I can't imagine anyone getting down the wire of choosing between XP or Linux as the right tool for a job, and deciding on XP because of NX.
Anyone with any knowledge of OS security will know that Windows automatically loses in the competition, because various OS components (Internet Explorer/ActiveX) allow bypassing of normal privilege isolation. Windows tends to fall apart on its own under security stressors, while UNIX holds its permission isolations -- assuming both are kept patched up to date, even.
There are sadly many ways to get around GPL... You simply charge an irrate fee for packaging, documentation, or something of the sort.
My understanding is, the point of the GPL isn't that everything has to be a free download! Rather, that once you acquire a copy of the source, you are free to redistribute it -- post it anywhere you want, etc. Or modify it, etc.
2. Group policies. Being able to lock down every little setting and creating a uniform "expierience" at every workstation from a central management console is crucial.
From what I've seen, Windows can not do this properly. No matter how hard you try, a vulnerability in Internet Explorer * will * be used to punch a hole in that "user separation" you're tricked into trusting. You'll start seeing weird little IE addons and spyware running in the background. I know this from experience, I have used and administered shared Windows labs.
Windows creates problems when you have multiple users sharing a computer. Various fancy components and services link parts of the system that should be isolated. Even though I kept our Windows lab up to date with the latest patches, it invariably "fell apart" and became clogged with unauthorized applications and files.
UNIX fares much better. On a UNIX based platform, provided you keep the software up to date, the isolated parts (enforced by permissions) do stay isolated and as an admin I like that very, very much.
The issue is ultimately about the public's lack of concern for computer, and more generally, digital security. My opinion is that this lack of concern stems from a lack of knowledge about the technologies we use.
I think the situation is more dangerous than most professionals realise. The majority of the people in IT shrug off security concerns. "We can always reinstall" or "we'll upgrade later" are common responses to warnings about insecurity and vulnerability. Most businesses and even governments entirely ignore digital security concerns.
We have a modern economy that depends entirely upon computer networks and data flow. All of our communication depends upon it too. So do public utilities and emergency services.
But at the same time, we perpetually neglect to protect these systems that we rely on. OS security is literally a joke; server security may or may not be a concern depending on how anal the operator is; and data encryption is still, for the most part, undiscovered by the masses.
Isn't this measure (an ISP blocking child porn) kind of like making drugs illegal? The bums who really want the stuff will probably go to great lengths to get what they need. On the street, it's finding a guy in an alley who can sell you a gun and on the Internet it's probably finding an open proxy or encrypted tunnel. People can still get child pornography:(
A problem I see is that you invariably create new access problems by censoring content. If the ISP blocks by IP, they will be blocking access to legitimate sites who might also have an unscrupulous user hosting the offending content on a virtual host. If the ISP is blocking by specific URLs, this is much better but then they must be running an http proxy (invisible caching) which IMHO creates new issues such as browsing privacy.
Does anyone know whether this thing is a symmetric or asymmetric IP service? There's a big difference:) I have a 3 Mbps ADSL service, but despite this it has limited functionality because my upstream bandwidth is so little (200 Kbps) which limits both upstream bandwidth and also limits downstream TCP/IP speed, because of the occasional ACKs required by TCP/IP.
Very good point. Also a heads up to anyone who possibly thinks that the NSA isn't looking at their traffic. The government and marketing agencies are probably looking at everything they can:) Knowledge is power... whether it's for (defense) or (marketing)
SMTP is inherently a peer-to-peer protocol (MTAs act as either clients or servers in mail transactions) -- being as common as it is, shouldn't SMTP account for the majority of peer to peer traffic on the Internet?
If you don't think that SMTP is P2P, why is that? Because there's no content theft (FUD) going on?
Seriously though, one has to wonder about the ethics of something like tagging humans. The example I think of is the debate in ethics about 'coercion'... which is usually wrong except in rare circumstances such as protecting your own children. RFID tracking might be fine if a parent wants to have it for their young children, but under no circumstances could be mandated for adults (which I would argue, is more like 13 and older)
'Linux' stopped being a kernel ages ago. Stop being a pedantic geek and correcting folk.
I'm not being pedantic. I'm saying that there is no way they can tell the distro unless the Apache installation identifies it, since TCP/IP fingerprinting can only reveal that the host is running Linux and nothing more. This is important because the survey results might be total bunk - there is no way to remotely differentiate between distros.
Linux is the kernel, and the TCP/IP stack is in the kernel. So you can't tell from a TCP/IP connection whether a host is running Redhat, Slackware or Debian.
What the survey site is probably doing is looking at information tags within the Server: field of the HTTP response headers. Redhat does advertise itself there in the vendor-supplied Apache packages, but some other distros don't. Slackware's Apache packages will return nothing more descriptive than 'Unix' in the Server string.
So not all distros will reveal themselves, and anybody can easily prevent this information from being shown period with a simple Apache configuration directive. I think that's a good idea to do on your own servers, by the way. Give attackers the least info possible at your setup.
Why does the government support the effort of bleeding heart liberal hippies who donate their resources to such projects? The feds might as well stick a knife directly in the backs if industry.
Broadband definitely makes it easier to download large amounts of data... but when I recall my own history, I was downloading a heluvalot more music in the days when 56 kbps modems first appeared. Back then it was an exploration of all the good music that's out there and that I had never heard before. Suddenly it all became available, waiting only 15 minutes or so for a download. For years I have felt that I have all the 'classics' in my private MP3 collection, and I don't often seek new music. When it comes to mainstream pop I certainly have 'heard it all before' and crave nothing.
So if "the industry" doesn't produce any new music that is worth craving, people don't download or buy it.
SMTP is essentially a peer-to-peer protocol, allowing arbitrary hosts to exchange mail. The client can act as the server, and vice versa in any mail transaction.
So if SMTP servers like Postfix, qmail, sendmail can be used to perform copyright violations (as they certainly can and do, depending on what a user sends) this would make these core Internet applications quite illegal.
The McAfee virus info page says that the source code is encrypted. Assuming the author used something sound like PGP, we'll probably never see the source code.
Yes, I'm seeing one-quarter Mozilla traffic also with little open source content. In fact, my site is a predominantly Windows shareware/freeware downloads site.
My web site gets about 1200 visitors/day and I track the stats on browsers used... although it's only 4 days of data, my stats are showing that 25.5% of my visitors use Mozilla. This is a huge increase over the norm, which is around 16% Mozilla.
Now if they could also bring back the ogg vorbis audio streams they were experimenting with at one point, I would be awfully happy. At the moment there is no choice but to use the proprietary Real Audio, and even though there is a good player for UNIX it still costs the BBC money, when they could go the free route with ogg vorbis and make customers happier too!
So, how long before we're driving down the highway and suddenly all of our radio stations turn into debt consolidation or penis enlargement ads?
See, but in that case the spammers would be stealing airtime from the other crooks, err, legitimate marketerss. So there would be some powerful backlash probably. In the case of the Internet, we're a bunch of volunteers and admins on cooperating networks. We don't have the same capital to fight spam.
There's a group in my graduating electrical engineering class that did their undergrad design project on something similar, Design, Construction, and Testing of a Microwave Radar System for Through-Wall Surveillance. It uses 1 - 3 GHz microwave frequencies and some pretty straightforward electronics to provide signals to a computer, which does the image resolution. I was able to see a first-hand demonstration of it, and it's impressive for an undergrad project! Just in case you thought this "New radar" in the article is revolutionary or something.
I'm always amazed at how many people "run my own mailserver" yet have no idea how mail is supposed to work.
SMTP certainly does not demand that all mail be sent through a higher-tier relay. Rather, SMTP was designed to provide diverse, peer-to-peer mail transaction facilities. It allows arbitrary hosts to exchange mail with their peers and this flexibility is what's let SMTP revolutionize communications!
Pretty much the only prerequisite condition for establishing a proper SMTP node is having a reliable, stationary position.
That's the whole beauty of it. Imagine the unreliable, fragile, and slow communications we would have if every small service provider had to relay its mail through its upstream's relay, until all email was handled through: MCI, UUNet, AOL, etcc. Instead, the point of SMTP is that if your host has its own reliable connection, it can send the mail directly to the destination domain.
Comparing to these measurements I made when Comcast first announced its strategy...
Looking at Comcast's IPs appearing on realtime blocklists, today: CBL: 17132 (Comcast is 1.3% of CBL) WPBL: 4779 (Comcast is 9.6% of WPBL)
Compared to the number of Comcast IPs that were spam sources two tweeks ago (19897 and 5199) it does appear that there are fewer Comcast spam sources. However the overall proportion of Comcast IPs in the entire lists haven't changed much from (2% and 10%)
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Windows creates problems when you have multiple users sharing a computer. Various fancy components and services link parts of the system that should be isolated. Even though I kept our Windows lab up to date with the latest patches, it invariably "fell apart" and became clogged with unauthorized applications and files.
UNIX fares much better. On a UNIX based platform, provided you keep the software up to date, the isolated parts (enforced by permissions) do stay isolated and as an admin I like that very, very much.
The issue is ultimately about the public's lack of concern for computer, and more generally, digital security. My opinion is that this lack of concern stems from a lack of knowledge about the technologies we use.
I think the situation is more dangerous than most professionals realise. The majority of the people in IT shrug off security concerns. "We can always reinstall" or "we'll upgrade later" are common responses to warnings about insecurity and vulnerability. Most businesses and even governments entirely ignore digital security concerns.
We have a modern economy that depends entirely upon computer networks and data flow. All of our communication depends upon it too. So do public utilities and emergency services.
But at the same time, we perpetually neglect to protect these systems that we rely on. OS security is literally a joke; server security may or may not be a concern depending on how anal the operator is; and data encryption is still, for the most part, undiscovered by the masses.
Isn't this measure (an ISP blocking child porn) kind of like making drugs illegal? The bums who really want the stuff will probably go to great lengths to get what they need. On the street, it's finding a guy in an alley who can sell you a gun and on the Internet it's probably finding an open proxy or encrypted tunnel. People can still get child pornography :(
A problem I see is that you invariably create new access problems by censoring content. If the ISP blocks by IP, they will be blocking access to legitimate sites who might also have an unscrupulous user hosting the offending content on a virtual host. If the ISP is blocking by specific URLs, this is much better but then they must be running an http proxy (invisible caching) which IMHO creates new issues such as browsing privacy.
Does anyone know whether this thing is a symmetric or asymmetric IP service? There's a big difference :) I have a 3 Mbps ADSL service, but despite this it has limited functionality because my upstream bandwidth is so little (200 Kbps) which limits both upstream bandwidth and also limits downstream TCP/IP speed, because of the occasional ACKs required by TCP/IP.
Very good point. Also a heads up to anyone who possibly thinks that the NSA isn't looking at their traffic. The government and marketing agencies are probably looking at everything they can :) Knowledge is power... whether it's for (defense) or (marketing)
SMTP is inherently a peer-to-peer protocol (MTAs act as either clients or servers in mail transactions) -- being as common as it is, shouldn't SMTP account for the majority of peer to peer traffic on the Internet?
If you don't think that SMTP is P2P, why is that? Because there's no content theft (FUD) going on?
Martin will no longer be alone.
Obscure Simpsons reference.
Seriously though, one has to wonder about the ethics of something like tagging humans. The example I think of is the debate in ethics about 'coercion'... which is usually wrong except in rare circumstances such as protecting your own children. RFID tracking might be fine if a parent wants to have it for their young children, but under no circumstances could be mandated for adults (which I would argue, is more like 13 and older)
Linux is the kernel, and the TCP/IP stack is in the kernel. So you can't tell from a TCP/IP connection whether a host is running Redhat, Slackware or Debian.
What the survey site is probably doing is looking at information tags within the Server: field of the HTTP response headers. Redhat does advertise itself there in the vendor-supplied Apache packages, but some other distros don't. Slackware's Apache packages will return nothing more descriptive than 'Unix' in the Server string.
So not all distros will reveal themselves, and anybody can easily prevent this information from being shown period with a simple Apache configuration directive. I think that's a good idea to do on your own servers, by the way. Give attackers the least info possible at your setup.
Mozilla rises from the dead (or at least a deep sleep) and goes mainstream rather quickly. Impressive :)
Why does the government support the effort of bleeding heart liberal hippies who donate their resources to such projects? The feds might as well stick a knife directly in the backs if industry.
Broadband definitely makes it easier to download large amounts of data... but when I recall my own history, I was downloading a heluvalot more music in the days when 56 kbps modems first appeared. Back then it was an exploration of all the good music that's out there and that I had never heard before. Suddenly it all became available, waiting only 15 minutes or so for a download. For years I have felt that I have all the 'classics' in my private MP3 collection, and I don't often seek new music. When it comes to mainstream pop I certainly have 'heard it all before' and crave nothing.
So if "the industry" doesn't produce any new music that is worth craving, people don't download or buy it.
SMTP is essentially a peer-to-peer protocol, allowing arbitrary hosts to exchange mail. The client can act as the server, and vice versa in any mail transaction.
So if SMTP servers like Postfix, qmail, sendmail can be used to perform copyright violations (as they certainly can and do, depending on what a user sends) this would make these core Internet applications quite illegal.
The McAfee virus info page says that the source code is encrypted. Assuming the author used something sound like PGP, we'll probably never see the source code.
Yes, I'm seeing one-quarter Mozilla traffic also with little open source content. In fact, my site is a predominantly Windows shareware/freeware downloads site.
My web site gets about 1200 visitors/day and I track the stats on browsers used... although it's only 4 days of data, my stats are showing that 25.5% of my visitors use Mozilla. This is a huge increase over the norm, which is around 16% Mozilla.
Now if they could also bring back the ogg vorbis audio streams they were experimenting with at one point, I would be awfully happy. At the moment there is no choice but to use the proprietary Real Audio, and even though there is a good player for UNIX it still costs the BBC money, when they could go the free route with ogg vorbis and make customers happier too!
There's a group in my graduating electrical engineering class that did their undergrad design project on something similar, Design, Construction, and Testing of a Microwave Radar System for Through-Wall Surveillance. It uses 1 - 3 GHz microwave frequencies and some pretty straightforward electronics to provide signals to a computer, which does the image resolution. I was able to see a first-hand demonstration of it, and it's impressive for an undergrad project! Just in case you thought this "New radar" in the article is revolutionary or something.
Pretty much the only prerequisite condition for establishing a proper SMTP node is having a reliable, stationary position.
That's the whole beauty of it. Imagine the unreliable, fragile, and slow communications we would have if every small service provider had to relay its mail through its upstream's relay, until all email was handled through: MCI, UUNet, AOL, etcc. Instead, the point of SMTP is that if your host has its own reliable connection, it can send the mail directly to the destination domain.
Comparing to these measurements I made when Comcast first announced its strategy...
Looking at Comcast's IPs appearing on realtime blocklists, today:
CBL: 17132 (Comcast is 1.3% of CBL)
WPBL: 4779 (Comcast is 9.6% of WPBL)
Compared to the number of Comcast IPs that were spam sources two tweeks ago (19897 and 5199) it does appear that there are fewer Comcast spam sources. However the overall proportion of Comcast IPs in the entire lists haven't changed much from (2% and 10%)