I was in Boston once. I needed two AC adapters. I ran into this new Apple store. I went up to the counter, "I'd like two 65-watt AC adapters." I didn't say anything about who I was.
Obviously being the Wonderful Wizard of Woz does not protect you from getting crappy PowerBook adapters in the first place (on my third at the moment); or maybe he needed some extra ones for some bizarro project?
If using Firefox, try this in your [profile]/chrome/userContent.css:/* indicate PDF links */
a[href$=".pdf"]:after {
font-size: smaller;
content: "pdf";
}
Think I got that from another Slashdot post, can't seem to find it now though (thanks anyway, whoever posted it!)
On the Radio 4 "Today" program this morning they covered this story, the correspondent basically said that NISCC knows where the attacks are coming from (& I would be surprised if they didn't, NISCC are pretty competent people), but did not spell it out in the report to avoid diplomatic complications. The Radio 4 guy reckoned that these specific, targeted attacks (mostly against gov.uk) were coming from China and Russia, though whether private or state actors he didn't say.
No mention of North Korean superhackers, I was a little disappointed:-)
I know the nomenclature is largely ignored nowadays, but I would call this a trojan not a virus since it requires the user to run it to start spreading: Quote from the ZDNet version of the story:
A recipient also has to accept and download CommWarrior in order for the Trojan to launch itself.
It's not like it starts running as soon as you open the MMS message; you actually have to take steps to run the application contained in the message. Of course some people will run anything...
I wouldn't say their "metamorphosis", if they ever purported to want or aim to do such a thing, is complete - I mean they are still selling VxWorks right? I believe the top four platforms on their Product Directory are based on VxWorks, not Linux. I think they can fairly be described as an embedded software vendor that supplies Linux platforms, rather than an "embedded Linux vendor".
What difference does a report like this really make?
It could be used to establish liability - just like the research into smoking causing cancer; before there was good research the tobacco companies could avoid liability (even though they knew fairly well that smoking caused various diseases), once the research was public they could reasonably be sued for carrying on their activities. Imagine Exxon getting sued for those excess 30,000-50,000 deaths per year due to anthropogenic global warming.
Don't think this is likely? The SCO nonsense should convince you that lawyers will do absolutely anything. On the example of the tobacco company lawsuits, I doubt such action would succeed, but it could cause serious costs and embarrassment to oil companies, car companies, etc., who fail to take action to moderate their impact.
EDS are preparing themselves to manage the UK national identity database and identity card scheme. This is one we could lobby our representatives on to ensure they do it right.
This is one we should lobby our representatives on to ensure they don't do it at all. The fact that they will piss away several billion quid of taxpayers money is by-the-by when there is no reason other than sheer control-freakery to want this database in the first place.
For me, Nokia's scheduling FUD is going to work against them - I was waiting for the
6260
to become available before upgrading but despite having a release date of Q3 2004 and heavy advertising it is proving impossible to get hold of (on Orange, in the UK). Now instead I will wait for the 7710 but I'm not holding my breath expecting it to come out in Q4 2005 as announced.
Methinks the "ever-extensible Kwiki implementation" needs a "slashdotting" extension.
To be honest I have looked over Wiki software in the past but do not think I have heard of Kwiki - what is so good about it that the submitter felt the need to mention it? I like UseMod and have made changes to it with ease (and I am by no means a hardcode Perl hacker).
Not an astroturfer (really!), but just this morning I happened to buy two albums from the Warp Records store BLEEP
which gives you high-quality, DRM-crap-unencumbered VBR MP3s (they claim encoded with lame --alt-preset)
at about 1 GBP per track or 8 GBP for the average album (I bought 26 tracks in 2 albums for 16 GBP). Hardly "millions of albums" - it is indie music from a number of different labels as far as I can see, but they can obviously make money without the need for DRM. The store was easy to use and worked well with Mozilla, the MP3s sound pretty good (cue quality flamewar) and work fine on my iPod (as you would expect).
I urge all Slashdotters to support the independent stores like BLEEP which prove there is a viable market for downloaded audio tracks without the restrictions of DRM, and avoid ITMS, MSN and the rest like the plague they are.
Products from Microsoft or Sun are just as likely to contain infringing code as Linux
- Maybe even more likely in fact since no-one outside those companies has seen the source - they rely on obscurity to save them from patent cases, whereas Linux developers rely on what might be called wilful ignorance.
but if such code is found, it's likely that the producer of the software finds itself at the wrong end of a lawsuit, not the users. - Tell that to the SQL Server developers who get cited in the Timeline case (haven't heard how this one is going recently though). Arguably MS vast cash reserves make them a better target for these IP-only vulture companies to go after (Eolas, I mean you), and therefore large MS users are more vulnerable.
The scary bit about the problems with Linux and purported IP infringement, is that the people laying claim to parts of Linux go after the users, since there is no real producing company to sue. But why would they when they can go after IBM, RedHat, Novell? I agree the vultures would be likely to try the salami tactic of rolling up a few small users first, but they do that with any patents (e.g. some of the web patents that have been "enforced" recently).
My point is that the software patent problem affects proprietary and Free software in just the same ways. In fact, all the SW patent cases actually brought to trial have involved proprietary sofware not Free (AFAIK). So the question is why did the Greens choose this project and this moment to raise the patent issue, when any large software procurement project is affected in exactly the same way?
"British Gas was cited as the Most Invasive Company, after it declared that U.K. privacy rules prevented it from helping an elderly couple who were found dead of hypothermia in their home last winter, weeks after their gas service was cut off due to nonpayment of a 140-pound ($255) bill."
How is this invasive? It sounds like the exact opposite. I'll admit it's a bit obsessive, but behavior like this is exactly what privacy is all about.
As I understand it the reason they got the award was not for killing those old people, or invading privacy as such, but rather because in an attempt to shift blame they tried to say that the Data Protection Act meant they could not inform Social Services that they had cut off the gas in the depths of winter. This was a bullshit excuse as the Information Commissioner pointed out, and was one of several cases (see the Soham murders) where various incompetents found it convenient to blame their stupidity on the Act.
In my opinion the DPA is one of the best pieces of legislation to have been created in the UK in the past 20 years. Unfortunately the current UK government, together with the EU Commission and us.gov is working to essentially destroy the act by having the USA declared a "Safe Harbour" for data transfers - ridiculous as there are almost no personal data protections in the USA at all (especially for non-US citizens).
This has already been done. That show is called The Adventures of Brisco County jr. It was great television, which was given a crappy timeslot and was subsequently axed by retarded Fox executives.
Interesting - don't think that has made it's way across the pond yet (not on terrestrial television anyway).
I'm sure this is going to make me unpopular, but here goes...
As much as I liked Firefly (and I liked it a lot) in almost every episode I watched I kept on thinking, "if Whedon wanted to do a Western, why did he set it in space"? I assume that it was to do with selling it to the studios, who wouldn't have bought a new "Wagon Train" or "Rawhide".
But really every plot could have been done just as easily in the 1870s rather than the 2700s (or whenever it was meant to be). The psychic girl could just as easily have been a mystic rather than surgically enhanced, most of the other characters (the preacher, the prostitute, the hard-bitten veteran) would be basically the same. Most of the plots would be exactly the same (e.g. the train robbery).
I think it would have been even better to just do a Western-set "historical" series (with fantasy elements) rather than shoehorn things into a far-future, science fictional setting. But probably the networks aren't buying Westerns any more (though there was that TV version of The Magnificent Seven a while back).
I think I first read about the Williams/Hotwired dispute in Ansible a few years ago, the only thing I can find online is about halfway down the chatlog at, ammusingly enough,
Club Wired. Even Paramount reckoned they had to ask his permission to use Hardwired as the title for the Johnny Mnemonic movie supposedly (he said no), but Wired thought they could go ahead and register it as a trademark.
I think you meant more trustworthy since trust is hardly ever an absolute.
Source audits don't necessarily tell you that a program is trustworthy - there could be nasties in the build chain (see Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust) or simply very well disguised
code (as I understand this Attempted
backdoor insertion was spotted by an automatic checksumming process not by inspection).
Would a formal proof process (i.e. start with formal specification, prove that implementation implements the spec, then that a given executable was produced by the proven implementation) give assurance? I'm not aware of any formal proof systems that can prove that an implementation only implements the spec and nothing else - sounds like an interesting problem doesn't it?
Preventing software makers from disclaiming liability would build trust; your trust in the producer would then be equivalent to the level of liability they are willing to sign up to.
Unfortunately neither of these are likely to happen any time soon (the first for technical limitations, the second for financial reasons) so I agree is that we are stuck with available source (and hence Free Software) as the only means of building trust, but it's worth bearing in mind that there are other (potential) means of assuring trust.
The only time the average Brit sees evidence of the dark side of their country is when some public figure has an accident or commits suicide at a very opportunistic moment for the country.
Or (more often) when the police, local authority, or private security force running the cameras sells footage of you in the street to one of those humorous documentaries with names like "Extreme public sex acts" or "Vomiting drunks caught on tape" (or when the bored minimum-wage security guard sitting on his arse all day decides to take a copy of something juicy for his "private collection").
Or when the police and security services set up cameras on buildings where protestors/agitators are known to live, "for their protection", then use the tapes to prosecute people for benefit fraud.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
- Galaxy Song from "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life"
Re:Not solution to slashdot effect
on
Freecache
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Also only works for large files unless this FAQ is out of date:
What files are being served by FreeCache?
FreeCache can only serve files that are on a web site. If the link to a file on that web site goes away, so will the file in the FreeCaches. Also, there is a minimum size requirement. We don't bother with files smaller than 5MB, as the saved bandwidth does not outweight the protocol overhead in those cases.
Slashdot Mirror
If using Firefox, try this in your [profile]/chrome/userContent.css: /* indicate PDF links */
a[href$=".pdf"]:after {
font-size: smaller;
content: "pdf";
}
Think I got that from another Slashdot post, can't seem to find it now though (thanks anyway, whoever posted it!)
No mention of North Korean superhackers, I was a little disappointed :-)
We could then refuse to do business with those companies on the grounds that they were obviously lying.
I wouldn't say their "metamorphosis", if they ever purported to want or aim to do such a thing, is complete - I mean they are still selling VxWorks right? I believe the top four platforms on their Product Directory are based on VxWorks, not Linux. I think they can fairly be described as an embedded software vendor that supplies Linux platforms, rather than an "embedded Linux vendor".
It could be used to establish liability - just like the research into smoking causing cancer; before there was good research the tobacco companies could avoid liability (even though they knew fairly well that smoking caused various diseases), once the research was public they could reasonably be sued for carrying on their activities. Imagine Exxon getting sued for those excess 30,000-50,000 deaths per year due to anthropogenic global warming.
Don't think this is likely? The SCO nonsense should convince you that lawyers will do absolutely anything. On the example of the tobacco company lawsuits, I doubt such action would succeed, but it could cause serious costs and embarrassment to oil companies, car companies, etc., who fail to take action to moderate their impact.
This is one we should lobby our representatives on to ensure they don't do it at all. The fact that they will piss away several billion quid of taxpayers money is by-the-by when there is no reason other than sheer control-freakery to want this database in the first place.
For me, Nokia's scheduling FUD is going to work against them - I was waiting for the 6260 to become available before upgrading but despite having a release date of Q3 2004 and heavy advertising it is proving impossible to get hold of (on Orange, in the UK). Now instead I will wait for the 7710 but I'm not holding my breath expecting it to come out in Q4 2005 as announced.
What exactly are you "Commander" of?
Methinks the "ever-extensible Kwiki implementation" needs a "slashdotting" extension.
To be honest I have looked over Wiki software in the past but do not think I have heard of Kwiki - what is so good about it that the submitter felt the need to mention it? I like UseMod and have made changes to it with ease (and I am by no means a hardcode Perl hacker).I urge all Slashdotters to support the independent stores like BLEEP which prove there is a viable market for downloaded audio tracks without the restrictions of DRM, and avoid ITMS, MSN and the rest like the plague they are.
My point is that the software patent problem affects proprietary and Free software in just the same ways. In fact, all the SW patent cases actually brought to trial have involved proprietary sofware not Free (AFAIK). So the question is why did the Greens choose this project and this moment to raise the patent issue, when any large software procurement project is affected in exactly the same way?
As I understand it the reason they got the award was not for killing those old people, or invading privacy as such, but rather because in an attempt to shift blame they tried to say that the Data Protection Act meant they could not inform Social Services that they had cut off the gas in the depths of winter. This was a bullshit excuse as the Information Commissioner pointed out, and was one of several cases (see the Soham murders) where various incompetents found it convenient to blame their stupidity on the Act.
In my opinion the DPA is one of the best pieces of legislation to have been created in the UK in the past 20 years. Unfortunately the current UK government, together with the EU Commission and us.gov is working to essentially destroy the act by having the USA declared a "Safe Harbour" for data transfers - ridiculous as there are almost no personal data protections in the USA at all (especially for non-US citizens).
Interesting - don't think that has made it's way across the pond yet (not on terrestrial television anyway).
I'm sure this is going to make me unpopular, but here goes...
As much as I liked Firefly (and I liked it a lot) in almost every episode I watched I kept on thinking, "if Whedon wanted to do a Western, why did he set it in space"? I assume that it was to do with selling it to the studios, who wouldn't have bought a new "Wagon Train" or "Rawhide".
But really every plot could have been done just as easily in the 1870s rather than the 2700s (or whenever it was meant to be). The psychic girl could just as easily have been a mystic rather than surgically enhanced, most of the other characters (the preacher, the prostitute, the hard-bitten veteran) would be basically the same. Most of the plots would be exactly the same (e.g. the train robbery).
I think it would have been even better to just do a Western-set "historical" series (with fantasy elements) rather than shoehorn things into a far-future, science fictional setting. But probably the networks aren't buying Westerns any more (though there was that TV version of The Magnificent Seven a while back).
I think I first read about the Williams/Hotwired dispute in Ansible a few years ago, the only thing I can find online is about halfway down the chatlog at, ammusingly enough, Club Wired. Even Paramount reckoned they had to ask his permission to use Hardwired as the title for the Johnny Mnemonic movie supposedly (he said no), but Wired thought they could go ahead and register it as a trademark.
I think you meant more trustworthy since trust is hardly ever an absolute.
Source audits don't necessarily tell you that a program is trustworthy - there could be nasties in the build chain (see Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust) or simply very well disguised code (as I understand this Attempted backdoor insertion was spotted by an automatic checksumming process not by inspection).
Would a formal proof process (i.e. start with formal specification, prove that implementation implements the spec, then that a given executable was produced by the proven implementation) give assurance? I'm not aware of any formal proof systems that can prove that an implementation only implements the spec and nothing else - sounds like an interesting problem doesn't it?
Preventing software makers from disclaiming liability would build trust; your trust in the producer would then be equivalent to the level of liability they are willing to sign up to.
Unfortunately neither of these are likely to happen any time soon (the first for technical limitations, the second for financial reasons) so I agree is that we are stuck with available source (and hence Free Software) as the only means of building trust, but it's worth bearing in mind that there are other (potential) means of assuring trust.
You really must have seen it one too many times to be halucinating Alicia Silverstone in that film
Or (more often) when the police, local authority, or private security force running the cameras sells footage of you in the street to one of those humorous documentaries with names like "Extreme public sex acts" or "Vomiting drunks caught on tape" (or when the bored minimum-wage security guard sitting on his arse all day decides to take a copy of something juicy for his "private collection").
Or when the police and security services set up cameras on buildings where protestors/agitators are known to live, "for their protection", then use the tapes to prosecute people for benefit fraud.
ObMontyPython: