I'm assuming he deposited $4,000 in his bank account. That would change the balance, which is, assumedly, a 32bit float or fixed point value.
No, I deposited $4G (four gigabucks, $4,000,000,000)
which changed four bytes from
0x0000000c to
0xEE6B280c
— well, that actually changed only 3 bytes, so it was even
more bucks/byte.
Of course, he also created some transaction records there, so that would dilute the value of his bytes.
Yes, but those four bytes are the most valuable ones for me...
I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few recent worms... anyone else care to add to this list?
Few days ago I found some info about the
Samhain worm.
Any one knows where I can find some more info about it?
Because from what I've read so far, it looks very interesting,
with the whole architecture-independence, wormnet, etc.
With insecure X permissions, you can use xwd to dump images from a remote xserver. With a short script you can also grab remote keypresses and events for logging.
It reminds me about OS
(Output Spy, not Operating System)
from many, many years ago.
Here's an
OS and JEDGAR story from the
Jargon File:
This story says a lot about the ITS ethos.
On the ITS system there was a program that allowed you to see what was being printed on someone else's terminal. It spied on the other guy's output by examining the insides of the monitor system. The output spy program was called OS. Throughout the rest of the computer science world (and at IBM too) OS means `operating system', but among old-time ITS hackers it almost always meant `output spy'.
OS could work because ITS purposely had very little in the way of `protection' that prevented one user from trespassing on another's areas. Fair is fair, however. There was another program that would automatically notify you if anyone started to spy on your output. It worked in exactly the same way, by looking at the insides of the operating system to see if anyone else was looking at the insides that had to do with your output. This `counterspy' program was called JEDGAR (a six-letterism pronounced as two syllables:/jed'gr/), in honor of the former head of the FBI.
But there's more. JEDGAR would ask the user for `license to kill'. If the user said yes, then JEDGAR would actually gun the job of the luser who was spying. Unfortunately, people found that this made life too violent, especially when tourists learned about it. One of the systems hackers solved the problem by replacing JEDGAR with another program that only pretended to do its job. It took a long time to do this, because every copy of JEDGAR had to be patched. To this day no one knows how many people never figured out that JEDGAR had been defanged.
Interestingly, there is still a security module named JEDGAR alive as of late 1994 -- in the Unisys MCP for large systems. It is unknown to us whether the name is tribute or independent invention.
Now I gotta go take a walk, because I am worked up. But man, this is the most blatant and desperate FUD I have read in a long, long time.
The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit
is everything that the average person will ever read about
free vs. proprietary software.
99.999% of people won't ever read the
evil GPL/LGPL,
or anything about the
FSF and
GNU philosophy, about OSI,
about open source and free software, et cetera.
Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that
his mother wants to talk with me about computers.
She told me that her whole company office is down because of
some e-mail worm or trojan
and they have to install every software from
scratch. She told me that her son told her that
I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.
Here I started to think:
"Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD?
I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD,
so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if
they chose Debian, but maybe her staff
would be more familiar with Red Hat..."
She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her
question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95?
I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry
about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly
recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows?
But we need to have WWW and e-mail
so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS.
I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux,
it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS
and 1000s of professional applications.
It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft
licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay
anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian
on as many computers as you like.
You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in
my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a
non-profit international organization
collecting other people's free software, so
you can legally
use their software without paying for it. Most of the software
is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional
software from Microsoft, so please tell me again,
which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a
Microsoft software expert.
The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and
his grandma to use Debian or free software in general,
but now I care much less.
Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS
FUD propaganda, no matter what I say.
Most of people believe in news from corporations
like MSNBC and take them as objective.
Similarly, most of people listen to POP music
and the POP Star of the day —
not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.
So as long as I have my Debian
I'm happy, no matter that most of people
will never use Debian
and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
If one day I see that everyone uses Debian,
I'll start wondering what's wrong with it.
As Mark Twain once said:
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
For example, if the Federal Aviation Agency were to develop an application (derived from open source) which controlled 747 flight patterns, a number of issues easily become national security questions such as: Would it be prudent for the FAA to use software that thousands of unknown programmers have intimate knowledge of for something this critical?
Yeah, there's nothing like the good ol' security through obscurity.
Thank God no one knows how does the software controling 747 flight
works, so now I can fly safely.
Especially considering the few plagiarism cases that come to trial, where some rich artist (or corporation) is sued by some nobody for stealing his idea.
What will companies think about paying per-seat licensing and having to manage all the licensing nightmares associated with it when most of what they are buying is under the GPL?
Well, actually it's not the case.
GPL is not an EULA so as the end users they can do whatever they want,
without even the need to accept the license:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program [...]
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
Those companies would have to accept the GPL only if they wanted
to redistribute the software,
and even then, they would have much more
licensing nightmares with the proprietary parts of the system,
since they are not allowed to redistribute them under any condition
at all, unlike the copylefted software.
RMS seems to be fundamentally afraid that all his claims about open source software are wrong. If it's as good as he claims, then why is he worrying about this. United Linux should get steam rolled by higher quality and cost-efficient software from other places.
You seem to confuse the
FSF's
stanpoint about
free software
represented by Richard Stallman with the
OSI's
open source
point of view.
I usually find that mozilla doesn't render sites like that poperly because they are in fact not web sites at all.
Very true.
If the
W3C HTML Validator
says "No errors found!" it's HTML —
otherwise it's not.
Unfortunately most of those clueless
webmasters' bosses don't even know
that there's such a thing as
The World Wide Web Consortium.
It's always a Good Thing to send emails to
the higher management of companies with
broken websites (not to their webmasters as they will probably
ignore them) kindly informing that "your website
is
broken
and however it may look good on your computer, it does't work for
some people with different configuration
(like myself and many of my friends)
and you lose part of your customers."
Speak to their wallets.
Atlas provides a standardized system for conducting networked communications between clients, servers, database apps, and other such tools and utilities, specifically for communications necessary to establish and interact in computerized multiplayer roleplaying games, realtime strategy games and other online virtual environment simulations.
It would be nice
if Atlas was being used
(and developed)
by many different games
as a lingua franca of online gaming.
With the LGPL there's no
reason not to use Atlas-C++ in proprietary products.
Also I think
many commercial games vendors could learn a lot from
the WorldForge people
(like never trusting the client, etc.
—
see:
The Engineering Section of Worldforge).
Slashdot Mirror
No, I deposited $4G (four gigabucks, $4,000,000,000) which changed four bytes from 0x0000000c to 0xEE6B280c — well, that actually changed only 3 bytes, so it was even more bucks/byte.
Yes, but those four bytes are the most valuable ones for me...
I had to pay $4G for changing only 4 bytes of my bank account state, that's $1G/B!
Few days ago I found some info about the Samhain worm. Any one knows where I can find some more info about it? Because from what I've read so far, it looks very interesting, with the whole architecture-independence, wormnet, etc.
It reminds me about OS (Output Spy, not Operating System) from many, many years ago. Here's an OS and JEDGAR story from the Jargon File:
The only thing that worries me is that this kind of bull shit is everything that the average person will ever read about free vs. proprietary software. 99.999% of people won't ever read the evil GPL/LGPL, or anything about the FSF and GNU philosophy, about OSI, about open source and free software, et cetera.
Some time ago, I got a phone call from my friend, who said that his mother wants to talk with me about computers. She told me that her whole company office is down because of some e-mail worm or trojan and they have to install every software from scratch. She told me that her son told her that I could help her in choosing the most secure operating system.
Here I started to think: "Should I tell her to choose OpenBSD? I don't know, I'm not the expert with OpenBSD, so I wouldn't be able to help them so much as if they chose Debian, but maybe her staff would be more familiar with Red Hat..."
She interrupted my thinking process by continuing her question about the most secure OS:
— Do you think Windows 98 or maybe 95? I've heard that NT is the most secure OS, but I don't know.
I realized that she knows only about different Microsoft products...
— Well, if you want to have a secure environment and don't worry about all of those Internet worms and viruses, I wouldn't exactly recommend Windows — I said.
— What do you mean? Not Windows? But we need to have WWW and e-mail so I don't think we could work under DOS — she said.
— No, I wasn't talking about DOS. I personally prefer the OS called Debian GNU/Linux, it's not made by Microsoft, it's a very high quality OS and 1000s of professional applications. It has a UNIX security model, which...
— But we have already paid for Microsoft licenses.
— Don't worry, you don't have to pay anything for Debian, you can borrow my CDs and install Debian on as many computers as you like. You see, it's a free software and...
— Oh, no. We have to pay for the software in my company, we can't have pirate software here!
— No, you don't understand, Debian is a non-profit international organization collecting other people's free software, so you can legally use their software without paying for it. Most of the software is under the GNU General Public License and it says that you...
— Well, I would prefer to use a professional software from Microsoft, so please tell me again, which version of Windows is the most secure operating system?
— Then I'm sorry but I'm not a Microsoft software expert.
The moral is that few years ago I was telling everyone and his grandma to use Debian or free software in general, but now I care much less. Most of people won't forget about the pro-MS, anti-FS FUD propaganda, no matter what I say. Most of people believe in news from corporations like MSNBC and take them as objective. Similarly, most of people listen to POP music and the POP Star of the day — not Chopin, Mozart or Liszt.
So as long as I have my Debian I'm happy, no matter that most of people will never use Debian and will never listen to Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody.
If one day I see that everyone uses Debian, I'll start wondering what's wrong with it. As Mark Twain once said: "Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Yeah, there's nothing like the good ol' security through obscurity. Thank God no one knows how does the software controling 747 flight works, so now I can fly safely.
The WorldForge Project is probably a good place to start looking for them.
It reminds me the history of Lambada...
I hope your family don't read Slashdot — poor guys...
Well, actually it's not the case. GPL is not an EULA so as the end users they can do whatever they want, without even the need to accept the license:
Those companies would have to accept the GPL only if they wanted to redistribute the software, and even then, they would have much more licensing nightmares with the proprietary parts of the system, since they are not allowed to redistribute them under any condition at all, unlike the copylefted software.
You seem to confuse the FSF's stanpoint about free software represented by Richard Stallman with the OSI's open source point of view.
Very true. If the W3C HTML Validator says "No errors found!" it's HTML — otherwise it's not. Unfortunately most of those clueless webmasters' bosses don't even know that there's such a thing as The World Wide Web Consortium. It's always a Good Thing to send emails to the higher management of companies with broken websites (not to their webmasters as they will probably ignore them) kindly informing that "your website is broken and however it may look good on your computer, it does't work for some people with different configuration (like myself and many of my friends) and you lose part of your customers." Speak to their wallets.
What I would love to see is the Atlas protocol from The WorldForge Project being used by big online games vendors. Atlas-C++ library (the C++ implementation of the Atlas protocol) is licensed under The GNU Lesser General Public License.
Here's the Atlas Mission Statement:
It would be nice if Atlas was being used (and developed) by many different games as a lingua franca of online gaming. With the LGPL there's no reason not to use Atlas-C++ in proprietary products. Also I think many commercial games vendors could learn a lot from the WorldForge people (like never trusting the client, etc. — see: The Engineering Section of Worldforge).