Linux has a gaping vulnerability. Apparently there's a "root" account which, if left unsecured, can provide access to ANYTHING on the computer. A series of so-called "rooted" Linux boxes -- say, in a public place -- could then be used to launch a sophisticated DDoS attack.
GDS causes problems on public terminals? Easy solution: DDTT!
Actually, I think it's more like blaming the company that sold the sharpening block. All of the info that Google turns up is already readily available on the computer! They've just made it more accessible. If you're the kind of idiot who gets a password reminder emailed to you on a public terminal, then it's not Google's fault when you get pwn3d. It's yours.
As an aside, we run SunRay thin clients for our public internet kiosks. Want the browser cache? Sorry, it's housed safely on the server.
It rather startles me that both Microsoft and Sun are yammering about hardware being free and software costing money when, if we've learned anything in the past 13 years, it's the exact opposite. Hardware will always cost money; bricks and mortar don't want to be free. Manufacturing costs will always exist (except in some nanotech utopia).
Software, on the other hand is information, which desperately wants to be free. And, contrary to the predictions of Schatz and Ballmer, software already is free.
Until they make hardware freely duplicatable, it will cost money. It's more expensive to make 100 sticks of RAM than one. But it's no more expensive to make 100 million copies of Firefox than it is to make one. In fact, it's no more expensive to make 100 million copies of Windows -- legal or not -- than to make one. That's Netcraft confirms that Microsoft is dying: with information gaining increasing freedom, a company that sells information will be hard pressed to survive. A company like IBM, on the other hand, which sells silicon but gives away information, can expect a long and prosperous future.
Yes, hydrogen fuel cells exist. But, had you RTFA, you would know why these microturbines have advantages over them. Plus, I hardly think that a D-cell sized fuel tank for 10 hours of operation is petroleum dependence. Of course, you wouldn't know that they consumed so little fuel, not having RTFA and all.
Are you familiar with the abbreviation "RTFA"? Half of the frikkin' article is devoted to extolling the benefits of micro gas turbines over hydrogen fuel cells.
* "we need to be able to solve the problem in as little time as possible with the lowest cost to the customer and Sun." - a co-worker spent a month corresponding with Sun to get them to admit there's a bug in SunOne AppServer (it compiles JSP pages even if they existed on the server in jar files).
A month? Dang, why did you get such good service? I've got a service request in to Sun about the SunOne Messaging Server that turned three months old last Friday. It took me a month just to get a call back on a request that was supposed to have four hour turnaround. I've had our vendor and our regional rep call them, and I'm finally getting a little bit of service, by which I mean an email a day or so.
When Sun had their big new product conference last week, I tuned in -- and laughed out loud every time they touted their service. Sun service SUCKS, bad. I've only been dealing with them since May, and already I've got a three month outstanding service request, plus on two occasions I've been redirected to people with no connection to Sun. Once, they transfered my call to a company that used to be a Sun reseller (but hasn't been for several *years*, and from whom we never bought anything); later, they gave me a phone number to call, and it turned out to be some poor dude's home phone number. Totally unrelated to Sun.
We've got SunRay thin clients. There's a known issue with the power supply; it quite frequently burns out. Returning them should be simple, but it took me three separate service calls and finally a call to our vendor to have them flex their muscle to get these things exchanged.
Frankly, it seems to me that, unless you're running seriously big iron -- and we aren't; our biggest system is a four-way -- you buy Sun for the service. That purchasing point has gone right out the window for me. What's left? Reliability? On systems as small as we use, there's no advantage. Oh, I remember: buy-in. We've already blown thousands on Sun products, so it would be silly to go to Linux, right? Right?
Hmm....
I think you raise a good point: different needs have different levels. My work computer is, I think, a level 10 for what it does: Dual Athlon 2800+, 1.5 Gb RAM, but 40 Gb hard drive and ancient PCI video card that I pulled out of a 486. I don't need a big honkin' video card or hard drive to compile. But I can't play darn near anything on it. Heck, Tux Racer is too fancy for this box. What is it, then? When I can toast most any modern computer on darn near any benchmark, but stick a Geforce 2 in a Pentium 2 and you'll outperform me in games.
This is why we have *lots* of benchmarks. Some are applicable to some people, others to other people. If I'm raytracing, I want to know that Pentium chips are great for floating-point monsters, not that I should have a level 8.
Let's not forget the uncountable numbers of handy malware apps out there that regularly pop-up advertisements. Just give someone an offer for Viagra that, having seen it a billion times already, they'll just close, but not before they're pwn3d.
Hmm. My roommate graduated ten months ago with a CS degree, and so far 0% of the CIO's to whom he has applied for jobs have wanted to hire him. Maybe I should recommend that, instead of changing his name to Sanjit, he should just write a worm. Bang! He'll instantly get half of the jobs he applies for.
(3) Choice of Law and Jurisdiction. These Terms of Use will be governed by and construed in accordance with
the laws of Uninhabited Sovereign Territory of Palmyra Atoll.... Any claims... will be brought...to the jurisdiction of Palmyra Atoll courts.
Yeah, but it sucks for posting code on./. The lameness filter won't let me post my killer 452-character "Just another Brainfuck hacker" sigline unless I pad it with an UNGODLY amount of filter-circumvention text.
Re:Where do you draw the line?
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm aware of this. I use Opera (and love it!), used NetZero for the brief time that it was free, and other ad-supported software. Most of those practice true disclosure: You're getting a service in exchange for your eyes. And I'm fine with that.
But if someone is hawking something like EUniverse or Claria, then they're not going to be upfront and forthcoming about it, because their service isn't valuable enough. Opera is (or was; Firefox is gaining ground) a nice enough browser that I'm willing to put up with some ads, so I accept the EULA precisely because they're upfront about being ad-supported.
In contrast, no one would ever install a 404-redirect program if they knew what it would do up front. Instead, somewhere in the EULA is a paragraph explaining in euphemism a mile deep that the app hijacks your browser.
I'm not anti-ad-supported software; I think it allows some outstanding software to get into the world for free. (Obviously I'd prefer they GPL'd Opera, but I'll take what I can get.) I'm saying that forcing disclosure is basically masturbatory.
Re:Separating Linux users from Windows users
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 1
But I watch Windows users tolerate
truly mindboggling amounts of adware/spamware/malware.
My personal record was when I was cleaning off a student's machine with Ad-Aware and uncovered over 1,700 components of spyware and other malware. Now, that's including all of the tracking cookies and registry entries that are installed with that, but the nearest I've ever seen was a computer with 400 components that was totally unusable because all the malware was eating the memory. When I clean off my home Windows machine every month or so, I can expect to find less than a dozen.
I don't know about the part with our deep underlying guilt, though. That seems awfully Freudian. (Read: crap.)
Re:Where do you draw the line?
on
The Spyware Inferno
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
When was the last time you read an EULA in full? What about your grandma? Name the last EULA she read in full.
Disclosure really doesn't matter when "NiftyFreeWebApp" buries the fact that it requires the sacrifice of your firstborn on page 972 of a EULA written in obfuscated legalese.
I use Opera, and I have not purchased it. In the top corner of my browser, small text ads display, enabled by Google, and based on what I'm currently browsing. No registration required.
Why can't these big news sites do something like that? Track what you read with a cookie and give you ads that relate to the content you're interested in? The NYT would see that I read lots of tech articles, and could hawk computers at me, while giving ads for dictionaries to someone who does the crossword every day. The technology obviously exists, and all it does is connect a browser with a set of preferences, not a person.
As it is, all the NYT knows about me is that Blonzo T. Yermalloy lives in Anytown, PA. (I live on 1234 No. Fucking way.) How does that help at all? Especially when compared to the alternative?
That's why we have things like NetNanny and the V-Chip; ratings for TV, movies and video games; and "Click if you're over 18" buttons on web pages. It's all to allow the consumer to make an informed decision about the content that they choose to view and that they choose to make viewable to their children.
Slashdot Mirror
GDS causes problems on public terminals? Easy solution: DDTT!
As an aside, we run SunRay thin clients for our public internet kiosks. Want the browser cache? Sorry, it's housed safely on the server.
Software, on the other hand is information, which desperately wants to be free. And, contrary to the predictions of Schatz and Ballmer, software already is free.
Until they make hardware freely duplicatable, it will cost money. It's more expensive to make 100 sticks of RAM than one. But it's no more expensive to make 100 million copies of Firefox than it is to make one. In fact, it's no more expensive to make 100 million copies of Windows -- legal or not -- than to make one. That's Netcraft confirms that Microsoft is dying: with information gaining increasing freedom, a company that sells information will be hard pressed to survive. A company like IBM, on the other hand, which sells silicon but gives away information, can expect a long and prosperous future.
What about herpes?
Yes, hydrogen fuel cells exist. But, had you RTFA, you would know why these microturbines have advantages over them. Plus, I hardly think that a D-cell sized fuel tank for 10 hours of operation is petroleum dependence. Of course, you wouldn't know that they consumed so little fuel, not having RTFA and all.
Are you familiar with the abbreviation "RTFA"? Half of the frikkin' article is devoted to extolling the benefits of micro gas turbines over hydrogen fuel cells.
Okay, one more word: idiots.
Where's the "+1; absurdly pedantic and nerdy" when you need it?
When Sun had their big new product conference last week, I tuned in -- and laughed out loud every time they touted their service. Sun service SUCKS, bad. I've only been dealing with them since May, and already I've got a three month outstanding service request, plus on two occasions I've been redirected to people with no connection to Sun. Once, they transfered my call to a company that used to be a Sun reseller (but hasn't been for several *years*, and from whom we never bought anything); later, they gave me a phone number to call, and it turned out to be some poor dude's home phone number. Totally unrelated to Sun.
We've got SunRay thin clients. There's a known issue with the power supply; it quite frequently burns out. Returning them should be simple, but it took me three separate service calls and finally a call to our vendor to have them flex their muscle to get these things exchanged.
Frankly, it seems to me that, unless you're running seriously big iron -- and we aren't; our biggest system is a four-way -- you buy Sun for the service. That purchasing point has gone right out the window for me. What's left? Reliability? On systems as small as we use, there's no advantage. Oh, I remember: buy-in. We've already blown thousands on Sun products, so it would be silly to go to Linux, right? Right? Hmm....
This is why we have *lots* of benchmarks. Some are applicable to some people, others to other people. If I'm raytracing, I want to know that Pentium chips are great for floating-point monsters, not that I should have a level 8.
Thank you, Microsoft. Thank you right to hell.
Hmm. My roommate graduated ten months ago with a CS degree, and so far 0% of the CIO's to whom he has applied for jobs have wanted to hire him. Maybe I should recommend that, instead of changing his name to Sanjit, he should just write a worm. Bang! He'll instantly get half of the jobs he applies for.
Yeah, but it sucks for posting code on ./. The lameness filter won't let me post my killer 452-character "Just another Brainfuck hacker" sigline unless I pad it with an UNGODLY amount of filter-circumvention text.
Does Netcraft confirm it?
But if someone is hawking something like EUniverse or Claria, then they're not going to be upfront and forthcoming about it, because their service isn't valuable enough. Opera is (or was; Firefox is gaining ground) a nice enough browser that I'm willing to put up with some ads, so I accept the EULA precisely because they're upfront about being ad-supported.
In contrast, no one would ever install a 404-redirect program if they knew what it would do up front. Instead, somewhere in the EULA is a paragraph explaining in euphemism a mile deep that the app hijacks your browser.
I'm not anti-ad-supported software; I think it allows some outstanding software to get into the world for free. (Obviously I'd prefer they GPL'd Opera, but I'll take what I can get.) I'm saying that forcing disclosure is basically masturbatory.
I don't know about the part with our deep underlying guilt, though. That seems awfully Freudian. (Read: crap.)
Disclosure really doesn't matter when "NiftyFreeWebApp" buries the fact that it requires the sacrifice of your firstborn on page 972 of a EULA written in obfuscated legalese.
Why can't these big news sites do something like that? Track what you read with a cookie and give you ads that relate to the content you're interested in? The NYT would see that I read lots of tech articles, and could hawk computers at me, while giving ads for dictionaries to someone who does the crossword every day. The technology obviously exists, and all it does is connect a browser with a set of preferences, not a person.
As it is, all the NYT knows about me is that Blonzo T. Yermalloy lives in Anytown, PA. (I live on 1234 No. Fucking way.) How does that help at all? Especially when compared to the alternative?
Emacs! Full, builtin support for 88-key keyboards, can be run under vt100, and I've heard you can even use a mouse with it. What more do you want?
Shouldn't the page be called "Three Laws Considered Harmful"?
PHP does have an equivalent to CPAN: PEAR.
In Soviet Russia, IE criticizes linux geeks!
That's why we have things like NetNanny and the V-Chip; ratings for TV, movies and video games; and "Click if you're over 18" buttons on web pages. It's all to allow the consumer to make an informed decision about the content that they choose to view and that they choose to make viewable to their children.