OOps, my mistake. I pressed the f to K instead of C to K. I should have noticed that there wasn't a 100 degrees between my bad measurments. Stupidly, I gave measurements of 0 F to 100 F (-17 C to 37 C about).
I've never heard of the Pan Spermia theory, but when you paraphrased what it means "life is spread infectiously though out space", then what about radiation? Cosmic rays and the 3k background are bound to disrupt celluar actions (assuming they are cells).
Also, space is quite harsh to adapt to. No pressure, extreme tematures, and little food, unless these creatures are able to turn radiation into food. I just don't get how a small organism can stand a flash fire (eg. in space outside of Earth, if you were facing the sun with no suit on, your face would boil and your back would crystallize).
Viruses do seem to be an interesting variant, but they require a host to reproduce, at least to our knowledge.
Still, this theory does intrigue me...
Josh Crawley
You all question water to survive. Since I want to further my understanding, what sort of liquid do you think can replace H2O ? I do see a few things that water can do/properties it has.
1: H2O is quite light. It's only 18g/mol. There's no other combination _I_ can think of that would be as light, as we humans are made up of a lot of water.
2: H2O is slightly polar, so it 'sticks' to certain structures a little more. Oil would be an interesting substitute to water, but oil is large polimer chains. Too hard to create. However Ions would disrupt other chemicals. Also, Ions require water to have charge.
3: Most of all biological elements are within the top 10 elements on the peridic chart. The reason these are used is because nuclear fusion within the sun allows these to be made with much greater abundance. This reason also coves why no Earthen creatures use silicon instead of carbon.
4: If you can accept the above examples of why water is better than other mostly inert transfer chemicals, then tempature also comes into play. I know of no animals that use solid or gaseous blood. All use liquid of some type, just because diffusion (or in water, osmosis) is easier to transport chemicals. The tempature of water being a liquid is between 255K and 310K , so most planets are eliminated just because of the tempature needs strict control.
A simple question about life in general: What grows faster, plants in the rainfores or plants on Antartica?
This sounds like wishful thinking and all, but who actually believes anything can live in the environs mentioned in the story?
The article:
""Oceans might be common and diverse in our solar system and in other solar systems, according to David Stevenson of Caltech, who regards the old notion of a narrow "habitable zone" (Venus too hot, Mars too cold, Earth just right) for liquid water oceans as erroneous.
Stevenson spoke earlier this week in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union at a session intended to bring together two scientific communities that scrutinize very different realms--the planets and the seafloor on Earth.
The connection? Observations from the bottom of the ocean show that microbes thrive both in near-freezing seawater and in near-boiling effusions from thermal vents. These conditions might turn up in many other planetary environments.
For example, the Galileo spacecraft has provided evidence for watery oceans on three of Jupiter's moons-Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. Subsurface oceans could be kept liquid by warmth from tidal forces (Jove wringing its satellites) or from radioactivity. Torrance Johnson of JPL, also speaking that the meeting, said that Europa's ocean might be 75-150 km thick and could thus harbor twice the water in Earth's oceans.
Stevenson added that observations also hint at oceans on Titan, Triton, and Pluto. In the case of Titan (soon to get the Galileo treatment when the Cassini spacecraft reaches Saturn in 2004) an ocean would be a mixture of water and ammonia (acting as antifreeze). Under some circumstances water might even be found inside Uranus and Neptune.""
Europa does have very likely evidence of a liquid ocean, but the article then uses that to 'assume' of living creatures there (bac). How can there be? Complex nucleotides and a slurry of other complex chemicals are required for 'life' to occur. Another problem is energy entering/leaving the system. The Earth is quite close to the sun, but europa can rely on nearly 0 energy from the sun (at least as useful radiation). Tidal energy is energy none the less, but it's too limited, even coming from Jupiter.
=="(almost) anything that you can see in these photos you can see in person. If people from other countries are seeing it, they could see it in person for the price of a plane ticket and a good excuse to get a visa."
Other than many military installations which are surrounded with razor wire fencing, this is true. I'm mainly worried about those installations.
=="I've heard other people raise this argument before; "doesn't this help terrorists/rogue states"? Think about it, genius."
First of all, I am 'thinking about it'. How does commercial sat pictures _help_ us? I cannot come up with at least one convincing answer.
=="Do you need an aerial photo to aim an ICBM at NYC? Did the terrorists need to research the area around Manhattan to figure out that the WTC is located there, and they should fly the plane in that general direction? Honestly, what the hell can you do with this?"
First you have to see terrorism in the terrorist eyes. If I remember correctly, our local television news programs have 'exposes' that detail the lack of military awareness of chemical factories. In our area, there is a military surplus of many types of nerve agents. The news mentioned what the facility was called. Now if some rich terrorists were to look at a map and determine where this was, they could buy a sat map and know the outer schematics of this plant.
Also, be aware that some military installations are NOT on maps. the only way to see it is to get past the guards with nice SMG's (yes, the last time we passed through, they were carrying that type).
=="Also, I'd have trouble believing that the Chinese gov't is not aware that the US has the ability to peep at them with about 50 different satellites. I don't think they are suddenly going to become aware because Joe User posts pics online."
Maybe I didn't explain what I considered that bas scenario. The US knows about China's (fill in the blank), however the US hides that knowledge from us for certain reasons. There is NO need to know about a nuclear reactor at coords x,y or other such stuff. This type of data should be seen as need to know only. All we should care about is if the military is doing thier job.
=="As for pictures of US military installations, what is there to see?"
Like I said above, there are some installations that positions are itself marked as a rating _under_ classified but still not released to the public. Pictures of these places are nothing but deterimental
=="Anything that they don't want you to see is hidden underground, and the government restricts private remote-imaging firms from releasing data less than 24 hours old. So if you're Osama Bin Laden, you might be able to get a pic of the B2 that just bombed your ass taking off, although about a day late."
So you told me something I didn't know. I wasn't aware that such a law exists.
I may be much for technology, but this kind of thing comprimises US national security. I live here in the country (aka, not city) so things like airplanes crashing in our house is'nt a problem. This sub-point is that I'm safe from extra-government actions.
What it comes down to is; if we can buy pictures of 64 cm= 1 pixel, so can terrorists and enemy countries. The US military made this type of device in the Cold War so they could SPY on other countries for intelligence (however mainly USSR at the time). Now, they're used in large intelligence missions over enemy territory so that OUR soldiers don't get killed due to lack of mapping.
There is a good basis for the US military to have this technology, but what are the pluses for non-military to have this? Other than the sake of knowing, not any. They aren't valid survey techniques, you pay surveyors that. Home camera's make good security systems, sat cams don't.
The negative's come at a distinct disadvantage. Say a US civillian is interested in a Chinese nuclear power reactor and pays for sat scans. Then they post it online, which I believe this has been done (can't remember site). If the Chinese gov't find about this, don't you think that they would be slightly miffed off at the US? Or how about taking pictures of US military installations? Those are dangerous to the saftey of US citizens, Military and non-military.
Josh Crawley
ps: I'll probably be modded down, since mod's here dislike anything but the typical knee-jerk , no matter how well a disagreeing is written.
Also, in reffering to the "non-standard format", I am talking about the once 5 types of possible DVD medias. If I am correct, there are only 3 left DVD+rw, DVD-rw and some other (the name eludes me). They are all somewhat incompatible with each other and to my understanding, some more than others: DVD+rw and DVD-rw.
"I can't stand the irony.. What part of the draconian Chinese political system do you find less offensive than the DVD consortium?"
Open standards makes the Chinese solution of SVCD 'less offensive'. No CSS either, so I have rights to do whatever I want to with the movie (that includes using footage for personal stuff).
SVCD uses no additional equipment (other than cd player and mpeg2 decoder) and supports just as much "extra features" as DVD's do. The only downside is that you can store only 800 MB of movie per cd. But compare that to the cost of a DVD burner, non-standard format, and bloated cost of burnable DVD's
Josh Crawley.
PS: Sorry about the typo's. Also, I did mean windows media *, just wmf just hit my mind as the right acronym:-)
What's the purpose of this? So what a DVD player can play WMF. Yeah for them.
Actually, I'm quite jaded on this issue. First, did you know that the MPAA gets cuts from every DVD sold? (You did)... not surprised. But did you also know that the MPAA gets liscensing fees for DVD tech from about $1,000,000. There's a reason China created the standard of SVCD. I'd rather not contribute to an orginazation that makes draconian 'rules' and essentially legislates thier tech to us. Instead of a DVD player, I invest in svcd's and have a tv in/out 500 mHz athalon for our movie purposes at home. VHS is just fine for us.
I have an old program from the DOS days of programming. It's called KOH (potassium hydroxide ) virus. It resides in your boot sector and encrypts partitions, data, and everything else. Well, I was thinking if you used some sort of dos loopback of Linux ( so that DOS is resident), everything could be encrypted. Perhaps CYGWIN is a good IDEA:-) The encryption used was IDEA (fyi).
Instead of believing in to the hype that Slashdot has come to like, let's look at the situation(s) more closely. My main questions spawn from ponderance of the WHOLE situation. These questions I plan to adress.
1:Why did MCafee allow this trojan?
2:What is the FBI's purpose in creating this tool?
3:Why did the FBI tell?
4:Who is this tool targeted at(main classes of criminals)?
5:How will other anti-virus companies look at the FBI's choice?
Well, lets consider the targets first. I see the most common groups targeted at are drug dealers and computer _criminals_. It's safe to say that the Computer criminals probably will not be caught in a trap like this. The FBI's main tool is believed to be a windows executible however, don't make rash belifs that the FBI hasn't considered a *nix tool yet.
The main mode of transport is that of a binary segment sent over email. Since Outlook is the most popular form of email client, Outlook buffer hacks that 'autorun' binary code are the best transport. Next off, who said that the FBI would be sending data back through the Internet or do any dialing? If I wrote a tool like that, I'd store data (keystrokes, logins/passwds, 'certain sites') in a secure place of the computer. I'd aim for the segment after the bootsector code. There's plenty of space for a few KB of the 'best info'. The FBI would raid the machine anyways, so sending back data is useless (trace of tcp/udp streams would be evident).
However, I question why the FBI even told here. Thier purpose is to catch intrastate criminals and investigate bad political dealings. I'm questioning if the FBI even has this technology. I'm much more scared of a hardware dongle that has 5 megs of storage capibility. Those types of entering have been cleared by the courts, providing the correct documents have been presented. Malware is going to be caught, unless the FBI destroys the data before the criminal sends it away elsewhere.
The last fields of questions deal with the AV companies themselves. Why exactly did MCafee do such a thing? Perhaps they have no choice. There is such a law called Obstruction of Justice. If the AV companies do not allow some sort of loophole, they could be tried in a court of law. Most of you Slashdotters would say "So What", but this type of court battle would lead to either horrendous losses to the company, and eventually having to put the anti-FBI code in, or the destruction of the company. However all is not lost. There is more AV companies outside the US. They WILL defend thier rights to no FBI code in thier computers. I mainly count the Russian AV coders to somehow get the code and track/kill it.
Flat out, the FBI will fail only because of public outcry. They will catch a few criminals and will parade around saying how the US is a better place without the 'scum of the Earth' around. However the worst thing people could do is to assume that the FBI is stupid. They have already addressed most of the questions, better than that has slashdot crowd.
6.2 REFUSES to run on athalons without a downloaded bootdisk. That right there, is a negative. I shouldn't have to go on the web to make the thing run. What if I didn't even have Windows??? I'd end up with a nice doorstop, with SuSE be at fault. I have NEVER had windows refuse to run on any somewhat newer computer (let alone a 500 mHz athalon).
A secondary problem of why I cannot run yast (without going and editing modules out) is the ethernet autoconf. I'm using a mobo that has onboard lan but I have no risers, so I'm using a secondary card. The SuSE autoconf sees the 2'nd card first and applies that driver to the first card. Kernel Panic.
With 6.2, you get no YAST2, just command prompt Yast1. Next, when my dad went to run YAST2 from SuSE 6.3, we couldn't even change or make partitions. There was some sort of nasty bug. Rebooting and restarting the installer did NOT help. We had to resort back to Yast1 and use the cfdisk and fdisk(on the 2'nd cd). I know I'm stating the obvious here, but That Shouldn't Have Happened.
Something I'm slightly miffed off at SuSE is that they claim to support graphic driver 'X' but they leave it out of the cd. Yes, RAGE.
PS: I'm currently running Slackware on my 2'nd box, as it correctly installs my ethernet card right. However, the only RH distro I have is 5.2 (way too old to compare). Other than nasty compiler issues I've seen (OOPS), RH seems to be pretty good.
Would you care to explain why we should "fuck the kernel" as you say? Anyways, the last I checked, the kernel is software. Bits and people cannot engage in sex.
Perhaps you'd like to 'unhide' yourself if you actually stood beside your <laugh> cause.
Who says this Red Hat offering is actually good???? Well for a little background, I am a Windows user.. However I'm also a Linux user, Mac user, Solaris user and a next user. My biases are only what is actually good (EG: cost, stability, support).
Linux has EASILY proved to be a superb OS as compared to monetary cost (none) and stability (weeks and weeks without reboot). However support is lacking. Red Hat is offering support to all schools under this plan, but that support isn't any better than a good posting to USENET.
However, Windows has easily proved in thier recent OS'es that THEY can make a stable product. I run win2k at home in conjunction with a Sparcstation 5, a linux server and a few other clients (sister and dad).
My main beefs are
1: Has anybody EVEN worked at a school (not college)? Like I said, I have a sister who's in 3'rd grade. The teacher is responsible for teaching them Windows and other skills. She hasn't a clue on how to do stuff herself. People at schools are EXTREMLY computer-phobic and won't use one unless they have to. I even tried to donate time to that same school. The computer specialist was an overworked Sys-ad who had to go to 2 other schools/fix problems/pull her hair out.
2: When's the last time Linux has EASILY went on hardware so that you DIDN'T have to open the box? Windows, however does. You can do a bulk install of windows machines without bunches of questions to answer. If Linux manufactuers could create a SEAMLESS install with autodetect Sound/Graphics/Ethernet and start at a nice fuzzy KDE term, then that's the product for them. However it doesn't. It's that nasty command line-thingy whatsit. Teachers/school sysad's won't have time to learn Linux.
Overall, Linux is NOT for school use yet. Only when it's made very easy for home users, should schools even consider this. Bringing the whole monolopy garbage clouds the issue. The issue is really at: Is Linux ready in schools?
Slashdot Mirror
OOps, my mistake. I pressed the f to K instead of C to K. I should have noticed that there wasn't a 100 degrees between my bad measurments. Stupidly, I gave measurements of 0 F to 100 F (-17 C to 37 C about).
Josh Crawley
I've never heard of the Pan Spermia theory, but when you paraphrased what it means "life is spread infectiously though out space", then what about radiation? Cosmic rays and the 3k background are bound to disrupt celluar actions (assuming they are cells). Also, space is quite harsh to adapt to. No pressure, extreme tematures, and little food, unless these creatures are able to turn radiation into food. I just don't get how a small organism can stand a flash fire (eg. in space outside of Earth, if you were facing the sun with no suit on, your face would boil and your back would crystallize). Viruses do seem to be an interesting variant, but they require a host to reproduce, at least to our knowledge. Still, this theory does intrigue me... Josh Crawley
You all question water to survive. Since I want to further my understanding, what sort of liquid do you think can replace H2O ? I do see a few things that water can do/properties it has.
1: H2O is quite light. It's only 18g/mol. There's no other combination _I_ can think of that would be as light, as we humans are made up of a lot of water.
2: H2O is slightly polar, so it 'sticks' to certain structures a little more. Oil would be an interesting substitute to water, but oil is large polimer chains. Too hard to create. However Ions would disrupt other chemicals. Also, Ions require water to have charge.
3: Most of all biological elements are within the top 10 elements on the peridic chart. The reason these are used is because nuclear fusion within the sun allows these to be made with much greater abundance. This reason also coves why no Earthen creatures use silicon instead of carbon.
4: If you can accept the above examples of why water is better than other mostly inert transfer chemicals, then tempature also comes into play. I know of no animals that use solid or gaseous blood. All use liquid of some type, just because diffusion (or in water, osmosis) is easier to transport chemicals. The tempature of water being a liquid is between 255K and 310K , so most planets are eliminated just because of the tempature needs strict control.
A simple question about life in general: What grows faster, plants in the rainfores or plants on Antartica?
This sounds like wishful thinking and all, but who actually believes anything can live in the environs mentioned in the story?
The article:
""Oceans might be common and diverse in our solar system and in other solar systems, according to David Stevenson of Caltech, who regards the old notion of a narrow "habitable zone" (Venus too hot, Mars too cold, Earth just right) for liquid water oceans as erroneous.
Stevenson spoke earlier this week in San Francisco at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union at a session intended to bring together two scientific communities that scrutinize very different realms--the planets and the seafloor on Earth.
The connection? Observations from the bottom of the ocean show that microbes thrive both in near-freezing seawater and in near-boiling effusions from thermal vents. These conditions might turn up in many other planetary environments.
For example, the Galileo spacecraft has provided evidence for watery oceans on three of Jupiter's moons-Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. Subsurface oceans could be kept liquid by warmth from tidal forces (Jove wringing its satellites) or from radioactivity. Torrance Johnson of JPL, also speaking that the meeting, said that Europa's ocean might be 75-150 km thick and could thus harbor twice the water in Earth's oceans.
Stevenson added that observations also hint at oceans on Titan, Triton, and Pluto. In the case of Titan (soon to get the Galileo treatment when the Cassini spacecraft reaches Saturn in 2004) an ocean would be a mixture of water and ammonia (acting as antifreeze). Under some circumstances water might even be found inside Uranus and Neptune.""
Europa does have very likely evidence of a liquid ocean, but the article then uses that to 'assume' of living creatures there (bac). How can there be? Complex nucleotides and a slurry of other complex chemicals are required for 'life' to occur. Another problem is energy entering/leaving the system. The Earth is quite close to the sun, but europa can rely on nearly 0 energy from the sun (at least as useful radiation). Tidal energy is energy none the less, but it's too limited, even coming from Jupiter.
Energy, yes but useful, no.
Josh Crawley
=="(almost) anything that you can see in these photos you can see in person. If people from other countries are seeing it, they could see it in person for the price of a plane ticket and a good excuse to get a visa."
Other than many military installations which are surrounded with razor wire fencing, this is true. I'm mainly worried about those installations.
=="I've heard other people raise this argument before; "doesn't this help terrorists/rogue states"? Think about it, genius."
First of all, I am 'thinking about it'. How does commercial sat pictures _help_ us? I cannot come up with at least one convincing answer.
=="Do you need an aerial photo to aim an ICBM at NYC? Did the terrorists need to research the area around Manhattan to figure out that the WTC is located there, and they should fly the plane in that general direction? Honestly, what the hell can you do with this?"
First you have to see terrorism in the terrorist eyes. If I remember correctly, our local television news programs have 'exposes' that detail the lack of military awareness of chemical factories. In our area, there is a military surplus of many types of nerve agents. The news mentioned what the facility was called. Now if some rich terrorists were to look at a map and determine where this was, they could buy a sat map and know the outer schematics of this plant.
Also, be aware that some military installations are NOT on maps. the only way to see it is to get past the guards with nice SMG's (yes, the last time we passed through, they were carrying that type).
=="Also, I'd have trouble believing that the Chinese gov't is not aware that the US has the ability to peep at them with about 50 different satellites. I don't think they are suddenly going to become aware because Joe User posts pics online."
Maybe I didn't explain what I considered that bas scenario. The US knows about China's (fill in the blank), however the US hides that knowledge from us for certain reasons. There is NO need to know about a nuclear reactor at coords x,y or other such stuff. This type of data should be seen as need to know only. All we should care about is if the military is doing thier job.
=="As for pictures of US military installations, what is there to see?"
Like I said above, there are some installations that positions are itself marked as a rating _under_ classified but still not released to the public. Pictures of these places are nothing but deterimental
=="Anything that they don't want you to see is hidden underground, and the government restricts private remote-imaging firms from releasing data less than 24 hours old. So if you're Osama Bin Laden, you might be able to get a pic of the B2 that just bombed your ass taking off, although about a day late."
So you told me something I didn't know. I wasn't aware that such a law exists.
=="Use your head."
I am, are you?
Josh Crawley
I may be much for technology, but this kind of thing comprimises US national security. I live here in the country (aka, not city) so things like airplanes crashing in our house is'nt a problem. This sub-point is that I'm safe from extra-government actions.
What it comes down to is; if we can buy pictures of 64 cm= 1 pixel, so can terrorists and enemy countries. The US military made this type of device in the Cold War so they could SPY on other countries for intelligence (however mainly USSR at the time). Now, they're used in large intelligence missions over enemy territory so that OUR soldiers don't get killed due to lack of mapping.
There is a good basis for the US military to have this technology, but what are the pluses for non-military to have this? Other than the sake of knowing, not any. They aren't valid survey techniques, you pay surveyors that. Home camera's make good security systems, sat cams don't.
The negative's come at a distinct disadvantage. Say a US civillian is interested in a Chinese nuclear power reactor and pays for sat scans. Then they post it online, which I believe this has been done (can't remember site). If the Chinese gov't find about this, don't you think that they would be slightly miffed off at the US? Or how about taking pictures of US military installations? Those are dangerous to the saftey of US citizens, Military and non-military.
Josh Crawley
ps: I'll probably be modded down, since mod's here dislike anything but the typical knee-jerk , no matter how well a disagreeing is written.
That's quite expensive for a 3.9 MB hard drive. Oh wait? It's not 3.9 mb? My mistake, I just use the standard unlisted 'slashdot' bitrate of 8kbps.
f I remember correctly, the Microwave cannon was in the anime series of Gundam X.
"Is there a Moon?"
Josh crawley
Also, in reffering to the "non-standard format", I am talking about the once 5 types of possible DVD medias. If I am correct, there are only 3 left DVD+rw, DVD-rw and some other (the name eludes me). They are all somewhat incompatible with each other and to my understanding, some more than others: DVD+rw and DVD-rw.
Josh Crawley
"I can't stand the irony.. What part of the draconian Chinese political system do you find less offensive than the DVD consortium?"
:-)
Open standards makes the Chinese solution of SVCD 'less offensive'. No CSS either, so I have rights to do whatever I want to with the movie (that includes using footage for personal stuff).
SVCD uses no additional equipment (other than cd player and mpeg2 decoder) and supports just as much "extra features" as DVD's do. The only downside is that you can store only 800 MB of movie per cd. But compare that to the cost of a DVD burner, non-standard format, and bloated cost of burnable DVD's
Josh Crawley.
PS: Sorry about the typo's. Also, I did mean windows media *, just wmf just hit my mind as the right acronym
What's the purpose of this? So what a DVD player can play WMF. Yeah for them.
Actually, I'm quite jaded on this issue. First, did you know that the MPAA gets cuts from every DVD sold? (You did)... not surprised. But did you also know that the MPAA gets liscensing fees for DVD tech from about $1,000,000. There's a reason China created the standard of SVCD. I'd rather not contribute to an orginazation that makes draconian 'rules' and essentially legislates thier tech to us. Instead of a DVD player, I invest in svcd's and have a tv in/out 500 mHz athalon for our movie purposes at home. VHS is just fine for us.
Josh Crawley
I found out that the 'downloading' part is register locked. Big deal. guest:guest worked for me :-)
I love default passwords...(ahem, root:root)
I have an old program from the DOS days of programming. It's called KOH (potassium hydroxide ) virus. It resides in your boot sector and encrypts partitions, data, and everything else. Well, I was thinking if you used some sort of dos loopback of Linux ( so that DOS is resident), everything could be encrypted. Perhaps CYGWIN is a good IDEA :-) The encryption used was IDEA (fyi).
Please, I welcome all criticisms...
How is this "News For Nerds, Stuff that Matters"??? NASA found planets years ago. Now, through spectral anaylysis, they have sodium. Big deal.
The linux radio monitor was sooo much cooler.
Well, Robots have a more sinister usage. The purpose is to keep 'bots' out, but it also tells ME where to snoop more. Cool.
Instead of believing in to the hype that Slashdot has come to like, let's look at the situation(s) more closely. My main questions spawn from ponderance of the WHOLE situation. These questions I plan to adress.
1:Why did MCafee allow this trojan?
2:What is the FBI's purpose in creating this tool?
3:Why did the FBI tell?
4:Who is this tool targeted at(main classes of criminals)?
5:How will other anti-virus companies look at the FBI's choice?
Well, lets consider the targets first. I see the most common groups targeted at are drug dealers and computer _criminals_. It's safe to say that the Computer criminals probably will not be caught in a trap like this. The FBI's main tool is believed to be a windows executible however, don't make rash belifs that the FBI hasn't considered a *nix tool yet.
The main mode of transport is that of a binary segment sent over email. Since Outlook is the most popular form of email client, Outlook buffer hacks that 'autorun' binary code are the best transport. Next off, who said that the FBI would be sending data back through the Internet or do any dialing? If I wrote a tool like that, I'd store data (keystrokes, logins/passwds, 'certain sites') in a secure place of the computer. I'd aim for the segment after the bootsector code. There's plenty of space for a few KB of the 'best info'. The FBI would raid the machine anyways, so sending back data is useless (trace of tcp/udp streams would be evident).
However, I question why the FBI even told here. Thier purpose is to catch intrastate criminals and investigate bad political dealings. I'm questioning if the FBI even has this technology. I'm much more scared of a hardware dongle that has 5 megs of storage capibility. Those types of entering have been cleared by the courts, providing the correct documents have been presented. Malware is going to be caught, unless the FBI destroys the data before the criminal sends it away elsewhere.
The last fields of questions deal with the AV companies themselves. Why exactly did MCafee do such a thing? Perhaps they have no choice. There is such a law called Obstruction of Justice. If the AV companies do not allow some sort of loophole, they could be tried in a court of law. Most of you Slashdotters would say "So What", but this type of court battle would lead to either horrendous losses to the company, and eventually having to put the anti-FBI code in, or the destruction of the company. However all is not lost. There is more AV companies outside the US. They WILL defend thier rights to no FBI code in thier computers. I mainly count the Russian AV coders to somehow get the code and track/kill it.
Flat out, the FBI will fail only because of public outcry. They will catch a few criminals and will parade around saying how the US is a better place without the 'scum of the Earth' around. However the worst thing people could do is to assume that the FBI is stupid. They have already addressed most of the questions, better than that has slashdot crowd.
Would they let us know that?
Josh Crawley
Atcually, I own SuSE 6.2 and 6.3 boxed sets.
I've had my 'Luck' with both of them.
6.2 REFUSES to run on athalons without a downloaded bootdisk. That right there, is a negative. I shouldn't have to go on the web to make the thing run. What if I didn't even have Windows??? I'd end up with a nice doorstop, with SuSE be at fault. I have NEVER had windows refuse to run on any somewhat newer computer (let alone a 500 mHz athalon).
A secondary problem of why I cannot run yast (without going and editing modules out) is the ethernet autoconf. I'm using a mobo that has onboard lan but I have no risers, so I'm using a secondary card. The SuSE autoconf sees the 2'nd card first and applies that driver to the first card. Kernel Panic.
With 6.2, you get no YAST2, just command prompt Yast1. Next, when my dad went to run YAST2 from SuSE 6.3, we couldn't even change or make partitions. There was some sort of nasty bug. Rebooting and restarting the installer did NOT help. We had to resort back to Yast1 and use the cfdisk and fdisk(on the 2'nd cd). I know I'm stating the obvious here, but That Shouldn't Have Happened.
Something I'm slightly miffed off at SuSE is that they claim to support graphic driver 'X' but they leave it out of the cd. Yes, RAGE.
PS: I'm currently running Slackware on my 2'nd box, as it correctly installs my ethernet card right. However, the only RH distro I have is 5.2 (way too old to compare). Other than nasty compiler issues I've seen (OOPS), RH seems to be pretty good.
Josh Crawley
Would you care to explain why we should "fuck the kernel" as you say? Anyways, the last I checked, the kernel is software. Bits and people cannot engage in sex.
Perhaps you'd like to 'unhide' yourself if you actually stood beside your <laugh> cause.
Go away, troll.
Who says this Red Hat offering is actually good???? Well for a little background, I am a Windows user.. However I'm also a Linux user, Mac user, Solaris user and a next user. My biases are only what is actually good (EG: cost, stability, support). Linux has EASILY proved to be a superb OS as compared to monetary cost (none) and stability (weeks and weeks without reboot). However support is lacking. Red Hat is offering support to all schools under this plan, but that support isn't any better than a good posting to USENET. However, Windows has easily proved in thier recent OS'es that THEY can make a stable product. I run win2k at home in conjunction with a Sparcstation 5, a linux server and a few other clients (sister and dad). My main beefs are 1: Has anybody EVEN worked at a school (not college)? Like I said, I have a sister who's in 3'rd grade. The teacher is responsible for teaching them Windows and other skills. She hasn't a clue on how to do stuff herself. People at schools are EXTREMLY computer-phobic and won't use one unless they have to. I even tried to donate time to that same school. The computer specialist was an overworked Sys-ad who had to go to 2 other schools/fix problems/pull her hair out. 2: When's the last time Linux has EASILY went on hardware so that you DIDN'T have to open the box? Windows, however does. You can do a bulk install of windows machines without bunches of questions to answer. If Linux manufactuers could create a SEAMLESS install with autodetect Sound/Graphics/Ethernet and start at a nice fuzzy KDE term, then that's the product for them. However it doesn't. It's that nasty command line-thingy whatsit. Teachers/school sysad's won't have time to learn Linux. Overall, Linux is NOT for school use yet. Only when it's made very easy for home users, should schools even consider this. Bringing the whole monolopy garbage clouds the issue. The issue is really at: Is Linux ready in schools?