Linux users, or just people who prefer alternative browsers (such as Opera)
Ahhh! This is the very cause of the problem! Why are they acting like IE is the "standard" and everything else is "alternative!" Is Ford standard, but Chevrolet alternative?
Another scary point is that these articles indicate that browser spoofing often works. This means that the only reason some of these sites don't work, is because they refuse to! There are no real incompatibilities
I'm not very knowledgable on *nix security, so please help me out here. Why could you not simply do this trick to any program? IE: make a fake libc.so that erases all the files on the hard drive on a call to fopen(), and then run a program that has suid root?
Is there a good reference for how libraries are loaded (other than the man pages to ld)
As another note, Windows has had the ability you describe since win32. Most calls take a SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR pointer that is usually NULL, but can be used to elevate priveledges of a function call.
One photo is among the highest-resolution ever obtained...It resolves the surface to 5 feet (1.5 meters) per pixel...Objects the size of school buses can be seen in the full size image, the scientists say, though there is no evidence for any such transportation devices on the planet.
You know, they had to put that last part in there because, otherwise, some tabloid would summarize the whole article as "Evidence of school buses found on Mars!"
I have a friend who spends lots of time on newsgroups, Kazaa, etc. copying movies. At the same time, I read articles like this, and spend $10 sending certified delivery confirmed letters to congressmen like Mr. Hollings and businesses like Intel and AMD. This is highly counterproductive. My friend saves $10/month on movie rentals, and I spend $10/month on letters.
I've talked to this person and they say "Oh, I just copy movies I wouldn't rent anyway." (I assume because they are too expensive) They have a valid point since some products are just ridiculously expensive. But they are not helping the problem. If they spent their effort protesting, or finding alternatives as they did pirating, we would be in good shape. I would probably be better off paying them $10/month and having them rent the movies, than to spend it writing letters.
What should I do? Do I turn them in? Do I hassle them? Do I pay them to stop doing it? It's my rights they are taking away, but turning them in seems ridiculous. Is there somethnig we can do in mass that could prevent this problem?
Piezoelectric Microfiber Armor
on
Electric Armor
·
· Score: 2
Anyone remember this article? It was about using piezoelectric microfibers in tennis rackets - when an electric current runs through the fibers, they become taut, giving an extra push to the ball. I always wondered if something like that could be used in military purposes (maybe personal armor, if not tank armor). If not, they might make a heck of a pair of boxing gloves!
...including the standard things (PCs, networking equipment, servers, furniture, fixtures, techs, games, etc)...
I hope you include how you are going to make money, and how long it will take to become profitable. This may sound obvious, but many geeks spend lots of time planning hardware and software, but forget the business plan. If you are new to this, I recommend that you spend the money to hire someone to review it, and/or get some good books on the subject. The more you know ahead of time (plans, failsafes, even what criteria you will use to decide when to give up) will improve your chances in may ways.
The parent post brings up a very very important question, perhaps the very crux of the state of Linux today.
...So, if people won't switch off something as flaky as Windows 98 on to 2000 or XP, what makes anyone think that these people will switch to something like Linux...?
There is a very easy answer: There must be something more important to them than any of those factors. But what could it be? Maybe that doesn't sound very profound, but I think that there are many things that the Linux community is missing the boat on.
BTW - Posted using Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)
Why does it have to be done that way? If I personally wanted to make a media player clone, why could I not reverse engineer the protocol, then implement it too?
Cygwin/XFree86 is a port of XFree86 to the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. Cygwin/XFree86 runs on all recent consumer and business versions of Windows; as of 2002-05-12 those versions are specifically Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.
This is what makes too many laws. There is already a solution in place, the citizens and representatives just need to use them:
Most of the posts I see say that these codes are easy to obtain. If the codes for some manufacturer are hard to obtain, shops should not work on those cars. Or charge more. So customers will not buy them. That is how capitalism is supposed to work. Consumers and service shops just need to stand up for the good manufacturers.
"Sen. Wellstone says that manufacturers are acting like a cartel, blocking independent shops and car owners." We already have laws against cartels. Use them.
In the US, all products must carry an implied warranty of merchantability. If the product can be disabled for any reason, wouldn't that violate the agreement? Thus, this product cannot be sold in the us? Any lawyers care to comment?
That's the best point on copy protection I've heard in 6 months. Is the RIAA telling us that it is okay to duplicate copyrighted material if the quality is bad? Who decides what is bad? That's fine with me, I grew up with casette tapes. My parents used records and 8-tracks. We survived.
Simple: Take any existing C code. Add inline and const appropriately. Recompile. Bang, code is faster. If you have a really new compiler, you could also use the new restrict keyword when aliasing is not permitted.
I know this is a cheesy example, but remember that this is one of the reasons C++ is provably faster than C. It has keywords that allow the compiler to generate better code.
1) I've never exceeded STL's requirements (without having the requirements too specific to expect any library do what I need). I'm curious what it does not do that you want, and how you chose to work around it.
3) Agreed! But please tell me how STL could have been designed to have better error messages?
You point out that STL has support issues, but you place the blame in the wrong place. The fault is poor compilers, not a poor standard.
If my web browser does not implement cookies, is HTTP no longer a standard? STL is a standard, and if a vendor chooses not to conform, that is not the fault of the standard.
I am an avid user of STL, and I have worked on many projects, large and small, that make use of it.
Advantages of STL: - Standardized, comes with every C++ compiler - Fast - Generalized (excellent use of templates) - Many different implementations freely and commercially available. - Source code available.
Disadvantages of STL: - Large executable file sizes - Incompatibilities between implementations - Complex to debug
STL is a very fast and powerful library. Ignore those who say "it uses virtuals, and is in C++, therfore it is slow" because none of them have ever used it. (C++ is in fact faster than C if coded properly, and STL is coded properly) Often, a good structure is much faster than using arrays, even if they have less overhead.
Unfortunately, STL's use of templates and inlines can inflate the size of your code in exchange for raw speed. This can vary very much depending on your compiler. MSVC adds 200k or more just for the priveledge of using strings! Using STLport still requires that you link in the old 200k libraries ON TOP of STLPort!
I do not recommend using STL on small projects where compiled file size is an issue. For anything else, go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahhh! This is the very cause of the problem! Why are they acting like IE is the "standard" and everything else is "alternative!" Is Ford standard, but Chevrolet alternative?
Another scary point is that these articles indicate that browser spoofing often works. This means that the only reason some of these sites don't work, is because they refuse to! There are no real incompatibilities
I'm not very knowledgable on *nix security, so please help me out here. Why could you not simply do this trick to any program? IE: make a fake libc.so that erases all the files on the hard drive on a call to fopen(), and then run a program that has suid root?
Is there a good reference for how libraries are loaded (other than the man pages to ld)
As another note, Windows has had the ability you describe since win32. Most calls take a SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR pointer that is usually NULL, but can be used to elevate priveledges of a function call.
I have a friend who spends lots of time on newsgroups, Kazaa, etc. copying movies. At the same time, I read articles like this, and spend $10 sending certified delivery confirmed letters to congressmen like Mr. Hollings and businesses like Intel and AMD. This is highly counterproductive. My friend saves $10/month on movie rentals, and I spend $10/month on letters.
I've talked to this person and they say "Oh, I just copy movies I wouldn't rent anyway." (I assume because they are too expensive) They have a valid point since some products are just ridiculously expensive. But they are not helping the problem. If they spent their effort protesting, or finding alternatives as they did pirating, we would be in good shape. I would probably be better off paying them $10/month and having them rent the movies, than to spend it writing letters.
What should I do? Do I turn them in? Do I hassle them? Do I pay them to stop doing it? It's my rights they are taking away, but turning them in seems ridiculous. Is there somethnig we can do in mass that could prevent this problem?
Anyone remember this article? It was about using piezoelectric microfibers in tennis rackets - when an electric current runs through the fibers, they become taut, giving an extra push to the ball. I always wondered if something like that could be used in military purposes (maybe personal armor, if not tank armor). If not, they might make a heck of a pair of boxing gloves!
I hope you include how you are going to make money, and how long it will take to become profitable. This may sound obvious, but many geeks spend lots of time planning hardware and software, but forget the business plan. If you are new to this, I recommend that you spend the money to hire someone to review it, and/or get some good books on the subject. The more you know ahead of time (plans, failsafes, even what criteria you will use to decide when to give up) will improve your chances in may ways.
The parent post brings up a very very important question, perhaps the very crux of the state of Linux today.
There is a very easy answer: There must be something more important to them than any of those factors. But what could it be? Maybe that doesn't sound very profound, but I think that there are many things that the Linux community is missing the boat on.
BTW - Posted using Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)
Why does it have to be done that way? If I personally wanted to make a media player clone, why could I not reverse engineer the protocol, then implement it too?
The licensing.
This is what makes too many laws. There is already a solution in place, the citizens and representatives just need to use them:
1) Microsoft was not sued.
2) In a criminal case, yes.
In the US, all products must carry an implied warranty of merchantability. If the product can be disabled for any reason, wouldn't that violate the agreement? Thus, this product cannot be sold in the us? Any lawyers care to comment?
That's the best point on copy protection I've heard in 6 months. Is the RIAA telling us that it is okay to duplicate copyrighted material if the quality is bad? Who decides what is bad? That's fine with me, I grew up with casette tapes. My parents used records and 8-tracks. We survived.
As a coder, what did the third pass do?
Simple: Take any existing C code. Add inline and const appropriately. Recompile. Bang, code is faster. If you have a really new compiler, you could also use the new restrict keyword when aliasing is not permitted.
I know this is a cheesy example, but remember that this is one of the reasons C++ is provably faster than C. It has keywords that allow the compiler to generate better code.
What is wrong with vector ?
1) I've never exceeded STL's requirements (without having the requirements too specific to expect any library do what I need). I'm curious what it does not do that you want, and how you chose to work around it.
3) Agreed! But please tell me how STL could have been designed to have better error messages?
STL works in GCC.
GCC is cross platform.
Therefore, STL is cross platform.
Seriously, I've ported utilities and 3D games across multiple OSs, and STL is the portion I have the LEAST trouble with.
You point out that STL has support issues, but you place the blame in the wrong place. The fault is poor compilers, not a poor standard.
If my web browser does not implement cookies, is HTTP no longer a standard? STL is a standard, and if a vendor chooses not to conform, that is not the fault of the standard.
Standard Template Library
I am an avid user of STL, and I have worked on many projects, large and small, that make use of it.
Advantages of STL:
- Standardized, comes with every C++ compiler
- Fast
- Generalized (excellent use of templates)
- Many different implementations freely and commercially available.
- Source code available.
Disadvantages of STL:
- Large executable file sizes
- Incompatibilities between implementations
- Complex to debug
STL is a very fast and powerful library. Ignore those who say "it uses virtuals, and is in C++, therfore it is slow" because none of them have ever used it. (C++ is in fact faster than C if coded properly, and STL is coded properly) Often, a good structure is much faster than using arrays, even if they have less overhead.
Unfortunately, STL's use of templates and inlines can inflate the size of your code in exchange for raw speed. This can vary very much depending on your compiler. MSVC adds 200k or more just for the priveledge of using strings! Using STLport still requires that you link in the old 200k libraries ON TOP of STLPort!
I do not recommend using STL on small projects where compiled file size is an issue. For anything else, go for it.
What do DVDs and DVD players use for the menus? Is this format open? Is it appropriate for the web?