Why are they called rootkits in windows, when the superuser is called "administrator" and not "root"?
The entity/app/device known as a rootkit was first popularized (so to speak) as a way for the intruder to hide his tracks and maintain root access on a Unix machine. If rootkits had first become popular (again, so to speak) on Win32 machines they likely would have been called adminkit or similar.
In a general techspeak sense, though, (root == full access); most techies have at least a nodding acquaintance with Unix so the idea of root makes sense regardless of the OS in question.
The cynical part of me would like to mention that in years past there really wasn't much need for rootkits on Win32 machines: if the intruder wanted to keep privileged access it would be relatively simple matter to acquire it again.
I should be able to post my email on the net without fear of some shameless spammer harvesting it.
Yes, and I should be able to walk around all parts of a major metropolitan area without fear of getting mugged. Guess what? That is just not true. One must be cognizant of surroundings and protect oneself appropriately, which brings us to the next item...
I finnaly posted my personal address on just a few forums and now I receive at least 50 spam a day.
In all seriousness, what did you expect? The practice of address harvesting from newsgroups, etc. has been well known for ages.
I never consented for it to be mailed to
Not to put too fine a point on it, but where on earth did you get the idea that your consent had anything to do with people sending you email?
At one point the mag was so thick that police officers in major cities were subscribing, just so they could use 'em as hillbilly personal armor. I used to use my back issues to reinforce deterioriating sections of the basement walls in my house.
Wired was for pansies. Real men used the Computer Shopper. That was personal armor, and you coud have built your basement with back issues. Kids today...
There is nothing logical about your conclusion. If you actually read the whole first line of nurb432's post, you will see that it says
Its their country, their rules.. internet access is not a 'human right'..
nurb432 is correct: Internet access is not a human rights issue. I can't believe you actually think it is.
You then said
We can go back in history and include Cambodia, Nazi Germany,...
Furthermore, I can't believe you tried to compare genocide/mass murder to the presence/lack of Internet access. Either you were trolling (and I took the bait - go me) or you really do believe what you said, in which case your ignorance is astounding. Here is a hint: no one dies from lack of Internet access.
I use AVG on all my company systems and can say that in addition to being free...
Wow - good job. I would like to direct you to this paragraph on Grisoft's site:
AVG Free Edition is for private, non-commercial, single home computer use only. Use of AVG Free Edition within any organization or for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Your use of AVG Free Edition shall be in accordance with and is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the AVG Free Edition License Agreement which accompanies AVG Free Edition.
Simplication, in the world of gadgets, unfortunately means using a single, do-it-all device.
That will simplify one's cartage/storage needs - using one device is pretty straightforward, after all - but can very easily complicate other aspects.
I carry a laptop, a PDA (Clie), and a mobile phone. I don't need all of them all the time, so I carry what is necessary. However, if one item goes south I will still have the other two. If the all-in-one device breaks it becomes an all-are-gone. I find this unacceptable - YMMV.
Small all-in-one devices also frequently suffer from substandard input options and user interfaces. A fair compromise might be a PDA/phone device with an optional full-size (e.g. folding) keyboard, but that still leaves the user with the risk of losing all functionality with one mishap.
Strayer, D. L., & Johnston, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated driving and conversing on a cellular telophone. Psychological Science, 12(6), 462-466.
Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A., & Johnston, W. A. (2003). Cell phone-induced failures of visual attention during simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 9(1), 23-32. (emphasis mine)
I shall have to see if I can acquire these reports. However, I would feel better about the conclusions if they came from more than one source: D. L. Strayer and W. A. Johnston appear to have done the bulk of the work [in both reports] collaboratively. A second report from a wholly different group would help validate Strayer & Johnston's work.
I'm afraid he has the science behind him, not you. Go read the studies. Conversations over the phone degrade driving ability more than conversations with someone in the same car.
He made the assertion; it is his responsibility to provide data to support his assertion. He did not do so, and neither did you. I could tell you to go read the studies that confirm that humans descended from parakeets and it would carry as much weight as what you said.
This is a basic critical thinking concept: if you make an assertion, it is your job to provide evidence to back that assertion. Otherwise you are just expressing your opinion.
It's a small matter, but a crucial one: it requires far less attention to communicate with someone who is physically present than with someone who's a disconnected voice on the other end of a telephone line.
Shall I assume that you have reasonably unbiased and scientifically valid data to back your assertion?
I can just as easily state the opposite: "Communicating with a voice on the phone requires far less attention than speaking with someone in the vehicle because the driver will not feel the need to turn my head to look at the person on the phone." I just made that up, but it sounds reasonable; I have no data to back or refute the assertion.
For example, if a truck suddenly pulls out in front of you, you will suddenly focus on it; your passenger will tend to notice this and stop talking. Someone on the other end of a phone won't.
Your scenario assumes the driver and passenger(s) will see the same things at the same time, which is not a given: what if the passenger is reading or just has his eyes shut?
"Which means that a 70-year-old yakking away on his cellphone has the reaction times of a 120-year-old, or have we misunderstood this rather poor analogy?"
Apparently this is not the first time...
on
TCPA Support in Linux
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Go to the Linux Journal search function and search for 'garrick'. You should get eleven hits. I didn't read all of them, but using ctrl+f to search the pages revealed notes to Garrick re: font selection and the like. D'oh.
With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
It seems most people already lament the battery life of their portable devices. If a PDA's battery already is marginal [in the owner's opinion] then the additional power consumption caused by playing music for an extended period of time would be Considered Harmful.
The power drain would come primarily from driving the speakers: even the small ones in headphones consume a certain amount of power. That, and the device would not be able to shut itself off or otherwise use some power management features.
I also suspect that 1GB would not be enough for some people. (Please - no inane comments about that urban-legend quote from billg.)
Heh, thanks for pointing that out. I read that paragraph two or three times trying to figure out what LSB meant, and my mind just totally blanked out the parenthetical part.
Remember 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally'? Parentheses and exponents should be parsed first.:-)
I've been writing papers, and I use the reverse format - I would've written "Linux Standards Base (LSB)," and gone on to use LSB for the rest of the paper.
That would have made more sense, of course, but we must work with what we have.
I'll say a dozen Hail RTFA's and promise to be a good slashbot in the future.
Why do we need more standards defining the Least Significant Bit? ... Seriously, why can't articles explain what all of the acronyms mean?
Here is your big pointy hat - go sit in the corner.
From the FIRST PARAGRAPH of the article:
The Free Standards Group has decided to move away from a single, core LSB (Linux Standards Base) specification, and is instead going to break this down into different modules that can be combined to give a server or desktop LSB standard.(emphasis mine)
But where ever business memo must be written in such a way that you csn't tell the truth because it might be used against you in a court of law, your have a big problem with your tort system.
Replace tort system with business practices. Now your statement makes more sense.
IOW, the problem is not in the tort system: if the truth is bad enough to get one in trouble then that is the real issue.
I'm not sure how practical it is, though. It's all about cryptanalysis the old fashioned way (i.e. before computers). Still, I suppose it is good to acknowledge that the enemy may surprise us by taking a low-tech approach.
You mean if they surprise us by doing exactly the same thing we would have to do if the computers weren't available, right? You would be surprised how practical low-tech methods can be.
There ARE computers that store their BIOS settings in NVRAM or EEPROM instead of CMOS.
Yes, there are: my Sun 4c, 4m, and 4u machines are good examples of this. However, the original discussion seemed to be focused on PC/X86, so my comments were made with that in mind.
Some of them even have a case made of heavy steel to prevent easy intrusion.
Yes, the Suns do well in this category, too.:-) In fact I had an Axil SPARC10 clone that was actually heavier and stronger than its Sun counterpart. I miss the days of elegant RISC workstations...
/ties an onion to his belt, which was the style at the time
Slashdot Mirror
Why are they called rootkits in windows, when the superuser is called "administrator" and not "root"?
The entity/app/device known as a rootkit was first popularized (so to speak) as a way for the intruder to hide his tracks and maintain root access on a Unix machine. If rootkits had first become popular (again, so to speak) on Win32 machines they likely would have been called adminkit or similar.
In a general techspeak sense, though, (root == full access); most techies have at least a nodding acquaintance with Unix so the idea of root makes sense regardless of the OS in question.
The cynical part of me would like to mention that in years past there really wasn't much need for rootkits on Win32 machines: if the intruder wanted to keep privileged access it would be relatively simple matter to acquire it again.
Not every business needs to have a respectable name like "Federated Usable Computational Devices, Inc."
So the company would basically be FUCD?
:-)
My HP laptop is several years old; can anyone confirm this?
How should we know? It's your laptop.
I should be able to post my email on the net without fear of some shameless spammer harvesting it.
Yes, and I should be able to walk around all parts of a major metropolitan area without fear of getting mugged. Guess what? That is just not true. One must be cognizant of surroundings and protect oneself appropriately, which brings us to the next item...
I finnaly posted my personal address on just a few forums and now I receive at least 50 spam a day.
In all seriousness, what did you expect? The practice of address harvesting from newsgroups, etc. has been well known for ages.
I never consented for it to be mailed to
Not to put too fine a point on it, but where on earth did you get the idea that your consent had anything to do with people sending you email?
At one point the mag was so thick that police officers in major cities were subscribing, just so they could use 'em as hillbilly personal armor. I used to use my back issues to reinforce deterioriating sections of the basement walls in my house.
Wired was for pansies. Real men used the Computer Shopper. That was personal armor, and you coud have built your basement with back issues. Kids today...
That's a rather boring name. Shouldn't the awards be called the 'Geekies' or 'Nerdies' or something?
So people can't link to Red Hat?
Gee, I sure hope not.
[nurb432] Its their country, their rules..
Let's take that idea to a logical conclusion:
There is nothing logical about your conclusion. If you actually read the whole first line of nurb432's post, you will see that it says
Its their country, their rules.. internet access is not a 'human right'..
nurb432 is correct: Internet access is not a human rights issue. I can't believe you actually think it is.
You then said
We can go back in history and include Cambodia, Nazi Germany,
Furthermore, I can't believe you tried to compare genocide/mass murder to the presence/lack of Internet access. Either you were trolling (and I took the bait - go me) or you really do believe what you said, in which case your ignorance is astounding. Here is a hint: no one dies from lack of Internet access.
I submitted this yesterday with a more Insightful^W Interesting^W Funny headline.
Worlds... colliding... *yeeaarrgh*
I use AVG on all my company systems and can say that in addition to being free...
Wow - good job. I would like to direct you to this paragraph on Grisoft's site:
AVG Free Edition is for private, non-commercial, single home computer use only. Use of AVG Free Edition within any organization or for commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. Your use of AVG Free Edition shall be in accordance with and is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the AVG Free Edition License Agreement which accompanies AVG Free Edition.
Perhaps you should upgrade.
The Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual is here.
Simplication, in the world of gadgets, unfortunately means using a single, do-it-all device.
That will simplify one's cartage/storage needs - using one device is pretty straightforward, after all - but can very easily complicate other aspects.
I carry a laptop, a PDA (Clie), and a mobile phone. I don't need all of them all the time, so I carry what is necessary. However, if one item goes south I will still have the other two. If the all-in-one device breaks it becomes an all-are-gone. I find this unacceptable - YMMV.
Small all-in-one devices also frequently suffer from substandard input options and user interfaces. A fair compromise might be a PDA/phone device with an optional full-size (e.g. folding) keyboard, but that still leaves the user with the risk of losing all functionality with one mishap.
That's better.
Thanks!
Strayer, D. L., & Johnston, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated driving and conversing on a cellular telophone. Psychological Science, 12(6), 462-466.
Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A., & Johnston, W. A. (2003). Cell phone-induced failures of visual attention during simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 9(1), 23-32. (emphasis mine)
I shall have to see if I can acquire these reports. However, I would feel better about the conclusions if they came from more than one source: D. L. Strayer and W. A. Johnston appear to have done the bulk of the work [in both reports] collaboratively. A second report from a wholly different group would help validate Strayer & Johnston's work.
I'm afraid he has the science behind him, not you. Go read the studies. Conversations over the phone degrade driving ability more than conversations with someone in the same car.
He made the assertion; it is his responsibility to provide data to support his assertion. He did not do so, and neither did you. I could tell you to go read the studies that confirm that humans descended from parakeets and it would carry as much weight as what you said.
This is a basic critical thinking concept: if you make an assertion, it is your job to provide evidence to back that assertion. Otherwise you are just expressing your opinion.
It's a small matter, but a crucial one: it requires far less attention to communicate with someone who is physically present than with someone who's a disconnected voice on the other end of a telephone line.
Shall I assume that you have reasonably unbiased and scientifically valid data to back your assertion?
I can just as easily state the opposite: "Communicating with a voice on the phone requires far less attention than speaking with someone in the vehicle because the driver will not feel the need to turn my head to look at the person on the phone." I just made that up, but it sounds reasonable; I have no data to back or refute the assertion.
For example, if a truck suddenly pulls out in front of you, you will suddenly focus on it; your passenger will tend to notice this and stop talking. Someone on the other end of a phone won't.
Your scenario assumes the driver and passenger(s) will see the same things at the same time, which is not a given: what if the passenger is reading or just has his eyes shut?
Clicky.
The folks at El Reg had a question:
"Which means that a 70-year-old yakking away on his cellphone has the reaction times of a 120-year-old, or have we misunderstood this rather poor analogy?"
Go to the Linux Journal search function and search for 'garrick'. You should get eleven hits. I didn't read all of them, but using ctrl+f to search the pages revealed notes to Garrick re: font selection and the like. D'oh.
With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
It seems most people already lament the battery life of their portable devices. If a PDA's battery already is marginal [in the owner's opinion] then the additional power consumption caused by playing music for an extended period of time would be Considered Harmful.
The power drain would come primarily from driving the speakers: even the small ones in headphones consume a certain amount of power. That, and the device would not be able to shut itself off or otherwise use some power management features.
I also suspect that 1GB would not be enough for some people. (Please - no inane comments about that urban-legend quote from billg.)
Heh, thanks for pointing that out. I read that paragraph two or three times trying to figure out what LSB meant, and my mind just totally blanked out the parenthetical part.
Remember 'Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally'? Parentheses and exponents should be parsed first.
I've been writing papers, and I use the reverse format - I would've written "Linux Standards Base (LSB)," and gone on to use LSB for the rest of the paper.
That would have made more sense, of course, but we must work with what we have.
I'll say a dozen Hail RTFA's and promise to be a good slashbot in the future.
That's the spirit!
Why do we need more standards defining the Least Significant Bit?
...
Seriously, why can't articles explain what all of the acronyms mean?
Here is your big pointy hat - go sit in the corner.
From the FIRST PARAGRAPH of the article:
The Free Standards Group has decided to move away from a single, core LSB (Linux Standards Base) specification, and is instead going to break this down into different modules that can be combined to give a server or desktop LSB standard.(emphasis mine)
But where ever business memo must be written in such a way that you csn't tell the truth because it might be used against you in a court of law, your have a big problem with your tort system.
Replace tort system with business practices. Now your statement makes more sense.
IOW, the problem is not in the tort system: if the truth is bad enough to get one in trouble then that is the real issue.
I'm not sure how practical it is, though. It's all about cryptanalysis the old fashioned way (i.e. before computers). Still, I suppose it is good to acknowledge that the enemy may surprise us by taking a low-tech approach.
You mean if they surprise us by doing exactly the same thing we would have to do if the computers weren't available, right? You would be surprised how practical low-tech methods can be.
Lobbying is not even taintamount to bribery, it is bribery!
I like it:
taintamount - adj. - quality of a bad thing being remarkably similar to something worse
There ARE computers that store their BIOS settings in NVRAM or EEPROM instead of CMOS.
Yes, there are: my Sun 4c, 4m, and 4u machines are good examples of this. However, the original discussion seemed to be focused on PC/X86, so my comments were made with that in mind.
Some of them even have a case made of heavy steel to prevent easy intrusion.
Yes, the Suns do well in this category, too.