Personally, I've discovered that my ISP (Cox Communications in Washington, DC) only blocks port 80 (HTTP) and port 119 (news). This I thought was a little strange, maybe it's only in my neighborhood, but it does allow me to run FTP/mail servers behind my cable modem.
Re:They only forgot one thing - power
on
Spray-On Computers
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Ever build one of those crystal radio kits you got from RadioShack as a kid? Those had way larger components than we're talking here, and they were powered by small electric currents from the AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio waves.
With these spray-on computers, you could easily add a small circuitry that could provide power just from stray radio waves. IIRC you would just need a magnetic coil, a diode and a transistor. That would provide plenty of power for the scale we're talking here.
There are some cases where a strictly "binary-only" system would be wanted. It is possible to build RedHat servers without GCC and stripped-down C libraries for various reasons, such as really small hard drive, or security (kinda hard for users to compile rootkits if there's no C compilier available).
CPAN builds the Perl modules in the same way you would on a source-based distro. It downloads the tarball, unzips it, does a
./configure
, checks for dependencies, then does a
make
and
make install
. RPMS don't require compiliation, and for systems lacking a C compilier, or systems with many Perl modules to install, this can be very useful. Try to imagine downloading and compiling the entire CPAN archive. It would take a week even on a fast system. Let the developers build it on something massively distributed and release an RPM that takes a few minutes to install.
1. Aquire your piece of test equipment (video card, motherboard, tower case) 2. Hold the equipment 3 to 5 feet above the bench surface 3. Release. Gravity will take care of the test 4. Measure the mark left in the bench by the equipment. Bigger mark = better equipment.
It is official; National Geographic confirms: Gentoo Penguins are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Gentoo Penguin population when the Australian Antarctic Data Centre confirmed that the Gentoo Penguin habitat has decreased yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of Antartica. Coming on the heels of a recent National Geographic survey which plainly states that Gentoo Penguins have lost more habitat, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Gentoo Penguins are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Penguin population counts.
You don't need to be an Eskimo to predict Gentoo Penguin's future. The hand writing is on the iceberg: Gentoo Penguins face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Gentoo Penguins because Gentoo Penguins are dying. Things are looking very bad for Gentoo Penguins. As many of us are already aware, Gentoo Penguins continue to lose habitat. Red blood flows like a river of, well, blood.
The colony on the Antartic Peninsula is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its population. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Gentoo Penguins Ikky and Wokky only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Gentoo Penguins are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Gentoo Penguin leader Kowikki states that there are 96610 Gentoo Penguins in South Georgia. How many Gentoo Penguins are there in the Iles Kerguelen? Let's see. The number of South Georgia versus Iles Kerguelen posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 96610/5 = 19322 Gentoo Penguins on the Iles Kerguelen. Falkland Island posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Iles Kerguelen posts. Therefore there are about 9661 Gentoo Penguins on the Falklands. A recent article put the Antartica Peninsula colonies at about 80 percent of the total Gentoo Penguin population. Therefore there are (96610+19322+9661)*4 = 502372 Gentoo Penguins on the Antartic Peninsula. This is consistent with the number of Antartica Peninsula Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of the Antartic Peninsula, abysmal fishing success, and so on, the Peninsula colonies died out and the bodies were scattered around the region, and have in turn infected all the other colonies.
All major surveys show that Gentoo Penguins have steadily declined in population and habitat. Gentoo Penguins are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If Gentoo Penguins are to survive at all it will be among hippy nature-loving dilettante dabblers. Their bodies continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Gentoo Penguins are dead.
I've seen tools to crack Windows NT passwords for years now, most of them in the form of a Linux bootdisk (I keep one here, in case of emergency, break glass...)
Granted, this is different, as the Swiss in this article basically reverse-engineered the algorithms for password encryption, whereas all the bootdisk does is re-hash the registry entry containing the desired password.
I totally agree with this post. I'm glad someone had the cojones to post it as parent. What kept me away from Gentoo was the politics involved and the arrogance of the userbase.
Gentoo just burst onto the scene and was all like LOOK WE'RE BIG AND FAT AND IN YOUR DUMB FACE and they just flat-out said "Hey we're just better than you are." Forum posts are ignored, questions go unanswered, and they basically made themselves look like the immature 12-year-old warez-d00d kiddie distribution.
Now we've got the Gentoo fanboy crew who refuse to accept the opinions of others and think they are the hottest thing on the block. These verbal ejaculations from these ignorant preteens about how great or l33t or super-awesome-gay their Linux is are the worst. SHUT UP, IT'S JUST A GOD DAMN OPERATING SYSTEM. Gentoo users are like the Jehoviah's Witnesses of the Linux community. Ask them, "Why did you choose Gentoo?" and they'll answer, "Oh, because it's better than RedHat/Debian/Slackware/Butterfinger McFlurry!" This is akin to the Jehoviah's at my front door telling me their God is better than my God and not being able to back it up. JESUS WILL SMITE YOUR ASSES TO HELL FOR BEING SUCH HOMOSEXUALS.
The point is, I don't believe Gentoo is a Real Linux. They don't have the "tried-and-true" feel of Slackware, nor do they have the dedicated userbase of Debian. I bet you dollars to doughnuts every "f1r5t p0s7" troll is some god damn hippy prepubescent script kiddie with his limp dick in one hand and a Gentoo CD in the other. Until Gentoo can learn to FUCKING GROW UP they will not get any respect from the Linux community.
Rant over. Karma to burn. Flame on.
Re:Linux's uptimes approaching Solaris'
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Linux uptimes comparable with Solaris on busy sites
You do have to remember a few things, however:
1) Linux boxes that have uptimes of 400+ days are still using kernels that have the uptime rollovers at ~497 days, when the 32-bit long unsigned integer used to count the number of uptime seconds resets to 0, and the uptimes returned look like the machine had been rebooted at that point.* This is one reason that you don't see any Linux machines on the Top 50 uptimes page at Netcraft.
2) Consider what Solaris is mostly used for these days: webserver and database server (from what I've seen from experience, that is). The hardware architectures of Sun machines (SPARC processors with loads of L1 cache, fast Ultra-wide SCSI disks, and spectacular memory managment of the SunOS kernel) make these machines perfect for applications where there would be lots of disk accessing going on, such as a web server or a database server.
* I haven't had any machines stay up long enough to see this for myself, but does anyone know if this bug has been fixed, and if so, since what release?
Check and see if your school has a wireless network installed. (My Example) If they have such a network set up, invest in a good laptop (I would recommend an IBM ThinkPad or a Macintosh Powerbook, pick your poison) and make sure it has wireless capabilities (most networks these days are 802.11b). Trust me, it's a great investment. Heck, I'm posting this from my wireless laptop in lecture right now!
How is using a honeypot an "interception of communications"? The attack is coming in on your own machine, which you have set up and are sacrificing in the name of enhanced security. Under the law, this is known as "permissable deception." (Yeah, I learned this from Law & Order.)
If a cop poses as a "prostitute" and attempts to solict from a John, they can be found guilty of solicitation of sex. If I throw a "server" holding lots of "important data" on my network, and I catch some hacker breaking in, presumably, under the same idea, he is now guilty of a cyber-crime, and can be tried and found guilty.
There is a cyber-war going on, and as in a land war, you must know your enemy. Think of using a honeypot as gathering intel on your attacker, learning his ways and developing methods to protect against his attacks.
I've used Earthlink as an ISP for going on 6 years now, and I must say, I've never dealt with better. For one thing, in the years that I've had my earthlink address, I'd say I never get more than 3 or 4 spams per week. What is my secret? For starters, if I need to provide an e-mail address for something that may result in unsolicited messages, I use one of the free webmail providers (Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.) I can check those to confirm what I wanted, then never check it again, and my Outlook (with my primary e-mail) doesn't fill up with useless crap.
Another way to stop the spam before it starts is to keep your e-mail address from getting on those lists in the first place. When posting to Usenet, BBSes, forums, even Slashdot, use some sort of clever cloaking (Slashcode does this already), or even a fake email. Encryption for e-mail such as using a free personal certificate from Thawte or a GPL encryption such as GNU Privacy Guard is always a good idea.
In addition, Earthlink's Spaminator is a Godsend. With that baby enabled, I'm lucky if I get one spam a month. Case in point: my mother has an Earthlink address that she uses for her business contact. She complained that she's getting hundreds of porn spam and "enlarge your penis"-type e-mails (no idea how these got here.) Setting up a few Outlook Express filters and enabling Spaminator cut the dirty messages by about 90%, and she is grateful she no longer has to wade through such filth to get to her real mesages.
The bottom line is, the fewer spammers that have your address, the fewer spams you're gonna get. I have a Hotmail that gets 1000+ spams a day. My real e-mails get next to none. It's just like telemarketers, they get your number from companies who need a contact info for whatever reason. However, Hotmail address are free, whereas extra phone numbers to give the telemarketers, and then never answer, are not. Well, we do have Caller-ID for that, but that's another post...
I've actually found that using the Shop Vac as a blower (with the hose attached to the output) can be very useful to quickly dust out the inside of cases. The flexible hose and powerful stream of air can dust out a full-tower ATX case in a matter of seconds. Especially useful for power supplies that are clogged with dust and other things that you wouldn't want to disassemble. Just remember to do this outside and disconnect the power from the motherboard.
Slashdot Mirror
...Gentoo is a toy for babies.
Actually, port 443 is secure HTTP. Some other major services blocked by ISPs are:
23 TCP - telnet
25 TCP - SMTP
53 UDP - DNS
79 TCP - finger
110 TCP - POP3
119 TCP - NNTP (USEnet news)
143 TCP - IMAP
Personally, I've discovered that my ISP (Cox Communications in Washington, DC) only blocks port 80 (HTTP) and port 119 (news). This I thought was a little strange, maybe it's only in my neighborhood, but it does allow me to run FTP/mail servers behind my cable modem.
Ever build one of those crystal radio kits you got from RadioShack as a kid? Those had way larger components than we're talking here, and they were powered by small electric currents from the AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio waves.
With these spray-on computers, you could easily add a small circuitry that could provide power just from stray radio waves. IIRC you would just need a magnetic coil, a diode and a transistor. That would provide plenty of power for the scale we're talking here.
CPAN builds the Perl modules in the same way you would on a source-based distro. It downloads the tarball, unzips it, does a , checks for dependencies, then does a and . RPMS don't require compiliation, and for systems lacking a C compilier, or systems with many Perl modules to install, this can be very useful. Try to imagine downloading and compiling the entire CPAN archive. It would take a week even on a fast system. Let the developers build it on something massively distributed and release an RPM that takes a few minutes to install.
1. Aquire your piece of test equipment (video card, motherboard, tower case)
2. Hold the equipment 3 to 5 feet above the bench surface
3. Release. Gravity will take care of the test
4. Measure the mark left in the bench by the equipment. Bigger mark = better equipment.
So, short answer, no.
(I feel ashamed for being so geeky there...)
It is official; National Geographic confirms: Gentoo Penguins are dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Gentoo Penguin population when the Australian Antarctic Data Centre confirmed that the Gentoo Penguin habitat has decreased yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of Antartica. Coming on the heels of a recent National Geographic survey which plainly states that Gentoo Penguins have lost more habitat, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Gentoo Penguins are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Penguin population counts.
You don't need to be an Eskimo to predict Gentoo Penguin's future. The hand writing is on the iceberg: Gentoo Penguins face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Gentoo Penguins because Gentoo Penguins are dying. Things are looking very bad for Gentoo Penguins. As many of us are already aware, Gentoo Penguins continue to lose habitat. Red blood flows like a river of, well, blood.
The colony on the Antartic Peninsula is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its population. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Gentoo Penguins Ikky and Wokky only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Gentoo Penguins are dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Gentoo Penguin leader Kowikki states that there are 96610 Gentoo Penguins in South Georgia. How many Gentoo Penguins are there in the Iles Kerguelen? Let's see. The number of South Georgia versus Iles Kerguelen posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 96610/5 = 19322 Gentoo Penguins on the Iles Kerguelen. Falkland Island posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Iles Kerguelen posts. Therefore there are about 9661 Gentoo Penguins on the Falklands. A recent article put the Antartica Peninsula colonies at about 80 percent of the total Gentoo Penguin population. Therefore there are (96610+19322+9661)*4 = 502372 Gentoo Penguins on the Antartic Peninsula. This is consistent with the number of Antartica Peninsula Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of the Antartic Peninsula, abysmal fishing success, and so on, the Peninsula colonies died out and the bodies were scattered around the region, and have in turn infected all the other colonies.
All major surveys show that Gentoo Penguins have steadily declined in population and habitat. Gentoo Penguins are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If Gentoo Penguins are to survive at all it will be among hippy nature-loving dilettante dabblers. Their bodies continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Gentoo Penguins are dead.
Fact: Gentoo Penguins are dying
I just want to take a moment to talk to all the retards.
So, you spend your real money in order to get pretend money in your online games.
Then, for the privilege of spending that pretend money - in a pretend world, on pretend things - you pay more real money, every month.
What a bunch of fucking brain surgeons.
(Credit goes to Penny Arcade. Seems apropros here. Seriously guys, get a life. It's disturbing.)
I've seen tools to crack Windows NT passwords for years now, most of them in the form of a Linux bootdisk (I keep one here, in case of emergency, break glass...)
Granted, this is different, as the Swiss in this article basically reverse-engineered the algorithms for password encryption, whereas all the bootdisk does is re-hash the registry entry containing the desired password.
You, sir, are the newbie. You've been trolled.
we'll see the 2.6 kernel in Mandrake 23.2 in the year 2019..
No, no, no. The proper troll is:
"I guess this means that we'll see the 2.6 kernel in the Debian stable branch in the year 2019!"
(That said, I use Debian exclusively. Man, you kids today...)
I've never seen a more blatant trolling in my life. Let's dissect this post shall we?
...it's not yet as fucked up as redhat is...
...TROLL!
...plus linus uses suse at home...
Last time I checked that was IRRELEVANT!
And in closing...
but gentoo is better.
Oviously a Gentoo fanboy.
I hereby proclaim this post FLAMEBAIT!
I totally agree with this post. I'm glad someone had the cojones to post it as parent. What kept me away from Gentoo was the politics involved and the arrogance of the userbase.
Gentoo just burst onto the scene and was all like LOOK WE'RE BIG AND FAT AND IN YOUR DUMB FACE and they just flat-out said "Hey we're just better than you are." Forum posts are ignored, questions go unanswered, and they basically made themselves look like the immature 12-year-old warez-d00d kiddie distribution.
Now we've got the Gentoo fanboy crew who refuse to accept the opinions of others and think they are the hottest thing on the block. These verbal ejaculations from these ignorant preteens about how great or l33t or super-awesome-gay their Linux is are the worst. SHUT UP, IT'S JUST A GOD DAMN OPERATING SYSTEM. Gentoo users are like the Jehoviah's Witnesses of the Linux community. Ask them, "Why did you choose Gentoo?" and they'll answer, "Oh, because it's better than RedHat/Debian/Slackware/Butterfinger McFlurry!" This is akin to the Jehoviah's at my front door telling me their God is better than my God and not being able to back it up. JESUS WILL SMITE YOUR ASSES TO HELL FOR BEING SUCH HOMOSEXUALS.
The point is, I don't believe Gentoo is a Real Linux. They don't have the "tried-and-true" feel of Slackware, nor do they have the dedicated userbase of Debian. I bet you dollars to doughnuts every "f1r5t p0s7" troll is some god damn hippy prepubescent script kiddie with his limp dick in one hand and a Gentoo CD in the other. Until Gentoo can learn to FUCKING GROW UP they will not get any respect from the Linux community.
Rant over. Karma to burn. Flame on.
Linux uptimes comparable with Solaris on busy sites
You do have to remember a few things, however:
1) Linux boxes that have uptimes of 400+ days are still using kernels that have the uptime rollovers at ~497 days, when the 32-bit long unsigned integer used to count the number of uptime seconds resets to 0, and the uptimes returned look like the machine had been rebooted at that point.* This is one reason that you don't see any Linux machines on the Top 50 uptimes page at Netcraft.
2) Consider what Solaris is mostly used for these days: webserver and database server (from what I've seen from experience, that is). The hardware architectures of Sun machines (SPARC processors with loads of L1 cache, fast Ultra-wide SCSI disks, and spectacular memory managment of the SunOS kernel) make these machines perfect for applications where there would be lots of disk accessing going on, such as a web server or a database server.
* I haven't had any machines stay up long enough to see this for myself, but does anyone know if this bug has been fixed, and if so, since what release?
Check and see if your school has a wireless network installed. (My Example) If they have such a network set up, invest in a good laptop (I would recommend an IBM ThinkPad or a Macintosh Powerbook, pick your poison) and make sure it has wireless capabilities (most networks these days are 802.11b). Trust me, it's a great investment. Heck, I'm posting this from my wireless laptop in lecture right now!
they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies."
(A quote from your hero and mine, Linus Torvalds.)
How is using a honeypot an "interception of communications"? The attack is coming in on your own machine, which you have set up and are sacrificing in the name of enhanced security. Under the law, this is known as "permissable deception." (Yeah, I learned this from Law & Order.)
If a cop poses as a "prostitute" and attempts to solict from a John, they can be found guilty of solicitation of sex. If I throw a "server" holding lots of "important data" on my network, and I catch some hacker breaking in, presumably, under the same idea, he is now guilty of a cyber-crime, and can be tried and found guilty.
There is a cyber-war going on, and as in a land war, you must know your enemy. Think of using a honeypot as gathering intel on your attacker, learning his ways and developing methods to protect against his attacks.
I've used Earthlink as an ISP for going on 6 years now, and I must say, I've never dealt with better. For one thing, in the years that I've had my earthlink address, I'd say I never get more than 3 or 4 spams per week. What is my secret? For starters, if I need to provide an e-mail address for something that may result in unsolicited messages, I use one of the free webmail providers (Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.) I can check those to confirm what I wanted, then never check it again, and my Outlook (with my primary e-mail) doesn't fill up with useless crap.
Another way to stop the spam before it starts is to keep your e-mail address from getting on those lists in the first place. When posting to Usenet, BBSes, forums, even Slashdot, use some sort of clever cloaking (Slashcode does this already), or even a fake email. Encryption for e-mail such as using a free personal certificate from Thawte or a GPL encryption such as GNU Privacy Guard is always a good idea.
In addition, Earthlink's Spaminator is a Godsend. With that baby enabled, I'm lucky if I get one spam a month. Case in point: my mother has an Earthlink address that she uses for her business contact. She complained that she's getting hundreds of porn spam and "enlarge your penis"-type e-mails (no idea how these got here.) Setting up a few Outlook Express filters and enabling Spaminator cut the dirty messages by about 90%, and she is grateful she no longer has to wade through such filth to get to her real mesages.
The bottom line is, the fewer spammers that have your address, the fewer spams you're gonna get. I have a Hotmail that gets 1000+ spams a day. My real e-mails get next to none. It's just like telemarketers, they get your number from companies who need a contact info for whatever reason. However, Hotmail address are free, whereas extra phone numbers to give the telemarketers, and then never answer, are not. Well, we do have Caller-ID for that, but that's another post...
I've actually found that using the Shop Vac as a blower (with the hose attached to the output) can be very useful to quickly dust out the inside of cases. The flexible hose and powerful stream of air can dust out a full-tower ATX case in a matter of seconds. Especially useful for power supplies that are clogged with dust and other things that you wouldn't want to disassemble. Just remember to do this outside and disconnect the power from the motherboard.