Whilst I agree that making OSS/FS software developers liable for the consequences of 'bad software' would be a death knell for the Open source development, I still consider it very much a question of 'you get what you pay for'. If I don't charge for my software, then I'm _not_ offering it for sale as a viable product, I'm pointing it out as something that I put together that might be worth you taking a look at.
The flip side is $BIGCORP who charges for their software IMHO has a duty of care to make sure that it's going to be up to a required standard. Fit for the purpose sold and all that.
If you went to a sofware company and said 'I want an air traffic control progam' the part of the spec would have to be 'safe'. Buggy software _isn't_ safe. It's perhaps not as deadly as a faulty air traffic control system, but I think they should be liable if my database corrupts horribly and I lose x days work. It's not going to be a huge cost to them in each instance (what's x days pay to re-enter it + a bit for slippage in deadlines), but if it happens frequently with their products then they are going to start losing an awful lot of money.
Less bugs = less 'loss' from fault claims.
Well, it'd crucify an awful lot of big companies in the short term, but they'd soon get their quality specs in place. The major resistance would be from the consumer who would in the end have to carry the extra cost of production.
The flaw in this argument is that the rate of spread is not going to double. Because once a machine has been infected, it is then removed from the set of possible infections.
OF course, you do realise this is all theoretical evidence. There is some evidence to indicate that with such a rapid propagation backbone links will start to get saturated - probably causing NOC staff to run a packet sniffer and maybe notice a new worm, but definitely slowing the propagation rate down significantly.
This would also start tripping intrusion detection systems, getting a response or defense from many
The simplest defense, is of course firewall good practice.
FILTER YOUR OUTBOUND as well as your inbound traffic. There's no reason that a web server in your DMZ is going to need to connect out to anywhere (and definitely not on port 80)
That's a very good point.
Note to self: Boost range, or design repeater to hide in their garden.
Or make them move to a smaller house so they're close enough together to get overlap of the wlan cells.
That's a really fantastic idea.
Get a load of muppets broadband enabled, plug in some Wireless access points, and never have to pay for my net access again!
Thus starts the Evil (tm)[1] scheme to freeload off people with more money than sense, by shipping 'wireless enabled' cable and xDSL modems.
(Yes, I did (tm) Evil. I am the owner of the universe and thus can do so.)
It's quite possible to recover files, because, much like PCs nothing actually gets 'deleted'. The inode is marked as 'available for reuse' and removed from the directory entry, but doesn't actually remove anything.
Looking for an undelete? Take a look at the coroners toolkit. There's even instructions on how to recover files from a unix partition (any unix). It's one of those ones which you'd _really_ need to recover the data because it's hard work and a pain, but it is possible.
I don't recall seeing and 'write with zeros' program for Unix. I guess there must be some out there, since at a guess it's fairly trivial.
(would dding/dev/zero over a file just prior to erasing it work?)
Of course, there's always disk analysis with an electron microscope, which I've always heard was possible but it's not one I've ever had substantiated.
Peer to peer DNS sounds like a fun idea (well I rather like it). The drawback is the arbitration of domain names (or whatever). I mean, if everyone is peers, then that means that multiple people can lay claim to a particular name.
IMHO that's why the current system works well enough - it's a first come first served, and sue them if you don't like it, but at least I don't have to worry about my vanity domain being taken off me by someone else on the P2P network.
A waiting list for blah.com.
So if I add my name to the waiting list for Microsoft.com do I get it after the current expiry? Now there's a pr0n URL:)
Last I saw networksolutions were offering a 'automatic grabbing' service which you paid your money for, and if they didn't reregister in time it did it for you automatically.
Just so you can try and steal someones domain (this is linked off network solutions). I don't really see how a waiting list is any different, and I also reckon it's a really daft idea.
Then again, NSI (sorry, verisign) do have some decidedly dodgy practices regarding domain names. Like auctioning (not going back into the $35 pool or whatever the cost is) old domain names on "Great Domains"
Or charging a 'preference' rate to get a domain transfer request actioned in 2 days rather than 6 weeks.
Looks like yet another extortion tactic by the domain monopoly.
How very useful.
Whilst Solaris does have package management, it's not as good as RPM.
Of course, now all you have to do is convince sun to support it:)
Truly a nice idea.
Apart from the safety issue, the other problem is the cost-benefit of doing this.
Space launches cost X million, and you'd get a 'few' tons of waste disposed of. Digging a really big, deep hole is much cheaper and you can store more.
I agree, that the big hole is a problem for _much_ longer than the space launch, but politicians only care about the next 4 years...
I've been reading Ken Macleod recently.
Cosmonaut Keep is pretty good, but personally I prefer some of his earlier books (The Stone Canal, The Cassini division, the star fraction).
IMHO well written, and a good read.
I would, I reckon it's great:)
Besides, Solaris 8 has some fairly funky stuff which IMHO would be valuable to perhaps merge with one of the free OSs (or alternatively the other way round).
Solaris isn't only on Suns (although IMHO it's better that way), there's an intel version of it. Unfortunately, they're not going to be doing Solaris 9 for intel anymore (The Register's article)
The odd thing is, I heard that StarOffice 6 was going to cost money.
For a couple of reasons - a lot of corporate cultures equate free with worthless, and for the benefit of bundled software sellers so they can say 'This PC comes with $600 worth of software'
I don't know if that means it'll be available on a 'free use' license or not though. (which might sound odd, but I understand that their strategy behind this project is to take office suite market share away from microsoft).
Since Solaris X86 is not going to be supported any more, is there any chance of getting that 'donated' to the user community?
I appreciate that there's a fair chunk of intellectual property in there (and probably a fair amount of overlap with Sparc), but it'd be nice to see.
Laser efficiency Apparantly a 'really efficient' laser is 30%, of course this may be a little out of date. For solar cell efficiency
Looking at the tables 30% ish is about the maximum on a solar cell too.
I was a bit out.
I think an AC also responded to the fact that my post wasn't a reply to the main article either, so I'll leave that one.
Have a nice day.
Instead of using energy from burning hydrogen from the sun, to power a laser, to separate more hydrogen to burn it again, what we _really_ need is a giant space vacuum cleaner, and suck up all the hydrogen from the sun directly.
Far more efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst I agree that making OSS/FS software developers liable for the consequences of 'bad software' would be a death knell for the Open source development, I still consider it very much a question of 'you get what you pay for'. If I don't charge for my software, then I'm _not_ offering it for sale as a viable product, I'm pointing it out as something that I put together that might be worth you taking a look at. The flip side is $BIGCORP who charges for their software IMHO has a duty of care to make sure that it's going to be up to a required standard. Fit for the purpose sold and all that.
If you went to a sofware company and said 'I want an air traffic control progam' the part of the spec would have to be 'safe'. Buggy software _isn't_ safe. It's perhaps not as deadly as a faulty air traffic control system, but I think they should be liable if my database corrupts horribly and I lose x days work. It's not going to be a huge cost to them in each instance (what's x days pay to re-enter it + a bit for slippage in deadlines), but if it happens frequently with their products then they are going to start losing an awful lot of money.
Less bugs = less 'loss' from fault claims.
Well, it'd crucify an awful lot of big companies in the short term, but they'd soon get their quality specs in place. The major resistance would be from the consumer who would in the end have to carry the extra cost of production.
IBM's research paper on Topology and population dynamics.
The flaw in this argument is that the rate of spread is not going to double. Because once a machine has been infected, it is then removed from the set of possible infections.
OF course, you do realise this is all theoretical evidence. There is some evidence to indicate that with such a rapid propagation backbone links will start to get saturated - probably causing NOC staff to run a packet sniffer and maybe notice a new worm, but definitely slowing the propagation rate down significantly.
This would also start tripping intrusion detection systems, getting a response or defense from many
The simplest defense, is of course firewall good practice.
FILTER YOUR OUTBOUND as well as your inbound traffic. There's no reason that a web server in your DMZ is going to need to connect out to anywhere (and definitely not on port 80)
find $dir -exec shred -fuzv {} \;
TV! Bah, the _real_ use for video projectors is playing Doom/Quake/$FPS_OF_CHOICE.
That's a very good point.
Note to self: Boost range, or design repeater to hide in their garden.
Or make them move to a smaller house so they're close enough together to get overlap of the wlan cells.
Hrm, don't get chattr on a sun. :)
Ok, so dding zeros, and then a sync and then an rm
That's a really fantastic idea.
Get a load of muppets broadband enabled, plug in some Wireless access points, and never have to pay for my net access again!
Thus starts the Evil (tm)[1] scheme to freeload off people with more money than sense, by shipping 'wireless enabled' cable and xDSL modems.
(Yes, I did (tm) Evil. I am the owner of the universe and thus can do so.)
The Russians cosmonauts just used a pencil.
And then wondered why they were having so many electrical faults (yes, graphite does conduct)
And for those who noticed, I can't type URLs, so here it is again :) http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/tct.html
It's quite possible to recover files, because, much like PCs nothing actually gets 'deleted'. The inode is marked as 'available for reuse' and removed from the directory entry, but doesn't actually remove anything. /dev/zero over a file just prior to erasing it work?)
Looking for an undelete? Take a look at the coroners toolkit. There's even instructions on how to recover files from a unix partition (any unix). It's one of those ones which you'd _really_ need to recover the data because it's hard work and a pain, but it is possible.
I don't recall seeing and 'write with zeros' program for Unix. I guess there must be some out there, since at a guess it's fairly trivial. (would dding
Of course, there's always disk analysis with an electron microscope, which I've always heard was possible but it's not one I've ever had substantiated.
Peer to peer DNS sounds like a fun idea (well I rather like it). The drawback is the arbitration of domain names (or whatever). I mean, if everyone is peers, then that means that multiple people can lay claim to a particular name.
IMHO that's why the current system works well enough - it's a first come first served, and sue them if you don't like it, but at least I don't have to worry about my vanity domain being taken off me by someone else on the P2P network.
A waiting list for blah.com. :)
So if I add my name to the waiting list for Microsoft.com do I get it after the current expiry? Now there's a pr0n URL
Last I saw networksolutions were offering a 'automatic grabbing' service which you paid your money for, and if they didn't reregister in time it did it for you automatically.
Just so you can try and steal someones domain (this is linked off network solutions). I don't really see how a waiting list is any different, and I also reckon it's a really daft idea.
Then again, NSI (sorry, verisign) do have some decidedly dodgy practices regarding domain names. Like auctioning (not going back into the $35 pool or whatever the cost is) old domain names on "Great Domains"
Or charging a 'preference' rate to get a domain transfer request actioned in 2 days rather than 6 weeks.
Looks like yet another extortion tactic by the domain monopoly.
How very useful. :)
Whilst Solaris does have package management, it's not as good as RPM.
Of course, now all you have to do is convince sun to support it
Cool!
Glow in the dark spliffs.
In .uk the government is elected every 4.
Truly a nice idea.
Apart from the safety issue, the other problem is the cost-benefit of doing this.
Space launches cost X million, and you'd get a 'few' tons of waste disposed of. Digging a really big, deep hole is much cheaper and you can store more.
I agree, that the big hole is a problem for _much_ longer than the space launch, but politicians only care about the next 4 years...
I've been reading Ken Macleod recently.
Cosmonaut Keep is pretty good, but personally I prefer some of his earlier books (The Stone Canal, The Cassini division, the star fraction).
IMHO well written, and a good read.
I would, I reckon it's great :)
Besides, Solaris 8 has some fairly funky stuff which IMHO would be valuable to perhaps merge with one of the free OSs (or alternatively the other way round).
Solaris isn't only on Suns (although IMHO it's better that way), there's an intel version of it. Unfortunately, they're not going to be doing Solaris 9 for intel anymore (The Register's article)
The odd thing is, I heard that StarOffice 6 was going to cost money.
For a couple of reasons - a lot of corporate cultures equate free with worthless, and for the benefit of bundled software sellers so they can say 'This PC comes with $600 worth of software'
I don't know if that means it'll be available on a 'free use' license or not though. (which might sound odd, but I understand that their strategy behind this project is to take office suite market share away from microsoft).
Since Solaris X86 is not going to be supported any more, is there any chance of getting that 'donated' to the user community?
I appreciate that there's a fair chunk of intellectual property in there (and probably a fair amount of overlap with Sparc), but it'd be nice to see.
Laser efficiency
Apparantly a 'really efficient' laser is 30%, of course this may be a little out of date.
For solar cell efficiency
Looking at the tables 30% ish is about the maximum on a solar cell too.
I was a bit out.
I think an AC also responded to the fact that my post wasn't a reply to the main article either, so I'll leave that one.
Have a nice day.
Wow, a response from a troll.
Now I truly feel honoured.
Everyone who spread DeCSS around must be a crook, right?
After all, it's not like DVDs don't work on anything other than a winblows PC is it?
Doh.
Instead of using energy from burning hydrogen from the sun, to power a laser, to separate more hydrogen to burn it again, what we _really_ need is a giant space vacuum cleaner, and suck up all the hydrogen from the sun directly.
Far more efficient.