Thanks for those links I wasn't aware of that site in the past. For a laugh, read the description of the reports here: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/ man.200 310/webbug.html
A little bit of greasing of palms is a fairly common business practice. MS have probably seen that all that did, rather than persuade the rest of the world to move over to IIS, was cost MS money. So what comes next? I reckon the future will be MS playing dirtier. They'll buy up companies which have trivial web patents, and will sue every hosting company under the sun for "serving dynamically created content based on the user's prior browsing history" or something inane like that. (I made that one up.)
They have to start playing dirty now. Therefore they will.
I care very much about usability. After slackware 4.0, I dabbled with RedHat 5.0, 6.0, SuSE 6.2, and finally decided that the/most/ usable system was Debian, which I've been with for 3 years now. I'm with Debian because of usability, not for any other reason.
Usability's in the eye of the beholder. The most recent "improvements" in Debian's installer have made it _less_ usable to me. (I took longer to install my X-th debian system than I did any of the previous X-1 of them all those years ago.)
Good, good, I'm glad to see that I managed to find some idiot who was prepared to imply that passengers should be allowed to carry arms on planes.
I recommend you always plead the 5th as you are able to jetison all credibility within 2 sentences. (Of course, being anonymous gives you no credibility to start with.)
OK, lets change all the rules - lets permit passengers to be armed on planes. Fine. In your country (or the US if they're different). Go for it. Particularly on those flights with free booze. Great. Go for it. The rest of the world can sit back and watch the news reports as they roll in.
""" I can not even think what would have happened if windows xp did this thing """
What do you mean?
The _error_ is in LG's drives. Mandrake doesn't _do_ anything (out of ATAPI spec), it's LG that interprets a valid ATAPI command as some kind of "self destruct".
So XP couldn't _do_ this thing, as the _doing_ is in the LG firmware.
OK, looks like you understand enough about linux to tell me quite what "unix-like file aliases" is supposed to mean. I really couldn't RTFA as I hit that phrase in the first paragraph, and thought "WTF is this guy gibbering about?". When I have a blocking point like that I can't read any more.
He can't mean "aliases" such as alias j='jobs' as that's got nothing to do with files.
The Hacker Ethic includes the use of pre-written small tools to do one particular job, well, rather than either creating solutions from scratch or the use of monolithic behemoths.
The script kiddie ethic includes the use of pre-written small tools to do one particular job, well, rather than creating solutions from scratch.
Ain't so different. The difference is mostly in what you're trying to achieve. I don't think ESR's polar differentiation between hackers and crackers is particularly true either. Hackers create, crackers destroy is as meaningless as shit like men/mars women/venus. Hackers may create, but every act of creatively hacking that one I've known has involved phases of destruction in order to have the raw materials or ideas used for the creation.
I probably destroyed 10 wind-up alarm clocks when I was a kid. I managed to rebuild the 11th.
If the crackers _feel_ that they're achieving something (e.g. defacement = sucessful propagation of a message), then some will feel justified in using the 'hacker' logo.
There'll be no difference in the argument over the image than there is in the argument over the word.
As a contributor to several GPL'ed projects (and thus one of the Open Source crowd) I can honestly say that _most_ GPL software is rubbish.
But hey, a million people are all permitted to write and release their own buggy KDE CD player plug in. Noone's forcing anyone to download or use any of them.
"...wonder why razor blades are the most shoplifted item..."
Just beaten by condoms in the UK, I think. However, both are extrememly high cost for their size. (And both have a fairly captive market. I must get the snip some time...)
I thought that the patent only applied to specific moduli? However, AFAIK there are strong moduli and weak moduli,and proving strength is extremely hard. So you could chose to use your own modulus, at risk of not being as strong, but without having to pay royalties.
The first mention of 15360 bits that I saw was w.r.t. an equivalence of ~570 bits in ECC. If so, then 512 bits ECC is closer to 12000 or 13000 bits of RSA. However, that 15360 is a _round number_, and so almost certainly an approximation. The ~570 came from a Certicom white paper, IIRC.
However, 13000, 15360, what's the difference? It's outragiously uncrackable given all current knowledge of algorithms.
""" To me, this looks like just about every other unix file dialogue. Bad """
Are you sure?
I'd have said _worse_!:-)
I'm not a huge fan of the OSX style, but I'm failing to think of anything better. Some old windows 3.1 applications had decent home-grown file selection widgets, but they were few and far between, and I can't remember any of them.
I'll know them when I use them. These are the things that either feel _just right_ or feel like a pain in the neck instantly. Everything apart from Opera 6 is a pain in the neck at the moment.
And to your parent poster - "The design work on this just started less than a month ago. Give them a chance."
??? They _had_ a chance - they chose a design, and they chose a poor design. Past tense. Maybe the only way they can fix it is by _retreating_, going back to basics, reading Tognazzini et al., and performing usability studies (much as I hate them, Microsoft do actually do this), and _not_ by pushing forwards.
Slashdot Mirror
You fucker. I've got muesli on my keyboard now. _And_ - even worse - up my nose.
Sheesh. Can't a guy even read slashdot over breakfast safely now?
YAW.
Thanks for those links I wasn't aware of that site in the past./ man.200 310/webbug.html
For a laugh, read the description of the reports here:
http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data
Phil
Very insightful post.
A little bit of greasing of palms is a fairly common business practice. MS have probably seen that all that did, rather than
persuade the rest of the world to move over to IIS, was cost MS
money. So what comes next? I reckon the future will be MS playing
dirtier. They'll buy up companies which have trivial web patents,
and will sue every hosting company under the sun for "serving dynamically created content based on the user's prior browsing history" or something inane like that. (I made that one up.)
They have to start playing dirty now. Therefore they will.
YAW.
I care very much about usability. /most/ usable system was Debian, which I've been with for 3 years now. I'm with Debian because of usability, not for any other reason.
After slackware 4.0, I dabbled with RedHat 5.0, 6.0, SuSE 6.2, and finally decided that the
Usability's in the eye of the beholder. The most recent "improvements" in Debian's installer have made it _less_ usable to me. (I took longer to install my X-th debian system than I did any of the previous X-1 of them all those years ago.)
YAW.
Good, good, I'm glad to see that I managed to find some idiot who was prepared to imply that passengers should be allowed to carry arms on planes.
I recommend you always plead the 5th as you are able to jetison all credibility within 2 sentences. (Of course, being anonymous gives you no credibility to start with.)
OK, lets change all the rules - lets permit passengers to be armed on planes. Fine. In your country (or the US if they're different). Go for it. Particularly on those flights with free booze. Great. Go for it. The rest of the world can sit back and watch the news reports as they roll in.
YAW.
I was thinking of SCO - and it guessed:
I am guessing that it is a urinal?
It wasn't that far out, was it?
YAW.
Like how a well-armed population prevented the 9/11 tragedy.
Has history been rewritten, as I'm sure the WTC was flattented in my version of history?
YAW.
For "University of Finland", read "University of Helskini, Finland" (of Linus fame).
For "ABC News Online", read "ABC poorly-researched partial truths online".
YAW.
New advertising slogan: BSD: For when you want to write code and let other people make a profit from it while you make nothing.
Sounds great, where can I get a slice?
YAW.
"What happened to the Winston Churchill's of Europe?"
Given that Churchill' policy of genocide killed more Kurds than Saddam Hussein's, I hope they're all swinging from lampposts.
YAW.
"""
I can not even think what would have happened if windows xp did this thing
"""
What do you mean?
The _error_ is in LG's drives. Mandrake doesn't _do_ anything (out of ATAPI spec), it's LG that interprets a valid ATAPI command as some kind of "self destruct".
So XP couldn't _do_ this thing, as the _doing_ is in the LG firmware.
YAW.
OK, looks like you understand enough about linux to tell me quite what "unix-like file aliases" is supposed to mean.
I really couldn't RTFA as I hit that phrase in the first paragraph, and thought "WTF is this guy gibbering about?". When I have a blocking point like that I can't read any more.
He can't mean "aliases" such as
alias j='jobs'
as that's got nothing to do with files.
So does he mean "ln -s" file "aliases"?
YAW.
"Anyway: simplicity has it's own quality"
Absolutely.
I stuck it on my pages, and it did't shove itself down my gob as I looked at it. Perfect.
YAW.
10.1.111 is a perfectly valid unambiguous representation for a single IP address.
Read the specs, doofus.
YAW.
The Hacker Ethic includes the use of pre-written small tools to do one particular job, well, rather than either creating solutions from scratch or the use of monolithic behemoths.
The script kiddie ethic includes the use of pre-written small tools to do one particular job, well, rather than creating solutions from scratch.
Ain't so different. The difference is mostly in what you're trying to achieve. I don't think ESR's polar differentiation between hackers and crackers is particularly true either. Hackers create, crackers destroy is as meaningless as shit like men/mars women/venus. Hackers may create, but every act of creatively hacking that one I've known has involved phases of destruction in order to have the raw materials or ideas used for the creation.
I probably destroyed 10 wind-up alarm clocks when I was a kid. I managed to rebuild the 11th.
If the crackers _feel_ that they're achieving something (e.g. defacement = sucessful propagation of a message), then some will feel justified in using the 'hacker' logo.
There'll be no difference in the argument over the image than there is in the argument over the word.
YAW.
Unless there's just the right arrangement of a dozen or so of them, and then you get an infinite number over time.
Eugh
YAW.
As a contributor to several GPL'ed projects (and thus one of the Open Source crowd) I can honestly say that _most_ GPL software is rubbish.
But hey, a million people are all permitted to write and release their own buggy KDE CD player plug in. Noone's forcing anyone to download or use any of them.
YAW.
"...wonder why razor blades are the most shoplifted item..."
Just beaten by condoms in the UK, I think.
However, both are extrememly high cost for their size.
(And both have a fairly captive market. I must get the snip some time...)
YAW
What about those of us who have DIN5 keyboard plugs?
That's real legacy.
YAW.
I thought that the patent only applied to specific moduli?
However, AFAIK there are strong moduli and weak moduli,and proving strength is extremely hard. So you could chose to use your own modulus, at risk of not being as strong, but without having to pay royalties.
YAW.
The first mention of 15360 bits that I saw was w.r.t. an equivalence of ~570 bits in ECC. If so, then 512 bits ECC is closer to 12000 or 13000 bits of RSA. However, that 15360 is a _round number_, and so
almost certainly an approximation.
The ~570 came from a Certicom white paper, IIRC.
However, 13000, 15360, what's the difference? It's outragiously uncrackable given all current knowledge of algorithms.
YAW.
"but still for all practical purposes you're brute forcing."
NO!
Brute force means that you're obliged to try all possibilities.
fuckload of computation != brute force.
NFS doesn't even really have the concept of "all possibilities".
YAW.
You're too hard on them. A spam's no more annoying than a paper cut.
Now if 50 million people were all allowed to give them 50 paper cuts each, then thepunnishment would defiitely fit the crime.
YAW.
Is your sig supposed to have a 'z' in it?
Typing on a German keyboard?
Or a German typeing on a US keyboard?
I guess I just violated the DMCA, oops, sorry.
YAW.
"""
:-)
To me, this looks like just about every other unix file dialogue. Bad
"""
Are you sure?
I'd have said _worse_!
I'm not a huge fan of the OSX style, but I'm failing to think of anything better. Some old windows 3.1 applications had decent
home-grown file selection widgets, but they were few and far between, and I can't remember any of them.
I'll know them when I use them. These are the things that either feel _just right_ or feel like a pain in the neck instantly.
Everything apart from Opera 6 is a pain in the neck at the moment.
And to your parent poster - "The design work on this just started less than a month ago. Give them a chance."
??? They _had_ a chance - they chose a design, and they chose a poor design. Past tense. Maybe the only way they can fix it is by _retreating_, going back to basics, reading Tognazzini et al., and performing usability studies (much as I hate them, Microsoft do actually do this), and _not_ by pushing forwards.
YAW.