Under UK law, if you are accused even informally of so much as thinking about looking at child pornography (which is defined as any picture apparently depicting a child -- even if they are over 18 in real life, even if they are fully-clothed, and even non-photo-realistic drawings count) then you are automatically considered guilty, even despite possibly being later proved innocent.
It's already got to the point where parents aren't allowed to film their kids' school nativity plays (in case the recordings get into the wrong hands) and adults are unwilling to volunteer to work with kids (because of the bureaucracy, the paperwork and the interviews; it's considerably less bother for an ex-embezzler who's served his time to get a job cleaning bank vaults after all the staff have gone home). Next thing, schools won't even put on plays at all.
Google want you to develop "open source" code, which they will then take and pervert into proprietary, Caged software. They will then peddle this back to you using the misleading word "free". That's not free as in "free speech", or even free as in "free beer"; but free as in "this dog is free from lice".
Don't believe me? Where's the Source Code for Picasa or Google Earth?
Run Debian and use the Window Maker desktop. It doesn't look or behave a blind thing like Windows. Perhaps as a consequence of this, it's blisteringly fast.
On a few occasions, I have used a server cabinet with about 8 machines in it to dry my trousers (which got wet on the way in to work).
Hey, you might as well do something useful with all that hot air!
In a previous job, we used to have to test gas boilers by plumbing the boiler to a test rig with an expansion vessel and a plate-to-plate heat exchanger -- the secondary side of which was fed from the water main via a flow rate meter (I still remember the formula: 1 degree temp rise * 1 lpm flow rate = 70 watts) and dumped down a grid. Which is very wasteful, but the trouble with hot water is it doesn't stay hot for long. Don't know if anyone has found a good use for it since then, or if anyone even remembers how to use that test rig.
Well, take a tip from the global financial markets..... Wait for the inch to take another tumble against the centimetre (which is backed by the light standard, and not about to alter much any time soon..... it would create chaos for the whole of physics). Then you'll be able to buy a so-called 19" laptop with a screen that is only 28.5cm. across!
You'll have to find a country with a very short default copyright term, or which has forcibly revoked Microsoft's copyright over Windows XP, and legitimately (bearing in mind Microsoft probably won't sell it in countries where their business model is legally thwarted) purchase a copy of XP there. Once it enters the Public Domain in that country, it's legal under that country's laws to copy it.
If you can later show that your computer has been used in that country, then it will give you Plausible Deniability if you are ever in court for copyright violation.
Actually, there's a really easy way to ensure that all your software is correctly licenced -- especially if you're an organisation the size of Sony.
All you have to do is insist on OSI-approved software licences only. No exceptions: whatever you can't do with Open Source, you do by hand. Or you get someone in to write you a piece of custom software -- and if they don't release it under an OSI-approved licence, then you'd better make damn sure that you own the copyright on it. Do that, and there's no way you can possibly be accused of unauthorised copying -- since any copying that happens is either specifically authorised by the licence, or the software is yours to copy.
If you're a big enough organisation, you can create your own software distribution especially for internal use -- and patch the kernel, gcc and glibc so heavily that anybody else's pre-compiled software will just segfault. (Obligatory Gentoo plug: This probably wouldn't be hard to do just with use flags.....) Include the special patched compiler, of course, so that Source Code for anything you missed out can be downloaded and built. Now, unauthorised Caged software won't run at all; while you could theoretically get busted for mere possession of unauthorised copies, if the steps you've taken to prevent any use from being made of them don't get you off the hook then you need a new lawyer.
Otherwise, if that's too much effort, then standardise on Debian; and make sure only to use the "main" repository, not "non-free". (You could use "contrib"; but there's not a lot of point really, since software in this repository is basically Free but depends on Caged software.)
I saw a modified version of that game..... where, amongst other visual alterations, the caveman didn't quite fit entirely into his loincloth, and the "R" and "A" of the "FRAK!" speech balloon were replaced by other letters.
With only 32KB of RAM which had to be shared between system variables, code and the unfeasibly large frame buffer, absence of source code frankly was not a showstopper for anyone wanting to modify games. Patching binaries was common, and there were tools readily available especially for doing just that -- either in RAM, or right there on the disk. Graphics mods were rare; most were just extra lives, though I often changed the keys (some programmers liked using A and Z for up and down, with _£ and cursor down for left and right; I preferred the so-called "Snapper keys" of Z and X for left and right, and:* and/? for up and down.)
No, BASIC 1 had named PROCs. BASIC 2 introduced OSCLI -- a command for issuing MOS commands through BASIC without resorting to low-level hackery -- and OPENUP -- a new file mode (update). (Actually, it introduced OPENIN, an input-only file mode, but BASIC 1 already had an OPENIN which actually, in defiance of documentation, opened files for update: the token for OPENIN on BASIC 1 became OPENUP on BASIC 2, and OPENIN got a new token of its own.)
Anyway, a backward GOTO addressed to a destination line which would be visible on the same screen is perfectly acceptable. And deep down inside, every processor architecture supports unconditional jumps.
Well, that rather depends upon what they're doing while the computer is doing its stuff. Put an "and" sign on the end, and you get a prompt back straight away (or just open more xterms / virtual consoles). You can do one drive in each USB port, up to however many sd* devices you compiled support for into your kernel minus however many you're already using. It's not like/dev/zero is going to start blocking reads anytime..... (cue some crusty old BSD user making a feeble joke about not enough zeros going into/dev/null or something)
Anyone who mentions the discredited Gutmann paper in connection with data remanence is full of shit and does not know how computers work.
Hint: until recently, all memory devices relied upon magnetism. If it was true about data remanence, there would have been at least one device which exploited the phenomenon to increase storage density -- given the way prices of components have varied with respect to one another, there must have been a time when it would have been worthwhile to do so.
Microsoft were looking the other way and whistling, while everyone who had one of the newfangled CD-writers was giving away copies of "MS Office 97 - Gold Disk Edition" for a big fat duck-egg. That's practically indistinguible from dumping.
There was no way that anybody who acquired a pirated copy of Office would ever have paid full whack for it; without the option of piracy, and because magazine type-ins had already disappeared but Open Source wasn't yet mainstream, they would have installed alternative third-party office software.
And the fact that MS Office deliberately couldn't export documents to other formats, while it was perfectly happy to import them, certainly wasn't helping anybody except Microsoft: effectively, once a document had been touched by Office, it had to remain forever in Office format.
You don't need to overwrite data more than once to make it unreadable. Anybody who tells you you do is full of shit and does not know how computers work.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 will write zeros to/dev/sda1 until interrupted (which will happen of its own accord as soon as/dev/sda1 is full).
/dev/zero is a virtual device that whenever you read a character from it, comes out with a stream of zeros; it is always ready to read and never shows end-of-file./dev/sda1 is a device that represents the first partition of the first SCSI, SATA or USB disk drive, treated as one huge file (which happens to contain all the files and pointers to them) rather than a file system.
Simpler version: I know, because that's just the way computers work. (And I've read the Source Code.)
Can you hear the sound of the fiddle and the drum Passing, then fade? Can you hear the sound of chanting in the streets Screaming for better days? You've heard it all, yes we've all heard it all So tell me what has changed? You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all So tell me what has changed? And the palace stays the same Only the guards ever change So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down *violin solo* And you've heard the singer sing protest songs, Telling us what is wrong; And you've read the books that say where to look, Well, where's the answer gone? You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all So tell me what has changed? You've read it all, yes we've all read it all So tell me what has changed? And the palace stays the same Only the guards ever change So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
(C) Chadwick/Miles/Cunningham/Heather/Sevinck, 1988. Notice under CDPA 1988 AA: This reproduction is believed to constitute Fair Dealing, because it accurately describes what I was genuinely feeling when I heard this "news" report.
The problem..... is solved by SPF; if only more people configured their MTA to check that before generating a bounce:(
And as long as there is one ISP anywhere in the world who aren't checking SPF (and as long as there is one domain registrar in the world who don't include the necessary TXT records in their zonefiles, there's a good reason for them not to check SPF), we'll continue to get spammed to christ. In fact, if everyone even checked the existing MX and A records, there would be no spam..... and no need for SPF.
It's very tempting to think some ISPs don't want to do anything about spam.
I came to the conclusion that the only way to stop it is for each ISP and mail server to require correct sender IP info from the sender, or bounce the message right back.
Almost. Actually, if the HELO is incorrect, or the originating machine is not registered as an MX for the domain, the proper course of action would be to return an SMTP error code -- absolutely not bounce the message back. If it's genuine, there'll be a copy on the sending machine somewhere anyway; and the bounceback from failed spamming attempts is not pretty. (Domains of mine have occasionally been used as the purported originators of spam, and the floods of "returned" mail coming "back" from clueless ISPs -- hello? see where that HELO is coming from? is that machine an MX for my domain? then WhyTF do you think this message has anything to do with me? -- are as bad as anything else.)
If more people configured their sendmail to reject bad HELOs, it would be a lot harder to send spam.
Well, they already are worse than the spammers, in their own way.
Most of the shite legacy software that was written (using Microsoft's deliberately incomplete, and occasionally downright wrong, documentation) for Windows takes advantage for its legitimate operations of the exact same features that most malware uses for its nefarious ones, so it won't run as a non-administrative user.
You know what's worse? It'd be a quick half-hour job to fix it, if only the owners had thought to demand the Source Code.
You'd be opening yourself up to prosecution. Even in countries without specific "misuse of computers" laws, running a program on someone else's computer is trespass. You might think that, since trespass is a civil matter, you'd only need to worry about someone who has the money to sue you taking a dim view of what you were up to. And you'd be right. But the botnet-controllers have got enough money and would be bothered to take you to court.
And I haven't even touched on the really horrifying issue: what if your benign, anti-malware malware malfunctioned, or was subverted by the next generation malignant, anti-benign-anti-malware-malware malware? You could easily end up becoming even worse than the enemy whose dirty tricks you borrowed.
Look, I can forgive the Pilgrim Fathers not taking a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the Mayflower -- they probably had more important things to think about at the time. I can even forgive them naming the place they landed (Plymouth, Massachusetts) after the place they set off from (Plymouth, Devon). However, you've since had the better part of 400 years (and two Industrial Revolutions) in which either to learn to spell our language properly or to invent your own language. What's your sorry excuse?
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There's a simple formula you can apply to mobs:
The inverse of the IQ of a mob is equal to the sum of the inverses of the IQs of each of its individual members.
Just like resistors in parallel.
Why am I not surprised by any of this?
Under UK law, if you are accused even informally of so much as thinking about looking at child pornography (which is defined as any picture apparently depicting a child -- even if they are over 18 in real life, even if they are fully-clothed, and even non-photo-realistic drawings count) then you are automatically considered guilty, even despite possibly being later proved innocent.
It's already got to the point where parents aren't allowed to film their kids' school nativity plays (in case the recordings get into the wrong hands) and adults are unwilling to volunteer to work with kids (because of the bureaucracy, the paperwork and the interviews; it's considerably less bother for an ex-embezzler who's served his time to get a job cleaning bank vaults after all the staff have gone home). Next thing, schools won't even put on plays at all.
Google want you to develop "open source" code, which they will then take and pervert into proprietary, Caged software. They will then peddle this back to you using the misleading word "free". That's not free as in "free speech", or even free as in "free beer"; but free as in "this dog is free from lice".
Don't believe me? Where's the Source Code for Picasa or Google Earth?
I think my eyesight is getting worse.
I read the headline as "US Military Hired Exploding Bloggers As Propagandists" !
Run Debian and use the Window Maker desktop. It doesn't look or behave a blind thing like Windows. Perhaps as a consequence of this, it's blisteringly fast.
Debian comes "out-of-the-box" in console mode (no desktop at all!) but it certainly supports KDE.
About the time of "Lenny Plus One", I expect KDE4 will just be coming into Sid.
On a few occasions, I have used a server cabinet with about 8 machines in it to dry my trousers (which got wet on the way in to work). Hey, you might as well do something useful with all that hot air!
In a previous job, we used to have to test gas boilers by plumbing the boiler to a test rig with an expansion vessel and a plate-to-plate heat exchanger -- the secondary side of which was fed from the water main via a flow rate meter (I still remember the formula: 1 degree temp rise * 1 lpm flow rate = 70 watts) and dumped down a grid. Which is very wasteful, but the trouble with hot water is it doesn't stay hot for long. Don't know if anyone has found a good use for it since then, or if anyone even remembers how to use that test rig.
Well, take a tip from the global financial markets ..... Wait for the inch to take another tumble against the centimetre (which is backed by the light standard, and not about to alter much any time soon ..... it would create chaos for the whole of physics). Then you'll be able to buy a so-called 19" laptop with a screen that is only 28.5cm. across!
You'll have to find a country with a very short default copyright term, or which has forcibly revoked Microsoft's copyright over Windows XP, and legitimately (bearing in mind Microsoft probably won't sell it in countries where their business model is legally thwarted) purchase a copy of XP there. Once it enters the Public Domain in that country, it's legal under that country's laws to copy it.
If you can later show that your computer has been used in that country, then it will give you Plausible Deniability if you are ever in court for copyright violation.
Actually, there's a really easy way to ensure that all your software is correctly licenced -- especially if you're an organisation the size of Sony.
.....) Include the special patched compiler, of course, so that Source Code for anything you missed out can be downloaded and built. Now, unauthorised Caged software won't run at all; while you could theoretically get busted for mere possession of unauthorised copies, if the steps you've taken to prevent any use from being made of them don't get you off the hook then you need a new lawyer.
All you have to do is insist on OSI-approved software licences only. No exceptions: whatever you can't do with Open Source, you do by hand. Or you get someone in to write you a piece of custom software -- and if they don't release it under an OSI-approved licence, then you'd better make damn sure that you own the copyright on it. Do that, and there's no way you can possibly be accused of unauthorised copying -- since any copying that happens is either specifically authorised by the licence, or the software is yours to copy.
If you're a big enough organisation, you can create your own software distribution especially for internal use -- and patch the kernel, gcc and glibc so heavily that anybody else's pre-compiled software will just segfault. (Obligatory Gentoo plug: This probably wouldn't be hard to do just with use flags
Otherwise, if that's too much effort, then standardise on Debian; and make sure only to use the "main" repository, not "non-free". (You could use "contrib"; but there's not a lot of point really, since software in this repository is basically Free but depends on Caged software.)
I saw a modified version of that game ..... where, amongst other visual alterations, the caveman didn't quite fit entirely into his loincloth, and the "R" and "A" of the "FRAK!" speech balloon were replaced by other letters.
:* and /? for up and down.)
With only 32KB of RAM which had to be shared between system variables, code and the unfeasibly large frame buffer, absence of source code frankly was not a showstopper for anyone wanting to modify games. Patching binaries was common, and there were tools readily available especially for doing just that -- either in RAM, or right there on the disk. Graphics mods were rare; most were just extra lives, though I often changed the keys (some programmers liked using A and Z for up and down, with _£ and cursor down for left and right; I preferred the so-called "Snapper keys" of Z and X for left and right, and
No, BASIC 1 had named PROCs. BASIC 2 introduced OSCLI -- a command for issuing MOS commands through BASIC without resorting to low-level hackery -- and OPENUP -- a new file mode (update). (Actually, it introduced OPENIN, an input-only file mode, but BASIC 1 already had an OPENIN which actually, in defiance of documentation, opened files for update: the token for OPENIN on BASIC 1 became OPENUP on BASIC 2, and OPENIN got a new token of its own.)
Anyway, a backward GOTO addressed to a destination line which would be visible on the same screen is perfectly acceptable. And deep down inside, every processor architecture supports unconditional jumps.
Well, that rather depends upon what they're doing while the computer is doing its stuff. Put an "and" sign on the end, and you get a prompt back straight away (or just open more xterms / virtual consoles). You can do one drive in each USB port, up to however many sd* devices you compiled support for into your kernel minus however many you're already using. It's not like /dev/zero is going to start blocking reads anytime ..... (cue some crusty old BSD user making a feeble joke about not enough zeros going into /dev/null or something)
Anyone who mentions the discredited Gutmann paper in connection with data remanence is full of shit and does not know how computers work.
Hint: until recently, all memory devices relied upon magnetism. If it was true about data remanence, there would have been at least one device which exploited the phenomenon to increase storage density -- given the way prices of components have varied with respect to one another, there must have been a time when it would have been worthwhile to do so.
Cutting an artery and waiting?
Microsoft were looking the other way and whistling, while everyone who had one of the newfangled CD-writers was giving away copies of "MS Office 97 - Gold Disk Edition" for a big fat duck-egg. That's practically indistinguible from dumping.
There was no way that anybody who acquired a pirated copy of Office would ever have paid full whack for it; without the option of piracy, and because magazine type-ins had already disappeared but Open Source wasn't yet mainstream, they would have installed alternative third-party office software.
And the fact that MS Office deliberately couldn't export documents to other formats, while it was perfectly happy to import them, certainly wasn't helping anybody except Microsoft: effectively, once a document had been touched by Office, it had to remain forever in Office format.
You don't need to overwrite data more than once to make it unreadable. Anybody who tells you you do is full of shit and does not know how computers work.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 will write zeros to /dev/sda1 until interrupted (which will happen of its own accord as soon as /dev/sda1 is full).
/dev/sda1 is a device that represents the first partition of the first SCSI, SATA or USB disk drive, treated as one huge file (which happens to contain all the files and pointers to them) rather than a file system.
/dev/zero is a virtual device that whenever you read a character from it, comes out with a stream of zeros; it is always ready to read and never shows end-of-file.
Simpler version: I know, because that's just the way computers work. (And I've read the Source Code.)
Can you hear the sound of the fiddle and the drum
Passing, then fade?
Can you hear the sound of chanting in the streets
Screaming for better days?
You've heard it all, yes we've all heard it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
*violin solo*
And you've heard the singer sing protest songs,
Telling us what is wrong;
And you've read the books that say where to look,
Well, where's the answer gone?
You've seen it all, yes we've all seen it all
So tell me what has changed?
You've read it all, yes we've all read it all
So tell me what has changed?
And the palace stays the same
Only the guards ever change
So lay me down, oh lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
Oh lay me down, ah lay me down, yeah lay me down, lay me down
(C) Chadwick/Miles/Cunningham/Heather/Sevinck, 1988. Notice under CDPA 1988 AA: This reproduction is believed to constitute Fair Dealing, because it accurately describes what I was genuinely feeling when I heard this "news" report.
At the very least, they could /dev/zero them and give them away.
It's very tempting to think some ISPs don't want to do anything about spam.
If more people configured their sendmail to reject bad HELOs, it would be a lot harder to send spam.
Well, they already are worse than the spammers, in their own way.
Most of the shite legacy software that was written (using Microsoft's deliberately incomplete, and occasionally downright wrong, documentation) for Windows takes advantage for its legitimate operations of the exact same features that most malware uses for its nefarious ones, so it won't run as a non-administrative user.
You know what's worse? It'd be a quick half-hour job to fix it, if only the owners had thought to demand the Source Code.
In theory, yes it would.
In practice, no it wouldn't.
You'd be opening yourself up to prosecution. Even in countries without specific "misuse of computers" laws, running a program on someone else's computer is trespass. You might think that, since trespass is a civil matter, you'd only need to worry about someone who has the money to sue you taking a dim view of what you were up to. And you'd be right. But the botnet-controllers have got enough money and would be bothered to take you to court.
And I haven't even touched on the really horrifying issue: what if your benign, anti-malware malware malfunctioned, or was subverted by the next generation malignant, anti-benign-anti-malware-malware malware? You could easily end up becoming even worse than the enemy whose dirty tricks you borrowed.
Look, I can forgive the Pilgrim Fathers not taking a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the Mayflower -- they probably had more important things to think about at the time. I can even forgive them naming the place they landed (Plymouth, Massachusetts) after the place they set off from (Plymouth, Devon). However, you've since had the better part of 400 years (and two Industrial Revolutions) in which either to learn to spell our language properly or to invent your own language. What's your sorry excuse?