I wonder how long it will take for the US to make a law that gives immunity against lawsuits to power plants and automakers for their part in generating the C02?
snipped One can't expect Joe Sixpack to know how to secure his PC against hackers. Even people who USE computers at work on a daily basis are not normally expected to keep their computers safe. That is normally the IT departments responsibility. So how can we expect a home user to do so?
As I said, it only takes a few people to get fined and their computers confiscated for allowing their computers to be used in an illegal manner before people start taking this shit seriously.
The person ultimately to blame for this is the spammer or script kiddie. We shouldn't NEED to have anti-virus protection. We shouldn't NEED to have spam filtering in our e-mail clients. Heck, we shouldn't NEED to lock the door on our house when we leave. People who take advantage of unlocked doors, unsecured computers, and unfiltered inboxes are scum and don't deserve to live in our society.
I fully agree with you; and most people lock their houses and this is why burglars are sent to jail and why spammers should be sent to jail.
The computer owner who gets his computer hijacked is not innocent, dumb maybe, but not innocent.
There have been way too many public warnings about the insecurity of PCs for hijacked computer owners to claim innocence. I wouldn't think that the courts would send the dumb user to jail for the first offense. If there were enough trials where dumb users were made to pay a fine and had their computer confiscated, then maybe computer owners might consider securing their PCs. A computer is not a harmless appliance.
Re:Innocent until proven guilty
on
SCO.com Defaced
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· Score: 1
I am not a lawyor. My opinion is based upon the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. US law is likely to apply in this case as a web site defacement would be a criminal offense, SCO is an American company, and presumably the SCO web server is located in the US.
You presumed incorrectly, I am not of the "Linux community". I really do not care what conclusions the "pro-SCO" people jump to.
My point is that not enough information is known to make a valid presumption as to who defaced the site and the motive for defacing the site (assuming that it was actually defaced).
The courts would not get involved in this unless a specific person or group of people is charged with a crime or SCO decides to sue somebody or some organization. In a criminal case the prosecutor would have to prove in a court of law that a specific person or group of people broke the law (group, as in specific individuals, not a "community").
Innocent until proven guilty
on
SCO.com Defaced
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· Score: 1
Until it is proven who defaced the SCO site and their motive; it should be presumed that the site could have been defaced by anybody, including somebody from within SCO or even another organization that would wish to perpetuate anti-Linux FUD.
I am not so sure of that. I know of several x86/Sparc based Unix people who bought Macs specificly because of OSX's Unix capabilities. These people look at Mac with OSX as being a Unix box with a really cool desktop.
Didn't Apple already bring out low end Mac's? I think that the low end desktops were one piece and came in orange, blue, and other colors. I think that the low end laptops came in assorted colors and looked like Barby Doll cosmetic cases. I seem to remember that certain colors of the colored desktops did very well and that certain colors did not sell at all. I am not sure if the colored laptops did very well overall, although I seem to recall that they were popular among school age children.
If lost parents ask me for driving directions to Disneyland, and I give them directions to Mickey's S&M Palace instead, *I* am responsible, though the other parties should work together to ensure their markets don't cross, to their mutual detriment.
The porn site has an adult content warning screen "Click if you are over 18".
If you gave lost parents direction to Mickey's S&M Palace and they followed your directions, I would find it humorous in an evil sort of way -- and I would consider the parents to be innocent victims of a prank with no harm done. If the parents actually took the kids into Mickey's S&M Palace after seeing the Adult Content warning screen and the kids saw things that the parents didn't want the kids to see, I would consider the parents to be idiots.
True there will be some initial momentum of people trying to port application for Solaris, then it will be more determined by the market share.
I can't figure out why you say that. Linux developers are not the same as the OS application developers. The OS application developers have supporting Solaris very well for quite some time now, actually as a whole they have been supporting Solaris longer than they have been supporting Linux. With a very few exceptions, applications written for Linux or Solaris don't need to be ported to compile on either platform. Unless there are hardware dependancies or wierd library requirements, there are very few applications available for Linux that will not compile for both Linux and Solaris.
At the present time, port 25 filtering is being implemented by quite a few providers. Most providers who are not doing port 25 filtering at the present time have a major spam problem.
There are options for sending mail. One way that is gaining popularity is the use of port 587 to send mail to authenticated smart hosts. And then there is always the ever popular web mail.
ISP's mailservers do not normally get blocklisted for a handful of junk, it usually takes great gobs of junk to get then blocked. The only exception might be Spam Cop, which is a very dynamic list. Very little spam is reported coming from AOL's mailservers and I do not know of any widely used block list that is currently listing AOL's mail servers.
Much of the slowness caused by well managed ISP mail farms is due to the anti spam and anti virus checking that is being done. One problem that you didn't mention with ISP's mail servers is that some of them have started silently dropping outgoing mail if it trips the spam filters. Cox is doing this and it makes it impossible to report spam via email.
IF ALL providers would submit ALL of their dynamic IPs for inclusion in dynamic block lists, I would fully agree with you. Unfortunately many DSL providers don't segregate their dynamic IP customers from their static IP customers into identifiable blocks. Also, many providers do not voluntarily provide that information to list providers.
I also disagree with port 25 redirection. Port 25 should be filtered (port 25 access blocked to all IPs except for the ISP's mail farm), not redirected (all port 25 traffic is redirected to the ISP's mail farm).
Responsible providers have their users remove or clean infected machines (or the users ar disconnected), which reduces the number of zombies available on a network. The biggest difference is what the provider does to prevent spam from leaving it's network. The single most effective measure is for broadband providers to block outgoing port 25 and require that all users who wish to send email via port 25 use the provider's mail relays. Responsible providers also take action to prevent it's relays from being used to relay spam from it's users. It is well known which broadband providers allow the most spam to be sent from their networks, and they are listed in several rbl's.
Creepy spammer approaches creepy trojan writer. Creepy trojan writer rents creepy spammer access to 10,000 compromised PC's on DSL and cable. Creepy spammer commands each compromised PC to send three emails per minute from 11PM to 7AM. Creepy spammer has now sent 1.44 million pieces of email without an obvious flood anywhere and without an obvious IP address to block.
After a while this activity develops a pattern that shows which broadband providers to block because they allow this to happen. This causes the IP addresses of the broadband providers who allow this to happen to be place in rbl's for blocking.
If this works like it is hoped and the fees remain at the level mentioned in the article, I very seriously doubt that anybody can compete with them. I have serious doubts that it will work as it is hoped (at least in most areas). If it does work as advertised, no wired competitor will be able to compete on price. It could end up that it is good enough for mobile computing but not be considered to be good enough to replace ADSL/cable in the home. It is also possible that the entire network could become so compromised and spam ridden that it becomes a wireless Intranet.
Re:Still can't see how Sun will survive
on
Sun-isms Debunked
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· Score: 1
Open sourcing Solaris 10 is fine and dandy, but I think it's too little too late. There's brands of Linux and BSD (e.g. RHES, Debian, SE Linux, OpenBSD) that cover every one of Sun's old sweet spots (e.g. uptime, security, Oracle support,...), so I just can't see why people would go with Solaris these days.
Solaris covers every one of those sweet spots with a single operating system that scales from the smallest single processor desktops all the way up to the biggest Sun big iron. Sun may have no idea right now how to make money with Solaris and may be saying strange things, that does not diminish the fact that Solaris is a great operating system.
That would depend upon the carrier. Some DSL and cable modem carriers require that you register your MAC address with them or it doesn't work. I wonder what would happen if every NIC on a block had the same MAC address...
I was looking for Valve to take legal action a-la' RIAA. I don't see any reliable way for Valve to ban them from Steam using an IP based system (without banning many other users). Although, in some cable systems, even though the IPs are technically dynamic, it seems that the same IP is assigned even if the modem was unplugged for a while. My cable modem IP has been the same for over a year, even after extended power outages. It is possible that I am the only cable modem subscriber in my apt building and I just always get the first DHCP assigned IP. As Steam has a modest bandwidth requirement, just using a dialup connection would pretty much ensure a diffferent IP address every time.
The entire Half Life 2 release and drm fiasco (not to mention the reported technical problems) is going to hurt Valve and Sierra/Vivendi in the long run. The best outcome would be for Valve and Sierra to gets burned enough that Half Life 2 can be used as an example of how not to release a game.
How can they expect to track people? Bittorrent? The only tracking information specified in BT is IP address, and most people have a dynamic IP which can be changed by unplugging their modem for 10 minutes.
It is not difficult to get usage information for a dynamic IP address, it just takes a subpoena; and for a lawyer, getting a subpoena is usually pretty easy. The RIAA ran into a bit of trouble because they were trying to bypass the proper subpoena process.
Although US ISPs are not legally required to keep the data for subpoena purposes, ISPs usually keep IP assignment data for some period of time. BTW, unplugging a cable modem may or may not change your IP address. The cable company will have a record of the IP address, what NIC the IP was assigned to, and the time period for which it was assigned. The only hope for anonymity would be if the cable company couldn't identify the owner of the NIC. For a dialup connection, just dropping the call and redialing will probably get you a new IP address -- and the ISP will have lots of data concerning the call.
Makes sense to me as an example of what can happen when badly implemented and overly restrictive drm is introduced. I have absolutely no sympathy for these assholes and I don't give a rat's ass if ANY more games ever get produced if the game has a shiteating drm system that prohibits legitimate purchasers of the physical game from playing their game whenever they choose to play it. There is no excuse for non-network games to require online activation. When a purchaser buys a game in a store the buyer has a reasonable expectation to be able to take it home and play it immediately. The game was being sold in stores when the "permission" system wasn't even turned on yet (and there was no warning given in the stores I saw it being sold in). It is my fervent hope that everybody involved with this scheme gets totally fucked over in the courts. Yeah, that includes Valve, they gave their soul to Sierra/Vivendi.
Then stop reading the whiner posts. It appears that your experience was not the normal experience for people who bought the game in a store. After seeing all of the drm and registration shit, and seeing the various *AA organizations suing customers; I would love to see customers sue Valve back to the stone-age. Fuck the publishers, fuck the distributers, fuck the registration assholes, fuck the associations.
This pisses me off, as I just ordered a TiVo with lifetime subscription to give to a friend as a holiday gift. Oh well, at least it's better than the POS SA DVR that he has now.
Linus does the linux kernel, the distribution folks do the bits that go around the kernel. The distribution folks combine the Linux kernel with various other bits of software, various graphics, and software that the distribution folks writen themselves to build a "distro". Even though all of the linux distros use the linux kernel, the choice of the other software and file system arrangements gives each distribution it's own unique flavor.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how long it will take for the US to make a law that gives immunity against lawsuits to power plants and automakers for their part in generating the C02?
snipped
One can't expect Joe Sixpack to know how to secure his PC against hackers. Even people who USE computers at work on a daily basis are not normally expected to keep their computers safe. That is normally the IT departments responsibility. So how can we expect a home user to do so?
As I said, it only takes a few people to get fined and their computers confiscated for allowing their computers to be used in an illegal manner before people start taking this shit seriously.
The person ultimately to blame for this is the spammer or script kiddie. We shouldn't NEED to have anti-virus protection. We shouldn't NEED to have spam filtering in our e-mail clients. Heck, we shouldn't NEED to lock the door on our house when we leave. People who take advantage of unlocked doors, unsecured computers, and unfiltered inboxes are scum and don't deserve to live in our society.
I fully agree with you; and most people lock their houses and this is why burglars are sent to jail and why spammers should be sent to jail.
The computer owner who gets his computer hijacked is not innocent, dumb maybe, but not innocent.
There have been way too many public warnings about the insecurity of PCs for hijacked computer owners to claim innocence. I wouldn't think that the courts would send the dumb user to jail for the first offense. If there were enough trials where dumb users were made to pay a fine and had their computer confiscated, then maybe computer owners might consider securing their PCs. A computer is not a harmless appliance.
I am not a lawyor. My opinion is based upon the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. US law is likely to apply in this case as a web site defacement would be a criminal offense, SCO is an American company, and presumably the SCO web server is located in the US.
You presumed incorrectly, I am not of the "Linux community". I really do not care what conclusions the "pro-SCO" people jump to.
My point is that not enough information is known to make a valid presumption as to who defaced the site and the motive for defacing the site (assuming that it was actually defaced).
The courts would not get involved in this unless a specific person or group of people is charged with a crime or SCO decides to sue somebody or some organization. In a criminal case the prosecutor would have to prove in a court of law that a specific person or group of people broke the law (group, as in specific individuals, not a "community").
Until it is proven who defaced the SCO site and their motive; it should be presumed that the site could have been defaced by anybody, including somebody from within SCO or even another organization that would wish to perpetuate anti-Linux FUD.
I am not so sure of that. I know of several x86/Sparc based Unix people who bought Macs specificly because of OSX's Unix capabilities. These people look at Mac with OSX as being a Unix box with a really cool desktop.
Didn't Apple already bring out low end Mac's? I think that the low end desktops were one piece and came in orange, blue, and other colors. I think that the low end laptops came in assorted colors and looked like Barby Doll cosmetic cases. I seem to remember that certain colors of the colored desktops did very well and that certain colors did not sell at all. I am not sure if the colored laptops did very well overall, although I seem to recall that they were popular among school age children.
It's more like switching to Sony televisions/ monitors because they like their Sony DVD player as the two products work together.
If lost parents ask me for driving directions to Disneyland, and I give them directions to Mickey's S&M Palace instead, *I* am responsible, though the other parties should work together to ensure their markets don't cross, to their mutual detriment.
The porn site has an adult content warning screen "Click if you are over 18".
If you gave lost parents direction to Mickey's S&M Palace and they followed your directions, I would find it humorous in an evil sort of way -- and I would consider the parents to be innocent victims of a prank with no harm done. If the parents actually took the kids into Mickey's S&M Palace after seeing the Adult Content warning screen and the kids saw things that the parents didn't want the kids to see, I would consider the parents to be idiots.
True there will be some initial momentum of people trying to port application for Solaris, then it will be more determined by the market share.
I can't figure out why you say that. Linux developers are not the same as the OS application developers. The OS application developers have supporting Solaris very well for quite some time now, actually as a whole they have been supporting Solaris longer than they have been supporting Linux. With a very few exceptions, applications written for Linux or Solaris don't need to be ported to compile on either platform. Unless there are hardware dependancies or wierd library requirements, there are very few applications available for Linux that will not compile for both Linux and Solaris.
The GPL causes a kernel panic? What kernel? When does it happen?
At the present time, port 25 filtering is being implemented by quite a few providers. Most providers who are not doing port 25 filtering at the present time have a major spam problem.
There are options for sending mail. One way that is gaining popularity is the use of port 587 to send mail to authenticated smart hosts. And then there is always the ever popular web mail.
ISP's mailservers do not normally get blocklisted for a handful of junk, it usually takes great gobs of junk to get then blocked. The only exception might be Spam Cop, which is a very dynamic list. Very little spam is reported coming from AOL's mailservers and I do not know of any widely used block list that is currently listing AOL's mail servers.
Much of the slowness caused by well managed ISP mail farms is due to the anti spam and anti virus checking that is being done. One problem that you didn't mention with ISP's mail servers is that some of them have started silently dropping outgoing mail if it trips the spam filters. Cox is doing this and it makes it impossible to report spam via email.
IF ALL providers would submit ALL of their dynamic IPs for inclusion in dynamic block lists, I would fully agree with you. Unfortunately many DSL providers don't segregate their dynamic IP customers from their static IP customers into identifiable blocks. Also, many providers do not voluntarily provide that information to list providers.
I also disagree with port 25 redirection. Port 25 should be filtered (port 25 access blocked to all IPs except for the ISP's mail farm), not redirected (all port 25 traffic is redirected to the ISP's mail farm).
Responsible providers have their users remove or clean infected machines (or the users ar disconnected), which reduces the number of zombies available on a network. The biggest difference is what the provider does to prevent spam from leaving it's network. The single most effective measure is for broadband providers to block outgoing port 25 and require that all users who wish to send email via port 25 use the provider's mail relays. Responsible providers also take action to prevent it's relays from being used to relay spam from it's users. It is well known which broadband providers allow the most spam to be sent from their networks, and they are listed in several rbl's.
Creepy spammer approaches creepy trojan writer. Creepy trojan writer rents creepy spammer access to 10,000 compromised PC's on DSL and cable. Creepy spammer commands each compromised PC to send three emails per minute from 11PM to 7AM. Creepy spammer has now sent 1.44 million pieces of email without an obvious flood anywhere and without an obvious IP address to block.
After a while this activity develops a pattern that shows which broadband providers to block because they allow this to happen. This causes the IP addresses of the broadband providers who allow this to happen to be place in rbl's for blocking.
If the system works the PRC will be getting a great WiFi network when they take over the ROC.
If this works like it is hoped and the fees remain at the level mentioned in the article, I very seriously doubt that anybody can compete with them. I have serious doubts that it will work as it is hoped (at least in most areas). If it does work as advertised, no wired competitor will be able to compete on price. It could end up that it is good enough for mobile computing but not be considered to be good enough to replace ADSL/cable in the home. It is also possible that the entire network could become so compromised and spam ridden that it becomes a wireless Intranet.
Open sourcing Solaris 10 is fine and dandy, but I think it's too little too late. There's brands of Linux and BSD (e.g. RHES, Debian, SE Linux, OpenBSD) that cover every one of Sun's old sweet spots (e.g. uptime, security, Oracle support, ...), so I just can't see why people would go with Solaris these days.
Solaris covers every one of those sweet spots with a single operating system that scales from the smallest single processor desktops all the way up to the biggest Sun big iron. Sun may have no idea right now how to make money with Solaris and may be saying strange things, that does not diminish the fact that Solaris is a great operating system.
That would depend upon the carrier. Some DSL and cable modem carriers require that you register your MAC address with them or it doesn't work. I wonder what would happen if every NIC on a block had the same MAC address ...
I was looking for Valve to take legal action a-la' RIAA. I don't see any reliable way for Valve to ban them from Steam using an IP based system (without banning many other users). Although, in some cable systems, even though the IPs are technically dynamic, it seems that the same IP is assigned even if the modem was unplugged for a while. My cable modem IP has been the same for over a year, even after extended power outages. It is possible that I am the only cable modem subscriber in my apt building and I just always get the first DHCP assigned IP. As Steam has a modest bandwidth requirement, just using a dialup connection would pretty much ensure a diffferent IP address every time.
The entire Half Life 2 release and drm fiasco (not to mention the reported technical problems) is going to hurt Valve and Sierra/Vivendi in the long run. The best outcome would be for Valve and Sierra to gets burned enough that Half Life 2 can be used as an example of how not to release a game.
How can they expect to track people? Bittorrent? The only tracking information specified in BT is IP address, and most people have a dynamic IP which can be changed by unplugging their modem for 10 minutes.
It is not difficult to get usage information for a dynamic IP address, it just takes a subpoena; and for a lawyer, getting a subpoena is usually pretty easy. The RIAA ran into a bit of trouble because they were trying to bypass the proper subpoena process.
Although US ISPs are not legally required to keep the data for subpoena purposes, ISPs usually keep IP assignment data for some period of time. BTW, unplugging a cable modem may or may not change your IP address. The cable company will have a record of the IP address, what NIC the IP was assigned to, and the time period for which it was assigned. The only hope for anonymity would be if the cable company couldn't identify the owner of the NIC. For a dialup connection, just dropping the call and redialing will probably get you a new IP address -- and the ISP will have lots of data concerning the call.
Makes sense to me as an example of what can happen when badly implemented and overly restrictive drm is introduced. I have absolutely no sympathy for these assholes and I don't give a rat's ass if ANY more games ever get produced if the game has a shiteating drm system that prohibits legitimate purchasers of the physical game from playing their game whenever they choose to play it. There is no excuse for non-network games to require online activation. When a purchaser buys a game in a store the buyer has a reasonable expectation to be able to take it home and play it immediately. The game was being sold in stores when the "permission" system wasn't even turned on yet (and there was no warning given in the stores I saw it being sold in). It is my fervent hope that everybody involved with this scheme gets totally fucked over in the courts. Yeah, that includes Valve, they gave their soul to Sierra/Vivendi.
Then stop reading the whiner posts. It appears that your experience was not the normal experience for people who bought the game in a store. After seeing all of the drm and registration shit, and seeing the various *AA organizations suing customers; I would love to see customers sue Valve back to the stone-age. Fuck the publishers, fuck the distributers, fuck the registration assholes, fuck the associations.
This pisses me off, as I just ordered a TiVo with lifetime subscription to give to a friend as a holiday gift. Oh well, at least it's better than the POS SA DVR that he has now.
Linus does the linux kernel, the distribution folks do the bits that go around the kernel. The distribution folks combine the Linux kernel with various other bits of software, various graphics, and software that the distribution folks writen themselves to build a "distro". Even though all of the linux distros use the linux kernel, the choice of the other software and file system arrangements gives each distribution it's own unique flavor.