What's the old saying? "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide?"
It's a familiar modus operandi (or is it operandus in this case?) for Communist governments. And frankly, I feel vaguely uneasy that the average person is going to associate free software with a nation that jails and tortures people for wanting to go to church, or for saying, "Mao bites his farts!" (With apologies to P.J. O'Rourke.)
Am I the only one who thinks he hears a soft chuckle in Redmond? This isn't exactly the P.R. coup of the century, here.
Unlike a Red Hat install, I was never prompted to create a user or set a root password. I had visions of having to crack my own installation to even login. I tentatively typed in root, and wondered if I could guess what a Chinese developer would set as a default password, when I was presented with a root prompt!
That's right, they don't set a root password, and seem to expect users will be running as root right from the start. That's surely not the best way to introduce a newbie into best practices.
ObDisclaimer: This is certainly not intended as flamebait, although it will probably be modded so.
Given the mindset of a totalitarian government -- that is to say, all ideas and possessions are ultimately the property of the oligarchy (or in China's case the gerontocracy) -- doesn't it seem logical that a default install for an OS endorsed by the government to be open to the world by default?
Seriously, if you want to be able to access any system in your nation, and you know the average user doesn't know thing one about security, this sort of tactic would be on page 1 of Information Control for Dummies.
Interesting that this was posted tonight -- today I was poking around my parents' basement (aka, "Free Storage for Me," or in German, "Krappenhaus"), and I discovered a wealth of old equipment I'd...um...creatively obtained from my high school and various jobs over the years:
A Zenith Data Systems Z-100 486SX, 8MB RAM, 120MB HDD. The first PC I had a CD-ROM in!
Serial mice out the wazoo.
A Compaq VGA monitor.
Two old Labtec CS-800 speakers.
A keyboard (huge-ass AT connector...or was it XT? It's been so long...). I think it was putty-colored at one time, but all the keys are black and shiny smooth now...ewwwww.
A shitload of old DOS games -- Sam and Max Hit the Road, X-Wing, Maniac Mansion II, Rebel Assault. (yeah, I was a LucasArts fan. Wanna make something of it?)
The only problem is deciding whether or not I want to turn it into a Linux box (SOHO firewall, anyone?), or take advantage of all those classic games by installing FreeDOS.
Damn you Slashdot. Who would have thought that you could have too many choices for using a 486?
The 25 cents per encoder/decoder is bad enough, but then charging by the hour as well?
You know, I don't really have a problem with them charging $.25 per codec. The developers of the MPEG-4 standard deserve to be compensated for their time, and money is a pretty good universally understood medium (popped popcorn is often too bulky to mail in mass quantities, and oral pleasure from each purchaser could be difficult -- and in today's epidemiological climate, hazardous). So more power to 'em, I say.
The $.02/hour scheme does seem a little tough to enforce, though. I mean, if I'm selling for-profit movies (and really, there's only one type of movie that's truly profitable on the World Wide Pr0n Repository), don't you think it would be in my best interests to lowball the estimate just a teensy bit? "Well, I'm going to sell movies encoded in MPEG-4, but only, um, three hours' worth. Yeah, that's the ticket! Three hours -- here's your six cents. Bye!"
Seems to me like this is yet another case of greed being foiled by stupidity.
Well, if they're going to follow the dot-commers' business plans for success, the next step after the multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad is to buy comfy office chairs.
Interesting that you would say that -- when I was in junior high, our family's shiny new Apple//c sat in the corner of our basement (in Nebraska, mind you, where the winters are insane). The only corner of the room that was warm between November and February was around that lovely grey case.
I used a laser and a maser to extract energy from the waste heat generated by my Athlon. I've been running everything in my house but my computer off that exhaust tap!
Re:Qeynos == Manhattan before the ugly europeans
on
EverQuest and the UN
·
· Score: 1
Yes, and someday a group of crazed fanatics from the Tox Forest will crash a buggy into the biggest market in Qeynos. It will be the end of innocence for a lot of EQ players, who up until that point had only heard stories about the problems in pre-Shadows of Luclin days.
I was glad to see the interviewee was brutally honest about free software -- both its benefits and its drawbacks. Usually discussions among my friends usually degenerate into holy wars, with both of us spouting cliches at one another until we all storm off in huffs.
Free software can save the world, I think. We just need to realize that it needs a lot more work to get there.
I mean, it's all well and good to say you're going to measure this sort of thing, but how can we be sure he's correct? I could just as easily say that the exact distance from the center of the earth to the center of the moon is 385,137.473 KM.
In fact, what if these scientists are just using this as a cover to get a lot of funding money. Look for the research team to be on vacation in the Bahamas next month. When they come back, they've got a request for funding on a project about angels and pinheads...
This sort of thin-film circuitry would be great for palmtop computing -- the reduction in Batman factor alone would be worth it.
I've been praying for something like this to come along since I was in the military, and we had rules about exactly what we could have on underneath our BDU tunics. Didn't stop most of us military geeks from carrying the cell, Palm, Leatherman, and pager, but it would still be nice to have something that doesn't ruin your uniform appearance (or the lines of your suit, if you're stuck in one of those jobs).
Plus, the flexibility might make a great selling point. Are touch screens flexible?
Am I the only sleep-deprived person who read the front page blurb thinking that the Boy Scouts of America would be sending storm troopers into the homes of 700,000 random citizens?
Guten Morgen! Ve are from ze Boy Scouts, und ve must this home search! After we have zis done, ve vill force you...to tie knots!
Back in the days of vampire taps and thick-net cable, I took over a LAN at my high school. Because people disconnecting the thinnet to the AUI (or even directly into the NIC for the lucky ones!) caused resistance on the cable to go crazy, my predecessor had epoxied the BNC connectors to all AUIs and NICs on the segment. It was all well and good until we needed to move a PC.
The BNC connector with its epoxy bead (and when I say bead, I mean "ping-pong ball-sized lump") was waaaaaay to large to fit through the expansion slot opening on the back of the PC, and the card of course had a metal retainer/dust cover on it.
No problem, thought I. I'll just use a little acetone, dissolve the glue, and be on my way. I set up a little plastic splashguard and a catch cup, poured some nail polish remover, and waited. Nothing. I got some acetone from our chemistry department, poured a healthy amount over it, and waited again. Once more, nothing. I actually bathed the bead in acetone overnight (by now I'd written off both the cable and the NIC as total losses), and checked again in the morning. A third time, no effect. This was obviously no ordinary epoxy.
I ended up swiping a hacksaw from the metals shop and working for about an hour to cut the bead off (all the acetone had made the bead and the connector slippery, and me a little woozy). That epoxy bead still sits next to my computer.
Thanks for bringing back a little laugh at 3:30 in the morning...
Jim Cullinan, lead product manager for XP, in Redmond, Wash., agreed that the information released with the patches does not offer that much detail so as not to confuse and overwhelm users with technical information. "Most users did not want specific detail of source code changes," Cullinan said.
Oh? And how much of the source code were you actually going to give us, Jim?
Locking a door is great. But when it's a lock that's easily picked, and the lock manufacturers refuse to tell their customers, doesn't that say something?
Frankly, I'd love to see Microsoft held legally and fiscally accountable for their security flaws -- especially if it can be documented that they knew and did nothing. And since this is the best of all possible worlds, I can expect that Real Soon Now.
I'll grant you that. But at the same time, Microsoft moves like an arthritic tortoise munching on a quaalude (thank you Dennis Miller) when it's informed of a security vulnerability.
If you're not a bugtraq or MS-bugtraq subscriber, I heartily recommend signing up. The developers for debian, SuSE, and RedHat are all fairly frequent contributers and participants in discussions. When an actual Microserf does post to the list, the overall attitude they assume is that of one who has descended from on high, bearing Holy Writ for us, the great unwashed.
Personally, I much prefer the open and informative discussions than being told how naughty a monkey I am for discovering a vulnerability, or having the gall to inform others about it.
Begun to raise concerns?! That's like saying, "In other news, repeated appearances of the star Sol on an approximate 24 hour basis have begun to raise concerns that it may do so tomorrow."
Microsoft never built operating systems with security in mind. The last time I checked, the security testing group at MS consisted of two Norwegian Black rats, a four-year-old, and a blind, deaf, chimpanzee with a drinking habit. It still hasn't occurred to them that improving their security might, in fact, be a good thing.
Even better really -- IIRC, only season 1 was 22 episodes long. After that, they were 26 episodes (although there may have been one season that was cut short; I'm not sure). At that rate, it works out to ~3.85 an episode.
Passed monitors all processes to determine if their use has fallen out of current fashion. For instance, when gopher became unfashionable to use during the mid-1990's, passed informed all gopherspace maintainers that it was no longer a "cool" geeky service. Think about it -- when was the last time you did a veronica search?
Slashdot Mirror
What's the old saying? "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide?"
It's a familiar modus operandi (or is it operandus in this case?) for Communist governments. And frankly, I feel vaguely uneasy that the average person is going to associate free software with a nation that jails and tortures people for wanting to go to church, or for saying, "Mao bites his farts!" (With apologies to P.J. O'Rourke.)
Am I the only one who thinks he hears a soft chuckle in Redmond? This isn't exactly the P.R. coup of the century, here.
Unlike a Red Hat install, I was never prompted to create a user or set a root password. I had visions of having to crack my own installation to even login. I tentatively typed in root, and wondered if I could guess what a Chinese developer would set as a default password, when I was presented with a root prompt!
That's right, they don't set a root password, and seem to expect users will be running as root right from the start. That's surely not the best way to introduce a newbie into best practices.
ObDisclaimer: This is certainly not intended as flamebait, although it will probably be modded so.
Given the mindset of a totalitarian government -- that is to say, all ideas and possessions are ultimately the property of the oligarchy (or in China's case the gerontocracy) -- doesn't it seem logical that a default install for an OS endorsed by the government to be open to the world by default?
Seriously, if you want to be able to access any system in your nation, and you know the average user doesn't know thing one about security, this sort of tactic would be on page 1 of Information Control for Dummies.
Or this could just be me being paranoid again.
Interesting that this was posted tonight -- today I was poking around my parents' basement (aka, "Free Storage for Me," or in German, "Krappenhaus"), and I discovered a wealth of old equipment I'd...um...creatively obtained from my high school and various jobs over the years:
The only problem is deciding whether or not I want to turn it into a Linux box (SOHO firewall, anyone?), or take advantage of all those classic games by installing FreeDOS.
Damn you Slashdot. Who would have thought that you could have too many choices for using a 486?
The 25 cents per encoder/decoder is bad enough, but then charging by the hour as well?
You know, I don't really have a problem with them charging $.25 per codec. The developers of the MPEG-4 standard deserve to be compensated for their time, and money is a pretty good universally understood medium (popped popcorn is often too bulky to mail in mass quantities, and oral pleasure from each purchaser could be difficult -- and in today's epidemiological climate, hazardous). So more power to 'em, I say.
The $.02/hour scheme does seem a little tough to enforce, though. I mean, if I'm selling for-profit movies (and really, there's only one type of movie that's truly profitable on the World Wide Pr0n Repository), don't you think it would be in my best interests to lowball the estimate just a teensy bit? "Well, I'm going to sell movies encoded in MPEG-4, but only, um, three hours' worth. Yeah, that's the ticket! Three hours -- here's your six cents. Bye!"
Seems to me like this is yet another case of greed being foiled by stupidity.
<humor type="friendly sarcasm">
How can somebody with a nick like "flockofseagulls" even mention the words "genetically fit?" :-)
</humor>
Actually, I just feel bad that I queued up "I Ran (So Far Away)" after I saw your nick.
Well, if they're going to follow the dot-commers' business plans for success, the next step after the multimillion-dollar Super Bowl ad is to buy comfy office chairs.
My suggestion? By stock in Aeron, folks...
Interesting that you would say that -- when I was in junior high, our family's shiny new Apple //c sat in the corner of our basement (in Nebraska, mind you, where the winters are insane). The only corner of the room that was warm between November and February was around that lovely grey case.
I used a laser and a maser to extract energy from the waste heat generated by my Athlon. I've been running everything in my house but my computer off that exhaust tap!
Yes, and someday a group of crazed fanatics from the Tox Forest will crash a buggy into the biggest market in Qeynos. It will be the end of innocence for a lot of EQ players, who up until that point had only heard stories about the problems in pre-Shadows of Luclin days.
There is no System Administrators Cabal.
I was glad to see the interviewee was brutally honest about free software -- both its benefits and its drawbacks. Usually discussions among my friends usually degenerate into holy wars, with both of us spouting cliches at one another until we all storm off in huffs.
Free software can save the world, I think. We just need to realize that it needs a lot more work to get there.
not for a productive use server...
Freudian slip? I have to agree, though, the biggest productivity killer I have is SameGnome...
This is why I always forget how I built my cool Lego(TM) models when I was a kid!
:s/Odometer/odometer.
I hate it when I do that.
...Check the Odometer on the Apollo 11 capsule.
I mean, it's all well and good to say you're going to measure this sort of thing, but how can we be sure he's correct? I could just as easily say that the exact distance from the center of the earth to the center of the moon is 385,137.473 KM.
In fact, what if these scientists are just using this as a cover to get a lot of funding money. Look for the research team to be on vacation in the Bahamas next month. When they come back, they've got a request for funding on a project about angels and pinheads...
This sort of thin-film circuitry would be great for palmtop computing -- the reduction in Batman factor alone would be worth it.
I've been praying for something like this to come along since I was in the military, and we had rules about exactly what we could have on underneath our BDU tunics. Didn't stop most of us military geeks from carrying the cell, Palm, Leatherman, and pager, but it would still be nice to have something that doesn't ruin your uniform appearance (or the lines of your suit, if you're stuck in one of those jobs).
Plus, the flexibility might make a great selling point. Are touch screens flexible?
Am I the only sleep-deprived person who read the front page blurb thinking that the Boy Scouts of America would be sending storm troopers into the homes of 700,000 random citizens?
Guten Morgen! Ve are from ze Boy Scouts, und ve must this home search! After we have zis done, ve vill force you...to tie knots!
Back in the days of vampire taps and thick-net cable, I took over a LAN at my high school. Because people disconnecting the thinnet to the AUI (or even directly into the NIC for the lucky ones!) caused resistance on the cable to go crazy, my predecessor had epoxied the BNC connectors to all AUIs and NICs on the segment. It was all well and good until we needed to move a PC.
The BNC connector with its epoxy bead (and when I say bead, I mean "ping-pong ball-sized lump") was waaaaaay to large to fit through the expansion slot opening on the back of the PC, and the card of course had a metal retainer/dust cover on it.
No problem, thought I. I'll just use a little acetone, dissolve the glue, and be on my way. I set up a little plastic splashguard and a catch cup, poured some nail polish remover, and waited. Nothing. I got some acetone from our chemistry department, poured a healthy amount over it, and waited again. Once more, nothing. I actually bathed the bead in acetone overnight (by now I'd written off both the cable and the NIC as total losses), and checked again in the morning. A third time, no effect. This was obviously no ordinary epoxy.
I ended up swiping a hacksaw from the metals shop and working for about an hour to cut the bead off (all the acetone had made the bead and the connector slippery, and me a little woozy). That epoxy bead still sits next to my computer.
Thanks for bringing back a little laugh at 3:30 in the morning...
From the eWeek article:
Jim Cullinan, lead product manager for XP, in Redmond, Wash., agreed that the information released with the patches does not offer that much detail so as not to confuse and overwhelm users with technical information. "Most users did not want specific detail of source code changes," Cullinan said.
Oh? And how much of the source code were you actually going to give us, Jim?
Locking a door is great. But when it's a lock that's easily picked, and the lock manufacturers refuse to tell their customers, doesn't that say something?
Frankly, I'd love to see Microsoft held legally and fiscally accountable for their security flaws -- especially if it can be documented that they knew and did nothing. And since this is the best of all possible worlds, I can expect that Real Soon Now.
I'll grant you that. But at the same time, Microsoft moves like an arthritic tortoise munching on a quaalude (thank you Dennis Miller) when it's informed of a security vulnerability.
If you're not a bugtraq or MS-bugtraq subscriber, I heartily recommend signing up. The developers for debian, SuSE, and RedHat are all fairly frequent contributers and participants in discussions. When an actual Microserf does post to the list, the overall attitude they assume is that of one who has descended from on high, bearing Holy Writ for us, the great unwashed.
Personally, I much prefer the open and informative discussions than being told how naughty a monkey I am for discovering a vulnerability, or having the gall to inform others about it.
Begun to raise concerns?! That's like saying, "In other news, repeated appearances of the star Sol on an approximate 24 hour basis have begun to raise concerns that it may do so tomorrow."
Microsoft never built operating systems with security in mind. The last time I checked, the security testing group at MS consisted of two Norwegian Black rats, a four-year-old, and a blind, deaf, chimpanzee with a drinking habit. It still hasn't occurred to them that improving their security might, in fact, be a good thing.
There, I feel better.
Even better really -- IIRC, only season 1 was 22 episodes long. After that, they were 26 episodes (although there may have been one season that was cut short; I'm not sure). At that rate, it works out to ~3.85 an episode.
From the passed man page: