I still prefer "they" / "them" / "their" &c. for an introduced person of unspecified gender. It already exists in the English language, and is correct in gender (equally valid for common and neuter!) and case (well, assuming.....) even if it's wrong in number. It's already quite acceptable for people to refer to themselves as "we" even when there's only one of them, and I for one would certainly rather be mistaken for two people than one person of the opposite sex.
But that's the point -- it is coming from the Inside!
The request to change the settings is coming from your PC. You just have to visit a malicious web page that has a bit of JavaScript that calls up another web page in an iframe..... nothing too extraordinary..... Except the URL it calls up is something like "http://admin:1234@10.0.0.1/configure?dns1=123.4.5 .67&dns2=234.5.6.78&submit=submit". And the iframe is too small for you to be able to see it.
Now you are no longer using your ISP's nameservers, but the attacker's own nameservers. You type in "www.google.co.uk"; that has to be translated to an IP address, just like a place name has to be translated to an STD code when you want to make a phone call, and the "codebook" is the nameserver. The nameserver tells your computer that the IP address is 66.230.165.157. Your computer then goes and asks the computer whose IP address is 66.230.165.157 for a web page..... and you find out the hard way that 66.230.165.157 is not really Google at all. Scarier still would be to replace "real" bank sites with phake sites that accept and store up your login details (and maybe even pass them on to the real site to confirm them).
One way is to ignore it, because it's not your problem.
Another way is to point out gently that it's a problem. Except then, you have made it your problem; and you can expect to be treated like a free 24/7/52 helpdesk forever from then on. Or treated as though it was your fault that it wasn't secure.
Yet another way is to set up your a router of your own, with broadly the same settings as theirs, but with a proxy configured to do something like this. But don't switch it on just yet. Then, while their network is idle, disable their router (remember the password.....) and enable yours. The only thing that could possibly be more phun than this would be listening in on their frantic phone calls to their ISP's support hotline. And, with the appropriateequipment, you could even hi-jack their phone wiring..... but that's a little bit much to expect anyone to survive!
It used to be that only people who knew a fair amount about computers used them. They were a self educating populace. The adoption of computers and home networks by a lot of people has actually happened faster than the corresponding education of people about these things. They can walk into a box store, buy a wireless router, plug it in and go. They simply don't have a clue about securing their machines.
Give that person a cigar!
The moment ease-of-use trumped security was the moment the rot set in. Some things are meant to be hard. That's the whole point.
It's not for nothing that we have this old saying: He who controls DNS, controls the Internet. It's scary what you can do to someone if you can tell them, authoritatively, that (for instance) the IP address for "www.google.co.uk" is 66.230.165.157. And that's exactly the sort of thing you can do, if you have control of a machine running BIND. If you were very, very careful what you subverted, you could snarf a lot of information. I'm sure it's possible to reverse-profile people by the "targeted adverts" they get sent in return for supplying personal information (but see here for advice). If you're serving up the fake pages from your own machine (and you might as well, because Apache is as much part of every Linux distro as BIND) then you have all you need to be The Man In The Middle -- you can pass on a (munged) version of their request to the intended target server and offer up the reply. If you're within wireless range of their router, you can even do it via that. Change back the DNS settings afterward and nobody need ever be any the wiser.
In my street, there are at least three wireless networks with default passwords. When my friends come around with their wireless laptops, they get a good connection. It most definitely isn't through mine, because my LAN is all wired (in fact, it's still got one length of co-ax in it!) On two of them, the network name was the model of the router. One quick Google later and I had the default password. And it worked -- I had the configuration page up! I almost changed their network name to "uRpWn3d" and setting a new password, just for a laugh and maybe to teach them a lesson, but decided against it; there are ways of pointing out something loose that look less like vandalism than breaking it off.
The real, long-term solution is for routers to be designed not to route packets as long as the password is set to the factory default -- if the password hasn't been changed, then the router should not allow you to connect to anything except its own configuration page. If you do a full factory reset and find yourself able to connect to web sites straight away without deliberately changing the password, then that must mean one of your machines has already been compromised. Then it's better that you stay off the Net until your computers are fixed.
I had a constant 50Hz hum emanating from my loudspeakers once. Swapped the brown and blue wires going to the turntable and that cured it. Reckon somebody at the factory didn't understand that the live wire should be on the INSIDE of a motor stator or transformer whenever there is sensitive electronic equipment nearby. Of course, on the Continent, they could just reverse the plug in the socket with the same effect. What's worse is I've known someone wire a high-impedance (50K ohm) mic to a preamp with about five metres of unshielded cable, running in a bundle with mains cables, and not a hint of a hum. Go figure.
Yeah, but it's been possible to use water for addition -- even in base 10! -- for even longer.
Measure out 100ml. of water into a measuring jug. Measure out 200ml. of water into another jug. Now pour the second jug into the first, taking care not to spill any, and read the amount..... 300ml. So 100 + 200 = 300. You can do subtraction, too. Pour water from the first jug into the second jug until there is 50ml. of water in the second jug. You will find that there is 250ml. in the first jug. So 300 - 50 = 250.
Using a laboratory burette, you can measure even tiny amounts accurately. You can also use fixed-point arithmetic e.g. if 100ml represents 1 unit then 1ml = 0.01 unit. It's not so easy to do floating-point with water, but no doubt one of the logged-in responders to this post will explain how it's possible.
Never, ever give out your real details to anyone who doesn't need to know them.
Always use made-up names, addresses and other personal details when registering for an account with any on-line service -- and don't use the same details twice. If you're looking for an address, there's at least one Catholic church in almost every city in the world.
Remember: Nobody needs to know where you live unless they want to visit you. Nobody needs to know your e-mail address unless they want to send you e-mail. Nobody needs to know when you were born unless they want to send you a birthday card. Nobody needs to know how much you earn unless they are going to lend you money and want to know how soon you can pay it back. Nobody needs to know what is between your legs unless they want to shag you. Nobody needs to know if you are a vegetarian unless they are going to invite you for dinner. In fact, to give you service down a wire, the only thing anyone needs to know is your IP address; and if they managed to send you the form requesting your valuable data, they already know that.
Yeah, I had a problem with that one on Debian. I just downloaded a new daily build of the netinstall disk and that did work.
Another way to do it -- and I've had to do this before as well -- is to install a temporary IDE drive, install enough of a system to build yourself a new kernel with the drivers you need, then use that to bootstrap your installation onto the SCSI drive. I found a tool which created a LiveCD based on my kernel build environment, can't for the life of me remember where though.
A bit of wholesome dirt on your hands is a sign you're learning.....
People used to have to do their accounts before computers were invented. They managed fine. Don't assume that you have to use a computer; the simple fact is you don't. Everyone should learn to do their accounts by hand first, before they're allowed anywhere near a computer. Also, non-erasable pen and paper have one obvious advantage that you can't get with a computerised system: there is no UNDO function.
The dispute really centres over the emotive and overtly political language in which the first ever version of GPLv3 was written. It's not possible to eliminate politics altogether, because software licencing is a political issue; but there's a difference between a manifesto (which sets out your ideals) and a constitution (which seeks to uphold them). As far as the FSF are concerned, (1) not sharing is as bad as stealing, (2) using artificial means to keep somebody from sharing is bad, and (3) owners of hardware devices which are based on firmware covered under the GPL need to be granted all the privileges afforded them by the GPL, specifically the ability to upload modified firmware into said hardware. Those (manifesto) issues are what they want to get into the licence (which is more like a constitution).
Having seen more than one draught of the licence, I think the language is being toned down. The ultimate goal should be that the only people to be dissuaded by its wording from using it, are the very ones who seek to do something which it would forbid. I also think -- well, I hope -- that the FSF are smart enough to figure a way around the purported incompatibilities betwen GPLv2 and v3 before the final release of GPL version 3.
Abortion is just a necessary operation to get rid of a parasite that grows inside you. If you're against that then you're for some seriously messed-up people being born who just shouldn't be. In some cemetery next to a Buddhist monastery somewhere, lie the Earthly remains of a monk who thought it was a sin to kill germs using any kind of disinfectant, antiseptic or medicine. Sure, one day it will be possible to transplant a foetus into some childless couple's womb, and we'll have vegan disinfectants that gently but firmly persuade the germs to go somewhere else. But that's the future. For now, abortion is the only option we've got. And surely it's better to dispatch an unwanted foetus swiftly, than to let it turn into a foul-mouthed, glue-sniffing car thief?
Of course people should use contraception every time they have sex.
If you use a pirate copy of MS office instead of a legitimate copy of "Mom+Pop Software Cheap Office Suite (which you could afford to buy, as it costs only a tenth of MS Office) then you're harming Mom+Pop Software -- even although you're not actually pirating their product.
I develop web applications for Firefox first and foremost; and quite frankly as far as I am concerned, if it works in IE then that's a happy accident, a bonus. Anybody can run Firefox -- even if you've got a one-of-a-kind computer, you can just download the source code and compile it. Only Windows users can run IE. And that means not me, because I'm running pretty much the same application stack on my desktop box as any ISP -- Linux (it's close enough to Solaris as makes no difference for the purposes I care about; and as soon as OpenSolaris can read and write ext3, I will dual boot), Apache, MySQL and PostgreSQL for databases, and Bash, Perl, Python and PHP for scripting.
This is exactly how Microsoft kills off the competition.
They tolerate piracy because it has benefits for them. If people are pirating MS software, they are learning how MS software works, and they aren't using competing software. They can catch up later and demand their money; by which time, they're betting, most people will already be so used to Microsoft that they will pay up rather than go for a cheaper / free alternative.
If MS clamped down on piracy right now, then people would switch to cheaper / free products in a heartbeat.
Oh, yes! Pregnancy should lead to an abortion unless you have a parenting licence, and the father should be prosecuted -- and have the instruments used to commit the crime confiscated. Retrospective abortion should also be available -- if you want rid of a dog, you can; why not a child? Perhaps we should just put some kind of contraceptive drug in the water supply, or perform reversible sterilisation alongside childhood vaccinations.
The trouble with this is, it would be so open to abuse that it just isn't funny. Power tends to attract people who want to use it for the wrong reasons, while repelling those who want to use it for the right reasons. Forcibly limiting reproduction would lead to an attempt to create a "master race" quicker than you could spell eugenics.
Most people don't own their own cow and make their own dairy products because they *can't*, but rather because they don't care and would prefer to spend their time doing other things. I don't want to be responsible for taking care of another life (providing ample pasture and quality food and veterinary care and making sure it is comfortable in the winter/summer) and I don't want to culture my milk for cheese or stir constantly. I would prefer to go to the store and just buy it. I don't care if I could do it myself for 30 cents cheaper, or even for $1 cheaper.
But with the advent of cartridge-loading hay mangers and self-cleaning cow byres (just requires a 13 amp electrical supply, 1.5 bar water supply and sewage connection) and the BoviProbe electronic cow health monitor, looking after your cow will be easy. And the Cheesemaster 360, with settings for Cheddar, Camembert, Edam, Stilton or a rapid one-hour programme -- what's not to like about that? It's only the absence of such labour-saving gadgets at cheap prices that make cow ownership (or, for that matter, a programme where you lease a cow from a burger restaurant on a guaranteed buyback!) unviable. And if a scandal broke that Big Dairies were putting addictive drugs in their products to make you buy more from them, the benefits of milk-independence might outweigh the perceived inconveniences.
Remember too, there used to be a time when everybody relied on public transport to move them around -- nobody seriously believed that people would ever own their own cars on such a scale.
If Microsoft or Sun wants to hire people and make their own software and not give anyone the source, that's their right.
Actually, no, it isn't. That's like saying "It's my knife and I can stab whoever I like with it". Your right not to get stabbed trumps my right to stick my knife where I like, just like my right to know what the software I am running on my computer is really doing trumps anyone's right to keep that secret from me.
I've no objection to paying a chef to bake a cake and him not showing me how he does it, as long as he answers truthfuklly when I ask him about specific ingredients it may or may not contain. That's his prerogative. But when I'm paying him to bake a cake in my kitchen, using my ingredients, my utensils and my gas and electricity, it becomes very much my business what he's doing in there. How do I know he's not calling premium-rate pr0n chat lines on the kitchen extension, helping himself to my cooking sherry or making rude gestures to my neighbours through the window?
Likewise, if someone wants me to run a program on my computer, they'd damn well better show me exactly what it's doing in there. Otherwise, I've exactly two words for them. And the second one is "off".
Replacement parts and accessories are still tied to the original product (for appliances, basic electronics, and all sorts of mundane things). While the parts used to build them are standardized, the finished goods aren't, and likely never will be.
Depends to what level you mean. If an amplifier blows its output transistors, I can replace them with identical parts; the originals might have been made by Mullard, but if SGS-Thomson supply ones with the same part number, they will do fine. At a coarser granularity, whatever TV set I buy, I know that it will have the same 3-pin plug on the power lead that will fit any socket on my ring main, and the same 21-pin socket on the back that will connect to any VCR, DVD player, satellite decoder, games console or any future device to be invented that plugs into a TV set. I'd call that pretty well standardised.
If you look at software that's been around awhile -- mail servers, databases, web servers, FTP and so forth, there are well-standardised protocols. Any POP3 client will talk to any POP3 server and any web browser will talk to any H
Over time people may forget exactly why, but using Open Source Software will become second nature. People will start asking why there's no open development process, why there's not publicly available mailing lists, why the documentation for a peice of software isn't editable by the users, why the end users can't directly submit a bug request.
Exactly.
Not many people who have gone to the trouble of owning a cow and stuck at it for awhile are going to go back to buying milk and cheese from the supermarket. The big dairies will try to make out that milking a cow is too difficult for ordinary people to manage. Some will believe them, but others will have a go and some of them will succeed. And just because people aren't buying prepackaged milk anymore, doesn't mean they won't be needing other things. The smart investor would be thinking in terms of cow food, churns and maybe fancy gadgets like fully-automatic electric cheesemakers and home semi-skimmers, which cow owners will need if they don't want to go back to Tesco.
Microsoft are getting too big for their boots. One day now, they'll mess with the wrong people, and be told to go forth and multiply. That will make a lot of people wonder why they didn't have the cojones to blow Microsoft off sooner. Some will give it a try. Remember also that interoperability is improving all the time. Microsoft can't change their proprietary protocols too quickly, for fear of breaking everything. If they introduce a new server protocol, everything still has to be able to speak the old one for awhile. Open Source is behind now; but if Microsoft stall, it'll catch up quickly.
And there's always this sort of scenario;
Larry: What's up, Dave?
Dave: It's a nightmare, Larry. If I take on any more staff, I'm going to need to upgrade my Exchange server licence with another 25 seats. But if I don't take on more staff, I'm going to have to turn away business.
Larry: If any new business comes.
Dave: That's just the thing, isn't it? Never quite know what the market's going to do in this game. I can't exactly take people on and not give them e-mail, and I daren't risk it, not with FAST keeping poking their beaks in. How the hell do you afford your server licencing?
Larry: Oh, we're using Sitemail Gold Level. Unlimited seats. We rent the server for a fixed monthly fee, they upgrade it with software, and new hardware on an as-and-when basis -- if there's an actual hardware fault, they replace or repair it the same day and that's all fully inclusive. Phone support calls are a flat rate and they can diagnose most things remotely.
Dave: Unlimited seats?
Larry: Yeah. But it's all Open Source. You can look inside it and tweak it, if you know what you're doing. One of our IT people, Ray, he's been learning a bit about how it works, and we've already saved four support calls this past three months.
Dave: So all you pay is the rental on the hardware, and the odd phone call, but your people are getting smart enough to support it yourselves now so you don't even make so many calls?
Larry: Yeah. But Ray's confident that he could get to the point where we could just buy our own server, and he'd be able to maintain it all himself. We could download the software for free, of course.
Dave: And this is all legal and above board?
Larry: Totally. The only thing they ask is that if we make any improvements to the Sitemail software, we have to contribute them to the Community At Large. But then, we get to take advantage of any improvements anyone else makes, so it works both ways.
Dave: So why isn't everyone using this?
Larry: Beats the crap out of me, Dave.
Once Open Source deployment -- whether that's Linux, BSD, Solaris or something else altogether -- reaches a certain critical mass, it will automatically and suddenl
I dispute that. And even if Linux does die out, its legacy will continue.
Linux has had a huge positive effect. For one thing, it gave the GNU project a serious kick-start. Sure it was possible to run GNU on a BSD kernel before Linux came along; but next to nobody actually did. Anyway, BSD had its own set of Open Source userland utilities, and still hardly anybody used it. Suddenly Linux came along, and Open Source was trendy. Linux had its limitations, for sure; and some of the people who tried Linux moved over to BSD for what at the time were valid reasons. Some of them moved back when Linux cleaned its act up. These peole might never have tried a free OS, if it had not been for some young upstart Finn with a bee in his bonnet about performance of monolithic vs. microkernels.
Do you think Solaris would have been open-sourced -- possibly even under GPLv3! -- if it hadn't been for the fact that GNU/Linux posed a credible threat to it?
If anything is "headed to the landfill", it's the whole Closed Source model -- or more strictly, the egregious idea of keeping the Source Code of a program secret from its own users. The extent of the damage that this has done is just beginning to sink in, ever so slowly. Within a generation, there will be more than one country in the world where it will be illegal not to supply Source Code with software, even if you are not allowed to give out copies of it.
The only way DRM can work is if every consumer is forced to have a special DRM chip in their head and it would be interesting or horrifying to see if the consumer would accept this blindly or fight against it.
Under Thatcher, nobody would ever have stood for such a thing. There would have been rioting in the streets, people burning effigies, punk rock benefit gigs and all sorts. People who had the brain chips fitted would be on the receiving end of flying bricks crudely scratched with "SCAB". We'd be out marching with placards, chanting "Maggie Thatcher's GOT one, [name of major Brain Chip proponent] IS one". Decrepit coaches would be brought out of retirement to ferry Flying Pickets around, and enterprising kids would be hard at it poking holes in old oil drums to make braziers to flog to the striking workers.
Under Blair, there would just be a bit of polite tutting and moaning, followed by total passive acceptance. The Working Classes (who mostly think they aren't working class anymore just because [1] they have mobile phones and DVD players and [2] a whole new social class has grown up beneath Working) would even be saying things like "Well, it's probably a good thing. I mean, I've been looking for ages for a reason to cut down the amount of media I copy, or even give it up altogether; so I mean, this chip-in-the brain thing is a good idea really."
Talk about licking your arse and calling it chocolate.....
I'm not really sure Steve Jobs is campaigning against DRM. It benefits him that iTunes users are locked into the iPod.
The point is, it wouldn't be that hard to keep track of restricted and unrestricted songs; there is already a database, fields can be added to a database, and the DRM-wrapping happens at download time.
My guess is that The Major Labels won't co-operate with Apple if they start offering unrestricted tracks from independents. One, because there's an outside chance that a track might erroneously be sold unrestricted. Two, because they aren't keen on those young upstart indie labels anyway, with their emphasis on the music, and this is just a good way for them to throw their weight around. And three, because the existence of any unrestricted music at all (unless it's being pirated right, left and centre..... which it won't be) would lead people to question, perhaps out loud, why music needs restricting at all?
I think this is only going to be resolved when countries with strong consumer laws take up against Apple and The Major Labels; whichever way you look at it, it's anticompetitive behaviour. A whole succession of people taking digital audio players back to the store because they "don't work", might be enough to turn things around..... the industry might try to spin it as though you shouldn't expect 8-track cartridges to play on a turntable, but that argument is weak. And in the present political climate, something like anticompetitive behaviour on the part of entertainment companies isn't likely to be taken terribly seriously.
Also, it is an issue of management. Having to make sure this recording is DRM'd and *that* recording is not sounds like one gigantic management headache to me.
ALTER TABLE `songs` ADD COLUMN `use_drm` ENUM("Y","N") DEFAULT "Y";
That wasn't difficult, was it?
Far be it from me to knock this before I've tried it, and that's not my intention anyway; but there's a reason why unix file permissions have lasted so long, and that is that they're actually quite good for the job they are supposed to do.
Sure, you could have finer grained, ACL-based permissions. But that would be over-complicated for most real-life situations, with the result that they would end up not being used properly -- and that might well make things more dangerous. The idea of dividing the world into "user", "group" and "others" each having separate permissions to read, write and execute (or not) is simple enough for non-security experts to understand, while working well enough most of the time. It's that x bit, and the fact that you have to turn it on by performing some deliberate action, that really makes the difference between unix-based and DOS-based systems.
If you want to limit a user or a process to a particular area of the filesystem and a subset of commands, there's always chroot.
Slashdot Mirror
I still prefer "they" / "them" / "their" &c. for an introduced person of unspecified gender. It already exists in the English language, and is correct in gender (equally valid for common and neuter!) and case (well, assuming .....) even if it's wrong in number. It's already quite acceptable for people to refer to themselves as "we" even when there's only one of them, and I for one would certainly rather be mistaken for two people than one person of the opposite sex.
But that's the point -- it is coming from the Inside!
..... nothing too extraordinary ..... Except the URL it calls up is something like "http://admin:1234@10.0.0.1/configure?dns1=123.4.5 .67&dns2=234.5.6.78&submit=submit". And the iframe is too small for you to be able to see it.
..... and you find out the hard way that 66.230.165.157 is not really Google at all. Scarier still would be to replace "real" bank sites with phake sites that accept and store up your login details (and maybe even pass them on to the real site to confirm them).
The request to change the settings is coming from your PC. You just have to visit a malicious web page that has a bit of JavaScript that calls up another web page in an iframe
Now you are no longer using your ISP's nameservers, but the attacker's own nameservers. You type in "www.google.co.uk"; that has to be translated to an IP address, just like a place name has to be translated to an STD code when you want to make a phone call, and the "codebook" is the nameserver. The nameserver tells your computer that the IP address is 66.230.165.157. Your computer then goes and asks the computer whose IP address is 66.230.165.157 for a web page
One way is to ignore it, because it's not your problem.
.....) and enable yours. The only thing that could possibly be more phun than this would be listening in on their frantic phone calls to their ISP's support hotline. And, with the appropriate equipment, you could even hi-jack their phone wiring ..... but that's a little bit much to expect anyone to survive!
Another way is to point out gently that it's a problem. Except then, you have made it your problem; and you can expect to be treated like a free 24/7/52 helpdesk forever from then on. Or treated as though it was your fault that it wasn't secure.
Yet another way is to set up your a router of your own, with broadly the same settings as theirs, but with a proxy configured to do something like this. But don't switch it on just yet. Then, while their network is idle, disable their router (remember the password
The moment ease-of-use trumped security was the moment the rot set in. Some things are meant to be hard. That's the whole point.
It's not for nothing that we have this old saying: He who controls DNS, controls the Internet. It's scary what you can do to someone if you can tell them, authoritatively, that (for instance) the IP address for "www.google.co.uk" is 66.230.165.157. And that's exactly the sort of thing you can do, if you have control of a machine running BIND. If you were very, very careful what you subverted, you could snarf a lot of information. I'm sure it's possible to reverse-profile people by the "targeted adverts" they get sent in return for supplying personal information (but see here for advice). If you're serving up the fake pages from your own machine (and you might as well, because Apache is as much part of every Linux distro as BIND) then you have all you need to be The Man In The Middle -- you can pass on a (munged) version of their request to the intended target server and offer up the reply. If you're within wireless range of their router, you can even do it via that. Change back the DNS settings afterward and nobody need ever be any the wiser.
In my street, there are at least three wireless networks with default passwords. When my friends come around with their wireless laptops, they get a good connection. It most definitely isn't through mine, because my LAN is all wired (in fact, it's still got one length of co-ax in it!) On two of them, the network name was the model of the router. One quick Google later and I had the default password. And it worked -- I had the configuration page up! I almost changed their network name to "uRpWn3d" and setting a new password, just for a laugh and maybe to teach them a lesson, but decided against it; there are ways of pointing out something loose that look less like vandalism than breaking it off.
The real, long-term solution is for routers to be designed not to route packets as long as the password is set to the factory default -- if the password hasn't been changed, then the router should not allow you to connect to anything except its own configuration page. If you do a full factory reset and find yourself able to connect to web sites straight away without deliberately changing the password, then that must mean one of your machines has already been compromised. Then it's better that you stay off the Net until your computers are fixed.
I had a constant 50Hz hum emanating from my loudspeakers once. Swapped the brown and blue wires going to the turntable and that cured it. Reckon somebody at the factory didn't understand that the live wire should be on the INSIDE of a motor stator or transformer whenever there is sensitive electronic equipment nearby. Of course, on the Continent, they could just reverse the plug in the socket with the same effect. What's worse is I've known someone wire a high-impedance (50K ohm) mic to a preamp with about five metres of unshielded cable, running in a bundle with mains cables, and not a hint of a hum. Go figure.
Yeah, but it's been possible to use water for addition -- even in base 10! -- for even longer.
..... 300ml. So 100 + 200 = 300. You can do subtraction, too. Pour water from the first jug into the second jug until there is 50ml. of water in the second jug. You will find that there is 250ml. in the first jug. So 300 - 50 = 250.
Measure out 100ml. of water into a measuring jug. Measure out 200ml. of water into another jug. Now pour the second jug into the first, taking care not to spill any, and read the amount
Using a laboratory burette, you can measure even tiny amounts accurately. You can also use fixed-point arithmetic e.g. if 100ml represents 1 unit then 1ml = 0.01 unit. It's not so easy to do floating-point with water, but no doubt one of the logged-in responders to this post will explain how it's possible.
Never, ever give out your real details to anyone who doesn't need to know them.
Always use made-up names, addresses and other personal details when registering for an account with any on-line service -- and don't use the same details twice. If you're looking for an address, there's at least one Catholic church in almost every city in the world.
Remember: Nobody needs to know where you live unless they want to visit you. Nobody needs to know your e-mail address unless they want to send you e-mail. Nobody needs to know when you were born unless they want to send you a birthday card. Nobody needs to know how much you earn unless they are going to lend you money and want to know how soon you can pay it back. Nobody needs to know what is between your legs unless they want to shag you. Nobody needs to know if you are a vegetarian unless they are going to invite you for dinner. In fact, to give you service down a wire, the only thing anyone needs to know is your IP address; and if they managed to send you the form requesting your valuable data, they already know that.
Yeah, I had a problem with that one on Debian. I just downloaded a new daily build of the netinstall disk and that did work.
.....
Another way to do it -- and I've had to do this before as well -- is to install a temporary IDE drive, install enough of a system to build yourself a new kernel with the drivers you need, then use that to bootstrap your installation onto the SCSI drive. I found a tool which created a LiveCD based on my kernel build environment, can't for the life of me remember where though.
A bit of wholesome dirt on your hands is a sign you're learning
Calculator? Pah! We don't need no stinkin' calculators!
Don't overlook manual methods.
People used to have to do their accounts before computers were invented. They managed fine. Don't assume that you have to use a computer; the simple fact is you don't. Everyone should learn to do their accounts by hand first, before they're allowed anywhere near a computer. Also, non-erasable pen and paper have one obvious advantage that you can't get with a computerised system: there is no UNDO function.
The dispute really centres over the emotive and overtly political language in which the first ever version of GPLv3 was written. It's not possible to eliminate politics altogether, because software licencing is a political issue; but there's a difference between a manifesto (which sets out your ideals) and a constitution (which seeks to uphold them). As far as the FSF are concerned, (1) not sharing is as bad as stealing, (2) using artificial means to keep somebody from sharing is bad, and (3) owners of hardware devices which are based on firmware covered under the GPL need to be granted all the privileges afforded them by the GPL, specifically the ability to upload modified firmware into said hardware. Those (manifesto) issues are what they want to get into the licence (which is more like a constitution).
Having seen more than one draught of the licence, I think the language is being toned down. The ultimate goal should be that the only people to be dissuaded by its wording from using it, are the very ones who seek to do something which it would forbid. I also think -- well, I hope -- that the FSF are smart enough to figure a way around the purported incompatibilities betwen GPLv2 and v3 before the final release of GPL version 3.
Abortion is just a necessary operation to get rid of a parasite that grows inside you. If you're against that then you're for some seriously messed-up people being born who just shouldn't be. In some cemetery next to a Buddhist monastery somewhere, lie the Earthly remains of a monk who thought it was a sin to kill germs using any kind of disinfectant, antiseptic or medicine. Sure, one day it will be possible to transplant a foetus into some childless couple's womb, and we'll have vegan disinfectants that gently but firmly persuade the germs to go somewhere else. But that's the future. For now, abortion is the only option we've got. And surely it's better to dispatch an unwanted foetus swiftly, than to let it turn into a foul-mouthed, glue-sniffing car thief?
Of course people should use contraception every time they have sex.
You can indeed!
If you use a pirate copy of MS office instead of a legitimate copy of "Mom+Pop Software Cheap Office Suite (which you could afford to buy, as it costs only a tenth of MS Office) then you're harming Mom+Pop Software -- even although you're not actually pirating their product.
I develop web applications for Firefox first and foremost; and quite frankly as far as I am concerned, if it works in IE then that's a happy accident, a bonus. Anybody can run Firefox -- even if you've got a one-of-a-kind computer, you can just download the source code and compile it. Only Windows users can run IE. And that means not me, because I'm running pretty much the same application stack on my desktop box as any ISP -- Linux (it's close enough to Solaris as makes no difference for the purposes I care about; and as soon as OpenSolaris can read and write ext3, I will dual boot), Apache, MySQL and PostgreSQL for databases, and Bash, Perl, Python and PHP for scripting.
This is exactly how Microsoft kills off the competition.
They tolerate piracy because it has benefits for them. If people are pirating MS software, they are learning how MS software works, and they aren't using competing software. They can catch up later and demand their money; by which time, they're betting, most people will already be so used to Microsoft that they will pay up rather than go for a cheaper / free alternative.
If MS clamped down on piracy right now, then people would switch to cheaper / free products in a heartbeat.
Oh, yes! Pregnancy should lead to an abortion unless you have a parenting licence, and the father should be prosecuted -- and have the instruments used to commit the crime confiscated. Retrospective abortion should also be available -- if you want rid of a dog, you can; why not a child? Perhaps we should just put some kind of contraceptive drug in the water supply, or perform reversible sterilisation alongside childhood vaccinations.
The trouble with this is, it would be so open to abuse that it just isn't funny. Power tends to attract people who want to use it for the wrong reasons, while repelling those who want to use it for the right reasons. Forcibly limiting reproduction would lead to an attempt to create a "master race" quicker than you could spell eugenics.
But with the advent of cartridge-loading hay mangers and self-cleaning cow byres (just requires a 13 amp electrical supply, 1.5 bar water supply and sewage connection) and the BoviProbe electronic cow health monitor, looking after your cow will be easy. And the Cheesemaster 360, with settings for Cheddar, Camembert, Edam, Stilton or a rapid one-hour programme -- what's not to like about that? It's only the absence of such labour-saving gadgets at cheap prices that make cow ownership (or, for that matter, a programme where you lease a cow from a burger restaurant on a guaranteed buyback!) unviable. And if a scandal broke that Big Dairies were putting addictive drugs in their products to make you buy more from them, the benefits of milk-independence might outweigh the perceived inconveniences.
Remember too, there used to be a time when everybody relied on public transport to move them around -- nobody seriously believed that people would ever own their own cars on such a scale.
Actually, no, it isn't. That's like saying "It's my knife and I can stab whoever I like with it". Your right not to get stabbed trumps my right to stick my knife where I like, just like my right to know what the software I am running on my computer is really doing trumps anyone's right to keep that secret from me.
I've no objection to paying a chef to bake a cake and him not showing me how he does it, as long as he answers truthfuklly when I ask him about specific ingredients it may or may not contain. That's his prerogative. But when I'm paying him to bake a cake in my kitchen, using my ingredients, my utensils and my gas and electricity, it becomes very much my business what he's doing in there. How do I know he's not calling premium-rate pr0n chat lines on the kitchen extension, helping himself to my cooking sherry or making rude gestures to my neighbours through the window?
Likewise, if someone wants me to run a program on my computer, they'd damn well better show me exactly what it's doing in there. Otherwise, I've exactly two words for them. And the second one is "off".
Depends to what level you mean. If an amplifier blows its output transistors, I can replace them with identical parts; the originals might have been made by Mullard, but if SGS-Thomson supply ones with the same part number, they will do fine. At a coarser granularity, whatever TV set I buy, I know that it will have the same 3-pin plug on the power lead that will fit any socket on my ring main, and the same 21-pin socket on the back that will connect to any VCR, DVD player, satellite decoder, games console or any future device to be invented that plugs into a TV set. I'd call that pretty well standardised.
If you look at software that's been around awhile -- mail servers, databases, web servers, FTP and so forth, there are well-standardised protocols. Any POP3 client will talk to any POP3 server and any web browser will talk to any H
Exactly.
Not many people who have gone to the trouble of owning a cow and stuck at it for awhile are going to go back to buying milk and cheese from the supermarket. The big dairies will try to make out that milking a cow is too difficult for ordinary people to manage. Some will believe them, but others will have a go and some of them will succeed. And just because people aren't buying prepackaged milk anymore, doesn't mean they won't be needing other things. The smart investor would be thinking in terms of cow food, churns and maybe fancy gadgets like fully-automatic electric cheesemakers and home semi-skimmers, which cow owners will need if they don't want to go back to Tesco.
Microsoft are getting too big for their boots. One day now, they'll mess with the wrong people, and be told to go forth and multiply. That will make a lot of people wonder why they didn't have the cojones to blow Microsoft off sooner. Some will give it a try. Remember also that interoperability is improving all the time. Microsoft can't change their proprietary protocols too quickly, for fear of breaking everything. If they introduce a new server protocol, everything still has to be able to speak the old one for awhile. Open Source is behind now; but if Microsoft stall, it'll catch up quickly.
And there's always this sort of scenario;
Once Open Source deployment -- whether that's Linux, BSD, Solaris or something else altogether -- reaches a certain critical mass, it will automatically and suddenl
I dispute that. And even if Linux does die out, its legacy will continue.
Linux has had a huge positive effect. For one thing, it gave the GNU project a serious kick-start. Sure it was possible to run GNU on a BSD kernel before Linux came along; but next to nobody actually did. Anyway, BSD had its own set of Open Source userland utilities, and still hardly anybody used it. Suddenly Linux came along, and Open Source was trendy. Linux had its limitations, for sure; and some of the people who tried Linux moved over to BSD for what at the time were valid reasons. Some of them moved back when Linux cleaned its act up. These peole might never have tried a free OS, if it had not been for some young upstart Finn with a bee in his bonnet about performance of monolithic vs. microkernels.
Do you think Solaris would have been open-sourced -- possibly even under GPLv3! -- if it hadn't been for the fact that GNU/Linux posed a credible threat to it?
If anything is "headed to the landfill", it's the whole Closed Source model -- or more strictly, the egregious idea of keeping the Source Code of a program secret from its own users. The extent of the damage that this has done is just beginning to sink in, ever so slowly. Within a generation, there will be more than one country in the world where it will be illegal not to supply Source Code with software, even if you are not allowed to give out copies of it.
Under Blair, there would just be a bit of polite tutting and moaning, followed by total passive acceptance. The Working Classes (who mostly think they aren't working class anymore just because [1] they have mobile phones and DVD players and [2] a whole new social class has grown up beneath Working) would even be saying things like "Well, it's probably a good thing. I mean, I've been looking for ages for a reason to cut down the amount of media I copy, or even give it up altogether; so I mean, this chip-in-the brain thing is a good idea really."
Talk about licking your arse and calling it chocolate
I'm not really sure Steve Jobs is campaigning against DRM. It benefits him that iTunes users are locked into the iPod.
..... which it won't be) would lead people to question, perhaps out loud, why music needs restricting at all?
..... the industry might try to spin it as though you shouldn't expect 8-track cartridges to play on a turntable, but that argument is weak. And in the present political climate, something like anticompetitive behaviour on the part of entertainment companies isn't likely to be taken terribly seriously.
The point is, it wouldn't be that hard to keep track of restricted and unrestricted songs; there is already a database, fields can be added to a database, and the DRM-wrapping happens at download time.
My guess is that The Major Labels won't co-operate with Apple if they start offering unrestricted tracks from independents. One, because there's an outside chance that a track might erroneously be sold unrestricted. Two, because they aren't keen on those young upstart indie labels anyway, with their emphasis on the music, and this is just a good way for them to throw their weight around. And three, because the existence of any unrestricted music at all (unless it's being pirated right, left and centre
I think this is only going to be resolved when countries with strong consumer laws take up against Apple and The Major Labels; whichever way you look at it, it's anticompetitive behaviour. A whole succession of people taking digital audio players back to the store because they "don't work", might be enough to turn things around
Far be it from me to knock this before I've tried it, and that's not my intention anyway; but there's a reason why unix file permissions have lasted so long, and that is that they're actually quite good for the job they are supposed to do.
Sure, you could have finer grained, ACL-based permissions. But that would be over-complicated for most real-life situations, with the result that they would end up not being used properly -- and that might well make things more dangerous. The idea of dividing the world into "user", "group" and "others" each having separate permissions to read, write and execute (or not) is simple enough for non-security experts to understand, while working well enough most of the time. It's that x bit, and the fact that you have to turn it on by performing some deliberate action, that really makes the difference between unix-based and DOS-based systems.
If you want to limit a user or a process to a particular area of the filesystem and a subset of commands, there's always chroot.