No offense toward Gentoo, which does come with a nice collection of ebuilds, but Debian's far easier to audit than Gentoo, since the Debian logging defaults are downright massive compared to just about all other distributions I've tried (inclusing Slackware, Redhat, SuSE, Gentoo, and even LFS).
Now, in my mind, there's little that can help security along than the ability to see when a problem occurred, and view it from several different angles. Perhaps syslog can say something? Maybe userlog tells a different story? Perhaps/var/log/snort/alert? Or maybe even/var/log/squid/access.log?
All the debian server packages that I've ever seen come with logging functionality turned on by default, and if you have another computer, it wouldn't be too hard to set logs to be remoted. You can boast the wonders of all the hardening tools you want, but logs are the lifeblood of security. Any method of keeping trouble out can be circumvented, but with good logging practices, attention can be drawn to events that could point to the flaw that was exploited.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, perhaps Hardened Gentoo does pick up on the logging department. But Debian has it without the hardened version.
Actually, if they made MS Office for Linux, I would actually support them. If they made MS Windows for Linux, I probably wouldn't have an issue with that.
Microsoft makes decent software, they just suck at Operating System design.
Actually, there's a very apt quote from the movie the American President:
"I'd been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob spends so much time and energy shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong, Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it; Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Replace Bob Rumson with Microsoft, and you have a clear match.
I'm no expert in mathematics, but think about this, we're basing time in the same manner we base distance in the logic argument of the frog in a well. (For any distance you go, you must reach the halfway point, which you must make halfway, on and on, ad infinitum.)
Speed itself is probably not limited in such a fashion, since all that happens is that the associated time you exist in becomes smaller the faster you go; which is logical, because increased speed reduces the amount of time of travel between two points.
Of course, I'm probably speaking gibberish in the ears of those who have strong mathematical knowledge, but the idea that superlight speeds produces reverse time travel is like thinking about what's smaller than 1, and coming up with -1, rather than.1
*shrug* Maybe I'm just blowing smoke. Any comments?
Perhaps it was designed that way on purpose; anyone who was determined to learn astronomy for the sake of meeting Vulcans or Klingons would learn conclusively that they did not exist.
Sort of a veiled "Hey, dummy! It's only a TV show!"
Yes, humans have two ears. Were we talking headphones (which would apply the concepts properly), that would be a good point.
However, you might notice that ears are not just holes on the sides of their heads; there's a number of ridges and channels in a large, flat, fleshy protrusion that muffles or amplifies sound to give the mind enough information to perceive exactly where the sound is coming from. This is why you can know if sound is coming from your back and front.
For this reason, surround sound requires the two speakers in the back, so as to allow the appropriate set of ridges in the ear to channel the sound into the ear canal, giving the listener the sensation that sound is coming not only from before him, but also from behind him.
Now, I won't pretend to understand how these channels work; I'm no acoustic engineer. But I do know that they do work.
Now the exception to this is as I've mentioned above, the headphones. They bypass the entire canal system in the outer ear by aiming directly into the ear canal. As such, the algorithms you mention would likely work, since it would simulate the ridges and canals in the outer ear enough for proper aural depth perception.
Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there
on
More Microsoft Patents
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Here's a thought...
Perhaps there could be a law where any company whose patents have more than X amount of prior art then receives an audit of all its patents. Any with Y percent of junk patents are barred from registering patents for Z years.
Of course, any junk patents that are discovered in the Audit are placed in the Public Domain.
Ayn Rand's own words: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
Any thought or idea is the ultimate right of the one who came up with it. This is, however, not limited to the FIRST one who comes up with it.
Regardless of the original thinker's wishes, and regardless of the source (both are arbitrary, rather than objective), If I thought of it, I thought of it. (A=A)
Now, if there are laws that prohibit any action on that thought, then they are inhibiting the productive achievements I could produce, because someone else (erroneously) claimed ownership of the thoughts or ideas I had. They are inhibiting my pursuit of happiness, thus fighting my moral purpose. They are thus immoral.
Perhaps, but in a true objectivist state, Microsoft could not have a monopoly, since it is not efficiency that protects their software, but a collection of laws.
"Barring physical force or fraud, there is no such thing as "unfair" competition; there is only competition that your rivals may not be good enough to match."
This means that if Microsoft's source code was leaked, and products were made based on that source code, it would be fair in Objectivism; Microsoft failed to keep the information secret, now it has to eat its lunch. However, when that source got leaked, I saw nothing but the fear of being "Tainted."
That also means that any rival who cares to can freely reverse-engineer any part of the operating system without fear of reprisal; that's just another form of competition.
In fact, that above statement just argued against things like copyright, patents, and trade secrets; those are results of government intervention, and not true to the objectivist morality.
Revenue for what? Essential government services, like a military, and a police force that enforces the three freedoms of individuals (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) are what I would consider fair revenue.
However, programs like welfare, social security, and medicare are simply wealth redistribution and should become private charities, where people who give are giving, and not paying.
If the tax burden is such a burden, why not lighten it first? Let's privatize most this stuff that we're currently paying for in our taxes, such as welfare, social security, and healthcare, and maybe also start legalizing those things that are not inflicting upon anybody's basic rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness)?
Then, maybe the "lower and middle classes" will find taxes much more tolerable, without sponging off of those who built their own fortunes.
I will make one note; if there's to be any taxes I wouldn't mind seeing, it would be a tax on large inheritances. After all, this would also be, in my opinion, a disincentive for the recipient to actually work to achieve, since such inheritance would bypass the work part, and cut straight to achievement.
*chuckle* If you're not qualified for something else, maybe it's time to crack some different books?
The phrase "Tough, Adapt or Die" doesn't just apply to Companies like MS or SCO. They apply to you and me as well.
Like most geek-types, I neglected the fun of pursuing sexual relations with the opposite sex in order to perfect my knowledge of computers. However, I recently learned the fine art of salesmanship, and it's made an enormous difference.
Now, salesmen will never lose demand, because a person that can convince a customer of a particular product's value is someone any company in the world would want. If you have sales knowledge AND programming experience, you can just sing Cha-ching, because you will have a combination of skills that would make those "greedy management" people drool like fanboys in a Playboy convention.
Interesting. So you are basically saying that Microsoft might have a point with open Source destroying the economy by eliminating the software production industry?
Because if I'm reading your post and the link properly, that is exactly what I am seeing.
Considering that during the.com boom, they were enjoying massively INFLATED income and benefits... and when it was time to pay the piper, they didn't have the cashflow to survive.
Here's one for you... if you eliminate all tax breaks on the "poor," and settle them all on the "rich," who would actually put forward the effort to BECOME rich, then?
And if few people would be willing to become rich anymore, what exactly would motivate people to go beyond "just enough to meet their needs?"
The problem with the whole "Punish the rich" thing is that it inhibits the desire to produce more.
Using your example, if you step up the taxes like that at the $40000 a year level, then you've just caged in a person at sub-$40000/year income; you've just limited their usefulness.
And worse, if they so much as "Dare" go past $100000, then they're probably not going to be there for long; certainly not long enough to create jobs for anyone else.
Well, there really is no defense against submarine patents, since submariners usually don't develop anything but lawsuits... sort of like what SCO does, really.
Patent portfolios only protect against those litigious companies who actually produce something other than lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a better site for Hardening Debian:
a n- howto/
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debi
No offense toward Gentoo, which does come with a nice collection of ebuilds, but Debian's far easier to audit than Gentoo, since the Debian logging defaults are downright massive compared to just about all other distributions I've tried (inclusing Slackware, Redhat, SuSE, Gentoo, and even LFS).
/var/log/snort/alert? Or maybe even /var/log/squid/access.log?
Now, in my mind, there's little that can help security along than the ability to see when a problem occurred, and view it from several different angles. Perhaps syslog can say something? Maybe userlog tells a different story? Perhaps
All the debian server packages that I've ever seen come with logging functionality turned on by default, and if you have another computer, it wouldn't be too hard to set logs to be remoted. You can boast the wonders of all the hardening tools you want, but logs are the lifeblood of security. Any method of keeping trouble out can be circumvented, but with good logging practices, attention can be drawn to events that could point to the flaw that was exploited.
Now, maybe I'm wrong, perhaps Hardened Gentoo does pick up on the logging department. But Debian has it without the hardened version.
Security is a process, not a product.
The carrot: MSOffice for Linux.
Actually, if they made MS Office for Linux, I would actually support them. If they made MS Windows for Linux, I probably wouldn't have an issue with that.
Microsoft makes decent software, they just suck at Operating System design.
Actually, there's a very apt quote from the movie the American President:
"I'd been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob spends so much time and energy shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong, Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it; Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
Replace Bob Rumson with Microsoft, and you have a clear match.
It never stopped the Family Robinson. ;)
I'm no expert in mathematics, but think about this, we're basing time in the same manner we base distance in the logic argument of the frog in a well. (For any distance you go, you must reach the halfway point, which you must make halfway, on and on, ad infinitum.)
.1
Speed itself is probably not limited in such a fashion, since all that happens is that the associated time you exist in becomes smaller the faster you go; which is logical, because increased speed reduces the amount of time of travel between two points.
Of course, I'm probably speaking gibberish in the ears of those who have strong mathematical knowledge, but the idea that superlight speeds produces reverse time travel is like thinking about what's smaller than 1, and coming up with -1, rather than
*shrug* Maybe I'm just blowing smoke. Any comments?
Perhaps it was designed that way on purpose; anyone who was determined to learn astronomy for the sake of meeting Vulcans or Klingons would learn conclusively that they did not exist.
Sort of a veiled "Hey, dummy! It's only a TV show!"
Maybe once people have had enough, perhaps then books will once again be the primary form of entertainment?
Up goes the literacy level, and with it, public intelligence to the point where sanity is restored.
All you need to do is dig a massive hole and have a trenchcoat-wearing friend chase you into it. Voila! a VERY realistic ET game!
Of coure, you do it in your backyard so that the house would be there.
It'll probably take some doing to design your own parthanon, however...
Oh, and don't forget to scatter those Reese's Pieces!
Yes, humans have two ears. Were we talking headphones (which would apply the concepts properly), that would be a good point.
However, you might notice that ears are not just holes on the sides of their heads; there's a number of ridges and channels in a large, flat, fleshy protrusion that muffles or amplifies sound to give the mind enough information to perceive exactly where the sound is coming from. This is why you can know if sound is coming from your back and front.
For this reason, surround sound requires the two speakers in the back, so as to allow the appropriate set of ridges in the ear to channel the sound into the ear canal, giving the listener the sensation that sound is coming not only from before him, but also from behind him.
Now, I won't pretend to understand how these channels work; I'm no acoustic engineer. But I do know that they do work.
Now the exception to this is as I've mentioned above, the headphones. They bypass the entire canal system in the outer ear by aiming directly into the ear canal. As such, the algorithms you mention would likely work, since it would simulate the ridges and canals in the outer ear enough for proper aural depth perception.
Here's a thought...
Perhaps there could be a law where any company whose patents have more than X amount of prior art then receives an audit of all its patents. Any with Y percent of junk patents are barred from registering patents for Z years.
Of course, any junk patents that are discovered in the Audit are placed in the Public Domain.
What if some attacker gets ahold of a Linux MD5 /etc/passwd file? That would likely now be enough to get access to the computers...
I hope the distros migrate to sha-1 for their default authentication mechanisms...
Personally, I'll keep the Swiss Army Knife for physical tools, and use some form of PDA as a Digital Swiss Army Knife.
Ayn Rand's own words: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
Any thought or idea is the ultimate right of the one who came up with it. This is, however, not limited to the FIRST one who comes up with it.
Regardless of the original thinker's wishes, and regardless of the source (both are arbitrary, rather than objective), If I thought of it, I thought of it. (A=A)
Now, if there are laws that prohibit any action on that thought, then they are inhibiting the productive achievements I could produce, because someone else (erroneously) claimed ownership of the thoughts or ideas I had. They are inhibiting my pursuit of happiness, thus fighting my moral purpose. They are thus immoral.
Perhaps, but in a true objectivist state, Microsoft could not have a monopoly, since it is not efficiency that protects their software, but a collection of laws.
"Barring physical force or fraud, there is no such thing as "unfair" competition; there is only competition that your rivals may not be good enough to match."
This means that if Microsoft's source code was leaked, and products were made based on that source code, it would be fair in Objectivism; Microsoft failed to keep the information secret, now it has to eat its lunch. However, when that source got leaked, I saw nothing but the fear of being "Tainted."
That also means that any rival who cares to can freely reverse-engineer any part of the operating system without fear of reprisal; that's just another form of competition.
In fact, that above statement just argued against things like copyright, patents, and trade secrets; those are results of government intervention, and not true to the objectivist morality.
Revenue for what? Essential government services, like a military, and a police force that enforces the three freedoms of individuals (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) are what I would consider fair revenue.
However, programs like welfare, social security, and medicare are simply wealth redistribution and should become private charities, where people who give are giving, and not paying.
Here's a better idea:
If the tax burden is such a burden, why not lighten it first? Let's privatize most this stuff that we're currently paying for in our taxes, such as welfare, social security, and healthcare, and maybe also start legalizing those things that are not inflicting upon anybody's basic rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness)?
Then, maybe the "lower and middle classes" will find taxes much more tolerable, without sponging off of those who built their own fortunes.
I will make one note; if there's to be any taxes I wouldn't mind seeing, it would be a tax on large inheritances. After all, this would also be, in my opinion, a disincentive for the recipient to actually work to achieve, since such inheritance would bypass the work part, and cut straight to achievement.
*chuckle* If you're not qualified for something else, maybe it's time to crack some different books?
The phrase "Tough, Adapt or Die" doesn't just apply to Companies like MS or SCO. They apply to you and me as well.
Like most geek-types, I neglected the fun of pursuing sexual relations with the opposite sex in order to perfect my knowledge of computers. However, I recently learned the fine art of salesmanship, and it's made an enormous difference.
Now, salesmen will never lose demand, because a person that can convince a customer of a particular product's value is someone any company in the world would want. If you have sales knowledge AND programming experience, you can just sing Cha-ching, because you will have a combination of skills that would make those "greedy management" people drool like fanboys in a Playboy convention.
Interesting. So you are basically saying that Microsoft might have a point with open Source destroying the economy by eliminating the software production industry?
Because if I'm reading your post and the link properly, that is exactly what I am seeing.
Considering that during the .com boom, they were enjoying massively INFLATED income and benefits... and when it was time to pay the piper, they didn't have the cashflow to survive.
Here's one for you... if you eliminate all tax breaks on the "poor," and settle them all on the "rich," who would actually put forward the effort to BECOME rich, then?
And if few people would be willing to become rich anymore, what exactly would motivate people to go beyond "just enough to meet their needs?"
The problem with the whole "Punish the rich" thing is that it inhibits the desire to produce more.
Using your example, if you step up the taxes like that at the $40000 a year level, then you've just caged in a person at sub-$40000/year income; you've just limited their usefulness.
And worse, if they so much as "Dare" go past $100000, then they're probably not going to be there for long; certainly not long enough to create jobs for anyone else.
Actually, they have the better response...
"What infringement?"
Considering the clout the Libertarians are building (with Michael Badnarik in the running) lately, we are also one party away from freedom. ;)
So, not only is there prior art, but it's also prior PATENTED art?
*tsk tsk tsk*
Well, there really is no defense against submarine patents, since submariners usually don't develop anything but lawsuits... sort of like what SCO does, really.
Patent portfolios only protect against those litigious companies who actually produce something other than lawsuits.