I notice that this post was moderated to 'funny', though I don't think the poster was trying to make a joke. And while he makes a good point - security isn't the only part of running a company - the rest of it is more of what's -wrong- with the US than a good solution.
Who cares about being sued? Very few people, actually, unless they're going up against deep pockets corporations who seem to LOVE to sue everyone to get their way. Start a law suit over a port-scan? That's like shooting someone for peeking into your car windows in the Safeway parking lot. And, personally, I seriously doubt some script kiddie in Turkey (to grab a country out of the air) has anything to worry about worse than losing his dialup-account.
And lock your door. The pitbull likes hamburger...
I read the post on BugTraq earlier today and my immediate reaction was "and the point is?" Shutting off this "web bug" is trivial if someone is concerned with privacy. It's also relatively useless for tracking confidential information, unless the Industrial Espionage community has somehow managed to miss the "You're on the Net, you're vulnerable" point.
While it can provide some useful information (as someone pointed out with the resume thing) a well configured proxy server completely negates this little "bug."
Honestly, this is no more insidious than logging normal connections to a web server. While the cookie issue is a potential concern, it shouldn't be a big deal to bypass. After all. How hard is it to modify your cookie files?
We won't go into the bloatware aspects of Word, or why they seem fascinated with 'transparently integrating" everything. This is pretty much a non-issue.
Obviously, the "Privacy on IRC" issue is a non-issue. There IS no privacy on IRC. Well, not without doing some encryption...
As for the interface, take it a step farther. Or maybe two steps. Have an interface set up where you can say "I don't want your bots connecting to this network/server under any condition." OR "here is our network/channel information, please make it available on the list."
What I'd like to see, as a server admin, is a public listing of the source IP's of the Bots, or have them use a consistant U@H configuration so a channel manager (IRCop, Admin) can selectively ban them. If they're obfuscating them in order to get around a server's AUP, then they have no business there and their "service" is an intrusion. If they ask first and are willing to stay out of where they're not wanted it's not such a big deal. If they aren't following the rules, they should be treated like any other lamer on the Net. K-Line them and send a complaint to their ISP. (I know. "Like that will do any good!")
I run it on a K6/2-200 with 128 Meg and I've seen the same behaviour. The CPU usage spikes when it's first started, then settles down to a more reasonable 8-10%, with occassional bumps into the 20's and dips under 5.
What I have seen is X slow to a crawl with XMMS running. While I'm only running a 2Meg video card, I always thought it was a little odd that X slowed as much as it did with the CPU load that low.
Of course, if I want -real- sound, I leave the computer room behind, fire up the stereo, and the let Boston Acoustics rattle the light fixtures...
No one knows how Tesla did it? Well, that's not a particularly engrossing mystery, since Electric cars were already some 30-40 odd years old by then. Making one go 60 shouldn't have been a big deal, since Steam cars were already doing over 100.
Your "turn of the century" comment is more amusing than anything else. You don't seem to know much about automotive history here, since back around the turn of the century there was some real competition between electrics, steamers and gasoline engines. Gas engines won the battle then because as their technology matured they became more reliable and longer ranged than their competition. The best technology won out back at the dawn of the 20th century, and the engineers have been working on refining it ever since. (And no, that doesn't mean moden electrics, or fuel cells, or something else, won't be better tomorrow.)
For the record, Wankle style rotaries are mechanically efficient and marvelously smooth, but they're a bitch to get running clean and they're less fuel efficient than a comparable recip. We have computers in cars because carbs and mechanical fuel injectors aren't as readily adjustable as a computer controlled system. O2 sensors and the rest let the computer optimize the fuel mixture for economy, performance, emissions, and reliability, all on the fly. Think carbs are better, faster, and more efficient? Look at the induction system of an F1 motor some time. Heck, look at the whole car. Those things live by their computers.
Mediocracy is the Enemy of Good. Better is the enemy of Just Good Enough.
In reading the article, it seems he was studying the orbits of "long period" comets. While I forget the definition of "long period" I seem to remember it's on the order of hundreds to thousands of years. Given that, it seems likely that the comets in question have only been reliably observed once, so their orbits won't be known with a great deal of accuracy.
I'm not sure where the 1:1700 probability came from, but I'm sure the actual paper will elaborate.
As for observing this beast (if such exists) I'm not surprised it hasn't been spotted. Its energy output will be very low (probably not dramatically more than Jupiter's) and probably limited to the deep infra-red. Of course, without more information, it's hard to say how big this rogue planet would need to be. A good size asteroid (or several on different trajectories) could easily perturb the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud.
Until they release the paper, of course, anything we say here is pure speculation. Personally, I'll put a small wager on the evidence failing under peer review.
>>It does indeed. But boys actually do not need an incentive to crave computers. Someone said it was positive to make computers that would attract girls. I do not think it is a good way to attract girls.
Boys don't need any incentive? Isn't that just as sexist? These machines are targeted at children young enough to be attracted to the "Toy tie-in" provided by the Hot Wheels or Barbie brands. It's the parents who buy them, not the kids. Kids old enough to care about the hardware specs aren't going to worry too much about what color the case is, or whether it comes with Hot Wheels Racing, Barbie's MakeUp Kit, or Quake II. They'll get hardware they like and install what they want.
If it gets them into using the machine at an early age, why not? As for "Gender Neutral" maybe we can start selling a mid-range box, with a slate grey case, and a big penguin on the front...
Slashdot Mirror
I notice that this post was moderated to 'funny', though I don't think the poster was trying to make a joke. And while he makes a good point - security isn't the only part of running a company - the rest of it is more of what's -wrong- with the US than a good solution.
Who cares about being sued? Very few people, actually, unless they're going up against deep pockets corporations who seem to LOVE to sue everyone to get their way. Start a law suit over a port-scan? That's like shooting someone for peeking into your car windows in the Safeway parking lot. And, personally, I seriously doubt some script kiddie in Turkey (to grab a country out of the air) has anything to worry about worse than losing his dialup-account.
And lock your door. The pitbull likes hamburger...
I read the post on BugTraq earlier today and my immediate reaction was "and the point is?" Shutting off this "web bug" is trivial if someone is concerned with privacy. It's also relatively useless for tracking confidential information, unless the Industrial Espionage community has somehow managed to miss the "You're on the Net, you're vulnerable" point.
While it can provide some useful information (as someone pointed out with the resume thing) a well configured proxy server completely negates this little "bug."
Honestly, this is no more insidious than logging normal connections to a web server. While the cookie issue is a potential concern, it shouldn't be a big deal to bypass. After all. How hard is it to modify your cookie files?
We won't go into the bloatware aspects of Word, or why they seem fascinated with 'transparently integrating" everything. This is pretty much a non-issue.
Obviously, the "Privacy on IRC" issue is a non-issue. There IS no privacy on IRC. Well, not without doing some encryption...
As for the interface, take it a step farther. Or maybe two steps. Have an interface set up where you can say "I don't want your bots connecting to this network/server under any condition." OR "here is our network/channel information, please make it available on the list."
What I'd like to see, as a server admin, is a public listing of the source IP's of the Bots, or have them use a consistant U@H configuration so a channel manager (IRCop, Admin) can selectively ban them. If they're obfuscating them in order to get around a server's AUP, then they have no business there and their "service" is an intrusion. If they ask first and are willing to stay out of where they're not wanted it's not such a big deal. If they aren't following the rules, they should be treated like any other lamer on the Net. K-Line them and send a complaint to their ISP. (I know. "Like that will do any good!")
I run it on a K6/2-200 with 128 Meg and I've seen the same behaviour. The CPU usage spikes when it's first started, then settles down to a more reasonable 8-10%, with occassional bumps into the 20's and dips under 5.
What I have seen is X slow to a crawl with XMMS running. While I'm only running a 2Meg video card, I always thought it was a little odd that X slowed as much as it did with the CPU load that low.
Of course, if I want -real- sound, I leave the computer room behind, fire up the stereo, and the let Boston Acoustics rattle the light fixtures...
No one knows how Tesla did it? Well, that's not a particularly engrossing mystery, since Electric cars were already some 30-40 odd years old by then. Making one go 60 shouldn't have been a big deal, since Steam cars were already doing over 100.
Your "turn of the century" comment is more amusing than anything else. You don't seem to know much about automotive history here, since back around the turn of the century there was some real competition between electrics, steamers and gasoline engines. Gas engines won the battle then because as their technology matured they became more reliable and longer ranged than their competition. The best technology won out back at the dawn of the 20th century, and the engineers have been working on refining it ever since. (And no, that doesn't mean moden electrics, or fuel cells, or something else, won't be better tomorrow.)
For the record, Wankle style rotaries are mechanically efficient and marvelously smooth, but they're a bitch to get running clean and they're less fuel efficient than a comparable recip. We have computers in cars because carbs and mechanical fuel injectors aren't as readily adjustable as a computer controlled system. O2 sensors and the rest let the computer optimize the fuel mixture for economy, performance, emissions, and reliability, all on the fly. Think carbs are better, faster, and more efficient? Look at the induction system of an F1 motor some time. Heck, look at the whole car. Those things live by their computers.
Mediocracy is the Enemy of Good.
Better is the enemy of Just Good Enough.
In reading the article, it seems he was studying the orbits of "long period" comets. While I forget the definition of "long period" I seem to remember it's on the order of hundreds to thousands of years. Given that, it seems likely that the comets in question have only been reliably observed once, so their orbits won't be known with a great deal of accuracy.
I'm not sure where the 1:1700 probability came from, but I'm sure the actual paper will elaborate.
As for observing this beast (if such exists) I'm not surprised it hasn't been spotted. Its energy output will be very low (probably not dramatically more than Jupiter's) and probably limited to the deep infra-red. Of course, without more information, it's hard to say how big this rogue planet would need to be. A good size asteroid (or several on different trajectories) could easily perturb the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud.
Until they release the paper, of course, anything we say here is pure speculation. Personally, I'll put a small wager on the evidence failing under peer review.
>>It does indeed. But boys actually do not need an incentive to crave computers. Someone said it was positive to make computers that would attract girls. I do not think it is a good way to attract girls.
Boys don't need any incentive? Isn't that just as sexist? These machines are targeted at children young enough to be attracted to the "Toy tie-in" provided by the Hot Wheels or Barbie brands. It's the parents who buy them, not the kids. Kids old enough to care about the hardware specs aren't going to worry too much about what color the case is, or whether it comes with Hot Wheels Racing, Barbie's MakeUp Kit, or Quake II. They'll get hardware they like and install what they want.
If it gets them into using the machine at an early age, why not? As for "Gender Neutral" maybe we can start selling a mid-range box, with a slate grey case, and a big penguin on the front...