This is another case of where techies do not think about things from the customers point of view.
Unfortunatly this happens but techs shouldn't get the blame for ignorant users.
Of course most slashdotters will want their ports open
I don't pay for access to a http proxy. I pay for a connection to the net. (What I get may be another matter.)
the customers on the other hand dont know what a firewall is, what the implications of their ports are etc - quite frankly they shouldnt need to.
Just like they shouldn't need to check the air presure in their tires or change the oil. Cars should run magically everytime I get in one. I don't need to know how one works or how to maintain it.
I just don't bother buying the newer games. My time is usually spent on other things. Though a few weekends back I discovered transgaming's winex. I spend a few hours straight playing Grim Fandango. At the time (1998) it ran slow on the bare requirements and even had choppy sound. On my current machine it runs fine (even with the DriectX being interpreted/mapped/whatever in software). In fact it runs so fast I'm stuck in the eleveator in year 2.:(
The point is Grim Fandango was a great (ie *fun*) game to play. The characters were funny and the story carried the player forward. That's what makes it a good game. On the other had in Warcraft 3 I skipped the animated shorts between levels because I just wasn't interested in the tired two-races-at-war-story.
Each game is different and often good (or popular) games are good (or popular) for thier own reasons.
"You can't run from the grim reaper max, especially when he has a gun!" - Manny Calavera, Grim Fandango
I'm not sure what people don't like about X11 fonts. Maybe I happen to have nice fonts (slackware9 with blackbox and X installed from packages) or maybe I don't notice. I sure notice awful backgrounds on webpages that don't contrast with the text. Thank goodness for Opera's "User mode".
So is the X11 font complaint out of date or are the fonts really hard to read? If they are then why not just replace them (or the defaults) with some that are easier to read?
My beef with fonts would be when copying and pasting in OSX from a small browser font to a text editor so I can read what it says and the characters stay really small. So I change the font pull down menu from 9pt to 15 to 20 to 30pt and the _spacing_ changes but not the character size. Tip: open a shell and 'cat >/dev/null' then paste.:)
I remember hearing that blank CDs include individual ID numbers
A while ago someone wanted me to write something that could detect exactly which CD he had shipped was in the CD-ROM drive.
I looked into it and I think blanks don't have an ID like that because it would involve taking the time to burn a uniqe number onto ever disk. It's possible but would bring the costs up a bit. With pressed disks it would be way too expensive.
You could submit the information along with some crypted text that has your own personal information. Then if it looks like you won't be charged/etc you can reveal the key and the plaintext. In this way you can identify yourself if/when needed without being identified if you don't want to be.
I) Use the lyrics to a song or something if you don't want your personal info submited (though encrypted).
II) I can't garuntee someone won't lie to make you come forward and treat you poorly after you do. This just gets the info submitted and gives you the choice to identify yourself later.
Of course all of this assumes no one dicovers the plaintext somehow.:)
The HTTPD user should be a member of each users group so you don't have to set world rights to your files. Assuming it's just hosting and no other rights are required.
I like this idea but as a customer if I can run CGI pages or PHP (without safe mode) then it's easy to read everyone's files anyway because the script runs as the apache user.
Yes suEXEC exists but it places restrictions on the CGI which limits customers programming.
I have used CGIwrap and really liked it. Also it is some of the nicest C code I've ever read/worked with.
I heard Apache 2.0 may allow for the listening process to fork and change it's UID but 2.0 still isn't considered stable by most. In fact php.net says Warning Do not use Apache 2.0 and PHP in a production environment neither on Unix nor on Windows. To be honest I haven't tried apache 2.0 in the last 10-12 months. When I did it had threading issues so I swichted back to 1.3.
I had a rough time with my first year of university and a much better second year (after taking some time to work for a living).
On days you get out of class early go the somewhere quiet, like those desks with the built in walls in the library, and read over material for a course you had that day for about 50 minutes. Then go to work afterwards.
The noisy people in the computer lab were a huge distraction. Find somewhere quiet to work out the problem _before_ sitting down at a terminal. A top-down approach makes it easy to write pseudo-code (in stages!) on paper. Then when you go to the lab you basically just type up the code. Plus people think you are really bright because you "coded" your assignment in 1/8 the time they did.:)
You may not think this now (or you may) but one of the best things about school is being exposed to people with simillar interests as yourself. It took me a while to figure out that it can be really useful to talk to other people about problems and even studying a bit with others can help (but you all have to try to stay on topic). One big bonus is you get you know people to call on/send work to after you're done school.
Spread out your options. Don't take a whole semester of options unless you really enjoy the subjects. It's easy to think about dropping out when your work doesn't interest you.
Finally, get out, do other things, don't spend your life tied to a terminal. Relax a bit, have some fun but don't forget why you are in school or you might leave. (You have to figure out "why" on your own.)
You could just let everyone catch every virus going for a few months, then offer them a real computer that doesn't get viruses. I wonder how many people would get the message.
Nearly no one, they would just get upset and maybe blame the tech department for not doing enough to stop these problems.
I'm not saying I wouldn't want more educated users as well but I'm not going to hold my breath.
You can and you shall protect them [the users] from the outside world; you can and you shall protect your critical services from them; but you can't and you shall not protect them from themselves. - Firewall Piercing Mini-Howto
Hardware companies might be able to ignore Linux for another year or two, but beyond that they do so at their peril.
I have had a couple experiences and from now on I plan to check for hardware support before purchasing hardware. Once I had the sales person open an ATA controller box so I could check that the chipset was on OpenBSD's supported list.
I tried to get linux on an intel server (SE7501WV2 IIRC) with a promise PDC20277 for a few days. In the end I just installed FreeBSD. It just worked off the install CD.
Reciently I installed Slackware on my A7N266-VM (Asus board with an nForce220). The drivers from nVidia's site got the network up no problem.
Patching the 2.4.20 kernel for agp support went okay (not 2.4.21)(don't forget to turn off frame buffer support, the config option seems to have been renamed). So getting X11 running wasn't too bad but I went through at least one kernel that hung up at random and one which blanked the screen after LILO loaded the kernel.
I still don't have audio working then again I haven't really tried. (the module installs but xmms fails to open/dev/dsp.) Also the mouse movement lags and gets choppy every few minutes. It's as if the computer were really slow and under load but all I have running are a couple of xterms.
Now I do appreciate the support nVidia gives linux. And I would be really sad if I were stuck using only Windows. But I think from now on I'll try to find hardware that has native support in the kernel before I buy.
PS: the slack 9 ISO doesn't include kernel source anymore. the 'k' directory doesn't exist. Too bad when your NIC doesn't work with the stock kernel.
The guy wouldn't need a defense fund, and wouldn't need to settle because he'd simply go through the process and get his lawyer fees back when he wins.
So either he needs to be able to cover the legal fees before he gets his money back or he needs to find representation that will work on a contingency basis or at least agree to be paid after the fact. IIRC some regions do not allow contingency based representation.
What about a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube of water? That gives 1000 ml = 1 litre = 1 kg at some temperature (I don't recall offhand).
Now as mentioned we can (in a lab) determine distance from light and time we could build a 10cm cube to hold the 1 litre of water which ought to weigh 1 kg more than the cube. (well okay subtract the weight of 1 liter of the air/gas filling the "empty" cube but you get the idea.)
I think Becker's comments can be found (if/when the server is up) in this student newletter. It includes the following:
The 1st two courses in our program are called: "Introduction to Computer Science" NOT "Programming". The emphasis in those 1st courses is supposed to be on fundamental concepts - we are laying down the foundation for the rest of the program. 231 has not become a Pascal course, and 233 has not become a Java course. At least, that was never my intent.
Now my personal comments. I just finished my BSc last month. No I don't recall a course where we were "taught" C but I do recall using C in courses. Some examples are: a compiler, a serial mouse driver, bitmap manipulation (filesystems course), a linux device driver, linux kernel scheduler, Berkeley socket and SSL code.
I didn't have to use C untill second year. By then it's expected that we can 1) pick it up 2) borrow a book (CSUS or the library) 3) google for it 4) ask someone for help with a detail of the language (other students, TAs, an instructor) 5) try usenet.
Each tool for its own purpose! If the best language for the task is Java, then use Java. If the best language for your project is C++, then use C++. If it happens to be Billy Bob's Bug-Free Language which suits the job best, well, then, use that one.
I think a good question to ask is how do you know which language is the best for the task?
The other week I had a problem that dealt with sets (ie lists) of numbers. I thought of scheme right away. Yesterday I wanted to write a simple forking network server to allow me to run any text based application over a network. I chose C mainly because I could reuse some code I wrote last fall but also because I know how to use sockets in C.
So I think knowing which tool is right for the job depends on your knowing the different tools. (If I don't know Java it won't be my first choice even it might be easy to solve the problem in Java.)
Perhaps as important as knowing the tools is having experience with the tools, with problem solving in general and even with the particular sort of problem you are trying to solve.
From the BBC article: Paignton Zoo scientific officer Dr Amy Plowman said: "The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the 'infinite monkey' theory is flawed."
No, it doesn't because even though you didn't get Shakespeare you didn't have infinite number of monkeys further you didn't provide any other form of proof.
All you had were six monkeys and one computer and when Shakespeare's words didn't appear you could conclude: In the given month with the given six monkeys (Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan) and the given computer only five different characters were recoreded from the keys being pressed.
Also: He also denied it had been a waste of money.
He said the £2,000 was spent on purchasing the hardware to set up a radio link so the activities in the enclosure could be watched live on a website.
"Compared to the cost of reality TV, this was a tiny pinch of money," he said.
And it sounds as if it would be more interesting too.
The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.
How are they going to compare the two? "Well the GameOfLife program mainly just mates whereas the racoons chew on things a lot." Or "The tropical fish in the screen-saver aquarium don't tend to stay in the little castle during the sunny afternoons as much as the living fish."
some might be even paranoid about what opera sends home and block it for that, believing it again is _THEIR_ system and their network connection.
A valid concern. Opera has a doc that explains what is sent and how it's sent (assuming you trust them of course). http://www.opera.com/docs/ads/ Oh and their privacy policy mentions the ads too.
They also give out a description of file formats that they use.
Slackware jumped from 4 to 7 because of the version inflation in other distros. People were asking why slackware was only "linux 4" when other distros were running "linux 6".
Your dot qmail files can also call scripts. Any line that starts with a pipe is called. The message and headers get fed into STDIN and you can use an exit code to refuse the message. (I'm not sure about all the codes, I used exit(100);) You can refuse if you don't like the subject or something in the body. For example I check the From line against addresses I accept listed in a MySQL database.
I was just going to ask that same question. I though about it and I suppose I could "opt-in" to a list where I get sent "offers" for things I didn't solicit. Arguably the individual offers are for things I didn't request to be informed of even though I requested to be informed of new and exciting offers.
It's a crumby argument but I guess one might accept it. I don't but hey I'm just trying to figure out what was ment.
Indeed eithernet (even switched) is susceptible to a problem where a gratuitous arp is sent (from the bad guy's computer) that causes a machine (victim's computer) to think an IP address (eg the gateway) maps to an incorrect MAC address (the bad guy's NIC).
Last year a few friends got together and tested ettercap out (in a controlled environment) and sure enough it's trivial to snoop on a machine's traffic.:(
Free 30day or 24hr trial? But I've got a week off school starting today. Uh oh, I'm downloading the trial. Oh no, I've got projects to work on and midterms in a week. Oh well only 24 hrs, what harm can that lead to.;)
There are devices that you just plug in between the keyboard and the computer that will log every key you press. I know PS/2 loggers exist. I'm not sure about USB though.
You can even get keyboards with the logging device build inside the case where people are much less likely to see it.
I've gone looking for a good tool for things and found the beginnings of programs or compatability problems (I've had vendors say "You're glibc version might be the source of the problem but we only support RedHat version X, sorry.") and so on. I started thinking about how great it would be to have a tool XYZ but I don't have the time to work on it myself. Software companies that want to release comercial programs have troubles too. Here are a few of the fears/issues.
The market isn't mature yet (ie not enough linux users who will buy the app) so they might not turn a profit. Of course people are saying if we had app XYZ then we would have users.
ID had a ton of support work from Quake 3 for linux in a shrinkwrapped box. If I recall they said they won't release a game like that untill there is a standard set of requirements across distros to match the game to.
Support of software is hard to begin with but under linux when customers are running who knows how many distros and how many version of whatever library, libc and so on it becomes a nightmare.
Sometimes management thinks that if it runs on linux it's free. That's not to say people won't pay for linux apps but it can be tough convincing someone we need to spend money. I've heard "Isn't there something free for linux?"
One more issue is getting the program running on the user's machine. Sure a lot of us are used to compiling software but sometimes companies don't want to give away the source. So they distribute binaries. Well to keep library problems down they can be statically linked, the files get bigger.
It seems like minor details but the details take up a lot of time.
Slashdot Mirror
From http://www.slackware.com/announce/1.0.php ( google archive ):
From: Patrick J. Volkerding (bf703@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Slackware Linux 1.00
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Date: 1993-07-16 17:21:20 PST
The Slackware Linux distribution (v. 1.00) is now available for
anonymous FTP.
This is another case of where techies do not think about things from the customers point of view.
Unfortunatly this happens but techs shouldn't get the blame for ignorant users.
Of course most slashdotters will want their ports open
I don't pay for access to a http proxy. I pay for a connection to the net. (What I get may be another matter.)
the customers on the other hand dont know what a firewall is, what the implications of their ports are etc - quite frankly they shouldnt need to.
Just like they shouldn't need to check the air presure in their tires or change the oil. Cars should run magically everytime I get in one. I don't need to know how one works or how to maintain it.
I just don't bother buying the newer games. My time is usually spent on other things. Though a few weekends back I discovered transgaming's winex. I spend a few hours straight playing Grim Fandango. At the time (1998) it ran slow on the bare requirements and even had choppy sound. On my current machine it runs fine (even with the DriectX being interpreted/mapped/whatever in software). In fact it runs so fast I'm stuck in the eleveator in year 2. :(
The point is Grim Fandango was a great (ie *fun*) game to play. The characters were funny and the story carried the player forward. That's what makes it a good game. On the other had in Warcraft 3 I skipped the animated shorts between levels because I just wasn't interested in the tired two-races-at-war-story.
Each game is different and often good (or popular) games are good (or popular) for thier own reasons.
"You can't run from the grim reaper max, especially when he has a gun!" - Manny Calavera, Grim Fandango
Sure, sendmail has had holes found in it from time to time. But we should remember that it has been a very *long* time,
Was March that long ago? Here's a historic list of holes and Dan Bernstein's list from 1993 to 1997.
And I have never yet met anyone whose system has been compromised as a result of these holes.
I have. It was last summer. I helped install a new system (Slackware running qmail).
We also shouldn't forget that whenever bugs have been found, they have been fixed immediately (if not before).
Definitely good to see however I still prefer the approaches taken by OpenBSD and qmail. That is: Build it right in the first place.
I'm not sure what people don't like about X11 fonts. Maybe I happen to have nice fonts (slackware9 with blackbox and X installed from packages) or maybe I don't notice. I sure notice awful backgrounds on webpages that don't contrast with the text. Thank goodness for Opera's "User mode".
/dev/null' then paste. :)
So is the X11 font complaint out of date or are the fonts really hard to read? If they are then why not just replace them (or the defaults) with some that are easier to read?
My beef with fonts would be when copying and pasting in OSX from a small browser font to a text editor so I can read what it says and the characters stay really small. So I change the font pull down menu from 9pt to 15 to 20 to 30pt and the _spacing_ changes but not the character size.
Tip: open a shell and 'cat >
I remember hearing that blank CDs include individual ID numbers
A while ago someone wanted me to write something that could detect exactly which CD he had shipped was in the CD-ROM drive.
I looked into it and I think blanks don't have an ID like that because it would involve taking the time to burn a uniqe number onto ever disk. It's possible but would bring the costs up a bit. With pressed disks it would be way too expensive.
You could submit the information along with some crypted text that has your own personal information. Then if it looks like you won't be charged/etc you can reveal the key and the plaintext. In this way you can identify yourself if/when needed without being identified if you don't want to be.
:)
I) Use the lyrics to a song or something if you don't want your personal info submited (though encrypted).
II) I can't garuntee someone won't lie to make you come forward and treat you poorly after you do. This just gets the info submitted and gives you the choice to identify yourself later.
Of course all of this assumes no one dicovers the plaintext somehow.
The HTTPD user should be a member of each users group so you don't have to set world rights to your files. Assuming it's just hosting and no other rights are required.
I like this idea but as a customer if I can run CGI pages or PHP (without safe mode) then it's easy to read everyone's files anyway because the script runs as the apache user.
Yes suEXEC exists but it places restrictions on the CGI which limits customers programming.
I have used CGIwrap and really liked it. Also it is some of the nicest C code I've ever read/worked with.
I heard Apache 2.0 may allow for the listening process to fork and change it's UID but 2.0 still isn't considered stable by most. In fact php.net says Warning Do not use Apache 2.0 and PHP in a production environment neither on Unix nor on Windows. To be honest I haven't tried apache 2.0 in the last 10-12 months. When I did it had threading issues so I swichted back to 1.3.
I had a rough time with my first year of university and a much better second year (after taking some time to work for a living).
:)
On days you get out of class early go the somewhere quiet, like those desks with the built in walls in the library, and read over material for a course you had that day for about 50 minutes. Then go to work afterwards.
The noisy people in the computer lab were a huge distraction. Find somewhere quiet to work out the problem _before_ sitting down at a terminal. A top-down approach makes it easy to write pseudo-code (in stages!) on paper. Then when you go to the lab you basically just type up the code.
Plus people think you are really bright because you "coded" your assignment in 1/8 the time they did.
You may not think this now (or you may) but one of the best things about school is being exposed to people with simillar interests as yourself. It took me a while to figure out that it can be really useful to talk to other people about problems and even studying a bit with others can help (but you all have to try to stay on topic).
One big bonus is you get you know people to call on/send work to after you're done school.
Spread out your options. Don't take a whole semester of options unless you really enjoy the subjects. It's easy to think about dropping out when your work doesn't interest you.
Finally, get out, do other things, don't spend your life tied to a terminal. Relax a bit, have some fun but don't forget why you are in school or you might leave. (You have to figure out "why" on your own.)
Chad
You could just let everyone catch every virus going for a few months, then offer them a real computer that doesn't get viruses. I wonder how many people would get the message.
Nearly no one, they would just get upset and maybe blame the tech department for not doing enough to stop these problems.
I'm not saying I wouldn't want more educated users as well but I'm not going to hold my breath.
You can and you shall protect them [the users] from the outside world; you can and you shall protect your critical services from them; but you can't and you shall not protect them from themselves. - Firewall Piercing Mini-Howto
Hardware companies might be able to ignore Linux for another year or two, but beyond that they do so at their peril.
/dev/dsp .) Also the mouse movement lags and gets choppy every few minutes. It's as if the computer were really slow and under load but all I have running are a couple of xterms.
I have had a couple experiences and from now on I plan to check for hardware support before purchasing hardware. Once I had the sales person open an ATA controller box so I could check that the chipset was on OpenBSD's supported list.
I tried to get linux on an intel server (SE7501WV2 IIRC) with a promise PDC20277 for a few days. In the end I just installed FreeBSD. It just worked off the install CD.
Reciently I installed Slackware on my A7N266-VM (Asus board with an nForce220). The drivers from nVidia's site got the network up no problem.
Patching the 2.4.20 kernel for agp support went okay (not 2.4.21)(don't forget to turn off frame buffer support, the config option seems to have been renamed). So getting X11 running wasn't too bad but I went through at least one kernel that hung up at random and one which blanked the screen after LILO loaded the kernel.
I still don't have audio working then again I haven't really tried. (the module installs but xmms fails to open
Now I do appreciate the support nVidia gives linux. And I would be really sad if I were stuck using only Windows. But I think from now on I'll try to find hardware that has native support in the kernel before I buy.
PS: the slack 9 ISO doesn't include kernel source anymore. the 'k' directory doesn't exist. Too bad when your NIC doesn't work with the stock kernel.
The guy wouldn't need a defense fund, and wouldn't need to settle because he'd simply go through the process and get his lawyer fees back when he wins.
So either he needs to be able to cover the legal fees before he gets his money back or he needs to find representation that will work on a contingency basis or at least agree to be paid after the fact. IIRC some regions do not allow contingency based representation.
What about a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube of water? That gives 1000 ml = 1 litre = 1 kg at some temperature (I don't recall offhand).
Now as mentioned we can (in a lab) determine distance from light and time we could build a 10cm cube to hold the 1 litre of water which ought to weigh 1 kg more than the cube. (well okay subtract the weight of 1 liter of the air/gas filling the "empty" cube but you get the idea.)
It might be tough but I think it's reproducable.
Now my personal comments. I just finished my BSc last month. No I don't recall a course where we were "taught" C but I do recall using C in courses. Some examples are: a compiler, a serial mouse driver, bitmap manipulation (filesystems course), a linux device driver, linux kernel scheduler, Berkeley socket and SSL code.
I didn't have to use C untill second year. By then it's expected that we can 1) pick it up 2) borrow a book (CSUS or the library) 3) google for it 4) ask someone for help with a detail of the language (other students, TAs, an instructor) 5) try usenet.
Chad
Each tool for its own purpose! If the best language for the task is Java, then use Java. If the best language for your project is C++, then use C++. If it happens to be Billy Bob's Bug-Free Language which suits the job best, well, then, use that one.
I think a good question to ask is how do you know which language is the best for the task?
The other week I had a problem that dealt with sets (ie lists) of numbers. I thought of scheme right away. Yesterday I wanted to write a simple forking network server to allow me to run any text based application over a network. I chose C mainly because I could reuse some code I wrote last fall but also because I know how to use sockets in C.
So I think knowing which tool is right for the job depends on your knowing the different tools. (If I don't know Java it won't be my first choice even it might be easy to solve the problem in Java.)
Perhaps as important as knowing the tools is having experience with the tools, with problem solving in general and even with the particular sort of problem you are trying to solve.
From the BBC article:
Paignton Zoo scientific officer Dr Amy Plowman said: "The work was interesting but had little scientific value, except to show that the 'infinite monkey' theory is flawed."
No, it doesn't because even though you didn't get Shakespeare you didn't have infinite number of monkeys further you didn't provide any other form of proof.
All you had were six monkeys and one computer and when Shakespeare's words didn't appear you could conclude: In the given month with the given six monkeys (Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan) and the given computer only five different characters were recoreded from the keys being pressed.
Also:
He also denied it had been a waste of money.
He said the £2,000 was spent on purchasing the hardware to set up a radio link so the activities in the enclosure could be watched live on a website.
"Compared to the cost of reality TV, this was a tiny pinch of money," he said.
And it sounds as if it would be more interesting too.
The Plymouth experiment was funded by England's Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.
How are they going to compare the two? "Well the GameOfLife program mainly just mates whereas the racoons chew on things a lot." Or "The tropical fish in the screen-saver aquarium don't tend to stay in the little castle during the sunny afternoons as much as the living fish."
some might be even paranoid about what opera sends home and block it for that, believing it again is _THEIR_ system and their network connection.
A valid concern. Opera has a doc that explains what is sent and how it's sent (assuming you trust them of course). http://www.opera.com/docs/ads/ Oh and their privacy policy mentions the ads too.
They also give out a description of file formats that they use.
Slackware jumped from 4 to 7 because of the version inflation in other distros. People were asking why slackware was only "linux 4" when other distros were running "linux 6".
http://slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0
Your dot qmail files can also call scripts. Any line that starts with a pipe is called. The message and headers get fed into STDIN and you can use an exit code to refuse the message. (I'm not sure about all the codes, I used exit(100);) You can refuse if you don't like the subject or something in the body. For example I check the From line against addresses I accept listed in a MySQL database.
.qmail ./scripts/check-from-addr.pl
./Mailbox
[me@tpb ~]$cat
|
Be sure to read life with qmail.
I was just going to ask that same question. I though about it and I suppose I could "opt-in" to a list where I get sent "offers" for things I didn't solicit. Arguably the individual offers are for things I didn't request to be informed of even though I requested to be informed of new and exciting offers.
It's a crumby argument but I guess one might accept it. I don't but hey I'm just trying to figure out what was ment.
Indeed eithernet (even switched) is susceptible to a problem where a gratuitous arp is sent (from the bad guy's computer) that causes a machine (victim's computer) to think an IP address (eg the gateway) maps to an incorrect MAC address (the bad guy's NIC).
:(
Last year a few friends got together and tested ettercap out (in a controlled environment) and sure enough it's trivial to snoop on a machine's traffic.
Free 30day or 24hr trial? But I've got a week off school starting today. ;)
Uh oh, I'm downloading the trial.
Oh no, I've got projects to work on and midterms in a week.
Oh well only 24 hrs, what harm can that lead to.
Sure that will clear out software running on the operating system but what if the logger is in hardware? "hardware keystroke logger" at google
There are devices that you just plug in between the keyboard and the computer that will log every key you press. I know PS/2 loggers exist. I'm not sure about USB though.
You can even get keyboards with the logging device build inside the case where people are much less likely to see it.
I agree that apps make the difference. Neal Stephenson goes into this in In the Beginning There Was the Command Line.
I've gone looking for a good tool for things and found the beginnings of programs or compatability problems (I've had vendors say "You're glibc version might be the source of the problem but we only support RedHat version X, sorry.") and so on. I started thinking about how great it would be to have a tool XYZ but I don't have the time to work on it myself. Software companies that want to release comercial programs have troubles too. Here are a few of the fears/issues.
The market isn't mature yet (ie not enough linux users who will buy the app) so they might not turn a profit. Of course people are saying if we had app XYZ then we would have users.
ID had a ton of support work from Quake 3 for linux in a shrinkwrapped box. If I recall they said they won't release a game like that untill there is a standard set of requirements across distros to match the game to.
Support of software is hard to begin with but under linux when customers are running who knows how many distros and how many version of whatever library, libc and so on it becomes a nightmare.
Sometimes management thinks that if it runs on linux it's free. That's not to say people won't pay for linux apps but it can be tough convincing someone we need to spend money. I've heard "Isn't there something free for linux?"
One more issue is getting the program running on the user's machine. Sure a lot of us are used to compiling software but sometimes companies don't want to give away the source. So they distribute binaries. Well to keep library problems down they can be statically linked, the files get bigger.
It seems like minor details but the details take up a lot of time.