If your server is trojan-infested, you need to get yourself a better admin team.
Worms/virii don't need human intervention to function. I remember installing Windows SBS 2003 on a new server, connecting it, and having it owned by a varient of Sasser that caused it to reboot every 5 min within 10 min of connecting it. Well before I had time to download the up-to-date patches from MS.
I know that if I were offered a job that didn't require me to travel, and it pays me enough money to get out of serious debt, I would probably jump at an opportunity to make $50,000 for writing a clever trojan. Wouldn't you? If you were about to loose your house and American Dream, and everything you worked for in the last 20 years after you got layed off because of outsourcing. An offer of an immediate cash outlay of $50,000 is a bit hard to turn down.
Sure, and I'll make another $200,000 on the backside of the deal selling software to delete the trojan after its usefulness has expired. Pump out more malware and then make money selling protection software. The perfect waterfront racket.
If the first function was switched to a different port number (i.e. not 25) and made authenticated, then port 25 could be blocked by default for dial-up-style users without inconveniencing anyone.
It's been done. Port 587 is used for non-secure client-to-server SMTP already. Some ISP's allow port 587 passthrough but block 25. Personally, I think that sucks, and I'll summarily dump any ISP that blocks 25, if only because I need access to port 25 for things like testing clients' servers sometimes.
Governments do exacerbate the problem through their general attitude towards what the people think, but even the most perfect government on earth in a free society would see more complaints than endorsements.
Legislators would do better by asking, before banning an act or imposing unreasonably onerous requirements: "Is anyone not directly and voluntarily involved in that act likely to be injured or adversely by it?" If the answer is "no", then the act in question should remain legal. Same with surveillance - "would I like video footage of *me* to be kept for the rest of my natural life or even longer?
Like in medicine, "first, do no harm" should become a phrase to live by.
fearful penalties if an MP disobeys the Party line
Fearful? The worst that can be done is that they lose party membership if they defy the party line on a "three-line whip" vote. They can still sit as an independent.
as be amazed that we haven't dragged you out of Downing Street and strung you up outside of Parliament.
Hanging's too good. I prefer the ancient formula of "hanged, drawn, and quartered..." Pour encourager les autres, naturellment...
I don't think any media conspiracy or otherwise is necessary to induce rage and contempt for politicians from the public. Just looking up at any street corner to see the CCTV cameras of the state watching you (what's the ratio these days? something like 1 camera per 7 people* in London?) would be plenty enough to enrage me. Or how about Blair's lapdog-to-Bush style of international relations? The concessions to the US on international plane traveler privacy laws?
Mod parent up.
Add to this the parliamentary reform acts of 2006 that allow executive pre-emption of parliamentary legislation (nicknamed the Abolition of Parliament Act), the weakening of the House of Lords (whether you like hereditary legislation or not, it's been a conservative steadying influence in British politics), etc... Personally, I think Blair and Co. are traitors to the British people and should be treated as such. By the pre-1998 Treason Act, I may add.
But I find it much less stress full to just write with a pen than click buttons numerous times just to have your T9 mode tell me that I can't use the word "Fuck"
The SK65 phone has a full keyboard. No T9 needed nor desired, though it does have optional T9 functionality when the alpha keypad is closed.
In this case, you need to make the most people happy, not some fringe segment who need a 20 year old application to run, in which case they are still free to run just that application on an old OS, if it's that important to them.
Actually, there are a lot of cases, just not necessarily in the service industry. Custom control software for manufacturing (no, not all of it runs on microcontrollers). The telecoms industry - phone company *switching equipment* can be 30 yo in some cases, not to mention software. What else? Building automation - many schools throughout NJ are still using Solidyne automation boxes that have long since ceased to be supported. Complete with modems connected to 300 baud serial ports. The application to control them (in a company that I worked at) was a 20 yo UNIX application that no one felt the need to reinvent since the company had 7 employees with better things to do with their time. So when the time to migrate from Radio Shack Xenix boxes (in the 2000s), the code could be somewhat redesigned and recompiled to run under BSD without reinventing the wheel. Had the upgrade been from DOS to Server 200x, I suspect that it would have been total hell.
If products could be packaged such that they get compiled during install, but in the background with the user being none the wiser, then it might fly. Like say your installer went out and did all the work on its own of gathering the required libraries while the user only ever saw a wizard with a next button.
Yep, that's more or less what I was thinking. It *can* be done.
My original point was different. Given a high-value proprietary software package from 1985 with the publishing company long gone and not providing support and a open-source package with the same circumstances, where do you think backward compatibility matters more? One can be tweaked/rewritten to run on newer platforms without completely reinventing the wheel. The other one cannot.
Fsck North Korea. We're BUSY here and we've got much bigger/smaller worries.
The only thing to be worried about is that NK may commodify weapons of mass destruction. Then again, they probably won't. Kim jong Il is simply too paranoid to sell nukes to random organizations and NK's only real ally - China - already has The Bomb.
the issue is less worrisome, since the same app (if written well) can be written to compile on many different platforms, unlike compiled applications that are basically immutable unless recompiled.
... This is just a more modern version of equipment (machine gun + radar + aircraft-recognition computer) that's been on US aircraft carriers since the late 70s or early 80s. It's just adapted for use against people on land.
It's practically the most ideal target imaginable for a.50 BMG shooter: large, immobile, limited lethal range, and no human suffering upon destruction.
Immobile? I was picturing something mounted on wheels that would travel and "patrol". In that case, it's not anything new at all. US aircraft carriers already have something called Phalanx CIWS that is a very fast machine gun (nickname: R2D2 with a hardon) linked to a radar system and computer. It can be set to automatically shoot aircraft that it recognizes as unfriendly out of the sky. Also, the East Germans deployed automatic machine guns at their border, pointing at their own people so they didn't escape. How sad that they're being pointed into a slave nation by the "good guys" now.
This thing is completely useless in defending against a North Korean attack. These things are sitting ducks against an invasion.
Maginot Line, anyone? For those who don't know, the French build fortifications on the German border before WW II. When the invasion of France came, the Germans (a) leapfrogged it from the air (b) went around through "friendly" countries. The South Koreans are fighting last year's war. Actually, the best alternative would be to open the border and say "come in, you're welcome, we'll even give you money to spend in the South on capitalist luxuries." (West Germany pretty much did this with the East in '89.) Sadly, it's not in human nature to do so.
It isn't even a contest. South Korea is left setting on the bench, consoled by its modern economy and democracy. The field is North Korea all the way.
All the more reason to open the border. I bet the invaders^H refugees will be enjoying the capitalist decadance of the South within a few weeks. In less than a year, I suspect that Kim Jong Il would be suffering from acute and irreversible lead poisoning.
Given the 1+ million strong army north of the border, and the questionable sanity of the leader controlling it, that border must be defended.
Let the SOBs invade, I say. They'll learn that capitalist decadence isn't quite as bad as the propaganda makes it out to be. I bet that if the border were opened, Kim Jong Il would be the guest of honor of a firing party before the year ended.
You forgot one of it's most important features--it protects you from vampires!
That's the one bug, not a feature! Those goth chicks are hot, unfortunately, they run screaming when I use the phone. Oh well, can't have it all, I guess.
QWERTY was designed to reduce the jamming of keys, so it allowed fast typists go faster, not slowing them down! That it was designed to reduce the efficiency of typists is a very common (and wrong) myth.
By efficiency, I meant "possible keypresses in a given time." And I explained the history in my post.
somebody's already come up with T9 which works well enough for most people for entering large amounts of text instead of numbers.
T9's annoying. (a) I often text in other languages than English - business reasons. (b) it's too much like Clippy. 'Did you mean "foo"?' (when I try to type "doo".)
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Worms/virii don't need human intervention to function. I remember installing Windows SBS 2003 on a new server, connecting it, and having it owned by a varient of Sasser that caused it to reboot every 5 min within 10 min of connecting it. Well before I had time to download the up-to-date patches from MS.
-b.
Sure, and I'll make another $200,000 on the backside of the deal selling software to delete the trojan after its usefulness has expired. Pump out more malware and then make money selling protection software. The perfect waterfront racket.
-b.
(b) append a request for contact info (name, actually address) to said spams
(c) have Evil Henchmen(tm) go door to door shooting people stupid enough to respond to the spams
(d) once the market is destroyed, spam will cease to be a problem
Just like crack, whores, smokes, and booze, as long as there are buyers, there'll be people willing to provide the "product."
-b.
Actually, ISPs like Speakeasy that cater to the technically sentient are doing just fine, thank you very much.
-b.
It's been done. Port 587 is used for non-secure client-to-server SMTP already. Some ISP's allow port 587 passthrough but block 25. Personally, I think that sucks, and I'll summarily dump any ISP that blocks 25, if only because I need access to port 25 for things like testing clients' servers sometimes.
-b.
Legislators would do better by asking, before banning an act or imposing unreasonably onerous requirements: "Is anyone not directly and voluntarily involved in that act likely to be injured or adversely by it?" If the answer is "no", then the act in question should remain legal. Same with surveillance - "would I like video footage of *me* to be kept for the rest of my natural life or even longer?
Like in medicine, "first, do no harm" should become a phrase to live by.
-b.
Fearful? The worst that can be done is that they lose party membership if they defy the party line on a "three-line whip" vote. They can still sit as an independent.
as be amazed that we haven't dragged you out of Downing Street and strung you up outside of Parliament.
Hanging's too good. I prefer the ancient formula of "hanged, drawn, and quartered..." Pour encourager les autres, naturellment...
-b.
Mod parent up.
Add to this the parliamentary reform acts of 2006 that allow executive pre-emption of parliamentary legislation (nicknamed the Abolition of Parliament Act), the weakening of the House of Lords (whether you like hereditary legislation or not, it's been a conservative steadying influence in British politics), etc... Personally, I think Blair and Co. are traitors to the British people and should be treated as such. By the pre-1998 Treason Act, I may add.
-b.
The SK65 phone has a full keyboard. No T9 needed nor desired, though it does have optional T9 functionality when the alpha keypad is closed.
-b.
Actually, there are a lot of cases, just not necessarily in the service industry. Custom control software for manufacturing (no, not all of it runs on microcontrollers). The telecoms industry - phone company *switching equipment* can be 30 yo in some cases, not to mention software. What else? Building automation - many schools throughout NJ are still using Solidyne automation boxes that have long since ceased to be supported. Complete with modems connected to 300 baud serial ports. The application to control them (in a company that I worked at) was a 20 yo UNIX application that no one felt the need to reinvent since the company had 7 employees with better things to do with their time. So when the time to migrate from Radio Shack Xenix boxes (in the 2000s), the code could be somewhat redesigned and recompiled to run under BSD without reinventing the wheel. Had the upgrade been from DOS to Server 200x, I suspect that it would have been total hell.
-b.
Yep, that's more or less what I was thinking. It *can* be done.
My original point was different. Given a high-value proprietary software package from 1985 with the publishing company long gone and not providing support and a open-source package with the same circumstances, where do you think backward compatibility matters more? One can be tweaked/rewritten to run on newer platforms without completely reinventing the wheel. The other one cannot.
-b.
The only thing to be worried about is that NK may commodify weapons of mass destruction. Then again, they probably won't. Kim jong Il is simply too paranoid to sell nukes to random organizations and NK's only real ally - China - already has The Bomb.
-b.
-b.
-b.
Immobile? I was picturing something mounted on wheels that would travel and "patrol". In that case, it's not anything new at all. US aircraft carriers already have something called Phalanx CIWS that is a very fast machine gun (nickname: R2D2 with a hardon) linked to a radar system and computer. It can be set to automatically shoot aircraft that it recognizes as unfriendly out of the sky. Also, the East Germans deployed automatic machine guns at their border, pointing at their own people so they didn't escape. How sad that they're being pointed into a slave nation by the "good guys" now.
-b.
But it was mostly the Reds doing the murdering, not the supposed "good" guys.
-b.
No reason why landmines that can be turned off by radio control can't be made.
-b.
What about some kind of net gun that just tangles up the intruder?
-b.
Maginot Line, anyone? For those who don't know, the French build fortifications on the German border before WW II. When the invasion of France came, the Germans (a) leapfrogged it from the air (b) went around through "friendly" countries. The South Koreans are fighting last year's war. Actually, the best alternative would be to open the border and say "come in, you're welcome, we'll even give you money to spend in the South on capitalist luxuries." (West Germany pretty much did this with the East in '89.) Sadly, it's not in human nature to do so.
-b.
All the more reason to open the border. I bet the invaders^H refugees will be enjoying the capitalist decadance of the South within a few weeks. In less than a year, I suspect that Kim Jong Il would be suffering from acute and irreversible lead poisoning.
-b.
Let the SOBs invade, I say. They'll learn that capitalist decadence isn't quite as bad as the propaganda makes it out to be. I bet that if the border were opened, Kim Jong Il would be the guest of honor of a firing party before the year ended.
-b.
That's the one bug, not a feature! Those goth chicks are hot, unfortunately, they run screaming when I use the phone. Oh well, can't have it all, I guess.
-b.
By efficiency, I meant "possible keypresses in a given time." And I explained the history in my post.
-b.
Fine if you're dealing with common West European languages I guess. YOU fail it, condescending prick.
-b.
T9's annoying. (a) I often text in other languages than English - business reasons. (b) it's too much like Clippy. 'Did you mean "foo"?' (when I try to type "doo".)
-b.