Finally, a little yeast on the back of every SCO bigwig, folks of the MPAA, RIAA, MS Employees, and most government officials...and they're useful again!
The problem isn't in the abundance, it is in human choice. Though I admit that an abundance of food makes it more difficult to choose not to consume it, for example, there is still a human choice to do so. (insert Matrix Architect/Oracle joke here)
Humans must sacrifice convenience sometimes for personal, psychological, and spiritual gain. Turn that IM into a phonecall, that e-mail into visiting your co-worker -- bring the human factor back!
Abundance isn't the problem. Technology isn't the problem. Humanity and their choices are the problem...and it doesn't have to be.
I know a guy that fixes printers for a living. However, he's a hobbyist auto mechanic who knows his stuff and can get the job done.
Think about it this way -- if you liked playing video games, would you really like playing video games for a living? Paid to run around level 1 of a platformer hundreds of times to see where it breaks? Probably not. But you'd like to play video games on your downtime. It relaxes you...and you're more motivated.
To not secure a system is very bad as it is. To then add complexity to it (and invite friendly neighborhood teenybopper script kiddies) can't be healthy.
Think about it -- not only can you have your machine exposed to the Internet on a dedicated line, you now also allow drive-by access to your internal network, and can act as a proxy to anything they may want to do online. Neat, huh?
When someone ignores security issues, they not only fsck themselves, they also fsck up the people around them. Cleaning up viruses, slowing down networks, giving virus/worm writers and crackers media exposure. Time that could be best spent doing something more productive gets wasted because some well-meaning user is wielding technology he or she can't grasp properly.
If that's paranoia, then pass me a tinfoil hat.
Why Wireless?
on
Wireless Hacks
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm questioning the purpose of wireless technology. I understand that it's more convenient than a wired network but is there anything else?
Unless you've got an office full of notebooks, the best solution still seems to be a mixture of both wireless and wired...with wireless locked down as much as possible (even to the point of having to VPN through to the internal network).
It's fairly scary that one of the main reasons people go wireless if for convenience (and supposed simplicity for home users) -- and it's these same home users that will probably not take the time and effort to learn how to secure their network.
Do I like SUN for sponsoring and helping develop OOo or do I hate them for supposedly backing SCO, keeping Java "proprietary," creating the Mad Hatter "Java Desktop" and having an overall lukewarm attitude towards Linux?
Either way, many thanks to the folks of OOo -- they're a heuuuuge factor in making my laptop functional and productuve...and MS-Free.
I'm having a bit of a hard time defining the fine line between kernel and distro...especially at the driver level. I understand that stuff like Quanta and GIMP are not kernel stuff but are hardware drivers a kernel thing or a distro thing? (Network Cards and modems, for example)
On a different note -- maybe I'm talking out of ignorance here but one of the things I've been looking for is encryption support. As in being to encrypt folders and files, etc. The closest I found seemed a bit scary to try with kernel patching and loopback or whatnot. Am I just looking in the wrong spots?
I've read that one of the suspected purposes of Sobig was to create this zombie network with which to propagate spam. Now this article pretty much points us in that direction. Really disturbing.
I would think that the old days created industrial spy-caliber "hackers" but now it seems that a local script kiddie with a few ways to plant trojans can now have a decent going rate in the black market.
I wonder if there will now be flourishing closed-source underground 1337 groups who don't share 0'day exploitz (and thus stopping the "information wants to be free" mantra) because it has more value sold to marketeers who want to create their zombie army of spam.
More pressure on the powers-that-be to stop viruses, trojans, and the like from getting control of a PC...or at least educate users in the possible consequences they may have.
but there's nothing more rewarding than jumping on my A-Wing after work and blasting me some storm troopers by the mountains of Southern California. Wait, none of you have A-Wings? What do you mean there aren't any REAL storm troopers?
Seriously, though -- those that can't differentiate a game from reality shouldn't be allowed to play those games.
In my youth, I was quite a morbid creature even without much influence from video games. I will not refute any claim that video games introduce forms of violence...and really, so does any form of media. It is a matter of having someone instilling moral values to children. Just because the lead guy in Vice City blasts people with an AK doesn't mean it's ok to do the same in real life.
Parents -- your children WILL be playing these games. If not at your house, then at a friend's. Be proactive and responsible enough to make sure they realize the difference between fantasy and reality.
If they don't get it, let them know first-hand how much a crowbar can hurt by going Gordon Freeman on their violent selves.
I do wish I could get a good, clear, Linux-favoring argument on the security level (or any other level for that matter). I really am concerned about personal zealotry and the less I come off as a Penguinoid, the more believable/convincing I would be.
Alrighty then -- is this one step closer to being able to hold MS/lazy admins liable for not patching their systems? I mean think about it -- it's not exactly "spam" but those e-mail worms are most definitely unsolicited.
Install Linux on a killer laptop (slackware or gentoo for brownie points)
Get decent entertainment center (TV, DVD, PVR, speakers)
Get a dvd movie collection stocked with LoTR, Matrix, BTTFuture, Monty Python, Alton Brown cooking DVD's, Star Wars (only to comment on how much of a sell-out Lucas is), and if you're l337, RevolutionOS and Freedom Downtime.
Get a handful of books. O'Reily ones. None of that "For Dummies" series except if it's the RH9 one written by Mad Dog.
Get them on Slashdot...but PLEASE initiate them with AYB, Beowulf Clusters, In Soviet Russia, Welcoming Overlords, Profit!, etc.
If the Slashdot crowd doesn't already get them to do it, have them chant Microsoft Sux and SCO Sux until they absolutely wholeheartedly believe it.
Abuse them by asking them to fix their relatives' computers and explain to their AOLer friends what FTP is.
A bit like the PDF to Text command line stuff that already exists. Lots of power there if it can be tapped.
Office document gets parsed by a script, the images extracted and run through mogrify for scaling and branding, then the text gets translated to xhtml for posting on a DB-driven site somewhere.
Even better -- a BOFH can scan through the network of shared documents, catalog any and all confidential information, grep them for anything particularly interesting, and maybe post a few names into alt.social.deviants or whatnot. All from a small script instead of half a day wading through mundane memos and accounting info. That's efficiency!
True, I had problems with that particular CD on an NT system but if I recall correctly, it played ok on a Win2K box. Also, there were mega apologies about the cd not working on some computers. I'm hoping they've learned to get past that.
In other news, I got the Poodle Hat video to play on my RH9 machine where he mentions the "value added" thing and takes a shot at downloaded music.
The justification that mp3 "sharing" is ok based on the notion that anyone trading mp3s would not have been in the demographic to buy a cd anyway strikes me as odd.
As a consumer, it bothers me greatly everytime I purchase something and someone mentions that they got the same product for a lesser price. I believe that makes me a bad shopper. So if I buy a cd and someone can get it at a cheaper price, I feel cheated. (on an off-topic note, American consumers who buy MS software at full price should feel this cheated after MS price cuts in other countries)
What some suggest (me included) is an increased value on those music CDs. I mean for 2 bucks more, you can get a DVD which has 2hrs of high quality audio/video, support for various languages, and often has lots of bonus features. Maybe if more musicians created DVDs or CDs with their music, some live performances or interviews, or at least a couple of music videos -- more people would want to buy instead of downloading songs for free.
To increase the relevance of SCO in the current IT market, they put out a new press release regarding this Gnoppix CD:
Dateline 9/12/2003 -- a day after the anniversary of a great tragedy, the terrorists have struck again by continuing to disrespect our Intellectual Property. The Gnoppix CD is in clear violation of everything we stand for. It should be stopped.
In response to Gnoppix and its predecessor Knoppix, our last programmer (since we've turned to a litigation-based business model) was asked to create SCOppix with which you could try our operating system without having to install it onto your hard drive, thus avoiding violating our IP. Users of SCOppix will not be targeted in any of our litigation.
All users will be required to click through our EULA which states that by clicking, they agree that SCO owns Linux, the user's computer, the user's house, the user's underpants (UNDERPANTS? isn't that just silly? Guess it hasn't stopped us before so why not), and all his base, and will thus be forced to become indentured servants of SCO. Furthermore, by accessing the CD with their computers, they will immediately be charged $699 anyway.
We are firm in our resolve that our Intellectual Property rights will be enforced to the far reaches of the planet. Every human, every penguin, every gnome (are you sure this is good to mention?) using our IP shall be charged until we can all sleep soundly at night knowing our children are safe from these terrorists. (and our bank accounts profit from this great pump-and-dump business model).
KDE GUI version should be called Krang since Shredder would obviously be used from the command line (shell). Maybe it should have helper apps called Bebop and Rocksteady. And if the need should arise, the project shouldn't fork...it should splinter.
Re:Java, my abusive friend
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
A while back when I was tinkering with the language (and before I was introduced to NMap), I wanted to utilize Java's multi-threading capabilities to create a basic port scanner.
I was a VB person and was stuck with making single-thread socket stuff which took eons. Though I managed to create similar code in Java, I didn't stick around long enough to do much else with it. I was definitely thrilled when I ran the same "compiled" code on a Win98 and a RH7.3 box, though.
Oh, and did some text-parsing stuff to try and do reports on a test webserver's logs. That was fun. But again, just playing around.
So mostly I was thinking of the great Multi-Platform promise of Java. I know it means UI and AWT/Swing/etc. which I'm hearing a lot of ugly things about while reading these threads.
I'm sure JSP is a whole different beast and I tinker more with PHP (and ASP out of obligation)
So yeah, all the IDEs I tried had some UI stuff in them...for client-side GUI apps.
DirecTV is playing reruns of The Rocketeer? Hell yeah they should be sued -- that's a crime against humanity, damn it!!!
Java, my abusive friend
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
Java, to me, seems like being in an abusive relationship. I've tried it and couldn't grasp it, then left for a while. Came back with more knowledge and was disappointed by speed (ran on a slow machine while trying IDEs from Borland and Forte).
There seems to be a great promise there and I keep coming back to try to learn it but it seems I always leave disappointed. Then again, it's a matter of time and commitment, I suppose.
Anyone know any good/quick IDEs for Java? (that would install on a RH9 distro, that is) Having said that, I haven't tried.NET at all. I've read about Project Mono, but that's about it.:)
Being a caffeine junkie, I'm sure there's bonus points for coding in java.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, a little yeast on the back of every SCO bigwig, folks of the MPAA, RIAA, MS Employees, and most government officials...and they're useful again!
Who said we couldn't find good uses for vermin?
The problem isn't in the abundance, it is in human choice. Though I admit that an abundance of food makes it more difficult to choose not to consume it, for example, there is still a human choice to do so. (insert Matrix Architect/Oracle joke here)
Humans must sacrifice convenience sometimes for personal, psychological, and spiritual gain. Turn that IM into a phonecall, that e-mail into visiting your co-worker -- bring the human factor back!
Abundance isn't the problem. Technology isn't the problem. Humanity and their choices are the problem...and it doesn't have to be.
Hobbyists, man!
I know a guy that fixes printers for a living. However, he's a hobbyist auto mechanic who knows his stuff and can get the job done.
Think about it this way -- if you liked playing video games, would you really like playing video games for a living? Paid to run around level 1 of a platformer hundreds of times to see where it breaks? Probably not. But you'd like to play video games on your downtime. It relaxes you...and you're more motivated.
To not secure a system is very bad as it is. To then add complexity to it (and invite friendly neighborhood teenybopper script kiddies) can't be healthy.
Think about it -- not only can you have your machine exposed to the Internet on a dedicated line, you now also allow drive-by access to your internal network, and can act as a proxy to anything they may want to do online. Neat, huh?
When someone ignores security issues, they not only fsck themselves, they also fsck up the people around them. Cleaning up viruses, slowing down networks, giving virus/worm writers and crackers media exposure. Time that could be best spent doing something more productive gets wasted because some well-meaning user is wielding technology he or she can't grasp properly.
If that's paranoia, then pass me a tinfoil hat.
I'm questioning the purpose of wireless technology. I understand that it's more convenient than a wired network but is there anything else?
Unless you've got an office full of notebooks, the best solution still seems to be a mixture of both wireless and wired...with wireless locked down as much as possible (even to the point of having to VPN through to the internal network).
It's fairly scary that one of the main reasons people go wireless if for convenience (and supposed simplicity for home users) -- and it's these same home users that will probably not take the time and effort to learn how to secure their network.
Weasels in local zoos began protesting after slanderous survey compared them to the likes of Microsoft, GW-Bush, and the RIAA.
One outraged animal was quoted as saying "enough's enough, man! We've been portrayed negatively throughout history but this is pretty low."
Wouldn't such a fast patching be nullified by the new practice of releasing patches monthly?
Sure, we've got the fix...but you'll have to wait next month 'til we release it.
Of course this 24hr patch average sounds a lot like a case of bogosity.
so I'll follow the SUN?
Do I like SUN for sponsoring and helping develop OOo or do I hate them for supposedly backing SCO, keeping Java "proprietary," creating the Mad Hatter "Java Desktop" and having an overall lukewarm attitude towards Linux?
Either way, many thanks to the folks of OOo -- they're a heuuuuge factor in making my laptop functional and productuve...and MS-Free.
I'm having a bit of a hard time defining the fine line between kernel and distro...especially at the driver level. I understand that stuff like Quanta and GIMP are not kernel stuff but are hardware drivers a kernel thing or a distro thing? (Network Cards and modems, for example)
On a different note -- maybe I'm talking out of ignorance here but one of the things I've been looking for is encryption support. As in being to encrypt folders and files, etc. The closest I found seemed a bit scary to try with kernel patching and loopback or whatnot. Am I just looking in the wrong spots?
I've read that one of the suspected purposes of Sobig was to create this zombie network with which to propagate spam. Now this article pretty much points us in that direction. Really disturbing.
I would think that the old days created industrial spy-caliber "hackers" but now it seems that a local script kiddie with a few ways to plant trojans can now have a decent going rate in the black market.
I wonder if there will now be flourishing closed-source underground 1337 groups who don't share 0'day exploitz (and thus stopping the "information wants to be free" mantra) because it has more value sold to marketeers who want to create their zombie army of spam.
More pressure on the powers-that-be to stop viruses, trojans, and the like from getting control of a PC...or at least educate users in the possible consequences they may have.
but there's nothing more rewarding than jumping on my A-Wing after work and blasting me some storm troopers by the mountains of Southern California. Wait, none of you have A-Wings? What do you mean there aren't any REAL storm troopers?
Seriously, though -- those that can't differentiate a game from reality shouldn't be allowed to play those games.
In my youth, I was quite a morbid creature even without much influence from video games. I will not refute any claim that video games introduce forms of violence...and really, so does any form of media. It is a matter of having someone instilling moral values to children. Just because the lead guy in Vice City blasts people with an AK doesn't mean it's ok to do the same in real life.
Parents -- your children WILL be playing these games. If not at your house, then at a friend's. Be proactive and responsible enough to make sure they realize the difference between fantasy and reality.
If they don't get it, let them know first-hand how much a crowbar can hurt by going Gordon Freeman on their violent selves.
For those interested, there's a rebuttal linked from Newsforge which pretty much summarizes a lot of the points made here.
Direct link to the article here.
I do wish I could get a good, clear, Linux-favoring argument on the security level (or any other level for that matter). I really am concerned about personal zealotry and the less I come off as a Penguinoid, the more believable/convincing I would be.
GNU/Howard Dean, then?
Shhhh, don't tell Stallman or we'll never hear the end of it!
Alrighty then -- is this one step closer to being able to hold MS/lazy admins liable for not patching their systems? I mean think about it -- it's not exactly "spam" but those e-mail worms are most definitely unsolicited.
Instant Street Cred:
A bit like the PDF to Text command line stuff that already exists. Lots of power there if it can be tapped.
Office document gets parsed by a script, the images extracted and run through mogrify for scaling and branding, then the text gets translated to xhtml for posting on a DB-driven site somewhere.
Even better -- a BOFH can scan through the network of shared documents, catalog any and all confidential information, grep them for anything particularly interesting, and maybe post a few names into alt.social.deviants or whatnot. All from a small script instead of half a day wading through mundane memos and accounting info. That's efficiency!
True, I had problems with that particular CD on an NT system but if I recall correctly, it played ok on a Win2K box. Also, there were mega apologies about the cd not working on some computers. I'm hoping they've learned to get past that.
In other news, I got the Poodle Hat video to play on my RH9 machine where he mentions the "value added" thing and takes a shot at downloaded music.
The justification that mp3 "sharing" is ok based on the notion that anyone trading mp3s would not have been in the demographic to buy a cd anyway strikes me as odd.
As a consumer, it bothers me greatly everytime I purchase something and someone mentions that they got the same product for a lesser price. I believe that makes me a bad shopper. So if I buy a cd and someone can get it at a cheaper price, I feel cheated. (on an off-topic note, American consumers who buy MS software at full price should feel this cheated after MS price cuts in other countries)
What some suggest (me included) is an increased value on those music CDs. I mean for 2 bucks more, you can get a DVD which has 2hrs of high quality audio/video, support for various languages, and often has lots of bonus features. Maybe if more musicians created DVDs or CDs with their music, some live performances or interviews, or at least a couple of music videos -- more people would want to buy instead of downloading songs for free.
Yoran Nmap and Yoran Nessus
and Yoran Bastille or Yoran SELinux
This was funny until Yoran out of puns.
Cybersecurity, on the other hand, is supposedly not a joke.
5:00:00 - Profit!!!
To increase the relevance of SCO in the current IT market, they put out a new press release regarding this Gnoppix CD:
Dateline 9/12/2003 -- a day after the anniversary of a great tragedy, the terrorists have struck again by continuing to disrespect our Intellectual Property. The Gnoppix CD is in clear violation of everything we stand for. It should be stopped.
In response to Gnoppix and its predecessor Knoppix, our last programmer (since we've turned to a litigation-based business model) was asked to create SCOppix with which you could try our operating system without having to install it onto your hard drive, thus avoiding violating our IP. Users of SCOppix will not be targeted in any of our litigation.
All users will be required to click through our EULA which states that by clicking, they agree that SCO owns Linux, the user's computer, the user's house, the user's underpants (UNDERPANTS? isn't that just silly? Guess it hasn't stopped us before so why not), and all his base, and will thus be forced to become indentured servants of SCO. Furthermore, by accessing the CD with their computers, they will immediately be charged $699 anyway.
We are firm in our resolve that our Intellectual Property rights will be enforced to the far reaches of the planet. Every human, every penguin, every gnome (are you sure this is good to mention?) using our IP shall be charged until we can all sleep soundly at night knowing our children are safe from these terrorists. (and our bank accounts profit from this great pump-and-dump business model).
KDE GUI version should be called Krang since Shredder would obviously be used from the command line (shell). Maybe it should have helper apps called Bebop and Rocksteady. And if the need should arise, the project shouldn't fork...it should splinter.
A while back when I was tinkering with the language (and before I was introduced to NMap), I wanted to utilize Java's multi-threading capabilities to create a basic port scanner.
I was a VB person and was stuck with making single-thread socket stuff which took eons. Though I managed to create similar code in Java, I didn't stick around long enough to do much else with it. I was definitely thrilled when I ran the same "compiled" code on a Win98 and a RH7.3 box, though.
Oh, and did some text-parsing stuff to try and do reports on a test webserver's logs. That was fun. But again, just playing around.
So mostly I was thinking of the great Multi-Platform promise of Java. I know it means UI and AWT/Swing/etc. which I'm hearing a lot of ugly things about while reading these threads.
I'm sure JSP is a whole different beast and I tinker more with PHP (and ASP out of obligation)
So yeah, all the IDEs I tried had some UI stuff in them...for client-side GUI apps.
DirecTV is playing reruns of The Rocketeer? Hell yeah they should be sued -- that's a crime against humanity, damn it!!!
Java, to me, seems like being in an abusive relationship. I've tried it and couldn't grasp it, then left for a while. Came back with more knowledge and was disappointed by speed (ran on a slow machine while trying IDEs from Borland and Forte).
.NET at all. I've read about Project Mono, but that's about it. :)
There seems to be a great promise there and I keep coming back to try to learn it but it seems I always leave disappointed. Then again, it's a matter of time and commitment, I suppose.
Anyone know any good/quick IDEs for Java? (that would install on a RH9 distro, that is) Having said that, I haven't tried
Being a caffeine junkie, I'm sure there's bonus points for coding in java.