Most of the posters have been looking at OSS from a political or a developer standpoint. Yet most people's experience with OSS is as a user or administrator. I think an important topic would be how to manage and administer OSS on desktop and server PCs. Discuss the tradeoffs of package systems (RedHat) versus release systems (like BSD) versus build systems (gentoo).
I'd also like to see discussions of how to get ordinary work done with OSS tools and apps. You'd have to spend at least a little time talking about transitioning from commercial apps.
Stealing the picnic table out of your neighbor's back yard makes you a theif.
Stealing the "idea" of putting a picnic table in your backyard does not.
Now, maybe your neighbor sells the idea of a picnic table and had a copyright or patent granted by some government that prevents you from putting a picnic table in your backyard. Maybe you can go to jail for it. But the act of taking a physical object, and the act of copying data are two different things.
That's not all... When the original open source matlab was proprietarized, it was dumbed down in certain critical ways in order to make it more marketable. For example, in the original Matlab, functions of matricies always performed the function on the matrix. In today's commercial matlab, sometimes the function acts on the matrix, othertimes on the elements. Which way this goes seems to depend more on marketing than mathematical rigor. They actually went in and tangled the semantics so as to sell more copies to the lowest common math user.
Thus we have yet another example of how commercial competition doesn't lead to the best product.
They want to make sure only professional media pirates can steal copies of the videos. If ordinary people could steal copies, that would infringe on the rights of pirates.
As an ISP, I can tell you that for the last two years we put all of our R&D money into fighting
spam. For us, that's about $100/yr per customer.
That's a lot of money pissed away, and it's damn near bankrupting us.
But more significantly, it represents
a massive opportunity cost. There are all sorts of cool things we could have created for our users that we haven't been able to get to because we were tied up with weekly SpamAssasin upgrades. Spam is short circuiting the work of a lot of the most brilliant people into totally profitless endeavors.
Because I suspect it doesn't work as well. It's pretty easy for an ISP to notice
100,000 emails from one sender pumping
through their SMTP server, but relatively
difficult to notice those mails when sent
directly through the net. Also, outgoing servers are often set up with throttling.
Of course, nowadays, ISP's have no excuse in
either scenario. There are plenty of network monitoring tools that will notice spamming.
Because you get to choose which 16 hours in the day that you work.
Re:It's a GAME -- would anyone pay more for better
on
Steam Users Steamed
·
· Score: 1
Would people pay extra for the GAME to have five nines reliability? If you saw two games at the
store. Both basicially the same. One sells for
$59 and claims 99.999% uptime, and the other
sells for $49 and makes 99.99% uptime, which
would you buy? Some folks might pay the extra $10,
others might be willing to sacrifice.
Reliability is part of the value proposition, just like frame rate and any other feature.
For example, the big cable and DSL ISPs know that millions of their customers have virus infected PC's spewing out a deluge of spam on port 25. They can't plead ignorance. Why don't they block port 25? In another industry it would be criminal negligence to knowingly allow your resouces to be used in a crime. How can these big providers possibly get away with this head-in-the-sand attitude?
A nice class action lawsuit might wake them up.Like say $0.01 per spam received by direct SMTP from a virus infected PC on a Cable/DSL net connection.
Generally, if you belong to a professional society (e.g. IEEE, Usenix, ACM, etc...) it will be hard for you to avoid knowing about these sorts of conferences, as they tend to be advertised in society pubs.
At jtan.com we have used spamd for about a year. We use it
with an dynamic honeypot system to automatically identify and tarpit spammers.(We have publised this spamtrapd system as OSS).
All spamd/pf does, for those of you that don't know, is to
stall the spam sender by sending replies v-e-r-y
s-l-o-w-l-y using a daemon that runs alongside
sendmail. The OpenBSD pf packet filter is used to
redirect data away from the real SMTP daemon and
to spamd. Some people call spamd a tarpit.
Typically we have about 200-300 spammers in
our tarpit at a given time, with a mean time of
stalling at a few minutes. At the end of the
stalling, we send a 550 rather than a 450 -- a 450 temp fail IMHO is irresponsible and causes more problems than any spammer-punishing benefit it might have.
I'm not sure tarpits are punishing anyway. Rather tarpits reduce
the effectiveness of the spamming by tying up
the senders in the tarpit rather than sending more junk to people.
I assume that spammers are wise to tarpits.
We see a large number of disconnects within a
few seconds. Of course, lots of folks program
a HELO or multi-recipient delay in their MTA. That is a complementary
technique that helps tarpits be even more effective. The longer it takes for spammers to
tell that they are tarpitted, the less spam they
can send.
Phrases like "everything needs to be protected best" are little more than rhetoric. Another common vacuuous phrase is "common sense".
The question "From what threats" needs to be answered before any reasonable defense can be formulated.
I've seen lots of bombastic lists of "security assertions" from pundits. Often CPA firms like to mandate these lists (and soon the government), but these lists seldom are accompanied by analytical back up. They are security 'cliches'. Things like 1. Use a firewall, 2. Have strong passwords, 3. Lock your doors, etc....
These cliches, although arguably good in a vague general sense, may not be relevant to a particular security (or budget) situation.
You need to figure out exactly what threats you face, estimate the costs associated with them, prioritize them, analyze the results and design your policy specifcially to counter the threats that your budget and analysis justifies.
Streaming video to wireless handhelds has be
possible for 20+ years. That's terrestrial
broadcast TV, of course.
To stream satellite video to a handheld, you'd
have a problem with getting enough antenna gain.
Today's satellites aren't powerful enough to
send video without groundstation antenna gain.
Then again, if you were willing to wait 100 minutes for each minute of video, then it could
be done, I would think.
There seems to be a lot of confusion between
what is available on the used/surplus market,
and what is commercially viable. One can
buy an automobile for $100, but that doesn't
mean a $100 auto is a viable commercial product.
Satellite systems have been used to
distribute Usenet for many years. I know from that experience that you can get a decent chunk of Ku transponder bandwidth for low 5 figures US$. Especially if you are willing to accept conditional bandwidth. It costs a lot more if you
need a guarantee of bandwidth uptime (as TV/Cable guys often do). Theater movies don't need to be sent in guaranteed real time, I would think. Anytime before Friday should do.
If you are distributing a movie to a high 5-figure quantity of theaters with a system that costs low 5-figures per month, other than fixed installation costs, its clear that you can drive
the marginal cost of distributing films down
below a dollar.
An inevitable result of these falling distribution
costs and increased distribution alternatives would normally be increased competition amongst
distributors, spurring innovation, increasing
availability and lowering cost to end consumers.
Distributors that refuse to switch to low-cost satellite/internet/fedex-optical-media systems would be forced into bankrupcy.
That's how it works in a free market competitive economy according to generally understood and accepted capitalist principals.
Of course, we're talking the MPAA here, so
my point regarding the result of lowered costs is merely theoretical. More likely, adoption of digital distribution systems will just inflate
movie company profits even higher, with no
benefit to the movie consumer.
If you want two systems in 2U of rack space, the lowest cost way to go is a
2UX2 case. You
can use standard processors and cooling fans.
Standard ATX power supply, etc... No CD-ROM,
but you can use USB for media.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully a better one than last time.
If Jesus had a better lawyer, he could have saved the world AND avoided that whole crucifixion thing.
Did any of them get infected with the Sony rootkit, I wonder?
I wonder if any of them are infected with the Sony rootkit?
colored antibubbles?
What's next?
Forward slashes?
Text files without ^m's?
Most of the posters have been looking at OSS from a political or a developer standpoint. Yet most people's experience with OSS is as a user or administrator. I think an important topic would be how to manage and administer OSS on desktop and server PCs. Discuss the tradeoffs of package systems (RedHat) versus release systems
(like BSD) versus build systems (gentoo).
I'd also like to see discussions of how to get ordinary work done with
OSS tools and apps. You'd have to spend at least a little time talking
about transitioning from commercial apps.
Stealing the picnic table out of your neighbor's back yard makes you a theif.
Stealing the "idea" of putting a picnic table in your backyard does not.
Now, maybe your neighbor sells the idea of a picnic table and
had a copyright or patent granted by some government that
prevents you from putting a picnic table in your backyard.
Maybe you can go to jail for it. But the act of
taking a physical object, and the act of copying data are two different things.
[I stole this example from Lawrence Lessig]
Two words: meteor scatter.
Thus we have yet another example of how commercial competition doesn't lead to the best product.
They want to make sure only professional media pirates can steal copies of the videos. If ordinary people could steal copies, that would infringe on the rights of pirates.
Their lawyers didn't think of that, apparantly.
If all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail.
But more significantly, it represents a massive opportunity cost. There are all sorts of cool things we could have created for our users that we haven't been able to get to because we were tied up with weekly SpamAssasin upgrades. Spam is short circuiting the work of a lot of the most brilliant people into totally profitless endeavors.
Because I suspect it doesn't work as well. It's pretty easy for an ISP to notice 100,000 emails from one sender pumping through their SMTP server, but relatively difficult to notice those mails when sent directly through the net. Also, outgoing servers are often set up with throttling.
Of course, nowadays, ISP's have no excuse in either scenario. There are plenty of network monitoring tools that will notice spamming.
Because you get to choose which 16 hours in the day that you work.
Reliability is part of the value proposition, just like frame rate and any other feature.
A nice class action lawsuit might wake them up.Like say $0.01 per spam received by direct SMTP from a virus infected PC on a Cable/DSL net connection.
Generally, if you belong to a professional society (e.g. IEEE, Usenix, ACM, etc...) it will be hard for you to avoid knowing about these sorts of conferences, as they tend to be advertised in society pubs.
All spamd/pf does, for those of you that don't know, is to stall the spam sender by sending replies v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y using a daemon that runs alongside sendmail. The OpenBSD pf packet filter is used to redirect data away from the real SMTP daemon and to spamd. Some people call spamd a tarpit.
Typically we have about 200-300 spammers in our tarpit at a given time, with a mean time of stalling at a few minutes. At the end of the stalling, we send a 550 rather than a 450 -- a 450 temp fail IMHO is irresponsible and causes more problems than any spammer-punishing benefit it might have.
I'm not sure tarpits are punishing anyway. Rather tarpits reduce the effectiveness of the spamming by tying up the senders in the tarpit rather than sending more junk to people.
I assume that spammers are wise to tarpits. We see a large number of disconnects within a few seconds. Of course, lots of folks program a HELO or multi-recipient delay in their MTA. That is a complementary technique that helps tarpits be even more effective. The longer it takes for spammers to tell that they are tarpitted, the less spam they can send.
Why can't it be Monday? I mean, do the people that make these announcements think we _like_ working weekends?
Phrases like "everything needs to be protected best" are little more than rhetoric. Another common vacuuous phrase is "common sense".
The question "From what threats" needs to be answered before any reasonable defense can be formulated.
I've seen lots of bombastic lists of "security
assertions" from pundits. Often CPA firms like to mandate these lists (and soon the government), but
these lists seldom are accompanied by analytical
back up. They are security 'cliches'. Things like
1. Use a firewall, 2. Have strong passwords, 3. Lock your doors, etc....
These cliches, although arguably good in a vague
general sense, may not be relevant to a particular security (or budget) situation.
You need to figure out exactly what threats you
face, estimate the costs associated with them, prioritize them, analyze the results and design your policy specifcially to counter the threats that your budget and analysis justifies.
To stream satellite video to a handheld, you'd have a problem with getting enough antenna gain. Today's satellites aren't powerful enough to send video without groundstation antenna gain.
Then again, if you were willing to wait 100 minutes for each minute of video, then it could be done, I would think.
There seems to be a lot of confusion between what is available on the used/surplus market, and what is commercially viable. One can buy an automobile for $100, but that doesn't mean a $100 auto is a viable commercial product.
If you are distributing a movie to a high 5-figure quantity of theaters with a system that costs low 5-figures per month, other than fixed installation costs, its clear that you can drive the marginal cost of distributing films down below a dollar.
An inevitable result of these falling distribution costs and increased distribution alternatives would normally be increased competition amongst distributors, spurring innovation, increasing availability and lowering cost to end consumers. Distributors that refuse to switch to low-cost satellite/internet/fedex-optical-media systems would be forced into bankrupcy.
That's how it works in a free market competitive economy according to generally understood and accepted capitalist principals.
Of course, we're talking the MPAA here, so my point regarding the result of lowered costs is merely theoretical. More likely, adoption of digital distribution systems will just inflate movie company profits even higher, with no benefit to the movie consumer.
If you want two systems in 2U of rack space, the lowest cost way to go is a 2UX2 case. You can use standard processors and cooling fans. Standard ATX power supply, etc... No CD-ROM, but you can use USB for media.