And I am equally grateful I'm not as stupid or condescending as you are, my egotistical comrade. I do not purport to champion Microsoft in the slightest. I am simply pointing out the blatant hypocrisy that passes for "intelligent" thought espoused so frequently by people such as yourself. Your very tone and diction indicates you're no more capable of rational, intelligent thought than a toadstool, and you are thus unworthy of any further attention.
Political agenda? Where in the blue hell did you come up with that? There's no politics in my post, just simple observations. The great Linux annointed feel their stuff is so damned superior that everyone should run it everywhere. After all, you never hear any damned shortage of "Microsoft sucks" posts whenever there's a problem with something from Redmond. Then follow the inevitable "Microsoft will die, Linux will rule" posts, all extolling the virtues of Open Source and how it will take over everything. What these idiots fail to realize is that you can't take over something you're not willing to accomodate, and Linux is not the most accomodating thing out there.
As for your assertion that free OS coders "owe this somebody nothing", you're again treading awfully close to elitism. On the one hand, the Open Source community claims that having billions of eyeballs on the code is a good thing because problems get fixed. But when somebody wants something that nobody wants to implement, there is no leverage. Short of learning C++, that person is SOL. Doesn't sound like a very egalitarian way of running software. It sounds an awful lot like "Hey, you're not paying for this, so shut up and enjoy whatever I give you." Yeah, that's customer service with a smile, ain't it? That's sure to draw lots of new users.
And if you're not part of that great "movement" to have Microsoft replaced with a penguin, good for you! I'm proud of the fact that you realize there are multiple OS's out there and enough choices to satisfy everyone. Believe it or not, I'm on your side with that argument. I don't *mind* Linux being kept a hacker OS so long as the Linux zealots will finally shut up about how superior they are to Microsoft. "Better" is far too relative a term to be applied when comparing OS's.
Hey, the Internet is all about narrowcasting. If you want to hang out at a site that shares your way of looking at things, go find that site and hang out there. If you just want to hang out at a site that doesn't so you can whine about it, then you effectively are a troll.
So much for the highly-vaunted "enlightened diversity" notion, eh? Don't bother going anywhere to hear anything you disagree with, eh? You know what that results in? A bunch of sheep. Total fucking sheep. Everybody nods up and down at the same things in the same way at the same time. Nobody has to be inconvenienced by an idea or comment that's disagreeable or offensive. What a shock it must be when these sheep are forced to deal with reality, which is why I stay here. I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm attempting to let people know that there is an alternative to being a Slashdot sheep. Sadly, people like you are all too willing to remain a sheep.
And this is precisely the level of condescension that gives the Open Source movement such a bad name. It's a combination of "you ought to learn how to do it the hard way, like I did" and "you don't need to be able to do that the way you think you need to be able to do that".
Doesn't sound like much of a problem to you? Could you possibly be any more self-centered? It doesn't matter one damn bit whether or not you think it's a problem or not, dammit! It matters that somewhere, somebody may think it's a genuine problem for them, and that problem may seem insurmountable enough to dissuade them from using Open Source stuff. Your desire to easily shrug this off is a symptom of a disease called elitism, and it's rampant here at Slashdot.
You want Linux to overtake Microsoft on the desktop? You'd better figure it out pretty damned quick that people want things to work, and right now most things that interest average consumers work better on Windows than on Linux. Even Matthew Szulik mentions in his replies that your average consumer seeking to get their digital camera working will not be well served by any flavor of Linux. Your answer? "Oh, you don't really need to do that." Keep it up. Microsoft needs people like you.
I see it only took a few microseconds for my prior post to get modded as "Troll". Typical for Slashdot, but I digress.
I couldn't agree more with your statement about passwords. I've argued for years that it's not the OS you should be concerned about, it's the operator. You can take BSD, arguably one of the safest and most secure distros in the world, put it in front of an idiot admin, and he'll find a way to make it insecure. There is nothing truly foolproof because people consistently underestimate the ingenuity of fools.
However, the point of my post was to point out the forked-tongue, hypocritical, nonsensical ravings that so often pass for "+1 Insightful" on Slashdot. If a password compromise had taken place on a Windows box, the Slashdot mavens would be screaming "those stupid Windows admins" and generally deriding anyone who runs Windows as having the intelligence of tree fungus. But since it's a Debian system that got compromised, all is forgiven. Hey, it wasn't the OS, it was the operator! Mistakes happen, let's just move on! Nothing to see here!
What blatant, total hypocrisy. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Here we have yet another example of how Microsoft's shoddy programming is causing no end of trouble. Microsoft's products are well known throughout the world to have poor security and they get hacked all the time. We should all boycott Microsoft products and sue Bill Gates for false advertising! If Debian were using open source software, this would not have happened!
Huh? What's that you say? Debian was using open source? Linux, you say? Their own product, you say?
Oh, well...then that's all different now, isn't it? This is now an example of why open source is so much BETTER than Microsoft's stuff! Yeah, that's it! Yeah, there's a silver lining to this cloud somewhere...yeah, just give me a minute and I'll come up with a dandy excuse that totally absolves any open source code bug from fault while at the same time finding a way to slam Microsoft.
Let's not forget that the French nuclear industry survives and prospers not because of a free market economy but because of heavy government subsidies -- backed by heavy national taxes. Care to increase your tax burden, citizen?
Re:Been saying it for years
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Case in point: Windows 2000 and above has no problem reading FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB in size. But it refuses to create FAT32 partitions > 32GB in size. Why? Because at that size, Microsoft knows better, Microsoft knows you should be uses NTFS and get the benefits of meta-data and journaling."
There may be a far-less-nefarious reason why it won't let you create a FAT32 partition of size >32GB, namely that the FAT table would be ridiculously large and inefficient.
Now, you could argue that the Master File Table for NTFS is also large and inefficient, but at least you have some control there over cluster sizes. Don't like the default 512 byte size? It goes up to (I think) 16K in size. Sure, you end up getting some disk storage inefficiencies but you can get around this by either (a) picking a cluster size more in tune with your actual intended usage or (b) using file system compression which attempts to clean up a lot of hanging cluster wasted space in addition to its compression duties. The fact that you get security, journaling, and far better error recovery than FAT32 is just a bonus.
You have just instantaneously been added to my "Friends" list for coming up with a great tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out how elitism is hurting Linux. Bravo! What shocks me is that you haven't been modded to oblivion by the fair and balanced pro-Linux crowd that constantly hovers here.
While I agree that any biotechnology has the potential to do harm as well as good, have you considered exactly what you're saying here? Do you know how many extremely deadly toxins are used in conventional battery production? In the batteries themselves? Lead, arsenic, cadmium, just to name a few. Billions of these suckers end up in the trash where they can't be burned, crushed, or buried without serious environmental concerns.
These organic batteries, on the other hand, could be easily sterilized when they're "dead" (just heat them to 100C or so for a few minutes) and don't seem to pollute the environment anywhere near as badly as what we have now. If you ask me, you're overlooking the obvious benefits of this technology because of inflated concerns over biotech. Believe it or not, there are lots of biotech things that are very helpful and completely benign.
If the RICO statutes can be used as "extortion" ammunition against DirecTV, why can't these same statutes be used against the RIAA? Or for that matter, SCO? Aren't these same organizations using all sorts of deceptive, coercive tactics to force people to pay them money they may not actually owe?
If you'd read the Wired article on the artificial stones you'd know that Apollo's process would product absolutely perfect stones. X-ray diffraction, chemical analysis, visual inspection -- the stones would be indistinguishable from "natural" diamonds. In fact, their perfection might be the only way to tell the stone wasn't mined; natural diamonds, even the finest ones, usually have minute flaws. The Apollo stones would have none.
Fine, then we need better, more granular controls over what kinds of patches are auto-installed. Besides, the argument was about home users, not corporate PC's. You can control what's updated on corporate machines by using group policies or other conventions.
I think it's a given that the vast majority of home users have been and remain clueless when it comes to security. It doesn't matter what desktop you give them (Windows, Linux, OSX), they're more than likely not going to maintain it.
Personally, I think MS ought to have Windows Update turned on by default and set to auto-download and auto-install all patches. I'm sure some privacy advocates might bitch and moan for some obscure reason, and perhaps users won't like the idea of their machines rebooting at 3AM for "unknown" reasons, but it's a pittance to pay for machines that keep themselves up to date.
I suppose it's too much to point out that this worm exploits a vulnerability that's already been patched by Microsoft, so that only lazy or incompetent admins are going to get hit by it.
I also suppose it's too much to suggest that any fool who has TCP 135-139, and TCP 445 exposed to the public Internet is an utter idiot who deserves to be fired, stoned, burned, crucified, sterilized and beheaded.
Just keeping the Microsoft bashers honest here. It's not so much the OS's fault as it is the lazy, incompetent admins that are running the server. And Linux, BSD, and Mac boxes have their fair share of incompetents as well. Just run over to SecurityFocus and see how many exploits are available on any standard distribution or commercial OS that's out there. All of 'em have plenty of holes.
Don't you think that the overall animosity towards Microsoft by the techie community has at least something to do with this? For that matter, perhaps one reason why there are fewer attacks on Apache servers is the reverse of the anti-MS feelings. I'm not stating it as fact, just musing. My Apache logs show tons of IIS-type attacks but very few Apache attacks. There are a ton of known vulnerabilities for older versions of Apache, yet for some reason nobody uses them much.
My thoughts? Apache doesn't provide much in the way of default scripts, programs, or functionality. You have to do a bit of work to get it going, and how and where you set up your httpd daemon is more or less up to the admin. MS, on the other hand, provides loads of defaults (not true anymore with Win2k3) that are all in very well known locations, perfect script-kiddie fodder.
Last, I'll leave with this thought: the number of compromised Windows servers pales in comparison to the number of compromised workstations. Don't confuse the two numbers. The servers are doing better than most folks think. Not as good as Apache, but they're getting better, and Win2k3 is the closest yet.
You can (and should) disable NTLM authentication if you're running Windows 2000 or 2003. This is very easy to do and makes any server immune to this type of hashing attack. It's even listed in Microsoft's Best Practices documentation for administrating their servers. It might cause problems with older Win9x clients, but there are updates to these clients that allow them to get along without NTLM.
If you're running Active Directory in Native Mode, NTLM is easily kicked to the curb. However, NT4 machines remain vulnerable to this hack. Yet another reason to just get off of NT.
The only problem with this plan is that many, many companies out there are either trying this model or have already tried it unsuccessfully. There are some that are making money with this model, but they aren't making too much and many are losing their shirts. There's just too much competition for what is essentially a commodity: technical development knowledge.
In a day when one job opening for a mid-level developer making $30K a year will draw 500 resumes, some from former development Director's or VP's, I see them have a very hard time trying to position themselves with valuable, unique knowledge. Of course, I that could just be the cynic in me...I wish them luck. Nobody likes being treated like dirt.
You forget, this is dealing with the EU, which doesn't have any such pretenses towards individual freedom and privacy. This is not to say that the U.S. has a monopoly on privacy, since it's obvious that our government gets far too involved in our daily lives, but at least we have a piece of paper that says we're supposed to be free of such things. Denizens of the EU have no such equivalent, and never have. Maybe that's why they so passively accept things that would make an American go screaming to the ACLU.
I'd love to know just how sturdy these little RFID chips are. I mean, suppose you didn't want your euro's tracked? How hard would it be to disable these things?
For example, what if you put your cash in a microwave for thirty seconds? Or built a HERF gun to "sterilize" your cash? These things are microchips, so they should be vulnerable to the same types of electromagnetic damage that most semiconductors are.
I'm just glad that the kind of world that built them isn't here.
Oh, you mean the world that landed a man on the moon? Or perhaps the world that sent probes to the outer planets and, ultimately, out of the solar system entirely? Or maybe you're talking about the world that produced fast, reliable air transportation anywhere in the globe? Or could you be referring to the world that produced the hypersonic X-planes?
Don't act like this wind tunnel was made to kill babies and burn villages. It was built by engineers, for scientists, to perform science. Whatever else may have come of it, it has produced some remarkable things that have greatly benefited all of us.
You're right that the vast majority is protected, but the reason this whole housing thing was brought into the argument in the first place was to prove that there are no legal or Constitutional mechanisms in place that govern how private property or assocation can be controlled by the government. Some poster mentioned that it's illegal to discriminate when selling a house, and that's patently wrong. It's not even illegal to discriminate on who gets a private loan, but it is illegal to discriminate on who'll get a federally backed and insured loan from an FDIC insured banking and loan institution. Just because the vast majority of the cases are protected does not confer some sort of blanket legal authority, and it's dangerous for anyone to assume that it does.
Is that the best, most thoughtful response you can make? An attack on me personally? You'd think that you might've tried to at least comment on the argument at hand. Alas...
And, like so many others who disagreed with me and think they have some magical law that nails the case, you're wrong.
The statues you speak of do not apply to private transactions between individuals or private organizations that are not publicly funded. And if you'd do a small amount of thinking, you'd see why: such laws, if they existed, would be practically unenforceable. Allow me to give an example.
Suppose I have a car to sell, but I'm some racist bigot. I place an ad in the paper, and two people come to bid on the car, one white, one black. I get to choose who I want to sell the car to. I have to provide absolutely no reasons whatsoever to anyone on the face of God's green Earth as to why I might chose the white guy over the black guy. There are no forms to fill out, no interrogations, no questionaires, no racial quota police standing over my shoulder. And if anybody asks, I sold it to the white guy because I liked his haircut, or because he was friendlier, or for whatever reason I might want to manufacture to cover up my racist motivations. There is absolutely no way anyone can prove that I acted based solely on race, since it was my property to do with as I liked. Further, the losing bidder cannot drag me into court and demand that I sell him the car...again, simply because it is private property, and as the owner I'm free to do whatever I damn well please with my private property, including not selling it to folks who "ain't the right color, y'know".
Sure, it's crude and socially backwards, but the Constitution absolutely forbids the government to compell a citizen to behave a certain way with their property (with but few exceptions like eminent domain and such).
Again, I'll ask you just like I asked everyone else to show me the exact law and/or statute that empowers the government to regulate membership, association, or transfer of property from one private person/organization to another. Do not bother me with some crap about federal loans or federal housing, because that's not a private transaction anymore.
Good luck looking. You'll need it, because such laws do not exist, and further cannot exist under the current Constitution. As it states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble (emphasis mine), and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Protected Classes The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin or sex....blah blah...
Prohibited Practices The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits the following practices: 1. Refusal to sell, rent or otherwise deal with any person 2.
If you'd done a bit more reading and a little less jumping to conclusions you'd have noted that the above guidelines only apply if you're trying to get a loan that is federally backed (i.e. a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan). As a private individual, you are free to sell to whomever you like for whatever reasons you like...PERIOD. If I own a house and I don't want to sell it to you, I don't even have to have a reason to not sell it to you. I could discriminate against you because of your race, your hairstyle, or whether you wore mismatched socks when I first saw you. It's my damned property, and neither you nor anyone else in this entire world has any damned rights to force me to sell it to anyone for any reason. If someone wants to be a racist bigoted jerk, they have every right to be, and you cannot force them into a particular behavior mode.
I really don't have the time, or interest to find laws on every point you're trying to make, I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. The point is that there are federal laws that protect against racial discrimination.
Yes, and these laws applicable in many situations, but not all. As I have repeatedly stated, private transactions are not bound by these laws, yet for some reason you keep refusing to even acknowledge that I've said it. Instead, you keep holding up this ridiculous shield of "the feds say you can't do that" without having any relevant legal grounds to back it up. Are you suggesting that federal laws somehow prohibit me, an individual, from deciding who I'll sell my house, car, boat, or anything else to? You're deluding yourself! No such laws exist, nor can they exist within the framework of the Constitution!
Do you really think racial discrimination at lunch counters and the like ended for economic reasons?
Actually, I do. Social upheaval was tremendously unprofitable during the sixties. While there were undeniably many factors involved that led to desegregation, I tend to think that economic conditions had a fairly significant position in the mix. The maintenance of two separate infrastructures, one for whites and another for blacks, was very inefficient. Further, the exclusion of blacks from certain businesses hurt the businesses as much as those they discriminated against. A black person's dollars spent just the same as a white's, despite how many toothless rednecks wanted to believe otherwise.
As for "high minded liberalism", sorry, but laws against discrimnation for things like jobs, housing, and sitting at lunch counters isn't restricted to the "high minded liberal" camp anymore, it's a mainstream belief.
I was not suggesting that anti-discriminatory behavior was the purview of the the elites -- quite the opposite. What I was saying is that the poster's admonition that your private behavior should be strictly regulated by the government was evidence enough of his shallow thinking process, which it most certainly was and still is.
Look, it doesn't matter whether the intentions of behavior laws are good or bad, it matters whether or not they're Constitutional. When somebody starts recklessly throwing around concepts like "the government regulates (or ought to regulate) how private individuals or organizations can conduct their associations and affairs", it makes me angry, because it's obvious these folks haven't fully thought through the ramifications of their actions. Can you not see that by advocating government control of private transactions, we'd be giving up a cherished right guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights? Sure, the goal is noble (the reduction of discriminatio
Slashdot Mirror
And I am equally grateful I'm not as stupid or condescending as you are, my egotistical comrade. I do not purport to champion Microsoft in the slightest. I am simply pointing out the blatant hypocrisy that passes for "intelligent" thought espoused so frequently by people such as yourself. Your very tone and diction indicates you're no more capable of rational, intelligent thought than a toadstool, and you are thus unworthy of any further attention.
Political agenda? Where in the blue hell did you come up with that? There's no politics in my post, just simple observations. The great Linux annointed feel their stuff is so damned superior that everyone should run it everywhere. After all, you never hear any damned shortage of "Microsoft sucks" posts whenever there's a problem with something from Redmond. Then follow the inevitable "Microsoft will die, Linux will rule" posts, all extolling the virtues of Open Source and how it will take over everything. What these idiots fail to realize is that you can't take over something you're not willing to accomodate, and Linux is not the most accomodating thing out there.
As for your assertion that free OS coders "owe this somebody nothing", you're again treading awfully close to elitism. On the one hand, the Open Source community claims that having billions of eyeballs on the code is a good thing because problems get fixed. But when somebody wants something that nobody wants to implement, there is no leverage. Short of learning C++, that person is SOL. Doesn't sound like a very egalitarian way of running software. It sounds an awful lot like "Hey, you're not paying for this, so shut up and enjoy whatever I give you." Yeah, that's customer service with a smile, ain't it? That's sure to draw lots of new users.
And if you're not part of that great "movement" to have Microsoft replaced with a penguin, good for you! I'm proud of the fact that you realize there are multiple OS's out there and enough choices to satisfy everyone. Believe it or not, I'm on your side with that argument. I don't *mind* Linux being kept a hacker OS so long as the Linux zealots will finally shut up about how superior they are to Microsoft. "Better" is far too relative a term to be applied when comparing OS's.
Hey, the Internet is all about narrowcasting. If you want to hang out at a site that shares your way of looking at things, go find that site and hang out there. If you just want to hang out at a site that doesn't so you can whine about it, then you effectively are a troll.
So much for the highly-vaunted "enlightened diversity" notion, eh? Don't bother going anywhere to hear anything you disagree with, eh? You know what that results in? A bunch of sheep. Total fucking sheep. Everybody nods up and down at the same things in the same way at the same time. Nobody has to be inconvenienced by an idea or comment that's disagreeable or offensive. What a shock it must be when these sheep are forced to deal with reality, which is why I stay here. I'm not trying to be a troll, I'm attempting to let people know that there is an alternative to being a Slashdot sheep. Sadly, people like you are all too willing to remain a sheep.
And this is precisely the level of condescension that gives the Open Source movement such a bad name. It's a combination of "you ought to learn how to do it the hard way, like I did" and "you don't need to be able to do that the way you think you need to be able to do that".
Doesn't sound like much of a problem to you? Could you possibly be any more self-centered? It doesn't matter one damn bit whether or not you think it's a problem or not, dammit! It matters that somewhere, somebody may think it's a genuine problem for them, and that problem may seem insurmountable enough to dissuade them from using Open Source stuff. Your desire to easily shrug this off is a symptom of a disease called elitism, and it's rampant here at Slashdot.
You want Linux to overtake Microsoft on the desktop? You'd better figure it out pretty damned quick that people want things to work, and right now most things that interest average consumers work better on Windows than on Linux. Even Matthew Szulik mentions in his replies that your average consumer seeking to get their digital camera working will not be well served by any flavor of Linux. Your answer? "Oh, you don't really need to do that." Keep it up. Microsoft needs people like you.
I see it only took a few microseconds for my prior post to get modded as "Troll". Typical for Slashdot, but I digress.
I couldn't agree more with your statement about passwords. I've argued for years that it's not the OS you should be concerned about, it's the operator. You can take BSD, arguably one of the safest and most secure distros in the world, put it in front of an idiot admin, and he'll find a way to make it insecure. There is nothing truly foolproof because people consistently underestimate the ingenuity of fools.
However, the point of my post was to point out the forked-tongue, hypocritical, nonsensical ravings that so often pass for "+1 Insightful" on Slashdot. If a password compromise had taken place on a Windows box, the Slashdot mavens would be screaming "those stupid Windows admins" and generally deriding anyone who runs Windows as having the intelligence of tree fungus. But since it's a Debian system that got compromised, all is forgiven. Hey, it wasn't the OS, it was the operator! Mistakes happen, let's just move on! Nothing to see here!
What blatant, total hypocrisy. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Here we have yet another example of how Microsoft's shoddy programming is causing no end of trouble. Microsoft's products are well known throughout the world to have poor security and they get hacked all the time. We should all boycott Microsoft products and sue Bill Gates for false advertising! If Debian were using open source software, this would not have happened!
Huh? What's that you say? Debian was using open source? Linux, you say? Their own product, you say?
Oh, well...then that's all different now, isn't it? This is now an example of why open source is so much BETTER than Microsoft's stuff! Yeah, that's it! Yeah, there's a silver lining to this cloud somewhere...yeah, just give me a minute and I'll come up with a dandy excuse that totally absolves any open source code bug from fault while at the same time finding a way to slam Microsoft.
After all, isn't that the Slashdot way?
Let's not forget that the French nuclear industry survives and prospers not because of a free market economy but because of heavy government subsidies -- backed by heavy national taxes. Care to increase your tax burden, citizen?
"Case in point: Windows 2000 and above has no problem reading FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB in size. But it refuses to create FAT32 partitions > 32GB in size. Why? Because at that size, Microsoft knows better, Microsoft knows you should be uses NTFS and get the benefits of meta-data and journaling."
There may be a far-less-nefarious reason why it won't let you create a FAT32 partition of size >32GB, namely that the FAT table would be ridiculously large and inefficient.
Now, you could argue that the Master File Table for NTFS is also large and inefficient, but at least you have some control there over cluster sizes. Don't like the default 512 byte size? It goes up to (I think) 16K in size. Sure, you end up getting some disk storage inefficiencies but you can get around this by either (a) picking a cluster size more in tune with your actual intended usage or (b) using file system compression which attempts to clean up a lot of hanging cluster wasted space in addition to its compression duties. The fact that you get security, journaling, and far better error recovery than FAT32 is just a bonus.
You have just instantaneously been added to my "Friends" list for coming up with a great tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out how elitism is hurting Linux. Bravo! What shocks me is that you haven't been modded to oblivion by the fair and balanced pro-Linux crowd that constantly hovers here.
While I agree that any biotechnology has the potential to do harm as well as good, have you considered exactly what you're saying here? Do you know how many extremely deadly toxins are used in conventional battery production? In the batteries themselves? Lead, arsenic, cadmium, just to name a few. Billions of these suckers end up in the trash where they can't be burned, crushed, or buried without serious environmental concerns.
These organic batteries, on the other hand, could be easily sterilized when they're "dead" (just heat them to 100C or so for a few minutes) and don't seem to pollute the environment anywhere near as badly as what we have now. If you ask me, you're overlooking the obvious benefits of this technology because of inflated concerns over biotech. Believe it or not, there are lots of biotech things that are very helpful and completely benign.
If the RICO statutes can be used as "extortion" ammunition against DirecTV, why can't these same statutes be used against the RIAA? Or for that matter, SCO? Aren't these same organizations using all sorts of deceptive, coercive tactics to force people to pay them money they may not actually owe?
If you'd read the Wired article on the artificial stones you'd know that Apollo's process would product absolutely perfect stones. X-ray diffraction, chemical analysis, visual inspection -- the stones would be indistinguishable from "natural" diamonds. In fact, their perfection might be the only way to tell the stone wasn't mined; natural diamonds, even the finest ones, usually have minute flaws. The Apollo stones would have none.
Fine, then we need better, more granular controls over what kinds of patches are auto-installed. Besides, the argument was about home users, not corporate PC's. You can control what's updated on corporate machines by using group policies or other conventions.
I think it's a given that the vast majority of home users have been and remain clueless when it comes to security. It doesn't matter what desktop you give them (Windows, Linux, OSX), they're more than likely not going to maintain it.
Personally, I think MS ought to have Windows Update turned on by default and set to auto-download and auto-install all patches. I'm sure some privacy advocates might bitch and moan for some obscure reason, and perhaps users won't like the idea of their machines rebooting at 3AM for "unknown" reasons, but it's a pittance to pay for machines that keep themselves up to date.
I suppose it's too much to point out that this worm exploits a vulnerability that's already been patched by Microsoft, so that only lazy or incompetent admins are going to get hit by it.
I also suppose it's too much to suggest that any fool who has TCP 135-139, and TCP 445 exposed to the public Internet is an utter idiot who deserves to be fired, stoned, burned, crucified, sterilized and beheaded.
But hey! The solution is open source, right? I mean, no Linux admin would ever leave an unpatched service running for weeks after a fix has been released, would they?
Just keeping the Microsoft bashers honest here. It's not so much the OS's fault as it is the lazy, incompetent admins that are running the server. And Linux, BSD, and Mac boxes have their fair share of incompetents as well. Just run over to SecurityFocus and see how many exploits are available on any standard distribution or commercial OS that's out there. All of 'em have plenty of holes.
Don't you think that the overall animosity towards Microsoft by the techie community has at least something to do with this? For that matter, perhaps one reason why there are fewer attacks on Apache servers is the reverse of the anti-MS feelings. I'm not stating it as fact, just musing. My Apache logs show tons of IIS-type attacks but very few Apache attacks. There are a ton of known vulnerabilities for older versions of Apache, yet for some reason nobody uses them much.
My thoughts? Apache doesn't provide much in the way of default scripts, programs, or functionality. You have to do a bit of work to get it going, and how and where you set up your httpd daemon is more or less up to the admin. MS, on the other hand, provides loads of defaults (not true anymore with Win2k3) that are all in very well known locations, perfect script-kiddie fodder.
Last, I'll leave with this thought: the number of compromised Windows servers pales in comparison to the number of compromised workstations. Don't confuse the two numbers. The servers are doing better than most folks think. Not as good as Apache, but they're getting better, and Win2k3 is the closest yet.
You can (and should) disable NTLM authentication if you're running Windows 2000 or 2003. This is very easy to do and makes any server immune to this type of hashing attack. It's even listed in Microsoft's Best Practices documentation for administrating their servers. It might cause problems with older Win9x clients, but there are updates to these clients that allow them to get along without NTLM.
If you're running Active Directory in Native Mode, NTLM is easily kicked to the curb. However, NT4 machines remain vulnerable to this hack. Yet another reason to just get off of NT.
The only problem with this plan is that many, many companies out there are either trying this model or have already tried it unsuccessfully. There are some that are making money with this model, but they aren't making too much and many are losing their shirts. There's just too much competition for what is essentially a commodity: technical development knowledge.
In a day when one job opening for a mid-level developer making $30K a year will draw 500 resumes, some from former development Director's or VP's, I see them have a very hard time trying to position themselves with valuable, unique knowledge. Of course, I that could just be the cynic in me...I wish them luck. Nobody likes being treated like dirt.
You forget, this is dealing with the EU, which doesn't have any such pretenses towards individual freedom and privacy. This is not to say that the U.S. has a monopoly on privacy, since it's obvious that our government gets far too involved in our daily lives, but at least we have a piece of paper that says we're supposed to be free of such things. Denizens of the EU have no such equivalent, and never have. Maybe that's why they so passively accept things that would make an American go screaming to the ACLU.
I'd love to know just how sturdy these little RFID chips are. I mean, suppose you didn't want your euro's tracked? How hard would it be to disable these things?
For example, what if you put your cash in a microwave for thirty seconds? Or built a HERF gun to "sterilize" your cash? These things are microchips, so they should be vulnerable to the same types of electromagnetic damage that most semiconductors are.
I'm just glad that the kind of world that built them isn't here.
Oh, you mean the world that landed a man on the moon? Or perhaps the world that sent probes to the outer planets and, ultimately, out of the solar system entirely? Or maybe you're talking about the world that produced fast, reliable air transportation anywhere in the globe? Or could you be referring to the world that produced the hypersonic X-planes?
Don't act like this wind tunnel was made to kill babies and burn villages. It was built by engineers, for scientists, to perform science. Whatever else may have come of it, it has produced some remarkable things that have greatly benefited all of us.
You're right that the vast majority is protected, but the reason this whole housing thing was brought into the argument in the first place was to prove that there are no legal or Constitutional mechanisms in place that govern how private property or assocation can be controlled by the government. Some poster mentioned that it's illegal to discriminate when selling a house, and that's patently wrong. It's not even illegal to discriminate on who gets a private loan, but it is illegal to discriminate on who'll get a federally backed and insured loan from an FDIC insured banking and loan institution. Just because the vast majority of the cases are protected does not confer some sort of blanket legal authority, and it's dangerous for anyone to assume that it does.
Is that the best, most thoughtful response you can make? An attack on me personally? You'd think that you might've tried to at least comment on the argument at hand. Alas...
And, like so many others who disagreed with me and think they have some magical law that nails the case, you're wrong.
The statues you speak of do not apply to private transactions between individuals or private organizations that are not publicly funded. And if you'd do a small amount of thinking, you'd see why: such laws, if they existed, would be practically unenforceable. Allow me to give an example.
Suppose I have a car to sell, but I'm some racist bigot. I place an ad in the paper, and two people come to bid on the car, one white, one black. I get to choose who I want to sell the car to. I have to provide absolutely no reasons whatsoever to anyone on the face of God's green Earth as to why I might chose the white guy over the black guy. There are no forms to fill out, no interrogations, no questionaires, no racial quota police standing over my shoulder. And if anybody asks, I sold it to the white guy because I liked his haircut, or because he was friendlier, or for whatever reason I might want to manufacture to cover up my racist motivations. There is absolutely no way anyone can prove that I acted based solely on race, since it was my property to do with as I liked. Further, the losing bidder cannot drag me into court and demand that I sell him the car...again, simply because it is private property, and as the owner I'm free to do whatever I damn well please with my private property, including not selling it to folks who "ain't the right color, y'know".
Sure, it's crude and socially backwards, but the Constitution absolutely forbids the government to compell a citizen to behave a certain way with their property (with but few exceptions like eminent domain and such).
Again, I'll ask you just like I asked everyone else to show me the exact law and/or statute that empowers the government to regulate membership, association, or transfer of property from one private person/organization to another. Do not bother me with some crap about federal loans or federal housing, because that's not a private transaction anymore.
Good luck looking. You'll need it, because such laws do not exist, and further cannot exist under the current Constitution. As it states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble (emphasis mine), and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Protected Classes ...blah blah...
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin or sex.
Prohibited Practices
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits the following practices: 1. Refusal to sell, rent or otherwise deal with any person 2.
If you'd done a bit more reading and a little less jumping to conclusions you'd have noted that the above guidelines only apply if you're trying to get a loan that is federally backed (i.e. a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan). As a private individual, you are free to sell to whomever you like for whatever reasons you like...PERIOD. If I own a house and I don't want to sell it to you, I don't even have to have a reason to not sell it to you. I could discriminate against you because of your race, your hairstyle, or whether you wore mismatched socks when I first saw you. It's my damned property, and neither you nor anyone else in this entire world has any damned rights to force me to sell it to anyone for any reason. If someone wants to be a racist bigoted jerk, they have every right to be, and you cannot force them into a particular behavior mode.
I really don't have the time, or interest to find laws on every point you're trying to make, I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. The point is that there are federal laws that protect against racial discrimination.
Yes, and these laws applicable in many situations, but not all. As I have repeatedly stated, private transactions are not bound by these laws, yet for some reason you keep refusing to even acknowledge that I've said it. Instead, you keep holding up this ridiculous shield of "the feds say you can't do that" without having any relevant legal grounds to back it up. Are you suggesting that federal laws somehow prohibit me, an individual, from deciding who I'll sell my house, car, boat, or anything else to? You're deluding yourself! No such laws exist, nor can they exist within the framework of the Constitution!
Do you really think racial discrimination at lunch counters and the like ended for economic reasons?
Actually, I do. Social upheaval was tremendously unprofitable during the sixties. While there were undeniably many factors involved that led to desegregation, I tend to think that economic conditions had a fairly significant position in the mix. The maintenance of two separate infrastructures, one for whites and another for blacks, was very inefficient. Further, the exclusion of blacks from certain businesses hurt the businesses as much as those they discriminated against. A black person's dollars spent just the same as a white's, despite how many toothless rednecks wanted to believe otherwise.
As for "high minded liberalism", sorry, but laws against discrimnation for things like jobs, housing, and sitting at lunch counters isn't restricted to the "high minded liberal" camp anymore, it's a mainstream belief.
I was not suggesting that anti-discriminatory behavior was the purview of the the elites -- quite the opposite. What I was saying is that the poster's admonition that your private behavior should be strictly regulated by the government was evidence enough of his shallow thinking process, which it most certainly was and still is.
Look, it doesn't matter whether the intentions of behavior laws are good or bad, it matters whether or not they're Constitutional. When somebody starts recklessly throwing around concepts like "the government regulates (or ought to regulate) how private individuals or organizations can conduct their associations and affairs", it makes me angry, because it's obvious these folks haven't fully thought through the ramifications of their actions. Can you not see that by advocating government control of private transactions, we'd be giving up a cherished right guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights? Sure, the goal is noble (the reduction of discriminatio