Because he's a writer, and since the Mac 512, the most viable word processor for the MacOS was a port of a Microsoft product. He's not anti-windows, he's anti-Microsoft.
Before we all get giddy with excitement, consider this -- WalMart selling Linux may be what it takes for AOL to port to Linux. Last time I checked, that's one of the signs of the apocalypse! (though I admit I'm posting before the Coffee has really kicked in)
Reasons AGAINST setting up a Linux Demo PC at Walmart
1. su -; password; rm -rf *.*
<ob_smartass>So someone might remove all files with a dot in the filename?</ob_smartass>
2. When Linux breaks, (or is broken) you've got to be knowledgable to fix it. If you installed it, you've got no problem, but can you really count on someone who works at Walmart to know how to edit files? In my experience, non techies who sell computers would rather *not* fix a broken software demo by reinstalling. If they can't make it 'right' again with a few mouse clicks, they'll turn it off.
No problem. That's what "Flash this box back to factory configuration" CDs are for. The store demo doesn't need any custom config work, it's a demo of what you get right out of the box.
3. 133t k1dd135
See above. If they wind up having to re-flash the box more than one or two times a week, then they'll pull it down (or flash it to the WinXP version) I'm curious though, what makes you think that a Linux box would be MORE prone to this than a Win box? Last I checked, unpriviledged users could still edit the display settings for a windows box and set a refresh rate that the monitor can't handle, or drop it to 640x480x16 colors (which to a WalMart associate is "crashing the machine") You can also remove DLLs from the Windows folder, no?
By the way, you mention the Zealot Attractor factor as a Pro -- I'd call it a Con. The average WalMart associate is going to be more likely to think the geeky guy hanging out in the electronics section is looking to swipe something than be grateful for his help selling PCs.
My mom's not running Linux because my mom has a Mac
Seriously, for the first six months that she had her Performa, she would turn it on, launch Word and write her correspondence, (actual quote: "That spell-check thing is pretty handy!") print it out, and turn it off. When one of my sisters was cleaning up the hard drive, she asked "So where do you save your letters?" My mom said "Why on earth would I want to do that? I've already printed them and mailed them!"
So "All Our Moms" won't ever be running the same thing -- they don't all want the same thing!
... But who the hell needs a doctor (or silly coins) to tell them that they're color blind?
Most red-green folks don't know, as they've spent their entire lives subconciously developing coping mechanisms. My brother-in-law was well into grade school before someone noticed that he had an odd fascination with red-green combinations. (actually, he had a bloody nose and was watching the blood drip into the lawn. When asked why, he said it was cool to watch it disappear.) Most colorblindness is subtle -- you don't see the world like a black and white movie, you just don't have all the hues that a healthy visual system has.
Coined money is a public service, but that's ridiculous. Ease in differentiating coins should have been higher on the Europeans' To Do List than testing for MS.
Nobody ever claimed that the EU designed the coins as a colorblindness test. The researchers here got published for noticing that the diff between the gold-ish-colored coin and the copper-ish-colored coin happened to map onto the red-green area that matters for one type of colorblindness.
cool story though, just wondering how it turned out for your buddy.
Not too bad. Like I said, he was a pretty straight arrow before the one incident, so when push came to shove, they didn't really have much on him. He was offered a no-fine, no-time plea bargain. They even gave him a heads-up when his computer came up on siezed-property auction.
He had to buy his own property back, but I believe he got it all.
We've fallen out of touch, so for all I know he changed his name to Mitnick and vowed revenge, but somehow I suspect he's just another keyboard jockey at a struggling dot com.
Ok, it would have watered down the satire, but I really should have commented about where the analogy breaks down. Here goes, courtesy of the rapid-response team that is the slashdot community:
Cars are physical property, software is bits.
Creating physical property incurs significant expense, copying bits does not.
jacking a car deprives the person who purchased that car of something, taking/making a copy of software does not remove anything from the publisher, and per your argument doesn't even deprive them of potential revenue.
Ok, fine. My point is that your argument of "It costs too much for my intended use, so I used an illegally obtained copy instead of paying for it" doesn't cut it with me. You're not on better moral ground because you didn't use it very much, you still got software, used it, and didn't pay for it.
Its not that I dont think the program is worth it, its just the fact that FOR ME PERSONALLY to use it ONCE or TWICE doesnt justify the exorbitant price tag, whereas something cheaper might have led to to buy it.
Then don't use it! If Gimp didn't do it for you, then find something else that OSS that does. If you can't find free software for your once-or-twice use, then find cheap software and pony up the bucks.
Ok, this is offtopic so mod to your heart's content, but I love to tell the story so I'm gonna
I friend of mine back in the BBS day had always steered clear of guessing MCI codes for fear of getting busted. Lots of people we knew were doing it, and had been for a long time without any problem, so finally someone talked him into running a kind of war dialer to find MCI codes. He gets the program, finds a local MCI dialup number on a BBS and sets it to run overnight. Sadly, the dialup that he finds is an FBI plant -- they had been trying to get some big-time LD thiefs in the area and my buddy stumbled into the sting. His computer was a flaky old Apple II, which didn't quite run before the CPU warmed up a bit. The way he booted it was to turn it on, wait a few seconds, then hit the red button connected to a non-maskable-interrupt card (NMI cards, ahh the memories!) to restart, and repeat the cylce until it worked. So these two FBI goons greet him at his door, and ask to see the computer. He shows them the computer on his desk, and they ask him to turn it on. As he's reaching for the red button, he notices that the two goons have shoved their hands inside their jackets, just shy of drawing guns on this dorky kid, and ask him "just WHAT does that button do?!?" To this day we can't figure out what they hell they THOUGHT it was going to do. (release the hounds!)
How were pirates prosecuted before then? I seem to recall that they busted hacker rings long before 1997.
Typically via interstate wire fraud laws. The bits being transferred (net, or BBS prior to net) were considered to be stolen property, and the fact that they went over a telephone network and crossed state lines made it a federal. Of course back in the day, those that were swiping software were also often the sames ones using illegal (either full-on phreaked or simply guessed MCI codes) long distance telephone calls to transfer the bits, so that made a convenient charge as well.
Did some digging to refresh my memory. Here's a spot from back when Jennifer was working in Washington: Some people have ask what is the deal with the Washinton Post's Metro reporter Jennifer 8 Lee. Well here it is... Jennifer's parents are from China, where there about 200 million people have the last name "Lee." To impart a sense of individuality they gave her the middle name "8," which has special meaning to the Chinese. It means luck, good fortune, security and strength.
D000d, I hear ya! There's this sweet Jag that I jacked last year, but I've only driven it twice, and once was just down to the Circle-K ya know? That was NOT worth the hefty ($60 G's!) price tag associated with it, although I'd've probably payed $50.
The article wasn't claiming that the Euro was poorly designed. The coins are easily identified if you look at the front, but the flip side (obverse side in the article text) of two coins are strikingly similar in every aspect but red-green hue. Ok, that and the big "5" on the right vs the big "20" on the left.
From the article:
The population which is affected by some type of
congenital red-green anomaly has been estimated by several authors as 8% of men and 0.4%
of women in Europe and North-America [2].
2. J. Pokorny, V. C. Smith, G. Verriest, A. J. L. G. Pinkers, Congenital and acquired color vision defects,
(Grune and Stranton, New York, 1979).
The point is that the vast majority of the population will never get in to have an opthalmologist evaluate their color vision, but now anyone can perform their own screening with a little pocket change. Since one of the causes of R/G anomolies is undiagnosed Multiple Sclerosis, this is A Good Thing.
If the technology could get data to the other side of the planet faster than trans-oceanic fiber, then the size (or cost) of the device wouldn't matter a whit.
The trick is catching the things. Communication isn't just about throwing, you've got to be able to know what has been thrown. Don't expect neutrino-based communication anytime soon.
Isn't there anyone who is profiting from the development of perl?
Yes there is: me. I pull in around $1000/month in supplemental income doing perl work on the side. (I also have a day job, but drafted an addendum to the non-compete agreement so I could continue doing the contracting that fed me before this job came along)
And I've just sent $50 towards the foundation. Thanks
for putting it into perspective for me.
the province shakes the liver moss barium generation
Chinese zither fiercely
Another page for the same device?
on
Linux PDA From China
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Elsewhere on the page, there's a link with "Linux" in the text, which brings up
this page (with even more amusing Fish-isms)
which appears to be the same device with better pictures.
Anyone have any well-translated info on this?
The public won't blame them when someone cracks the system, because folks like you will jump up and blame the telco for not following Nortel's proceedures (as documented on page 497 of the installation guide!)
The telco managed to read the rest of the installation manual. They must have since they have hardware people can use to make telephone calls with. As opposed to a pile of hardware which dosn't do anything useful.
I'm not complaining about bad documentation, I'm claiming that the DMS was ill-designed with respect to security. Even within that, I'm only arguing against one design choice: The default state is for well-known authentication keys to be enabled. That's it. That's all. That's a flawed design. The user has to take an explicit step to secure the box as part of configuration, rather than the default state being secure and the user taking an explicit step to open it up if they choose.
As I said to Wolf earlier, you say we should blame Sprint for not securing the device when they turned it up. I say shame on Nortel for making that an extra step.
Never worked for Nortel, and I certainly don't think their gear (Telco switches like the DMS, or optical boxes like the Optera line) are any more or less secure than their competitors in each arena. The "axe" that I've got to grind is the attitude of "Sure I shipped a product with all the doors wide open, but page 497 of the installation guide clearly states how to close them."
The default state for the DMS-100 is inherently insecure.
If well-known (or even documented) authentication keys exist, and it's up the user to take the initiative to go find and change these keys, then the product vendor should get the lion's share of blame when an outside party exploits this design weakness. Decent design would either not have well-known keys in the first place, or would force the user to take explicit steps to enable them. It's not that hard to prompt the user at configuration time for passwords, and enforce even half-way "good" passwords at that. Nortel didn't (and most vendors don't) because it's extra work to do and there's not a payback. The customers won't say thank you, they'll be pissed that they can't install The Way We Have Always Done It(tm) The public won't blame them when someone cracks the system, because folks like you will jump up and blame the telco for not following Nortel's proceedures (as documented on page 497 of the installation guide!)
I'm not trying to play games with semantics. Sprint used the DMS the way Nortel intended the box to be used: Powered Up, Connected to the public network, switching telephone calls. You say we should blame Sprint for not securing the device when they turned it up. I say shame on Nortel for making that an extra step.
The default state of this gear should not be insecure.
It isn't insecure. It's only when the customer wires it up to the public telephone networks, without first bothering to set the passwords up that it becomes insecure.
Surely you don't believe this statement, do you? The default state of the gear is insecure. If the customer "wires it up to the public network" they're turning it on. If they do so without taking an additional step of setting the passwords, the system is vulnerable. The default state is what you get PRIOR to taking the additional steps.
Saying that it's secure until you wire it up and turn it on is absurd. Dynamite is harmless, until you light the fuse.
I don't buy it.
Of course the owner of a tool is responsible for making that tool perform correctly. In this case, Sprint was certainly responsible for ensuring that the DMS didn't have the default admin passowrds in production. But saying that Nortel is blameless because they documented this fact is bullshit. The right answer is to design tools where the default condition is secured, and make the customer read the manual, attend the training, and jump through hoops to make it insecure. Nortel shipped the box 180 degrees opposite of this.
There's enough blame to go around, but Nortel shipped gear designed for production. The default state of this gear should not be insecure.
And for what it's worth, your Alcatel DSL router isn't a case of bad design. If I recall correctly, TFTP doesn't have a password scheme. The first T is for trivial. There's no authentication and it's sessionless. For a DSL router this isn't a big deal if you don't accpet connections on the WAN port. Sure, a small business using this as the only router between employees and the net could be cracked, but only by a disgruntled employee, not by some script kiddie on the other side of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Because he's a writer, and since the Mac 512, the most viable word processor for the MacOS was a port of a Microsoft product.
He's not anti-windows, he's anti-Microsoft.
Aiiiieeee!
Great, early Monday and you've soured me on the entire week.
that's it, I'm going back to bed
Before we all get giddy with excitement, consider this -- WalMart selling Linux may be what it takes for AOL to port to Linux.
Last time I checked, that's one of the signs of the apocalypse! (though I admit I'm posting before the Coffee has really kicked in)
I'm curious though, what makes you think that a Linux box would be MORE prone to this than a Win box? Last I checked, unpriviledged users could still edit the display settings for a windows box and set a refresh rate that the monitor can't handle, or drop it to 640x480x16 colors (which to a WalMart associate is "crashing the machine") You can also remove DLLs from the Windows folder, no?
By the way, you mention the Zealot Attractor factor as a Pro -- I'd call it a Con. The average WalMart associate is going to be more likely to think the geeky guy hanging out in the electronics section is looking to swipe something than be grateful for his help selling PCs.
My mom's not running Linux because my mom has a Mac
Seriously, for the first six months that she had her Performa, she would turn it on, launch Word and write her correspondence, (actual quote: "That spell-check thing is pretty handy!") print it out, and turn it off. When one of my sisters was cleaning up the hard drive, she asked "So where do you save your letters?" My mom said "Why on earth would I want to do that? I've already printed them and mailed them!"
So "All Our Moms" won't ever be running the same thing -- they don't all want the same thing!
... But who the hell needs a doctor (or silly coins) to tell them that they're color blind?
Most red-green folks don't know, as they've spent their entire lives subconciously developing coping mechanisms. My brother-in-law was well into grade school before someone noticed that he had an odd fascination with red-green combinations. (actually, he had a bloody nose and was watching the blood drip into the lawn. When asked why, he said it was cool to watch it disappear.) Most colorblindness is subtle -- you don't see the world like a black and white movie, you just don't have all the hues that a healthy visual system has.
Coined money is a public service, but that's ridiculous. Ease in differentiating coins should have been higher on the Europeans' To Do List than testing for MS.
Nobody ever claimed that the EU designed the coins as a colorblindness test. The researchers here got published for noticing that the diff between the gold-ish-colored coin and the copper-ish-colored coin happened to map onto the red-green area that matters for one type of colorblindness.
cool story though, just wondering how it turned out for your buddy.
Not too bad. Like I said, he was a pretty straight arrow before the one incident, so when push came to shove, they didn't really have much on him. He was offered a no-fine, no-time plea bargain. They even gave him a heads-up when his computer came up on siezed-property auction. He had to buy his own property back, but I believe he got it all.
We've fallen out of touch, so for all I know he changed his name to Mitnick and vowed revenge, but somehow I suspect he's just another keyboard jockey at a struggling dot com.
- Cars are physical property, software is bits.
- Creating physical property incurs significant expense, copying bits does not.
- jacking a car deprives the person who purchased that car of something, taking/making a copy of software does not remove anything from the publisher, and per your argument doesn't even deprive them of potential revenue.
Ok, fine. My point is that your argument of "It costs too much for my intended use, so I used an illegally obtained copy instead of paying for it" doesn't cut it with me. You're not on better moral ground because you didn't use it very much, you still got software, used it, and didn't pay for it.Its not that I dont think the program is worth it, its just the fact that FOR ME PERSONALLY to use it ONCE or TWICE doesnt justify the exorbitant price tag, whereas something cheaper might have led to to buy it.
Then don't use it! If Gimp didn't do it for you, then find something else that OSS that does. If you can't find free software for your once-or-twice use, then find cheap software and pony up the bucks.
Ok, this is offtopic so mod to your heart's content, but I love to tell the story so I'm gonna
I friend of mine back in the BBS day had always steered clear of guessing MCI codes for fear of getting busted. Lots of people we knew were doing it, and had been for a long time without any problem, so finally someone talked him into running a kind of war dialer to find MCI codes. He gets the program, finds a local MCI dialup number on a BBS and sets it to run overnight.
Sadly, the dialup that he finds is an FBI plant -- they had been trying to get some big-time LD thiefs in the area and my buddy stumbled into the sting.
His computer was a flaky old Apple II, which didn't quite run before the CPU warmed up a bit. The way he booted it was to turn it on, wait a few seconds, then hit the red button connected to a non-maskable-interrupt card (NMI cards, ahh the memories!) to restart, and repeat the cylce until it worked.
So these two FBI goons greet him at his door, and ask to see the computer. He shows them the computer on his desk, and they ask him to turn it on. As he's reaching for the red button, he notices that the two goons have shoved their hands inside their jackets, just shy of drawing guns on this dorky kid, and ask him "just WHAT does that button do?!?"
To this day we can't figure out what they hell they THOUGHT it was going to do. (release the hounds!)
How were pirates prosecuted before then? I seem to recall that they busted hacker rings long before 1997.
Typically via interstate wire fraud laws. The bits being transferred (net, or BBS prior to net) were considered to be stolen property, and the fact that they went over a telephone network and crossed state lines made it a federal.
Of course back in the day, those that were swiping software were also often the sames ones using illegal (either full-on phreaked or simply guessed MCI codes) long distance telephone calls to transfer the bits, so that made a convenient charge as well.
Did some digging to refresh my memory. Here's a spot from back when Jennifer was working in Washington:
Some people have ask what is the deal with the Washinton Post's Metro reporter Jennifer 8 Lee. Well here it is... Jennifer's parents are from China, where there about 200 million people have the last name "Lee." To impart a sense of individuality they gave her the middle name "8," which has special meaning to the Chinese. It means luck, good fortune, security and strength.
D000d, I hear ya! There's this sweet Jag that I jacked last year, but I've only driven it twice, and once was just down to the Circle-K ya know? That was NOT worth the hefty ($60 G's!) price tag associated with it, although I'd've probably payed $50.
From the article:
The point is that the vast majority of the population will never get in to have an opthalmologist evaluate their color vision, but now anyone can perform their own screening with a little pocket change.
Since one of the causes of R/G anomolies is undiagnosed Multiple Sclerosis, this is A Good Thing.
If the technology could get data to the other side of the planet faster than trans-oceanic fiber, then the size (or cost) of the device wouldn't matter a whit.
The trick is catching the things. Communication isn't just about throwing, you've got to be able to know what has been thrown. Don't expect neutrino-based communication anytime soon.
Man, can you imagine a beowolf flock of these?
And I've just sent $50 towards the foundation. Thanks for putting it into perspective for me.
You've never seen fridge-magnet-poetry before?
the province shakes the liver moss barium generation
Chinese zither fiercely
Elsewhere on the page, there's a link with "Linux" in the text, which brings up this page (with even more amusing Fish-isms) which appears to be the same device with better pictures.
Anyone have any well-translated info on this?
As I said to Wolf earlier, you say we should blame Sprint for not securing the device when they turned it up. I say shame on Nortel for making that an extra step.
Never worked for Nortel, and I certainly don't think their gear (Telco switches like the DMS, or optical boxes like the Optera line) are any more or less secure than their competitors in each arena. The "axe" that I've got to grind is the attitude of "Sure I shipped a product with all the doors wide open, but page 497 of the installation guide clearly states how to close them."
The default state for the DMS-100 is inherently insecure.
If well-known (or even documented) authentication keys exist, and it's up the user to take the initiative to go find and change these keys, then the product vendor should get the lion's share of blame when an outside party exploits this design weakness.
Decent design would either not have well-known keys in the first place, or would force the user to take explicit steps to enable them.
It's not that hard to prompt the user at configuration time for passwords, and enforce even half-way "good" passwords at that. Nortel didn't (and most vendors don't) because it's extra work to do and there's not a payback. The customers won't say thank you, they'll be pissed that they can't install The Way We Have Always Done It(tm)
The public won't blame them when someone cracks the system, because folks like you will jump up and blame the telco for not following Nortel's proceedures (as documented on page 497 of the installation guide!)
I'm not trying to play games with semantics. Sprint used the DMS the way Nortel intended the box to be used: Powered Up, Connected to the public network, switching telephone calls. You say we should blame Sprint for not securing the device when they turned it up. I say shame on Nortel for making that an extra step.
Saying that it's secure until you wire it up and turn it on is absurd. Dynamite is harmless, until you light the fuse.
Geez... As if the jerk talking on his phone during lunch wasn't bad enough, now he's gonna be flashing a damn laser pointer around the place too!
I don't buy it.
Of course the owner of a tool is responsible for making that tool perform correctly. In this case, Sprint was certainly responsible for ensuring that the DMS didn't have the default admin passowrds in production. But saying that Nortel is blameless because they documented this fact is bullshit. The right answer is to design tools where the default condition is secured, and make the customer read the manual, attend the training, and jump through hoops to make it insecure. Nortel shipped the box 180 degrees opposite of this.
There's enough blame to go around, but Nortel shipped gear designed for production. The default state of this gear should not be insecure.
And for what it's worth, your Alcatel DSL router isn't a case of bad design. If I recall correctly, TFTP doesn't have a password scheme. The first T is for trivial. There's no authentication and it's sessionless. For a DSL router this isn't a big deal if you don't accpet connections on the WAN port. Sure, a small business using this as the only router between employees and the net could be cracked, but only by a disgruntled employee, not by some script kiddie on the other side of the world.
I know I shouldn't, but I simply can't help bringing up one of my favorite Strange Matter comics.