comparing the latest KDE and GNOME desktop to Windows XP just shows that as far as usability, Linux may have already surpassed Windows.
I'm not so sure. Showing my wife how to use her new Gnome desktop: opened a samba share, double-clicked on a.jpg; Gimp started automatically... but didn't open the picture.
"Oh. *Ahem* That's because Nautilus views samba shares through the VFS subsystem, which only some Gnome applications actually implement, and none of the applications you would use. So to work around that, honey, just copy-and-paste into your home directory, then double-click the new file, edit it, save it, then copy-and-paste it back onto the samba share using Nautilus. Or if you like, I can su root, change the smb.conf, send a USR1 signal to smbd and then mount the share. That'll work except when you boot when outside of wireless LAN range. Then an additional reboot may be needed."
Returning to your point, I guess all your internet purchases will be recorded on your credit card statements.
Yes, but not where you were when you made the order. If I'm in Texas when I buy something on the internet from a company in Alabama, but ship it to Colorado, who gets to collect the taxes?
Oh. Sorry, didn't know you were connecting to slashdot via HTTPS.
Wait a minute... how are you doing that?
The point of my post (which I'm sure is lost on the sort of slashdot poster who limits themselves to ad hominem attacks), was that most folks think that it's hard (impossible? illegal?) for the man-in-the-middle to sniff the IP packets. In reality it's trivially easy. If you think your network is secure... good for you. I can conclude, then, that your network isn't secure for anyone else using it; if you have the power to physically secure the network infrastructure, then you obviously have the power to sniff everyone else's traffic.
The solution to wireless security and wired security is the same: end-to-end encryption.
I'm going to leave my tinfoil hat in its box for the moment.
A desire to not wear the tinfoil hat is the best sign that the mind control ray is working. The rest of us must now assume that you've been compromised.
Obligatory IANAL. I think "unconditional copyright" is a good idea. I might write a hundred songs (or poems or whatever) in a year and not make any money off of them. It costs money to register your work as copyrighted.
How is this a good thing? If these songs or poems are not marketable, then all your copyright is doing is preventing anyone from ever seeing them. Copyright is supposed to serve us, not enslave us. The current system bankrupts the public domain for no obvious value to anyone.
Take this example. You need a photo of a waterfall for a webpage, you google for a waterfall photo and find several. All of them are copyrighted by somebody, but nowhere does it say by whom. So, even though they are great, and even though the copyright owner would quite probably allow you to use them, the law prohibits it since you can't ask for permission.
born-again evangelican christians (also known as religio-loonies) are apt to fervently disagree with something just on the basis that it was said by a "scientist".
Folks: this bookmark parent as reference material for future moderations. Any post that is as patently offensive to millions of people as this one is clearly a Troll.
There are those of us who are actively displeased with the fact that Viacom puts our money to use funding Music Porn Television.
The sooner this works out such that I can get the networks I want without paying for the disgusting trash MTV puts out the better.
Bravo to DishNetwork! Here's to hoping they win, that the FTC trust-busts Viacom, and that I can finally get a la carte programming.
(I was surprised to see the Pro-Viacom slant to the article, but then Slashdot opinions are rarely well considered. Slashdot: home of the Anti-Business, Pro-Monopoly, Luddite Technotrope, Schizophrenic Sycophant Rebels.)
Sandboxing is not a cure all -- it specifically does not prevent DOS attacks from sandboxed code that "runs hot", either with respect to hardware or network resources.
If another device in the internet can send you code that you execute, sandbox VM or not, it can DOS you. This idea seems flawed from the outset.
If copyright were to be abolished, the amount of new works will undoubtly fall, but it's unlikely to dissappear altogether.
As a working songwriter, I can tell you: there is simply no money to be made in the current system. The authors of the creative works simply aren't making any money now... so where's the value of the monopoly?
The "industry" is using their monopoly protection not to increase creative output, but to reduce it. There are hundreds of thousands of performing musicians in this country... how many are represented by "industry" labels? Almost none. Meanwhile the most prolific songwriter I know works at Guitar Center selling knockoff Fenders to teenagers in order to pay the rent.
The issues here are too complex for one to argue either for or against IP laws. The simple matter of fact is that it does benefit some businesses and it hurts others.
Actually, I would argue that the current legal climate hurts all businesses. If you ask a company that is actively pursuing the acquisition of silly patents why they are doing it, they will uniformly respond that it is for their "War Chest". Wha? Yeah -- silly patents held in order defend against silly patent suits.
The end result feeds the lawyers' children, and hurts everyone else.
in the end, the free market will decide.
A free market doesn't have enforced monopolies. When we are talking IP law, we are NOT talking about anything vaguely similar to a free market.
Put more simply, the problem is not that Linux sucks, it just needs to have larger market share before hardware manufacturers pay attention and bother with the hassle of trying to deal with Linux (multiple distros, multiple DEs, etc).
Well, a lot of this is based on a false perception on the part of the hardware developers that they are selling hardware and software. If they'd just drop their pants on the interface specification and let open source drivers be written, they'd get more customers.
We don't need them to produce drivers for Linux distros or desktop environments. They just need to open their interfaces and let other people write software for their hardware. I guarantee you that the interface documents exist internally (with labels on them like Proprietary: Internal Use Only) -- all they have to do is.pdf and post it.
Are they afraid we'll make fun of their poor spelling?
Maybe nowhere. The analysis methodology used could be spoofed by SCO by them running a program on their respective servers that sends out SYN-ACK and SYN-RST to random IP addresses.
CAIDA would just assume it's a real DDOS attack. Remember "backscatter analysis" analyzes the response from the "target" site. They don't see and cannot prove the existance of the actual SYN flood.
She HAS been accused of copyright infringement. In America it's an actionable tort to assert that someone is a criminal when they haven't been convicted of a crime.
And your libel is more reprehensible than her copyright infringement -- because libel causes individual harm.
Talk about hypocrite.
Super! E-Bomb kills only children and the elderly.
on
E-Bombs: Technology Update
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Having watched my little girl emerge from 8-weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, I don't find the idea of killing computers to be such a wonderful idea.
"In other news, the latest E-Bomb attack on North Korea was, in the words of the Air Force Chief of Staff, 'A resounding success.'
"Initial body counts indicate that civilian deaths , while widespread, were random and uncoordinated; from crashing jet liners to a hospital that exploded when a simple thermostat in the boiler room failed.
"'This is the sort of terror weapon that we've always wanted to have access to.' he is quoted as saying."
Well, as counterpoint, I have seen the big bright full-color 9x16 order screen at the Wendy's drive-through complain (at the console) that someone needed to run fsck on such-and-such EXT2 partition.
All systems fail, and when they fail they sometimes fail back to a "hacker friendly" mode.
It's up to the application developer to make sure that doesn't happen. The operating system is not to blame.
Warning: contents may be dangerously lukewarm.
on
CNet on WinFS
·
· Score: 1
There should have been a warning with this article to set an alarm clock before reading it.
Now I'm late for my 3 o'clock Friday ditch-out, and my keyboard soaked in drool.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a working prototype of a new security measure: "topic knocking." Duping topics in the correct order causes the REAL articles to become available.
And this 18-month sentence "was the maximum ever handed out in Quebec." (Presumably for the crime of manslaughter)
Are they serious?
Oh, silly me... it's HUP, not USR1. ;-)
"Oh. *Ahem* That's because Nautilus views samba shares through the VFS subsystem, which only some Gnome applications actually implement, and none of the applications you would use. So to work around that, honey, just copy-and-paste into your home directory, then double-click the new file, edit it, save it, then copy-and-paste it back onto the samba share using Nautilus. Or if you like, I can su root, change the smb.conf, send a USR1 signal to smbd and then mount the share. That'll work except when you boot when outside of wireless LAN range. Then an additional reboot may be needed."
"Honey?"
Oh. Sorry, didn't know you were connecting to slashdot via HTTPS.
Wait a minute... how are you doing that?
The point of my post (which I'm sure is lost on the sort of slashdot poster who limits themselves to ad hominem attacks), was that most folks think that it's hard (impossible? illegal?) for the man-in-the-middle to sniff the IP packets. In reality it's trivially easy. If you think your network is secure... good for you. I can conclude, then, that your network isn't secure for anyone else using it; if you have the power to physically secure the network infrastructure, then you obviously have the power to sniff everyone else's traffic.
The solution to wireless security and wired security is the same: end-to-end encryption.
SSH..... don't tell anyone, but my secret is...
SSH..... don't tell anyone, but my secret is...
SSH..... don't tell anyone, but my secret is...
The real joke is that some folks think that their WIRED ethernet is secure. Now, you'll have to excuse me if I wax ethereal for a second....
For our own safety, you understand.
Reading through his paper, I am struck by the following flash of enlightenment:
The concept of the limit is explained with more rigor in high-school calculus.
Grade: D- See me after class
Take this example. You need a photo of a waterfall for a webpage, you google for a waterfall photo and find several. All of them are copyrighted by somebody, but nowhere does it say by whom. So, even though they are great, and even though the copyright owner would quite probably allow you to use them, the law prohibits it since you can't ask for permission.
Folks: this bookmark parent as reference material for future moderations. Any post that is as patently offensive to millions of people as this one is clearly a Troll.
(Prejudice != Interesting)
There are those of us who are actively displeased with the fact that Viacom puts our money to use funding Music Porn Television. The sooner this works out such that I can get the networks I want without paying for the disgusting trash MTV puts out the better. Bravo to DishNetwork! Here's to hoping they win, that the FTC trust-busts Viacom, and that I can finally get a la carte programming.
(I was surprised to see the Pro-Viacom slant to the article, but then Slashdot opinions are rarely well considered. Slashdot: home of the Anti-Business, Pro-Monopoly, Luddite Technotrope, Schizophrenic Sycophant Rebels.)
Sandboxing is not a cure all -- it specifically does not prevent DOS attacks from sandboxed code that "runs hot", either with respect to hardware or network resources.
If another device in the internet can send you code that you execute, sandbox VM or not, it can DOS you. This idea seems flawed from the outset.
The "industry" is using their monopoly protection not to increase creative output, but to reduce it. There are hundreds of thousands of performing musicians in this country... how many are represented by "industry" labels? Almost none. Meanwhile the most prolific songwriter I know works at Guitar Center selling knockoff Fenders to teenagers in order to pay the rent.
The end result feeds the lawyers' children, and hurts everyone else. A free market doesn't have enforced monopolies. When we are talking IP law, we are NOT talking about anything vaguely similar to a free market.
Well, a lot of this is based on a false perception on the part of the hardware developers that they are selling hardware and software. If they'd just drop their pants on the interface specification and let open source drivers be written, they'd get more customers.
We don't need them to produce drivers for Linux distros or desktop environments. They just need to open their interfaces and let other people write software for their hardware. I guarantee you that the interface documents exist internally (with labels on them like Proprietary: Internal Use Only) -- all they have to do is
Are they afraid we'll make fun of their poor spelling?
Enforceable or not, who has the resources to go toe to tow with MS legal.
IBM.
What do I win?
Maybe nowhere. The analysis methodology used could be spoofed by SCO by them running a program on their respective servers that sends out SYN-ACK and SYN-RST to random IP addresses.
CAIDA would just assume it's a real DDOS attack. Remember "backscatter analysis" analyzes the response from the "target" site. They don't see and cannot prove the existance of the actual SYN flood.
Pull money from an index fund to avoid owning 0.000001 SCOX shares? Do you know what an index fund is?
Whoa, back the truck up, there Rick.
She HAS been accused of copyright infringement. In America it's an actionable tort to assert that someone is a criminal when they haven't been convicted of a crime.
And your libel is more reprehensible than her copyright infringement -- because libel causes individual harm.
Talk about hypocrite.
Having watched my little girl emerge from 8-weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, I don't find the idea of killing computers to be such a wonderful idea.
"In other news, the latest E-Bomb attack on North Korea was, in the words of the Air Force Chief of Staff, 'A resounding success.'
"Initial body counts indicate that civilian deaths , while widespread, were random and uncoordinated; from crashing jet liners to a hospital that exploded when a simple thermostat in the boiler room failed.
"'This is the sort of terror weapon that we've always wanted to have access to.' he is quoted as saying."
The crack is already out:
Does this mean that the | operator is now considered a circumvention device under the DMCA?
Well, as counterpoint, I have seen the big bright full-color 9x16 order screen at the Wendy's drive-through complain (at the console) that someone needed to run fsck on such-and-such EXT2 partition.
All systems fail, and when they fail they sometimes fail back to a "hacker friendly" mode.
It's up to the application developer to make sure that doesn't happen. The operating system is not to blame.
There should have been a warning with this article to set an alarm clock before reading it.
Now I'm late for my 3 o'clock Friday ditch-out, and my keyboard soaked in drool.
Duh!
Real programmer's marry kung fu.