...considering that at 9KB/second nobody has gotten past ISO 2 of 3 to install and review the thing...
Hardly.
BitTorrent worked excellently, and I was pulling it down at 100-400 KB/s yesteday, and already have it burned. Haven't installed it yet, however... but I could have!
What's the difference between sendmail and telnet?
You need a password to get root access through telnet!
Minor nit -- most OSs won't let you login as root via telnet, and haven't done so for a while. So you'll need more than a password -- you'll need a user account, it's password, and THEN the password for root (for su'ing from once you're in.) Depending on the OS and configuration, this user account may need to be in the `wheel' group.
That makes me want to delete everything I didn't pay for
Free software existed before RMS started writing software:)
rip the penguin stickers off of all of my hardware
RMS wrote much of the software used in most Linux boxes -- but he didn't have much to do with Linux itself, beyond having written the compiler most often used to compile it.
GNU/Linux and lignuiix are just RMS's attempts at getting credit for everything.
There have been cases in the US of people stealing electricity
from high power transmission lines, by burying a coil of large guage cable underneath them
as a giant transformer, it takes electricity without contact-
"from the ether"-- wonder what the take on that would be..
Do you have a citation for that?
I can't imagine that generating enough electricity to actually be worth the trouble. Yes, people like to wave flourscent bulbs under power lines, but that doesn't take much power.
That, and the energy is already lost -- it's not like the bulbs (or wire) are sucking energy from the wire -- the energy has already been radiated.
And it would be very interesting if this were made illegal -- after all, this is exactly how a radio works.
chrooted services don't prevent break-ins. They prevent/reduce damage done after the break-in.
With some security holes, a chrooted daemon can't be cracked where a non-chrooted daemon can, because the exploit does something like invoke/bin/sh, but that just means that the exploit needs to be altered somewhat to do something other than just invoke/bin/sh.
Don't get me wrong -- chrooted daemons are more secure than non-chrooted ones if done properly -- but their purpose is not to prevent break-ins, but to reduce their damage.
If everything is done right, when you exploit a chrooted named daemon, you've got access to a few files that named needs, and nothing else. Yes, your system has been broken into, but all they can do is muck with your named.
If they break into a non-chrooted named daemon, they've got full access to the system. Depending on how things are set up and how they got in, they may be root, or may be another account. But either way, they're in and can now poke around and look for other things to do.
How about you read the article? Specifically, the bit about "devices attached to a computer".
How about you think about what you're saying, AC.
How do YOU burn your CD-R disks without attaching them to a computer? With a lighter? (not many people use CD-R stereo components or CD-R writing digital cameras, but they do exist. Of course, they are in effect... computers!)
That little mirror thing... it's sold to be attached to a computer. (your monitor is part of your computer, is it not?)
What do YOU do with a printer cable? Attach it to your kitchen sink?
I guess that you could argue that a printer cartridge isn't attached to your computer, but instead to your printer... but your printer is either 1) attached to your computer or 2) considered to be part of your computer.
None of them say `Designed for Windows XP' or have been `certified by Microsoft.'
Does this mean that Office Depot won't sell them anymore?
How about things like power cards, printer cables, printer cartridges. Floppies?
How about that little mirror that you stick to your monitor that lets you see people who come up behind you? Or that little `brush' thing for cleaning your monitor? How about a mouse pad?
Consisting of three geostationary satellites and a network of ground stations,
If there's only three satellites, this must only be usable in Europe for now. Too bad -- 5cm accuracy would be sweet!
(Actually, the existing setup is sweet, but 5cm would be much sweeter.)
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month?
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
The fact of the matter is, the whole Free Software/Open Source movement would never have been more than a miniscule irrelevant niche if not for the GPL.
I don't believe this, but of course there's no way to prove or disprove it. The `hacker mentality' was certainly around before RMS got into it -- he grew up surrounded by it and it shaped who he became -- and this mentality likes to give stuff away, including source code. RMS helped it along, but I still believe that it would have happened without him as well.
As far as the GPL goes, Free/Net/Open BSD is doing just fine, and it's not under the GPL licence. Yes, companies (even Microsoft!) are exploiting it's code for commercial gain... but that's not killing *BSD.
[ if not for the GPL ]
There would be no good Free (or even free, for that matter) compilers.
From what I can see, the GPL came into being around June of 1989 (looking through groups.google.com.)
The first reference to the gcc compiler I can find is Februrary of 1987. According to this page, gcc had a beta release in March of 1987.
Yes, it was written by RMS. But to suggest that the GPL is responsible for something that came out before it did is rather incredible, and to suggest that only RMS can write good compilers and give them away is crazy. [ and of course some would complain that gcc isn't a good compiler. ]
RMS did good things for the state of software. I'm not disputing that. But I also tend to believe that if he hadn't, other people would have done much of the stuff that he's attributed with. The GPL may not have ever existed, but people would still be writing software and giving it and hte source away.
You didn't pay, but you didn't get source either and they typically came with an explicit no-commercial-use clause in the license.
Ever hear of `public domain software'? It did exist before the GPL, you know. And yes, you got the source, and you could use it any way you wanted, even commercially.
It's not like the GPL suddenly made software safe for commercial use. In fact, it often makes companies reluctant to use software because it requires things of them that they're often not likely to want to do. Is this a good thing? I'm not sure...
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month?
on
RMS Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
Open Source may not even be here today without him.
Um, you're kidding, right?
Do you really think that RMS is the first person to make something and then give it away?
Yes, he wrote some very useful software. Yes, he got people thinking about `free software'. Yes, he came up with the GPL. Yes, he sang the Free Software Song... but he wasn't the only person to write software and give it away, and he wasn't even the first.
Things may have played out differently if he hadn't ever done the things he did, but to suggest that
Open Source may not even be here today without him.
is disingenuous at best. He may be one of the more vocal proponents of a large movement, but the idea was already around, he just helped to give it a voice. If he hadn't done so, things would be different, but he did NOT single handledly save the free software world from the Evil Corporations.
And he doesn't even call it `Open Source'. He likes the term `Free Software', and will talk about the differences between the two at great length if you let him.
To scan, cat/proc/scsi/scsi.
As for resetting, do you really need that often?
There's a few SCSI support programs built in --
% apropos scsi
sane-find-scanner (1) - find SCSI scanners and their device files
sane-microtek2 (5) - SANE backend for Microtek scanners with SCSI-2 command set
sane-pie (5) - SANE backend for PIE and Devcom SCSI flatbed scanners
sane-scsi (5) - SCSI adapter tips for scanners
sd (4) - Driver for SCSI Disk Drives
st (4) - SCSI tape device
stinit (8) - initialize SCSI magnetic tape drives
stacker - jukebox control
I'm sure it exists. Amanda (the backup program) can use tape changers, even under Linux. It calls an external program to do it. You will have to find the external program, however.
mt is the usual program for controlling tape drives, but at least the version I've got doesn't do changers.
Plus, I'd like to see more about a Linux tape driver.
?
Linux supports SCSI tape drives just fine. Perhaps `man 4 st' would answer your questions?
You only need to install your sniffers on a few boxes to get plenty of good credit card numbers and passwords and such. And if it's installed on only a few boxes, it would (unless they were specifically looking for this) be very hard to detect if done correctly.
And then if you're careful about the credit cards that you use (i.e. use only one or two, or only those that have bought stuff from a given site, etc.) they won't even suspect that people are sniffing at this one site. (If you use every credit card you find, the credit card companies will figure it out pretty quick by finding out what's in common with all the cards in question.)
In short, for every guy who's caught, there's probably dozens of guys who aren't caught.
The EFF often has views similar to the ACLU. If you don't agree with the ACLU, perhaps the EFF is more your speed?
but, to me, they have gotten too politically-oriented
Plato (427-347 B.C.) said it very well --
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being
governed by those who are dumber.
I don't care for politics either. But also know that there's lots of people out there who will happily take my rights away from them if I let them, and I don't plan on letting them do so without some sort of fight.
There's more things than that that one can do, but that's a good start. Voting won't make much of a difference, as you've usually got two canidates who aren't that different, and that's even assuming that your vote will make a difference.
I'm not terribly familiar with the NRA, so I'll pass on that.
But the ACLU, definately. I finally got off my ass and did it. I just became a `card carrying member of the ACLU.' (I wonder if I'll be sent a real card:)
Thank you for visiting our website and also for your generous membership
contribution to the American Civil Liberties Union.
It is because of the support of friends like you that the ACLU has been able to
do so much to protect and expand individual rights in this country for the past
81 years.
Thank you for helping us hold the line in this alarming political climate.
You can join too. You don't have to give them a lot of money -- just having them list you as a member increases their bargaining power.
Except that discrimination based on color/sex/religion *is* illegal (at least in the US).
Yes it is. Which is exactly why I said this --
Obviously they can't just pick *any* reason not to hire you.
I'd assumed that I didn't need to say why they couldn't just pick any reason, but in case I do -- some reasons are illegal.
Basing employment on credit ratings is pretty iffy, and we may actually see legislation making it illegal in the future if there's enough public outcry. Maybe. But for now it's legal.
The post I replied to suggested that you could deny employment to anybody because you aren't obligated to hire them. Which I tried point out is true, but it's not quite that simple...
Is it even legal to refuse someone a job on the basis of their credit?
Sure... A company is under no ogligation to hire you.
All they need do is state that the credit check is a condition of employment.
It's not quite that simple. Let's replace a few words, and make a new question --
Is it even legal to refuse someone a job on the basis of their color/sex/religion?
Sure... A company is under no ogligation to hire you.
All they need do is state that being white/male/praising Jesus is a condition of employment.
Obviously they can't just pick *any* reason not to hire you. Well, maybe they could decide not to hire you because you're black, but they certainly can't *tell* you that, or you'll sue and win...
Yes, we've seen the story about the hard drives. Many times, in many different places.
However, this part --
What's the strangest thing readers have found, or left, on a hard drive?"
is not a duplicate. I think the question would better fit into the Ask Slashdot section, but oh well...
Perhaps somebody was just trying to start up a discussion about things that have been left on harddrives, not about how many times we can call it a dup.
In physics we were taught to assume the earth is an infinitely small point with the mass of the earth, and that to calculate how strongly it attacts something you just calculate radius_of_earth + objects_distance_from_surface.
That's not quite what you were taught. Close, but there's a subtle difference.
Nobody says that the mass of the Earth is all at the middle. What they say is -
1) to `correctly' calculate the gravity would require a computer billions of years, calculating the gravity for each subatomic particle. We need to simplify the matter somehow or we'd never get anywhere.
2) the `mass is all concentrated at the center' simplification is 100% accurate (and can be mathematically proven) if the mass in question is sherical and homogenuous (actually, it doesn't have to be quite homogenuous -- as long as it's 1) spherical and 2) the density at a given radius is a constant, it'll work) so it's a much simplier way of calculating that.
3) the Earth is not a perfect sphere, of course, and it's not homogenuous. But it's relatively close. If we need more accuracy, we can apply some corrections to the simple F=Gm1m2/r^2 formula -- but for most astronomical calculations, this isn't needed.
Physicists are always looking for ways to simplify problems into simpler ones. Calculus is a powerful tool for taking simplified rules and applying them to real world problems.
In the same vein, we could use Relativisitic Quantum Mechanics to calculate the trajectory of a baseball -- but for the vast majority of things, the Newtonian laws work just fine, and are zillions of times simpler, so we use those.
However, I simplified matters a little bit. I said that the explosion compressed the entire mass of the sun into a `shell' that came flying at us. Before the shell reaches us, we see full gravity. After the shell passes us, we'll see *no* gravity (and we'll be dead.) (You can do the calculus on this one if you want.)
If instead of making a shell, it expanded into a homogenuous sphere that got larger and larger, what you described is exactly what would happen.
(I just chose the `shell' because it would make a more `sudden' change.)
But even if the sun could disappear immediately, even so it wouldn't tell us if gravity obeyed the speed of light.
There's two possibilities :
1) suddenly the sun disappears, and we go flying off into space at the same instant.
2) we go flying off into space for no apparant reason, and then the sun disappears.
It *seems* like we'd then know if gravity obeyed the speed of light, yes? No, actually.
The problem is that we'd not know when we started speeding off into space. There would be no acceleration detected on the Earth, no jolt -- we'd not feel the loss of the Sun's gravity. And the only way we could determine our velocity would be to pick something remote (like a star, preferably many stars) and watch our relative veleocity.
We might be able to detect the change if we were already watching the relative velocity of a star (via the red/blue shift of the spectral lines.) But I don't think this is accurate enough for us to detect the orbital motion of the Earth.
In any event, in the real world, measuring the speed of gravity is tricky:)
Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent worked excellently, and I was pulling it down at 100-400 KB/s yesteday, and already have it burned. Haven't installed it yet, however ... but I could have!
HTH.
I dare you to hack into this IP address and do something awful to it! I double dog dare you!
I'll even leave sendmail running to help you get in!
GNU/Linux and lignuiix are just RMS's attempts at getting credit for everything.
In short? That song is not Linux's fault!
I can't imagine that generating enough electricity to actually be worth the trouble. Yes, people like to wave flourscent bulbs under power lines, but that doesn't take much power.
That, and the energy is already lost -- it's not like the bulbs (or wire) are sucking energy from the wire -- the energy has already been radiated.
And it would be very interesting if this were made illegal -- after all, this is exactly how a radio works.
chrooted services don't prevent break-ins. They prevent/reduce damage done after the break-in.
With some security holes, a chrooted daemon can't be cracked where a non-chrooted daemon can, because the exploit does something like invoke /bin/sh, but that just means that the exploit needs to be altered somewhat to do something other than just invoke /bin/sh.
Don't get me wrong -- chrooted daemons are more secure than non-chrooted ones if done properly -- but their purpose is not to prevent break-ins, but to reduce their damage.
If everything is done right, when you exploit a chrooted named daemon, you've got access to a few files that named needs, and nothing else. Yes, your system has been broken into, but all they can do is muck with your named.
If they break into a non-chrooted named daemon, they've got full access to the system. Depending on how things are set up and how they got in, they may be root, or may be another account. But either way, they're in and can now poke around and look for other things to do.
How do YOU burn your CD-R disks without attaching them to a computer? With a lighter? (not many people use CD-R stereo components or CD-R writing digital cameras, but they do exist. Of course, they are in effect ... computers!)
That little mirror thing ... it's sold to be attached to a computer. (your monitor is part of your computer, is it not?)
What do YOU do with a printer cable? Attach it to your kitchen sink?
I guess that you could argue that a printer cartridge isn't attached to your computer, but instead to your printer ... but your printer is either 1) attached to your computer or 2) considered to be part of your computer.
None of them say `Designed for Windows XP' or have been `certified by Microsoft.'
Does this mean that Office Depot won't sell them anymore?
How about things like power cards, printer cables, printer cartridges. Floppies?
How about that little mirror that you stick to your monitor that lets you see people who come up behind you? Or that little `brush' thing for cleaning your monitor? How about a mouse pad?
Sounds stupid to me.
Just because YOU don't, that doesn't mean that OTHER PEOPLE don't.
(Actually, the existing setup is sweet, but 5cm would be much sweeter.)
As far as the GPL goes, Free/Net/Open BSD is doing just fine, and it's not under the GPL licence. Yes, companies (even Microsoft!) are exploiting it's code for commercial gain ... but that's not killing *BSD.
From what I can see, the GPL came into being around June of 1989 (looking through groups.google.com.)The first reference to the gcc compiler I can find is Februrary of 1987. According to this page, gcc had a beta release in March of 1987.
Yes, it was written by RMS. But to suggest that the GPL is responsible for something that came out before it did is rather incredible, and to suggest that only RMS can write good compilers and give them away is crazy. [ and of course some would complain that gcc isn't a good compiler. ]
RMS did good things for the state of software. I'm not disputing that. But I also tend to believe that if he hadn't, other people would have done much of the stuff that he's attributed with. The GPL may not have ever existed, but people would still be writing software and giving it and hte source away.
Ever hear of `public domain software'? It did exist before the GPL, you know. And yes, you got the source, and you could use it any way you wanted, even commercially.It's not like the GPL suddenly made software safe for commercial use. In fact, it often makes companies reluctant to use software because it requires things of them that they're often not likely to want to do. Is this a good thing? I'm not sure ...
Do you really think that RMS is the first person to make something and then give it away?
Yes, he wrote some very useful software. Yes, he got people thinking about `free software'. Yes, he came up with the GPL. Yes, he sang the Free Software Song ... but he wasn't the only person to write software and give it away, and he wasn't even the first.
Things may have played out differently if he hadn't ever done the things he did, but to suggest that
is disingenuous at best. He may be one of the more vocal proponents of a large movement, but the idea was already around, he just helped to give it a voice. If he hadn't done so, things would be different, but he did NOT single handledly save the free software world from the Evil Corporations.And he doesn't even call it `Open Source'. He likes the term `Free Software', and will talk about the differences between the two at great length if you let him.
There used to be a nice Linux kernel history page, but it doesn't seem to exist anywhere anymore. Pity.
But back to 0.7, I can't find any evidence that 0.07 existed either, if that's what you meant.
Looks like 0.95 came out in March of 1992, and 0.01 sometime in 1991.
As for resetting, do you really need that often?
There's a few SCSI support programs built in --
I'm sure it exists. Amanda (the backup program) can use tape changers, even under Linux. It calls an external program to do it. You will have to find the external program, however.mt is the usual program for controlling tape drives, but at least the version I've got doesn't do changers.
?Linux supports SCSI tape drives just fine. Perhaps `man 4 st' would answer your questions?
From gdm.conf --
Allows me to have my windows and my wife to have hers. Switch between the two like two virtual consoles ...
I've never seen a non x86 box that could do virtual consoles ... and they were much missed.
(Oddly, Solaris x86 has them!)
You only need to install your sniffers on a few boxes to get plenty of good credit card numbers and passwords and such. And if it's installed on only a few boxes, it would (unless they were specifically looking for this) be very hard to detect if done correctly.
And then if you're careful about the credit cards that you use (i.e. use only one or two, or only those that have bought stuff from a given site, etc.) they won't even suspect that people are sniffing at this one site. (If you use every credit card you find, the credit card companies will figure it out pretty quick by finding out what's in common with all the cards in question.)
In short, for every guy who's caught, there's probably dozens of guys who aren't caught.
Be afraid. Or, more importantly, be careful.
I'm not terribly familiar with the NRA, so I'll pass on that.
But the ACLU, definately. I finally got off my ass and did it. I just became a `card carrying member of the ACLU.' (I wonder if I'll be sent a real card :)
You can join too. You don't have to give them a lot of money -- just having them list you as a member increases their bargaining power.Basing employment on credit ratings is pretty iffy, and we may actually see legislation making it illegal in the future if there's enough public outcry. Maybe. But for now it's legal.
The post I replied to suggested that you could deny employment to anybody because you aren't obligated to hire them. Which I tried point out is true, but it's not quite that simple ...
(fortunately, the original web page is not up anymore.)
However, this part --
is not a duplicate. I think the question would better fit into the Ask Slashdot section, but oh wellPerhaps somebody was just trying to start up a discussion about things that have been left on harddrives, not about how many times we can call it a dup.
Nobody says that the mass of the Earth is all at the middle. What they say is -
1) to `correctly' calculate the gravity would require a computer billions of years, calculating the gravity for each subatomic particle. We need to simplify the matter somehow or we'd never get anywhere.
2) the `mass is all concentrated at the center' simplification is 100% accurate (and can be mathematically proven) if the mass in question is sherical and homogenuous (actually, it doesn't have to be quite homogenuous -- as long as it's 1) spherical and 2) the density at a given radius is a constant, it'll work) so it's a much simplier way of calculating that.
3) the Earth is not a perfect sphere, of course, and it's not homogenuous. But it's relatively close. If we need more accuracy, we can apply some corrections to the simple F=Gm1m2/r^2 formula -- but for most astronomical calculations, this isn't needed.
Physicists are always looking for ways to simplify problems into simpler ones. Calculus is a powerful tool for taking simplified rules and applying them to real world problems.
In the same vein, we could use Relativisitic Quantum Mechanics to calculate the trajectory of a baseball -- but for the vast majority of things, the Newtonian laws work just fine, and are zillions of times simpler, so we use those.
However, I simplified matters a little bit. I said that the explosion compressed the entire mass of the sun into a `shell' that came flying at us. Before the shell reaches us, we see full gravity. After the shell passes us, we'll see *no* gravity (and we'll be dead.) (You can do the calculus on this one if you want.)
If instead of making a shell, it expanded into a homogenuous sphere that got larger and larger, what you described is exactly what would happen.
(I just chose the `shell' because it would make a more `sudden' change.)
But even if the sun could disappear immediately, even so it wouldn't tell us if gravity obeyed the speed of light.
There's two possibilities :
1) suddenly the sun disappears, and we go flying off into space at the same instant.
2) we go flying off into space for no apparant reason, and then the sun disappears.
It *seems* like we'd then know if gravity obeyed the speed of light, yes? No, actually.
The problem is that we'd not know when we started speeding off into space. There would be no acceleration detected on the Earth, no jolt -- we'd not feel the loss of the Sun's gravity. And the only way we could determine our velocity would be to pick something remote (like a star, preferably many stars) and watch our relative veleocity.
We might be able to detect the change if we were already watching the relative velocity of a star (via the red/blue shift of the spectral lines.) But I don't think this is accurate enough for us to detect the orbital motion of the Earth.
In any event, in the real world, measuring the speed of gravity is tricky :)