The only capacitor horror story I have involves an ancient PC AT type computer and a serial port ISA card. I plugged the card into the PC (correctly--antistatic procedures, power off, all that jazz) and powered up the system.
My first thought was "Oh, how nice, they even have a neon pilot lamp on the card to let you know it has power."
My second thought was "Wait? NEON? No way..."
My third thought was "I didn't know tantalum capacitors would glow bright orange."
My fourth thought was a continuation of the third: "...or EXPLODE!"
...it is reccomended that you keep nothing valuable underneath the area where the charge is to be deployed
Never mind "underneath". Can you imagine a blob of white-hot molten elemental iron splashing onto a 10,000 RPM disk platter? Once the charge blows through the drive case, you're gonna see the most painful case of "s*** hitting the fan" EVAR.
You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
And your back, and your legs....
Even as a kid, I thought The Six Million Dollar Man was bogus. Think about it: Steve Austin grabs the bumper of a car, hoists....and telescopes his spinal column into 6 inches of splintered bone and splatted spinal nerve fibers.
Yes. But every public figure thinks they're the exception to this rule.
Apparently, it's someone's fault, preferably the one with the deepest pockets and greatest publicity potential.
Welcome to the world of civil litigation. It's wrong 'cuz I said so, unless the courts (and all subsequent appeals) say otherwise. And then I'll just sue again, in a different jurisdiction, for a trivially different cause of action. Lather, rinse, repeat, ???, PROFIT!
A mad dog doesn't care that people think it's mad. It's mad, you see? It's too crazy to care that what people think. Or, probably, crazy enough to (in the immortal words of Adam Savage) "reject your reality and substitute his own", one in which he's a crusading hero and a lionized and adored leader of The Forces of Light.
I thought/. could see into the future for events such as these.
Only for subscribers, which I guess Microsoft ain't.
It had to take several weeks of planning for them to send that cake?
Well, it would have been sent earlier, but at the last minute the QC team discovered a show-stopping bug, one "would totally crash the cake, requiring a complete rebake". So they had to delay the RTM (Release to Mozilla).
I'm not even sure it's a game. Who's the opposition? The editors? Shyeah, right. Hockey ain't hockey if the goalie is trying to help you get the puck over the line.
Right said, Fred. That's why I've resisted joining guilds--obligation. I hate obligation. My real life is full of it, and I deal with it (moderately well IMHO, but my wife might differ), but sometimes you just want to be an antisocial undead face-melter. Too bad so little content is available for play like ours at higher levels.
Alcohol doesn't "create fatal dependencies in your body" either.
You just keep telling yourself that.
Background: Delirium tremens (DTs) is a severe manifestation of alcohol withdrawal. Pearson first described it in 1813 as an acute psychosis following abstinence from alcohol. Although it only occurs in a relatively small number of patients who undergo alcohol withdrawal, it can be fatal. DTs is a medical emergency that requires prompt recognition and treatment.... Mortality/Morbidity: Despite appropriate treatment, the current mortality for patients with DTs ranges from 5-15%. Mortality was as high as 35% prior to the era of intensive care and advanced pharmacotherapy. The most common conditions leading to death in these patients are respiratory failure and cardiac arrhythmias.
Free software users need to unite and say NO to binary blobs! Lets kick this crud out of our operating systems!
In the interests of full disclosure, don't forget to mention that you're saying NO to a lot of capability with your principled stand. You already understand this, I'm sure, and what you're losing (i.e., accelerated 3d) you obviously can do without. But for some, that's not negotiable.
I'd be curious to understand what you envision as the way forward from this. If we successfully "kick this crud out of our operating systems", as you put it, how do we get the features we're losing? Are you expecting a breakthrough in the Free developer community to reverse-engineer an unencumbered Free equivalent with full capabilities? The vendor to "come to its senses"? The user to decide "No, we really don't need that whizzy thing we can't have without binary crud"?
I am not optimistic about any of those three alternatives that I can guess at. Maybe you have another one I haven't come up with?
That was beautiful. Well reasoned. Backed up by a fairly comprehensive understanding of rhetoric and logic.
And, unfortunately, off the point.
Probably my fault, really; I didn't couch my objections well.
I agree entirely with you: Always consider the source. By all means. Communications isn't about what's said, but what's not said, and WHY (to both).
My point, really, was not "don't consider the source", but "don't take someone else's shallow sound-niblet characterization of a source for granted".
Again, let me reiterate: I am of the opinion that WorldNetDaily is nuttier than the entier Planters' corporate operation and makes Joseph Goebbels look like Ted Kennedy. But dammit, I worked for that opinion and I earned that opinion. I did not take J. Random Slashbot's word for it. Anything less is intellectual laziness.
I don't buy PCs off the shelf. So, if I decide to chuck an obsolete machine, who do I send it back to? I bought the parts from half a dozen manufacturers. Am I supposed to disassemble the thing and scatter the parts to the far corners of the world like the limbs of a traitor? Hell, I have no idea who manufactured the case, and they're in Taiwan or India or something. How do I solve this dilemma, Batman?
Ah, excellent--you see my point. (Thank $DIETY someone does; that just goes to show that sarcasm should be applied with a teaspoon and not with a trowel. I did my argument no good with my heavy hand.)
Anyways, yes; the tag was -1 Redundant. I'm not afraid to let people draw their own conclusions; if they're susceptible to "follow-the-dots", I don't care about their opinion anyways. An open-eyed examination of TFA and its compadres on the site is sufficient. But I'm not going to take anyone else's word on it, and I'm annoyed that anyone else thinks I (or anyone else) should.
I feel that Google is unfairly biased against ants. I mean look at the first search result if you type in "ant"!
LOL, only ants that are not members of a specific Southwest American native nation. Google hatez teh black antz! Tehy are teh RASCIZTS!
If any source has a history of being a wingnut, of any persuasion, policital or otherwise, then potential readers will benefit from knowing.
Because a tenet of critical reading skills is to pigeonhole your source, so you can predict what they're going to say in advance. That saves the grubby annoying trouble of deciding for yourself the trustworthiness of the source by, say, examining multiple samples of the source's work.
I know I'm awfully grateful when someone points out the heretics for me in advance.
Habeas corpus was suspended on April 27, 1861, during the American Civil War by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana....His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order.
It was wrong for Lincoln, or for Grant in 1870 in the U. S. South (in response to the rise of the KKK), and for Bush now, but it still works. To paraphrase another infamous historical figure, "How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?"
So he simply punched in an end-of-file on a blank card and sent that back instead of the card the company sent him.
Interesting. How'd he know what the EOF card was supposed to look like? Assuming the card and file format wasn't some COBOL genius' own invention, different OSs have differing ideas of what EOF is supposed to look like.
For instance (from my own ancient history), "@EOF" was the Unisys (UNIVAC, at the time) marker.
Now, if he had just punched a random garbage card he might have done some serious damage. A premature EOF is just a headache for the operations staff on shift. Rewriting the input validation to defend against a disgruntled employee with access to a card punch... well, it's pretty much the same problem we're seeing with "modern" OSs and the entire class of input validation protection problems in network service interfaces. A lot harder, and spreads the problem to the actual analyst/coder caste of the data processing department. And management would have hated that as it's much more expensive.
Re:I have plenty of reasons to dislike Microsoft..
on
The BBC's Honeypot PC
·
· Score: 1
Obviously they didn't install security updates before going about their business
Yes. But the machine came under attack within seconds of connection. Best case, you're downloading worms and MS updates simultaneously. The barn door will be closed...right on the horses' departing derriers.
And IIRC, this is the first thing Windows will do upon connecting to the internet.
In other words, quite possibly too late.
They also mention IIS.... does home version even ship with IIS???
No, but worms don't know that. I guess the upside is that there's at least one recorded attack in the sample that this particular installation wasn't vulnerable to.
The SANS Institute Internet Storm Center tracks "Internet Survival Time". Currently it's 23 minutes. That means an out-of-the-box Windows PC, connected unprotected to a live Internet connection, has on average 23 minutes before being pwnd. That might be long enough to finish your most critical bits of Windows Update business, except that's an average, so half the time you have LESS than 23 minutes before pwnage.
Take-away from this: Ma and Pa hooking up their brand-spanking new HP or Dell or emachines will become the proud owners of a zombot within minutes of connection, unless they're extraordinarily lucky or very well advised (for instance "buy a hardware router/firewall and use it" or "run all the security patches on this CD-R before going online").
And speaking of "well advised" and SANS Institute, read "Windows XP: Surviving the First Day". (WARNING: PDF) There's some good stuff in there. The SANS guys (and gals) are the Good Guys (and Gals).
...starts tagging which ip addresses in the call chain are routinely sending spam
Because spammers are tards and never never NEVER change which bots they use for their spam runs. And the bots are all on static IP addresses so prevalent in the dial-up and consumer broadband arena. So, learn IP address once, good forever.
So give them some slack please.
When they stop violating the inter-MTA interchange dictated by standards. Until then... well, at least you got the "evil" part right.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course not. The clear distinction between "Moon" and "Space Station" is the level at which Han Solo gets a bad feeling.
The only capacitor horror story I have involves an ancient PC AT type computer and a serial port ISA card. I plugged the card into the PC (correctly--antistatic procedures, power off, all that jazz) and powered up the system.
My first thought was "Oh, how nice, they even have a neon pilot lamp on the card to let you know it has power."
My second thought was "Wait? NEON? No way..."
My third thought was "I didn't know tantalum capacitors would glow bright orange."
My fourth thought was a continuation of the third: "...or EXPLODE!"
Sony batteries, after all.
Never mind "underneath". Can you imagine a blob of white-hot molten elemental iron splashing onto a 10,000 RPM disk platter? Once the charge blows through the drive case, you're gonna see the most painful case of "s*** hitting the fan" EVAR.
You lift with your whole arm, not just your hands.
And your back, and your legs....
Even as a kid, I thought The Six Million Dollar Man was bogus. Think about it: Steve Austin grabs the bumper of a car, hoists....and telescopes his spinal column into 6 inches of splintered bone and splatted spinal nerve fibers.
I think the fundamentally false premise is that this story is actually news.
However, at least it's interesting. Everyone loves someone else's disaster story.
This beats anything he has ever done.
That you know of...yet...
Well..
I thought /. could see into the future for events such as these.
Only for subscribers, which I guess Microsoft ain't.
It had to take several weeks of planning for them to send that cake?
Well, it would have been sent earlier, but at the last minute the QC team discovered a show-stopping bug, one "would totally crash the cake, requiring a complete rebake". So they had to delay the RTM (Release to Mozilla).
I'm not even sure it's a game. Who's the opposition? The editors? Shyeah, right. Hockey ain't hockey if the goalie is trying to help you get the puck over the line.
You have to admit, the typical /. dupe rate guarantees outstanding returns on each marketing dollar.
Right said, Fred. That's why I've resisted joining guilds--obligation. I hate obligation. My real life is full of it, and I deal with it (moderately well IMHO, but my wife might differ), but sometimes you just want to be an antisocial undead face-melter. Too bad so little content is available for play like ours at higher levels.
Alcohol doesn't "create fatal dependencies in your body" either.
You just keep telling yourself that.
- eMedicine.com, "Delirium Tremens"
Free software users need to unite and say NO to binary blobs! Lets kick this crud out of our operating systems!
In the interests of full disclosure, don't forget to mention that you're saying NO to a lot of capability with your principled stand. You already understand this, I'm sure, and what you're losing (i.e., accelerated 3d) you obviously can do without. But for some, that's not negotiable.
I'd be curious to understand what you envision as the way forward from this. If we successfully "kick this crud out of our operating systems", as you put it, how do we get the features we're losing? Are you expecting a breakthrough in the Free developer community to reverse-engineer an unencumbered Free equivalent with full capabilities? The vendor to "come to its senses"? The user to decide "No, we really don't need that whizzy thing we can't have without binary crud"?
I am not optimistic about any of those three alternatives that I can guess at. Maybe you have another one I haven't come up with?
That was beautiful. Well reasoned. Backed up by a fairly comprehensive understanding of rhetoric and logic.
And, unfortunately, off the point.
Probably my fault, really; I didn't couch my objections well.
I agree entirely with you: Always consider the source. By all means. Communications isn't about what's said, but what's not said, and WHY (to both).
My point, really, was not "don't consider the source", but "don't take someone else's shallow sound-niblet characterization of a source for granted".
Again, let me reiterate: I am of the opinion that WorldNetDaily is nuttier than the entier Planters' corporate operation and makes Joseph Goebbels look like Ted Kennedy. But dammit, I worked for that opinion and I earned that opinion. I did not take J. Random Slashbot's word for it. Anything less is intellectual laziness.
Critical thinking indeed.
I don't buy PCs off the shelf. So, if I decide to chuck an obsolete machine, who do I send it back to? I bought the parts from half a dozen manufacturers. Am I supposed to disassemble the thing and scatter the parts to the far corners of the world like the limbs of a traitor? Hell, I have no idea who manufactured the case, and they're in Taiwan or India or something. How do I solve this dilemma, Batman?
Ah, excellent--you see my point. (Thank $DIETY someone does; that just goes to show that sarcasm should be applied with a teaspoon and not with a trowel. I did my argument no good with my heavy hand.)
Anyways, yes; the tag was -1 Redundant. I'm not afraid to let people draw their own conclusions; if they're susceptible to "follow-the-dots", I don't care about their opinion anyways. An open-eyed examination of TFA and its compadres on the site is sufficient. But I'm not going to take anyone else's word on it, and I'm annoyed that anyone else thinks I (or anyone else) should.
I feel that Google is unfairly biased against ants. I mean look at the first search result if you type in "ant"!
LOL, only ants that are not members of a specific Southwest American native nation. Google hatez teh black antz! Tehy are teh RASCIZTS!
Ooops, got carried away again.
If any source has a history of being a wingnut, of any persuasion, policital or otherwise, then potential readers will benefit from knowing.
Because a tenet of critical reading skills is to pigeonhole your source, so you can predict what they're going to say in advance. That saves the grubby annoying trouble of deciding for yourself the trustworthiness of the source by, say, examining multiple samples of the source's work.
I know I'm awfully grateful when someone points out the heretics for me in advance.
You can't fight tyranny by becoming a tyrant.
History claims it worked for Abraham Lincoln:
(Wikipedia, Habeas Corpus)It was wrong for Lincoln, or for Grant in 1870 in the U. S. South (in response to the rise of the KKK), and for Bush now, but it still works. To paraphrase another infamous historical figure, "How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?"
Notice the trolls are all together on this one. We should extreminate their tribe.
Spoken like a typical Alliance racist. I suppose you'll go after the Orcs next?
So he simply punched in an end-of-file on a blank card and sent that back instead of the card the company sent him.
Interesting. How'd he know what the EOF card was supposed to look like? Assuming the card and file format wasn't some COBOL genius' own invention, different OSs have differing ideas of what EOF is supposed to look like.
For instance (from my own ancient history), "@EOF" was the Unisys (UNIVAC, at the time) marker.
Now, if he had just punched a random garbage card he might have done some serious damage. A premature EOF is just a headache for the operations staff on shift. Rewriting the input validation to defend against a disgruntled employee with access to a card punch... well, it's pretty much the same problem we're seeing with "modern" OSs and the entire class of input validation protection problems in network service interfaces. A lot harder, and spreads the problem to the actual analyst/coder caste of the data processing department. And management would have hated that as it's much more expensive.
Obviously they didn't install security updates before going about their business
Yes. But the machine came under attack within seconds of connection. Best case, you're downloading worms and MS updates simultaneously. The barn door will be closed...right on the horses' departing derriers.
And IIRC, this is the first thing Windows will do upon connecting to the internet.
In other words, quite possibly too late.
They also mention IIS.... does home version even ship with IIS???
No, but worms don't know that. I guess the upside is that there's at least one recorded attack in the sample that this particular installation wasn't vulnerable to.
The SANS Institute Internet Storm Center tracks "Internet Survival Time". Currently it's 23 minutes. That means an out-of-the-box Windows PC, connected unprotected to a live Internet connection, has on average 23 minutes before being pwnd. That might be long enough to finish your most critical bits of Windows Update business, except that's an average, so half the time you have LESS than 23 minutes before pwnage.
Take-away from this: Ma and Pa hooking up their brand-spanking new HP or Dell or emachines will become the proud owners of a zombot within minutes of connection, unless they're extraordinarily lucky or very well advised (for instance "buy a hardware router/firewall and use it" or "run all the security patches on this CD-R before going online").
And speaking of "well advised" and SANS Institute, read "Windows XP: Surviving the First Day". (WARNING: PDF) There's some good stuff in there. The SANS guys (and gals) are the Good Guys (and Gals).
Ross, is that you?
But more significantly, the point stands.
Initially callbacks will be evil as you say.
Agreed.
Because spammers are tards and never never NEVER change which bots they use for their spam runs. And the bots are all on static IP addresses so prevalent in the dial-up and consumer broadband arena. So, learn IP address once, good forever.
So give them some slack please.
When they stop violating the inter-MTA interchange dictated by standards. Until then... well, at least you got the "evil" part right.