TurboLinux is making alot of noise regarding the work they've done, meanwhile aren't they just taking an existing (very impressive) kernel patch referencing Virtual Servers and claiming it as their own?
Elsewhere in a reply to this article, here's what one of the TurboLinux people had to say:
"The TurboCluster was based upon the Virtual Server in the beginning. Since then we have hired a company to re-write it from scratch. There is nothing left of VS in the Cluster code, except some concepts (but none of their code). Did I mention it is GPL'ed in the source."
You're making an artificial distinction here. Many people who circumvent computer security enjoy spending a lot of time programming. I'd consider the Cult of the Dead Cow a hacker group, and they certainly do their share of programming. I find no problem with categorizing Alan Cox, the Cult of the Dead Cow, Richard Stallman, and L0pht Heavy Industries as hackers. They all are.
Well, you're misunderstanding the two groups. Web page hax0rs in general do not know any assembly, and are unlikely to have more than a passing knowledge of C. Usually they use already written exploits to break into servers.
Crackers, on the other hand, do know assembly, and circumvent copy protection. They are quite a bit more skilled than your average script kiddie. In fact, I'd consider them a subset of hackers, as many of them are true reverse engineers, often doing more than mere copy protection removal to add nifty features for programs or cheats for games.
I don't think we need to invent terms. Invented labels invariably either 1) don't catch on or 2) become self-parodies. Languages evolve naturaly, when a sufficient portion of the population collectively "decides" that a new term is warrented. Why can't we just say what happened: A web page was (defaced/altered) by an unauthorized person? Yeah, it's bland, but it gets the point across without falling into this whole cracker/hacker (f)lamewar again.
That sounds good to me. I was mainly objecting to the term "cracker" being inappropriately used in this context, and trying to suggest an alternative. "defaced" is certainly fine as well.
To get back to the article, I personly find it disheartening that this poor kid (I assume) who's been playing around is worried about being arrested for what amounts to causing someone to take five minutes to restore a backup. Yes, his actions are immature, and yes there's too much of this kind of thing going on, but fuck, the punishment should fit the crime. He deserves detention or summer school, not jail-time.
Definitely - there seems to be a level of paranoia about 12-year-old "superhackers" that makes people think they're a danger to society. The punishment should be the same as punishment for any other sort of vandalism that caused about $2 in damage that's easily fixed. Whatever punishment you'd give to somebody who sprayed shaving cream on your car is what you should give to this kid...
Just because a person or group broke into 11 websites doesn't make them hackers. It just means they found 11 websites vulnerable to one of the many rootshell.com exploits.
Hmm. The never-ending hack/crack debate. One the one hand, using "cracked" is obviously inappropriate, since the term already had a meaning in computer security prior to its application in 1984 to people who break into computers. It has, for as long as anybody remembers, described people who break the copy protection of software. This usage far predates the usage cited in the Jargon File (which itself admits to the 1984 date).
On the other hand, the term "hacked" is obviously inappropriate in this case. This system intrusion was merely the work of a script kiddie, it appears, and hence is not any sort of hacking.
We need a verb that means "broken into by a script kiddie," so as to differentiate from "broken into by an intelligent security expert" (which I'll continue to call "hacked") and from "breaking the copy protection of" (which I'll continue to call "cracked."
I personally prefer to use the term "hax0red," which, helpfully, is what they often call it themselves, so it should not be hard to have this term adopted. This differentiates from mature, intelligent people, who use "hacked," to describe their work (whatever that work may be, be it kernel hacking or NT hacking) and the script kiddies who use 3l33t sp33k to describe their work. It also allows "hax0r d00d" to be used as a convenient synonym for "script kiddie."
Hitler persecuted the Jewish religion, not just people of Semitic descent. Sure, most Jews are of a particular race of the Semitic family (to which, ironically, Arabs also belong), but there are also black Jews, arab Jews, asian Jews, and assorted other converts. Hitler was not particularly nice to those Jews either. Despite their not being from a "bad" race, they still belonged to the religion Hitler was persecuting.
Well, I have no idea how they run their monitoring, but if you report hate speech, they'll most likely remove it.
I suppose that still leaves the question of whether they enforce things unevenly, but at least if you see uneven enforcement you can report the things that didn't get enforced.
I'm somewhat skeptical of this. To quote from AOL's Terms of Service:
Language: Mild expletives and non-sexual anatomical references are allowed, but strong vulgar language, crude or explicit sexual references, hate speech, etc. are not. If you see it, report it at Keyword: Notify AOL
I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).
You'd be correct if Intel had been announcing new 700 MHz processors. Notice, however, that they're announcing processors starting at that speed, and going above 700 MHz.
Hmm, this is the only really on-topic post I see in response to this article, yet somebody's moderated it down from a 1 that some moderator gave it back to a 0. However, an off-topic article complaining that somebody's movie viewer can't view this format movie gets rated up to +2.
Since the majority of us do not use Linux to read Slashdot (according to the logs of/.'s webserver), I don't see the problem. Those of us who don't run Linux don't get upset when we can't run some new software program that Slashdot announces, so those of you who use Linux can show us the same courtesy by not objecting to things others may wish to see.
If there's another, better, format available, then sure. But if there's no other format, posting the Quicktime 4 link is better than posting no link at all, just as posting info about a Linux-only program is worse than posting a link to a highly ported program, but is better than posting no link at all.
Well, I have the auto-scnadisk running disabled, so that can't be doing much to help. I am using FAT32 in win98, but I was using FAT32 partitions in win95 as well. The improvement seems to have happened when I installed the win98 upgrade, not when I converted my partitions (I did that a while ago with PartitionMagic). Any other ideas? I'm frankly somewhat mystified (but it's a good thing nonetheless)...
Since the person asking the question did not once mention "Linux" in his question, I'm somewhat confused as to why the title of this Ask Slashdot is "Basic Linux Systems for the Home User?" Unless Cliff's biases are coming into play here, I don't see how this question could be interpreted in that way. The poster is asking how to set up a good system for his grandfather. He does not appear to care whether it is Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD, or BeOS, as long as it works nicely. That's the proper question to ask anyway - asking "how do i set up a easy-to-use Linux box for my grandfather" is a stupid question, since you are unnecessarily limiting yourself to a single OS which may or may not be the best choice for the situation.
Win98 seems to handle poweroffs nicely. In Win95, if I was in the middle of a download when the power went out, the file would be corrupted, with the wrong file size, and when ScanDisk fixed the filesize, it'd usually have a few KB of junk data appended to it. With Win98, for some odd reason, when the computer reboots, without even running scandisk, the filesize is correct, and the file is exactly as long as it needs to be. No corrupt data or metadata, and the download resumes fine. I've also tested this by powering off the computer while chatting on an IRC client set up to log the chat. In Win95, the logfile is corrupted, while in Win98 the logfile abruptly ends right after the last text that was typed before the poweroff.
Well, I don't think the online site *has* to be self-sustaining. They still sell quite a few copies of the dead-tree edition, for over $2000 a set, to libraries and individuals, and those bring in a nice profit. The $99 CD-ROM edition is also selling quite well (I have a copy, and I know a few other people that have it). Sure, providing the information for free online may cut into the CD-ROM's sales, but, not having a T1 line, I'd still rather have the full text and large images on a CD-ROM than over a 26.4 dialup link.
I'm still skeptical as to how this could be a mistake. If they went in and purchased a game, and the box did not say "Opposing Force" anywhere on it, how did the writer end up "accidentally" writing that in the article? Assuming the writer actually checked the facts, the box should've been fairly easy to read. The only way to get "Opposing Force" is to either get the game information from somewhere other than the box, or to make up the whole story in the first place.
Computer games are quite different from porn magazines or cigarettes, however. Those two items can be easily hidden from parents, consumed on the way home from school or something. Cigarettes are also physically harmful. Computer games, on the other hand, require a computer to play. If a parent is not home often enough, or paying enough attention, to notice when his or her kids are playing an "objectionable" computer game, that parent is not fulfilling his or her responsibilities. Kids cannot secretly play these games while on the bus coming home from school.
Yeah right. They expect me to believe that they actually did the "test" described, but did it with something like Quake 2 that's actually out, and mistyped "Quake 2" as "Half Life: Opposing Force"? Making a typo like that isn't very plausible.
It seems fairly clear that they didn't do any of the "research" described, but merely fabricated a story to try to support one of their points. If I were the developer or CompUSA, I'd sue for libel, since it's clear they never attempted to carry out the actions they're denouncing Gearbox Software and CompUSA (mostly CompUSA, since they're the ones allowing the child to buy the game) for allowing them to carry out.
Definitely techno...ambient stuff (some Aphex Twin, some Kraftwerk, Orbital, etc.) lets me concentrate on the code while still having good music playing. While I normally listen to Bad Religion, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, The Vandals, and a few other punk/industrial/other bands, it's hard to code to music that has lyrics =\
I don't know offhand how much MS revenue comes from server sales, but its pretty significant. NT server costs a bundle just to install, and on top of that you have the client license charges for everyone who can log on. Eroding server market share hurts MS far more than eroding desktop share.
Yeah, I'll agree that this could definitely put a dent in Microsoft's profits. However, servers also tend to be less visible, so Windows is likely to remain synonymous with "Operating System" in the minds of most people for at list a little while.
In addition Linux is now usable on the desktop, and its use on servers should create an acceptance of its use on corporate desktops as well. These people understand Total Cost of Ownership, and they are getting tired of writing huge cheques to MS every year and then watching their machines fall over every day.
Perhaps, but it'll take a while. Many companies are very attached to their Microsoft Outlook or Lotus CC:Mail email systems, and it'll take some convincing to get them to switch. Many large companies are also obsessed with uniformity, requiring everybody to have the same software installed and the same configurations, so they may only switch to Linux if they can switch *everything* and *everybody* to Linux. That might take some effort as well.
Interesting. Do you have any trend information? I'd really like to see it.
Unfortunately, no. It's one of those free web-statistics tracking things where you put an IMG on your page, and they collect stats about the people that load the image. This may slightly undercount Linux visitors, as Lynx doesn't load the image, but it'll also undercount users like me who surf on Windows with the images off (using Opera, in my case). It also doesn't collect any trend information, though my observations show that Linux's share has improved slightly (from around 0.05% to 0.08% over the last year or so). IE has also increased its totals to around 75% while Netscape is down below 20%, compared to a 60-35 advantage of IE over Netscape a little over a year ago.
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TurboLinux is making alot of noise regarding the work they've done, meanwhile aren't they just taking an existing (very impressive) kernel patch referencing Virtual Servers and claiming it as their own?
Elsewhere in a reply to this article, here's what one of the TurboLinux people had to say:
"The TurboCluster was based upon the Virtual Server in the beginning. Since then we have hired a company to re-write it from scratch. There is nothing left of VS in the Cluster code, except some concepts (but none of their code). Did I mention it is GPL'ed in the source."
So, in a word, no.
You're making an artificial distinction here. Many people who circumvent computer security enjoy spending a lot of time programming. I'd consider the Cult of the Dead Cow a hacker group, and they certainly do their share of programming. I find no problem with categorizing Alan Cox, the Cult of the Dead Cow, Richard Stallman, and L0pht Heavy Industries as hackers. They all are.
Well, you're misunderstanding the two groups. Web page hax0rs in general do not know any assembly, and are unlikely to have more than a passing knowledge of C. Usually they use already written exploits to break into servers.
Crackers, on the other hand, do know assembly, and circumvent copy protection. They are quite a bit more skilled than your average script kiddie. In fact, I'd consider them a subset of hackers, as many of them are true reverse engineers, often doing more than mere copy protection removal to add nifty features for programs or cheats for games.
I don't think we need to invent terms. Invented labels invariably either 1) don't catch on or 2) become self-parodies. Languages evolve naturaly, when a sufficient portion of the population collectively "decides" that a new term is warrented. Why can't we just say what happened:
A web page was (defaced/altered) by an unauthorized person?
Yeah, it's bland, but it gets the point across without falling into this whole cracker/hacker (f)lamewar again.
That sounds good to me. I was mainly objecting to the term "cracker" being inappropriately used in this context, and trying to suggest an alternative. "defaced" is certainly fine as well.
To get back to the article, I personly find it disheartening that this poor kid (I assume) who's been playing around is worried about being arrested for what amounts to causing someone to take five minutes to restore a backup. Yes, his actions are immature, and yes there's too much of this kind of thing going on, but fuck, the punishment should fit the crime. He deserves detention or summer school, not jail-time.
Definitely - there seems to be a level of paranoia about 12-year-old "superhackers" that makes people think they're a danger to society. The punishment should be the same as punishment for any other sort of vandalism that caused about $2 in damage that's easily fixed. Whatever punishment you'd give to somebody who sprayed shaving cream on your car is what you should give to this kid...
Just because a person or group broke into 11 websites doesn't make them hackers. It just means they found 11 websites vulnerable to one of the many rootshell.com exploits.
Hmm. The never-ending hack/crack debate. One the one hand, using "cracked" is obviously inappropriate, since the term already had a meaning in computer security prior to its application in 1984 to people who break into computers. It has, for as long as anybody remembers, described people who break the copy protection of software. This usage far predates the usage cited in the Jargon File (which itself admits to the 1984 date).
On the other hand, the term "hacked" is obviously inappropriate in this case. This system intrusion was merely the work of a script kiddie, it appears, and hence is not any sort of hacking.
We need a verb that means "broken into by a script kiddie," so as to differentiate from "broken into by an intelligent security expert" (which I'll continue to call "hacked") and from "breaking the copy protection of" (which I'll continue to call "cracked."
I personally prefer to use the term "hax0red," which, helpfully, is what they often call it themselves, so it should not be hard to have this term adopted. This differentiates from mature, intelligent people, who use "hacked," to describe their work (whatever that work may be, be it kernel hacking or NT hacking) and the script kiddies who use 3l33t sp33k to describe their work. It also allows "hax0r d00d" to be used as a convenient synonym for "script kiddie."
Hitler persecuted the Jewish religion, not just people of Semitic descent. Sure, most Jews are of a particular race of the Semitic family (to which, ironically, Arabs also belong), but there are also black Jews, arab Jews, asian Jews, and assorted other converts. Hitler was not particularly nice to those Jews either. Despite their not being from a "bad" race, they still belonged to the religion Hitler was persecuting.
Well, they just announced a 733 MHz processor today, so I guess I was right =)
Well, I have no idea how they run their monitoring, but if you report hate speech, they'll most likely remove it.
I suppose that still leaves the question of whether they enforce things unevenly, but at least if you see uneven enforcement you can report the things that didn't get enforced.
I'm somewhat skeptical of this. To quote from AOL's Terms of Service:
Language: Mild expletives and non-sexual anatomical references are allowed, but strong vulgar language, crude or explicit sexual references, hate speech, etc. are not. If you see it, report it at Keyword: Notify AOL
I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).
You'd be correct if Intel had been announcing new 700 MHz processors. Notice, however, that they're announcing processors starting at that speed, and going above 700 MHz.
7h47z R16h7 848y, 1F U D0n'7 5133P W17h m3, Ur Ur W38 5y73 & Ur H4rD DR1\/3 W1|_|_ N3V3R 533 7H3 L16H7 Ov D4Y. I 0Wn j00 848Y!!!$%$!$!$!!!!1!!!
That translates to:
"That's right baby, if you don't sleep with me, your web site and your hard drive will never see the light of day. I own you baby!"
Hmm, this is the only really on-topic post I see in response to this article, yet somebody's moderated it down from a 1 that some moderator gave it back to a 0. However, an off-topic article complaining that somebody's movie viewer can't view this format movie gets rated up to +2.
Since the majority of us do not use Linux to read Slashdot (according to the logs of /.'s webserver), I don't see the problem. Those of us who don't run Linux don't get upset when we can't run some new software program that Slashdot announces, so those of you who use Linux can show us the same courtesy by not objecting to things others may wish to see.
If there's another, better, format available, then sure. But if there's no other format, posting the Quicktime 4 link is better than posting no link at all, just as posting info about a Linux-only program is worse than posting a link to a highly ported program, but is better than posting no link at all.
Well, I have the auto-scnadisk running disabled, so that can't be doing much to help. I am using FAT32 in win98, but I was using FAT32 partitions in win95 as well. The improvement seems to have happened when I installed the win98 upgrade, not when I converted my partitions (I did that a while ago with PartitionMagic). Any other ideas? I'm frankly somewhat mystified (but it's a good thing nonetheless)...
Since the person asking the question did not once mention "Linux" in his question, I'm somewhat confused as to why the title of this Ask Slashdot is "Basic Linux Systems for the Home User?" Unless Cliff's biases are coming into play here, I don't see how this question could be interpreted in that way. The poster is asking how to set up a good system for his grandfather. He does not appear to care whether it is Windows, Mac OS, Linux, FreeBSD, or BeOS, as long as it works nicely. That's the proper question to ask anyway - asking "how do i set up a easy-to-use Linux box for my grandfather" is a stupid question, since you are unnecessarily limiting yourself to a single OS which may or may not be the best choice for the situation.
Win98 seems to handle poweroffs nicely. In Win95, if I was in the middle of a download when the power went out, the file would be corrupted, with the wrong file size, and when ScanDisk fixed the filesize, it'd usually have a few KB of junk data appended to it. With Win98, for some odd reason, when the computer reboots, without even running scandisk, the filesize is correct, and the file is exactly as long as it needs to be. No corrupt data or metadata, and the download resumes fine. I've also tested this by powering off the computer while chatting on an IRC client set up to log the chat. In Win95, the logfile is corrupted, while in Win98 the logfile abruptly ends right after the last text that was typed before the poweroff.
Anyway, that was sorta off-topic...
Well, I don't think the online site *has* to be self-sustaining. They still sell quite a few copies of the dead-tree edition, for over $2000 a set, to libraries and individuals, and those bring in a nice profit. The $99 CD-ROM edition is also selling quite well (I have a copy, and I know a few other people that have it). Sure, providing the information for free online may cut into the CD-ROM's sales, but, not having a T1 line, I'd still rather have the full text and large images on a CD-ROM than over a 26.4 dialup link.
Well if a parent bought his or her elementary schooler a laptop, that parent has problems to begin with...
I'm still skeptical as to how this could be a mistake. If they went in and purchased a game, and the box did not say "Opposing Force" anywhere on it, how did the writer end up "accidentally" writing that in the article? Assuming the writer actually checked the facts, the box should've been fairly easy to read. The only way to get "Opposing Force" is to either get the game information from somewhere other than the box, or to make up the whole story in the first place.
Computer games are quite different from porn magazines or cigarettes, however. Those two items can be easily hidden from parents, consumed on the way home from school or something. Cigarettes are also physically harmful. Computer games, on the other hand, require a computer to play. If a parent is not home often enough, or paying enough attention, to notice when his or her kids are playing an "objectionable" computer game, that parent is not fulfilling his or her responsibilities. Kids cannot secretly play these games while on the bus coming home from school.
Yeah right. They expect me to believe that they actually did the "test" described, but did it with something like Quake 2 that's actually out, and mistyped "Quake 2" as "Half Life: Opposing Force"? Making a typo like that isn't very plausible.
It seems fairly clear that they didn't do any of the "research" described, but merely fabricated a story to try to support one of their points. If I were the developer or CompUSA, I'd sue for libel, since it's clear they never attempted to carry out the actions they're denouncing Gearbox Software and CompUSA (mostly CompUSA, since they're the ones allowing the child to buy the game) for allowing them to carry out.
Definitely techno...ambient stuff (some Aphex Twin, some Kraftwerk, Orbital, etc.) lets me concentrate on the code while still having good music playing. While I normally listen to Bad Religion, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, The Vandals, and a few other punk/industrial/other bands, it's hard to code to music that has lyrics =\
I don't know offhand how much MS revenue comes from server sales, but its pretty significant. NT server costs a bundle just to install, and on top of that you have the client license charges for everyone who can log on. Eroding server market share hurts MS far more than eroding desktop share.
Yeah, I'll agree that this could definitely put a dent in Microsoft's profits. However, servers also tend to be less visible, so Windows is likely to remain synonymous with "Operating System" in the minds of most people for at list a little while.
In addition Linux is now usable on the desktop, and its use on servers should create an acceptance of its use on corporate desktops as well. These people understand Total Cost of Ownership, and they are getting tired of writing huge cheques to MS every year and then watching their machines fall over every day.
Perhaps, but it'll take a while. Many companies are very attached to their Microsoft Outlook or Lotus CC:Mail email systems, and it'll take some convincing to get them to switch. Many large companies are also obsessed with uniformity, requiring everybody to have the same software installed and the same configurations, so they may only switch to Linux if they can switch *everything* and *everybody* to Linux. That might take some effort as well.
Interesting. Do you have any trend information? I'd really like to see it.
Unfortunately, no. It's one of those free web-statistics tracking things where you put an IMG on your page, and they collect stats about the people that load the image. This may slightly undercount Linux visitors, as Lynx doesn't load the image, but it'll also undercount users like me who surf on Windows with the images off (using Opera, in my case). It also doesn't collect any trend information, though my observations show that Linux's share has improved slightly (from around 0.05% to 0.08% over the last year or so). IE has also increased its totals to around 75% while Netscape is down below 20%, compared to a 60-35 advantage of IE over Netscape a little over a year ago.
I first read that as "Puffin' Fest," which would be an interesting title indeed. Puffing on what, one would wonder...