"And 2.6 is quite stable, not to mention a hell of a lot faster than 2.4... so why are we still stuck in the stone age? If you want to be really elitist about it, stick with 2.2..."
This is one of the benefits of slackware. It's picky about new versions. Mature software is bound to be more stable. Like the article states, the new RC is 2.6 compliant but it's a Good Thing that it's not forced on users. It's not about elitism at all.
"Until Slackware has a solid PAM implementation, it will be delegated to my smaller, simpler tasks. And yes, I've read Patrick's rants about his dislike of PAM."
Why put in the work when there are some major problems with PAM? If you want it, you can either look for packages other people have made, or you can impliment it yourself. Yes, it's annoying not to have that option in the official distro, but then again, it's a whole lot of effort just for the sake of making a handful of people happy.
"In most of the groups I've been in, "RTFM" is help, at least in a subtle way. It's the "teach a man to fish" method. The idea being that telling a user where to find the answers to his questions is more helpful in the long run than just answering his question. Yes, there are people who use it as another way to say "get lost newbie", but, right or wrong, the intent is to help."
Yes, in many places you can consider it help. However, on newbie forum where the more experienced users are supposed to help, this comment is still found. The difference is that the forum is supposed to be a place for newbies to get answers, not brushed off. Newsgroups, mailing lists and more advanced forums can and should get away with it but I'm annoyed when I see it in a place that learners _should_ be asking those obvious questions. Indeed we should all help, but sometimes pointing the user to the right source of information is a better way of helping.
No seriously, I agree. The "newbies" will become the next experts and we should all help the best we can. What if school teachers refused to help the students based on the same princible? "No, I won't teach you the alphabet! You obviously havn't googled well enough for it!"
You forgot that a person may have left their DNA at the scene of the crime but may have had nothing to do with the crime. I'm pretty sure my DNA is present at my friends houses. If a crime got committed there would I become a suspect? What if I simply lend someone something of mine that has my DNA on it? That way I wouldn't have ever had to visit the scene, yet my DNA would be there.
It still had some interesting points to do with DNA though. To compare to the topic here: the man in the film who actually comitted a murder had DNA that said he had no violent tendancies. This is the kind of problem law enforcement might forget about if technology allows a profile to be created in the future regarding peoples behavior. You cannot judge a persons actions based on their biological footprint. Psychology plays a far bigger role in this. Of course, I'm being totally hypothetical here since building a profile on everyone is not what is being suggested in the article:)
Yes, the film wasn't about DNA and has many other aspects, but it DOES bring up more than simply superficial points on the subject.
Good grief! You really think the problem is C and C++?? I know that these arn't the holy grail of programming languages but to put some of that blame on them is very nieve. You can write buggy, unsecured code with asm! It's got very little to do with the language involved (the compiler and libraries used may have an effect) since it all gets put into machine code anyway. Blame the design and implementation, not the tool.
Software security is, in a way, getting better. More holes are being patched and more ways of exploiting security are getting found and publisized (which is good if programmers and sys admins take note). The real problems are the fact that software doesn't stick around too long. New versions are released with new bugs and holes. They get bigger and more complex which makes it harder and harder to get a good degree of security in any product or model. This would show that security is getting worse. I know I've contradicted what I said earlier but I think both are true. Security in software gets better with every hole fixed, but worse everytime it gets code changed or added. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that these problems don't exist because they are not published yet makes no sense. It doesn't make any system any more secure. If a door on a building is unlocked but no-one know this yet does it make that door secure? No.
Actually good art is reacting. Otherwise all pictures of people would be expressionless. Just because they arn't moving doesn't mean the artist hasn't managed to capture something is far from static. Sure, it's hard to animate the small unconcious details (such as body language) that humans (and animals for that matter) make but to say stationary art is static is wrong.
No, you're right. Just look at tetris (people are STILL playing tetris and it's clones). I think the problems come in when a game is trying to look all realistic and slick but doesn't pull it off very well. Games that are consistant and arn't meant to look realistic by design can still be great games and don't suffer for their lack of shiny graphics.
I think IBM have just been giving them enough rope to hang themselves. They've been patient and efficient (mostly) and have let SCO do most of the work for them. I'd prefer SCO being able to take their time and make that hole bigger rather than being able to make a good appeal.
Actually I beleive you should incinerate the hard drive, split the ashes up onto small piles and flush each pile down toilets in a different locations just incase soem sneeky bugger does some forensics on it.;-)
Hey, I've got a win98 machine here, no patches, only reinstalled once since we've had it (it's old). This guy must be doing something really serious or just needs to learn how to recover properly.
This sounds like MS fishing for free market research.../me takes off tinfoil hat
Windows seems to be a pretty adverage OS. I like something a little better, Something I can really use rather than something that wants to try predict what I want to do. I want something stable and useful. The ablity to tinker is just an added bonus in Open Source OS's;)
My walkman, my dogs clicker, my mobile phone (and my normal landline phone for that matter), many handheld games, I should have though some medical devices, the list kind of goes on.
"I do use pgp for my email with certain individuals. Does that likely put me on the 'radar'?"
It's quite likely. ECHELON picks up about 90% of traffic on the internet and encrypted messages are the most likely (next to plain text plans of committing crimes etc) to be picked up and looked at. I shouldn't have thought it would make the intelligence community put you on some list but they've more than likely given a second look at one or more of your messages.:-/
"but if we were all using it, then the gov't would have to rely on other indicators to find suspect emails." It would be nice if the majority used encryption.
And in many cases an educational institution will not accept people who have been caught cheating in the past. This would make it difficult for him to even reapply to the course.
Um...don't you mean _reported_ vulnerabilities? And no, it doesn't say a lot more since you are discounting the severity of the vulnerabilities and the level it would take to exploit them.
"Not much better? The Chinese government regularly imprisons people for decades at a time for publishing anything that it does not like, or even for such mundane activities as collecting newspaper clippings. Sometimes it even executes people for saying the wrong thing. So what exaclty has the Bush administration or the "corporate media" done which is "not much better" than killing people for speaking freely?"
Yes, they do. They have much more convincing readons for their citizens to agree with them. But just because they are more brutal with their censorship doesn't mean it doesn't happen in supposedly free countries. The US took down a fair amount of websites that were a "threat" to national security. You will get arrested if you say the wrong (albiet stupid) things in the west (such as shouting "BOMB" at a station). There is censorship in the form of netnannies in many schools and public libraries. Sure, the penalities are much less severe but you can't deny similarities.
"Every western intelligence agency believed that Iraq had WMDs"
Belief can be speculation. There seems to have been no solid evidence which means they were in fact speculating and assuming. If they had solid evidence, why the search?
Slashdot Mirror
"And 2.6 is quite stable, not to mention a hell of a lot faster than 2.4... so why are we still stuck in the stone age? If you want to be really elitist about it, stick with 2.2..."
This is one of the benefits of slackware. It's picky about new versions. Mature software is bound to be more stable. Like the article states, the new RC is 2.6 compliant but it's a Good Thing that it's not forced on users. It's not about elitism at all.
"Until Slackware has a solid PAM implementation, it will be delegated to my smaller, simpler tasks. And yes, I've read Patrick's rants about his dislike of PAM."
Why put in the work when there are some major problems with PAM? If you want it, you can either look for packages other people have made, or you can impliment it yourself. Yes, it's annoying not to have that option in the official distro, but then again, it's a whole lot of effort just for the sake of making a handful of people happy.
Dumb? no sorry. If you want to get pedantic you can call it a terminal (which is what it is) but to say there is no command line shows your ignorance.
"In most of the groups I've been in, "RTFM" is help, at least in a subtle way. It's the "teach a man to fish" method. The idea being that telling a user where to find the answers to his questions is more helpful in the long run than just answering his question. Yes, there are people who use it as another way to say "get lost newbie", but, right or wrong, the intent is to help."
Yes, in many places you can consider it help. However, on newbie forum where the more experienced users are supposed to help, this comment is still found. The difference is that the forum is supposed to be a place for newbies to get answers, not brushed off. Newsgroups, mailing lists and more advanced forums can and should get away with it but I'm annoyed when I see it in a place that learners _should_ be asking those obvious questions.
Indeed we should all help, but sometimes pointing the user to the right source of information is a better way of helping.
OSX has a command line. It's just well hidden.
You insensitive clod you!!
No seriously, I agree. The "newbies" will become the next experts and we should all help the best we can. What if school teachers refused to help the students based on the same princible? "No, I won't teach you the alphabet! You obviously havn't googled well enough for it!"
You forgot that a person may have left their DNA at the scene of the crime but may have had nothing to do with the crime. I'm pretty sure my DNA is present at my friends houses. If a crime got committed there would I become a suspect? What if I simply lend someone something of mine that has my DNA on it? That way I wouldn't have ever had to visit the scene, yet my DNA would be there.
Strange, I thought every human was capable of committing a crime. How many people have you met that havn't ever broken a law?
It still had some interesting points to do with DNA though. To compare to the topic here: the man in the film who actually comitted a murder had DNA that said he had no violent tendancies. This is the kind of problem law enforcement might forget about if technology allows a profile to be created in the future regarding peoples behavior. You cannot judge a persons actions based on their biological footprint. Psychology plays a far bigger role in this. Of course, I'm being totally hypothetical here since building a profile on everyone is not what is being suggested in the article :)
Yes, the film wasn't about DNA and has many other aspects, but it DOES bring up more than simply superficial points on the subject.
No. Only specially trained police in the UK are allowed to carry firearms. And I don't trust police any more than the stranger on the street.
Aslong as they don't steal all the good biscuits they're welcome :)
Good grief!
You really think the problem is C and C++?? I know that these arn't the holy grail of programming languages but to put some of that blame on them is very nieve. You can write buggy, unsecured code with asm! It's got very little to do with the language involved (the compiler and libraries used may have an effect) since it all gets put into machine code anyway. Blame the design and implementation, not the tool.
Software security is, in a way, getting better. More holes are being patched and more ways of exploiting security are getting found and publisized (which is good if programmers and sys admins take note).
The real problems are the fact that software doesn't stick around too long. New versions are released with new bugs and holes. They get bigger and more complex which makes it harder and harder to get a good degree of security in any product or model. This would show that security is getting worse. I know I've contradicted what I said earlier but I think both are true. Security in software gets better with every hole fixed, but worse everytime it gets code changed or added.
Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that these problems don't exist because they are not published yet makes no sense. It doesn't make any system any more secure.
If a door on a building is unlocked but no-one know this yet does it make that door secure? No.
Actually good art is reacting. Otherwise all pictures of people would be expressionless. Just because they arn't moving doesn't mean the artist hasn't managed to capture something is far from static. Sure, it's hard to animate the small unconcious details (such as body language) that humans (and animals for that matter) make but to say stationary art is static is wrong.
No, you're right. Just look at tetris (people are STILL playing tetris and it's clones). I think the problems come in when a game is trying to look all realistic and slick but doesn't pull it off very well. Games that are consistant and arn't meant to look realistic by design can still be great games and don't suffer for their lack of shiny graphics.
I think IBM have just been giving them enough rope to hang themselves. They've been patient and efficient (mostly) and have let SCO do most of the work for them.
I'd prefer SCO being able to take their time and make that hole bigger rather than being able to make a good appeal.
Actually I beleive you should incinerate the hard drive, split the ashes up onto small piles and flush each pile down toilets in a different locations just incase soem sneeky bugger does some forensics on it. ;-)
Hey, I've got a win98 machine here, no patches, only reinstalled once since we've had it (it's old).
This guy must be doing something really serious or just needs to learn how to recover properly.
/me puts on tinfoil hat
/me takes off tinfoil hat
;)
This sounds like MS fishing for free market research...
Windows seems to be a pretty adverage OS. I like something a little better, Something I can really use rather than something that wants to try predict what I want to do. I want something stable and useful. The ablity to tinker is just an added bonus in Open Source OS's
My walkman, my dogs clicker, my mobile phone (and my normal landline phone for that matter), many handheld games, I should have though some medical devices, the list kind of goes on.
"I do use pgp for my email with certain individuals. Does that likely put me on the 'radar'?"
:-/
It's quite likely. ECHELON picks up about 90% of traffic on the internet and encrypted messages are the most likely (next to plain text plans of committing crimes etc) to be picked up and looked at. I shouldn't have thought it would make the intelligence community put you on some list but they've more than likely given a second look at one or more of your messages.
"but if we were all using it, then the gov't would have to rely on other indicators to find suspect emails."
It would be nice if the majority used encryption.
Maybe he should try politics?
And in many cases an educational institution will not accept people who have been caught cheating in the past. This would make it difficult for him to even reapply to the course.
Soooo, if your scenario (hacker working incrementally)and the password was set to 00000000 it would take how long?
Um...don't you mean _reported_ vulnerabilities?
And no, it doesn't say a lot more since you are discounting the severity of the vulnerabilities and the level it would take to exploit them.
"Not much better? The Chinese government regularly imprisons people for decades at a time for publishing anything that it does not like, or even for such mundane activities as collecting newspaper clippings. Sometimes it even executes people for saying the wrong thing. So what exaclty has the Bush administration or the "corporate media" done which is "not much better" than killing people for speaking freely?"
Yes, they do. They have much more convincing readons for their citizens to agree with them. But just because they are more brutal with their censorship doesn't mean it doesn't happen in supposedly free countries. The US took down a fair amount of websites that were a "threat" to national security. You will get arrested if you say the wrong (albiet stupid) things in the west (such as shouting "BOMB" at a station). There is censorship in the form of netnannies in many schools and public libraries.
Sure, the penalities are much less severe but you can't deny similarities.
"Every western intelligence agency believed that Iraq had WMDs"
Belief can be speculation. There seems to have been no solid evidence which means they were in fact speculating and assuming. If they had solid evidence, why the search?