As someone who has seen a few FBI files on what kids of all socioeconomic status' get themselves into online:
It's NOT a matter of trust. It's a matter of safety.
My advice: set up a logging firewall, and log everything. But don't go through the logs unless you know something bad is up. Make sure they understand you trust them and the logs will probably just be erased one day, but *can* look things up if you need to.
It's just like anything...trust them, but have the ability to know what's going on.
Sorry Diebold, if your going to be dealing with something as powerful as a vote, then I don't think you have any "property rights" regarding your tech. It should be free and open and subject to review.
If this crap comes to our state, I'll be visiting the courthouse with some buddies.
When and if this happens, the great thing about the 'net is we can start our own DNS service. Sure there have been failed DNS alternatives in the past, but that was before someone tried to grap the existing DNS system.
Uh...dude....that's my point. Do you seriously think that anyone would suggest that TV news isn't about ratings? That radio is currently diverse? That newspapers are full of real news?
No offense, but you don't need to assume people are stupider than you.
All this has already happened. The old media outlets are *already* lost. Viva la Internet!
...let's hope this passes and the president doesn't veto it!
We are at a critical juncture. If it doesn't pass, Radio will lose all diversity, Newspapers will only print boring wire stories, and television news will only be about ratings!
But both me and my producer agreed that it was NOT a replacement for singing correctly and on pitch.
Instead, we'd set it so that it would slowly "grab" the tone to tighten things up a bit. This was particularly true in 'stacked' situations where up to 4 vocals were singing the same note.
In fact, sometimes we actually used it to make a stack just a hair flat or short...to give the sound a nice buzzy presence effect. Basically we used it as a creative tool and not to cheat. If I was off on something, we'd laugh and do it again...we NEVER relied on the box to fix something.
It's just like everything else...you can use technology for creativity or to cover imperfection. I'd rather get it as perfect as humanly possible, and leave the electronics for the creativity angle.
I think that you'll see labels pushing for singles, and indies/artists pushing for albums. This seems counterintuitive since labels have bigger budgets...but listen further.
I just finished my own project...not in a basement studio...but in a real production house type studio. I spent more than my last car. When I spend that much money I'm going to make darn sure that every track is both creative AND worth listening to because I *need* to recoup my investment, and 3000 99 cent downloads won't do it. In short, I have much more incentive to make a good album since my margin is only worth anything with a full album sale.
On the other hand, a label is looking for the big bang pop song single that's going to hit the Radio/TRL and sell the whole record--or hit a nucleus of 2 or 3 other songs to seal the deal. In a shift to an online sales model, they aren't going to completely abandon this...it's too ingrained. They are either going to force album purchases to attempt to maximize profits, or focus on the nucleus of 2 or 3 songs. In short, they have much more incentive to go on an EP type model which doesn't allow for diversity.
On a side note, about half my album used public domain material as a core. I'm preparing a slashdot article after it's released. Self recorded, self promoted, sold online using public domain material...wish me luck!
Oh...I understand the "Higher thinking" of most developers.
As someone who chose the networking path (real networking...not the bootcamp bred fare currently litering the corporatescape), I've had to fix, kludge, and work around the products of such superior intellects for nearly 10 years.
Please, this prima donna approach to developers as the darlings of anything silicon is ridiculous. They're smart, but there are lots of other people out there just as smart that do other things with computers. The company who recognizes *all* of it's brainpower--not just the coders--is a superior company indeed.
And so is the combustion engine with the innevitable creating of super cool transporter beams. And so is television when they plug wires right into our eye sockets. And so is lip balm when they upload our consciousness into RAM.
I'm not ready to count out portable physical storage media just yet. Ubiquitous bandwidth is a long ways away, and people *like* owning things that can't be taken away from them.
You mean, exactly the way the SQLSlammer worm did? It just hit _every_ IP address it could think of. Lack of a discovery protocol didn't slow it down a bit.
Exactly. What if it had utilized protocol that made blanket exploit attempts unnecessary? What made SQLSlammer/Sapphire spread so quickly was that the payload was so small. In fact, it previewed what can (and will) happen when blanket exploit time is negligible.
Authentication is the responsibility of the application layer. Rendezvous only makes it easier to find services. It's still up to the service to restrict access appropriately.
I'm not poo-poo'ing rendevous. I'm poo-poo'ing it's inevitable implementation in completely insecure manners. This article talks about how great it is to just turn on a laptop and instantly have access to all the resources around you. This 'feature rich' world is even worse than the microsoft security models out there. Leave an open, passwordless share out there on the 'net and see what universally available resources gets you.
Perhaps we should start writing resource authentication concepts into underlying protocols, don't you think? Take a poll of Best Buy WAP purchasers before you answer.
"It's a form of distributed computing with no middleman required. "
You mean I can write wor...I mean software that will automatically find the most available hosts to infe...I mean utilize? And network resources are instantly available to me with little or no authentication?
Open WAPS just get more and more problematic. Imagine wireless aware worms that spread through the air quickly rendering the airwaves useless.
Imagine your printers printing 1000's of worm initiated pages of X11 camera ads or something...
The authentication mechanisms and potentials for abuse involved in these 'features' are truly scary.
An employer doesn't want to know if you were late on your visa bill.
Say you ran up a bill of $20k and a company had to write that off. This and other forms of fraud are notated on your credit report. That's what they're looking for: history of fraud, dishonest or intentionally irresponsible dealings. They have a right to that information, as long as they get your permission to obtain it. If you don't trust them with your credit report then why do you even want to work there?
I have personally had to review these credit reports, and it's not a big deal. Lots of folks have credit problems--that's not the point. W few have a real pattern of dishonesty that only comes out in a credit report. Do you want them having access to your personal financial information at a bank? Or how about medical records?
Ok...so they pass a law that limits copyrights to 14 years. Then they embed DRM, etc. in all of our consumer electronics.
How long does it take to change that law back, and how long would it take to completely remove the the fully implementedinfrastructure of DRM, DMCA, etc?
Answer: One vote by our 'representatives' and we're screwed.
stuff like this scares me. Last year was the first time I ever considered buying mac (I did a 'top' command at a command prompt and was sold on the concept).
However, the path for macs increasingly seems to be paved with nickles and dimes. Add that to the existing price difference for an i386, and i'm slowly easing my wallet back into my pocket.
It's just becoming apparent that wintel for all its faults is much more economical and versatile (in a free way). And Linux as a desktop is getting closer and closer....
Sure, it may "just work". But so does a $35k BMW. I could probably afford a BMW but that's not what I'm driving. Apple has a great product, but this is an extremely poor economic time to be making ankle-biter fees and charges part of the deal.
You're making my point. What you speak of is a widget application of existing technology, not an education in solving problems creatively. I would agree that kids need to learn how to do math without a machine to do it for them. You seem to argue that the only application for computers in the classroom is to replace the repetitive tasks and allow them to be lazy.
A couple non-widget solutions to learning:
A - the creation of games that require computation (without assistance) as part of the gaming process. I'm amazed at how quickly my daughter (3.5 years old) learns things based on the games she plays on her computer. These games get gradually more complex and soon the tasks that were impossible a day or two ago are non-issues. She's even learning about her own learning processs: "daddy! I used my brain!".
For haunting similiarity, read "The Diamond Age" by Stephenson.
Kids routinely pick up stacks of information from gaming, because it's challenging and exciting. Why not put those forces to use?
B - the use of applications that occasionally require a complex calculation manually instead of doing it for you. Nothing really specific here, but it could be applied in things like geometry exercises or chemistry. How about a word processor that only tells you how many words you misspelled, not which ones?
I will say this...we spent waaaaay to much time doing stacks of silly repetitive work. Until about 8th grade when I figured out the Great Numbers Game of Education, I did poorly because I simply stopped doing the assignments after I got the point. I aced my tests, but got nailed on the repetitive homework. We seem to think that it takes gobs and gobs of time to learn. What really takes time is overcoming the sheer boredom of the factory/farm worker behavior the system was designed for.
You could replace much of repetition far more effectively with something challenging, applicable, intuitive, and freakin' worthwhile beyond learning to carry out abstract orders for authority figures (although that's an important skill...it's not THE skill).
Again, computers are perfect for tackling challenges and being creative. We just need to learn to apply that without the widgetthought (such as simply shoving a calculator in their hand.)
As I mentioned in a prior post, this is a classic example of widget-mentality. This brand of education was designed for general purpose factory workers, not creative problem solvers.
True, it often takes repetition to implant knowledge. But why make this repetition chained-to-the-desk sweatshop learning?
Computers are very good tools for solving problems. We should train kids to use them that way. They rote knowledge will be learned when the brain determines it actually needs it.
My little girl (3.5 years old) spends more time in front of the computer than television playing Blues Clues, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, etc, and she amazes me with how much she learns from these things. The key? They are entertaining and challenging.
(On a side note, she uses an old p200 with 200 megs RAM running w2k, and the games are like 5 bucks each from the bargain bins. The whole set up is probably 1/3 the cost of a typical edumuhcational setup.)
Is it any wonder that an educational system designed to turn out mindless widget makers in factories seems ill suited to implement machines that excel in creative problem solving?
I remember my middle school (early 80's) had a huge room full of TRS-80's. They would routinely trott the parents by so they could ooh and ahhh over the slick silver exteriors. However, when we made our weekly trip to the cpu room, it was to run crappy worksheet programs that asked random math questions--nothing more than what we did with paper worksheets.
The most we learned from these machines was how to break out of the programs, then alter the BASIC to give us high scores. We had it so they would generate enough wrong answers to avoid suspicions. Voila...a creative and challenging application of computers in the classroom.
My hunch is that current education is still focused on rote widget maker type learning, and that the presence of powerfully creative machines is simply baffling the system. Until we realize rhythmic factory-esque pounding of the 3 R's is an outdated methodology, we'll have more kids utilizing the latest tech to learn Darren's Dance Grooves than anything else.
7 production firewalls in varying degrees of importance. 6 of these guys have *never* gone down. The exception on one was one where squid had some compile issues and made the rest of the box unhappy (during implementation). This number includes one soekris box.
2 temporary firewalls where someone insists on using firewall-1 or Symantec on Solaris but doesn't have the Solaris hardware or the budget yet. One is a bridging firewall, so I don't know what they're going to do when they want to switch. To be honest, they'll probably end up keeping them.
3 Snort sensors. (2 have never crashed, uptime of over one year before massive power failure at the location). This includes 3 upgrades of snort. One crashed during some Gigabit experiments.
A high volume syslog server/ftp logfile repository/mysql server. This one has been a bit flaky. Crashed twice in a one year period, 10 months between crashes.
A web server that has a maximum uptime of 8 months. Could have gone longer but this location has a bad power situation.
So total OpenBSD boxen for me is around 14.
I've been using OpenBSD in several mission critical networking roles for 3 years now, and I can safely say that I haven't needed SMP.
The conventional wisdom that an operating system should be judged according to it's bells and whistles is what's wrong with the software industry. An OS should be judged by two things: Does it do the job I require of it, and does it do it well?
There are many many jobs that do not require SMP. There are many many jobs being done on SMP boxes that do not require SMP. As the price of processors has diminished, SMP is just a cool thing to buy. I'd be willing to put money down saying that 75% of the SMP boxes out there aren't needed (if that was measurable).
So, if you want to judge your OS based on features you don't need, then go for it. I use OpenBSD because it is the best choice for that particular need. If you want to assume that one OS is the Uber-OS because of the back panel of the box, then go for it. I'll assume a particular OS is best for the task at hand, and go with that.
I'm not part of the OpenBSD project (nor do I play one on TV), but one of the central points behind it is that they don't put in things unless they are needed. So far it doesn't seem like SMP has been justified in the great scheme of things (no surprise given the actual need in the wild). I'd much rather have them working on things I'm going to be using instead of evaluating other products based on things I won't.
Slashdot Mirror
See Alan Dean Fosters' Thranx race. They are humans tightest ally's in his Commonwealth series.
There's gotta be a joke in there somewhere.
As someone who has seen a few FBI files on what kids of all socioeconomic status' get themselves into online:
It's NOT a matter of trust. It's a matter of safety.
My advice: set up a logging firewall, and log everything. But don't go through the logs unless you know something bad is up. Make sure they understand you trust them and the logs will probably just be erased one day, but *can* look things up if you need to.
It's just like anything...trust them, but have the ability to know what's going on.
Sorry Diebold, if your going to be dealing with something as powerful as a vote, then I don't think you have any "property rights" regarding your tech. It should be free and open and subject to review.
If this crap comes to our state, I'll be visiting the courthouse with some buddies.
When and if this happens, the great thing about the 'net is we can start our own DNS service. Sure there have been failed DNS alternatives in the past, but that was before someone tried to grap the existing DNS system.
If they block port 53, run it on port 80.
Uh...dude....that's my point. Do you seriously think that anyone would suggest that TV news isn't about ratings? That radio is currently diverse? That newspapers are full of real news?
No offense, but you don't need to assume people are stupider than you.
All this has already happened. The old media outlets are *already* lost. Viva la Internet!
...let's hope this passes and the president doesn't veto it!
We are at a critical juncture. If it doesn't pass, Radio will lose all diversity, Newspapers will only print boring wire stories, and television news will only be about ratings!
But both me and my producer agreed that it was NOT a replacement for singing correctly and on pitch.
Instead, we'd set it so that it would slowly "grab" the tone to tighten things up a bit. This was particularly true in 'stacked' situations where up to 4 vocals were singing the same note.
In fact, sometimes we actually used it to make a stack just a hair flat or short...to give the sound a nice buzzy presence effect. Basically we used it as a creative tool and not to cheat. If I was off on something, we'd laugh and do it again...we NEVER relied on the box to fix something.
It's just like everything else...you can use technology for creativity or to cover imperfection. I'd rather get it as perfect as humanly possible, and leave the electronics for the creativity angle.
I think that you'll see labels pushing for singles, and indies/artists pushing for albums. This seems counterintuitive since labels have bigger budgets...but listen further.
I just finished my own project...not in a basement studio...but in a real production house type studio. I spent more than my last car. When I spend that much money I'm going to make darn sure that every track is both creative AND worth listening to because I *need* to recoup my investment, and 3000 99 cent downloads won't do it. In short, I have much more incentive to make a good album since my margin is only worth anything with a full album sale.
On the other hand, a label is looking for the big bang pop song single that's going to hit the Radio/TRL and sell the whole record--or hit a nucleus of 2 or 3 other songs to seal the deal. In a shift to an online sales model, they aren't going to completely abandon this...it's too ingrained. They are either going to force album purchases to attempt to maximize profits, or focus on the nucleus of 2 or 3 songs. In short, they have much more incentive to go on an EP type model which doesn't allow for diversity.
On a side note, about half my album used public domain material as a core. I'm preparing a slashdot article after it's released. Self recorded, self promoted, sold online using public domain material...wish me luck!
Oh...I understand the "Higher thinking" of most developers.
As someone who chose the networking path (real networking...not the bootcamp bred fare currently litering the corporatescape), I've had to fix, kludge, and work around the products of such superior intellects for nearly 10 years.
Please, this prima donna approach to developers as the darlings of anything silicon is ridiculous. They're smart, but there are lots of other people out there just as smart that do other things with computers. The company who recognizes *all* of it's brainpower--not just the coders--is a superior company indeed.
And so is the combustion engine with the innevitable creating of super cool transporter beams. And so is television when they plug wires right into our eye sockets. And so is lip balm when they upload our consciousness into RAM. I'm not ready to count out portable physical storage media just yet. Ubiquitous bandwidth is a long ways away, and people *like* owning things that can't be taken away from them.
If so, where can I send my campaign contribution?
...the Cop of the Universe?
You mean, exactly the way the SQLSlammer worm did? It just hit _every_ IP address it could think of. Lack of a discovery protocol didn't slow it down a bit.
Exactly. What if it had utilized protocol that made blanket exploit attempts unnecessary? What made SQLSlammer/Sapphire spread so quickly was that the payload was so small. In fact, it previewed what can (and will) happen when blanket exploit time is negligible.
Authentication is the responsibility of the application layer. Rendezvous only makes it easier to find services. It's still up to the service to restrict access appropriately.
I'm not poo-poo'ing rendevous. I'm poo-poo'ing it's inevitable implementation in completely insecure manners. This article talks about how great it is to just turn on a laptop and instantly have access to all the resources around you. This 'feature rich' world is even worse than the microsoft security models out there. Leave an open, passwordless share out there on the 'net and see what universally available resources gets you.
Perhaps we should start writing resource authentication concepts into underlying protocols, don't you think? Take a poll of Best Buy WAP purchasers before you answer.
"It's a form of distributed computing with no middleman required. "
You mean I can write wor...I mean software that will automatically find the most available hosts to infe...I mean utilize? And network resources are instantly available to me with little or no authentication?
Open WAPS just get more and more problematic. Imagine wireless aware worms that spread through the air quickly rendering the airwaves useless.
Imagine your printers printing 1000's of worm initiated pages of X11 camera ads or something...
The authentication mechanisms and potentials for abuse involved in these 'features' are truly scary.
An employer doesn't want to know if you were late on your visa bill.
Say you ran up a bill of $20k and a company had to write that off. This and other forms of fraud are notated on your credit report. That's what they're looking for: history of fraud, dishonest or intentionally irresponsible dealings. They have a right to that information, as long as they get your permission to obtain it. If you don't trust them with your credit report then why do you even want to work there?
I have personally had to review these credit reports, and it's not a big deal. Lots of folks have credit problems--that's not the point. W few have a real pattern of dishonesty that only comes out in a credit report. Do you want them having access to your personal financial information at a bank? Or how about medical records?
Ok...so they pass a law that limits copyrights to 14 years. Then they embed DRM, etc. in all of our consumer electronics.
How long does it take to change that law back, and how long would it take to completely remove the the fully implementedinfrastructure of DRM, DMCA, etc?
Answer: One vote by our 'representatives' and we're screwed.
stuff like this scares me. Last year was the first time I ever considered buying mac (I did a 'top' command at a command prompt and was sold on the concept).
However, the path for macs increasingly seems to be paved with nickles and dimes. Add that to the existing price difference for an i386, and i'm slowly easing my wallet back into my pocket.
It's just becoming apparent that wintel for all its faults is much more economical and versatile (in a free way). And Linux as a desktop is getting closer and closer....
Sure, it may "just work". But so does a $35k BMW. I could probably afford a BMW but that's not what I'm driving. Apple has a great product, but this is an extremely poor economic time to be making ankle-biter fees and charges part of the deal.
You're making my point. What you speak of is a widget application of existing technology, not an education in solving problems creatively. I would agree that kids need to learn how to do math without a machine to do it for them. You seem to argue that the only application for computers in the classroom is to replace the repetitive tasks and allow them to be lazy.
A couple non-widget solutions to learning:
A - the creation of games that require computation (without assistance) as part of the gaming process. I'm amazed at how quickly my daughter (3.5 years old) learns things based on the games she plays on her computer. These games get gradually more complex and soon the tasks that were impossible a day or two ago are non-issues. She's even learning about her own learning processs: "daddy! I used my brain!".
For haunting similiarity, read "The Diamond Age" by Stephenson.
Kids routinely pick up stacks of information from gaming, because it's challenging and exciting. Why not put those forces to use?
B - the use of applications that occasionally require a complex calculation manually instead of doing it for you. Nothing really specific here, but it could be applied in things like geometry exercises or chemistry. How about a word processor that only tells you how many words you misspelled, not which ones?
I will say this...we spent waaaaay to much time doing stacks of silly repetitive work. Until about 8th grade when I figured out the Great Numbers Game of Education, I did poorly because I simply stopped doing the assignments after I got the point. I aced my tests, but got nailed on the repetitive homework. We seem to think that it takes gobs and gobs of time to learn. What really takes time is overcoming the sheer boredom of the factory/farm worker behavior the system was designed for.
You could replace much of repetition far more effectively with something challenging, applicable, intuitive, and freakin' worthwhile beyond learning to carry out abstract orders for authority figures (although that's an important skill...it's not THE skill).
Again, computers are perfect for tackling challenges and being creative. We just need to learn to apply that without the widgetthought (such as simply shoving a calculator in their hand.)
As I mentioned in a prior post, this is a classic example of widget-mentality. This brand of education was designed for general purpose factory workers, not creative problem solvers.
True, it often takes repetition to implant knowledge. But why make this repetition chained-to-the-desk sweatshop learning?
Computers are very good tools for solving problems. We should train kids to use them that way. They rote knowledge will be learned when the brain determines it actually needs it.
My little girl (3.5 years old) spends more time in front of the computer than television playing Blues Clues, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, etc, and she amazes me with how much she learns from these things. The key? They are entertaining and challenging.
(On a side note, she uses an old p200 with 200 megs RAM running w2k, and the games are like 5 bucks each from the bargain bins. The whole set up is probably 1/3 the cost of a typical edumuhcational setup.)
Is it any wonder that an educational system designed to turn out mindless widget makers in factories seems ill suited to implement machines that excel in creative problem solving?
I remember my middle school (early 80's) had a huge room full of TRS-80's. They would routinely trott the parents by so they could ooh and ahhh over the slick silver exteriors. However, when we made our weekly trip to the cpu room, it was to run crappy worksheet programs that asked random math questions--nothing more than what we did with paper worksheets.
The most we learned from these machines was how to break out of the programs, then alter the BASIC to give us high scores. We had it so they would generate enough wrong answers to avoid suspicions. Voila...a creative and challenging application of computers in the classroom.
My hunch is that current education is still focused on rote widget maker type learning, and that the presence of powerfully creative machines is simply baffling the system. Until we realize rhythmic factory-esque pounding of the 3 R's is an outdated methodology, we'll have more kids utilizing the latest tech to learn Darren's Dance Grooves than anything else.
The book really rocks with a real virus that's spread via hardware/software during 3D Cybersex encounters. Poof! Kills you in 72 hours
Ummm....isn't this similar to Snowcrash?
Well, if ya can't afford OpenBSD, then ya can't afford accountants.
And in most planned growth network environments, faster IS better.
This leaves "better". And IMHO OpenBSD is "better" for many apps.
7 production firewalls in varying degrees of importance. 6 of these guys have *never* gone down. The exception on one was one where squid had some compile issues and made the rest of the box unhappy (during implementation). This number includes one soekris box. 2 temporary firewalls where someone insists on using firewall-1 or Symantec on Solaris but doesn't have the Solaris hardware or the budget yet. One is a bridging firewall, so I don't know what they're going to do when they want to switch. To be honest, they'll probably end up keeping them. 3 Snort sensors. (2 have never crashed, uptime of over one year before massive power failure at the location). This includes 3 upgrades of snort. One crashed during some Gigabit experiments. A high volume syslog server/ftp logfile repository/mysql server. This one has been a bit flaky. Crashed twice in a one year period, 10 months between crashes. A web server that has a maximum uptime of 8 months. Could have gone longer but this location has a bad power situation. So total OpenBSD boxen for me is around 14.
I've been using OpenBSD in several mission critical networking roles for 3 years now, and I can safely say that I haven't needed SMP.
The conventional wisdom that an operating system should be judged according to it's bells and whistles is what's wrong with the software industry. An OS should be judged by two things: Does it do the job I require of it, and does it do it well?
There are many many jobs that do not require SMP. There are many many jobs being done on SMP boxes that do not require SMP. As the price of processors has diminished, SMP is just a cool thing to buy. I'd be willing to put money down saying that 75% of the SMP boxes out there aren't needed (if that was measurable).
So, if you want to judge your OS based on features you don't need, then go for it. I use OpenBSD because it is the best choice for that particular need. If you want to assume that one OS is the Uber-OS because of the back panel of the box, then go for it. I'll assume a particular OS is best for the task at hand, and go with that.
I'm not part of the OpenBSD project (nor do I play one on TV), but one of the central points behind it is that they don't put in things unless they are needed. So far it doesn't seem like SMP has been justified in the great scheme of things (no surprise given the actual need in the wild). I'd much rather have them working on things I'm going to be using instead of evaluating other products based on things I won't.