with suspension settings, compile kernels, write device drivers and generally geek out does not mean that *everybody* should have to know how to.
In fact, the roadside recovery industry thrives on the fact that people *know* that cars fail. So, they pay to protect themselves.
If you want flexibility and fun, you get a computer. If you want clean socks, you get a washing machine. They are both von Neumann architecure machines. You expect different things from them. Most people don't care about their washing machine until it breaks. Then, they hire someone to fix it. They don't want a prolonged diatribe about how "It wouldn't have broken if the QuuxBar 9.3.4 patch had been installed..."
The 'Conventional Wisdom' is that operating systems should do *exactly* three things.
Manage memory
Manage CPU time (schedule processes)
Manage access to hardware
And that's what an operating system *kernel* does.
Operating systems do not need to:
provide compilers, web browsers, colossal text editors (MS Word and emacs included)
inform users of the *really* important reasons they need to upgrade *now*
do GUI shit.
If you use a computer, you want it to do what you want. Most of the time, you want it to help you manage information. Most users don't even know that their computer *has* an operating system. Most users know that it's a really useful typewriter with an 'undo' facility.
What OS does your fridge run? your car? your microwave oven? your alarm system?
Those are all von Neumann machines, running operating systems.
A computer in a home/business environment should be useful, usable and reliable.
Get this. It's important. The people who buy computers couldn't give a flying fuck about the OS. Some want 'applications'. Those people are called 'IT managers'. Most want information. They are called 'people'.
I do *not* want my dishwasher to stop with a message of "Oops in module handle_detergent. Please run ksymoops and report to lkml". I don't want my television to go blue with advice to 'set CRASHDEBUG' for some purpose.
If you know that you are running an operating system, you are either an OS hacker, or the OS hackers have failed to protect you from their work.
Theoretically, TokenRing is wise, clever, fault-tolerant and the *only* way to get your LAN running close to ultimate bandwidth.
I *like* TokenRing. In theory.
In practise, it sucks. Specifically, it sucks *all* the bandwidth out of your network.
A healthy TR network *will* use all the bandwidth that it needs. Collisions are impossible.
Then, a node fails (which is what happened to you). Gradually, the overhead of regenerating tokens becomed an issue. Remember, a node will *never* regenerate a token unless it is convinced that it's up-ring node is dead or bonkers. However, if the upstream node has gone totally doolally, the one downstream will regenerate.
Regeneration is *good*. except that the upring node is spewing filth onto the ring. So, the regenerated token is lost in garbage. Guess what happens next?
Yes! the next node tries to regenerate.....
Identifying this is easy. Find the node that is still operating. Then, find the nearest axe, and apply it with enthusiasm. Amazingly, the LAN recovers within seconds.
I still bear the scars of a TR network that failed. We split it every way we could. Eventually, we we took the server with the borked ISA bus (feeding the NIC) out of the loop.
All I can say is *GET THAT BOX OFF THE LAN* You are pissing people off with it. That is *not* good for Linux.
I would say "rewrite the network drivers", but that's pointless. Say sorry (repeatedly) and advocate Ethernet. I'd rather have collisions than catastrophes...
We defeated the Argentinian forces in a war that has *already* gone down in history. Our victory was also the major reason thet Argentina is now a democracy.
It was an impossible war. Argentina should have kicked us out As an analogy, imagine that Hawaii was assaulted and taken by the $FOOBARS. And all you have is New York state. That gives a sense of the distances involved.
Our allies helped us *a lot*. The UK hasn't forgotten that.
Unfortunately, you are completely right. History bears you out *without exception*.
"Jaw, jaw is better than War, war". Yup. True. Except it *doesn't fucking work*".
Ultimately, you have to blow the dust off your old copy of von Clausewitz "On War", and do something nasty. Accept that a lot of your people will die. Have a clear objective. Make use of everything you have. And remember your ancient history.
After the third war, no trace of Great Carthage remained
It used to be about 40,000. Now it's more than 2*10^6. Way to go Rob! No more trading of low-numbered accounts. Hell, success must hurt. Let me know when I can have some.
Judging from your user ID#, I suspect you weren't around when this was tried.
Somebody with a high-hundreds/low thousands karma (i.e. a student with *far* too much time on their hands) (was it FascDotKilledMyPR? apologies if I'm wrong.) tried to flog their account on ebay. Apparently, there were some ridiculously high bids (some valued karma more than dollars)
In one of his rare moments of creative lucidity, Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda aranged for the karma for this individual to vary (at random) between a cap value and zero, with the cap value reducing at a rate that would bring it to zero at the moment the ebay auction closed.
The whole debacle is best recorded in an IRC log where the/. management (well, Rob and at least one other) described the whole thing.
This ends your "Boring And Useless" slashdot history lesson.
{ps - no URLs, because I have better things to do than look them up}
The bandwidths you talk about are largely unattainable in Britain.
In fact, a "survey" or "report" or whatever reported in the infamous Register suggests that Britain has the lowest-bandwidth, highest priced broadband on the entire planet. The report (pay US$395 to pass 'go') is here.
I can buy a 512Kb/128Kb connection from British Telecom for as little as £50 a month. Plus £200 connection. With 40:1 contention. Oh, I have to run Windows 98 to do it. Or, I can pay £200 a month for 1Mb down, 128KB up at 20:1 contention, and run as many machines off it as I want. Installation is a bit more (£400 I think). Oh, and those bandwidths aren't 'committed bandwidths'. And they change your IP every 2 hours. I can always go to a supplier other than BT. But they have to charge more, because those are the prices that BT charge other suppliers, as well.
I am angry. I work with telecomms companies. One if them (in Europe) is giving *guaranteed* 1Mb down, 256 Kb up, 24*7, home access at 8:1 contention for the equivalent of £18 a month.
Do you ever wonder why UK people are so *fucking* furious?
On the bright side, BT has a market capitalisation of £28 billion, and debts of £30 billion. Way to go, Sir Peter and Sir Ian. (Chairman and CEO)
I'll certainly be glad when this little fad is over so we ("we" of course being professional developers) can go back to programming as usual.
<BEGIN Inconsistent rant>
What platform do you want to develop for? Embedded systems? Big databases (which means Oracle or DB/2)? Mainframes (love that COBOL...)? Macintrash?
Or do you mean Microsoft Windows? The joys of developing for at least ten different operating systems, which have *huge* inconsistencies in APIs. Gods, even the NT4 API has glaring, terrifying inconsintency in *it's own API*.
Or, maybe, you think that MFC/ATL/.NET is a nice place to work. Perhaps it is. If so, may I direct you to a supplier of antipsychotic drugs?
The Internet runs Unix. The *real* money is in Unix. Unless you are familiar with the POSIX standards and have a good knowledge of several implementations, you are doomed to a lifetime of unemployment, recriminations and boring stories about "when I was a fuckwit, Visual Basic programmers used to get *paid*".
It's not about operating systems. It's not even about platforms. It's about information. If you aren't adding value to data, you're going the way of the dotcoms.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, alancox@aol.com? He'd rather shave his beard off...
The still-excellent l0pht once informed the world that Microsoft had a serious security problem in a product.MS responded with the famous "That vulnerability is purely theoretical.". So, l0pht released a real exploit for the vulnerability.
Apologies, it's hard to find the original links since l0pht got up in the morning, put on a suit, and became @stake
Hello. Wake up. Theoretical vulnerabilites become real, nasty, exploited vulnerabilites very fast. I assume you read comp.risks?
Looks like it isn't very likely to succeed
LOOKS LIKE? It's a done deal. Somebody has exploited a widely-distribited scripting engine. The people who did it as a "proof-of-concept" have proven that the interpreter for this language is wide-open and gagging for a jolly good rogering. I wonder how many unchecked buffers there are in that code. I wonder how it handles multi-byte characters. I desperately hope it wasn't written in C.
I sit here as a smug old Unix hacker, secure in the knowledge that lisp and Smalltalk programs are unlikely to be attacked in the same way that C programs are.
I'm also sure I'm wrong.
It takes three years to get a degree (minimum). Do you honestly want to be poor for three years?
If you are currently hacking in C++, you are probably paid quite well. Trust me, you don't want to be poor again.
I had a similar problem. Went to university to do maths, ended up doing astrophysics, ran out of money, had to get a real job.
A few years later, I discovered you couldn't get a job without a first degree. So, I enrolled with the Open University. I signed on for the MSc in Computing for Commerce and Industry program. I can't speak highly enough about this course.
If you *really* want, you could get the MSc in three years. That would leave you no spare time whatsoever. Four years is attainable. Five years is the most usual.
The great thing is, you don't have to stop working. The hard thing is, it takes 1-3 hours a day of deep concentration.
You don't need a first degree before you start.
It is a *real* postgradute qualification. It's hard. You'll learn about operating systems, software engineering and programming in ways you hadn't thought about. You can do modules in anything from business and marketing to telecoms switching.
It's fun and demanding. At the end you get an MSc from a University that is highly respected globally for it's teaching.
It costs about $9000 over five years.
The best bit is, you can say to a prospective employer "I'm currently working for my Master's degree. Any chance of you helping with money/time?". This defuses the "Why haven't you got a degree?" question.
If you do the Objects couse, you get to learn Smalltalk as well. What more could you want?
Yes. Of course it would affect the momentum. But if the leak is slow enough for the vapour to remain close to the spacecraft for it to condense in large enough amounts to obscure a lens, I doubt that the velocity of the escape is enough to have much effect on a six-tonne spacecraft.
The source of contamination *has* to be the spacecraft itself.
If the contamination were external, it would have had a signifigant (measurable) effect on the momentum of the spacecraft. The space through which it is travelling is pretty much completely empty anyway.
That leaves one plausible possibility: Cassini is leaking something that is condensing on the cold (*very* cold) bits. The most likely cause is a small propellant leak. As far as I know, the spacecraft has three propellants on board, N2O4, N2H4 an monomethyl hydrazine. I'm too lazy to look up the charecteristics of these, but their boiling points differ.
A heating cycle of the lens seems to have helped. I would be *very* surprised if the data from the heating cycle didn't give them a good clue as to the exact contaminant by looking at the amount removed by a known heat input (latent heat of vapourisation)
The big worry is that the leak will leave the spacecraft with insufficient fuel for orbital insertion (unlikely - it's almost entirely a gravity-assist trajectory) or for manoeuvering. That would be bad.
I may, of course, be completely wrong.
...is not as strong as you think.
Otherwise, we'd all be sailing gaff cutters. The gaff rig is *much* prettier than a bermudan. Unfortunately, it's less efficient, more expensive and takes a lot more effort to use.
In the fast dinghy/sailboard arena, this could sell *because* it's new and unusual. For Eris' sake, sailboarders have been known to use dayglo pink sailcloth.
I'm sticking with my high-aspect fractional rig while the class rules require it...
To: Litigating Patent Holders
From: B.Franklin, Geo. Read, Jaco. Broom et. al.
Dear Sir,
We understand that you are planning to embark on certain legislation that will require the invocation of section eight of the document known as "The Constitution of the United States", specifically the clause that reads:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
We wish to remind you that this text is covered by modern copyright law. Should you find it necessary to refer to this clause, or any clause of the document, in your pleadings to the court we will require that you pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This fee will reflect the value of the document to the United States.
We trust that you will contact us before use or publication of our copyrighted material.
Kind Regards,
The Founding Fathers
I'm drunk.
IBM, Digital (sorry, Compaq) and HP can happily toast the pants off Sun in any benchmark there is.
Total bragging rights go to the PowerPC4, the Alpha, the PA-RISC.
So, why does Sun have so much market share?
Two simple reasons. It's reliable, and it's cheap.
OK, I'll justify that. When you buy a box from Sun, you give it a power cable, a network cable, you fire it up and it works. (OK, this magic is done by a sysadmin. But it's a commodity sysadmin. Because *everybody* knows how to make a Solaris box work) So, It's reliable.
It's also cheap. Sun sold you a box. They didn't *give* you a box in return for unspecified (but expensive) "services". You're not tied in for years. Companies don't like being tied to multi-billion dollar bullies.
Here's a test: Ask Sun to sell you an E450. Then, ask HP to sell you an L-series. Once you've bought it, I *bet* you get fewer solicitations from Sun for "consultancy" than you get from HP/IBM/...
Sun build reliable, fast, affordable kit. Then, they support it. That's all they do,
IBM/HP/Compaq/ make faster, more expensive, less affordable kit. Then they nail your management to the floor with incessant 'Services' crap.
Before you all correct me, *yes* I do know about real computers. I work with the things. And I'd happily trade CPU performance for bus throughput any day.
I'd love to see an IBM box running Solaris...
I assume you know that *all* flight training is currently banned in the USA? Yes, that's right. If you are a flying instructor, currently *you cannot* train students.
Well, you won't go to jail. But the FAA will take your pilot's license away. If you are a pilot, that's nasty. Check out news://rec.aviation.pilots for more.
Without passing a law, without recourse to a *single* elected person, thousands of US citizens have had their source of income removed.
Well, that makes us all safe doesn't it?
You seem to be making several different and to my mind, unrelated points here. In other words you've lumped everything you hate about operating systems into one rant.
:-)
Yup. My excuse is that I was drunk when I posted
Sorry. I am a sad old hacker. An OS *is* the kernel.
Filesystems? There is *no reason whatsoever* why a filesystem can't exist in userland (except performance). In fact, most computers have no concept of a filesystem. Engine managaement systems, Elevator control systems, Dishwashers, Televisions, mobile phones. All contain computers. Very few have filesystems.
Networking? How much networking does your digital wristwatch do? (no, don't answer that). OK. Your toaster?
If you are talking about the all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza that costs $1000 from Dell, then, yes. I'd be pretty pissed off it shipped without a usable shell. But the shell isn't part of the operating system. It's an application.
For 50 extra credits, write a userland FS for Linux....
Taking just one of your points out of context...
If people just wanted to browse the web and do email, WebTV would have gone over better.
Damn straight. A *huge* proportion of people just want to surf the web, do email. Occasionally, they want to write a letter. They don't *want* to know about the fun and pleasure you can get from hacking on a complex system. They *certainly* don't want to be bothered by an operating system.
And I do *not* want my car to stop working and start spitting out smoke. But you know what? It happens.
Sure. It happens. That's why we have roadside recovery organizations. *All* engineered systems can fail. The user of the system doesn't want to know how or why it failed. They want to be taken home. Then, they start complaining.
Just because we know how to balance carburettors, tune exhaust systems, goof around with suspension settings, compile kernels, write device drivers and generally geek out does not mean that *everybody* should have to know how to.
In fact, the roadside recovery industry thrives on the fact that people *know* that cars fail. So, they pay to protect themselves.
If you want flexibility and fun, you get a computer. If you want clean socks, you get a washing machine. They are both von Neumann architecure machines. You expect different things from them. Most people don't care about their washing machine until it breaks. Then, they hire someone to fix it. They don't want a prolonged diatribe about how "It wouldn't have broken if the QuuxBar 9.3.4 patch had been installed..."
Manage memory
Manage CPU time (schedule processes)
Manage access to hardware
And that's what an operating system *kernel* does.
Operating systems do not need to:
provide compilers, web browsers, colossal text editors (MS Word and emacs included)
inform users of the *really* important reasons they need to upgrade *now*
do GUI shit.
If you use a computer, you want it to do what you want. Most of the time, you want it to help you manage information. Most users don't even know that their computer *has* an operating system. Most users know that it's a really useful typewriter with an 'undo' facility.
What OS does your fridge run? your car? your microwave oven? your alarm system?
Those are all von Neumann machines, running operating systems.
A computer in a home/business environment should be useful, usable and reliable.
Get this. It's important. The people who buy computers couldn't give a flying fuck about the OS. Some want 'applications'. Those people are called 'IT managers'. Most want information. They are called 'people'.
I do *not* want my dishwasher to stop with a message of "Oops in module handle_detergent. Please run ksymoops and report to lkml". I don't want my television to go blue with advice to 'set CRASHDEBUG' for some purpose.
If you know that you are running an operating system, you are either an OS hacker, or the OS hackers have failed to protect you from their work.
IEEE 802.5?
No. I'll qualify that. It's vile.
Theoretically, TokenRing is wise, clever, fault-tolerant and the *only* way to get your LAN running close to ultimate bandwidth.
I *like* TokenRing. In theory.
In practise, it sucks. Specifically, it sucks *all* the bandwidth out of your network.
A healthy TR network *will* use all the bandwidth that it needs. Collisions are impossible.
Then, a node fails (which is what happened to you). Gradually, the overhead of regenerating tokens becomed an issue. Remember, a node will *never* regenerate a token unless it is convinced that it's up-ring node is dead or bonkers. However, if the upstream node has gone totally doolally, the one downstream will regenerate.
Regeneration is *good*. except that the upring node is spewing filth onto the ring. So, the regenerated token is lost in garbage. Guess what happens next?
Yes! the next node tries to regenerate.....
Identifying this is easy. Find the node that is still operating. Then, find the nearest axe, and apply it with enthusiasm. Amazingly, the LAN recovers within seconds.
I still bear the scars of a TR network that failed. We split it every way we could. Eventually, we we took the server with the borked ISA bus (feeding the NIC) out of the loop.
All I can say is *GET THAT BOX OFF THE LAN* You are pissing people off with it. That is *not* good for Linux.
I would say "rewrite the network drivers", but that's pointless. Say sorry (repeatedly) and advocate Ethernet. I'd rather have collisions than catastrophes...
Ho Hum.
I am a UK citizen.
We defeated the Argentinian forces in a war that has *already* gone down in history. Our victory was also the major reason thet Argentina is now a democracy.
It was an impossible war. Argentina should have kicked us out As an analogy, imagine that Hawaii was assaulted and taken by the $FOOBARS. And all you have is New York state. That gives a sense of the distances involved.
Our allies helped us *a lot*. The UK hasn't forgotten that.
The Falkland Islands are British.
But, cool one-liner troll.
Did you vote for the government in power when the NATO treaty was ratified?
I know I can't speak for you. I'm not trying to.
NATO means a lot. For fifty years, the USA promised to fight with us against a common enemy
Now, unexpectedly, a new enemy has attacked the United States.
As a nation, we promised that we would defend any other nation that was a member of NATO.
We *will* do that.
Whoever you voted for, you are now part of the "we" thing.
We (yes, that includes you) are now at war.
Do you want to win?
The *entire* NATO doctrine (well, apparently Article 5) is that an attack on one is an attack on all.
A NATO member has been *viciously* attacked.
During many crises, America has been there for it's allies.
We're there for you now. Whatever you need, you can have it.
Why do we need a *meeting* to discuss what we have always promised?
You have never let us down. We won't let you down. Ever.
(signed)
A UK Citizen, who grieves with you.
Appeasement NEVER works
Unfortunately, you are completely right. History bears you out *without exception*.
"Jaw, jaw is better than War, war". Yup. True. Except it *doesn't fucking work*".
Ultimately, you have to blow the dust off your old copy of von Clausewitz "On War", and do something nasty. Accept that a lot of your people will die. Have a clear objective. Make use of everything you have. And remember your ancient history.
After the third war, no trace of Great Carthage remained
My ID# is where it should be - 41002. Like I give a fuck. (on the other hand, is that worth $5 on ebay...)
It used to be about 40,000. Now it's more than 2*10^6. Way to go Rob! No more trading of low-numbered accounts. Hell, success must hurt. Let me know when I can have some.
Judging from your user ID#, I suspect you weren't around when this was tried.
/. management (well, Rob and at least one other) described the whole thing.
Somebody with a high-hundreds/low thousands karma (i.e. a student with *far* too much time on their hands) (was it FascDotKilledMyPR? apologies if I'm wrong.) tried to flog their account on ebay. Apparently, there were some ridiculously high bids (some valued karma more than dollars)
In one of his rare moments of creative lucidity, Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda aranged for the karma for this individual to vary (at random) between a cap value and zero, with the cap value reducing at a rate that would bring it to zero at the moment the ebay auction closed.
The whole debacle is best recorded in an IRC log where the
This ends your "Boring And Useless" slashdot history lesson.
{ps - no URLs, because I have better things to do than look them up}
The bandwidths you talk about are largely unattainable in Britain.
In fact, a "survey" or "report" or whatever reported in the infamous Register suggests that Britain has the lowest-bandwidth, highest priced broadband on the entire planet. The report (pay US$395 to pass 'go') is here.
I can buy a 512Kb/128Kb connection from British Telecom for as little as £50 a month. Plus £200 connection. With 40:1 contention. Oh, I have to run Windows 98 to do it. Or, I can pay £200 a month for 1Mb down, 128KB up at 20:1 contention, and run as many machines off it as I want. Installation is a bit more (£400 I think). Oh, and those bandwidths aren't 'committed bandwidths'. And they change your IP every 2 hours. I can always go to a supplier other than BT. But they have to charge more, because those are the prices that BT charge other suppliers, as well.
I am angry. I work with telecomms companies. One if them (in Europe) is giving *guaranteed* 1Mb down, 256 Kb up, 24*7, home access at 8:1 contention for the equivalent of £18 a month.
Do you ever wonder why UK people are so *fucking* furious?
On the bright side, BT has a market capitalisation of £28 billion, and debts of £30 billion. Way to go, Sir Peter and Sir Ian. (Chairman and CEO)
I love monopolies. Or I will when I get one.
This URL seems to address all of the stupidities of the 'Apollo Hoax' nutters. Take a look.
I find it worrying that 4% of the population of the "Last Superpower" don't just believe in UFOs, they beleive they've been abducted by one.
I'll certainly be glad when this little fad is over so we ("we" of course being professional developers) can go back to programming as usual.
<BEGIN Inconsistent rant>
What platform do you want to develop for? Embedded systems? Big databases (which means Oracle or DB/2)? Mainframes (love that COBOL...)? Macintrash?
Or do you mean Microsoft Windows? The joys of developing for at least ten different operating systems, which have *huge* inconsistencies in APIs. Gods, even the NT4 API has glaring, terrifying inconsintency in *it's own API*.
Or, maybe, you think that MFC/ATL/.NET is a nice place to work. Perhaps it is. If so, may I direct you to a supplier of antipsychotic drugs?
The Internet runs Unix. The *real* money is in Unix. Unless you are familiar with the POSIX standards and have a good knowledge of several implementations, you are doomed to a lifetime of unemployment, recriminations and boring stories about "when I was a fuckwit, Visual Basic programmers used to get *paid*".
It's not about operating systems. It's not even about platforms. It's about information. If you aren't adding value to data, you're going the way of the dotcoms.
</END Inconsistent rant>