Yeah, I forgot to proofread before submitting. Oh well. The bulk of the spirit of the argument seems more cohesive than I thought it would turn out despite my rambling.
"A marvelous, lengthy, and irrelevant post. Torr's point was not that you should not trust Mozilla but that you have no way of knowing that what you are downloading was created by them. It's an unsigned binary from an unknown host. Mozilla should know better and sign it."
How is it irrevelant? I'm really not trying to troll here, and my karma was maxed long before Slashdot switched away from the visible 50 point method, so whoring is useless to me now too.
Microsoft throws some crap in our direction, or at the users we are courting into our direction, so it is our responsibility to throw arguments right back. Digital signing has been bullshit ever since it was possible to trick web browsers into accepting self-signed certs from websites. Microsoft's own browser allows for authentic looking messages to be displayed and "agreed to" for installing stuff. Microsoft's browsers' default security settings allow it. "Signing" doesn't mean anything. Conexion.com has been compromised before anyway, so Microsoft's signing isn't any better than anyone elses'.
I also like the historical perspective. It definitely makes me feel good about decisions I made back in 1997 regarding my future computing experiences.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"Looks like we're in step 2.5.."
Be very careful. It is very easy to draw historical parallels to situations that don't quite apply. As much as I think Microsoft is the 800 lb. Gorilla that needs a couple of limbs amputated and a frontal lobotomy performed, they are a chartered corporation. Not a people, a government, or a secret society. They have lobbyists and they make political contributions, they have budgets and bank accounts and stockholders. They even have the advantage of being a "they" instead of us being part of them, in contrast to a subset of people being part of a nation. We cannot change Microsoft from within, and we have some very powerful individuals with a huge percentage stake in the company who don't really have that many people to answer to as long as things don't get criminally illegal. We know who they are and they're using all of the legal antics, spin doctoring, and market leverage that they can, and while we are making headway against them, we have a long way to go before "winning".
I remember when Microsoft wasn't the bad guy to the masses of techiedweebs that it is now. Certainly there was bad blood with some groups, like the OS/2 users, the CP/M users, the Apple and Macintosh users, and ultimately the DOS users that felt abandoned or screwed, but they were the good guys for many of us who are now in our mid twenties. For me that changed with the advent of Internet Explorer as a bundled product. For others it probably began the first time they got a Blue Screen of Death on their supposedly stable Windows 95, or had some other Redmond-generated problem that didn't get fixed.
IBM used to be the villian. They tried to take away our open PCs with Microchannel. They tried to sue the Phoenix BIOS people over reverse engineering. They tried to give us new proprietary "standards" that would have locked us into 350x280 resolution or something like that. Now, they're the good guys. They support a product that they don't own in a major way, make money off of it, and help advance it in the world at large.
Microsoft will eventually be forced to change. It will take a long time, it will be ugly, and it will probably take years to sink in once it actually happens. It won't be our win either, it will be their loss and their gain at the same time.
(Please pardon the elementary school essay feel of this)
In the recent debacle of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and the numerous security vulnerabilities, I can trust Mozilla Firefox. The development history and tradition can be traced back to the early nineties, when a small company entitled Netscape produced a commercial web browser, the first real commercial browser, complete with shrinkwrapped packaging in big box stores like Best Buy and Target, designed to run on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, Windows NT, and MacOS 7. This product revolutionized the Internet experience, not through doing anything completely new, but through bringing it to the public in a relatively non-technical way, through retail channels. On an ancillary note for the time, UNIX and Linux versions of the popular browser grew as well, and became the dominant browser in all markets. The product did have its faults, including nonstandard tags like blink, but for the most part Netscape ("pronounced Mozilla" according to the company itself) played fairly nice with others.
In 1996, Microsoft decided that The Web was The Way To Go. They obtained licensing to the losing browser at the time, Spyglass Mosiac, and rebranded it as Internet Explorer v2.0. No 1.0 release, no large chunk of original code from Microsoft. This kludge was bundled with Windows NT 4.0 Beta releases and final release, and later added to Windows 95 A, to replace the dead "The Microsoft Network" service.
In 1997, Microsoft decided to work hard to lay the better browser at the time, Netscape, in the fire. Microsoft modified Windows 95B (Aka OSR2) so that when installing the operating system, one was prompted with no obvious way to cancel to install Internet Explorer 3.0. Since the easy way was to just install the product and allow the resource-heavy shell "enhancements" to become the new norm most OEMs and users purchasing the OS for the first time installed it. It didn't matter that Netscape was still a better product and adhered to industry standards well at this point, Microsoft began to see significant market share.
In 1998, Microsoft continued revising its web browser, beginning to lean heavily on non-W3C-compliant tags, ActiveX, and other technologies proprietary to Microsoft web development suites and Microsoft web browsers. Netscape attempted to continue to compete, but was unable to maintain enough percentage of userbase due to the explosive growth of the new computer market, all running bundled Microsoft OSes with Internet Explorer now firmly the user shell. Netscape still enjoyed dominance on Macintosh and POSIX compliant platforms, but that was no real help. Netscape was bought out, to eventually end up in the hands of America Online.
Fast forward to the beginning of the wane of the tech boom. Mozilla as a standalone product is released and opensourced, based on attempts to revise the aging Netscape 4.0 engine to a 5.0 version which proved unworkable. Netscape 6.0 and Mozilla beta/1.X begin to work in tandem to create a community written browser capable of being turned into a quasi-commercial product. Influxes of free development make the product respond fairly rapidly to new market conditions. Being a standalone product, and not using Microsoft's proprietary ActiveX keeps Mozilla and Netscape 6 installations from infecting computers wholesale, while Microsoft's browser continues to suffer from exploit to exploit.
Today, Microsoft's browsers are responsible for delivering Spyware/Malware/Adware payloads to millions of people worldwide. Microsoft claims that security is their new thing, but they have orphaned new development for platforms other than their most modern to reduce the problem. Microsoft's maintenance of even the newest product, Windows XP (through Service Pack 2) still infects users' computers down to the service level with spyware, malware, and adware. Microsoft still has no true fix for these problems, and their ActiveX system is st
"Star Fleet recognized Data sufficiently to give him a rank that allows him to order humans to risk their lives (do the 3 laws apply in Star Trek?)."
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics do not apply in Star Trek. They are applied to Data's specific case, since he is the ultimate realization (other than the overly pasty complexion, but that might have just been to have the average fan empathise:) of Asimov's robots and acceptance into society, but Lore was hell-bent on his own agenda despite what it did to others.
The M-5 Computer (effectively turning the entire ship into an intelligent robot) killed its own crew, and the crew of another starship if my memory serves.
Daniel Davis' Moriarty character from ST:TNG episode Elementary, Dear Data, reprised in Ship In A Bottle was the walking, interacting construct of a computer took over the ship in the latter episode and threatened the crew's destruction if they didn't do what he wanted.
Robert Picardo's character in Star Trek: Voyager was a robot in the sense that he was the manifestation of a computer and a holodeck, later to be a mobile character with a portable holodeck emitter. One episode dealt with some kind of serial killerishness or something, though I cannot remember the details, but he took a character hostage.
Star Trek started out with adventure driven science fiction with Campbellian roots, and achieved the pinnacle of good storytelling and internal consistency in ST:TNG (in my opinion), but after Roddenberry's death they totally lost whatever sense of real cohesiveness. It degenerated into being referred to as "The Franchise", even in TV specials that were for the fans. It became pathetic.
They see what you are 'hiding' and maybe laugh in your face; but they don't detect the stegged content (which would, presumably, be *far* worse than 'bukkake bloopers 2000'...
Hmmm.. Laughing. So that's what they're calling it these days...
with the current administration be careful what you use as the containing data for the purposes of stenography. If the container becomes illegal then you have a real problem.
Re:Concur with the "no more registration required"
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 1
Get several keyboards of the same model and find some way to randomly depress keys on these keyboards.
Or just turn the stereo on and way up...
Re:Concur with the "no more registration required"
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 1
If you don't use the keyboard enough to give them a large enough sampling to determine which sound corresponds to which key (which they'd have to figure out with a best guess method) then they might not be able to build a profile on a given piece of equipment.
If you had many, many keyboards of the same manufacturer and model it'd be even more difficult, since the sounds would be so similar that they might not have an easy time telling keyboards apart, especially if you switched keyboards many times in the middle of a given session on the computer, and even worse if you switch keyboard layouts frequently too.
You can't accurately number-letter substitute if you don't know which numbers correspond to given letters. Admittedly they could take the time, over a long enough period of time, to determine which is which if you never change out to newer keyboards, but it would make the problem significantly more complex than simple sound interpretation.
Concur with the "no more registration required"...
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 1
...and if one learns Dvorak and Qwerty keyboard methods, and switches back and forth between them, wouldn't that cause audio monitoring of the typist and/or keyboard to be inconclusive? Or more interesting yet, have multiple keyboards, so to never leave an audio bug knowing which keyboard one is using at any given point so that they can't develop a profile of a given piece of equipm$#@^&
"Oh, so if a bill on allowing slavery again passes, it is constitutional because the majority wanted it (just go with it, I know the majority does NOT, in fact, want that). Thanks for that insight."
There is fallacy in your argument, in the sense that we have steps to protect from "tyranny of the majority". Removing someones' civil rights definitely falls into this category. Broadcasting something that a very particular group doesn't like is an entirely different matter, as the complainers aren't forced to watch/listen, and they aren't being told what to do or not do. The burden to choose their actions in what they take in is on themselves; they can choose anything that they like.
That they choose shows to specifically complain about that they wouldn't otherwise watch, simply to complain about them should discredit their complaints entirely. They have abused the system, the system should trim results gathered from them since they are an abberation.
First off, I was doing this think called joking. Secondly, this technique isn't uncommon anyway, with things called "demilitarized zones" in network management. You build a three-segment network, one segment being the world at large (entirely untrusted from the server perspective) the next segment being the userland machines on your network (semi-trusted from the server perspective), and the third being the servers (entirely trusted). You configure which set of machines get which access privileges through the routing device (any router is a computer, just a specialized one) so that only certain things get through in certain ways. One might port forward or proxy all connections from the world but allow direct routing on a limited number of ports from the userland segment.
At work we route three MUX rings' worth of sites, about 120 sites total, 30,000 machines across the entire WAN on the scale of a city, and the traffic is being handled at the concentration point for all major servers and the outbound internet connection by... drum roll please... a Linux box. That's right, a Linux box. An Intel-based 64bit PCI machine with six gigabit cards and an extensive routing table. It's probably the most stable thing on the network, and hasn't burned out like so many of the switches and routers out in the field due to poor quality fans. It'll probably handle a bunch more traffic than we are throwing at it, too.
So, we could have spent a shitload on a switch like you so advocate, or we could have spent the $3,000 to build this computer. We chose the computer. It's definitely not 'hobbyist'.
...would be to just firewall every Windows machine behind a Linux box or BSD box and use port forwarding or some other restrictive routing scheme. Even if the hardware to isolate a gigabit's worth of bandwidth ran $1,000, it'd probably still save the company money compared to the man hours required to fix custom software, test it, and install it.
"I got rid of TV altogether about four years ago. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Now, when I see TV at a friend's house, I think to myself: 'Who in the world would watch this trash?'"
I did about the same thing at about the same time. I remember commercials for the first Survivor series just before I unhooked the antenna. I only hooked it back up again on September 11th, and had it unhooked by the time television started to somewhat return to normal. I also see what's on and think, "What the hell?! This crap sucks!"
"But of course, we must pander to the mindless majority. If someone speaks up, he/she is just an old prude who wants to stop everyone else's fun. I am not a member of the PTC, but I support their right to do this."
I don't, and here's why: The TV has an off button. It also has channel up, channel down, mute, and some even have an image surpression mode. The city that I live in has the major four networks, the lightweight other three or so, a few independent stations of mainstream rerun programming, and at least three religious Christian channels, with shows like The 700 Club. Additionally there are at least four Christian radio networks in addition to the large number of conservative talk radio stations and music stations that have a more conservative bend. All of this conservative programming gives the PTC people plenty of airwave to look at where they don't have to see Janet Jackson's boob, Dennis Franz's ass, Tara Reid's surgical scar, or anything else that would "oh so damage" their children.
These people need to grow the fuck up, or else we need to start complaining about their television programs, especially ones that take strong stances against ideas or actions like premarital sex, science, liberal politics, or homosexuality. Call out the programs that criticize these and label them as obscene. Get them slapped with fines, or get their 501(c)3 tax exempt status revoked for endorsing political candidates.
...that are certain to get worse with my girlfriend and her four year old daughter. The only applications available to the little girl are a couple of Reader Rabbit games, but rather severe tantrums occur when she is denied playing the games or asked to stop for the night. I was reminded of my own behavior, though on a slightly different scale when I was fifteen or so and Warcraft II, Quake, and Grand Theft Auto were what dominated my non-schoolwork hours. I flat out had behavioral problems, wanting to do nothing beyond playing the games, and throwing teenager level tantrums when I was denied such.
Fortunately I was in marching band, jazz band, electric car club, and some other structured things for me to redirect myself to when my parents forced the issue and wouldn't let me use the family computer for games, but it definitely wasn't easy, and probably would have been even harder if I hadn't had other activities that I liked to turn to. Consequently I'm paying close attention to what happens in what I'm seeing now, because I know from experience what can happen if things get out of hand.
The moral of my own story: Have something else to do besides computers. Read. Play sports. Play a musical instrument. Work with your hands on something, like cars, or woodworking, or jewelery. Find a passion to compete with the one operating at 1024x768. It's definitely a lot more healthy that way.
...if the license doesn't follow BSD or GPL methodology. Most of the UN*X geeks that I know (including myself) subscribe to one or the other established licenses either because we want our work to be out there for the benefit of everyone, even if it is used in commercial applications and closed (BSD) or because we want it out there and we want it to remain out there because it was hard work, and not be closed (GPL). I don't see any other positions really available to coders who don't want their code to be rendered unavailable to the public at large.
So, since "Hundreds of Slashdotters responded..." and NOAA both kept functioning and was able listen to the comments, would it be safe to say that they weathered the storm?
A company that brands a product "Lycos Sidesearch" that Ad Aware finds as spyware isn't going to get me to install their screensaver; I don't care how long the name has been a brand on the Internet.
Disclaimer: I've never broken into any computers other than my own for testing purposes.
Why on Earth would anyone breaking into a computer do anything related to that breakin from the workstation that they're using, or even from any of the possible string of hosts that they're bouncing through to get there? If the entire point is to hide one's activities in the process, wouldn't the attacker either just use the cracked box or already have everything on hand to send without retrieving it from a public source? If one never makes any connections to servers until it's time to use the compromised computer for whatever task the cracker came up with, it's likely that no one will even know the machine has been compromised, and any evidence that would have been left on the computer could be erased in the concluding step of using it for the purpose that it was broken into for, so forensics would be difficult to impossible.
I guess that it's the stupid criminals that get caught though.
For all of the real records of achievement that exist in this world, there are numerous examples in their book of utter crap that doesn't amount to anything. The most people in a pie eating contest in one place. The most times running through a field serviced by multiple beehives. The largest cheese sandwich. The Houston 500. Etc, etc, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I forgot to proofread before submitting. Oh well. The bulk of the spirit of the argument seems more cohesive than I thought it would turn out despite my rambling.
Microsoft throws some crap in our direction, or at the users we are courting into our direction, so it is our responsibility to throw arguments right back. Digital signing has been bullshit ever since it was possible to trick web browsers into accepting self-signed certs from websites. Microsoft's own browser allows for authentic looking messages to be displayed and "agreed to" for installing stuff. Microsoft's browsers' default security settings allow it. "Signing" doesn't mean anything. Conexion.com has been compromised before anyway, so Microsoft's signing isn't any better than anyone elses'.
I also like the historical perspective. It definitely makes me feel good about decisions I made back in 1997 regarding my future computing experiences.
Be very careful. It is very easy to draw historical parallels to situations that don't quite apply. As much as I think Microsoft is the 800 lb. Gorilla that needs a couple of limbs amputated and a frontal lobotomy performed, they are a chartered corporation. Not a people, a government, or a secret society. They have lobbyists and they make political contributions, they have budgets and bank accounts and stockholders. They even have the advantage of being a "they" instead of us being part of them, in contrast to a subset of people being part of a nation. We cannot change Microsoft from within, and we have some very powerful individuals with a huge percentage stake in the company who don't really have that many people to answer to as long as things don't get criminally illegal. We know who they are and they're using all of the legal antics, spin doctoring, and market leverage that they can, and while we are making headway against them, we have a long way to go before "winning".
I remember when Microsoft wasn't the bad guy to the masses of techiedweebs that it is now. Certainly there was bad blood with some groups, like the OS/2 users, the CP/M users, the Apple and Macintosh users, and ultimately the DOS users that felt abandoned or screwed, but they were the good guys for many of us who are now in our mid twenties. For me that changed with the advent of Internet Explorer as a bundled product. For others it probably began the first time they got a Blue Screen of Death on their supposedly stable Windows 95, or had some other Redmond-generated problem that didn't get fixed.
IBM used to be the villian. They tried to take away our open PCs with Microchannel. They tried to sue the Phoenix BIOS people over reverse engineering. They tried to give us new proprietary "standards" that would have locked us into 350x280 resolution or something like that. Now, they're the good guys. They support a product that they don't own in a major way, make money off of it, and help advance it in the world at large.
Microsoft will eventually be forced to change. It will take a long time, it will be ugly, and it will probably take years to sink in once it actually happens. It won't be our win either, it will be their loss and their gain at the same time.
(Please pardon the elementary school essay feel of this)
In the recent debacle of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and the numerous security vulnerabilities, I can trust Mozilla Firefox. The development history and tradition can be traced back to the early nineties, when a small company entitled Netscape produced a commercial web browser, the first real commercial browser, complete with shrinkwrapped packaging in big box stores like Best Buy and Target, designed to run on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, Windows NT, and MacOS 7. This product revolutionized the Internet experience, not through doing anything completely new, but through bringing it to the public in a relatively non-technical way, through retail channels. On an ancillary note for the time, UNIX and Linux versions of the popular browser grew as well, and became the dominant browser in all markets. The product did have its faults, including nonstandard tags like blink, but for the most part Netscape ("pronounced Mozilla" according to the company itself) played fairly nice with others.
In 1996, Microsoft decided that The Web was The Way To Go. They obtained licensing to the losing browser at the time, Spyglass Mosiac, and rebranded it as Internet Explorer v2.0. No 1.0 release, no large chunk of original code from Microsoft. This kludge was bundled with Windows NT 4.0 Beta releases and final release, and later added to Windows 95 A, to replace the dead "The Microsoft Network" service.
In 1997, Microsoft decided to work hard to lay the better browser at the time, Netscape, in the fire. Microsoft modified Windows 95B (Aka OSR2) so that when installing the operating system, one was prompted with no obvious way to cancel to install Internet Explorer 3.0. Since the easy way was to just install the product and allow the resource-heavy shell "enhancements" to become the new norm most OEMs and users purchasing the OS for the first time installed it. It didn't matter that Netscape was still a better product and adhered to industry standards well at this point, Microsoft began to see significant market share.
In 1998, Microsoft continued revising its web browser, beginning to lean heavily on non-W3C-compliant tags, ActiveX, and other technologies proprietary to Microsoft web development suites and Microsoft web browsers. Netscape attempted to continue to compete, but was unable to maintain enough percentage of userbase due to the explosive growth of the new computer market, all running bundled Microsoft OSes with Internet Explorer now firmly the user shell. Netscape still enjoyed dominance on Macintosh and POSIX compliant platforms, but that was no real help. Netscape was bought out, to eventually end up in the hands of America Online.
Fast forward to the beginning of the wane of the tech boom. Mozilla as a standalone product is released and opensourced, based on attempts to revise the aging Netscape 4.0 engine to a 5.0 version which proved unworkable. Netscape 6.0 and Mozilla beta/1.X begin to work in tandem to create a community written browser capable of being turned into a quasi-commercial product. Influxes of free development make the product respond fairly rapidly to new market conditions. Being a standalone product, and not using Microsoft's proprietary ActiveX keeps Mozilla and Netscape 6 installations from infecting computers wholesale, while Microsoft's browser continues to suffer from exploit to exploit.
Today, Microsoft's browsers are responsible for delivering Spyware/Malware/Adware payloads to millions of people worldwide. Microsoft claims that security is their new thing, but they have orphaned new development for platforms other than their most modern to reduce the problem. Microsoft's maintenance of even the newest product, Windows XP (through Service Pack 2) still infects users' computers down to the service level with spyware, malware, and adware. Microsoft still has no true fix for these problems, and their ActiveX system is st
"Star Fleet recognized Data sufficiently to give him a rank that allows him to order humans to risk their lives (do the 3 laws apply in Star Trek?)."
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics do not apply in Star Trek. They are applied to Data's specific case, since he is the ultimate realization (other than the overly pasty complexion, but that might have just been to have the average fan empathise:) of Asimov's robots and acceptance into society, but Lore was hell-bent on his own agenda despite what it did to others.
The M-5 Computer (effectively turning the entire ship into an intelligent robot) killed its own crew, and the crew of another starship if my memory serves.
Daniel Davis' Moriarty character from ST:TNG episode Elementary, Dear Data, reprised in Ship In A Bottle was the walking, interacting construct of a computer took over the ship in the latter episode and threatened the crew's destruction if they didn't do what he wanted.
Robert Picardo's character in Star Trek: Voyager was a robot in the sense that he was the manifestation of a computer and a holodeck, later to be a mobile character with a portable holodeck emitter. One episode dealt with some kind of serial killerishness or something, though I cannot remember the details, but he took a character hostage.
Star Trek started out with adventure driven science fiction with Campbellian roots, and achieved the pinnacle of good storytelling and internal consistency in ST:TNG (in my opinion), but after Roddenberry's death they totally lost whatever sense of real cohesiveness. It degenerated into being referred to as "The Franchise", even in TV specials that were for the fans. It became pathetic.
You can put lipstick on a pig(skin), but it'll still be a pig(skin)...
with the current administration be careful what you use as the containing data for the purposes of stenography. If the container becomes illegal then you have a real problem.
Get several keyboards of the same model and find some way to randomly depress keys on these keyboards.
Or just turn the stereo on and way up...
If you don't use the keyboard enough to give them a large enough sampling to determine which sound corresponds to which key (which they'd have to figure out with a best guess method) then they might not be able to build a profile on a given piece of equipment.
If you had many, many keyboards of the same manufacturer and model it'd be even more difficult, since the sounds would be so similar that they might not have an easy time telling keyboards apart, especially if you switched keyboards many times in the middle of a given session on the computer, and even worse if you switch keyboard layouts frequently too.
You can't accurately number-letter substitute if you don't know which numbers correspond to given letters. Admittedly they could take the time, over a long enough period of time, to determine which is which if you never change out to newer keyboards, but it would make the problem significantly more complex than simple sound interpretation.
...and if one learns Dvorak and Qwerty keyboard methods, and switches back and forth between them, wouldn't that cause audio monitoring of the typist and/or keyboard to be inconclusive? Or more interesting yet, have multiple keyboards, so to never leave an audio bug knowing which keyboard one is using at any given point so that they can't develop a profile of a given piece of equipm$#@^&
NO CARRIER
"Oh, so if a bill on allowing slavery again passes, it is constitutional because the majority wanted it (just go with it, I know the majority does NOT, in fact, want that). Thanks for that insight."
There is fallacy in your argument, in the sense that we have steps to protect from "tyranny of the majority". Removing someones' civil rights definitely falls into this category. Broadcasting something that a very particular group doesn't like is an entirely different matter, as the complainers aren't forced to watch/listen, and they aren't being told what to do or not do. The burden to choose their actions in what they take in is on themselves; they can choose anything that they like.
That they choose shows to specifically complain about that they wouldn't otherwise watch, simply to complain about them should discredit their complaints entirely. They have abused the system, the system should trim results gathered from them since they are an abberation.
First off, I was doing this think called joking . Secondly, this technique isn't uncommon anyway, with things called "demilitarized zones" in network management. You build a three-segment network, one segment being the world at large (entirely untrusted from the server perspective) the next segment being the userland machines on your network (semi-trusted from the server perspective), and the third being the servers (entirely trusted). You configure which set of machines get which access privileges through the routing device (any router is a computer, just a specialized one) so that only certain things get through in certain ways. One might port forward or proxy all connections from the world but allow direct routing on a limited number of ports from the userland segment.
At work we route three MUX rings' worth of sites, about 120 sites total, 30,000 machines across the entire WAN on the scale of a city, and the traffic is being handled at the concentration point for all major servers and the outbound internet connection by... drum roll please... a Linux box. That's right, a Linux box. An Intel-based 64bit PCI machine with six gigabit cards and an extensive routing table. It's probably the most stable thing on the network, and hasn't burned out like so many of the switches and routers out in the field due to poor quality fans. It'll probably handle a bunch more traffic than we are throwing at it, too.
So, we could have spent a shitload on a switch like you so advocate, or we could have spent the $3,000 to build this computer. We chose the computer. It's definitely not 'hobbyist'.
...would be to just firewall every Windows machine behind a Linux box or BSD box and use port forwarding or some other restrictive routing scheme. Even if the hardware to isolate a gigabit's worth of bandwidth ran $1,000, it'd probably still save the company money compared to the man hours required to fix custom software, test it, and install it.
"I got rid of TV altogether about four years ago. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Now, when I see TV at a friend's house, I think to myself: 'Who in the world would watch this trash?'"
I did about the same thing at about the same time. I remember commercials for the first Survivor series just before I unhooked the antenna. I only hooked it back up again on September 11th, and had it unhooked by the time television started to somewhat return to normal. I also see what's on and think, "What the hell?! This crap sucks!"
"But of course, we must pander to the mindless majority. If someone speaks up, he/she is just an old prude who wants to stop everyone else's fun. I am not a member of the PTC, but I support their right to do this."
I don't, and here's why: The TV has an off button. It also has channel up, channel down, mute, and some even have an image surpression mode. The city that I live in has the major four networks, the lightweight other three or so, a few independent stations of mainstream rerun programming, and at least three religious Christian channels, with shows like The 700 Club. Additionally there are at least four Christian radio networks in addition to the large number of conservative talk radio stations and music stations that have a more conservative bend. All of this conservative programming gives the PTC people plenty of airwave to look at where they don't have to see Janet Jackson's boob, Dennis Franz's ass, Tara Reid's surgical scar, or anything else that would "oh so damage" their children.
These people need to grow the fuck up, or else we need to start complaining about their television programs, especially ones that take strong stances against ideas or actions like premarital sex, science, liberal politics, or homosexuality. Call out the programs that criticize these and label them as obscene. Get them slapped with fines, or get their 501(c)3 tax exempt status revoked for endorsing political candidates.
...that are certain to get worse with my girlfriend and her four year old daughter. The only applications available to the little girl are a couple of Reader Rabbit games, but rather severe tantrums occur when she is denied playing the games or asked to stop for the night. I was reminded of my own behavior, though on a slightly different scale when I was fifteen or so and Warcraft II, Quake, and Grand Theft Auto were what dominated my non-schoolwork hours. I flat out had behavioral problems, wanting to do nothing beyond playing the games, and throwing teenager level tantrums when I was denied such.
Fortunately I was in marching band, jazz band, electric car club, and some other structured things for me to redirect myself to when my parents forced the issue and wouldn't let me use the family computer for games, but it definitely wasn't easy, and probably would have been even harder if I hadn't had other activities that I liked to turn to. Consequently I'm paying close attention to what happens in what I'm seeing now, because I know from experience what can happen if things get out of hand.
The moral of my own story: Have something else to do besides computers. Read. Play sports. Play a musical instrument. Work with your hands on something, like cars, or woodworking, or jewelery. Find a passion to compete with the one operating at 1024x768. It's definitely a lot more healthy that way.
...if the license doesn't follow BSD or GPL methodology. Most of the UN*X geeks that I know (including myself) subscribe to one or the other established licenses either because we want our work to be out there for the benefit of everyone, even if it is used in commercial applications and closed (BSD) or because we want it out there and we want it to remain out there because it was hard work, and not be closed (GPL). I don't see any other positions really available to coders who don't want their code to be rendered unavailable to the public at large.
I hope that any large scale mechs don't give their occupant the same problem that Escaflowne did when they needed to repair it...
"woooh, who blew that smell?"
*cough*LycosSidesearch*cough*
So, since "Hundreds of Slashdotters responded..." and NOAA both kept functioning and was able listen to the comments, would it be safe to say that they weathered the storm?
A company that brands a product "Lycos Sidesearch" that Ad Aware finds as spyware isn't going to get me to install their screensaver; I don't care how long the name has been a brand on the Internet.
A-Team is already out on DVD. It was a few months ago. I don't know about Miami Vice. I'm still waiting for the animated Tick cartoon series.
At the rate these sites keep popping up, the bulk of the Internet will be one Reel Big Phish...
Disclaimer: I've never broken into any computers other than my own for testing purposes.
Why on Earth would anyone breaking into a computer do anything related to that breakin from the workstation that they're using, or even from any of the possible string of hosts that they're bouncing through to get there? If the entire point is to hide one's activities in the process, wouldn't the attacker either just use the cracked box or already have everything on hand to send without retrieving it from a public source? If one never makes any connections to servers until it's time to use the compromised computer for whatever task the cracker came up with, it's likely that no one will even know the machine has been compromised, and any evidence that would have been left on the computer could be erased in the concluding step of using it for the purpose that it was broken into for, so forensics would be difficult to impossible.
I guess that it's the stupid criminals that get caught though.
For all of the real records of achievement that exist in this world, there are numerous examples in their book of utter crap that doesn't amount to anything. The most people in a pie eating contest in one place. The most times running through a field serviced by multiple beehives. The largest cheese sandwich. The Houston 500. Etc, etc, etc.