Why the 760 motherboard? And with a 133MHz bus? Why not the new Asus K7M 761, with its DDR 266MHz bus? I have a feeling this project was started in about November.
You will get what you pay for. If you pay below-average wages, you will have below average employees, and you will do below average work. And then you will be massacred in the marketplace. Changing the oil, rotating the tires, and getting regular tune-ups is not cheap, but it will be cheaper in the long run. In a business like yours, your employees ARE your product. If you have an inferior product, you will fail. It's very simple.
Think about contractors and other service-providers you've worked with in the past. If you've had much experience with them, then you've probaby seen some gung-ho folks who really know what they're doing and are eager to make sure you're happy. You've probably also seen some who don't know what they're doing, are very unhelpful, and just want you out of their hair. If you low-ball your technichal staff, they're going to get out of there, and you're going to be left with bad employees.
It's very true that money is NOT the only consideration, but it is easily the most persuasive. You will not succeed if your employees are grossly underpaid, and neither will you succeed if your employees are grossly underqualified. If the management at your company can't grasp this, maybe it's you who should be looking for another job.
JSP would've done better if they had used Caucho's Resin. It's lightning fast. I'd be interested to see the results of a more comprehensive test covering more app servers.
In case you're not kidding: In the same way that a pound of gold is smaller than a pound of feathers, a 2-million-sun black hole is much smaller than 2 million suns. It's dense. Actually, it's more-or-less infinitely dense, since a black hole forms a singularity, a one-dimensional object, a pin-point, like the article said. The thing that confused me was that they also said it was the size of the distance from the sun to mars. Did they mean the event horizon was that size? Seems small to me, not that I would know.
...if this had come out earlier, perhaps some of this could have been included [in kernel 2.4] 2.4's already taken so much longer than any other release, why not just slap on a few more months to integrate preemtion?
What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up? What?
Hey, I have an idea. How about nothing. Isn't that the point of open source? The cream rises to the top even without million dollar prime-time ads, and regardless of silly reporters. What need is there to retaliate at all? Why not just go about the business of writing code. Or should the community become as litigious as our enemies (MPAA, RIAA, etc)?
Personally, I'd be extremely reluctant to leave everything I know behind on Earth and ship myself off to another planet where living conditions would likely be much poorer I'd kill to get to be on the first bus to Mars. Even if I knew ahead of time that I wouldn't be coming back. I'm sure a lot of people agree with you, and would rather relax in their warm hobbit holes, but some people would disagree. A lot of people will compete fiercely for the honor of being the first pioneers on the human race's first colony.
Almost all free software is of use to charities. Linux, GnuCash, Apache, GIMP, Gnome, KDE, Resin, etc etc etc. Commercial versions of these packages would cost a charity upwards of $2000 or more. I suggest working on worthwhile free software projects and preaching free software to your local charities, and even offer to install it for them. Everyone who works on free software is working towards cheap, high-quality software for everyone.
We can have a free www
on
Pirate DNS?
·
· Score: 3
We really can have a free world wide web (the way it used to be). Remember all those little banners you used to see a couple years back? "Corporate Web Sites Kill The Internet Dead" I thought the loonies who posted those at that time were paranoid. But they were 100% right. It's happening. Witness the multi-billion dollar corporations bullying private citizens and shaking them down for domain names. It's sick. But how can we stop the big money folks from destroying the new (let's call it FreeDNS) naming service?
We look to GNU and its GPL. That powerful license has kept free software free up until now. The basis of free software is "you're free to play with us, but if you do, you must play by our rules". The GPL says that if you want to use our GNU software, you may, but then you have to play by the rules in this license.
Imagine a contract for new domain name registrants. It will have them agree to play fair if they're going to play. Here's a sample of what I'm thinking of.
FreeDNS terms of service:
1) By registering a domain name with the FreeDNS service, I am agreeing to adhere to any and all terms in this FreeDNS terms of service contract. Where there is a discrepency between this and any other contract, this, the FreeDNS terms of service contract, shall take precendence.
2) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I agree to not challenge at any time the ownership of any FreeDNS domain name, neither existing domain names, nor domain names yet to be registered. I agree that any domain name registered by any person or organization containing any of my trademarks or other intellectual property.
3) I understand that if I ever do challenge, civilly or criminally, any domain name held by any other person, I forfeit my rights to participate in FreeDNS. Although I may legally prevent others from using my trademarks and other intellectual property in FreeDNS domain names, I understand that this shall preclude me from participating in FreeDNS.
4) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I am relinquishing any domain names such that I have gained control of through civil or criminal prosecution, or through legal settlements, or by coersion via threats of civil or criminal suits, to their previous owners.
5) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I am agreeing never to sell any FreeDNS domain name to another party for any fee or in exchange for any good or service or favor of any sort. I understand that any transaction is invalid, and such a transaction puts the sold domain name into the pool of registerable domain names. If it is discovered at any time that I sold a FreeDNS domain name, I make myself liable for any and all damages arising from the breach of this contract.
6) I agree that failure to adhere absolutely to this contract voids any and all FreeDNS domain name registrations that I hold, and that they shall return to the pool of registerable domains.
This does a few different things (and IANAL, so obviously, this would have to be beefed up by a real attorney). First, it says that if you want to participate in FreeDNS, then you can't try to take anyone else's domain name for any reason. If you choose not to participate, then you can sue to have, for example, microsoft.sux removed from use and removed from the pool of registerable domain names. However, if your company, for example, microsoft decides that it DOES want to participate, it will have to give back any siezed domains and play nice. So if my company, DerMarlboro Enterprises, registers dermarlboro.com, and some yahoo registers dermarlboro.sux or dermarlborosucks.com, I can't challenge that, and I can't even threaten the registrants of those names or else I will lose my right to participate. Plus, sale of domain names voids them, and voids all other domain name registrations by the seller, so the motivation to cybersquat is removed. You can't sell it. If you try, someone else can get it for free.
Personally, I think it should have been done this way to begin with. But when nameservice first appeared, who would have imagined the friendly bearded sysadmins who owned the domains SUEING one another because one owns sysadmin.com, and the other registers sysadmins.com? It turns out to be true. Corporate web sites really do kill the internet dead.
This guy teaches? Computer science? At Yale? You have to be kidding. He sounds like like the bastard son of Oprah and Carl Sagan. Your cyberbody will float down to a computer like a bluebird settling on a branch, will it? Give me a damn break. This is poetry. I think we are all very aware of the rapid change of technology. My grandfather and 50 generations before him may have been carpenters, but none could be computer programmers. Technology is not only moving forward, but accelerating. We know this. My grandchildren will do things for a living that I can't imagine. However, they will not speak in terms of cyberbodies and they will not be free of files or directories. My great great grandfather drove a horse and buggy. I drive a '97 Nissan Altima. Very different, but they both have wheels, a seat, a power source, and a steering system. Our computers, software, networks, peripherals, etc will all improve. This is for sure. But computers will not become mystical.
And while I'm ranting, the operating sustem does not fasten the user to the computer, it fastens the user software to the hardware. I wonder if this guy's a real CS prof or an escapee from a creative writing class.
A 6-year-old really has no business with a computer in school. Computers are a poor choice as a teaching tool, unless you're actually teaching kids about computers themselves. Reader Rabbit and what-not are fine games for kids. But those educational games are no substitute for a teacher sitting down with a kid and teaching him to read.
If you're going to use computers in elementary school they should be used to teach kids how computers work, how to plug in peripherals, how to use a word processor or spreadsheet. These are things that kids will really learn from. Kids don't learn math from typing answers on a computer. They learn math by study and practice. There is no reason to use computers as the medium for that study and practice.
High school kids need to have a required class on using office software (preferably touching on several packages, and not just MSOffice), and a required class on basic programming. Computers remain a fairly esoteric area of expertise. This is going to cause a big wage gap unless kids get out of high school with a good technical foundation.
I reccomend The Code Book. It's about the evolution of cryptography from the very early and primitive Caesar cypher, through the Enigma machine, RSA, PGP, and even quantum cryptography. It's not only very informative, but an extremely enjoyable read besides.
But seriously, we scoff at this because most of us have never had a virus on a linux box. I know I never have, and I don't know anybody who has. But don't let this lull you into a false sense of security. Murphy's law has been proven true over and over and over again.
Linux is a very large and complex system. And as we all know, in any sufficiently complex system, there are bugs. If we get arrogant, those bugs will be exploited.
On a lighter note, the throroughly open nature of linux means that any virus written will be rendered useless in the next patch. But I don't think it's a problem we should ignore until systems are going down left and right.
This whole rage against cybersquatting is getting out of hand. Stop and think for a moment what this means to our web, and to its users (me and you).
What we saw in this example was a private citizen who registered a domain name (which is legal), tried to sell it (which is legal), and had it forcibly seized by someone who decided he wanted the name three years after it was registered (which, amazingly, is perfectly legal!).
Could your domain be seized by anybody with enough money to buy big bad lawyers? Say I register a domain name. We'll say it's dermarlboro.com (which is, in actuality, not registered at all). I use it as my personal web page. I occasionally change the graphics and look of the site, and I post interesting stories and pictures I've run across and whatnot. But mostly its useless. It's just my little toy page.
Now say somebody decides to start up DerMarlboro Widget Company, and they go to register dermarlboro.com, and lo and behold, its registered by me. They have a look at my site, realize its owned by just some guy, and decide I'll be an easy chump to bully. So they send me a cease-n-desist, threated to sue me, yadda yadda yadda. I, of course, protest. It's my domain. I've had it for three years. I'm using it. And I don't want to get rid of it.
They decide to have it seized with ICANNs approval. They accuse me of cybersquatting because I'm obviously not running a business that uses the name. I don't own any trademarks. DerMarlboro Widget Company has registered DerMarlboro as a trademark, so they should get the name.
Could this happen? Is this good arbitration? This could allow anycompany to arbitrarily just pick out a name owned by a private citizen and (with Uncle Sam nodding in approval) just take it.
I think real cybersquatters are boils on the neck of the internet. I really do. But we need to be very careful of this kind of seizure of personal property. Cybersquatting is a grusome annoyance, but lets not cut off our nose to spite our face.
When I was first getting into Linux a few years back, Slackware the big distribution. Since then Slackware's popularity has taken a hard dive. My question, in two parts, is this: What do you beleive are the major reasons Slackware lost its place of dominance, and what do you see Slackware doing in the future to make up that lost ground?
They also make you say you won't hook up a second TV without paying for it in those terms-of-service agreements. That's insane. They're providing a signal. I say what you do with that signal is your business as long as you don't sell or share it with a household that isn't paying for it. Would they have me pay extra if a friend of mine comes over to watch TV? He's not paying for it, but he's watching it.
There's some more money to be made! Don't worry about pissing off your customers. Just shake 'em down for some more dough.
Same thing with internet access. You're paying for a pipeline through which you can move data. You only get so much bandwidth. Whose business is it what you do with that bandwidth; whether one machine uses it, or if its split between two, or three, or fifty machines.
If the cable companies had any kind of sense at all, they would be trying to cater to our needs as much as possible. High-bandwidth access is going to be a very, very, very big business, and they should try to garner a loyal following, rather than annoying and extorting customers.
Somebody who knows more about this of thing, please check me on this.
From what I understand, the box is going to just be an intel processor running Windows, and using some sort of Microsoft game API. Could we run Linux on this thing?
It seems to me all we would have to do is to get Linux loaded on a console and then write an API to emulate Microsoft's gaming API. Games that ventured outside the API would, of course, probably not work. Could one of the big distro's fund this API?
And why, I hear you asking, would we want to have the X-box run Linux and yet be otherwise identical to the Windows-driven X-box? Simple, if the game can run on a Linux-driven X-box, it can run on a Linux-driven desktop PC. Instantly, you have all those games that Linux was missing.
Well of course it's soluble! I bet given time we could come up with marginally reasonable algorithms to transform the cypher into, say, the receipt for Toklas Brownies , the Book of the Subgenius, my home phone number... after all, it could be compressed as well as encrypted. Without any idea of what the plaintext could even BE (what language? what alphabet?) how can we expect to know we have the right answer when we get one?
It's not quite so easy as that, I'm afraid. Sure, you can make the cyphertext come out to any plaintext you like if you use the algorythm and key. For example, say we assume its simple alphabetic rotation based on a key that happens to be exactly as long as the message itself. Then we can make the message say anything by simply rotating each letter so as to give us the intended result.
But the key would probably wind up looking pretty random. The real breathroughs in cryptanalysis come from order and repetition. In the case of a rotation based on a message-length key, we could come up with any number of keys that produce intelligible plaintext, but you'll probably find only one key that both makes sense itself, and produces a sensible plaintext.
Take, for example, the cyphertext:
uomgcqxhrfpzmlguyxk
Well, if we use the key:
coyzjudvutugqwrzgoo
We get a plaintext of:
iamthegodofhellfire
Which makes sense, but its probably not the right answer because the key is totally random. But if we use the key:
natalieportmanrules
and apply it to the cyphertext, we get
hotgritsdownmypants
Since both the key and the cyphertext make sense, this is probably the correct decypherment.
This is just one example, but that's the general idea behind deciding whether or not you're going down the wrong path in decyphering a message.
Damnation, if we ever do find life anywhere else in the universe, we're going to be too timid to study it. This craft has been in the vacuum of space for what, 10 years? And bathed in poisonous radiation most all of that time. I highly doubt that the craft is carrying a microbe that can live in a vacuum, live in radiation, survive a supersonic crash, and live in ice cold water. That would have to be one helluva amoeba.
On the contrary, I'd see how low I could get Galileo to orbit Europa. Then I'd try to edge lower and lower until it crashed.
"Why do you need to encrypt email to your grandmother with a 4096-bit PGP key?!"
Well, this, friends, is why we need to make encryption an integral part of every mail reader. This is why we need to thoroughly zero deleted data by default. And this is why you need to empty your mailbox every time you read it. If you can live without it, delete it (wiping the freed space).
Encryption and data wiping need to be the rule rather than the exception.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.3 for non-commercial use
The most important point of this legislation is the prohibition of reverse engineering and other information restrictions. Information, it is said, wants to be free. Well, the internet has changed all that. Information is free. It will be free. Information cannot be held captive any longer. If a file format is used, it will be decoded. If functionality is published, it will be reproduced. It will. No legislation can change that now. We can pass a law forbidding the sun to rise, but it will rise. It will. We can arrest everyone who watches a sunrise, but the sun will rise. LZW compression, although patented, is used freely. The DVD folks wanted a monopoly. It's true. Why else would they try to use a format that nobody else could use. That's the definition of monopoly: total control of a good or service. That got cracked. KOffice can import Microsoft Office files. All this is as it should be. Information is a different commodity than anything we've seen before. It costs effectively nothing to copy. The big corporations with the deep pockets are absolutely confounded by the internet. The smart ones are riding the waves. The foolish ones are trying to pass legislation to ban the tides. Information is available quickly and cheaply. And as broadband access becomes more widespread, more information will be accessible. DVD movies WILL be downloadable in the not-too-distant future. If Hollywood is smart it will watch the music industry. The music industry is experiencing the changes that will be coming to the movie industry in the next 5-10 years. Smart coders WILL write players for any movie format that comes out. Obviously, it is in our best interests to fight this legislation. If we shoot this garbage down, we'll have a lot fewer headaches later on. But, in the long run, it won't matter. Information will be free. It will. As a side note, be very mindful of what companies support this legislation, and which companies condemn it. Any supposedly Linux-supportive company that supports this legislation is no friend of the open-source community, or of its customers.
Kaboom! I expected a couple of know-it-alls to sneer at the suggestion that object-oriented design is better than a procedural design, but I never expected such a violent response.
How can an OS be object-oriented?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?!
Settle down. The poster (I'm sure) wasn't trying to say that the design methodology or language used to create a piece of software will, alone, decide its usefulness. A lot of us that write both C and C++ on a regular basis get used to the ease of conceptualizing object-oriented code, and are elated when new projects use a framework we favor. I would prefer to hack an OS written in C++. I think the code would probably much easier to get my head around. Naturally, I would rather USE whichever OS was fast, reliable, supported, etc.
Of course, that which gets hacked most frequently tends to become fast, reliable, supported, etc, etc.
The bottom line is this: OO vs. Anti-OO is a holy war, and the crusades will rage on. If you don't like OO, fine. Write C, or Fortran, or Cobol, or assembler for all I care. Object-oriented languages were created for a reason. Some people find advantages in them. And to those people, all other factors held constant, an OS written in C++ would clearly be an improvement.
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Why the 760 motherboard? And with a 133MHz bus? Why not the new Asus K7M 761, with its DDR 266MHz bus? I have a feeling this project was started in about November.
What about cut and paste? Screen grabs?
Think about contractors and other service-providers you've worked with in the past. If you've had much experience with them, then you've probaby seen some gung-ho folks who really know what they're doing and are eager to make sure you're happy. You've probably also seen some who don't know what they're doing, are very unhelpful, and just want you out of their hair. If you low-ball your technichal staff, they're going to get out of there, and you're going to be left with bad employees.
It's very true that money is NOT the only consideration, but it is easily the most persuasive. You will not succeed if your employees are grossly underpaid, and neither will you succeed if your employees are grossly underqualified. If the management at your company can't grasp this, maybe it's you who should be looking for another job.
JSP would've done better if they had used Caucho's Resin. It's lightning fast. I'd be interested to see the results of a more comprehensive test covering more app servers.
In case you're not kidding: In the same way that a pound of gold is smaller than a pound of feathers, a 2-million-sun black hole is much smaller than 2 million suns. It's dense. Actually, it's more-or-less infinitely dense, since a black hole forms a singularity, a one-dimensional object, a pin-point, like the article said. The thing that confused me was that they also said it was the size of the distance from the sun to mars. Did they mean the event horizon was that size? Seems small to me, not that I would know.
The guy in the article says they executed a very swift, quick shutdown. That's odd, since there've been two freshmeat updates this week.
...if this had come out earlier, perhaps some of this could have been included [in kernel 2.4] 2.4's already taken so much longer than any other release, why not just slap on a few more months to integrate preemtion?
What can a free software project do about this? Close the mailing lists or newsgroups to the media? Flame/sue the people who screw up? What?
Hey, I have an idea. How about nothing. Isn't that the point of open source? The cream rises to the top even without million dollar prime-time ads, and regardless of silly reporters. What need is there to retaliate at all? Why not just go about the business of writing code. Or should the community become as litigious as our enemies (MPAA, RIAA, etc)?
Personally, I'd be extremely reluctant to leave everything I know behind on Earth and ship myself off to another planet where living conditions would likely be much poorer I'd kill to get to be on the first bus to Mars. Even if I knew ahead of time that I wouldn't be coming back. I'm sure a lot of people agree with you, and would rather relax in their warm hobbit holes, but some people would disagree. A lot of people will compete fiercely for the honor of being the first pioneers on the human race's first colony.
Almost all free software is of use to charities. Linux, GnuCash, Apache, GIMP, Gnome, KDE, Resin, etc etc etc. Commercial versions of these packages would cost a charity upwards of $2000 or more. I suggest working on worthwhile free software projects and preaching free software to your local charities, and even offer to install it for them. Everyone who works on free software is working towards cheap, high-quality software for everyone.
We really can have a free world wide web (the way it used to be). Remember all those little banners you used to see a couple years back? "Corporate Web Sites Kill The Internet Dead" I thought the loonies who posted those at that time were paranoid. But they were 100% right. It's happening. Witness the multi-billion dollar corporations bullying private citizens and shaking them down for domain names. It's sick. But how can we stop the big money folks from destroying the new (let's call it FreeDNS) naming service?
We look to GNU and its GPL. That powerful license has kept free software free up until now. The basis of free software is "you're free to play with us, but if you do, you must play by our rules". The GPL says that if you want to use our GNU software, you may, but then you have to play by the rules in this license.
Imagine a contract for new domain name registrants. It will have them agree to play fair if they're going to play. Here's a sample of what I'm thinking of.
FreeDNS terms of service:
1) By registering a domain name with the FreeDNS service, I am agreeing to adhere to any and all terms in this FreeDNS terms of service contract. Where there is a discrepency between this and any other contract, this, the FreeDNS terms of service contract, shall take precendence.
2) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I agree to not challenge at any time the ownership of any FreeDNS domain name, neither existing domain names, nor domain names yet to be registered. I agree that any domain name registered by any person or organization containing any of my trademarks or other intellectual property.
3) I understand that if I ever do challenge, civilly or criminally, any domain name held by any other person, I forfeit my rights to participate in FreeDNS. Although I may legally prevent others from using my trademarks and other intellectual property in FreeDNS domain names, I understand that this shall preclude me from participating in FreeDNS.
4) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I am relinquishing any domain names such that I have gained control of through civil or criminal prosecution, or through legal settlements, or by coersion via threats of civil or criminal suits, to their previous owners.
5) By registering a domain name with FreeDNS, I am agreeing never to sell any FreeDNS domain name to another party for any fee or in exchange for any good or service or favor of any sort. I understand that any transaction is invalid, and such a transaction puts the sold domain name into the pool of registerable domain names. If it is discovered at any time that I sold a FreeDNS domain name, I make myself liable for any and all damages arising from the breach of this contract.
6) I agree that failure to adhere absolutely to this contract voids any and all FreeDNS domain name registrations that I hold, and that they shall return to the pool of registerable domains.
This does a few different things (and IANAL, so obviously, this would have to be beefed up by a real attorney). First, it says that if you want to participate in FreeDNS, then you can't try to take anyone else's domain name for any reason. If you choose not to participate, then you can sue to have, for example, microsoft.sux removed from use and removed from the pool of registerable domain names. However, if your company, for example, microsoft decides that it DOES want to participate, it will have to give back any siezed domains and play nice. So if my company, DerMarlboro Enterprises, registers dermarlboro.com, and some yahoo registers dermarlboro.sux or dermarlborosucks.com, I can't challenge that, and I can't even threaten the registrants of those names or else I will lose my right to participate. Plus, sale of domain names voids them, and voids all other domain name registrations by the seller, so the motivation to cybersquat is removed. You can't sell it. If you try, someone else can get it for free.
Personally, I think it should have been done this way to begin with. But when nameservice first appeared, who would have imagined the friendly bearded sysadmins who owned the domains SUEING one another because one owns sysadmin.com, and the other registers sysadmins.com? It turns out to be true. Corporate web sites really do kill the internet dead.
This guy teaches? Computer science? At Yale? You have to be kidding. He sounds like like the bastard son of Oprah and Carl Sagan. Your cyberbody will float down to a computer like a bluebird settling on a branch, will it? Give me a damn break. This is poetry. I think we are all very aware of the rapid change of technology. My grandfather and 50 generations before him may have been carpenters, but none could be computer programmers. Technology is not only moving forward, but accelerating. We know this. My grandchildren will do things for a living that I can't imagine. However, they will not speak in terms of cyberbodies and they will not be free of files or directories. My great great grandfather drove a horse and buggy. I drive a '97 Nissan Altima. Very different, but they both have wheels, a seat, a power source, and a steering system. Our computers, software, networks, peripherals, etc will all improve. This is for sure. But computers will not become mystical.
And while I'm ranting, the operating sustem does not fasten the user to the computer, it fastens the user software to the hardware. I wonder if this guy's a real CS prof or an escapee from a creative writing class.
A 6-year-old really has no business with a computer in school. Computers are a poor choice as a teaching tool, unless you're actually teaching kids about computers themselves. Reader Rabbit and what-not are fine games for kids. But those educational games are no substitute for a teacher sitting down with a kid and teaching him to read.
If you're going to use computers in elementary school they should be used to teach kids how computers work, how to plug in peripherals, how to use a word processor or spreadsheet. These are things that kids will really learn from. Kids don't learn math from typing answers on a computer. They learn math by study and practice. There is no reason to use computers as the medium for that study and practice.
High school kids need to have a required class on using office software (preferably touching on several packages, and not just MSOffice), and a required class on basic programming. Computers remain a fairly esoteric area of expertise. This is going to cause a big wage gap unless kids get out of high school with a good technical foundation.
Enter Napster -
Snag a file little one
don't forget, my son
to download every one
Download sin, download Fins
Download just for grins
Till the lawsuit comes
Browse with one eye open
Gripping your lawyer tight
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Napster lawsuit land
Something's wrong, I just might
Lose some moolah tonight
'Cause you're downloading sound bites
Dreams of power, dreams of ire
Dreams of songs on a wire
And of our Grammies past
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your 'rm *' tight
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Napster lawsuit land
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the Lord my songs to keep
If they're downloaded before I wake
Pray the Lord my cut to take
Hush little Napster, don't send a byte
And don't issue a disk write
If you can kill with a hand saw
Then shouldn't they be against the law
Exit light
Enter night
Old hair-band
Exit light
Enter night
Freedom banned
We're off to Napster lawsuit land
I reccomend The Code Book. It's about the evolution of cryptography from the very early and primitive Caesar cypher, through the Enigma machine, RSA, PGP, and even quantum cryptography. It's not only very informative, but an extremely enjoyable read besides.
rpm -ivh stoned.rpm
Missing dependencies:
glibc6
imlib
virus.so.4
But seriously, we scoff at this because most of us have never had a virus on a linux box. I know I never have, and I don't know anybody who has. But don't let this lull you into a false sense of security. Murphy's law has been proven true over and over and over again.
Linux is a very large and complex system. And as we all know, in any sufficiently complex system, there are bugs. If we get arrogant, those bugs will be exploited.
On a lighter note, the throroughly open nature of linux means that any virus written will be rendered useless in the next patch. But I don't think it's a problem we should ignore until systems are going down left and right.
This whole rage against cybersquatting is getting out of hand. Stop and think for a moment what this means to our web, and to its users (me and you).
What we saw in this example was a private citizen who registered a domain name (which is legal), tried to sell it (which is legal), and had it forcibly seized by someone who decided he wanted the name three years after it was registered (which, amazingly, is perfectly legal!).
Could your domain be seized by anybody with enough money to buy big bad lawyers? Say I register a domain name. We'll say it's dermarlboro.com (which is, in actuality, not registered at all). I use it as my personal web page. I occasionally change the graphics and look of the site, and I post interesting stories and pictures I've run across and whatnot. But mostly its useless. It's just my little toy page.
Now say somebody decides to start up DerMarlboro Widget Company, and they go to register dermarlboro.com, and lo and behold, its registered by me. They have a look at my site, realize its owned by just some guy, and decide I'll be an easy chump to bully. So they send me a cease-n-desist, threated to sue me, yadda yadda yadda. I, of course, protest. It's my domain. I've had it for three years. I'm using it. And I don't want to get rid of it.
They decide to have it seized with ICANNs approval. They accuse me of cybersquatting because I'm obviously not running a business that uses the name. I don't own any trademarks. DerMarlboro Widget Company has registered DerMarlboro as a trademark, so they should get the name.
Could this happen? Is this good arbitration? This could allow anycompany to arbitrarily just pick out a name owned by a private citizen and (with Uncle Sam nodding in approval) just take it.
I think real cybersquatters are boils on the neck of the internet. I really do. But we need to be very careful of this kind of seizure of personal property. Cybersquatting is a grusome annoyance, but lets not cut off our nose to spite our face.
When I was first getting into Linux a few years back, Slackware the big distribution. Since then Slackware's popularity has taken a hard dive. My question, in two parts, is this: What do you beleive are the major reasons Slackware lost its place of dominance, and what do you see Slackware doing in the future to make up that lost ground?
They also make you say you won't hook up a second TV without paying for it in those terms-of-service agreements. That's insane. They're providing a signal. I say what you do with that signal is your business as long as you don't sell or share it with a household that isn't paying for it. Would they have me pay extra if a friend of mine comes over to watch TV? He's not paying for it, but he's watching it.
There's some more money to be made! Don't worry about pissing off your customers. Just shake 'em down for some more dough.
Same thing with internet access. You're paying for a pipeline through which you can move data. You only get so much bandwidth. Whose business is it what you do with that bandwidth; whether one machine uses it, or if its split between two, or three, or fifty machines.
If the cable companies had any kind of sense at all, they would be trying to cater to our needs as much as possible. High-bandwidth access is going to be a very, very, very big business, and they should try to garner a loyal following, rather than annoying and extorting customers.
Somebody who knows more about this of thing, please check me on this.
From what I understand, the box is going to just be an intel processor running Windows, and using some sort of Microsoft game API. Could we run Linux on this thing?
It seems to me all we would have to do is to get Linux loaded on a console and then write an API to emulate Microsoft's gaming API. Games that ventured outside the API would, of course, probably not work. Could one of the big distro's fund this API?
And why, I hear you asking, would we want to have the X-box run Linux and yet be otherwise identical to the Windows-driven X-box? Simple, if the game can run on a Linux-driven X-box, it can run on a Linux-driven desktop PC. Instantly, you have all those games that Linux was missing.
Well of course it's soluble! I bet given time we could come up with marginally reasonable algorithms to transform the cypher into, say, the receipt for Toklas Brownies , the Book of the Subgenius, my home phone number... after all, it could be compressed as well as encrypted. Without any idea of what the plaintext could even BE (what language? what alphabet?) how can we expect to know we have the right answer when we get one?
It's not quite so easy as that, I'm afraid. Sure, you can make the cyphertext come out to any plaintext you like if you use the algorythm and key. For example, say we assume its simple alphabetic rotation based on a key that happens to be exactly as long as the message itself. Then we can make the message say anything by simply rotating each letter so as to give us the intended result.
But the key would probably wind up looking pretty random. The real breathroughs in cryptanalysis come from order and repetition. In the case of a rotation based on a message-length key, we could come up with any number of keys that produce intelligible plaintext, but you'll probably find only one key that both makes sense itself, and produces a sensible plaintext.
Take, for example, the cyphertext:
uomgcqxhrfpzmlguyxk
Well, if we use the key:
coyzjudvutugqwrzgoo
We get a plaintext of:
iamthegodofhellfire
Which makes sense, but its probably not the right answer because the key is totally random. But if we use the key:
natalieportmanrules
and apply it to the cyphertext, we get
hotgritsdownmypants
Since both the key and the cyphertext make sense, this is probably the correct decypherment.
This is just one example, but that's the general idea behind deciding whether or not you're going down the wrong path in decyphering a message.
Damnation, if we ever do find life anywhere else in the universe, we're going to be too timid to study it. This craft has been in the vacuum of space for what, 10 years? And bathed in poisonous radiation most all of that time. I highly doubt that the craft is carrying a microbe that can live in a vacuum, live in radiation, survive a supersonic crash, and live in ice cold water. That would have to be one helluva amoeba.
On the contrary, I'd see how low I could get Galileo to orbit Europa. Then I'd try to edge lower and lower until it crashed.
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Hash: SHA1
People scoff at day-to-day crypto.
"It's not convenient!"
"Why do you need to encrypt email to your grandmother with a 4096-bit
PGP key?!"
Well, this, friends, is why we need to make encryption an
integral part of every mail reader. This is why we need to
thoroughly zero deleted data by default. And this is why you need to
empty your mailbox every time you read it. If you can live without
it, delete it (wiping the freed space).
Encryption and data wiping need to be the rule rather than the
exception.
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iQA/AwUBOL6Zwe8mZ1H4eRoZEQLAngCffD3K9GB9h5m6F7q
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The most important point of this legislation is the prohibition of reverse engineering and other information restrictions. Information, it is said, wants to be free. Well, the internet has changed all that. Information is free. It will be free. Information cannot be held captive any longer. If a file format is used, it will be decoded. If functionality is published, it will be reproduced. It will. No legislation can change that now. We can pass a law forbidding the sun to rise, but it will rise. It will. We can arrest everyone who watches a sunrise, but the sun will rise. LZW compression, although patented, is used freely. The DVD folks wanted a monopoly. It's true. Why else would they try to use a format that nobody else could use. That's the definition of monopoly: total control of a good or service. That got cracked. KOffice can import Microsoft Office files. All this is as it should be. Information is a different commodity than anything we've seen before. It costs effectively nothing to copy. The big corporations with the deep pockets are absolutely confounded by the internet. The smart ones are riding the waves. The foolish ones are trying to pass legislation to ban the tides. Information is available quickly and cheaply. And as broadband access becomes more widespread, more information will be accessible. DVD movies WILL be downloadable in the not-too-distant future. If Hollywood is smart it will watch the music industry. The music industry is experiencing the changes that will be coming to the movie industry in the next 5-10 years. Smart coders WILL write players for any movie format that comes out. Obviously, it is in our best interests to fight this legislation. If we shoot this garbage down, we'll have a lot fewer headaches later on. But, in the long run, it won't matter. Information will be free. It will. As a side note, be very mindful of what companies support this legislation, and which companies condemn it. Any supposedly Linux-supportive company that supports this legislation is no friend of the open-source community, or of its customers.
Kaboom! I expected a couple of know-it-alls to sneer at the suggestion that object-oriented design is better than a procedural design, but I never expected such a violent response.
How can an OS be object-oriented?! What the hell is that supposed to mean?!
Settle down. The poster (I'm sure) wasn't trying to say that the design methodology or language used to create a piece of software will, alone, decide its usefulness. A lot of us that write both C and C++ on a regular basis get used to the ease of conceptualizing object-oriented code, and are elated when new projects use a framework we favor. I would prefer to hack an OS written in C++. I think the code would probably much easier to get my head around. Naturally, I would rather USE whichever OS was fast, reliable, supported, etc.
Of course, that which gets hacked most frequently tends to become fast, reliable, supported, etc, etc.
The bottom line is this: OO vs. Anti-OO is a holy war, and the crusades will rage on. If you don't like OO, fine. Write C, or Fortran, or Cobol, or assembler for all I care. Object-oriented languages were created for a reason. Some people find advantages in them. And to those people, all other factors held constant, an OS written in C++ would clearly be an improvement.