How the frig would that "same logic" apply to the cool tunes you're getting off of Kazaa?
I'm not entirely certain, but I think it could have similar (positive) effects. After all, how is anybody supposed to gain interest in buying Britney Spears' merchandise without being innundated with her {cough} music first? What about attending concerts of the latest'n'greatest Boy Wonder Band? If you hear their music enough, you might want to attend one of their asparin-fests (atleast, that's what an event-security guard friend of mine calls them. She rates them on a scale of the appropriate drug to use for the howls and/or piercing screams of the audience. Bon Jovi is a Midol evening...)
Hardly. We're talking about a third of a million participants taking 4 years here. Unless someone's developed a time machine and built ASCI from some future technology it's not that fast! (remember, many participants were science labs or other groups utilising several, sometimes hundreds of machines).
We're still talking about machines that don't even hit a single GFLop, whereas ASCI White clocks in at a paltry 7.2TFlops, while Japan's Earth Simulator runs at a tidy 35.86TFlops.
Not to sound too black-helicopterish or anything, but these are only the supercomputers that we know about.
Isn't it entirely possible that in the interests of tracking "terrorists", the Department of Homeland Security might just have assembled something that makes E.S. look like an old laptop?
The technology exists, it's just a simple matter of somebody (read: corporation / government) with the funding and wherewithall to put it together and make it function.
Re:With apologies to Douglas Adams
on
RC5-64 Success
·
· Score: 1
And speaking of Douglas Adams, when a dnetc client asks for RC5 work, the keyserver should reply "So long and thanks for all the fish!"
It can say whatever you want, of course, if you run your own keyserver;
[misc] proxymessage="Tux is your overlord. Suck it."
My server (AMD K62-400) has been running dnetc for approximately 2.5-3 years (coupled with four-times daily team stats update) and now.. it's not.
From a constant 1.0 load average to just the load of my regular maintainance and server functionality, will the CPU itself be ok? I mean, it's going to run a lot cooler until I find a new project.
I'm no expert on sillicon, but isn't there an issue when sillicon heats up, stays hot for a long period of time, then drops in temperature?
You may be forgetting that "most stores" have suppliers to deal with, and those suppliers have manufacturers to deal with.
What this all means is "most stores" won't be able to justify the return to their supplier, and sellling a used piece of equipment comes at a hit to their pocket books.
That might be a good strategy for large chain stores, but please, don't do it to your local Mom & Pop Computer Store.
As long as people are running windows 98 on non-DRM hardware this will never fly past the drawing board. People will not upgrade thier computers to view content and if they are forced to that content will never catch on.
<HAT CLASS=PC_Retailer MODE=on>
As it is, people don't seem to want to upgrade their computers anyways, letalone if they perceived a force pushing them to do so. People want value, and they want an OS that's relatively simple and straightforward. We get more requests for Win'98 than any other MS operating system. Speaking only for our customer base (consumers and local businesses alike), it's not looking promising for Microsoft to ramrod this through.
Apple is making waves to force people into OS X by altering hardware - they can do that, because they control the hardware. I'm starting to see rumblings of this in the PC world, but hopefully the open nature of x86 vs. PowerPC will prevent Microsoft from becoming the Apple of the PC world.
In the meantime, I doubt very much that they'll be successful in forcing the entire world to switch to XP. Atleast, not in the very near future, anyways.
</HAT>
Would you care to accompany me on a routine run of some of our customers' networks today and inform them that in the interest of virus protection, we will be removing their Internet routers?
It's said that the safest way to protect your computer from [viruses/cracking/information theft/etc.] is to unplug it, but how practical is that here in the real world?
Would have led to Symantec who ship their Norton Antivirus CDROMs as bootable CDs that can automatically check the filesystem(s) of the hard drive(s) with as little as one or two carriage returns.
Since the scanner can also be run manually, you could install updated definitions on a floppy disk with the tab set.
That's just off the top of my head; I'm sure The Best Friend Of The WWW could render gallons more assistance.
What about Nokia's high prices for their mobiles, you could call them thieves too.
While I realize this was a sarcastic post, I want to respond to it anyways.
I've oft found myself wishing prices of electronics would go up again. Perhaps they would go up because electronics companies were actually paying attention to quality, rather than quantity.
Now that Cell Phones are so cheap as to be a commodity item, every joe schlepp out there has one. There are even deals that specifically target high school students with offers like free lunch hours and free from 3-5PM.
This means, of course, that modern cell phones tend to be crap. Overall quality diminishes (how many people still have functional Panasonic analog phones from the mid 80's? How many people will still have a 'modern' Nokia phone in 17 years? Hell, mine's barely four years old and it's already showing signs that it's going!)
Computer parts are another fantastic example. Most power supplies on the consumer market are targetted for short term use, as witnessed by the fact that the fans need to be replaced (at the very least) within 2-3 years. My server's AT power supply is five years old and still going strong. Motherbords, RAM, hard drives - they're all diminishing in quality.
Consumers haven't helped matters much, in that they want systems that are cheap, rather than systems that'll last. We have customers come into the store all the time and ask for a price on a system. We give it to them, and they tell us that such-and-such other computer store priced out the "same" system for $100 less. So we quote the price with crappy, generic parts and they happily lay down the money, feeling good about their purchase. So, in six months, a year, or even two years we see them again and they're unsatisfied "This is crap! It broke down! It's making a grinding noise!" {sigh} For an extra $400 we could have sold them higher quality parts with double the MTBF, but they don't WANT to spend an extra $400 when they could just go down the street...
Should be useful to security auditors. Get out and take a stroll around your site, and be alarmed at any chalk-up you find.
And of course, do something about it.
This is the first time I've wished for mod points. Bravo! I mean, how much more helpful can these warchalkers be without taping a note to the company President's forehead?
"This is the hole, this is how we're getting in, therefore $Action_X will stop us cold in our tracks."
When I was a lowly High School network administrator, back in the dark days of 128k ISDN connections, I used to get into technical (possibly philisophical) arguments with some of the students and faculty. They were of the mind that if they downloaded $Program_X or $Music_Y, it was not removing the bandwidth from other students, and therefore not harmful.
The problem, however, was that somebody else in the same room was using the same mentality and downloading $Music_Z and/or $Program_Q. Then there were the individuals in the library who were constantly playing $Online_Game_W.
Each and every one of these individuals were only doing one single act of extra bandwidth usage - an act that in and of itself did not overall harm the network - but an act that, when combined with other acts, actually prevented the principal from accessing a student's record (stored on an AS/400 at the board office) while $Student's parent was sitting in his office. It caused Guidance to have to wait an extra 45 minutes to register a new student to the school, due to having to retreive $Student_2's record from his/her former school.
So now we have somebody who sits on a park bench outside of $Organization, just casually browsing Slashdot. No harm done, right?
But now, somebody else comes along and fires off a couple of e-mail messages to his signifigant other.
Yet a third person is sitting there, and this person is slightly less scrupulous, so they fire up KaZAA and queue a couple of MP3s. (I won't even get into movies, which is another large possibility)
So somebody else comes along with an ear-bud in their right ear, connected to their laptop whilst they play a ShoutCast 128k stream.
Now the company's T1 connection is somewhat under the weather, and the deal the sales people are working on becomes impossible since they can no longer communicate with $Client or $Supplier.
Even if one of the employees can't retreive their e-mail, it's still something that's caused atleast part of the company some amount of grief, and the additional xxKB/sec *HAS* been in the posession of the unwanted individuals.
While I'm all for companies securing their networks to prevent such things from happening in the first place (for what, an extra 25% cost on the WAPs? An extra hour's worth of config time implementing an encryption key? A slight delay in initial packet transmission while the session is initiated?), let's not forget that the act of using a company's bandwidth without permission IS theft, no matter what spin anybody wants to put on it.
Now hopefully companies will wake up and secure their networks rather than wasting the courts' time with endless litigation.
If I didn't understand the crux of a vocal minority, I'd really start to buy into the American persecution complex theories.
Long story short; since/. is based in North America, and many of the stories tend to relate to.COM's and other North-American companies / corporations, most of the talk is therefore about (you guessed it) US systems administrators. The poster was clearly giving an "If you think $SITUATION_1 is bad, $SITUATION_2 will blow your mind!"
If anything, Moroccans should be offended at his insiduous remark about the horrible sysadmins over there.</SARCASM>
Now step down from that horse of yours and join the rest of us, won't you?
Our business website, the websites we host, as well as my personal (read: vanity) website are still being hit left, right, and centre.
Is this a prequel to the one-year anniversary of 'bugtraq.c'? Will we see Apache servers still sploited next September, and still probing half the 'net for new potential victims?
This only goes to strengthen my resolve that people should be licensed to use the Internet. Basic common sense and knowledge that product updates exist should top the list of test requirements.
Yes in many cases you can go "ask google" however...you might get a page or two with in formation on the howto's...you will not get the life expirence information on how everyone did do it
As a person who's had several "HOW-TO" pages on Google myself, I'm rather offended by that remark. Why is my web page's anecdotal evidence any less valid than a ten line comment from a/.er?
You can find a plethora of valuable information on the WWW, including archived mailing lists and other discussion forums (Yes, they do exist outside of/.!). Were a person crafty enough, they might even dig a little deeper into these forums and perhaps, upon finding a relatively fresh topic, post some of their own input and experience to the thread in order that they may help the NEXT person to come along asking the same question.
If same person has a webpage, perhaps they could post a detailed explanation of their experiences, as have so many other people done in the past, in order that "Ask Google!" will only become more valid as time goes on, rather than less so.
Its a community folks, personally I would rather ask the people who have done it and have the expirence that I can ask questions of during my implimentation...
You mean to tell me that you could submit an Ask Slashdot article, have it posted to the front page, and have people responding with valid tips/tricks in time for you to implement a solution to your problem, and still have time to iron out the kinks before the article scrolls off the page and everybody loses interest?
What are you doing, setting up a Samba server for a LAN? Installing a 4-in-1 printer device for a network? It's these very mundane tasks that "Ask Google" excells at, because so many others have come before and done the exact same thing (not to mention support from the copman[y/ies] in whatever form is available).
Slashdot is supposed to be (and if not, pardon my ignorance, I'm just going by the title of the page here) a NEWS site - is it not? Why is it news to me to find out where to get/how to make a portable hub (something that Google, BTW, excelled at determining the answer to)? What about finding graphics editing software? Don't we have Freshmeat for finding *NIX software? What about balancing Career and College? Haven't people been doing that for DECADES now? Don't most schols have guidance counsellors for that? What about career counselling services? Hell, one's own employer and/or co-workers? Safely cleaning LCD displays? My laptop came with instructions that were quite clear on this procedure, as have most devices I've ever purchased with LCD / TFT displays. Is Ask Slashdot really quicker than flipping to the Index in a manual? Online marketing for an indie band? People have been doing this for years - ask other bands, not nerds. If you're having trouble finding bands, look in the (sorry to alarm you) "Yellow Pages". You know, sources of information pointing to local businesses (read: people who make their living in each of these technical areas). Musty Music is a great source for people in the Durham / GTA and surrounding area. ("Not By Choice" rehearsed there, and was played first on the online radio station in which they are a partner!).
Whoa.. This one just took the cake - "Learning x86 for Non-x86 Assembler Programmers?"?!? I'm fairly certain that I could fill my shiny new 80GB hard drive with information in this area from, you guessed it, search engines!
Ask Slashdot was interesting a few years ago, but now it's just become a source of answers for people too lazy to do any legwork of their own. I agree with a previous post - one to two weeks of legwork required before an A.S. article makes it to the site. Perhaps documented proof of research should be a requirement to have an article posted to the front page.
The bottom line is this: users don't do what you tell them.
LOL.. Don't I know it.:> That's where my timeouts come in. If users don't learn to close their session, they'll just have to re-enter their password (oh, and close all n subsidiary windows while they're at it..) to get back in.
My (potential) problem with relying on onunload() to end a session is the instability of ${GUI_INTERFACE} causing a browser to go, quite frankly, tits up. If the browser goes without notice, it can't call the handler regardless, so the timeouts would be used regardless.
I programmed for just long enough to learn about babysitting users.;) One of the most important things I learned during my time was to never rely on;
The client
Anything client-side
to handle anything, period. Centralize, and trust in the servers was always my mantra.
To each his own, of course, and if you're not having problems with your method, all the power to you. Perhaps one day I'll find need of it myself, who knows.:)
I'll give you one example. My company sells software with web front-end interfaces.
Ok, those are certainly good examples. Myself, I prefer to rely on the user closing their session(s) properly, and timeouts to close them if they don't, but I suppose that is a relatively valid application.
I've still yet to learn about a valid WWW application of this handler, however. Of course, without it, the pr0n industry might be a bit worse off.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I've even heard that it helps people study/work better. I can't see Papa Roach being good for one's studies.
Not to sound too black-helicopterish or anything, but these are only the supercomputers that we know about.
Isn't it entirely possible that in the interests of tracking "terrorists", the Department of Homeland Security might just have assembled something that makes E.S. look like an old laptop?
The technology exists, it's just a simple matter of somebody (read: corporation / government) with the funding and wherewithall to put it together and make it function.
My server (AMD K62-400) has been running dnetc for approximately 2.5-3 years (coupled with four-times daily team stats update) and now.. it's not.
From a constant 1.0 load average to just the load of my regular maintainance and server functionality, will the CPU itself be ok? I mean, it's going to run a lot cooler until I find a new project.
I'm no expert on sillicon, but isn't there an issue when sillicon heats up, stays hot for a long period of time, then drops in temperature?
That's what has to be considered in all of this.
What this all means is "most stores" won't be able to justify the return to their supplier, and sellling a used piece of equipment comes at a hit to their pocket books.
That might be a good strategy for large chain stores, but please, don't do it to your local Mom & Pop Computer Store.
Apple is making waves to force people into OS X by altering hardware - they can do that, because they control the hardware. I'm starting to see rumblings of this in the PC world, but hopefully the open nature of x86 vs. PowerPC will prevent Microsoft from becoming the Apple of the PC world.
In the meantime, I doubt very much that they'll be successful in forcing the entire world to switch to XP. Atleast, not in the very near future, anyways. </HAT>
It's said that the safest way to protect your computer from [viruses/cracking/information theft/etc.] is to unplug it, but how practical is that here in the real world?
Since the scanner can also be run manually, you could install updated definitions on a floppy disk with the tab set.
That's just off the top of my head; I'm sure The Best Friend Of The WWW could render gallons more assistance.
(For the humour-imapired; "Hi, Jack!")
I've oft found myself wishing prices of electronics would go up again. Perhaps they would go up because electronics companies were actually paying attention to quality, rather than quantity.
Now that Cell Phones are so cheap as to be a commodity item, every joe schlepp out there has one. There are even deals that specifically target high school students with offers like free lunch hours and free from 3-5PM.
This means, of course, that modern cell phones tend to be crap. Overall quality diminishes (how many people still have functional Panasonic analog phones from the mid 80's? How many people will still have a 'modern' Nokia phone in 17 years? Hell, mine's barely four years old and it's already showing signs that it's going!)
Computer parts are another fantastic example. Most power supplies on the consumer market are targetted for short term use, as witnessed by the fact that the fans need to be replaced (at the very least) within 2-3 years. My server's AT power supply is five years old and still going strong. Motherbords, RAM, hard drives - they're all diminishing in quality.
Consumers haven't helped matters much, in that they want systems that are cheap, rather than systems that'll last. We have customers come into the store all the time and ask for a price on a system. We give it to them, and they tell us that such-and-such other computer store priced out the "same" system for $100 less. So we quote the price with crappy, generic parts and they happily lay down the money, feeling good about their purchase. So, in six months, a year, or even two years we see them again and they're unsatisfied "This is crap! It broke down! It's making a grinding noise!" {sigh} For an extra $400 we could have sold them higher quality parts with double the MTBF, but they don't WANT to spend an extra $400 when they could just go down the street ...
"This is the hole, this is how we're getting in, therefore $Action_X will stop us cold in our tracks."
The problem, however, was that somebody else in the same room was using the same mentality and downloading $Music_Z and/or $Program_Q. Then there were the individuals in the library who were constantly playing $Online_Game_W.
Each and every one of these individuals were only doing one single act of extra bandwidth usage - an act that in and of itself did not overall harm the network - but an act that, when combined with other acts, actually prevented the principal from accessing a student's record (stored on an AS/400 at the board office) while $Student's parent was sitting in his office. It caused Guidance to have to wait an extra 45 minutes to register a new student to the school, due to having to retreive $Student_2's record from his/her former school.
So now we have somebody who sits on a park bench outside of $Organization, just casually browsing Slashdot. No harm done, right?
But now, somebody else comes along and fires off a couple of e-mail messages to his signifigant other.
Yet a third person is sitting there, and this person is slightly less scrupulous, so they fire up KaZAA and queue a couple of MP3s. (I won't even get into movies, which is another large possibility)
So somebody else comes along with an ear-bud in their right ear, connected to their laptop whilst they play a ShoutCast 128k stream.
Now the company's T1 connection is somewhat under the weather, and the deal the sales people are working on becomes impossible since they can no longer communicate with $Client or $Supplier.
Even if one of the employees can't retreive their e-mail, it's still something that's caused atleast part of the company some amount of grief, and the additional xxKB/sec *HAS* been in the posession of the unwanted individuals.
While I'm all for companies securing their networks to prevent such things from happening in the first place (for what, an extra 25% cost on the WAPs? An extra hour's worth of config time implementing an encryption key? A slight delay in initial packet transmission while the session is initiated?), let's not forget that the act of using a company's bandwidth without permission IS theft, no matter what spin anybody wants to put on it.
Now hopefully companies will wake up and secure their networks rather than wasting the courts' time with endless litigation.
I'm sure there are other ways, but that's about the gist of it.
(Apologies, etc..)
Long story short; since /. is based in North America, and many of the stories tend to relate to .COM's and other North-American companies / corporations, most of the talk is therefore about (you guessed it) US systems administrators. The poster was clearly giving an "If you think $SITUATION_1 is bad, $SITUATION_2 will blow your mind!"
If anything, Moroccans should be offended at his insiduous remark about the horrible sysadmins over there.</SARCASM>
Now step down from that horse of yours and join the rest of us, won't you?
Yeesh... My love for the status quo is ever unchanged.
Is this a prequel to the one-year anniversary of 'bugtraq.c'? Will we see Apache servers still sploited next September, and still probing half the 'net for new potential victims?
This only goes to strengthen my resolve that people should be licensed to use the Internet. Basic common sense and knowledge that product updates exist should top the list of test requirements.
You can find a plethora of valuable information on the WWW, including archived mailing lists and other discussion forums (Yes, they do exist outside of /.!). Were a person crafty enough, they might even dig a little deeper into these forums and perhaps, upon finding a relatively fresh topic, post some of their own input and experience to the thread in order that they may help the NEXT person to come along asking the same question.
If same person has a webpage, perhaps they could post a detailed explanation of their experiences, as have so many other people done in the past, in order that "Ask Google!" will only become more valid as time goes on, rather than less so.
You mean to tell me that you could submit an Ask Slashdot article, have it posted to the front page, and have people responding with valid tips/tricks in time for you to implement a solution to your problem, and still have time to iron out the kinks before the article scrolls off the page and everybody loses interest?What are you doing, setting up a Samba server for a LAN? Installing a 4-in-1 printer device for a network? It's these very mundane tasks that "Ask Google" excells at, because so many others have come before and done the exact same thing (not to mention support from the copman[y/ies] in whatever form is available).
Slashdot is supposed to be (and if not, pardon my ignorance, I'm just going by the title of the page here) a NEWS site - is it not? Why is it news to me to find out where to get/how to make a portable hub (something that Google, BTW, excelled at determining the answer to)? What about finding graphics editing software? Don't we have Freshmeat for finding *NIX software? What about balancing Career and College? Haven't people been doing that for DECADES now? Don't most schols have guidance counsellors for that? What about career counselling services? Hell, one's own employer and/or co-workers? Safely cleaning LCD displays? My laptop came with instructions that were quite clear on this procedure, as have most devices I've ever purchased with LCD / TFT displays. Is Ask Slashdot really quicker than flipping to the Index in a manual? Online marketing for an indie band? People have been doing this for years - ask other bands, not nerds. If you're having trouble finding bands, look in the (sorry to alarm you) "Yellow Pages". You know, sources of information pointing to local businesses (read: people who make their living in each of these technical areas). Musty Music is a great source for people in the Durham / GTA and surrounding area. ("Not By Choice" rehearsed there, and was played first on the online radio station in which they are a partner!).
Whoa.. This one just took the cake - "Learning x86 for Non-x86 Assembler Programmers?"?!? I'm fairly certain that I could fill my shiny new 80GB hard drive with information in this area from, you guessed it, search engines!
Ask Slashdot was interesting a few years ago, but now it's just become a source of answers for people too lazy to do any legwork of their own. I agree with a previous post - one to two weeks of legwork required before an A.S. article makes it to the site. Perhaps documented proof of research should be a requirement to have an article posted to the front page.
</RANT>
My (potential) problem with relying on onunload() to end a session is the instability of ${GUI_INTERFACE} causing a browser to go, quite frankly, tits up. If the browser goes without notice, it can't call the handler regardless, so the timeouts would be used regardless.
I programmed for just long enough to learn about babysitting users. ;) One of the most important things I learned during my time was to never rely on;
to handle anything, period. Centralize, and trust in the servers was always my mantra.
To each his own, of course, and if you're not having problems with your method, all the power to you. Perhaps one day I'll find need of it myself, who knows. :)
I've still yet to learn about a valid WWW application of this handler, however. Of course, without it, the pr0n industry might be a bit worse off. ;)