Regarding your point of features, there was a firmware modification for the Linksys WRT54G router (A Google search comes up with a ton of results if you start searching for VPN WRT54G linux firmware). This seems to have a reasonable development community now the code is open source.
Lawsuits: I can't exactly chime up and say that I have written large amounts of GPL code, or anything like that. I can only say though, that I am working on a project at the moment, that I will open source shortly. At that point I hope it is more of a contribution. When I think about that, and think if somebody took off with it and rebadged it and sold it as a commmercial binary product, and didn't release the changes that they made, or give me credit for what they did; I would be pissed.
If they continued on with my development, contributed, and became part of the community I want to build, then I would be very thankful.
Bringing this back to the issue at hand however says to me, that they don't want to be a part of the community, and if this is the case, then they shouldn't have taken off with our code.
If they don't like the GPL and what it stands for; they can go out and write their own kernel, take off with BSD, whatever. But they shouldn't be taking off with code that isn't theirs.
As far as I am concerned, (although I don't want to be SCO, or a Microsoft or an IBM for that matter) I say we take them to the cleaners, just to make the message clear "This is our code. You are more then welcome to it, you just have to play by the rules. They aren't difficult or painful, you just have to be open about what you do"
Finally a little support for your comment of:
"Support another chipset vendor, you twits! " This one I will definately harp in on and say do it. If they don't want to play, then ditch them. Secondly, in personal experience I haven't had a lot of luck with RealTek chipsets before, they have pretty crap throughput and certainly aren't as good as Intel (Old style 82557 style chips) or the 3Com (Etherlink XL? PCI 10/100) cards.
If we could however get a hack for these boards to use something decent and include that in the kernel that we are compiling for these units, why the hell not. Intel have open sourced their code under the GPL, why not get a good Intel Pro100S chip and start doing IPSEC handoff to the chips for VPN? (Just a guess, but something to think about if we have the real code)
That could easily be used as a DoS against someone's email box ("Let's all leave a message for that ass Professor Doofus tonight!")
Maybe, but you would have to be pretty hard up to do so. Most voice recordings that I get on my email are about 50 KB (Don't forget 8kbps mono signals that come from voice modems aren't exactly high quality or large) How much is a large'ish HDD? 160GB? Try filling that in a hurry.
It uses Jet, the same database format as what is used in Exchange. If you want more information a couple of technet searches should see you good. Note the use of edbutil to fix up active directory databases, and eseutil to fix Exchange database issues. If you look up a few of the articles on the net they also say that Active Directory uses the Jet database system as well.
There is another post above mine saying people can get access to passwords etc. Yes true to some degree, but the password isn't stored in plaintext, its stored encrypted. So you either have to have physical access to the box, a tape backup (and hope the tape data isn't encrypted) or you need admin access. If you have admin access already it doesn't matter as you can reset passwords, or otherwise you can at least using something like pwdump and get a copy of the password list anyway. You shouldn't have physical access to the box if you aren't an admin either. So really, it isn't that insecure.
Really, this isn't any more insecure than anything else. The password variables I don't believe passwords can be queried via. LDAP either. It just returns the data as "binary value".
How about the people that put out this hardware include somewhere in the hardware that is connected (Firmware, flash, whatever) a URL for the machine to follow to pick up the latest drivers / software for that hardware. If the machine has the software installed locally it uses that temporarily and the machine comes up saying:
"You have connected new hardware to this computer, the hardware is currently usable, but may not be optimal. Do you want to connect to the internet and see if there is a newer version of this software?"
Once the software is installed, the machine every now and again, checks the page for a new version number to see if there is a new version.
At the end of the day, you might say this is automated and bad; from a security point of view I have to agree to some degree. The only problem I have is that at the moment we are basically doing the same thing anyway, we are just doing it manually as opposed to automatically.
How many of the people out there review the binary drivers that they get for their SCSI card when they download them from Adaptec?
The inquiries would have came from people asking for proof before they purchased a license.
"OK, what am I purchasing a license for?"
"When you purchase a license, you are compensating SCO for the UNIX source code, derivative UNIX code and other UNIX-related intellectual property and copyrights owned by SCO as it is currently found in Linux"
"Oh OK, now I have a copy of the Linux kernel source code here, where exactly can it be found?"
"I'm sorry I don't have that information"
"I didn't think you did, when you do find out, let the lawyers in the US know. They don't appear to have a clue at the moment either. Thanks for your time."
The people that make the "official" Mars watch are going to make a packet, just look at how much Omega managed to milk out of the moon landing. Same thing.
Whoever ends up making these things will stand to earn a butt load of cash for what equates to a simple modification.
Seconded, I bought the lastest Massive Attack album from overseas and had it shipped here to Aus. for exactly that reason.
If I see a CD that I like, and it has copy protection, ok, back on the shelf, lets see what else is around.
BTW, something I thought I would mention, with the exception of older albums, and some of the Australian groups, most CDs here in Aus are actually about $30 as opposed to the $20 that people in the US are used to paying.
I have had two so far, the other one I still use as a regular back pack. (I got given a new one 'cause my ex thought the old one looked dirty) They are indestructable. I carry WAY too much stuff in these bags and they don't give me an ounce of grief.
The base of these bags is padded, and there is a seperate section in the back of the bag (also padded) for a laptop. You slide the closed laptop in from the top of the bag, and then you can lock it in with a strap held down by velcro and a draw cord (I personaly don't use this but if you wanted to hide your laptop in an open bag you could). This section is within the bag, so you still do the zip up around this.
The bag has multiple sections for carrying stuff, they have a pouch in the front for carrying iPods, Discmans and the like and a hole in there which sorta seals around the cable when you poke the cable through the pouch. Works brilliantly.
All the pieces of fabric are at a minimum double stitched and sealed I believe. As stated above I can't break them no matter what I do, and I consider myself hard on my equipment, my friends think I am nuts.
Laptop travel has the STM Sports back pack. I don't know where you are from, but have a look around the STM web site and I am sure you can organise something.
The best laptop backpack I have ever used, the build quality is great, the fabrics are strong, it doesn't get better than that.
What I didn't like, and what they obviously just plain don't get is the fact that the software that I am using under Linux at the moment is both cheaper and better. (Temporarily forgetting the whole open source thing)
All through the survey were things like:
How good a replacement is Linux for Windows?
(I don't see Linux as a replacement for Windows, Linux is my first choice)
Rank the importance of server operating attributes to your organization.
The options on this chart are:
higher price & less effort
lower price & more effort
They can only be looking at it from the point of view that lower price (linux) is more effort, when in actual fact it isn't. Windows is a much higher cost as I don't have access to the source. With the server environment that I have at the moment on linux, I use APT to pick up and install packages from an internal mirror once they are tested and I am happy with them. This happens automatically. This therefore means that it is a lower price and less effort.
The whole way through this survey all I could think of was "They don't get it do they? They just don't get it. How can it be so hard for them to understand?"
They are already behind the 8 ball, and they know it. They can't escape what's happening, so now they turn to the open Linux community to ask how the hell to get them out of the mess they are in.
I think Telstra re-directing / copying all traffic for port 25 outbound and then filtering on that would be more trouble than it's worth.
I think given that they ARE the ISP and that they basically can do whatever they want, why wouldn't they just stop all access outbound to port 25 (Outside of their own network) and say to everyone "To send email you must use our mail servers". It wouldn't affect anyone but people who run their own mail servers (A very small percentage of Telstra's Cable and ADSL users).
People talk about the new announced change being restictive. What if Telstra came out saying their customers can ONLY use Telstra's mail servers. I don't see this as a major loss of functionality though. As long as you are on a Telstra network, you can actually use their mail servers, and send from any address. You don't have to be sending from an @telstra.com or @bigpond.com etc. email address.
From other things I have seen in the press recently about their recent major outtage; it was apparently blamed on a bad software upgrade from HP / Sun or something. Maybe this additional functionality is the reason for the upgrade, and their additional spending on their hardware is to account for messages they might hold until checked?
Possibly not. A lot of virii and worms send email directly; therefore not using Telstra's mail servers. Therefore Telstra wouldn't even see the messages leaving the machine.
If you read a little better, this is only for ADSL and Cable customers, why they would read offline (Unless they have a notebook or something) when on ADSL or Cable it doesn't matter if they are online or not?
On top of the previous posters comment regarding it only being investigated and not an automatic immediate suspension.
> You spend the first two years teaching a kid how to talk and walk, then you spend the next sixteen years telling them to shut up and sit down. Seems so pointless, doesn't it?
Agreed. They had a certain amount of oomph to them, but they need to go back to how they were before they did the first matrix and rewrite the sequels.
The graphics in the sequels were brilliant, the amount of work that they put in I can't take away from them. I still liked the sequels, but they just weren't enough of a mind fsck like the first one was, and that I would have liked to have seen more, even if it meant having to wait years for it.
I understand that the original poster quoted McBride hence the major reason to start the anti-fud.
But taking it the extra step and say they are including code into Linux, not just distributing it WITH Linux; as long they they don't release it outside of the business (i.e. a public release) then they are well within their rights (provided by the GPL) not to release their code at all.
I wanted to get this out in the open, so in case someone is reading through this, and I am correct, then we can do a little anit-fudding.
Merrill Lynch could use GPL code for their trading application, distribute it internally for their own purposes, even bundle it completely and make a "Trader workstation" out of GPL code, but as long as they were only using it internally, and never did a public release, they wouldn't have to release the source.
Now, admitedly, I would like to see ML release some source code especially if they used a heck of a lot of GPL code in the process, but if my memory serves me correctly, it isn't a requirement to do so.
Secondly to this, a lot of people also didn't have the ability to easily modify the metadata / config for IIS, which is very much required for hosting setups. This became a lot easier in IIS 6.0 (Part of Windows 2003 server) these people went over to Apache from IIS to get around this.
Now Windows 2003 server has been around for a few months and they are moving the rest of their setups back to IIS. It was a shift that was bound to happen.
Here is Australia I sent a message over to the ACCC and to the Copyright council about this.
Basically after talking to them and the Copyright council, the answer I ended up with the answer that it could be returned under the Fair Trade Act, saying the the CD "Was not fit for purchase" in that it did not do what it was intended to do.
If you intended it to play on a computer and it doesn't you can return it for a refund or credit or otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
My $0.02
Regarding your point of features, there was a firmware modification for the Linksys WRT54G router (A Google search comes up with a ton of results if you start searching for VPN WRT54G linux firmware). This seems to have a reasonable development community now the code is open source.
Lawsuits: I can't exactly chime up and say that I have written large amounts of GPL code, or anything like that. I can only say though, that I am working on a project at the moment, that I will open source shortly. At that point I hope it is more of a contribution. When I think about that, and think if somebody took off with it and rebadged it and sold it as a commmercial binary product, and didn't release the changes that they made, or give me credit for what they did; I would be pissed.
If they continued on with my development, contributed, and became part of the community I want to build, then I would be very thankful.
Bringing this back to the issue at hand however says to me, that they don't want to be a part of the community, and if this is the case, then they shouldn't have taken off with our code.
If they don't like the GPL and what it stands for; they can go out and write their own kernel, take off with BSD, whatever. But they shouldn't be taking off with code that isn't theirs.
As far as I am concerned, (although I don't want to be SCO, or a Microsoft or an IBM for that matter) I say we take them to the cleaners, just to make the message clear "This is our code. You are more then welcome to it, you just have to play by the rules. They aren't difficult or painful, you just have to be open about what you do"
Finally a little support for your comment of:
"Support another chipset vendor, you twits! "
This one I will definately harp in on and say do it. If they don't want to play, then ditch them. Secondly, in personal experience I haven't had a lot of luck with RealTek chipsets before, they have pretty crap throughput and certainly aren't as good as Intel (Old style 82557 style chips) or the 3Com (Etherlink XL? PCI 10/100) cards.
If we could however get a hack for these boards to use something decent and include that in the kernel that we are compiling for these units, why the hell not. Intel have open sourced their code under the GPL, why not get a good Intel Pro100S chip and start doing IPSEC handoff to the chips for VPN? (Just a guess, but something to think about if we have the real code)
Berny
That could easily be used as a DoS against someone's email box ("Let's all leave a message for that ass Professor Doofus tonight!")
Maybe, but you would have to be pretty hard up to do so. Most voice recordings that I get on my email are about 50 KB (Don't forget 8kbps mono signals that come from voice modems aren't exactly high quality or large) How much is a large'ish HDD? 160GB? Try filling that in a hurry.
vgetty provides this functionality.
It uses Jet, the same database format as what is used in Exchange. If you want more information a couple of technet searches should see you good. Note the use of edbutil to fix up active directory databases, and eseutil to fix Exchange database issues. If you look up a few of the articles on the net they also say that Active Directory uses the Jet database system as well.
There is another post above mine saying people can get access to passwords etc. Yes true to some degree, but the password isn't stored in plaintext, its stored encrypted. So you either have to have physical access to the box, a tape backup (and hope the tape data isn't encrypted) or you need admin access. If you have admin access already it doesn't matter as you can reset passwords, or otherwise you can at least using something like pwdump and get a copy of the password list anyway. You shouldn't have physical access to the box if you aren't an admin either. So really, it isn't that insecure.
Really, this isn't any more insecure than anything else. The password variables I don't believe passwords can be queried via. LDAP either. It just returns the data as "binary value".
Extremely funny, love your work!
Hey Stokey,
I know you would be looking through the comments, so when you get something, let me know!
berny@.technology.net.au
Just a question for everyone here:
Who thinks this could have been any better with Open Source and why?
People make the comment of the many eyes, but who is really looking at the code?
Stupid buggy release, those linux idiots can't get anything right..... :P
Here is a thought.
How about the people that put out this hardware include somewhere in the hardware that is connected (Firmware, flash, whatever) a URL for the machine to follow to pick up the latest drivers / software for that hardware. If the machine has the software installed locally it uses that temporarily and the machine comes up saying:
"You have connected new hardware to this computer, the hardware is currently usable, but may not be optimal. Do you want to connect to the internet and see if there is a newer version of this software?"
Once the software is installed, the machine every now and again, checks the page for a new version number to see if there is a new version.
At the end of the day, you might say this is automated and bad; from a security point of view I have to agree to some degree. The only problem I have is that at the moment we are basically doing the same thing anyway, we are just doing it manually as opposed to automatically.
How many of the people out there review the binary drivers that they get for their SCSI card when they download them from Adaptec?
Thoughts? Comments?
The inquiries would have came from people asking for proof before they purchased a license.
"OK, what am I purchasing a license for?"
"When you purchase a license, you are compensating SCO for the UNIX source code, derivative UNIX code and other UNIX-related intellectual property and copyrights owned by SCO as it is currently found in Linux"
"Oh OK, now I have a copy of the Linux kernel source code here, where exactly can it be found?"
"I'm sorry I don't have that information"
"I didn't think you did, when you do find out, let the lawyers in the US know. They don't appear to have a clue at the moment either. Thanks for your time."
"Bye"
Simplest answer of the lot. Advertising.
The people that make the "official" Mars watch are going to make a packet, just look at how much Omega managed to milk out of the moon landing. Same thing.
Whoever ends up making these things will stand to earn a butt load of cash for what equates to a simple modification.
Seconded, I bought the lastest Massive Attack album from overseas and had it shipped here to Aus. for exactly that reason.
If I see a CD that I like, and it has copy protection, ok, back on the shelf, lets see what else is around.
BTW, something I thought I would mention, with the exception of older albums, and some of the Australian groups, most CDs here in Aus are actually about $30 as opposed to the $20 that people in the US are used to paying.
VERY big recommendation on these backpacks.
I have had two so far, the other one I still use as a regular back pack. (I got given a new one 'cause my ex thought the old one looked dirty) They are indestructable. I carry WAY too much stuff in these bags and they don't give me an ounce of grief.
The base of these bags is padded, and there is a seperate section in the back of the bag (also padded) for a laptop. You slide the closed laptop in from the top of the bag, and then you can lock it in with a strap held down by velcro and a draw cord (I personaly don't use this but if you wanted to hide your laptop in an open bag you could). This section is within the bag, so you still do the zip up around this.
The bag has multiple sections for carrying stuff, they have a pouch in the front for carrying iPods, Discmans and the like and a hole in there which sorta seals around the cable when you poke the cable through the pouch. Works brilliantly.
All the pieces of fabric are at a minimum double stitched and sealed I believe. As stated above I can't break them no matter what I do, and I consider myself hard on my equipment, my friends think I am nuts.
I have got the STM Ultra and the Sports.
Laptop travel has the STM Sports back pack. I don't know where you are from, but have a look around the STM web site and I am sure you can organise something.
The best laptop backpack I have ever used, the build quality is great, the fabrics are strong, it doesn't get better than that.
Berny
I have completed the business users survey.
What I didn't like, and what they obviously just plain don't get is the fact that the software that I am using under Linux at the moment is both cheaper and better. (Temporarily forgetting the whole open source thing)
All through the survey were things like:
How good a replacement is Linux for Windows?
(I don't see Linux as a replacement for Windows, Linux is my first choice)
Rank the importance of server operating attributes to your organization.
The options on this chart are:
higher price & less effort
lower price & more effort
They can only be looking at it from the point of view that lower price (linux) is more effort, when in actual fact it isn't. Windows is a much higher cost as I don't have access to the source.
With the server environment that I have at the moment on linux, I use APT to pick up and install packages from an internal mirror once they are tested and I am happy with them. This happens automatically. This therefore means that it is a lower price and less effort.
The whole way through this survey all I could think of was "They don't get it do they? They just don't get it. How can it be so hard for them to understand?"
They are already behind the 8 ball, and they know it. They can't escape what's happening, so now they turn to the open Linux community to ask how the hell to get them out of the mess they are in.
Integrated products, open standards, lower costs.
They just don't get it.
Berny
I think Telstra re-directing / copying all traffic for port 25 outbound and then filtering on that would be more trouble than it's worth.
I think given that they ARE the ISP and that they basically can do whatever they want, why wouldn't they just stop all access outbound to port 25 (Outside of their own network) and say to everyone "To send email you must use our mail servers". It wouldn't affect anyone but people who run their own mail servers (A very small percentage of Telstra's Cable and ADSL users).
People talk about the new announced change being restictive. What if Telstra came out saying their customers can ONLY use Telstra's mail servers. I don't see this as a major loss of functionality though. As long as you are on a Telstra network, you can actually use their mail servers, and send from any address. You don't have to be sending from an @telstra.com or @bigpond.com etc. email address.
From other things I have seen in the press recently about their recent major outtage; it was apparently blamed on a bad software upgrade from HP / Sun or something. Maybe this additional functionality is the reason for the upgrade, and their additional spending on their hardware is to account for messages they might hold until checked?
Simple mistake. I had viruses there, and thought, "Nope, viruses virii... Bugger virii will do, people still know what I mean".
"I've seen grammar nazis before but this is the most incredible thing I've personally ever witnessed."
I read that and the last part of your previous sentence and nearly fell off my chair laughing.
Great work.
Possibly not. A lot of virii and worms send email directly; therefore not using Telstra's mail servers. Therefore Telstra wouldn't even see the messages leaving the machine.
If you read a little better, this is only for ADSL and Cable customers, why they would read offline (Unless they have a notebook or something) when on ADSL or Cable it doesn't matter if they are online or not?
On top of the previous posters comment regarding it only being investigated and not an automatic immediate suspension.
> You spend the first two years teaching a kid how to talk and walk, then you spend the next sixteen years telling them to shut up and sit down. Seems so pointless, doesn't it?
Love your work, so very very true.
Agreed. They had a certain amount of oomph to them, but they need to go back to how they were before they did the first matrix and rewrite the sequels.
The graphics in the sequels were brilliant, the amount of work that they put in I can't take away from them. I still liked the sequels, but they just weren't enough of a mind fsck like the first one was, and that I would have liked to have seen more, even if it meant having to wait years for it.
Berny
I understand that the original poster quoted McBride hence the major reason to start the anti-fud.
But taking it the extra step and say they are including code into Linux, not just distributing it WITH Linux; as long they they don't release it outside of the business (i.e. a public release) then they are well within their rights (provided by the GPL) not to release their code at all.
Correct?
Berny
And does someone want to shoot me down for this?
I wanted to get this out in the open, so in case someone is reading through this, and I am correct, then we can do a little anit-fudding.
Merrill Lynch could use GPL code for their trading application, distribute it internally for their own purposes, even bundle it completely and make a "Trader workstation" out of GPL code, but as long as they were only using it internally, and never did a public release, they wouldn't have to release the source.
Now, admitedly, I would like to see ML release some source code especially if they used a heck of a lot of GPL code in the process, but if my memory serves me correctly, it isn't a requirement to do so.
Anyone want to correct me on this?
Berny
Secondly to this, a lot of people also didn't have the ability to easily modify the metadata / config for IIS, which is very much required for hosting setups. This became a lot easier in IIS 6.0 (Part of Windows 2003 server) these people went over to Apache from IIS to get around this.
Now Windows 2003 server has been around for a few months and they are moving the rest of their setups back to IIS. It was a shift that was bound to happen.
Here is Australia I sent a message over to the ACCC and to the Copyright council about this.
Basically after talking to them and the Copyright council, the answer I ended up with the answer that it could be returned under the Fair Trade Act, saying the the CD "Was not fit for purchase" in that it did not do what it was intended to do.
If you intended it to play on a computer and it doesn't you can return it for a refund or credit or otherwise.
Unfortunately welcome to Windows. Windows always checks its other DNS servers first before it checks ones from VPNs.
Our only real option would be to put int. in the external DNS with NS records pointing to invalid addresses.
Unfortunately I am talking about Windows boxes, and not Linux. If it was linux then I could have configured it to work like this from day .