Because if you don't like the government, the best thing to do would be to put yourself up for the election, rather than "yelling" abuse on Slashdot...
btw, I was about 15 when interest rates were 18 percent, and unemployment was around 11 percent. That was a great time to be considering my future. If you think this government is bad, then you don't know how bad it was under Labour in the late 80s, early 90s.
CSIRO is a not-for-profit Australian Government organisation. Do all these companies really want to screw around with what is likely to be their biggest customer in Australia ?
Invalidate the patent by all means if it shouldn't have been granted. However, if it is legitimate, then just pay the licensing fees.
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented. If these companies don't like that, then they should have all their patents revoked immediately, or they should sue the US government for incopetence because the US government granted the patent in the first place.
I did a whole lot of programming in pascal as a hobby many years ago, after moving from it in Basic. Since that time, I've learned C, although I haven't done anywhere near as much programming in it, partly because I lost interest in programming in general - I've found a few other IT related things that have interested me more eg., networking.
I like C a lot, as it allows you to break a lot of "general" programming the rules. However, I think it is a terrible language to learn programming in, because it doesn't enforce general programming rules that should normally be followed, unlike pascal.
After you've learnt the rules of programming in a language such as Pascal, you can usually break the rules in C relatively safely, because you realise when you're stepping across the line, can work out what the consequences will be, and how to do it safely.
Of course, you're still being a bit naughtly, and, the D you deserve will need to be sort from some other source than the programming language you're using:-)
, as the original article poster was using the "all secrecy is bad" misnomer, and I hit my "I've got to say something" threashold:-). It was probably a bit off topic, and I can see how people were thinking that my comments were specifically relating to freenet. I'm wasn't saying use a secret algorithm, I'm saying that using a non-secret algorithm, but keeping which one you're using secret will add to the security of a system.
In the case of encryption algorithms, however, the benefit of publishing the algorithm, thereby subjecting it to public review, outweighs keeping it secret.
It was a bit hard to make the point I was trying to. As always, a bullet point summary seems to be better sometimes:
Use a publically evaluated, non-secret cryptographic algorithm, such as 3DES, AES, Blowfish, etc.
Don't tell people which one you are using, as this will increase the depth of security. They'll have to at least now discover two things - the value of the key, and which (public) crypto algorithm you're using.
I'd very much doubt that if people were given all the public addresses they needed (negating the need for the address expansion property of NAT), they'd be happy for their machines to be publicly visible, respond to ICMP echo-requests a.k.a. pings etc.
Note that I didn't say it was the only property that people liked, just that it was one of the main ones.
Nothing wrong with obfuscation
on
Revamping Freenet
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
A lot of people seem to be confused about obfuscation / obscurity.
Obscurity or hiding things is a perfectly valid security technique, and can be used as a component of a defense in depth strategy. One of the main reasons people love NAT boxes is because they provide this property automatically. (I don't like them for other properties they have, and a firewall combinded with public address space will be just as effective at providing this specific property).
People are stretching the meaning of Kirchoff's theorm. Krichoff was refering to crytographic algorithms when he said that there is no security in obscurity - the security of a crytographic algorithm should only rely on the secrecy of key. You should assume that the functioning of the algorithm will eventually be discovered by your adversaries, and therefore shouldn't make the security of the system depend on the functioning of the algorithm being kept secret. That being said, restricting knowledge of what algorithm you're using will make a contribution of the system being secured, as it can add to the depth an adversary has to penetrate.
People seem to assume that laws should only be enacted if they can "perfectly" prevent what is made illegal. People then seem to say a law that doesn't perfectly prevent the act that is made illegal is a waste of time.
Laws don't work that way.
Prevention of "illegal acts" is actually an intended side effect of the law. Murder, for example, is commonly prevented because of the consequences of the laws against murder, not purely because of the existance of the law itself. The significant punishment for murder hopefully makes people think twice about committing it. Of course, people sometimes still commit murder, irrespective of the law against it. Murder could be declared illegal, with no punishment attached. Law abiding people should therefore not commit it, however the significant punishment attached is what gives the law it's "teeth".
Laws primary goal is to create a significant level of discouragment to commit the illegal act. In most cases, that discouragement then has a resultant effect of preventing most cases occuring. Laws are actually a form of behaviour control.
Laws such as this one are an attempt to make spyware authors think twice about creating it. It certainly won't perfectly eliminate it. However, if there is a significant reduction in spyware, then the law can be considered to be effective.
My post could have only been redundant if everybody, except the original poster, knew that some customers weren't worth having.
of course, if the original poster didn't know that, then my post wouldn't be redundant to him or her.
Actually, come to think of it, with the amount of complaining about various, insignificant
things here on Slashdot, a relatively high percentage of slashdotters would probably be "customers you don't want to have...".
Firstly let me say that I agree with all you've said, except the following. Note that I'm not endorsing what HP initially did, although I am endorsing their actions in putting the comment back.
Every consumer knows not everything will be perfect every time.
Unfortunately, there are consumers / customers that expect perfection every time, which I think is unrealistic, and commonly they're also the most vocal. Futher more, they're sometimes also the most stingy - they have "champagne tastes" on a "beer budget".
I've learnt through bad experience there are sometimes "customers" you don't want to have. Some customers want your cheapest priced product or service, and if you give it to them, then have the gall to complain that what they got wasn't the "top of the market". Spending time and effort then dealing with all the follow on "crap" disolves any profit that you derived from the initial sale. They'd have been better not to deal with in the first place.
Less experienced people tend to believe that in business, any customer is a good customer. However, it is better to remember that the only good customer to have is one that is actually a good customer - one that is willing to pay a fair price for what you are providing, and is willing to accept that you're not 100% perfect (just like they aren't), and is then willing to give you reasonable opportunities to rememdy an problems in an acceptable time frame.
Ah, I understand what you're getting at now, and it's rather selfish of those people.
I certainly agree it's selfish, obviously that doesn't mean people won't try to do it:-). That being said, if people, such as Agile, make a useful and convenient resource freely and easily available, I think it's fairly likely that people will try use it. It's a bit like a having a tap available in a public park. Even if it is obviously not a drinking fountain, most people will probably have no problems with taking a drink from it, because it is so easily available.
What's wrong with setting up your own Ad-Hoc network or using a small USB powered AP? Honestly...
Nothing wrong with doing it, no where near as easy as using wireless bandwidth that is already there and available:-)
I must admit I haven't got much practicle experience with wireless stuff, so I'm theorising about these problems.
If you were to setup your own AP, is it easy to select which AP you want to use ? In other words, would it be hard to avoid using the Citylan APs, possibly when they have a stronger signal strength than your AP ? I've heard something about wireless channels, and how APs can be configured to only use certain ones. Do you happen to know if the Citylan APs use selected and well known channels, and therefore you could setup your own AP on different one(s) ? If the Citylan APs are using all channels, and there isn't an easy or convenient way of selecting which AP you can use, then to me that sounds a bit selfish on the Citylan part. It would mean that althought the 802.11 spectrum is shared and unlicensed, the Citylan people have configured their equipment as though it is exclusively theirs.
I think they were using an open network, with a login page the first time you try to use the connection.
That's probably only the case if you enable DHCP, and then aquire an IP address from the Citylan network.
My question is more about the idea of running your own IP subnet over the same wireless LAN, by statically configuring IP addresses on the interfaces of the devices that you want to communicate. In this sense, you aren't stealing Internet bandwidth, you're stealing wireless bandwidth. If it is an open network, with an SSID of "Agile" or something similar, then using the wireless network for your own IP networking purposes is likely to be easily possible. Of course, you'll also be consuming bandwidth that the legitimate wireless Internet users would also want to be using.
The only way they could prevent that sort of thing happening is to also enable authentication at layer 2, in other words, prevent use of the wireless LAN unless you're a known and authenticated use. Even then on a wireless network, that can be a bit hard, because you can't really disable the "port" that the device is attached to, as, of course ports don't exist, unlike on ethernet switches.
Even if they switch on authenticated Internet access, are they going to have problems with people just using the wireless layer 2 link for trading files between laptops etc.
Are they using something like 802.1X/LEAP for layer 2 authentication, which would also prevent unauthorised use of the wireless, layer 2 bandwidth itself ?
Good post - particularly the "loaded words" angle.
Thanks.
Remember (and ironically, it was my point regarding the whole concept of this article!), that such a site is dealing with the lowest common denominator incapable of making reasoned security decisions for themselves, and in that light, a little over-compensation can be forgiven. Those who know better, can measure the danger for themselves.
I think that that over-compensation approach could be acceptable when dealing with very young children, who's brains haven't developed to a level where they can understand the process of evaluating certain risks.
However, I don't think it is necessary to use those sorts of techniques on adults. Steve would be more helpful if he explained, in particular without the sensationalising, why the particular threats are there, why he considers them to be risks, and how to deal with them appropriately. Daily, adults make value decisions e.g., weighting up whether to buy one product or another, or whether to go down a dark alley or not, or whether to take a turn in front of on coming traffic or not at stop lights (ie. right turn (or left if you are from the US) across traffic when there is "green", but no "green-arrow"), risking a car accident.
While I don't think he is going this far, his techniques are certainly the some of those used by cults. The basic technique is to set up an unrealistic level of fear about something, such that fear dominates the person's thinking about the particular thing being considered. The "saviour" then implants the idea that only they can save or protect the victim of this mind trick from the fearful things. Of course, the problem is that the "saviour" is the same person who created and instilled these unrealistic levels of fear in the first place.
Usually these fear / protector belief scenarios can be discredited quite easily. Steve Gibson seems to be promoting i.e., creating a fear, that the Internet is a really evil place. The question then is, if it is so evil, and he should be believing it because he is saying it, why is he still connected to it ?
Steve Gibson often is referred to as being a "Security Expert", yet one has to see his appearances on *real* security boards/interviews/gatherings. Where was Steve Gibson at Defcon/BlackHat Conference ? Why doesn't he comment/ on Bugtraq or other Security Focus mailing lists ?
The answer is quite simple: he would get nailed down by arguments and facts from real security experts in less then a minute. These persons tend not to be very impressed by self-proclaimed Security Experts and his obfuscation of the real issues and intentions.
As you can read on his resume page, Gibson worked for years as a marketer "Gibson founded a proprietorship specializing in media advertising and public relations" , and that's what he is really good at.
There is usually always an amount of truth behind stories in tabloid newspapers. However, everybody knows that the tabloid newspaper will sensationalise the story to make it sound worse than it already is. Of course they do this to sell more newspapers.
Steve does the same thing, and while he does have a few things to sell, it appears that the main reason he does it is to stroke his inflated ego.
His technique is the same as tabloids - use loaded words to spread Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt among his readers, such that they tend to think that only he knows and understands the whole truth, and only he is the one that will "save them". Notice how he liberally also uses HTML features, such as colour, font sizing and emphasis to highlight some of the loaded words. His DoS attack description could be a canonical example of this technique.
You may be interested in my first attempt at doing it, in regards to the possiblity that your house could be burgled - GRC.com has a new Sheilds UP Test.... It's not that hard to do, and for somebody who lived in a house, yet wasn't aware that they could be burgled, it would be quite scary to find out, particularly in the way I've presented this information.
I was running bridging between multiple Qemu instances (around 5), using tun/tap interfaces on a 2.6.9 kernel. There were some problems and I reported them to the netdev mailing list. It was suggested that I try out the then current 2.6.10-rc, and they disappeared.
Have you reported the problems to the netdev mailing list, or possibly the bridge maintainers ? Here are the bridge details from the MAINTAINERS file in the linux kernel source:
I'm running a circa-1999 machine, and have been running 2.6 since 2.6.0, and am currently running 2.6.11. I use it everyday, so it isn't just sitting idle. Here is my current uptime:
At the risk of starting a religious war, are you running any binary modules ? They can cause some stability problems.
I avoid binary modules, or rather, make sure that the hardware I buy is supported by official kernel device drivers. Back in 1993, when I first started to use Linux, you didn't have a choice - it was open source device drivers or the hardware just wouldn't work.
Here are some brief specs on my machine.
>cat/proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 7 model name : Pentium III (Katmai) stepping : 3 cpu MHz : 448.172 cache size : 512 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse bogomips : 886.78
OpenGL isn't fully working on my Radeon 9200 yet, following the dri-development mailing list, there seems to be some bugs that are causing it to lock up. I've had glxgears run for about 4 minutes, then X locks up. If I desperately need it, I'll put my Matrox G550 back in.
CA have contributed so much to the Linux kernel, so they know what they're talking about. NOT.
What is CA's motive in saying this ? They have no real experience in developing operating systems, nor are they producing data and a testing methodology to backup their opinion.
There's no such thing. It's your money. They take it. What's charitable about it?
They don't take it, the charity does. The government doesn't apply tax to the money you donate to the charity.
Governments could be nasty, and tax your all salary no matter what you did with it. However, they don't tax charitable donations - that seems chariable to me.
At least from a personal perspective, I think that part of the incentive to donate is that if you're just over a tax bracket, you may be able to drop to a lower bracket.
Sure, it does reduce your tax, but it also costs you money to do it. I'm pretty sure that finacially, it doesn't make you any better off at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Because if you don't like the government, the best thing to do would be to put yourself up for the election, rather than "yelling" abuse on Slashdot ...
btw, I was about 15 when interest rates were 18 percent, and unemployment was around 11 percent. That was a great time to be considering my future. If you think this government is bad, then you don't know how bad it was under Labour in the late 80s, early 90s.
CSIRO is a not-for-profit Australian Government organisation. Do all these companies really want to screw around with what is likely to be their biggest customer in Australia ?
Invalidate the patent by all means if it shouldn't have been granted. However, if it is legitimate, then just pay the licensing fees.
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented. If these companies don't like that, then they should have all their patents revoked immediately, or they should sue the US government for incopetence because the US government granted the patent in the first place.
Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language
I did a whole lot of programming in pascal as a hobby many years ago, after moving from it in Basic. Since that time, I've learned C, although I haven't done anywhere near as much programming in it, partly because I lost interest in programming in general - I've found a few other IT related things that have interested me more eg., networking.
I like C a lot, as it allows you to break a lot of "general" programming the rules. However, I think it is a terrible language to learn programming in, because it doesn't enforce general programming rules that should normally be followed, unlike pascal.
After you've learnt the rules of programming in a language such as Pascal, you can usually break the rules in C relatively safely, because you realise when you're stepping across the line, can work out what the consequences will be, and how to do it safely.
Of course, you're still being a bit naughtly, and, the D you deserve will need to be sort from some other source than the programming language you're using :-)
, as the original article poster was using the "all secrecy is bad" misnomer, and I hit my "I've got to say something" threashold :-). It was probably a bit off topic, and I can see how people were thinking that my comments were specifically relating to freenet. I'm wasn't saying use a secret algorithm, I'm saying that using a non-secret algorithm, but keeping which one you're using secret will add to the security of a system.
In the case of encryption algorithms, however, the benefit of publishing the algorithm, thereby subjecting it to public review, outweighs keeping it secret.
It was a bit hard to make the point I was trying to. As always, a bullet point summary seems to be better sometimes :
I'd very much doubt that if people were given all the public addresses they needed (negating the need for the address expansion property of NAT), they'd be happy for their machines to be publicly visible, respond to ICMP echo-requests a.k.a. pings etc.
Note that I didn't say it was the only property that people liked, just that it was one of the main ones.
A lot of people seem to be confused about obfuscation / obscurity.
Obscurity or hiding things is a perfectly valid security technique, and can be used as a component of a defense in depth strategy. One of the main reasons people love NAT boxes is because they provide this property automatically. (I don't like them for other properties they have, and a firewall combinded with public address space will be just as effective at providing this specific property).
People are stretching the meaning of Kirchoff's theorm. Krichoff was refering to crytographic algorithms when he said that there is no security in obscurity - the security of a crytographic algorithm should only rely on the secrecy of key. You should assume that the functioning of the algorithm will eventually be discovered by your adversaries, and therefore shouldn't make the security of the system depend on the functioning of the algorithm being kept secret. That being said, restricting knowledge of what algorithm you're using will make a contribution of the system being secured, as it can add to the depth an adversary has to penetrate.
People seem to assume that laws should only be enacted if they can "perfectly" prevent what is made illegal. People then seem to say a law that doesn't perfectly prevent the act that is made illegal is a waste of time.
Laws don't work that way.
Prevention of "illegal acts" is actually an intended side effect of the law. Murder, for example, is commonly prevented because of the consequences of the laws against murder, not purely because of the existance of the law itself. The significant punishment for murder hopefully makes people think twice about committing it. Of course, people sometimes still commit murder, irrespective of the law against it. Murder could be declared illegal, with no punishment attached. Law abiding people should therefore not commit it, however the significant punishment attached is what gives the law it's "teeth".
Laws primary goal is to create a significant level of discouragment to commit the illegal act. In most cases, that discouragement then has a resultant effect of preventing most cases occuring. Laws are actually a form of behaviour control.
Laws such as this one are an attempt to make spyware authors think twice about creating it. It certainly won't perfectly eliminate it. However, if there is a significant reduction in spyware, then the law can be considered to be effective.
This is an effort worthy of more publicity.
My post could have only been redundant if everybody, except the original poster, knew that some customers weren't worth having.
of course, if the original poster didn't know that, then my post wouldn't be redundant to him or her.
Actually, come to think of it, with the amount of complaining about various, insignificant things here on Slashdot, a relatively high percentage of slashdotters would probably be "customers you don't want to have ...".
Firstly let me say that I agree with all you've said, except the following. Note that I'm not endorsing what HP initially did, although I am endorsing their actions in putting the comment back.
Every consumer knows not everything will be perfect every time.
Unfortunately, there are consumers / customers that expect perfection every time, which I think is unrealistic, and commonly they're also the most vocal. Futher more, they're sometimes also the most stingy - they have "champagne tastes" on a "beer budget".
I've learnt through bad experience there are sometimes "customers" you don't want to have. Some customers want your cheapest priced product or service, and if you give it to them, then have the gall to complain that what they got wasn't the "top of the market". Spending time and effort then dealing with all the follow on "crap" disolves any profit that you derived from the initial sale. They'd have been better not to deal with in the first place.
Less experienced people tend to believe that in business, any customer is a good customer. However, it is better to remember that the only good customer to have is one that is actually a good customer - one that is willing to pay a fair price for what you are providing, and is willing to accept that you're not 100% perfect (just like they aren't), and is then willing to give you reasonable opportunities to rememdy an problems in an acceptable time frame.
I'm certainly an OSS advocate, however, I consider open data formats to be even more important, in particular for government use.
Yes, we love our Fosters, it is the best Aussie beer ever. I personally drink 3 pints of the stuff with breakfast, lunch and tea.
Shh! We've got to let them think we drink camel piss ..ur... Fosters, so we can keep all the good beer to ourselves.
Ah, I understand what you're getting at now, and it's rather selfish of those people.
I certainly agree it's selfish, obviously that doesn't mean people won't try to do it :-). That being said, if people, such as Agile, make a useful and convenient resource freely and easily available, I think it's fairly likely that people will try use it. It's a bit like a having a tap available in a public park. Even if it is obviously not a drinking fountain, most people will probably have no problems with taking a drink from it, because it is so easily available.
What's wrong with setting up your own Ad-Hoc network or using a small USB powered AP? Honestly...
Nothing wrong with doing it, no where near as easy as using wireless bandwidth that is already there and available :-)
I must admit I haven't got much practicle experience with wireless stuff, so I'm theorising about these problems.
If you were to setup your own AP, is it easy to select which AP you want to use ? In other words, would it be hard to avoid using the Citylan APs, possibly when they have a stronger signal strength than your AP ? I've heard something about wireless channels, and how APs can be configured to only use certain ones. Do you happen to know if the Citylan APs use selected and well known channels, and therefore you could setup your own AP on different one(s) ? If the Citylan APs are using all channels, and there isn't an easy or convenient way of selecting which AP you can use, then to me that sounds a bit selfish on the Citylan part. It would mean that althought the 802.11 spectrum is shared and unlicensed, the Citylan people have configured their equipment as though it is exclusively theirs.
I think they were using an open network, with a login page the first time you try to use the connection.
That's probably only the case if you enable DHCP, and then aquire an IP address from the Citylan network.
My question is more about the idea of running your own IP subnet over the same wireless LAN, by statically configuring IP addresses on the interfaces of the devices that you want to communicate. In this sense, you aren't stealing Internet bandwidth, you're stealing wireless bandwidth. If it is an open network, with an SSID of "Agile" or something similar, then using the wireless network for your own IP networking purposes is likely to be easily possible. Of course, you'll also be consuming bandwidth that the legitimate wireless Internet users would also want to be using.
The only way they could prevent that sort of thing happening is to also enable authentication at layer 2, in other words, prevent use of the wireless LAN unless you're a known and authenticated use. Even then on a wireless network, that can be a bit hard, because you can't really disable the "port" that the device is attached to, as, of course ports don't exist, unlike on ethernet switches.
Even if they switch on authenticated Internet access, are they going to have problems with people just using the wireless layer 2 link for trading files between laptops etc.
Are they using something like 802.1X/LEAP for layer 2 authentication, which would also prevent unauthorised use of the wireless, layer 2 bandwidth itself ?
You couldn't see it from the track, however, it isn't all that far away from the CBD - about 1/2 hours drive at "normal" person speed.
Good post - particularly the "loaded words" angle.
Thanks.
Remember (and ironically, it was my point regarding the whole concept of this article!), that such a site is dealing with the lowest common denominator incapable of making reasoned security decisions for themselves, and in that light, a little over-compensation can be forgiven. Those who know better, can measure the danger for themselves.
I think that that over-compensation approach could be acceptable when dealing with very young children, who's brains haven't developed to a level where they can understand the process of evaluating certain risks.
However, I don't think it is necessary to use those sorts of techniques on adults. Steve would be more helpful if he explained, in particular without the sensationalising, why the particular threats are there, why he considers them to be risks, and how to deal with them appropriately. Daily, adults make value decisions e.g., weighting up whether to buy one product or another, or whether to go down a dark alley or not, or whether to take a turn in front of on coming traffic or not at stop lights (ie. right turn (or left if you are from the US) across traffic when there is "green", but no "green-arrow"), risking a car accident.
While I don't think he is going this far, his techniques are certainly the some of those used by cults. The basic technique is to set up an unrealistic level of fear about something, such that fear dominates the person's thinking about the particular thing being considered. The "saviour" then implants the idea that only they can save or protect the victim of this mind trick from the fearful things. Of course, the problem is that the "saviour" is the same person who created and instilled these unrealistic levels of fear in the first place.
Usually these fear / protector belief scenarios can be discredited quite easily. Steve Gibson seems to be promoting i.e., creating a fear, that the Internet is a really evil place. The question then is, if it is so evil, and he should be believing it because he is saying it, why is he still connected to it ?
From http://www.grcsucks.com/.
Steve Gibson often is referred to as being a "Security Expert", yet one has to see his appearances on *real* security boards/interviews/gatherings. Where was Steve Gibson at Defcon/BlackHat Conference ? Why doesn't he comment/ on Bugtraq or other Security Focus mailing lists ?
The answer is quite simple: he would get nailed down by arguments and facts from real security experts in less then a minute. These persons tend not to be very impressed by self-proclaimed Security Experts and his obfuscation of the real issues and intentions.
As you can read on his resume page, Gibson worked for years as a marketer "Gibson founded a proprietorship specializing in media advertising and public relations" , and that's what he is really good at.
There is usually always an amount of truth behind stories in tabloid newspapers. However, everybody knows that the tabloid newspaper will sensationalise the story to make it sound worse than it already is. Of course they do this to sell more newspapers.
Steve does the same thing, and while he does have a few things to sell, it appears that the main reason he does it is to stroke his inflated ego.
His technique is the same as tabloids - use loaded words to spread Fear, Uncertainly and Doubt among his readers, such that they tend to think that only he knows and understands the whole truth, and only he is the one that will "save them". Notice how he liberally also uses HTML features, such as colour, font sizing and emphasis to highlight some of the loaded words. His DoS attack description could be a canonical example of this technique.
You may be interested in my first attempt at doing it, in regards to the possiblity that your house could be burgled - GRC.com has a new Sheilds UP Test .... It's not that hard to do, and for somebody who lived in a house, yet wasn't aware that they could be burgled, it would be quite scary to find out, particularly in the way I've presented this information.
I was running bridging between multiple Qemu instances (around 5), using tun/tap interfaces on a 2.6.9 kernel. There were some problems and I reported them to the netdev mailing list. It was suggested that I try out the then current 2.6.10-rc, and they disappeared.
Here is the URL for my post to the list :
[2.6.9] Networking crash, slightly exotic setup, bridged tap/tun
Have you reported the problems to the netdev mailing list, or possibly the bridge maintainers ? Here are the bridge details from the MAINTAINERS file in the linux kernel source :
and the netdev list
I'm running a circa-1999 machine, and have been running 2.6 since 2.6.0, and am currently running 2.6.11. I use it everyday, so it isn't just sitting idle. Here is my current uptime :
At the risk of starting a religious war, are you running any binary modules ? They can cause some stability problems.
I avoid binary modules, or rather, make sure that the hardware I buy is supported by official kernel device drivers. Back in 1993, when I first started to use Linux, you didn't have a choice - it was open source device drivers or the hardware just wouldn't work.
Here are some brief specs on my machine.
OpenGL isn't fully working on my Radeon 9200 yet, following the dri-development mailing list, there seems to be some bugs that are causing it to lock up. I've had glxgears run for about 4 minutes, then X locks up. If I desperately need it, I'll put my Matrox G550 back in.
In my experience, 2.6 has been as stable as 2.4.
CA have contributed so much to the Linux kernel, so they know what they're talking about. NOT.
What is CA's motive in saying this ? They have no real experience in developing operating systems, nor are they producing data and a testing methodology to backup their opinion.
It seems to me they might be talking through their hat.
There's no such thing. It's your money. They take it. What's charitable about it?
They don't take it, the charity does. The government doesn't apply tax to the money you donate to the charity.
Governments could be nasty, and tax your all salary no matter what you did with it. However, they don't tax charitable donations - that seems chariable to me.
At least from a personal perspective, I think that part of the incentive to donate is that if you're just over a tax bracket, you may be able to drop to a lower bracket.
Sure, it does reduce your tax, but it also costs you money to do it. I'm pretty sure that finacially, it doesn't make you any better off at all.