This incident underscores why many use or have switched to Firefox: vulnerabilities discovered and promptly fixed
Even better - vulnerabilities discovered in third party software are fixed:
"This isn't even a problem with Mozilla; it's a problem with Windows Explorer. Windows XP Service Pack 1 was supposed to have closed this hole, but apparently it is still functioning and leaving Windows systems open to remote attack. So the Mozilla team worked to patch a hole that had little to do with their project."
So basically the Mozilla team had to fix a problem, that MS already claimed to fix, in Windows Explorer because MS are too clueless to fix and test it themselves.
The New Scientist recently did an article saying that when the Earth's magnetic field collapses the solar wind will generate a replacement magnetic field as it interacts with the upper atmosphere. Why didn't the same happen on Mars?
You're right that space junk is becoming a quite big problem and I'm not sure what can be done about it - larger particles can probably be vaporised by laser within the next few years. NASA tracks particles down to about 1cm in size with radar and experiments looking at particles below 1mm involve putting up satellites that are essentially large orbital dartboards. Of course, when you're doing mach 25, hitting objects smaller than 1cm is still a really bad thing to do.
The trick, now that we know how much of a problem orbital debris can cause, is to stop dumping more up there.
For larger objects such as disposable rocket stages and low satellites this shouldn't be too big a problem - fit them with reaction control thrusters and enough propellent to deorbit them. You also need to take this into account when designing the satellites so they will burn up on reentry instead of crashing into possibly populated areas - I wouldn't have thought this would be a big problem - if you're designing a satellite and isn't going to burn up, why not put a small charge inside it to fragment the satellite after it's entered the atmosphere?
The use of completely reusable vehicles like Space Ship One will help here too.
The real problem is when things go wrong and something unexpectedly fragments while in orbit (your space craft explodes while in orbit or a satellite is hit by some large debris and disintegrates) - then you're left with a lot of junk floating around with no way for it to deorbit itself.
Another problem seems to be that geostationary satellites are too high to deorbit - geostationary orbit is at about 36,000 Km high and they just don't have enough fuel to deorbit from that altitude. At the moment, these satellites are pushed into a "graveyard orbit" that's 200 - 300Km above geostationary. Eventually it's going to get pretty crowded in the graveyard orbit, with the added problem that in a few hundred years those satellites orbits will decay back to geosynchronous altitude.
You mean Metric vs Imperial or American measurements don't you? Here in England we use metric a lot (pretty much 100% of the time in engineering although there's probably a 50:50 split between metric and imperial outside of engineering circles). I honestly couldn't tell you how many yards in a mile, but I know right off the top of my head that there are 1000 metres in a kilometre and that 1 litre of water has a mass of 1 kilogram.
I am a big fan of the private 'prize' process, and think that with the success of the xprize we should figure out how to offer a slew of additional prizes to continue to stimulate private space efforts.
I think (hope?) that once the X-Prize has been won, there will be another prize put up for the first private flight into orbit, since that's the next big milestone in commercial spaceflight. Or maybe a prize for the first suborbital space flight to the other side of the planet - there are big applications for suborbital space flight as a replacement for normal air travel since once you get our of the atmosphere going hypersonic is much easier.
I must admit that I didn't realise the prize expired at the end of this year though - that kinda puts a lot of pressure on everyone.
The most successful businesses are often those who sell very simple things first.
Most people here on slashdot wouldn't dream of buying a ready built desktop computer, but the masses out there don't want to build their own. The same applies here - HP have done something obvious and made it easy for people who don't have the ability to hack software to do what they want. And here's the thing: HP did it first.
Wrong - the *latest* computers cost vast amounts of money - go surf around ebay for a 5 (or more) year old computer and you'll see how cheap computing can be. Yeah, ok it won't run Windows 5006 and Quake 7, but that's not what you're after - It'll run Linux, X, Open Office and gcc just fine.
I think it is great that they are using Linux, I personally think that for education and stuff like that Linux is way better, the only time I really need windows is for high performance games that neither WineX / Wine support, but in a school enviroment you dont need those kind of things so Linux is a great solution, stable, cheap, and lots of great free software
Infact, Linux is good in a school environment *because* the kids can't just install the latest windows games.
Not only are HP helping the developing nations, they are promoting Linux to future generations, who will not have already been bought by MS like the whole of the west has been. I would favor schools in the west running both Linux and Windows - if kids are taught both from the start then they will (hopefully) not be prejudiced either way and when faced with a problem can choose the right system as a solution.
Another good thing is that this is helping the environment - a single 4-head machine takes less resources to build, contains less toxic materials, contains less plastics (which come from our limited oil resources and end up in the landfill) and sucks less electricity.
We need more of this stuff - while we need powerful machines as developers, the secretaries, etc, who use their machines for surfing the web and word processing have no use for a 2GHz machine - I used to run MS Office 97 on a P200 (all those years ago before I ditched MS completely) and it was perfectly fast enough.
You might think it wouldn't do a lot of harm, but for security, changing the ownership of a file clears it's suid and sgid bits, completely breaking all the handy progs like su:)
However, the SBAS satellites (known as WAAS in the US and EGNOS in the EU) are in geosync orbit - they broadcast differential corrections to compensate for the errors introduced into the GPS position by the ionosphere, etc. If you can get a good view of the southern horizon in an area that has SBAS coverage then you can get accuracies of under 6 feet.
Actually that 's not entirely true - here in the UK there ia a "cooling off period" (something like 14 days I think) whereby you can return an item so long as it's in it's original packaging.
I haven't paid for Linux, infact I didn't even get any CDs from a shop - I downloaded it over BitTorrent - I don't expect any service level. If I had spent over a hundred pounds (sometimes several thousand) for a product I would expect some kind of service level.
It's kinda sad though that you've been infected by the time you managed to download the security update...
I've got an idea - Microsoft can start letting the magazines ship the patches on cover CDs again... or even better - they should be legally required to ship a CD containing the patches to every registered user.
Its in the slashdot FAQ, but basically there are 2 types of "free" in the english language - free as in beer and freedom - the debate is always on as to the meaning of "free" software:
Free as in beer - costs no money Freedom - no (or not many) restrictions on it. I.e. opensource software may be thought of as "free" because you are (usually) entitled to modify and redistribute the software to suit your purposes, so long as you follow some basic rules.
Government funded project suffer greatly from policy changes - the government decides they want to do something and the project is starter. Then part way through the project, the government gets kicked out of office for whatever reason (lose an election, etc) and the new government doesn't like the project so shut it down... wasting both time and money. Industry doesn't suffer from this problem (as much) since there are real financial goals involved - they can't afford to pour a few million $ into a project and then can it because of a policy change.
As an aside do you know the difference between: $* - Expands to all of the parameters (except $0) "$*" - The same as $* except it inserts the first character of $IFS between them and returns a single string. $@ - The same as $* "$@" - The same as $* except each parameter is enclosed in quotes
i.e. if $1 contains 'a' and $2 contains 'b c' then they would expand like: $* = "a" "b" "c" "$*" = "a b c" $@ = "a" "b" "c" "$@" = "a" "b c"
The only one that is inconsistent with normal variable handling is "$@", but you're right that this is something to be careful with.
when writing shell script wrappers; make sure to exec the final program or your wrapper eats the return value as well as wasting a process table slot.
Depends what you're doing with the wrapper - the wrapper may need to do something on exit, so you end up with something like:
#!/bin/sh foo/bin/origprog R="$?" if [ "$R" != 0 ]; then
bar fi exit "$R"
In which case, you execute "foo", then the original program you're wrapping. When that prog exits you're chekcing the exit status, doing "bar" if it failed and making sure you pass the exit status of the prog back as you exit.
Someone decided it'd be a good idea to "test" the UPS powering our datacabinet by killing the power... There was a short "blip" from the UPS's warning buzzer followed by the entire cabinet immediately powering down - the battery had died on the UPS and was holding no charge - not exactly the best way of testing it though.:)
There was a badly written script on a machine I was dealing with a few years ago which was supposed to delete a user's home directory (when deleting users from the system):
rm -rf/home/$USERNAME/
Of course it worked fine until a user somehow ended up with a space on the start of their home directory name, whereupon it did:
rm -rf/home/ foo/
oops?:)
(I've seen the same script do "rm -rf/home/foo/" when the user ends up with a space on the end of the name too... moral of the story - always enclose variable parameters in quotes)
Slashdot Mirror
This incident underscores why many use or have switched to Firefox: vulnerabilities discovered and promptly fixed
Even better - vulnerabilities discovered in third party software are fixed:
"This isn't even a problem with Mozilla; it's a problem with Windows Explorer. Windows XP Service Pack 1 was supposed to have closed this hole, but apparently it is still functioning and leaving Windows systems open to remote attack. So the Mozilla team worked to patch a hole that had little to do with their project."
So basically the Mozilla team had to fix a problem, that MS already claimed to fix, in Windows Explorer because MS are too clueless to fix and test it themselves.
The New Scientist recently did an article saying that when the Earth's magnetic field collapses the solar wind will generate a replacement magnetic field as it interacts with the upper atmosphere. Why didn't the same happen on Mars?
You're right that space junk is becoming a quite big problem and I'm not sure what can be done about it - larger particles can probably be vaporised by laser within the next few years. NASA tracks particles down to about 1cm in size with radar and experiments looking at particles below 1mm involve putting up satellites that are essentially large orbital dartboards. Of course, when you're doing mach 25, hitting objects smaller than 1cm is still a really bad thing to do.
The trick, now that we know how much of a problem orbital debris can cause, is to stop dumping more up there.
For larger objects such as disposable rocket stages and low satellites this shouldn't be too big a problem - fit them with reaction control thrusters and enough propellent to deorbit them. You also need to take this into account when designing the satellites so they will burn up on reentry instead of crashing into possibly populated areas - I wouldn't have thought this would be a big problem - if you're designing a satellite and isn't going to burn up, why not put a small charge inside it to fragment the satellite after it's entered the atmosphere?
The use of completely reusable vehicles like Space Ship One will help here too.
The real problem is when things go wrong and something unexpectedly fragments while in orbit (your space craft explodes while in orbit or a satellite is hit by some large debris and disintegrates) - then you're left with a lot of junk floating around with no way for it to deorbit itself.
Another problem seems to be that geostationary satellites are too high to deorbit - geostationary orbit is at about 36,000 Km high and they just don't have enough fuel to deorbit from that altitude. At the moment, these satellites are pushed into a "graveyard orbit" that's 200 - 300Km above geostationary. Eventually it's going to get pretty crowded in the graveyard orbit, with the added problem that in a few hundred years those satellites orbits will decay back to geosynchronous altitude.
Metric vs English measurements
You mean Metric vs Imperial or American measurements don't you? Here in England we use metric a lot (pretty much 100% of the time in engineering although there's probably a 50:50 split between metric and imperial outside of engineering circles). I honestly couldn't tell you how many yards in a mile, but I know right off the top of my head that there are 1000 metres in a kilometre and that 1 litre of water has a mass of 1 kilogram.
I am a big fan of the private 'prize' process, and think that with the success of the xprize we should figure out how to offer a slew of additional prizes to continue to stimulate private space efforts.
I think (hope?) that once the X-Prize has been won, there will be another prize put up for the first private flight into orbit, since that's the next big milestone in commercial spaceflight. Or maybe a prize for the first suborbital space flight to the other side of the planet - there are big applications for suborbital space flight as a replacement for normal air travel since once you get our of the atmosphere going hypersonic is much easier.
I must admit that I didn't realise the prize expired at the end of this year though - that kinda puts a lot of pressure on everyone.
The most successful businesses are often those who sell very simple things first.
Most people here on slashdot wouldn't dream of buying a ready built desktop computer, but the masses out there don't want to build their own. The same applies here - HP have done something obvious and made it easy for people who don't have the ability to hack software to do what they want. And here's the thing: HP did it first.
Computers cost vast amounts of money.
Wrong - the *latest* computers cost vast amounts of money - go surf around ebay for a 5 (or more) year old computer and you'll see how cheap computing can be. Yeah, ok it won't run Windows 5006 and Quake 7, but that's not what you're after - It'll run Linux, X, Open Office and gcc just fine.
I think it is great that they are using Linux, I personally think that for education and stuff like that Linux is way better, the only time I really need windows is for high performance games that neither WineX / Wine support, but in a school enviroment you dont need those kind of things so Linux is a great solution, stable, cheap, and lots of great free software
Infact, Linux is good in a school environment *because* the kids can't just install the latest windows games.
Not only are HP helping the developing nations, they are promoting Linux to future generations, who will not have already been bought by MS like the whole of the west has been. I would favor schools in the west running both Linux and Windows - if kids are taught both from the start then they will (hopefully) not be prejudiced either way and when faced with a problem can choose the right system as a solution.
Another good thing is that this is helping the environment - a single 4-head machine takes less resources to build, contains less toxic materials, contains less plastics (which come from our limited oil resources and end up in the landfill) and sucks less electricity.
We need more of this stuff - while we need powerful machines as developers, the secretaries, etc, who use their machines for surfing the web and word processing have no use for a 2GHz machine - I used to run MS Office 97 on a P200 (all those years ago before I ditched MS completely) and it was perfectly fast enough.
From the root directory:
.
:)
chown -R foo
You might think it wouldn't do a lot of harm, but for security, changing the ownership of a file clears it's suid and sgid bits, completely breaking all the handy progs like su
For the same reason that all software has to be secure these days.
However, the SBAS satellites (known as WAAS in the US and EGNOS in the EU) are in geosync orbit - they broadcast differential corrections to compensate for the errors introduced into the GPS position by the ionosphere, etc. If you can get a good view of the southern horizon in an area that has SBAS coverage then you can get accuracies of under 6 feet.
Actually that 's not entirely true - here in the UK there ia a "cooling off period" (something like 14 days I think) whereby you can return an item so long as it's in it's original packaging.
Of course you do it during a maintenance window before you start the actual work.
:)
Exactly
I haven't paid for Linux, infact I didn't even get any CDs from a shop - I downloaded it over BitTorrent - I don't expect any service level. If I had spent over a hundred pounds (sometimes several thousand) for a product I would expect some kind of service level.
Seems strangely like far too much work to me.
Please don't give them ideas...
It's kinda sad though that you've been infected by the time you managed to download the security update...
I've got an idea - Microsoft can start letting the magazines ship the patches on cover CDs again... or even better - they should be legally required to ship a CD containing the patches to every registered user.
You mean they're not really security updates? bugger - I just installed 5 of them. :)
Its in the slashdot FAQ, but basically there are 2 types of "free" in the english language - free as in beer and freedom - the debate is always on as to the meaning of "free" software:
Free as in beer - costs no money
Freedom - no (or not many) restrictions on it. I.e. opensource software may be thought of as "free" because you are (usually) entitled to modify and redistribute the software to suit your purposes, so long as you follow some basic rules.
Government funded project suffer greatly from policy changes - the government decides they want to do something and the project is starter. Then part way through the project, the government gets kicked out of office for whatever reason (lose an election, etc) and the new government doesn't like the project so shut it down... wasting both time and money.
Industry doesn't suffer from this problem (as much) since there are real financial goals involved - they can't afford to pour a few million $ into a project and then can it because of a policy change.
As an aside do you know the difference between:
/bin/origprog
$* - Expands to all of the parameters (except $0)
"$*" - The same as $* except it inserts the first character of $IFS between them and returns a single string.
$@ - The same as $*
"$@" - The same as $* except each parameter is enclosed in quotes
i.e. if $1 contains 'a' and $2 contains 'b c' then they would expand like:
$* = "a" "b" "c"
"$*" = "a b c"
$@ = "a" "b" "c"
"$@" = "a" "b c"
The only one that is inconsistent with normal variable handling is "$@", but you're right that this is something to be careful with.
when writing shell script wrappers; make sure to exec the final program or your wrapper eats the return value as well as wasting a process table slot.
Depends what you're doing with the wrapper - the wrapper may need to do something on exit, so you end up with something like:
#!/bin/sh
foo
R="$?"
if [ "$R" != 0 ]; then
bar
fi
exit "$R"
In which case, you execute "foo", then the original program you're wrapping. When that prog exits you're chekcing the exit status, doing "bar" if it failed and making sure you pass the exit status of the prog back as you exit.
Isn't that like peeing on an electric fence? :)
Someone decided it'd be a good idea to "test" the UPS powering our datacabinet by killing the power... There was a short "blip" from the UPS's warning buzzer followed by the entire cabinet immediately powering down - the battery had died on the UPS and was holding no charge - not exactly the best way of testing it though. :)
There was a badly written script on a machine I was dealing with a few years ago which was supposed to delete a user's home directory (when deleting users from the system):
/home/$USERNAME/
/home/ foo/
:)
/home/foo /" when the user ends up with a space on the end of the name too... moral of the story - always enclose variable parameters in quotes)
rm -rf
Of course it worked fine until a user somehow ended up with a space on the start of their home directory name, whereupon it did:
rm -rf
oops?
(I've seen the same script do "rm -rf