I think we'll have to pin our hopes on the next President telling his AG to investigate and pursue criminal charges against those responsible in the Bush Administration and in Congress.
It'll never happen, no matter who the president winds up being. Any administration doesn't want to look back on the previous one, and realistically they only have so much political capital to spend. This administration has screwed things up so badly that it'd actually be a waste of political capital for a new President to pursue that.
I'd say the only hope we have of that happening is someone in Congress to take up that cause.
Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was let's talk every Thursday. Or they said we're putting everything in place, we'll contact you shortly with the time.
Yah, that would be true if the current wiretaps were to expire when the legislation expired. But the law was written to specifically say they didn't. Any existing wiretaps expire when they were originally set to expire.
This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.
There's a hidden premise here. The premise is we can know the expected lifetime of something that:
We never fully get to test each probe in the environment it experiences.
We've only made (I'm guessing) less than 100 of these probes ever, each of which is very different and experiences very different environments.
We don't even know exactly the environment each probe is going to experience.
The technology itself is constantly changing over the last 40-50 years of sending out robotic probes.
Which do you think is more likely?
The engineers all know how long the thing is going to last, but lie about it to make themselves and NASA look good.
or
They really don't know how long it's going to last, but make some very conservative estimates about the above unknowns, to make sure it'll last at least as long as the time frame it's supposed to. Sometimes those guesses turn out to make the thing last a lot longer than it needed to be.
Now IIRC at about Mach 1.5, aluminum begins to soften. I suspect the plastic in a pop bottle melts at a somewhat lower temperature.
At what altitude? The one large difference between going up, and going down is where in the atmosphere you're achieving top speed. Going up, the atmosphere obviously gets thinner as you're going faster.
Anyway, I suspect he's already gone beyond the original constraints of using an actual pop-bottle, since his second experiment mentions "Kevlar-reinforced, experimental missile".
So you're saying, give up my right to free speech on the internet, because it's trivial?
No, I mean that the IP theft is pretty trivial. My main interest is just what motivates people to go through what sounds like a long, convoluted process. It sounds like the situation just escalated with the other side trying to shout you down with counter-suits. Kind of dumb on their part, for something they could have likely settled for a few grand at the start.
I've posted about this litigation on Slashdot before, but the verdict is in now so here's the URL again: Gregerson v. Vilana
Huh. You won in the end, but it also sounds like you went through a lot of effort to do so. I have to wonder was it really worth it? I often wonder what motivates people to go through the legal system for what seems to the rest of us, mostly trivial matters.
Most people will be faceless sheep by comparison, doing nothing of significance in their lives.
There's some of us that think that swimming the english channel, or taking a hot air balloon father than others is "nothing of significance". So what? How did he affect anyone else's life?
I've got a lot more respect for someone who actually created something new (like the countless guys who created all the technology I'm currently using) than some guy who participated in a pissing contest. If he liked it, great. But I don't respect anything he's accomplished.
Not really. You've created another fantasy about "the best way to die". We don't even really know if this plane accident thing was Steve Fossett's "best way to die" or even if it was particularly horrible, or great, or anything. It's just a nice story to tell yourself, but none of it is real.
It's all just a bunch of nonsense to stave off the real thoughts about dying. In the end, the guy is still dead.
As an adventurer, a go-getter, a risk-taker, he inspires us to live.
Ballooning and flying long distances in a plane inspires you to live? I find that kind of sad. I don't need inspiration to live, do you?
The only people that really inspire me are anyone that's tried to change the world for the better. Hell, even Bill Gates is using his billions to do that. This guy has used to his billions for his own pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess. But I just don't understand why it's so inspiring, or great, or whatever. He's just participating in a giant pissing contest about who can do thing X longer, faster, or bigger.
Evel Knievel did the same thing. I didn't see his death announced on slashdot, and he was a hell of a lot more popular for more years than Fossett.
For who? You? I thought we were talking about Steve Fossett, not his family.
Sorry about your dad, we'll all likely face that day sometime. But I just don't understand why one way of dying is better than some other way of dying. I'm sure we can all agree that being tortured to death would be pretty horrible.. but I just don't understand this weird story people have come up with, where Steve Fosset is grinning, flying into the sunset, and then the movie ends with a "Steve Fosset was never found again". That's not real, that's a story that people tell themselves isn't a story.
Now, if each of us could click a "jackass" button, and when a certain number of them get pressed the individual responsible receives a brief 30 kV electric shock... now that might do it.
Get over it already. If you're really that ticked off by some random tag on slashdot, I suggest barricading yourself in a room and never coming out again.
I'm offended at least once a week by stories I read in the mainstream media. The AP carried a story yesterday about the IL shooter guy, expressing amazement how he didn't fit into the little box the news media created for the Virginia Tech guy. I laughed, and it was amusing.. but I find the media practice of turning every killer into simplistic, easy to understand, "not like you" terms disturbing and offensive. They can't fit him into the "didn't like people, disagreeable" box, so they've found the "he was off his medication" box. I don't really know if that had anything to do with it.. but then again neither does anyone else.
Whether he was enjoying the last moments of life or not, he was at least enjoying life up to that point.
Followed by many moments of intense panic, worry, etc. What is it with this strange fantasy people concoct about death? I just don't buy the whole story about how great it is to die while "doing something you love". It's just a fairy tale people tell themselves to make them feel a bit better about death.
I agree. Unfortunately for you, there's too many people that don't like the grim reality that "thrillseeking" is just about an ego or adrenaline rush, and not something to be really be proud of, so they mod you down.
That's a generally accepted shorthand for "at least he was engaged in an activity he enjoyed, not rotting away in an Alzheimers ward or in the agonizing throes of cancer".
Why is that any better? He's still dead. If you were to die from cancer, or some other long term disease, at least you die with the people around you. He died alone, in some unknown place. That's supposed to be "better"?
This is no tragedy; we should be celebrating this man's life.
A billionaire who spent his billions on hot air balloon rides, and trying to fly around the world?
Sorry, I just don't see much worth celebrating. I'm sure he loved it, and great for him and all. But I don't find what he did or accomplished terribly noteworthy or important.
That makes a lot more sense. I didn't quite understand how any sane investment group would expect to make back $100 million on this dumb SCO case. But a 10 million dollar risk at a perceived chance to make a lot more makes more sense.
At this point in the ruling though, I just don't see how they intend to win the case.
What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this.
They'll just have to change their policy. I'm sure this is really what this whole policy is about. If enough research institutions make this a policy, the journals which have had so much control over controlling publication will have no other choice.
The limitations of transfer rates for scp is often the round trip time that consumes time for confirmation of received packages. This is a serious issue for transfers from the Europe to the US West Coast (around 200 ms) or to Australia (around 400 ms).
Huh. I'm surprised TCP sliding window protocol doesn't take care of that. Shouldn't it account for filling up the pipeline between sender and receiver?
There's a big part of why Things Are The Way They Are missing in this far too long essay (which I didn't find interesting enough to fully read).
Laws aren't always made to serve the people. Laws are made by politicians, many of which have differing motivations. Some want to get re-elected, some don't like the law being developed, and want to either kill it, or make it innefective, some are heavily influenced by lobby groups, some are just plain morons and just believe they can pass any law they like, and it'll just be interpreted The Right Way.
The essay makes the assumption everyone is on board and wants to accomplish at least partially the same goals. You don't need to pay even much attention to politics to know that's not true.
One advantage that a large paid organization can have is strict testing requirements - I'm honestly not sure if I believe the Linux kernel is held to the strong standards that a commercial kernel theoretically could be
Are you on crack? I remember the 90s quite well, and there were TONS of local exploits by every commercial UNIX vendor. Sun, SGI, HP, you name it! The "commercial kernels" are no exception when it comes to local root exploits. The existence of this bug is a failure on Linux's part. There's no way to get around that.
I guess, but so what? If you're protecting some Big Secret, relying on the single best perfect lock is going to screw you every time. If this actually affects anyone, I'd put the blame more squarely on whoever implemented the system where some critical piece of information is dependent on one component of the security system failing. Defense in depth, as they say.
What's the best way to protect yourself from bugs like this? I'd say for starters don't give away shell accounts or accounts that allow people to execute arbitrary code to someone untrusted. Local exploits are unlikely to go away completely as there's just too much code to exploit. If you truly can't help but give away shell accounts for whatever reason (and not use something like VMWare to just give everyone their own box), then work on mitigating the damage to local root access.
Yet another good example of why you shouldn't hire the sysadmins who blindly use what the vendors ship, but security and performance minded sysadmins who reduce installations to what's actually needed.
I used to do that 10+ years ago. Then I realized there's more interesting and useful things to do than waste my time learning what each and every kernel module was, what it did, if I really needed it, etc.
I also realized that I didn't want to screw around re-compiling kernels every time some new patch came out that fixed this-or-that.
With this specific case, it's quite rare these days to have untrusted users with the shell access required to execute this code. Nowadays Linux servers are running services that interact with the users rather than shell accounts, so almost nobody you don't already trust can execute arbitrary code.
It'd also be interesting to know if Security Enhanced Linux can prevent this exploit.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we'll have to pin our hopes on the next President telling his AG to investigate and pursue criminal charges against those responsible in the Bush Administration and in Congress.
It'll never happen, no matter who the president winds up being. Any administration doesn't want to look back on the previous one, and realistically they only have so much political capital to spend. This administration has screwed things up so badly that it'd actually be a waste of political capital for a new President to pursue that.
I'd say the only hope we have of that happening is someone in Congress to take up that cause.
Assume they recorded a conversation that was important, and part of that conversation was let's talk every Thursday. Or they said we're putting everything in place, we'll contact you shortly with the time.
Yah, that would be true if the current wiretaps were to expire when the legislation expired. But the law was written to specifically say they didn't. Any existing wiretaps expire when they were originally set to expire.
Nader has done more good for this country than Gore (or most others in politics.)
Maybe so, but what's he done lately?
Nader has turned into an egomaniac. What good did he do with his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaign?
This kinda makes me wonder if NASA and other space agencies purposely over-estimate the useful lives of their spacecraft.
There's a hidden premise here. The premise is we can know the expected lifetime of something that:
Which do you think is more likely?
The engineers all know how long the thing is going to last, but lie about it to make themselves and NASA look good.
or
They really don't know how long it's going to last, but make some very conservative estimates about the above unknowns, to make sure it'll last at least as long as the time frame it's supposed to. Sometimes those guesses turn out to make the thing last a lot longer than it needed to be.
Now IIRC at about Mach 1.5, aluminum begins to soften. I suspect the plastic in a pop bottle melts at a somewhat lower temperature.
At what altitude? The one large difference between going up, and going down is where in the atmosphere you're achieving top speed. Going up, the atmosphere obviously gets thinner as you're going faster.
Anyway, I suspect he's already gone beyond the original constraints of using an actual pop-bottle, since his second experiment mentions "Kevlar-reinforced, experimental missile".
Isn't "could eventually" one of those warning phrases that tells you something is dubious,
Sure. It think it's really more like communicating an upper limit. The more interesting number would be cost/watt.
So you're saying, give up my right to free speech on the internet, because it's trivial?
No, I mean that the IP theft is pretty trivial. My main interest is just what motivates people to go through what sounds like a long, convoluted process. It sounds like the situation just escalated with the other side trying to shout you down with counter-suits. Kind of dumb on their part, for something they could have likely settled for a few grand at the start.
I've posted about this litigation on Slashdot before, but the verdict is in now so here's the URL again: Gregerson v. Vilana
Huh. You won in the end, but it also sounds like you went through a lot of effort to do so. I have to wonder was it really worth it? I often wonder what motivates people to go through the legal system for what seems to the rest of us, mostly trivial matters.
Most people will be faceless sheep by comparison, doing nothing of significance in their lives.
There's some of us that think that swimming the english channel, or taking a hot air balloon father than others is "nothing of significance". So what? How did he affect anyone else's life?
I've got a lot more respect for someone who actually created something new (like the countless guys who created all the technology I'm currently using) than some guy who participated in a pissing contest. If he liked it, great. But I don't respect anything he's accomplished.
But many other agree with the sentiments expressed by the saying.
And many people disagree with the sentiments being expressed. What's your point?
Get it?
Not really. You've created another fantasy about "the best way to die". We don't even really know if this plane accident thing was Steve Fossett's "best way to die" or even if it was particularly horrible, or great, or anything. It's just a nice story to tell yourself, but none of it is real.
It's all just a bunch of nonsense to stave off the real thoughts about dying. In the end, the guy is still dead.
As an adventurer, a go-getter, a risk-taker, he inspires us to live.
Ballooning and flying long distances in a plane inspires you to live? I find that kind of sad. I don't need inspiration to live, do you?
The only people that really inspire me are anyone that's tried to change the world for the better. Hell, even Bill Gates is using his billions to do that. This guy has used to his billions for his own pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess. But I just don't understand why it's so inspiring, or great, or whatever. He's just participating in a giant pissing contest about who can do thing X longer, faster, or bigger.
Evel Knievel did the same thing. I didn't see his death announced on slashdot, and he was a hell of a lot more popular for more years than Fossett.
Know what? That was better.
For who? You? I thought we were talking about Steve Fossett, not his family.
Sorry about your dad, we'll all likely face that day sometime. But I just don't understand why one way of dying is better than some other way of dying. I'm sure we can all agree that being tortured to death would be pretty horrible.. but I just don't understand this weird story people have come up with, where Steve Fosset is grinning, flying into the sunset, and then the movie ends with a "Steve Fosset was never found again". That's not real, that's a story that people tell themselves isn't a story.
Now, if each of us could click a "jackass" button, and when a certain number of them get pressed the individual responsible receives a brief 30 kV electric shock
Get over it already. If you're really that ticked off by some random tag on slashdot, I suggest barricading yourself in a room and never coming out again.
I'm offended at least once a week by stories I read in the mainstream media. The AP carried a story yesterday about the IL shooter guy, expressing amazement how he didn't fit into the little box the news media created for the Virginia Tech guy. I laughed, and it was amusing.. but I find the media practice of turning every killer into simplistic, easy to understand, "not like you" terms disturbing and offensive. They can't fit him into the "didn't like people, disagreeable" box, so they've found the "he was off his medication" box. I don't really know if that had anything to do with it.. but then again neither does anyone else.
Why is Fossett's wife in a rush to declare that her husband is dead?
Because it's probably pretty hard to run an estate of a billionaire without the guy being dead. Even billionaires have bills to pay.
Whether he was enjoying the last moments of life or not, he was at least enjoying life up to that point.
Followed by many moments of intense panic, worry, etc. What is it with this strange fantasy people concoct about death? I just don't buy the whole story about how great it is to die while "doing something you love". It's just a fairy tale people tell themselves to make them feel a bit better about death.
I agree. Unfortunately for you, there's too many people that don't like the grim reality that "thrillseeking" is just about an ego or adrenaline rush, and not something to be really be proud of, so they mod you down.
That's a generally accepted shorthand for "at least he was engaged in an activity he enjoyed, not rotting away in an Alzheimers ward or in the agonizing throes of cancer".
Why is that any better? He's still dead. If you were to die from cancer, or some other long term disease, at least you die with the people around you. He died alone, in some unknown place. That's supposed to be "better"?
This is no tragedy; we should be celebrating this man's life.
A billionaire who spent his billions on hot air balloon rides, and trying to fly around the world?
Sorry, I just don't see much worth celebrating. I'm sure he loved it, and great for him and all. But I don't find what he did or accomplished terribly noteworthy or important.
That makes a lot more sense. I didn't quite understand how any sane investment group would expect to make back $100 million on this dumb SCO case. But a 10 million dollar risk at a perceived chance to make a lot more makes more sense.
At this point in the ruling though, I just don't see how they intend to win the case.
What about those journals (Nature and Science, maybe?) that do not allow this.
They'll just have to change their policy. I'm sure this is really what this whole policy is about. If enough research institutions make this a policy, the journals which have had so much control over controlling publication will have no other choice.
The limitations of transfer rates for scp is often the round trip time that consumes time for confirmation of received packages. This is a serious issue for transfers from the Europe to the US West Coast (around 200 ms) or to Australia (around 400 ms).
Huh. I'm surprised TCP sliding window protocol doesn't take care of that. Shouldn't it account for filling up the pipeline between sender and receiver?
There's a big part of why Things Are The Way They Are missing in this far too long essay (which I didn't find interesting enough to fully read).
Laws aren't always made to serve the people. Laws are made by politicians, many of which have differing motivations. Some want to get re-elected, some don't like the law being developed, and want to either kill it, or make it innefective, some are heavily influenced by lobby groups, some are just plain morons and just believe they can pass any law they like, and it'll just be interpreted The Right Way.
The essay makes the assumption everyone is on board and wants to accomplish at least partially the same goals. You don't need to pay even much attention to politics to know that's not true.
One advantage that a large paid organization can have is strict testing requirements - I'm honestly not sure if I believe the Linux kernel is held to the strong standards that a commercial kernel theoretically could be
Are you on crack? I remember the 90s quite well, and there were TONS of local exploits by every commercial UNIX vendor. Sun, SGI, HP, you name it! The "commercial kernels" are no exception when it comes to local root exploits.
The existence of this bug is a failure on Linux's part. There's no way to get around that.
I guess, but so what? If you're protecting some Big Secret, relying on the single best perfect lock is going to screw you every time. If this actually affects anyone, I'd put the blame more squarely on whoever implemented the system where some critical piece of information is dependent on one component of the security system failing. Defense in depth, as they say.
What's the best way to protect yourself from bugs like this? I'd say for starters don't give away shell accounts or accounts that allow people to execute arbitrary code to someone untrusted. Local exploits are unlikely to go away completely as there's just too much code to exploit. If you truly can't help but give away shell accounts for whatever reason (and not use something like VMWare to just give everyone their own box), then work on mitigating the damage to local root access.
Yet another good example of why you shouldn't hire the sysadmins who blindly use what the vendors ship, but security and performance minded sysadmins who reduce installations to what's actually needed.
I used to do that 10+ years ago. Then I realized there's more interesting and useful things to do than waste my time learning what each and every kernel module was, what it did, if I really needed it, etc.
I also realized that I didn't want to screw around re-compiling kernels every time some new patch came out that fixed this-or-that.
With this specific case, it's quite rare these days to have untrusted users with the shell access required to execute this code. Nowadays Linux servers are running services that interact with the users rather than shell accounts, so almost nobody you don't already trust can execute arbitrary code.
It'd also be interesting to know if Security Enhanced Linux can prevent this exploit.