Actually, I've seen the scrolling text in 10.2, or I wouldn't have mentioned it. Only once, though; usually it does what you were probably talking about: a little box comes up saying, "You need to restart your computer now." in about seventeen zillion different languages, the rest of the screen dims, and...the mouse cursor still disappears.
More annoying to me is that this little box appears on my secondary monitor...I'm not sure why, but this is unfortunate as that monitor is an old CRT very much lacking blue phosphors, which makes it rather dark and gives it a yellowish cast. I wish I could see the kernel panic in its full glory!
This is also the screen on which the scrolling text appeared that one time, so maybe it's just because it's the leftmost screen.
Oh, BTW, I'm running OS X 10.2.3 Server...maybe the server edition still has the weird text-scrolling panics occasionally...more likely it's a bug.
As far as screenshots...when the kernel panics, nothing functions any more, not even Grab or whatever that program is called. I do have a screenshot of the BSOD, though--cropped from a virtual PC screenshot. Every time I use Windows I get it, so now it's my desktop, to remind me never to use bad OSes.
What I want to know is: If a program can change the permissions of a page after creating that page, what's to stop a worm from finding a way of exploiting this?
Example: A hacker sends a packet that exploits a buffer overflow bug to insert some malicious code into memory. The computer won't execute it because it's writeable, and it doesn't execute writeable pages. But that's okay! The worm cleverly inserted the data into a location it knew was writeable, but would eventually become readable. Sure enough, later on another function makes that location executable and then executes it.
So, this makes it far more difficult to get the malicious code to execute, since the creator of the worm has to know of a place in the program's memory that the program will later want to execute, but that's writeable right now, and furthermore has to depend on the program not to change that data in between when the worm overwrites it and when it'll be executed. But I have faith that a hacker somewhere will find a way to do this if people actually make it common practice to change a page from writeable to executable in the middle of a program...they are a creative (destructive?) bunch.
Okay, I'm new to this--just started learning about how this works last Saturday (the timing is for obvious reasons). So, someone correct me if I go wrong somewhere in this explanation.
As I understand it, when a program gets data from the system's I/O, be it a hard drive, other drive or, notably, a network interface, it first reads it to a buffer, then into main memory. Problem is, when reading from a network interface, the program doesn't know ahead of time how big the chunk of data will be--it'll be a packet of virtually any size. If a packet arrives that's bigger than what the program expects, problems arise.
Of course, if the programmer is alert, (s)he'll insert some code to check the size of the buffer and make sure it'll fit in the place in memory allotted for it. But if one forgets this step, as soon as an extra-large packet comes through and is retrieved by this flawed bit of code, the data being retrieved from the network will overwrite something else already in memory, and the program won't know it's there, or what it is.
The next step is to get the program to execute this code. At the end of each function (you have some programming background, right?) are a few bytes telling the function where it came from, and where to jump back to when it's done. If the worm knows where in memory it's putting the code it wants executed, and if it has bytes storing that memory address in exactly the right place, the function will finish executing, check to see where it should go to next, and find a memory address that in fact contains a worm. The program jumps to the location of the extra data and executes it.
So the worm contains, in this order: 1) Lots of junk code to fill the buffer, 2) a memory address pointing to #3, and 3) executable code that does whatever the author of the worm wants.
A non-executable stack means that no matter what the hacker does, the data in the stack will not be executed. If a hacker manages to issue a jump command to a memory location in the stack, the kernel will object and the process will return an error.
The reason why page-by-page protection is necessary is because there is another memory location where a program can write whatever it wants (or whatever a worm tells it to), called the heap. Protecting only the stack still leaves a way, albeit a more difficult one, for a worm to infect the system, by putting some code in the heap and telling the program to execute it. The page-by-page protection the article talks about as the team's goal would allow the OS to keep any page of memory either writeable or executable, but never both. This means that any place a worm can write to through a buffer overflow, it can't later have the program execute, no matter what.
Because they're making their OS for profit, and they find they can sell a shitty OS. It costs extra to make it not be shitty, and it's not worth it to them.
Notice that it's apparently worth it to Apple--hence the move to a Unix base. This is OpenBSD; Darwin is based on FreeBSD, right? But maybe somebody will find a way to incorporate these changes into Darwin, or maybe Apple will do it themselves. I would certainly appreciate it if they did.
That said, maybe the word "death" is too negative. It's more of a Beachball of Thought, or a Beachball of One of These Words. (My favorite: Beachball of Rumination.)
Then, when it appears and won't go away, because a program has crashed, it's just a Beachball of Eternal Rumination.
Now, when you get the white-on-black text scrolling down the screen and the mouse cursor disappears, that's the time to start throwing around the word "death".
Don't even start by saying with that money you could buy some 1997 era Mac either.
The $400 Wintel will be using essentially five-year-old hardware anyway. Celerons just suck, even compared with the G3. Maybe 1997 is a little extreme, but if you have money to get an iMac from 2000 or so, so that you can run OS X, I'd say that's preferable to some $400 POS stumbling (as opposed to running) XP.
Other than that, point taken, including the fact that Wintels are faster than Macs.
The thing about this is that whichever one is on top at a given time is only on top temporarily--they've traded back and forth countless times in the <20 year history of the platforms. When the Mac came out, I'm sure it was faster than any DOS crap offered at the time; by the time of the 68040, it was lagging behind; the PPC brought us back into the lead; when the 604e was aging the Pentiums of the time (P2s, I believe) were faster; the G3 turned the tables back in our favor dramatically; the G3 started to age, the G4 came out, now the G4 is aging and the 970 is almost ready to replace it.
This is the real reason for the fact cited numerous times in the comments above that speed isn't really an issue. If you're selecting a platform to stick with for the long term, speed should be the last thing on your mind.
The company's stock soared on the news, rising $54.75, or 57 percent, to close at $11.69 on Nasdaq.
So the company's stock rose $54.75, to close at $11.69...having opened at what, -$43.06?
How can a stock price be negative? Does this mean that more shares were sold short than actually existed? So somebody borrowed stock, sold it short, borrowed it back, and sold it short again...
It's interesting that in what you just said, you completely failed to even begin to find a fault in what the parent comment said.
>>"...a straightforward and honest answer"
>Rather than a straightforward and dishonest answer, or a cryptic, yet honest answer? How about just 'truthful'.
Does it really make a difference which one of those things he's differentiating from? Either way, "straightforward and honest" is the better option. As for your second stab, you're criticizing the parent for being too eloquent. I'd say that the sentence you complain about so nitpickingly is a very apt way of describing political speech.
Radio station have the right to free speech, not the obligation to play music without compensation.
This bill doesn't ask them to play music without compensation if they don't want to. It asks them to be honest with us, the listeners, when they do so, to encourage them to choose to play music that's good, rather than music that's being promoted in expensive ways.
What happened to freedom in this country.
As far as I can tell, companies like CCC bought it.
Rhetorical questions like that are not an effective way to convince people. Keep in mind that since not everyone agrees with you, the answer someone else gives to such a question may be different from what you expected. For instance:
Why does the govt. feel they need to regulate everything?
You're expecting an answer along the lines of "Because we're control freaks, because we want to institute a totalitarian regime, muahahaha!" But the fact is that for many people, the answer is "Because we do have to regulate everything." The way to convince people--or better yet, mutually arrive at a truth that may be different from anyone's initial views--is to ask, without sarcasm, why we would be better off this way.
In case you care, my answer to that question is that the government should regulate cases such as this because it benefits the consumer, whose rights should always outweigh the rights of corporations. This is because, simply, people are people, and real, whereas corporations are simply groups of people. Situations that benefit corporations benefit the individuals who are members of those corporations, whereas situations that benefit individuals in general benefit all the same people, and many more.
Now somebody will respond saying that I've oversimplified this, and my preemptive response to that is that to do this subject justice would be to write volumes on it. I think what I've said above captures the essence of the liberal view.
This isn't a blow to individual freedom, it's a blow to corporate freedom, which usually translates to a boon to individual freedom.
This bill makes it possible for small, mom-and-pop radio stations (individuals) to once again compete with the huge conglomerates. It makes it possible for these small stations to enhance the range of music available for us (individuals) to listen to. It does this by restricting the (not constitutionally protected, by the way) freedom of huge corporations.
But don't worry, the bill won't pass. Congress is very much too taken with your point of view at the moment, and I'd say we'll have to wait till the Republicans cause a revolt by bringing back the draft before we see the left wing back in power and see bills like this one passing.
Every now and again,... our government comes through.
I'd say it's more like every now and again, some individual comes through despite the best efforts of the rest of the government--but never for long.
I hope this bill passes. It would be great to be able to listen to the radio and hear music I enjoy, rather than the commercialized crap they play now. I haven't listened to the radio since my favorite classical station switched to a talk format about 5 or 6 years ago.
At the same time, I doubt this bill will pass. Feingold is in the minority in Congress in his ability to ignore the payoffs offered him by big media conglomerates. The political system is corrupt, and will remain so.
Ah yes. I actually installed FreeNet a couple days ago, at the suggestion of another/.er, but couldn't get it working. I guess it just required more effort.
Hey, that last link isn't going to work for the vast majority of us not sitting at your computer as long as it links to localhost (127.0.0.1). You need to put your IP address or a hostname of some sort in there.
Copying and pasting is obviously not as effective as it used to be...
The only thing I have to add: The possibility of abusing this law to harass the little guys who are the enemy of the music industry is exactly why this law was enacted.
And, while your examle was perfectly valid, I feel I should offer another one just because I love irony...
Imagine, if you will, that you are in a band. Now imagine one of the RIAA's member companies has made you an offer you find insulting ("You get to be famous, I get to be rich" --Tom Petty, Joe). So you go to an indie label, or decide to self-publish by some means.
Now, it just happens that you've downloaded a few songs via Kazaa recently.
Pretty soon, you're in jail, ostensibly for pirating music, but really because you didn't accept the unreasonable contract offered by Columbia.
The fear of getting one's door kicked in will be an initial threat to keep people from "drawing attention to themselves", but once, say, I'm thrown in jail for hosting this site, my friends and parents may want to see the law changed.
Not that I could actually be thrown in jail (under this law, anyway) for owning a computer like Louise, since she's a download-only server for everone but my friends, so there's no way for people to pay me for the material they download. But the first paragraph still works as a hypothetical situation.
Slashdot Mirror
(infinity)/n == infinity, even when n is very large.
SSH into your computer at home from work and use Software Update remotely so the new stuff is ready for you when you get home?
/., that's just...just...
Come on...even for
Hmmm...actually, it's not a bad idea...
Maybe you wouldn't have had so many problems if you'd been using Office for Mac. I have no trouble turning off the auto-features.
Once in a while MS makes a Mac version that's better than the Windoze version.
Actually, I've seen the scrolling text in 10.2, or I wouldn't have mentioned it. Only once, though; usually it does what you were probably talking about: a little box comes up saying, "You need to restart your computer now." in about seventeen zillion different languages, the rest of the screen dims, and...the mouse cursor still disappears.
More annoying to me is that this little box appears on my secondary monitor...I'm not sure why, but this is unfortunate as that monitor is an old CRT very much lacking blue phosphors, which makes it rather dark and gives it a yellowish cast. I wish I could see the kernel panic in its full glory!
This is also the screen on which the scrolling text appeared that one time, so maybe it's just because it's the leftmost screen.
Oh, BTW, I'm running OS X 10.2.3 Server...maybe the server edition still has the weird text-scrolling panics occasionally...more likely it's a bug.
As far as screenshots...when the kernel panics, nothing functions any more, not even Grab or whatever that program is called. I do have a screenshot of the BSOD, though--cropped from a virtual PC screenshot. Every time I use Windows I get it, so now it's my desktop, to remind me never to use bad OSes.
What I want to know is: If a program can change the permissions of a page after creating that page, what's to stop a worm from finding a way of exploiting this?
Example: A hacker sends a packet that exploits a buffer overflow bug to insert some malicious code into memory. The computer won't execute it because it's writeable, and it doesn't execute writeable pages. But that's okay! The worm cleverly inserted the data into a location it knew was writeable, but would eventually become readable. Sure enough, later on another function makes that location executable and then executes it.
So, this makes it far more difficult to get the malicious code to execute, since the creator of the worm has to know of a place in the program's memory that the program will later want to execute, but that's writeable right now, and furthermore has to depend on the program not to change that data in between when the worm overwrites it and when it'll be executed. But I have faith that a hacker somewhere will find a way to do this if people actually make it common practice to change a page from writeable to executable in the middle of a program...they are a creative (destructive?) bunch.
Okay, I'm new to this--just started learning about how this works last Saturday (the timing is for obvious reasons). So, someone correct me if I go wrong somewhere in this explanation.
As I understand it, when a program gets data from the system's I/O, be it a hard drive, other drive or, notably, a network interface, it first reads it to a buffer, then into main memory. Problem is, when reading from a network interface, the program doesn't know ahead of time how big the chunk of data will be--it'll be a packet of virtually any size. If a packet arrives that's bigger than what the program expects, problems arise.
Of course, if the programmer is alert, (s)he'll insert some code to check the size of the buffer and make sure it'll fit in the place in memory allotted for it. But if one forgets this step, as soon as an extra-large packet comes through and is retrieved by this flawed bit of code, the data being retrieved from the network will overwrite something else already in memory, and the program won't know it's there, or what it is.
The next step is to get the program to execute this code. At the end of each function (you have some programming background, right?) are a few bytes telling the function where it came from, and where to jump back to when it's done. If the worm knows where in memory it's putting the code it wants executed, and if it has bytes storing that memory address in exactly the right place, the function will finish executing, check to see where it should go to next, and find a memory address that in fact contains a worm. The program jumps to the location of the extra data and executes it.
So the worm contains, in this order: 1) Lots of junk code to fill the buffer, 2) a memory address pointing to #3, and 3) executable code that does whatever the author of the worm wants.
A non-executable stack means that no matter what the hacker does, the data in the stack will not be executed. If a hacker manages to issue a jump command to a memory location in the stack, the kernel will object and the process will return an error.
The reason why page-by-page protection is necessary is because there is another memory location where a program can write whatever it wants (or whatever a worm tells it to), called the heap. Protecting only the stack still leaves a way, albeit a more difficult one, for a worm to infect the system, by putting some code in the heap and telling the program to execute it. The page-by-page protection the article talks about as the team's goal would allow the OS to keep any page of memory either writeable or executable, but never both. This means that any place a worm can write to through a buffer overflow, it can't later have the program execute, no matter what.
Anyone know how portable these modifications are to other BSDs, notably Darwin?
Because they're making their OS for profit, and they find they can sell a shitty OS. It costs extra to make it not be shitty, and it's not worth it to them.
Notice that it's apparently worth it to Apple--hence the move to a Unix base. This is OpenBSD; Darwin is based on FreeBSD, right? But maybe somebody will find a way to incorporate these changes into Darwin, or maybe Apple will do it themselves. I would certainly appreciate it if they did.
That said, maybe the word "death" is too negative. It's more of a Beachball of Thought, or a Beachball of One of These Words. (My favorite: Beachball of Rumination.)
Then, when it appears and won't go away, because a program has crashed, it's just a Beachball of Eternal Rumination.
Now, when you get the white-on-black text scrolling down the screen and the mouse cursor disappears, that's the time to start throwing around the word "death".
I have one bone to pick:
Don't even start by saying with that money you could buy some 1997 era Mac either.
The $400 Wintel will be using essentially five-year-old hardware anyway. Celerons just suck, even compared with the G3. Maybe 1997 is a little extreme, but if you have money to get an iMac from 2000 or so, so that you can run OS X, I'd say that's preferable to some $400 POS stumbling (as opposed to running) XP.
Other than that, point taken, including the fact that Wintels are faster than Macs.
The thing about this is that whichever one is on top at a given time is only on top temporarily--they've traded back and forth countless times in the <20 year history of the platforms. When the Mac came out, I'm sure it was faster than any DOS crap offered at the time; by the time of the 68040, it was lagging behind; the PPC brought us back into the lead; when the 604e was aging the Pentiums of the time (P2s, I believe) were faster; the G3 turned the tables back in our favor dramatically; the G3 started to age, the G4 came out, now the G4 is aging and the 970 is almost ready to replace it.
This is the real reason for the fact cited numerous times in the comments above that speed isn't really an issue. If you're selecting a platform to stick with for the long term, speed should be the last thing on your mind.
I thought they must just be using MSSQL on Windows.
/., and they know better than to do that.
But then I remembered that this is
The company's stock soared on the news, rising $54.75, or 57 percent, to close at $11.69 on Nasdaq.
So the company's stock rose $54.75, to close at $11.69...having opened at what, -$43.06?
How can a stock price be negative? Does this mean that more shares were sold short than actually existed? So somebody borrowed stock, sold it short, borrowed it back, and sold it short again...
It's interesting that in what you just said, you completely failed to even begin to find a fault in what the parent comment said.
>>"...a straightforward and honest answer"
>Rather than a straightforward and dishonest answer, or a cryptic, yet honest answer? How about just 'truthful'.
Does it really make a difference which one of those things he's differentiating from? Either way, "straightforward and honest" is the better option. As for your second stab, you're criticizing the parent for being too eloquent. I'd say that the sentence you complain about so nitpickingly is a very apt way of describing political speech.
"What luck for rulers that men do not think."
--Adolf Hitler
Radio station have the right to free speech, not the obligation to play music without compensation.
This bill doesn't ask them to play music without compensation if they don't want to. It asks them to be honest with us, the listeners, when they do so, to encourage them to choose to play music that's good, rather than music that's being promoted in expensive ways.
What happened to freedom in this country.
As far as I can tell, companies like CCC bought it.
Rhetorical questions like that are not an effective way to convince people. Keep in mind that since not everyone agrees with you, the answer someone else gives to such a question may be different from what you expected. For instance:
Why does the govt. feel they need to regulate everything?
You're expecting an answer along the lines of "Because we're control freaks, because we want to institute a totalitarian regime, muahahaha!" But the fact is that for many people, the answer is "Because we do have to regulate everything." The way to convince people--or better yet, mutually arrive at a truth that may be different from anyone's initial views--is to ask, without sarcasm, why we would be better off this way.
In case you care, my answer to that question is that the government should regulate cases such as this because it benefits the consumer, whose rights should always outweigh the rights of corporations. This is because, simply, people are people, and real, whereas corporations are simply groups of people. Situations that benefit corporations benefit the individuals who are members of those corporations, whereas situations that benefit individuals in general benefit all the same people, and many more.
Now somebody will respond saying that I've oversimplified this, and my preemptive response to that is that to do this subject justice would be to write volumes on it. I think what I've said above captures the essence of the liberal view.
It has ads, but not as many, and not every channel.
If only I could afford it...
This isn't a blow to individual freedom, it's a blow to corporate freedom, which usually translates to a boon to individual freedom.
This bill makes it possible for small, mom-and-pop radio stations (individuals) to once again compete with the huge conglomerates. It makes it possible for these small stations to enhance the range of music available for us (individuals) to listen to. It does this by restricting the (not constitutionally protected, by the way) freedom of huge corporations.
But don't worry, the bill won't pass. Congress is very much too taken with your point of view at the moment, and I'd say we'll have to wait till the Republicans cause a revolt by bringing back the draft before we see the left wing back in power and see bills like this one passing.
Every now and again, ... our government comes through.
I'd say it's more like every now and again, some individual comes through despite the best efforts of the rest of the government--but never for long.
I hope this bill passes. It would be great to be able to listen to the radio and hear music I enjoy, rather than the commercialized crap they play now. I haven't listened to the radio since my favorite classical station switched to a talk format about 5 or 6 years ago.
At the same time, I doubt this bill will pass. Feingold is in the minority in Congress in his ability to ignore the payoffs offered him by big media conglomerates. The political system is corrupt, and will remain so.
Oh well. If only we lived in a free country...
Ah yes. I actually installed FreeNet a couple days ago, at the suggestion of another /.er, but couldn't get it working. I guess it just required more effort.
Hey, that last link isn't going to work for the vast majority of us not sitting at your computer as long as it links to localhost (127.0.0.1). You need to put your IP address or a hostname of some sort in there.
Copying and pasting is obviously not as effective as it used to be...
This is an irrelevant claim. As with practically any technology, epecially P2P file-sharing concepts, it will only be useful when it's widely used.
/.ed.
/. posts about /.? Is this some sort of meta/. phenomenon? And why has /. been so slow of late? Has /. /.ed itself?
/.er on /. /.ed /., how many /s and .s can be fit into one sentence?
My worry would be in the sites serving up the plugin being
BTW, what's with
If a
If there are no spelling errors in this post then it's not the real Bob Abooey
I was worried for a minute, there, but on re-reading I found this:
I can go to the distribitors website...
Whew! Not an imposter after all.
MAnaul splel-chekcing i shte ebst knd.
I agree with you 100%.
The only thing I have to add: The possibility of abusing this law to harass the little guys who are the enemy of the music industry is exactly why this law was enacted.
And, while your examle was perfectly valid, I feel I should offer another one just because I love irony...
Imagine, if you will, that you are in a band. Now imagine one of the RIAA's member companies has made you an offer you find insulting ("You get to be famous, I get to be rich" --Tom Petty, Joe). So you go to an indie label, or decide to self-publish by some means.
Now, it just happens that you've downloaded a few songs via Kazaa recently.
Pretty soon, you're in jail, ostensibly for pirating music, but really because you didn't accept the unreasonable contract offered by Columbia.
OMG, a use of the DMCA that benefits the consumer! Maybe we shouldn't burn that document and pretend it never existed after all.
The fear of getting one's door kicked in will be an initial threat to keep people from "drawing attention to themselves", but once, say, I'm thrown in jail for hosting this site, my friends and parents may want to see the law changed.
Not that I could actually be thrown in jail (under this law, anyway) for owning a computer like Louise, since she's a download-only server for everone but my friends, so there's no way for people to pay me for the material they download. But the first paragraph still works as a hypothetical situation.