Minor reality nit on comparing 2.4 with Windows 98: 2.4 didn't come out in 1998. It would be more proper to compare 2.4 with Windows XP and ask if MS still creates patches or service packs for XP (it's planning a major Service Pack release (SP2) for sometime in 2004, currently in Beta).
But I know many people who consider XP to be not quite fully cooked and recomment win 2000 (in its 4th or 5th iteration at SP3 or 4 now) over WinXP. WinXP still gets corrupted often enough that MS AND OEM's still recommend reformatting and reinstallation to solve really tough problems. That's not my idea of a "stable OS" (though SuSE is starting the same practice with their new releases -- recommending reformat and reinstall to correct problems in their online, update, database stored on the local computer).
The parents still have control. Nothing prevents them from buying the game and giving it to their child.
The law only affects those parents who don't want to take such responsibility.
Who do you think should be taking a "dose of personal responsibility"? The child who is restricted from most things until 18 or drinking till 21, or who doesn't have to take responsibility for most law breaking until they reach adulthood (except in cases where they acted as only a completely, gone-wrong, adult could).
You don't like the law, then get your parents to take some responsibility and buy the game for you. Many parents have no clue what their children are up to and are uninvolved, in many cases, because the parent is overwhelmed in their own life, perhaps by "just", "bringing home the bacon".
Sorry, too much evidence exists that violence training begats more violence.
It's only the possibility of 'intellect' asserting itself and controlling violent impulses that prevent laws being enacted to put down 'aggressive humans' like multiple strike 'aggressive dogs' are. It's only the hope that some people will behave responsibly that even allows the concept of freedom. Unfortunately, you need to go fix the mentality of those who sue when spilling hot coffee, or those who knowingly release 'bad software' to meet a schedule or to extract money from the next MS or violence addicted software junky.
We know software makers don't release software 'responsibly'. Why don't you try getting them to show some "personal responsibility" (vs. managers who hide software flaws from 3rd party evaluators during a security audit for CAPP or LSPP evaluations -- something totally legal, I might add). How many software manufacturers don't knowingly release software with known bugs, these days? Even among "open software projects", how many are released with zero bug counts (assuming a bug-tracking mechanism is in place). Not just zero "critical"... How many are released with test-suites that show %code coverage or how many products are designed for testability during the design and initial coding phase? How many times have I seen (or anyone else) a bug reclassified from critical or severe, down to moderate, or low priority just to pass an internal requirement of all "P1-S1" (priority & severity) bugs fixed before release? Or, later on, watching the process change to allow shipping of software with P1S1 bugs, if they were "exceptioned".
Americans don't behave responsibly -- that's why we have needed drunk driving laws. Otherwise we'd have common sense laws like Texas used to have: open and drinking alcoholic beverages were ok for drivers as long as they were not drinking unsafely (so as to exceed state blood alcohol levels and so as to not be driving unsafely). But people couldn't handle such responsibility -- and they were supposedly, over-21-year-old, adults (actually I think it was to come into compliance with Fed. laws to get highway money that it was finally changed). But if adults can't be expected to behave responsibly, why do you think those cruel" and "animalistic". Young kids often haven't been taught rules of society and may have little concept of "right" and "wrong". As a society, we expect that by age 18 or 21 most people will have learned proper restraint, though given the increasingly higher violent-crime incarceration rate of adults, its obvious more of the non-socialized ones are making it into adulthood.
Given the state of software, and my own personal experience, I know that ethics in the sw industry are quickly swept aside in the name of the almighty buck --- right down to a previous manager who claimed "it isn't a bug unless a customer finds it".
Unfortunately, the sentiment in the US has become "anything not illegal" is "ok" to do. Many people have lost their sense of "right" & "wrong" (and BTW, I'm generally against laws addressing "consensual crimes" (supposed "crimes" affecting only one's self
As far as I'm concerned, matrix 3 was the biggest movie let down since Star Trek: The Movie.
75% of the movie was watching special effects making up a pointless war of man steered machines fighting machine steered machines.
Um...yeah, we _think_ we saw Trinity die.
But there was no evidence, that I saw, that Neo died. He was unconscious and being taken into machine central, but he's been unconscious before.
Little girl even asked if Neo would come back and oracle said yes. Can you tell me why he didn't just go off to machine hospital to have wounds tended?
Can you tell me why he doesn't just realize that the entire scene with Trinity dying was just another construct of the real-world Matrix which is no more real than the machine-world matrix and doesn't just realize that 'time', like the subjective reality of "bullet-time" is just another bendable rule?
Trinity "died" with tons of cable-like devices plugged into her...do you know she wasn't downloaded and her entire consciousness exists in the machine world just like smith's consciousness was able to exist in the 'real' world?
Maybe they all "wake" up and realize the 'real' world is just another simulation within another machine world and death transitory as inserting another quarter?
AFAI am concerned, M3 was not an "ending" of M2 -- it was just a single episode in a series...
For that matter...if it was so trivial for Neo & Trinity to fly up to where the sun was really shining, how difficult would it have been for the machines to build a tower up through the lightening storms to the sunlight area ala the proposed orbital elevator?
The 3rd movie was so full of ****....I was pissed. Second movie setup many questions -- and 3rd movie answered virtually none. Was I the only one who saw this? There's room for an entire run of sequals or even a "X-files" style TV series....which is sorta what the 3rd movie reminded me of...a bunch of unexplained questions that you think they are going to answer...but "that's what life's about: unanswered and unexplained questions". The "W" bros. chimped out and didn't even propose answers.
Gave it a big 5 thumbs down.
Now we need a real writer who could write an ending -- maybe Lucas, though I think he's going to have trouble finishing his StarW 7-8-9. Do we wanna take bets on him dying before they are finished because he keeps stretching them out because he can't think of an ending of as good as quality as the original 3 (4-5-6).
Hopefully LOTR-III will provide at least 1 movie with some closure this year.
It'd take alot more to make their products secure.
It's more about image rather than actually fixing anything.
Fixing things costs money -- like just to *evaluate* an OS as CAPP or LSPPcompliant can run over $1million. That's not including the documentation that needs to be done before hand or the test suite or the actual code to fool the evaluators into believing it is secure.
Like many companies seem to believe -- it's not a bug unless the customer finds it; its not a problem unless the customer says so. Capitalism dictates that you _must_ continue to strive for lower quality -- since whoever supplies the least quality that the customer will buy has the market edge in margins.
Customer perception of quality is continually being pushed downward. It won't be until lives are lost and software companies are held liable for bad software that things will appreciably change. History shows that people will accept pretty rotten conditions before staging a revolt. I have a feeling that quality has alot of room to decrease before anyone will really care enough to do anything about it -- especially in the end-user market.
I'm still not sure how Win2000 even got CAPP compliance -- theoretically, all of their audit messages have to be documented, yet if you note -- none of the supporting documentation for it getting CAPP certified seems to be public -- even the "audit" codes -- which, when you go to their website to have them interpret, says "we don't know what this code means, but thank you for looking it up so we know for the future". They can't not know and have passed CAPP as far as I know.
I'm beginning to wonder who's pocket they had to line to pass the evaluation? I'm guessing none of the certification documentation was made public because it was 'strawman' documentation and wouldnt' have stood up to public scrutiny.
How many companies other than Lexmark had tried such a tactic to protect their refill market? How long has the DMCA been a spector, seriously preventing 3rd party cartridge competition? The lexmark case -- isn't it less than a year old? Refill gouging has been going on alot longer than that.
Printer companies can still use technological means to ensure cartridge loyalty, and only for the oldest printers are you likely to reap the benefit of reliable reverse engineering. Suppose your printer company has rotating encryption keys for the protocol that rotate twice a year for 10 years but only after 365 days of being 'on' with '5' days assumed usage out of '7'. Now you use your printer 3 days a week -- That would mean you rotate in.8-1.0 years. To crack all the keys, (assuming 256-bit encryption) they could make it very difficult to produce a reliable replacement. At the very least it would create a great deal of FUD around using 3rd party cartridges for years after a new printer came out. Now compare that with the useful life of a printer.
HP places expiration dates in each printer cartridge -- which means if you buy a 3rd party cartdridge and if such encryption were employed, users could find their 3rd party cartridges quickly "expired".
This legal decision does nothing more than release low-quality cartridge verification algorithms -- the easy one's to reverse engineer; it does nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from using ever more complex methods to protect their lucrative cartridge income.
Only if state laws (some state out east was doing this?) pass "open replacement" requirements on printer manufacturers will this situation seriously change.
There is also nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from secretly detecting foreign cartridges and setting a flag in the printer NVRAM to mark it as "tainted" and no longer available for support/warrantee. Makes perfect sense -- "we" (a printer manufacturer) "won't warantee our printers when used with 3rd party cartridges due to the lack of quality assurance in such cartridges. We can't be held responsible if a 3rd party cartridge damages or otherwise causes problems in your printer and won't be held responsible if 3rd party cartridges are used."....etc.etc.etc...blah blah blah. The DMCA is a tool of companies to protect against easily circumventable access controls.
If an off-site user has properly authenticated to the Mirra service at the Ispiri host, and requests a file, the service makes the request when the Mirra next touches base. The advantage of this approach is that the connection is initiated by the Mirra server inside the user's router or firewall. This means that no firewall or router reconfiguration is required to allow an external server to get information from within the network. It's an approach that minimizes user effort and security risk.
Great....someone hacks the protocol, and a remotely controlled server running
proprietary software hands them the keys to my network?
I'm not sure about the no router or FW reconfig -- my stupid Replay TV box never did work behind my FW...it couldn't understand a proxy (unless it was setup
as transparent). Of course ReplayTV has in their contract that they can download any update they want that may disable any feature they want like Tivo has
done in the past. Now some company wants me to put a file-server on my
network that is designed to regularly ask them for instructions to execute
on itself behind my FW -- with it designed to understand and work through
a FW? Why does this make me uneasy. ([shhhhh, just close your eyes and put
your fingers in your ears and all will be well; this isn't the opendoor security breach you are looking for....])
It's a bit pricey, but fully programmable -- you can remap keys on the keyboard, you can remap keys to send macros (like shift-F4 was always a reach for me, so Print-screen->Shift-F4). Original model has 3 sections (nag the
support folks for splitting a dell keyboard in two and making it all a 2
section keyboard). It's full sized, can come with a pedal for pressing
shift or key combos.
Of course not -- no more than nuclear fusion (ala fusion reactors or H-bombs). I can't help but ponder the implications of developing the software I enjoy most, system-level software (kernel, security (other than crypto, like mathematically supported security models...something like chess, but with mathematical limits on allowed states), etc...).
But I can't help but realize how almost any computer automation technology from image recognition,
voice recog, games using real-physics to model events, games pushing limits of 3D rendering to envision data in ways previously unimaginable
Side note: is this real or sci fi?, quad sonar emitters @ ~2-3 meter spacing in rectangle form, different frequencies ultra sonic for best resolution), with cartiod or unidirectional microphone array ~ 50-100cm spacing extending maybe.25-.5m out from emitters in straight lines (forming a 2D plane), then using phase and reflection analysis from microphones to create a 3-D image that would allow even items not in visible
site to be imaged via reflection or absorption? Can imagine it in Sci-Fi, but don't know if its current science...
Will tech make visions worse than "1984 " or They Live! possible? With ultra-right-wing, "terrorist-threat-using", non elected officials that have nothing to lose (like little chance of being re-elected or worse, with a 2nd term US president) how can almost all of our software efforts be turned
against us -- one story talks about most workers being replaced by robots.
This once was the utopian dream -- humans no longer having to work but having everything done for them by machines. The only thing that was left out of those utopian futures: how are resources distributed?
The current method of the US, capitalism, would have maybe 1 robot owning all wealth (who says capitalists can't be replaced by robots too?) -- would humans become a planetary liability, ala "The Matrix" or the
"Terminator" movies?
Can someone please paint me a positive future -- negative futures are too easy. Child's work. How can we shape the future toward a positive outcome for us?
Best is one of those meaningless words -- but in the game of capitalism, isn't the definition of best defined as he who collects the most 'capital' (money)?
If Billy wanted to optimize security, he'd put 80% of his resources on fixing current versions of current products. He'd stop charging customers to report bugs in his products (via support calls). He'd release *bug fix only* releases with minimal or *no* new features (except those needed to fix design flaws).
Got a great idea Bill, Instead of forcing customers to pay $35-100 per "support call", let's up the ante a bit. If it is a failing, bug, or undocumented shortcoming in your product, then you pay the user the $35-$100. If it is just a case of them not reading the manual and it's the customer being supported, the customer pays. If the fix involves no fault finding -- i.e. -- say you have them uninstall and reinstall the product, the call cost is zero, since all you've done is erase any evidence of the problem -- you didnt' find out what caused the problem (amok user or amok MS program).
Seems only fair, since all the bugs I've tried to support to you that I managed to get MS to look at were duplicatable bugs in MS software. Many are fixed in the 2003 _*SERVER*_ release...(hello...does anyone think the 2003 product is a replacement for Windows XP? Where's the Windows XP:bug fix edition?
It'd really be nice if you paid customers for all the Beta testing they do for you.
-l
Lightening only needs to strike once
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Someone else mentioned it, but it was modded 'funny'. I have a serious question.
I have speakeasy which encourages bandwidth sharing -- if you involve them on the billing, they will even supply the user with 1 IP and mailbox. The idea is to operate a wireless node and nearby neighbors can tap into near DSL speeds w/o the mondo hookup and per-month charges.
Problem is it's limited to neighbors within 100 or so yards. I keep thinking of how cool a community supported internet would be and the roof-top forwarding idea furthers that. With multiple nodes within range, if one goes down, dynamic routing should (in classic internet behavior) be able to route the packets around a dead node and connections could be fairly resiliant.
However. Even though I live in an area that sees lightning only a few times a year, it occasionally happens. Wouldn't lightning see those antennae as attractive points to strike? The distance in the computer between the antennae and some wire going to ground has to be near millimeters in some places -- i.e. zero, as far as lightning voltages are are concerned. Wouldn't lightening strike be a very real concern of such a system -- especially if you have 1 or more blocks of little lightning rods popping up beside chimneys (or somewhere on the roof).
How would one cost-effectively protect against such? Even if you managed to ground the antenna (which would seem counter productive to signal strength), the tiny gauge wire would seem likely to fry with any strike with a good chance of structural damage to anything in the vicinity. Am I just paranoid or is this something that is more and more likely to occur as #nodes increases -- installing a heavy 2-4 gauge wire next to the antennae that has to run to ground w/o touching a flammable structure (like your house) seems like it would significantly add to the cost of the setup. Any antennae experts out there?
Please doon't laugh, but I thought a part of copy _right_ was the right of the consumer to make a copy of the work obstensibly for archivie purposes -- like playing the copy and saving the original as a master to make more copies of CD or works thare are destroyed or lost. Perhaps (and easily), I'm incorrect, but wouldn't copy prevention violate my right to make a usable copy "? I don't know, but I don't think it is required that the format of the backup be of the same format as the original (i.e. - copying from a CD to tape or disk should also be permitted.
The best piece of contextual bullshit I saw recently was on some artwork, The Blue Fairy that claimed to be copy protected. Of course it scanned in just fine into my computert and makes for a nice computer background --- which was the primary reason I bould it, though you couldn't read their shrink wrap license until you opened the padciage. Specifically they said you couldn't use it as a private screen background or in a craft project (i.e. -- cut the picture into pieces and make a collage). Near as I can tell, they have no legal backing for their 'fluff' and to my knowledge copy protected isn't a legal term and I'm not sure the pidture is actually copyrighted -- maybe just copy protected! ---shrink wrap pictures that you can read until you open the picture.
Next thing, you'llh ave a shrink wrap on a book that says you are not allowed to store the contects in your memory or related a synopsis of a book to another person or to write a book reifview;. Can you say joke? It will only get worse when people have electronic eyes that transmit images to memory stored in their brain (cybog tech). What if the person is genetically enhanced with a photographic memory? Will they be barred from museams and such?
Its like all the bogus patent on technology that has been developed independantly by more than one person at the same time, implemented, then one of the implmentors shows that they had filed the first patent -- The purpose of the patent was to reward inventors for bringing something useful to society -- but if it was so obvious that 400 or 1000 people did it at the same time, can it, or should it be patentable?
One was told to do it or he'd be replaced by someone who would follow instructions
One who didn't say no ended up with a work-comp injury that the company, eventually, fired them for (illegal, but "prove it" in writing)
One who said "No. Not possible, given the constraints" was replaced by a 'yes-man' Manager wasted about 21 engineer months (15 real months) before the implantation was mathematically proven to be impossible in a public paper (due to race conditions where locks couldn't be used). Entire project was canned, manager was promoted for having the "smarts" to cancel such an ill-conceived project (no one remembered it was he who conceived it:-))
It's sorta like the saying "Easier to get forgiveness after the fact than ask for permission up front." Stoopid managers don't like to hear no, but prefer "yes" with shoddy work and bugs over all else. Knew one manager (managing a government security project) who was proud of having hidden bugs and problems and having beaten another company in competing for a contract (because they were "stupid" and were forthright and outspoken about problems or questions). This manager's motto was "it's not a bug unless the customer finds it" [so any work on "correcting" such "features" was a waste of company resources and an indication of the fixer's inability to follow orders (or so it said on reviews of his employees)].
It really depends on what type of company/manager you work for. But bottom line with global competition for your job is that those who follow orders without question rise the most quickly. Only if there are post-disaster or post-war investigations/tribunals are such ethics questioned -- otherwise, it's just "par for the course" in the battlefield of capitalism (lowest quality product that the consumer will bare for least price).
That's why the government had to create laws to stop exploitation of children, create minimum safe working conditions, minimum wages, product safety commissions, building codes (designed to be the _minimums_ necessary for a safe building, but are used by most builders as the target to shoot for -- because, again, in a capitalistic sense, shooting for anything higher than the minimum will cost more and make you less competitive than those that barely scrape over the minimums.
Of one of these 'do the minimum' managers, a government evaluator, who didn't like the manager's attitude, but had to *pass* him because he met the letter of the law on the minimums: "if you always shoot to just roll over the rim, sometimes you're going to miss".
But things are going to have to get worse before they will get better. Until such managers (and companies) are held accountable for failures, the situation won't change. Until customers stop buying buggy software, product quality will continue to decline (because if the customer is buying it, it still must be over the minimum -- let's try even lower quality the next time!). Anyone who cut their programming teeth during the dot.bomb era has been taught that software bugs are inevitable and to be expected. Software quality has been "spin doctored" to be something that is "not really possible" in real life. Everyone has been given _ALOT_ of propaganda about why software quality is impossible - to the point that most people are now believers. Though occasionally, there comes along a privately held company that disproves the myth (from slashdot, summary on qnx website) that probably got its biggest boost as MS FUD and propaganda.
It seems fairly straightforward why SCO isn't showing the code. They've already said that the code in the kernel isn't affected. That leaves what: superfluous drivers (maybe, depending on how one defines code), and all of the 'gnu-ish' utils that make up a linux distro.
They don't want to show the code, since we'd probably see that it's something in the 'bc' program (for example) that is trespassing and it would be a trivial exercise to rewrite or remove the offending speck of code (a bit like gif was replaced by jpg and compress was replaced by gzip). They don't want to tell people what it is -- just that they are violating SCO's copyright. The whole purpose of not showing the code is the hope that whatever the technology is, it will become more embedded in actual use and become more difficult and painful to remove it as time goes on. So they stall for time to allow as much integration as possible before they have to produce the code.
I'd say ignore it until they state exactly what lines of code or what driver or utility infringes, then we excise it. I'm just guessing that maybe they have a case, but it's too easy to excise the offending code that if they showed the code, the case would be moot by every vendor's next release or prior with a patch.
It seems the only logical explanation for their actions.
Beer made from Hops contain estrogens (plant derived). The estrogen content tends to influence your body to store more fat. The herb, hops, by itself has a 'relaxing effect' in herbal medicine, and, BTW, is in the same family as the cannibis plant -- a family noted as 'advanced' as it has two sexes. I'm not familiar with maltose or how much it is used in beer production, so I can't comment on how much it contributes, but herbal books will warn that phytoestrogens in hops can cause fat to be deposited into the classic "beer-belly" pattern (this effect is independant of alcohol other than alcohol having 7 calories/gram that can be converted to and stored as fat).
Plant estrogens can also cause gynomastia (breast/nipple development and fat storage around nipple/breast area) as well as lower testosterone levels. They are also linked to erectile dysfunction in some men. I would speculate that they could also lower libido and sperm count.
Women with estrogen related disorders, especially cancer, should avoid phytoestrogens as they can stimulate cancer and/or tumor growth. Also, women who are pregnant should avoid phytoestrogens (not just in hops, but also some soy products, licorice and others) since they can interfere with fetal development.
I could speculate that taking products with extra estrogen effects could especially hinder male fetus development. That's why there are BIG cautions about pregnant women even handling drugs like propecia which block the testosterone derivative DHT (I think that's Di-hydrotestosterone). If testosterones are blocked during fetal development, an XY-"chromosoned" baby might develop as female (since all babies start out as 'female', and only testosterone surges during certain stages of development result in the baby developing male sex characteristics.
It's been noted that there are two large surges of testosterone during male fetus development -- the first is associated with genital development. The 2nd occurs later on during brain development and is _speculated_ to affect how the brain develops.
I'd be cautious about considering 'beer' as some generic food group component, (which doesn't mean an icy cold beer on a hot day doesn't taste good, though technically, it has a dehydrating effect...:-( ).
Reminds me of problems with chocolate -- how can something that tastes so good be bad for you....;-).
Re:I much prefer XFS; should be part of comparison
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Your problem (and one of SGI's) is your reliance on Red Hat.
Just as you are annoyed that XFS isn't part of Hans's FS benchmarks, I'm a minorly annoyed that people don't realize there are better alternatives to Red Hat. SuSE Pro, comes with 2 DVD's and 5 CD's now, which can be had for less than $100. Upgrades are running in the 40-50$ range I think. Even Mandrake is still chugging along on the smell of the money they used to have.
I 1st tried Red Hat, then seduced by Mandrake's superior UI, turned off a bit by Mandrake's Pentium-optimized code that runs slower on x686 (Pentium Pro, P-II, P-III, even P4) (according to the gnu C-library people). Then tried SuSE -- impressed with number of pre-loadable packages (though their maintenance and install procedure is still flakey and their 'installation support' doesn't even include a laptop with external monitor...lame. Still like the wider coverage enough to stay w/SuSE. When I bought it, it was 5 CD's for the base product -- about $40 at the time -- compared to RH and Mandrake's 1-3 CD's at the time.
When SuSE went to DVD distribution, I was stoked! No more "CD-shuffle" -- and DVD xfer rates were quite a bit above CD xfer rates. I'm a little worried -- haven't had a chance to look over their new release yet -- but now they have 2 DVD's....I don't wanna play DVD shuffle....
SuSE will format the rootFS as XFS and does have the support to do it. (and has had such support for about 2 years now).
I tend to agree with your sentiment about XFS being left out of the comparisons, but if RH doesn't give lip service to XFS, maybe it's not a high enough priority for Hans to run the tests, for the extra time it would take. If you only had the time/resources to compare against 1 fs, which would you choose? Market leader supported ext3, or performance leader, xfs (assuming it is)?
You might be able to contact Hans (maybe it is on the website) for the disk performance tests he is running and run the same tests on Rieser and XFS on your system. I'd be interested in seeing such results...:-)).
While XFS has spectacular performance on IRIX as it was developed to handle real-time video streaming and terabyte filesystems, 5-6 years ago (and improved on since then), you can't really use that as a reliability/stability/ performance base, since IRIX had multi-threaded/pre-emptable/ and direct I/O features for years that Linux is just now beginning to get. There was alot of framework provided by the IRIX OS that linux just couldn't do. While upgrades of Linux features have been coming to support such a framework, adding such upgrades and getting them accepted into the main base has been less than easy.
There has been considerable sentiment in the Linux upper echelons against modularization, granularity and verification of correct functioning (micro kernels are bad; all drivers should be able to overwrite anything; resistance to capabilities or increasing the number; resistance to modular / configurable, "truly generic", security system (no, LSM isn't close -- and even that's been an uphill battle); no ability to do run-time validation logging of all security relevant transactions; etc.
The last implementation SGI did trying to use LSM had fundamental security flaws that would invalidate any attempt to have it evaluated for CAPP compliance under Common Criteria (even knowing this, the security manager there managed to pull the wool over his superiors eyes to tell them that it would work -- but then he was also one to hide known bugs from 3rd party validators and create elaborate tests to dissuade running them where they might uncover known bugs; and stress the point that performance is never an issue unless a big enough customer complains and that a bug isn't a bug until a customer reports it.
This is very much like Microsoft's practices where MS has incentive to *NOT* ship working products (for each support call on a bug, they can pull in up to $100/call or more). Why spend money testing an
Re:Reiser4 for cheap ba5tards? [offtopic]
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If you have a multi-level and/or granular security architecture, penetration or a hack at one security level doesn't mean automatic access
to other levels or privileges. So they hack the webserver process. If the webserver is running as a non-root process in a chrooted jail -- perhaps even on a 'virtual machine', does that automatically mean we should shut down the whole system?
It's the same with well designed programs -- there was a slashdot article recently on QNX -- that is designed to be fault tolerant -- and it works. Only when you design huge monolithic code monsters where a fault anywhere in the monster means kill the whole beast do you have such frail computer systems.
Imagine human skin hacked by a scrape on some sharp object. If the first decision was to instantly kill the whole host, there wouldn't be too many humans -- can you say *stoopid* design?
Sure, there are some things that can't be healed, but the majority of us have had scrapes and bruises growing up and are still quite healthy -- and even where the car body may have permanent damage, then engine/CPU (the person's brain) is often quite capable.
Next time you think fault tolerant or intrusion tolerant systems are foolish and impossible, think "Stephen Hawking", or "Einstein" (not able to complete High School). I had a *stoopid* manager who thought that making system-audit so efficient, it could be left on by default in all but the most demanding of compute environments was a waste of time -- that it was *impossible* to build real-time intrusion detection systems.
Of course people thought it was impossible to circumnavigate the globe (you'd fall off the edge), impossible to fly, impossible to go faster than the speed of sound, etc.
Every time someone talks about how "impossible", you have to realize they are consciously or unconsciously thinking inside a box. To do the impossible requires something that *isn't* engineering. It isn't manageable. It can't be driven by a schedule. You have to *think outside the box*. You have to be creative. By definition, engineering, isn't creative. Engineering is taking known principles, applying them in some set of known circumstances, and coming out with another "widget", that looks similar to a previous widget.
Most large companies breed conformity and uniformity. While this type of engineering is great for reproducing Honda's on an assembly line, it greatly hinders thinking 'out of the box' (the box of conformity and uniformity that the company asserts is "necessary" for their business). Then they wonder why what was once a 'wonder company' is now a 'dinosaur company'.
Creative people are often *not* group players -- if they had a group mentality, then how can they be expected to come up with any idea that is radically different from the rest of the group?
Creative people tend more toward not having exceptional social graces (think of the novel ideas of unix, or Multics). These were not done by suit-and-tie, management "yes"-men. Even Linux was started by 1 person -- who has not always been known to be the social charmer, even tempered type -- and I certainly don't get the impression that everything is done by group consensus.
But already in linux, there is a fair amount of doing things the 'linux' way, certain people to please, various people who get say-so or veto powers (or are believed to have such) beyond Linus.
People familiar with Microsoft can remember when even the simplest application crash would bring down the entire system. Unix people would generally laugh at this. But now we see those who think a single penetration should cause the whole system to be brought down. Maybe it will require a next-generation OS (dunno enough about QNX to know if it might qualify), but there are other OS's that have better security records than linux (BSD, OS/X (I've heard)).
Linux, laughably, doesn't even have CAPP certification. Sure, there are alot more Microsoft vulnerabilities every
Might want to check out the ESP Package Manager. It seems to be able to generate output
for multiple 'single package systems'. I just stumbled onto it while looking
for more info on packing options. Haven't used it but it does make for
a good/polished presentation...If the software is half as good...:-)
Seems like the French aren't afraid to try techno-miracles -- I haven't seen any metro system as good -- London is close, but alot of inconsistencies. In Paris and France, they aren't afraid to try new things (and the US still doesn't have any high-speed trains....bunch of cowards -- look big behind their high-tech weapons -- but when it comes to something socially useful... forget it. It was a shame the French became the only company to provide Super-Sonic speeds on jets -- and, of course, what did we do in the US? We banned their use in US airspace because Elmer's cow might stop producing milk from the occasional bang. Big woop. We could have had coast-to-coast in 2-3 hours, but noooOOOOOooo.... any real R&D goes to defense where they don't have to worry about every soldier who breaks a nail suing them.
Americans are just so damn stupid so often....that and greedy. Grrr.
Why can't the US every take the lead in these areas --- because it's always private development and unless the private developer can prove profit (minus real or bogus lawsuits) before it is even tested, it falls dead on the design floor.
I really thought the Casino bosses in Las Vegas just might pull off the high speed train idea to L.A. But it's been ages since I heard that idea float.
Everyone in the US seems to want to have the right to stop progress that can benefit large numbers of people -- like all the poltics with the "Rich" who can buy their congressmen in Menlo Park/Palo Alto and don't want BART to go through their town -- we were promised it would circle he Bay and have been paying sales tax to support it since...when, 1970's? Everything is politics and self-interest.
Some people are arguing robots.txt as the determiner, however remember the court case that a company *lost* because it copied the data of a competitor site and set it's prices lower.
This is equivalent to Kroger hiring a few clerks to go down each day and take prices of various objects on their wifi equip'ed phones/handhelds in a store so Safeway can under cut prices.
What, you didn't read the fine print on the Safeway door that says no price comparisons or making up price lists? Or what...were they supposed to look for a robots.txt file behind the Safeway door?
There seems to be a general lack of common sense here (especially on the part of the judge that ruled against the company scanning for competing prices). If it is allowed in the real world, it shouldn't be different in the computer world without alot of sound reasoning behind why it should be different. The fact that Safeway could have a 3-page acceptable use policy that I accept when my body presence opens the door, is ludicrous.
Now you talk about advertising losses -- what about whatever major network it was, deleting competing major network logo bought and paid for on tall building in Times Square for New Years eve? Competing networked modified the image in realtime and inserted their own logo for the price of an SGI workstation -- heck of alot cheaper. Legal? Not legal? Can you say a real life image is "copyright" and if two people take a picture of the same real life picture, is one the rightful owner? What if one or both alter the "real life picture", have they violated someone's rights? Reality's rights (ok, in this case it would have been the network that paids to rent the entire side of the building), but it's really a matter of who owns what you see? If a picture is take of what you see, who owns the picture?
This is a complete mishmash of conflicting legal decisions with computer copying, caching, alteration and adding to the mess. What if I load a page but I don't load the images? Have I violated copyright because I either chose or cannot load the images? What if I selectively blocked them based on their IP or name? If I don't load flash player, am I violating a copyright on a site by not viewing the flash content advertising?
Random judges in random jurisdictions are going to be making random calls on right/wrong that will collide with each other and with what makes sense in the real world.
I'm not sure what the collective approach should be -- should I be required to watch TV advertising or am I stealing programming if I go to the loo during a panty spot? If I block popup am I stealing computer time.....
This is all just one big gigantic growing mass of living worms that promises to be one of the larger headaches of times to come.
As I walk through the store aisles of various Silicon Valley stores, the shelves are noticeably more barren. Selection on everything is down. No more bulk items -- if you want items (if they are available at all), you have to buy a greater quantity of smaller sizes (usually at a 20-40% price increase).
Selection? I went to Fry's the other day. They used to have 2-3 60G laptop drives, now, the largest drive they carry is a 40G. Similar problems in cables, memory, cpu's.... everything -- product isn't there to be bought.
It's in the drug stores, the clothing stores, the electronics stores, the food stores -- all of them have vastly reduced inventory and selection.
I couldn't even buy brand name thick aluminum foil in large size and not in the store brand in any size except 27" wide.
What color did you want? Was that black or black? Size? One size (Large) fits all... Everything is backordered or they've changed suppliers, or they just don't know why they aren't getting shipments in.
The disk drive selection at Fry's is 1/2 - 1/4th what it used to be and the prices haven't fallen like they were. In fact tech as a whole seems to be stagnating. I could walk in every 3 months and expect to see a new size disk drive or new speed, whatever....now....things are moving at a snail's pace. Remember when the computer manufacturer's couldn't keep up with how fast Intel was putting out faster CPU processors -- now...things are still pretty maxed at 3.06, though I think I saw one 3.2MHz
Just seems like everything is stalled and in short supply. I'm wondering if they are going to turn to rationing on basic goods if they can't keep the shelves stocked....its just a bit too eary -- like the last decades/years of the old USSR.
Is that where the US is headed? Did capitalism just 'outlast' communism, but is still doomed to failure?
I see prices on many items going up, up up -- especially overseas items as the dollar drops, drops, drops. Foreign buying power seems to have dropped by 30% or more depending on the country...on the good side -- if this keeps up, it will be cheaper to hirer Americans again:-/
That's what I had to do -- spammers found out my Verizon text messaging number a year or two back. I had to pay for each message I got (even though I had a flat rate service for more minutes/month that I usually use. No - they couldn't take excess minutes and credit them to the text messaging. I could call them for each spam received and receive a credit for each message -- just like I can call them and get 1 whole minute credit when their system drops me in dead (but busy, traffic wise) zones.
I can be on phone hold with some company (Dell, Kaiser, etc.) for over 20 minutes, then just as they answer, I can get a drop, and Verizon is willing to add 1 minute to my call allowance for that month. However each service call to Verizon to do this runs 5-10 minutes of real time (no air time charges, but who has 10 minutes to earn the equivalent of $0.60 dollars/hour? They count on that.
Not enough competition. I was in Europe a few years back -- Israel of all places -- *ALL* the teens had cell phones. Turns out it's about 1/10th the cost here in California. From what I've been told, California's rates are among the worst -- so much so that I've thought of getting a phone for outgoing calls through my parents located in another area where cell phone rates with full roaming and free long distance running half what I pay here.
Anyway -- I asked if I could specify a list of allowed users -- nope. Basically, anyone who knew my number and some magic incantation could send me spam. Ironically -- at the time, I didn't know how to send my phone text messages via an email port -- but the spammers did! So I requested they disable the service completely.
I sure as heck don't need spam on my stupid cell phone where I have to pay per/spam. That should be as illegal as sending unrequested faxes.
You will note that no matter what kind of program you run, it'll draw the same amount of power as long as the load % is the same. The exception might be an app that steps all over the cache, triggering memory to work hard.
Don't forget, you are talking first level cache, and can't be doing 3-D graphics. Extensive use of the the floating point math co-processor also adds watts.
I measured about a 20W difference/computer that was running SETI vs. blank-screen idle. The PC version had the graphics builtin to the screen saver too.
The height of SETI usage was the same summer we had rolling blackouts in CA.
Nope -- 'work' as in applying a force to move electrons around qualifies as work, I believe -- and 'work' done doesn't come with zero energy usage.
I think that was one of my rejected posts on slashdot at the time.:-)
It's rumored that some people actually turn off the whole computer when they're not using it.
I think most people actually believe the HW experts that point to lower computer lifespan when you do that due to vastly fluctuating temperatures in all the components. I remember often having to reseat memory chips before the advent of the PC.
Besides, it makes it harder to remotely log in and have your computer fetching email when it's off.
Slashdot Mirror
Minor reality nit on comparing 2.4 with Windows 98: 2.4 didn't come out in 1998. It would be more proper to compare 2.4 with Windows XP and ask if MS still creates patches or service packs for XP (it's planning a major Service Pack release (SP2) for sometime in 2004, currently in Beta).
But I know many people who consider XP to be not quite fully cooked and recomment win 2000 (in its 4th or 5th iteration at SP3 or 4 now) over WinXP.
WinXP still gets corrupted often enough that MS AND OEM's still recommend reformatting and reinstallation to solve really tough problems. That's not my idea of a "stable OS" (though SuSE is starting the same practice with their new releases -- recommending reformat and reinstall to correct problems in their online, update, database stored on the local computer).
The parents still have control. Nothing prevents them from buying the game and giving it to their child.
The law only affects those parents who don't want to take such responsibility.
Who do you think should be taking a "dose of personal responsibility"? The child who is restricted from most things until 18 or drinking till 21, or who doesn't have to take responsibility for most law breaking until they reach adulthood (except in cases where they acted as only a completely, gone-wrong, adult could).
You don't like the law, then get your parents to take some responsibility and buy the game for you. Many parents have no clue what their children are up to and are uninvolved, in many cases, because the parent is overwhelmed in their own life, perhaps by "just", "bringing home the bacon".
Sorry, too much evidence exists that violence training begats more violence.
It's only the possibility of 'intellect' asserting itself and controlling violent impulses that prevent laws being enacted to put down 'aggressive humans' like multiple strike 'aggressive dogs' are. It's only the hope that some people will behave responsibly that even allows the concept of freedom. Unfortunately, you need to go fix the mentality of those who sue when spilling hot coffee, or those who knowingly release 'bad software' to meet a schedule or to extract money from the next MS or violence addicted software junky.
We know software makers don't release software 'responsibly'. Why don't you try getting them to show some "personal responsibility" (vs. managers who hide software flaws from 3rd party evaluators during a security audit for CAPP or LSPP evaluations -- something totally legal, I might add). How many software manufacturers don't knowingly release software with known bugs, these days? Even among "open software projects", how many are released with zero bug counts (assuming a bug-tracking mechanism is in place). Not just zero "critical"... How many are released with test-suites that show %code coverage or how many products are designed for testability during the design and initial coding phase? How many times have I seen (or anyone else) a bug reclassified from critical or severe, down to moderate, or low priority just to pass an internal requirement of all "P1-S1" (priority & severity) bugs fixed before release? Or, later on, watching the process change to allow shipping of software with P1S1 bugs, if they were "exceptioned".
Americans don't behave responsibly -- that's why we have needed drunk driving laws. Otherwise we'd have common sense laws like Texas used to have: open and drinking alcoholic beverages were ok for drivers as long as they were not drinking unsafely (so as to exceed state blood alcohol levels and so as to not be driving unsafely). But people couldn't handle such responsibility -- and they were supposedly, over-21-year-old, adults (actually I think it was to come into compliance with Fed. laws to get highway money that it was finally changed). But if adults can't be expected to behave responsibly, why do you think those cruel" and "animalistic". Young kids often haven't been taught rules of society and may have little concept of "right" and "wrong". As a society, we expect that by age 18 or 21 most people will have learned proper restraint, though given the increasingly higher violent-crime incarceration rate of adults, its obvious more of the non-socialized ones are making it into adulthood.
Given the state of software, and my own personal experience, I know that ethics in the sw industry are quickly swept aside in the name of the almighty buck --- right down to a previous manager who claimed "it isn't a bug unless a customer finds it".
Unfortunately, the sentiment in the US has become "anything not illegal" is "ok" to do. Many people have lost their sense of "right" & "wrong" (and BTW, I'm generally against laws addressing "consensual crimes" (supposed "crimes" affecting only one's self
As far as I'm concerned, matrix 3 was the biggest movie let down since Star Trek: The Movie.
75% of the movie was watching special effects making up a pointless war of man steered machines fighting machine steered machines.
Um...yeah, we _think_ we saw Trinity die.
But there was no evidence, that I saw, that Neo died. He was unconscious and being taken into machine central, but he's been unconscious before.
Little girl even asked if Neo would come back and oracle said yes. Can you tell me why he didn't just go off to machine hospital to have wounds tended?
Can you tell me why he doesn't just realize that the entire scene with Trinity dying was just another construct of the real-world Matrix which is no more real than the machine-world matrix and doesn't just realize that 'time', like the subjective reality of "bullet-time" is just another bendable rule?
Trinity "died" with tons of cable-like devices plugged into her...do you know she wasn't downloaded and her entire consciousness exists in the machine world just like smith's consciousness was able to exist in the 'real' world?
Maybe they all "wake" up and realize the 'real' world is just another simulation within another machine world and death transitory as inserting another quarter?
AFAI am concerned, M3 was not an "ending" of M2 -- it was just a single episode in a series...
For that matter...if it was so trivial for Neo & Trinity to fly up to where the sun was really shining, how difficult would it have been for the machines to build a tower up through the lightening storms to the sunlight area ala the proposed orbital elevator?
The 3rd movie was so full of ****....I was pissed. Second movie setup many questions -- and 3rd movie answered virtually none. Was I the only one who saw this? There's room for an entire run of sequals or even a "X-files" style TV series....which is sorta what the 3rd movie reminded me of...a bunch of unexplained questions that you think they are going to answer...but "that's what life's about: unanswered and unexplained questions". The "W" bros. chimped out and didn't even propose answers.
Gave it a big 5 thumbs down.
Now we need a real writer who could write an ending -- maybe Lucas, though
I think he's going to have trouble finishing his StarW 7-8-9. Do we wanna take bets on him dying before they are finished because he keeps stretching them out because he can't think of an ending of as good as quality as the original 3 (4-5-6).
Hopefully LOTR-III will provide at least 1 movie with some closure this year.
-l
It'd take alot more to make their products secure.
It's more about image rather than actually fixing anything.
Fixing things costs money -- like just to *evaluate* an OS as CAPP or LSPPcompliant can run over $1million. That's not including the documentation that needs to be done before hand or the test suite or the actual code to fool the evaluators into believing it is secure.
Like many companies seem to believe -- it's not a bug unless the customer finds it; its not a problem unless the customer says so. Capitalism dictates that you _must_ continue to strive for lower quality -- since whoever supplies the least quality that the customer will buy has the market edge in margins.
Customer perception of quality is continually being pushed downward. It won't be until lives are lost and software companies are held liable for bad software that things will appreciably change. History shows that people will accept pretty rotten conditions before staging a revolt. I have a feeling that quality has alot of room to decrease before anyone will really care enough to do anything about it -- especially in the end-user market.
I'm still not sure how Win2000 even got CAPP compliance -- theoretically, all of their audit messages have to be documented, yet if you note -- none of the supporting documentation for it getting CAPP certified seems to be public -- even the "audit" codes -- which, when you go to their website to have them interpret, says "we don't know what this code means, but thank you for looking it up so we know for the future". They can't not know and have passed CAPP as far as I know.
I'm beginning to wonder who's pocket they had to line to pass the evaluation? I'm guessing none of the certification documentation was made public because it was 'strawman' documentation and wouldnt' have stood up to public scrutiny.
-l
Where's mod privs when ya want 'em...sigh
-l
How many companies other than Lexmark had tried such a tactic to protect their refill market? How long has the DMCA been a spector, seriously
.8-1.0 years. To crack all the keys, (assuming 256-bit encryption) they could make it very difficult to produce a reliable replacement. At the very least it would create a great deal of FUD around using 3rd party cartridges for years after a new printer came out. Now compare that with the useful life of a printer.
preventing 3rd party cartridge competition? The lexmark case -- isn't it less than a year old? Refill gouging has been going on alot longer than that.
Printer companies can still use technological means to ensure cartridge loyalty, and only for the oldest printers are you likely to reap the benefit of reliable reverse engineering. Suppose your printer company has rotating encryption keys for the protocol that rotate twice a year for 10 years but only after 365 days of being 'on' with '5' days assumed usage out of '7'. Now you use your printer 3 days a week -- That would mean you rotate in
HP places expiration dates in each printer cartridge -- which means if you buy a 3rd party cartdridge and if such encryption were employed, users could find their 3rd party cartridges quickly "expired".
This legal decision does nothing more than release low-quality cartridge verification algorithms -- the easy one's to reverse engineer; it does nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from using ever more complex methods to protect their lucrative cartridge income.
Only if state laws (some state out east was doing this?) pass "open replacement" requirements on printer manufacturers will this situation seriously change.
There is also nothing to prevent printer manufacturers from secretly detecting foreign cartridges and setting a flag in the printer NVRAM to mark it as "tainted" and no longer available for support/warrantee. Makes perfect sense -- "we" (a printer manufacturer) "won't warantee our printers when used with 3rd party cartridges due to the lack of quality assurance in such cartridges. We can't be held responsible if a 3rd party cartridge damages or otherwise causes problems in your printer and won't be held responsible if 3rd party cartridges are used."....etc.etc.etc...blah blah blah. The DMCA is a tool of companies to protect against easily circumventable access controls.
-lpq
-
If an off-site user has properly authenticated to the Mirra service at the Ispiri host, and requests a file, the service makes the request when the Mirra next touches base. The advantage of this approach is that the connection is initiated by the Mirra server inside the user's router or firewall. This means that no firewall or router reconfiguration is required to allow an external server to get information from within the network. It's an approach that minimizes user effort and security risk.
Great....someone hacks the protocol, and a remotely controlled server running proprietary software hands them the keys to my network?I'm not sure about the no router or FW reconfig -- my stupid Replay TV box never did work behind my FW...it couldn't understand a proxy (unless it was setup as transparent). Of course ReplayTV has in their contract that they can download any update they want that may disable any feature they want like Tivo has done in the past. Now some company wants me to put a file-server on my network that is designed to regularly ask them for instructions to execute on itself behind my FW -- with it designed to understand and work through a FW? Why does this make me uneasy. ([shhhhh, just close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears and all will be well; this isn't the opendoor security breach you are looking for....])
Huh, wuh...sounds secure to me!
-l
www.comfortkeyboard.com
But I can't help but realize how almost any computer automation technology from image recognition, voice recog, games using real-physics to model events, games pushing limits of 3D rendering to envision data in ways previously unimaginable
Will tech make visions worse than " 1984 " or They Live! possible? With ultra-right-wing, "terrorist-threat-using", non elected officials that have nothing to lose (like little chance of being re-elected or worse, with a 2nd term US president) how can almost all of our software efforts be turned against us -- one story talks about most workers being replaced by robots.This once was the utopian dream -- humans no longer having to work but having everything done for them by machines. The only thing that was left out of those utopian futures: how are resources distributed?
The current method of the US, capitalism, would have maybe 1 robot owning all wealth (who says capitalists can't be replaced by robots too?) -- would humans become a planetary liability, ala "The Matrix" or the "Terminator" movies?
Can someone please paint me a positive future -- negative futures are too easy. Child's work. How can we shape the future toward a positive outcome for us?
-lpq
If Billy wanted to optimize security, he'd put 80% of his resources on fixing current versions of current products. He'd stop charging customers to report bugs in his products (via support calls). He'd release *bug fix only* releases with minimal or *no* new features (except those needed to fix design flaws).
Got a great idea Bill, Instead of forcing customers to pay $35-100 per "support call", let's up the ante a bit. If it is a failing, bug, or undocumented shortcoming in your product, then you pay the user the $35-$100. If it is just a case of them not reading the manual and it's the customer being supported, the customer pays. If the fix involves no fault finding -- i.e. -- say you have them uninstall and reinstall the product, the call cost is zero, since all you've done is erase any evidence of the problem -- you didnt' find out what caused the problem (amok user or amok MS program).
Seems only fair, since all the bugs I've tried to support to you that I managed to get MS to look at were duplicatable bugs in MS software. Many are fixed in the 2003 _*SERVER*_ release...(hello...does anyone think the 2003 product is a replacement for Windows XP? Where's the Windows XP:bug fix edition?
It'd really be nice if you paid customers for all the Beta testing they do for you.
-l
I have speakeasy which encourages bandwidth sharing -- if you involve them on the billing, they will even supply the user with 1 IP and mailbox. The idea is to operate a wireless node and nearby neighbors can tap into near DSL speeds w/o the mondo hookup and per-month charges.
Problem is it's limited to neighbors within 100 or so yards. I keep thinking of how cool a community supported internet would be and the roof-top forwarding idea furthers that. With multiple nodes within range, if one goes down, dynamic routing should (in classic internet behavior) be able to route the packets around a dead node and connections could be fairly resiliant.
However. Even though I live in an area that sees lightning only a few times a year, it occasionally happens. Wouldn't lightning see those antennae as attractive points to strike? The distance in the computer between the antennae and some wire going to ground has to be near millimeters in some places -- i.e. zero, as far as lightning voltages are are concerned. Wouldn't lightening strike be a very real concern of such a system -- especially if you have 1 or more blocks of little lightning rods popping up beside chimneys (or somewhere on the roof).
How would one cost-effectively protect against such? Even if you managed to ground the antenna (which would seem counter productive to signal strength), the tiny gauge wire would seem likely to fry with any strike with a good chance of structural damage to anything in the vicinity. Am I just paranoid or is this something that is more and more likely to occur as #nodes increases -- installing a heavy 2-4 gauge wire next to the antennae that has to run to ground w/o touching a flammable structure (like your house) seems like it would significantly add to the cost of the setup. Any antennae experts out there?
Please doon't laugh, but I thought a part of copy _right_ was the right
of the consumer to make a copy of the work obstensibly for archivie purposes -- like playing the copy and saving the original as a master to make more
copies of CD or works thare are destroyed or lost. Perhaps (and easily),
I'm incorrect, but wouldn't copy prevention violate my right to make a
usable copy "? I don't know, but I don't think it is required that the
format of the backup be of the same format as the original (i.e. - copying
from a CD to tape or disk should also be permitted.
The best piece of contextual bullshit I saw recently was on some artwork, The Blue Fairy that claimed
to be copy protected. Of course it scanned in just fine into my computert
and makes for a nice computer background --- which was the primary reason
I bould it, though you couldn't read their shrink wrap license until
you opened the padciage. Specifically they said you couldn't use it as
a private screen background or in a craft project (i.e. -- cut the picture
into pieces and make a collage). Near as I can tell, they have no legal
backing for their 'fluff' and to my knowledge copy protected isn't a
legal term and I'm not sure the pidture is actually copyrighted -- maybe
just copy protected!
---shrink wrap pictures that you can read until you open the picture.
Next thing, you'llh ave a shrink wrap on a book that says you are not allowed
to store the contects in your memory or related a synopsis of a book to
another person or to write a book reifview;. Can you say joke? It will
only get worse when people have electronic eyes that transmit images to
memory stored in their brain (cybog tech). What if the person is
genetically enhanced with a photographic memory? Will they be barred
from museams and such?
Its like all the bogus patent on technology that has been developed independantly by more than one person at the same time, implemented, then one of the implmentors shows that they had filed the first patent -- The purpose
of the patent was to reward inventors for bringing something useful to
society -- but if it was so obvious that 400 or 1000 people did it at
the same time, can it, or should it be patentable?
Baloney is getting deeper all the time
-l
One was told to do it or he'd be replaced by someone who would follow instructions
One who didn't say no ended up with a work-comp injury that the company, eventually, fired them for (illegal, but "prove it" in writing)
One who said "No. Not possible, given the constraints" was replaced by a 'yes-man' Manager wasted about 21 engineer months (15 real months) before the implantation was mathematically proven to be impossible in a public paper (due to race conditions where locks couldn't be used). Entire project was canned, manager was promoted for having the "smarts" to cancel such an ill-conceived project (no one remembered it was he who conceived it :-))
It's sorta like the saying "Easier to get forgiveness after the fact than ask for permission up front." Stoopid managers don't like to hear no, but prefer "yes" with shoddy work and bugs over all else. Knew one manager (managing a government security project) who was proud of having hidden bugs and problems and having beaten another company in competing for a contract (because they were "stupid" and were forthright and outspoken about problems or questions). This manager's motto was "it's not a bug unless the customer finds it" [so any work on "correcting" such "features" was a waste of company resources and an indication of the fixer's inability to follow orders (or so it said on reviews of his employees)].
It really depends on what type of company/manager you work for. But bottom line with global competition for your job is that those who follow orders without question rise the most quickly. Only if there are post-disaster or post-war investigations/tribunals are such ethics questioned -- otherwise, it's just "par for the course" in the battlefield of capitalism (lowest quality product that the consumer will bare for least price).
That's why the government had to create laws to stop exploitation of children, create minimum safe working conditions, minimum wages, product safety commissions, building codes (designed to be the _minimums_ necessary for a safe building, but are used by most builders as the target to shoot for -- because, again, in a capitalistic sense, shooting for anything higher than the minimum will cost more and make you less competitive than those that barely scrape over the minimums.
Of one of these 'do the minimum' managers, a government evaluator, who didn't like the manager's attitude, but had to *pass* him because he met the letter of the law on the minimums: "if you always shoot to just roll over the rim, sometimes you're going to miss".
But things are going to have to get worse before they will get better. Until such managers (and companies) are held accountable for failures, the situation won't change. Until customers stop buying buggy software, product quality will continue to decline (because if the customer is buying it, it still must be over the minimum -- let's try even lower quality the next time!). Anyone who cut their programming teeth during the dot.bomb era has been taught that software bugs are inevitable and to be expected. Software quality has been "spin doctored" to be something that is "not really possible" in real life. Everyone has been given _ALOT_ of propaganda about why software quality is impossible - to the point that most people are now believers. Though occasionally, there comes along a privately held company that disproves the myth (from slashdot, summary on qnx website) that probably got its biggest boost as MS FUD and propaganda.
Only when enough people die wil
It seems fairly straightforward why SCO isn't showing the code. They've already said that the code in the kernel isn't affected. That leaves what: superfluous drivers (maybe, depending on how one defines code), and all of the 'gnu-ish' utils that make up a linux distro.
They don't want to show the code, since we'd probably see that it's something in the 'bc' program (for example) that is trespassing and it would be a trivial exercise to rewrite or remove the offending speck of code (a bit like gif was replaced by jpg and compress was replaced by gzip). They don't want to tell people what it is -- just that they are violating SCO's copyright. The whole purpose of not showing the code is the hope that whatever the technology is, it will become more embedded in actual use and become more difficult and painful to remove it as time goes on. So they stall for time to allow as much integration as possible before they have to produce the code.
I'd say ignore it until they state exactly what lines of code or what driver or utility infringes, then we excise it. I'm just guessing that maybe they have a case, but it's too easy to excise the offending code that if they showed the code, the case would be moot by every vendor's next release or prior with a patch.
It seems the only logical explanation for their actions.
-l
Beer made from Hops contain estrogens (plant derived). The estrogen content tends to influence your body to store more fat. The herb, hops, by itself has a 'relaxing effect' in herbal medicine, and, BTW, is in the same family as the cannibis plant -- a family noted as 'advanced' as it has two sexes. I'm not familiar with maltose or how much it is used in beer production, so I can't comment on how much it contributes, but herbal books will warn that phytoestrogens in hops can cause fat to be deposited into the classic "beer-belly" pattern (this effect is independant of alcohol other than alcohol having 7 calories/gram that can be converted to and stored as fat).
;-).
Plant estrogens can also cause gynomastia (breast/nipple development and fat storage around nipple/breast area) as well as lower testosterone levels. They are also linked to erectile dysfunction in some men. I would speculate that they could also lower libido and sperm count.
Women with estrogen related disorders, especially cancer, should avoid phytoestrogens as they can stimulate cancer and/or tumor growth. Also, women who are pregnant should avoid phytoestrogens (not just in hops, but also some soy products, licorice and others) since they can interfere with fetal development.
I could speculate that taking products with extra estrogen effects could especially hinder male fetus development. That's why there are BIG cautions about pregnant women even handling drugs like propecia which block the testosterone derivative DHT (I think that's Di-hydrotestosterone). If testosterones are blocked during fetal development, an XY-"chromosoned" baby might develop as female (since all babies start out as 'female', and only testosterone surges during certain stages of development result in the baby developing male sex characteristics.
It's been noted that there are two large surges of testosterone during male fetus development -- the first is associated with genital development. The 2nd occurs later on during brain development and is _speculated_ to affect how the brain develops.
I'd be cautious about considering 'beer' as some generic food group component,
(which doesn't mean an icy cold beer on a hot day doesn't taste good, though technically, it has a dehydrating effect...:-( ).
Reminds me of problems with chocolate -- how can something that tastes so good be bad for you....
Your problem (and one of SGI's) is your reliance on Red Hat.
:-)).
Just as you are annoyed that XFS isn't part of Hans's FS benchmarks, I'm a minorly annoyed that people don't realize there are better alternatives to Red Hat. SuSE Pro, comes with 2 DVD's and 5 CD's now, which can be had for less than $100. Upgrades are running in the 40-50$ range I think. Even Mandrake is still chugging along on the smell of the money they used to have.
I 1st tried Red Hat, then seduced by Mandrake's superior UI, turned off a bit by Mandrake's Pentium-optimized code that runs slower on x686 (Pentium Pro, P-II, P-III, even P4) (according to the gnu C-library people). Then tried SuSE -- impressed with number of pre-loadable packages (though their maintenance and install procedure is still flakey and their 'installation support' doesn't even include a laptop with external monitor...lame. Still like the wider coverage enough to stay w/SuSE. When I bought it, it was 5 CD's for the base product -- about $40 at the time -- compared to RH and Mandrake's 1-3 CD's at the time.
When SuSE went to DVD distribution, I was stoked! No more "CD-shuffle" -- and DVD xfer rates were quite a bit above CD xfer rates. I'm a little worried -- haven't had a chance to look over their new release yet -- but now they have 2 DVD's....I don't wanna play DVD shuffle....
SuSE will format the rootFS as XFS and does have the support to do it. (and has had such support for about 2 years now).
I tend to agree with your sentiment about XFS being left out of the comparisons, but if RH doesn't give lip service to XFS, maybe it's not a high enough priority for Hans to run the tests, for the extra time it would take. If you only had the time/resources to compare against 1 fs, which would you choose? Market leader supported ext3, or performance leader, xfs (assuming it is)?
You might be able to contact Hans (maybe it is on the website) for the disk performance tests he is running and run the same tests on Rieser and XFS on your system. I'd be interested in seeing such results...
While XFS has spectacular performance on IRIX as it was developed to handle real-time video streaming and terabyte filesystems, 5-6 years ago (and improved on since then), you can't really use that as a reliability/stability/ performance base, since IRIX had multi-threaded/pre-emptable/ and direct I/O features for years that Linux is just now beginning to get. There was alot of framework provided by the IRIX OS that linux just couldn't do. While upgrades of Linux features have been coming to support such a framework, adding such upgrades and getting them accepted into the main base has been less than easy.
There has been considerable sentiment in the Linux upper echelons against modularization, granularity and verification of correct functioning (micro kernels are bad; all drivers should be able to overwrite anything; resistance to capabilities or increasing the number; resistance to modular / configurable, "truly generic", security system (no, LSM isn't close -- and even that's been an uphill battle); no ability to do run-time validation logging of all security relevant transactions; etc.
The last implementation SGI did trying to use LSM had fundamental security flaws that would invalidate any attempt to have it evaluated for CAPP compliance under Common Criteria (even knowing this, the security manager there managed to pull the wool over his superiors eyes to tell them that it would work -- but then he was also one to hide known bugs from 3rd party validators and create elaborate tests to dissuade running them where they might uncover known bugs; and stress the point that performance is never an issue unless a big enough customer complains and that a bug isn't a bug until a customer reports it.
This is very much like Microsoft's practices where MS has incentive to *NOT* ship working products (for each support call on a bug, they can pull in up to $100/call or more). Why spend money testing an
Yeah and it'll make you go blind too!
If you have a multi-level and/or granular security architecture, penetration or a hack at one security level doesn't mean automatic access to other levels or privileges. So they hack the webserver process. If the webserver is running as a non-root process in a chrooted jail -- perhaps even on a 'virtual machine', does that automatically mean we should shut down the whole system?
It's the same with well designed programs -- there was a slashdot article recently on QNX -- that is designed to be fault tolerant -- and it works. Only when you design huge monolithic code monsters where a fault anywhere in the monster means kill the whole beast do you have such frail computer systems.
Imagine human skin hacked by a scrape on some sharp object. If the first decision was to instantly kill the whole host, there wouldn't be too many humans -- can you say *stoopid* design?
Sure, there are some things that can't be healed, but the majority of us have had scrapes and bruises growing up and are still quite healthy -- and even where the car body may have permanent damage, then engine/CPU (the person's brain) is often quite capable.
Next time you think fault tolerant or intrusion tolerant systems are foolish and impossible, think "Stephen Hawking", or "Einstein" (not able to complete High School). I had a *stoopid* manager who thought that making system-audit so efficient, it could be left on by default in all but the most demanding of compute environments was a waste of time -- that it was *impossible* to build real-time intrusion detection systems.
Of course people thought it was impossible to circumnavigate the globe (you'd fall off the edge), impossible to fly, impossible to go faster than the speed of sound, etc.
Every time someone talks about how "impossible", you have to realize they are consciously or unconsciously thinking inside a box. To do the impossible requires something that *isn't* engineering. It isn't manageable. It can't be driven by a schedule. You have to *think outside the box*. You have to be creative. By definition, engineering, isn't creative. Engineering is taking known principles, applying them in some set of known circumstances, and coming out with another "widget", that looks similar to a previous widget.
Most large companies breed conformity and uniformity. While this type of engineering is great for reproducing Honda's on an assembly line, it greatly hinders thinking 'out of the box' (the box of conformity and uniformity that the company asserts is "necessary" for their business). Then they wonder why what was once a 'wonder company' is now a 'dinosaur company'.
Creative people are often *not* group players -- if they had a group mentality, then how can they be expected to come up with any idea that is radically different from the rest of the group?
Creative people tend more toward not having exceptional social graces (think of the novel ideas of unix, or Multics). These were not done by suit-and-tie, management "yes"-men. Even Linux was started by 1 person -- who has not always been known to be the social charmer, even tempered type -- and I certainly don't get the impression that everything is done by group consensus.
But already in linux, there is a fair amount of doing things the 'linux' way, certain people to please, various people who get say-so or veto powers (or are believed to have such) beyond Linus.
People familiar with Microsoft can remember when even the simplest application crash would bring down the entire system. Unix people would generally laugh at this. But now we see those who think a single penetration should cause the whole system to be brought down. Maybe it will require a next-generation OS (dunno enough about QNX to know if it might qualify), but there are other OS's that have better security records than linux (BSD, OS/X (I've heard)).
Linux, laughably, doesn't even have CAPP certification. Sure, there are alot more Microsoft vulnerabilities every
Might want to check out the ESP Package Manager. It seems to be able to generate output for multiple 'single package systems'. I just stumbled onto it while looking for more info on packing options. Haven't used it but it does make for a good/polished presentation...If the software is half as good...:-)
-l
Seems like the French aren't afraid to try techno-miracles -- I haven't seen any metro system as good -- London is close, but alot of inconsistencies. In Paris and France, they aren't afraid to try new things (and the US still
doesn't have any high-speed trains....bunch of cowards -- look big behind
their high-tech weapons -- but when it comes to something socially useful...
forget it. It was a shame the French became the only company to provide
Super-Sonic speeds on jets -- and, of course, what did we do in the US?
We banned their use in US airspace because Elmer's cow might stop producing
milk from the occasional bang. Big woop. We could have had coast-to-coast
in 2-3 hours, but noooOOOOOooo.... any real R&D goes to defense where
they don't have to worry about every soldier who breaks a nail suing them.
Americans are just so damn stupid so often....that and greedy. Grrr.
Why can't the US every take the lead in these areas --- because it's always
private development and unless the private developer can prove profit (minus
real or bogus lawsuits) before it is even tested, it falls dead on the design
floor.
I really thought the Casino bosses in Las Vegas just might pull off the
high speed train idea to L.A. But it's been ages since I heard that idea
float.
Everyone in the US seems to want to have the right to stop progress that can benefit large numbers of people -- like all the poltics with the "Rich"
who can buy their congressmen in Menlo Park/Palo Alto and don't want BART
to go through their town -- we were promised it would circle he Bay and have
been paying sales tax to support it since...when, 1970's? Everything
is politics and self-interest.
Grrrrrr.
Some people are arguing robots.txt as the determiner, however remember
:-)
the court case that a company *lost* because it copied the data of a
competitor site and set it's prices lower.
This is equivalent to Kroger hiring a few clerks to go down each day and
take prices of various objects on their wifi equip'ed phones/handhelds in
a store so Safeway can under cut prices.
What, you didn't read the fine print on the Safeway door that says no price
comparisons or making up price lists? Or what...were they supposed to look
for a robots.txt file behind the Safeway door?
There seems to be a general lack of common sense here (especially on the
part of the judge that ruled against the company scanning for competing
prices). If it is allowed in the real world, it shouldn't be different in
the computer world without alot of sound reasoning behind why it should be
different. The fact that Safeway could have a 3-page acceptable use policy
that I accept when my body presence opens the door, is ludicrous.
Now you talk about advertising losses -- what about whatever major network
it was, deleting competing major network logo bought and paid for on
tall building in Times Square for New Years eve? Competing networked modified
the image in realtime and inserted their own logo for the price of an SGI
workstation -- heck of alot cheaper. Legal? Not legal? Can you say a
real life image is "copyright" and if two people take a picture of the same
real life picture, is one the rightful owner? What if one or both alter
the "real life picture", have they violated someone's rights? Reality's
rights (ok, in this case it would have been the network that paids to rent the
entire side of the building), but it's really a matter of who owns what you
see? If a picture is take of what you see, who owns the picture?
This is a complete mishmash of conflicting legal decisions with computer
copying, caching, alteration and adding to the mess. What if I load a page
but I don't load the images? Have I violated copyright because I either
chose or cannot load the images? What if I selectively blocked them based
on their IP or name? If I don't load flash player, am I violating a
copyright on a site by not viewing the flash content advertising?
Random judges in random jurisdictions are going to be making random calls on
right/wrong that will collide with each other and with what makes sense in
the real world.
I'm not sure what the collective approach should be -- should I be required to
watch TV advertising or am I stealing programming if I go to the loo during
a panty spot? If I block popup am I stealing computer time.....
This is all just one big gigantic growing mass of living worms that promises to be one of the larger headaches of times to come.
Any unified field theories to solve this mess?
As I walk through the store aisles of various Silicon Valley stores, the
.... everything -- product isn't there to be
:-/
shelves are noticeably more barren. Selection on everything is down. No
more bulk items -- if you want items (if they are available at all), you
have to buy a greater quantity of smaller sizes (usually at a 20-40% price
increase).
Selection? I went to Fry's the other day. They used to have 2-3 60G
laptop drives, now, the largest drive they carry is a 40G. Similar problems
in cables, memory, cpu's
bought.
It's in the drug stores, the clothing stores, the electronics stores, the
food stores -- all of them have vastly reduced inventory and selection.
I couldn't even buy brand name thick aluminum foil in large size and not in
the store brand in any size except 27" wide.
What color did you want? Was that black or black? Size? One size (Large)
fits all... Everything is backordered or they've changed suppliers, or
they just don't know why they aren't getting shipments in.
The disk drive selection at Fry's is 1/2 - 1/4th what it used to be and the
prices haven't fallen like they were. In fact tech as a whole seems to be
stagnating. I could walk in every 3 months and expect to see a new size
disk drive or new speed, whatever....now....things are moving at a snail's
pace. Remember when the computer manufacturer's couldn't keep up with how
fast Intel was putting out faster CPU processors -- now...things are still
pretty maxed at 3.06, though I think I saw one 3.2MHz
Just seems like everything is stalled and in short supply. I'm wondering if
they are going to turn to rationing on basic goods if they can't keep the
shelves stocked....its just a bit too eary -- like the last decades/years of
the old USSR.
Is that where the US is headed? Did capitalism just 'outlast' communism,
but is still doomed to failure?
I see prices on many items going up, up up -- especially overseas items as
the dollar drops, drops, drops. Foreign buying power seems to have dropped
by 30% or more depending on the country...on the good side -- if this keeps
up, it will be cheaper to hirer Americans again
That's what I had to do -- spammers found out my Verizon text messaging number a year or two back. I had to pay for each message I got (even though I had a flat rate service for more minutes/month that I usually use. No - they couldn't take excess minutes and credit them to the text messaging. I could call them for each spam received and receive a credit for each message -- just like I can call them and get 1 whole minute credit when their system drops me in dead (but busy, traffic wise) zones.
I can be on phone hold with some company (Dell, Kaiser, etc.) for over 20 minutes, then just as they answer, I can get a drop, and Verizon is willing to add 1 minute to my call allowance for that month. However each service call
to Verizon to do this runs 5-10 minutes of real time (no air time charges, but
who has 10 minutes to earn the equivalent of $0.60 dollars/hour? They
count on that.
Not enough competition. I was in Europe a few years back -- Israel of all
places -- *ALL* the teens had cell phones. Turns out it's about 1/10th the cost here in California. From what I've been told, California's rates
are among the worst -- so much so that I've thought of getting a phone for
outgoing calls through my parents located in another area where cell phone
rates with full roaming and free long distance running half what I pay
here.
Anyway -- I asked if I could specify a list of allowed users -- nope. Basically, anyone who knew my number and some magic incantation could send
me spam. Ironically -- at the time, I didn't know how to send my phone
text messages via an email port -- but the spammers did! So I requested
they disable the service completely.
I sure as heck don't need spam on my stupid cell phone where I have to
pay per/spam. That should be as illegal as sending unrequested faxes.
Grrr.
You will note that no matter what kind of program you run, it'll draw the same amount of power as long as the load % is the same. The exception might be an app that steps all over the cache, triggering memory to work hard.
:-)
Don't forget, you are talking first level cache, and can't be doing 3-D
graphics. Extensive use of the the floating point math co-processor also
adds watts.
I measured about a 20W difference/computer that was running SETI vs. blank-screen idle. The PC version had the graphics builtin to the screen saver too.
The height of SETI usage was the same summer we had rolling blackouts in
CA.
Nope -- 'work' as in applying a force to move electrons around qualifies as
work, I believe -- and 'work' done doesn't come with zero energy usage.
I think that was one of my rejected posts on slashdot at the time.
-l
It's rumored that some people actually turn off the whole computer when they're not using it.
I think most people actually believe the HW experts that point to lower
computer lifespan when you do that due to vastly fluctuating temperatures
in all the components. I remember often having to reseat memory chips
before the advent of the PC.
Besides, it makes it harder to remotely log in and have your computer fetching email when it's off.
-l