I don't think that my users would stand for sending all their attachments through a processing server...
What about the file sharing capabilities of these distros? Or can you use Netware, OpenADS, DCE, or something to avoid the file attachment problem?
It seems like file sharing technologies are more mature than MIME/SMTP file transfers.
Most security advisories seem to me to actively discourage all binary attachments. Then you also have the issues of version control, locking, worms, storage space, etc.
That's a quick way to get a root kit.
on
Debian On DVD
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· Score: 1
I had to cure my co-workers of that last year. Like everyone else, our site was / is under constant probing, so by the time the patches and upgrades were downloaded and added to the installed-from-CD base system, they were owned.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll just work online first for a few minutes...What's this, now? ps and top just got weird"
It's good to have everything you need on CD so you don't have to break the airgap until you're as close to secure as you can reasonably get.
Do it. Vote with your feet and take your business else where. This includes other businesses that do it and is most time effective for you.
If you're feeling evangelistic, the soft way is to drop them an e-mail. The hard way is to find a competitor with a better site. Then call up the first business and start an order, but ask if it can be done on the web, talk then through your browsing session and point out that their competitor's site. Maybe it's even a site that the ADA needs to know about.
As of now Fri Oct 26 06:14:57 UTC 2001, they're still blocking all of my browsers on my RedHat-based workstation.
Though I would not have notice except for this posting. Got to wonder what this is a smoke screen for. What's happening right now that would benefit from being ignored by the/. crowd?
Microsoft's revenue streams are in danger of drying up unless they can get a lock on people through MS-Passport. MS can leverage Hotmail and other online services by purchasing them and forcing migration to MS-Passport, but that can only happen on the desktop through upgrades to XP.
XP has improvements, but there's no exciting reason to upgrade. Plus, with all of the security concerns finally,the press release the other week coming down on publishing exploits is a tacit admisision that MS products can compete in a real world security environment.
Skipping the agenda behind this and just addressing the technical feasibility, this proposal appears no different than PICS which has been around for years, but has not become widely used despite all the whining.
All the standard opt-in vs opt-out arguments apply, plus you have three hurdles to hop before it works. Specifically, sites must:
add metadata elements (aka "tags")...
in the correct syntax...
and contain a recognized vocabulary...
This relative complexity renders the probablity for success very low. Besides, it is a system to exclude web sites which contradicts the concept of publishing on the web: to be found. Thus there is a disincentive for compliance.
Also, you have the problem of self-evaluation which can be troubled by different interpretations by individuals or by malicious mis-classification. ( BTW: even professional catalogers tend to overlap only about 60% on the subject of a given resource. Quality and suitability are even more subjective and thus subject to variation. ) For accuracy, third party evaluation is the way to go, which introduces the problems with staffing and other human dependencies.
The FBI nearly put Steve Jackson Games out of business SJG v. USSS in 1997 for even writing fiction about cracking / cybercrime.
The confiscation of all equipment and storage media would clobber the production cycle of any software house. Or just tying up key programmers in a legal maze for months or years.
If things get worse, a lot of development is going to move off shore by necessity while the legal situation in the US gets straightened out. Germany was actively recruiting (I can't find the link) Germans to return and other folks willing to work in Germany. They'd even throw in free language classes.
The long term solution is to keep working and not let the weirdness cause delays. At the same time make sure that the US catches up to Europe again. Otherwise it risks dragging down all of us. No one wins a fight except lawyers.
I'm all for research in GM crops, but there's usually a big difference in how we want things to turn out and how they actually turn out.
Assuming that GM crops would poison the ants, the ants would merely find other food and the crops would end up depleting native species. Think about the cane toad, which never developed a taste for sugarcane-eating grubs, but kill many carnivorous marsupials which find the poisonous toads somehow tasty.
Then there's also the starlings, sparrows, rabbits, and foxes, to name a few.
Even nukes may not work well because the nests are so deep. It may be necessary to treat each nest individually.
The role of vapourware is to block competitors.
on
Opposing Open Source?
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· Score: 1
...but the ability to depend on their announced release dates is not one of them.
Take the beta release for
Windows 95, which came shortly after OS/2 warp, but never really acquired the features promised until it was windows 98 (1999).
Perhaps in this case there was
no other role than to keep people from buying OS/2 Warp. By the time W95 was ready, OS/2 was not a novelty anymore.
There are many reasons that large companies are slow to move, but alot of the announced release dates are probably only to prevent a shift of capital to competitors. It looks like MS is in a similar phase now where there is the tangible possibility of most of their revenue streams disappearing, thus their increase of recent attacks.
It sounds like Russ Mitchell is airing intraoffice politics to the world. Perhaps there is more than one agenda here. However, the high profile of Wired make his gripe a point worth addressing.
Michael Lucas did this quite well in
his recent article on Selling BSD (as an idea) to managment. The short of it is to behave well and act mature even if you're not.
Perhaps this is a call to raise the bar on the various "Certified [RH/SuSe/etc] Engineer" exams. I know more than one MSCE that nearly earned a free trip down the stairs. I'd hate to see that start happening to the corresponding Linux techs.
People love to be told what to do... and most knuckle under to facilitate facists or become facists themselves: In
The Third Wave was an experiment just like this,but on a larger scale. Student went around with armbands, even. Eventually it got rough and the teacher brought it to a halt.
Now that facism is allowed to be discussed in Germany again, it's being used as a teaching tool. (Uh, specifically on the *dangers* of facism.)
I guess all the Americans that remember McCarthyism are non-tech and retired. Everyone else is too young.
There must be millions of square kilometers of flat rooves in the world's cities. Since most are neither generally accessable nor designed for regular activties, they'd make
an idea place for solar arrays. You could even use DC instead of AC due to the proximity, but that would be a bother. In hot areas, the shade would help lower the temperature of the upper floors.
Putting them on hold is one thing, but I preferred to use the speaker phone while doing other tasks and see how long I could keep them on the line.
Always answer their questions with another question or some non-commital social noise. "Hmm...I see","Interesting","What else?" and so on.
If I could keep them on the line at no personal inconvenience, then every minute was a minute they were not bothering anyone else and costing their company some money.
The U.S. has been and is a great place.
However, the crazy legal environment and corporate republic mentality will gradually cause a migration to Europe anyway for pragmatic reasons.
In the EU there is no DMCA, no weird cryptography rules. The EU Commission, as bad as it is, even seems to be handling the Microsoft issues better.
Recruitment will happen. The benefits are much better: lower crime, health care, 5 weeks holiday, free university, pension, and in some countries, clean rivers and lakes.
Also, most European governments (at least the Northern European ones) make it really easy to start small businesses and provide tax major breaks and grants. The larger countries also get pretty good deals. However, the competition between companies in the same branch is often really cuttroat and dictated by who is childhood friends with whom.
For example, regarding privacy, I automaticaly get a written statement of who has requested my credit rating and why.
The other option is to phase in the European standard of living in the U.S. For ex, doesn't California provide free or inexpensive university to its residents?
Per Host is more accurate than Per Computer
on
Netcraft Survey Updated
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Perhaps a "per host" OS pie chart should sit next to the "per computer" one.
The pie chart showing 50% windows machines could be indicative of less efficient servers.
If MS servers are less efficient then we'd see that MS has a worse host-to-hardware ratio, which we do see here.
Annecdotally, I can say that about a dozen machine linux servers I know are each running 3 or more separate hosts.
Many neighborhoods, condos, and apartment complexes across the water in Sweden have gone ahead and installed their own network without waiting.
Can someone who lives over there tell a little more about it or point to some resources for ideas?
Wide Staircases are good
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
This sounds like a case for wider staircases.
In most modern buildings they're obscured, hidden, or just plain locked. Granted the chance of a fire or other catastrophe is small, but nicely done stairs lend an air of authority and status. Think about the Lincoln Memorial. Status is what the WTC towers were about and possibly why they were targets.
On the other hand if people had usable staircases in their buildings, the health clubs would lose all the yuppies that pay x USD / month to play on a stair climber.
A number of areas are now under DDOS attacks. Could just be opportunists, but hey... you never know.
If the DDOS is coordinated, then there is probably going to be a second strike elsewhere after the adrenalin rush wears off and the crisis planners are fatigued.
Yes, Win95 is worth significantly more than $400, but not to the customer. These refurbished computers will lead directly to paid upgrades. This will bring in much more than $400 to Redmond.
Hey, kid. The first one's free. How 'bout I give you one for your friend, too.
Actually, if the DoJ had already split Microsoft into an OS company and an applications company then it would not be as much of an issue.
However, come to think of it that in order to truly level the playing field, MS should be split into three: OS, applications (Word, et al.), and ISP (.NET, MSN, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
What about the file sharing capabilities of these distros? Or can you use Netware, OpenADS, DCE, or something to avoid the file attachment problem?
It seems like file sharing technologies are more mature than MIME/SMTP file transfers. Most security advisories seem to me to actively discourage all binary attachments. Then you also have the issues of version control, locking, worms, storage space, etc.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll just work online first for a few minutes...What's this, now? ps and top just got weird"
It's good to have everything you need on CD so you don't have to break the airgap until you're as close to secure as you can reasonably get.
Do it. Vote with your feet and take your business else where. This includes other businesses that do it and is most time effective for you.
If you're feeling evangelistic, the soft way is to drop them an e-mail. The hard way is to find a competitor with a better site. Then call up the first business and start an order, but ask if it can be done on the web, talk then through your browsing session and point out that their competitor's site. Maybe it's even a site that the ADA needs to know about.
Though I would not have notice except for this posting. Got to wonder what this is a smoke screen for. What's happening right now that would benefit from being ignored by the /. crowd?
XP has improvements, but there's no exciting reason to upgrade. Plus, with all of the security concerns finally ,the press release the other week coming down on publishing exploits is a tacit admisision that MS products can compete in a real world security environment.
So they have to compete through saturation advertising. The Register has had a few articles over the last few weeks. Here's last weeks warning about the salvo we're experiencing : Microsoft will kick off a $200 million marketing campaign on
Monday 15 October to create consumer awareness of upcoming Windows
XP.
They also explained how MS was able to insert a press release into Reuters.
All the standard opt-in vs opt-out arguments apply, plus you have three hurdles to hop before it works. Specifically, sites must:
- add metadata elements (aka "tags")...
- in the correct syntax...
- and contain a recognized vocabulary...
This relative complexity renders the probablity for success very low. Besides, it is a system to exclude web sites which contradicts the concept of publishing on the web: to be found. Thus there is a disincentive for compliance.Also, you have the problem of self-evaluation which can be troubled by different interpretations by individuals or by malicious mis-classification. ( BTW: even professional catalogers tend to overlap only about 60% on the subject of a given resource. Quality and suitability are even more subjective and thus subject to variation. ) For accuracy, third party evaluation is the way to go, which introduces the problems with staffing and other human dependencies.
The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education ran a technically similar project called SAFARI to help disseminate material, which is what the web is about. If you make the good stuff easy to find then the crap is less troublesome. You can read a a description of the methods used.
The confiscation of all equipment and storage media would clobber the production cycle of any software house. Or just tying up key programmers in a legal maze for months or years.
If things get worse, a lot of development is going to move off shore by necessity while the legal situation in the US gets straightened out. Germany was actively recruiting (I can't find the link) Germans to return and other folks willing to work in Germany. They'd even throw in free language classes.
The long term solution is to keep working and not let the weirdness cause delays. At the same time make sure that the US catches up to Europe again. Otherwise it risks dragging down all of us. No one wins a fight except lawyers.
Assuming that GM crops would poison the ants, the ants would merely find other food and the crops would end up depleting native species. Think about the cane toad, which never developed a taste for sugarcane-eating grubs, but kill many carnivorous marsupials which find the poisonous toads somehow tasty.
Then there's also the starlings, sparrows, rabbits, and foxes, to name a few.
Even nukes may not work well because the nests are so deep. It may be necessary to treat each nest individually.
It sounds like Russ Mitchell is airing intraoffice politics to the world. Perhaps there is more than one agenda here. However, the high profile of Wired make his gripe a point worth addressing.
Michael Lucas did this quite well in his recent article on Selling BSD (as an idea) to managment. The short of it is to behave well and act mature even if you're not.
Perhaps this is a call to raise the bar on the various "Certified [RH/SuSe/etc] Engineer" exams. I know more than one MSCE that nearly earned a free trip down the stairs. I'd hate to see that start happening to the corresponding Linux techs.
People love to be told what to do... and most knuckle under to facilitate facists or become facists themselves: In The Third Wave was an experiment just like this,but on a larger scale. Student went around with armbands, even. Eventually it got rough and the teacher brought it to a halt.
Now that facism is allowed to be discussed in Germany again, it's being used as a teaching tool. (Uh, specifically on the *dangers* of facism.)
I guess all the Americans that remember McCarthyism are non-tech and retired. Everyone else is too young.
There must be millions of square kilometers of flat rooves in the world's cities. Since most are neither generally accessable nor designed for regular activties, they'd make an idea place for solar arrays. You could even use DC instead of AC due to the proximity, but that would be a bother. In hot areas, the shade would help lower the temperature of the upper floors.
If I could keep them on the line at no personal inconvenience, then every minute was a minute they were not bothering anyone else and costing their company some money.
The U.S. has been and is a great place. However, the crazy legal environment and corporate republic mentality will gradually cause a migration to Europe anyway for pragmatic reasons.
In the EU there is no DMCA, no weird cryptography rules. The EU Commission, as bad as it is, even seems to be handling the Microsoft issues better.
Recruitment will happen. The benefits are much better: lower crime, health care, 5 weeks holiday, free university, pension, and in some countries, clean rivers and lakes.
Also, most European governments (at least the Northern European ones) make it really easy to start small businesses and provide tax major breaks and grants. The larger countries also get pretty good deals. However, the competition between companies in the same branch is often really cuttroat and dictated by who is childhood friends with whom.
For example, regarding privacy, I automaticaly get a written statement of who has requested my credit rating and why.
The other option is to phase in the European standard of living in the U.S. For ex, doesn't California provide free or inexpensive university to its residents?
Annecdotally, I can say that about a dozen machine linux servers I know are each running 3 or more separate hosts.
Many neighborhoods, condos, and apartment complexes across the water in Sweden have gone ahead and installed their own network without waiting.
Can someone who lives over there tell a little more about it or point to some resources for ideas?
In most modern buildings they're obscured, hidden, or just plain locked. Granted the chance of a fire or other catastrophe is small, but nicely done stairs lend an air of authority and status. Think about the Lincoln Memorial. Status is what the WTC towers were about and possibly why they were targets.
On the other hand if people had usable staircases in their buildings, the health clubs would lose all the yuppies that pay x USD / month to play on a stair climber.
A number of areas are now under DDOS attacks. Could just be opportunists, but hey... you never know.
If the DDOS is coordinated, then there is probably going to be a second strike elsewhere after the adrenalin rush wears off and the crisis planners are fatigued.
This rather sucks.
Yes, Win95 is worth significantly more than $400, but not to the customer. These refurbished computers will lead directly to paid upgrades. This will bring in much more than $400 to Redmond.
Hey, kid. The first one's free. How 'bout I give you one for your friend, too.
Actually, if the DoJ had already split Microsoft into an OS company and an applications company then it would not be as much of an issue.
However, come to think of it that in order to truly level the playing field, MS should be split into three: OS, applications (Word, et al.), and ISP (.NET, MSN, etc.)
Wouldn't this violate common carriage? I believe the US still has this practice and has applied it to cable TV and telephone service.