Some time back, I lost an important package sent via registered mail to me in the US from the UK. We asked both the UK post office and the USPS to investigate:
Within 2 days, the UK Post Office told me that they had tracked the letter to the airport nearest me (in the US).
After six months, the USPS told me they had no clue about the letter. Nothing. And it took six months.
It's ironic that Microsoft provides that service for free, whereas Linux requires paying money.
1. You are confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in speech".
2. It's pretty easy to set up a cron job to automatically download the patches from a mirror ("wget -m...."). As you see a new patch is downloaded, install your already downloaded update(s).
3. Mailing lists, mailing lists. Gentoo has a mailing list for announcements that is very quiet and seems to have only security announcements. I'm sure there are others for other distros.
By having an arrangement where a car's GPS system was also tied to the car's entire electrical system,
I'd like to see them do that to my car: the only semiconductor device it might have is a diode in the fuel pump and I'm not even sure that it has that.
Fuel tax has the dual advantage of discouraging driving and discouraging vehicles that use large amounts of fuel.
Oh, wait, Europe already does that.... HOW many $/gallon?
But really, some of the proposals are to tax what were freeways -- yet it is clear better for the environment and safer if people use freeway-style roads instead of local roads.
list operators had to block whole ISPs to guarantee filtering them.
I don't think so. It is because name-based virtual hosting is used to save IP addresses. Name-based virtual hosting means that many web sites can be hosted on the same single IP address.
As odd as it sounds, companies that do studies don't just pull "statistics" out of their ass,
I think it was Disraeli who said: "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics".
I'm sure the raw data for these studies comes from some reputable sources. However, studies can easily be slanted by:
1. Careful selection of the data sources
2. "Analysis" of the raw data that eliminates data that does not support the hypothesis.
3. Careful presentation to emphasise analysis results that support the hypothesis while hiding results that do not support the hypothesis.
So while I agree that there has to be some basis for the raw data, a completent analysts/statistician can obtain pretty much whatever results s/he wants, unless the data overwhelmingly supports the opposite view.
Steal, definition 1: To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Well, I don't know about American law, but I think you will find that British law requires intent to permanently deprive the owner of the object in question.
That's why copyright infringement is not stealing: the owner is not deprived of the the copyright or music or whatever.
is that it costs real money to block ports. ISPs have big routers and the cpu cycles of those routers are expensive. Blocking ports takes additonal cpu cycles, so ISPs need to have a strong business reason to start blocking.
If SCO can invalidate the BSD settlement, then SCO can potentially claim ownership of much of the BSD-derived code in the kernel. Now that would present problems!
The only counter argument to this is that SCO has already "blessed" much of the BSD-derived code by stating that the 2.2 kernel series are clean.
I can't wait for SCO to accuse *BSD of infringing SCO's IP
Din't they already hint at it? See the comment: ""But what about BSD?" I asked. Sontag responded that there "could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement," adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement."
Well, maybe, but I have a CA driver's license and I am not eligible to vote (think H1B, or green card, or L1, etc.).
At a local street fair, where lots of immigrants were present, someone was signing up people to vote. I wonder how many that signed up were merely residents, not citizens.
I once worked for a comany that was in the midst of a lawsuit. It was company policy that emails were not archived. It made presenting information for discovery so much easier.
You can't find another ISP for your T1 connection? OK, you may be in a 1-year contract, but at the time that contract ends, you should discuss the issue with Lightyear.
Not at all, it depends how you use them. You have 3 choices:
1. Use them to block at the server or
2. Use them to tag incoming email or (the one I favor)
3. Use them as part of your spam scoring system.
The last is a built-in feature of SpamAssassin and works well.
Your saying that Windows has no sticky bit-like mechanism is like saying *NIX doesn't hae ACL.
No, it's not. ACLs are a nice-to-have feature (which you can get in Linux now), but the concept of the sticky bit is an essential requirement to providing security.
OK, so a user wants to use the CD-burner:
On the Win2k/XP system he must either be administrator or know the adminstrator password. Hence he can do anything on the system. As the real administrator, I now have no control.
On the *nix system, I make the cd-burner program run as root. Note that this does not allow the user to run any other program as root, it does not allow him to change his privileges or do anything as root EXCEPT burning CDs.
So, on the Windows system, there is no proper control of privileges. Having ACL's is meaningless, because, as administrator, the user can change them (OK, not true for a file on a windows share, but true nevertheless for all local files)
Slashdot Mirror
Some time back, I lost an important package sent via registered mail to me in the US from the UK. We asked both the UK post office and the USPS to investigate:
Within 2 days, the UK Post Office told me that they had tracked the letter to the airport nearest me (in the US).
After six months, the USPS told me they had no clue about the letter. Nothing. And it took six months.
It's ironic that Microsoft provides that service for free, whereas Linux requires paying money.
...."). As you see a new patch is downloaded, install your already downloaded update(s).
1. You are confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in speech".
2. It's pretty easy to set up a cron job to automatically download the patches from a mirror ("wget -m
3. Mailing lists, mailing lists. Gentoo has a mailing list for announcements that is very quiet and seems to have only security announcements. I'm sure there are others for other distros.
Generator, not alternator? Electro-Mechanical voltage regulator?
Yep, my car has all the above (not alternator).
By having an arrangement where a car's GPS system was also tied to the car's entire electrical system,
I'd like to see them do that to my car: the only semiconductor device it might have is a diode in the fuel pump and I'm not even sure that it has that.
Fuel tax has the dual advantage of discouraging driving and discouraging vehicles that use large amounts of fuel.
Oh, wait, Europe already does that.... HOW many $/gallon?
But really, some of the proposals are to tax what were freeways -- yet it is clear better for the environment and safer if people use freeway-style roads instead of local roads.
I tried Microsoft's scanner for Office updates. All it updated was the installer, yet there is a serious vulnerability in VBA stuff.
I could have used the "office update" and thought I was secure! I had to go and download the patches myself.
Really.... There have been far more vulnerabilities discovered recently in the NT/2k/XP line than the 95/98/ME line.
list operators had to block whole ISPs to guarantee filtering them.
I don't think so. It is because name-based virtual hosting is used to save IP addresses. Name-based virtual hosting means that many web sites can be hosted on the same single IP address.
Now seat belts,
In my daily driver, I legally don't wear seat belts! The car was built before seat belt regulations were passed and such regs are not retro-active.
OK, so in my wife's car and any other that has seat belts, I do wear them!
As odd as it sounds, companies that do studies don't just pull "statistics" out of their ass,
I think it was Disraeli who said: "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics".
I'm sure the raw data for these studies comes from some reputable sources. However, studies can easily be slanted by:
1. Careful selection of the data sources
2. "Analysis" of the raw data that eliminates data that does not support the hypothesis.
3. Careful presentation to emphasise analysis results that support the hypothesis while hiding results that do not support the hypothesis.
So while I agree that there has to be some basis for the raw data, a completent analysts/statistician can obtain pretty much whatever results s/he wants, unless the data overwhelmingly supports the opposite view.
Will Linux Luminary 'Shred' SCO's Unix Claims?
Steal, definition 1: To take (the property of another) without right or permission.
Well, I don't know about American law, but I think you will find that British law requires intent to permanently deprive the owner of the object in question.
That's why copyright infringement is not stealing: the owner is not deprived of the the copyright or music or whatever.
is that it costs real money to block ports. ISPs have big routers and the cpu cycles of those routers are expensive. Blocking ports takes additonal cpu cycles, so ISPs need to have a strong business reason to start blocking.
If SCO can invalidate the BSD settlement, then SCO can potentially claim ownership of much of the BSD-derived code in the kernel. Now that would present problems!
The only counter argument to this is that SCO has already "blessed" much of the BSD-derived code by stating that the 2.2 kernel series are clean.
I can't wait for SCO to accuse *BSD of infringing SCO's IP
Din't they already hint at it? See the comment: ""But what about BSD?" I asked. Sontag responded that there "could be issues with the [BSD] settlement agreement," adding that Berkeley may not have lived up to all of its commitments under the settlement."
You are, however, eligible to be drafted into the US military.
Actually no, I'm not. But only because of age.
I did a little searching. Wow! I knew that non-citizens could serve in the military, but did not know they could be drafted
First, let's make people show ID before voting
Well, maybe, but I have a CA driver's license and I am not eligible to vote (think H1B, or green card, or L1, etc.).
At a local street fair, where lots of immigrants were present, someone was signing up people to vote. I wonder how many that signed up were merely residents, not citizens.
Some newer CDs come with promotional items such as DVDs containing music videos and glimpses into production.
They expect consumers to pay to see their adverts?
I find it stunning that anyone upgraded at all to Office XP
I find it stunning that anyone upgraded past Office97. What useful feature exists in Office2k and not Office97?
I guess that depends on how Evil(tm) your company plans on being.
Well, the company and several executives eventually plead guilty to stealing another company's trade secrets/source code.
I only found myself working there because of an acquisition and I left as soon as I could.
to not have a backup of emails.
I once worked for a comany that was in the midst of a lawsuit. It was company policy that emails were not archived. It made presenting information for discovery so much easier.
there was nothing I could do about it.
You can't find another ISP for your T1 connection? OK, you may be in a 1-year contract, but at the time that contract ends, you should discuss the issue with Lightyear.
A blacklist is like the death penalty
Not at all, it depends how you use them. You have 3 choices:
1. Use them to block at the server or
2. Use them to tag incoming email or (the one I favor)
3. Use them as part of your spam scoring system.
The last is a built-in feature of SpamAssassin and works well.
And there's milter.
Postfix has "content_filter", which seems to do everything milters can do.
Your saying that Windows has no sticky bit-like mechanism is like saying *NIX doesn't hae ACL.
No, it's not. ACLs are a nice-to-have feature (which you can get in Linux now), but the concept of the sticky bit is an essential requirement to providing security.
OK, so a user wants to use the CD-burner:
On the Win2k/XP system he must either be administrator or know the adminstrator password. Hence he can do anything on the system. As the real administrator, I now have no control.
On the *nix system, I make the cd-burner program run as root. Note that this does not allow the user to run any other program as root, it does not allow him to change his privileges or do anything as root EXCEPT burning CDs.
So, on the Windows system, there is no proper control of privileges. Having ACL's is meaningless, because, as administrator, the user can change them (OK, not true for a file on a windows share, but true nevertheless for all local files)