North Korea has the capacity to hit Japan. The U.S. has forces in Japan. Ergo, the North Koreans have the ability to strike with nuclear weaponry against U.S. assets. And thus is an attack on the nation.
It seems to me that what is and what isn't part of 'the nation' rather depends on what comes in handy eh? Some forces in a foreign country are included, but a military base on US controlled territory is not?
Thinking instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some anti-war hippy is telling you might be smart.
I indeed happen to think war is not such a good thing to be involved in, doesn't exactly make me a hippy. What is this name calling needed for whenever anyone might disagree with the current government anyway.
Sure there isn't a USSR who could take out the entire country in one shot anymore, but one or two missiles is enough. One well placed nuke could kill/injure 10 million if it took out Los Angeles county. New york city has 8 million. Two nukes, well placed, could take out 18 million people. There are 295 million people in the US. That would be 16.39% of the US population. That is literally decimation. That is 50% more than decimation.
Just please go learn something about the effects of nuclear weapons, what Korea might have in the worst case, and what kind of damage they can do with it.
I do agree that they can cause a pretty amount of damage, that is not the point.
If you are going to be afraid of a country with nukes, then I'd take another look at Pakistan. Its current leader may not be a problem, and actually most of its population would not be either, but chances of some extremist comming to power one way or another are quite there, and then you have a country with proven nuclear ability, some access to resources for making more, own technology for delivery and a group of fanatic idiots who may try anything to get a nuke delivered.
Do something about North Korea? sure, something should have been done some 40+ years ago there actually, end the state of war between it and the USA. It is one of those 'monsters' the USA has created itself with the same kind of blindness and fear (for communism back then) that so many there are still showing today.
North Korea at the very least? Lots of places, sheesh. And there are a lot of old Soviet scientist with nothing in their wallets but nuclear warhead schematics. Come on, open your eyes a little bit.
Opening your eyes and actually using them instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some war happy people in the White House are telling you might be a really good idea indeed.
In short, North Korea might have the capability to launch one or two nukes directly at the USA (actually they don't, but lets just assume they do, they probably do have the nukes for it), but is far from assured destruction of the USA. Don't come with the theory that that is only a matter of time, North Korea does not have access to the resources to come anywhere near.
Hmm, I just get me a shitty cheap all-in-one device every 2 years or so, thats how long they seem to last for me anyway..
Getting a new one every 2 years is about as expensive as getting the extended warranty and then still having to replace it every 3 or 4 years anyway... and it gets me 'newer technology' on a regular basis.
Interesting enough, the utterly cheap and crappy HP PSC 1200 I have now is way past its expected lifetime of 2 years already, without any signs of giving up.
There is one reason why I happen to like those PSC all-in-one devices btw.. after a few months of being left unused, they just print without any trouble, no dried ink or such, no cleaning/replacing of print heads.. But then, thats about the only good thing I have to say about them, print quality is acceptable, scanner is crappy (for anything beyond 300dpi that is), and you just don't want to know how much ink it wastes on 'cleaning' the heads (only use when you really need it). Hmm.. there was actually aother positive thing to say about thise devices.. the cartridges are extremely easy to tefill, almost as if they were made for it (and yeah, you can get the original ink for them with some hunting around)
They don't intend to make a product at all. They intend to sell these screens as components to companies that are making products.
Yes, that has been Phillips' way of doing business for a long time now. Seems to work well for them, and we actually get to see quite a few of their inventions, so companies seem to be quite willing to take their 'inventions' and make products based on them.
Well, you could hook a PC up to a mainframe with an sna connection, sure. You still ended up using terminal emulation (a 3270 emulator usually), and this just bypassed the pc for most parts and turned it into a glorrified 3279 terminal. Tho it indeed used a 'proper' networking protocol, the role of the PC wasn't that of an intelligent node or such.
It wasn't untill things like lan server, lan manager and of course Novell had been around for a while that pcs became capable of being an end node or terminal in appn and sna networks.
You will still see this stuff around at airports and travel agents for example, and your typical unix/linux distribution still has a tn3270 package for talking to such environments over tcp/ip networks.
PROFS and later OFFICE/VM.. arghhh..
Ah well, it served its job at the time, but cumbersome only begins expressing part of the issues I had with those.
That said.. the VM environment they were running on was pretty cool.. Had a lot of fun with it (and got some operators calling me to tell stopping whatever I was doing... ).
Let me again (and this time complete) quote the question, tell me where I mentioned Apache..
Then, I have a question for you, I honestly do not know if OpenBSD by now provides a good and secure way to implement the following but last time I checked it did not:
A webserver is hosting multiple websites which generate content dynamically from information in a database. The specific sites are written in PHP, the underlying database can be either MySQL or Postgress. How do I implement this such that both websites can access their own configuration information (so they can know what database to use and how to authenticate with it) without them being able to read eachothers configuration?
I see a way through setuid cgi but for me that is not an acceptable solution security wise.
PHP mattered, apache did not (please read what I asked again if you think I am changing my mind all the time). Anyway, will take a peek at if lighthttpd + fastcgi do what I need. I agree that PHP sucks, too bad my customers want it.
Uh, hello? Dude, he already said that you should use a better webserver than Apache in this thread, are you are retard?
As I ponted out, nothing confined my question to Apache, I rather explicitly called it a webserver.
Any one that you can recomend that would indeed solve this better then Apache? Saying 'use something else' is really not a solution unless you can at the very least point at something else that works better. Is name calling all you have to contribute?
You're such a douche. He's not been saying this is an attack on his favourite system, he's been calling you a moron. Christ's sake boy, you really need to get some glasses, or English as a second language courses or something, cause you're hard of reading.....
Ah right, so name calling is all you have to contribute indeed.
You also need to pull the stick out of your ass, you're being jumpy and protective of FreeBSD as though this were a personal assault on you, that all these things even mentioning another operating system is somehow hurting you.
It is funny how you accuse me of being unable to read, yet are not very good at it yourself. I have been mentioning quite a few other systems in this thread myself, even mentioning some quite nice features those have. I don't mind anyone talking about other systems when that adds to the discussion, I do mind people hijacking a discussion about system X (being it FreeBSD, Linux or anything else) for promoting their own agenda. If you cannot understand the difference between those two things then well, too bad.
Your name wouldn't happen to be Poul-Henning, would it?
It takes all of 1 minute to find out what my name is, you could answer that question yourself easily. Not to mention that I told earlier in this thread that I have a little bit of code and docs in Open/Net/FreeBSD, specifically in the i4b (isdn for bsd) drivers. Does that anywhere match what PHK did? Oh well, why am I even bothering with responding to people like you.
Both you and the person I have been trying to discuss with seem to have a big issue with making assumptions and reading at best half of what is being said.
You are right that my quote was incomplete and that I should have quoted that part as well.
That said, I was not asking for OpenBSD to do anything magical, nor was I asking OpenBSD to do anything to a product outside their control or even imply that a solution has to use Apache.
OpenBSD comes with its own fork of Apache, and if another better http server is available on OpenBSD then that is fine as well.
Apache 2.x does at least in theory offer two better mechanisms to build such things (cgid and perchild mpm), both of which mean you can run a single server (if they would actually work that is). It might just be that OpenBSD's fork of Apache has similar features which (unlike those of Apache 2) actually work?
You read it as a question confined to Apache (and not the OpenBSD fork of it either) hence my conclusion that you simply don't read very well seems jusitified, or are you to say that you were not aware that OpenBSD comes with its own fork, and that there are more webservers around then Apache?
What amuses me somewhat is how you manage to interpret almost everything as an attack on your favorite system.
A webserver is hosting multiple websites which generate content dynamically from information in a database. The specific sites are written in PHP, the underlying database can be either MySQL or Postgress. How do I implement this such that both websites can access their own configuration information (so they can know what database to use and how to authenticate with it) without them being able to read eachothers configuration?
Now your last post:
You asked if openbsd had some magic way to change apache into a webserver that supports seperating websites. So that's the question I answered
Uhmm. do you always read things that well before answering?
Well, that's the same thing as people always complaining about OpenBSD's lacking support for 3d graphics, why should they make that compromise? OpenBSD doesn't really care for 3d work, it's not one of the focuses of any of their developers, thus, it's not something they're going to bend over backwards for.
That is quite fine with me. When the Open Graphics project tried to approach them about if there was any interest within OpenBSD for a graphics card with complete published specs and open source drivers, that was met by a definite NO from Theo, so it seems they really don't care about it, even when not having to bend over backwards. Also, as I pointed out earlier, there are quite a few cards one can support well without needing any non-free code, in fact the code exists on another BSD variation (as source). Again I point at the Radeon 9000, 9200, 9400, the Matrox g4xx and g5xx series. For all of those you can get the specs you need, open source drivers have been written, and generally all that is needed is simply there.
This is too bad because modern desktop platforms use more and more opengl, and would benefit quite a bit from it. So might the battery of your laptop when trying to run a modern desktop environment due to lower resource usage (when compared to software rendering). Oh, you are not going to use such a desktop environment to begin with? Fine, no problem. You are right it is not OpenBSD's focus, but such things might just be why I don't consider it to be a good general purpose OS. That is not FUD and does not mean it sucks (it does not, it is pretty damn good at those things that do have the focus of its developers) but it does make it more a special purpose system.
It happens, it will continue to happen. As long as there is something that is different than another thing at anything in any way, there will be comparisons.
Comparisons are fine. Proclaiming something as the only possible option is not, and has very little to do with comparison. Repeating things people quite know (OpenBSD people care A LOT about security and Freedom) is not very constructive and does not add any information.
Also, why not contribute to a discussion about wireless support in FreeBSD instead? Sure, tell about what happened in OpenBSD, why it might be a better way if you think that, wonder how the firmware activism from OpenBSD might help this etc, thats all something else then some blind 'this is best, there is no other option' proclamations.
Guess what, I have been subscribed to the list for years, tech and misc.
Yeah, and I was there when OpenBSD split off from NetBSD, actually have a little bit of code and docs in Open,Net and FreeBSD (in the i4b driver actually), your point being? Ah, you found the 2 examples irrelevant? Likely find any other examples as irrelevant since they don't happen to concern something you want or need? I already responded to that, but there is a bit more in this post since you don't seem to get it at all.
Autorun is not supported because this is not windows. Wtf do you want it to run? Setup.exe? Automounting is supported just fine though.
Maybe autorun.sh instead? Obviously it is not going to run bit of windows software, nowhere means you cannot have an (OpenBSD specific) autorun feature. There are other Unix systems implementing such a thing (Irix for example has had such a feature for at least the last decade), and it is really easy to implement, so that can't really be the problem. It is usefull as well to quite a few users, but you may not have a need for it and even find it undesirable. I think most if not all of the OpenBSD developers would agree with you also. As for myself I consider it undesirable for a machine that needs to be very secure, because I find it undesirable in such a case that the system automatically loads code from something that can easily be inserted into the machine. Doesn't really matter if that is a CD or some usb stick or whatever actually.
The fact that you don't want such a feature or fail to see the use of it is completely irrelevant. In an earlier post I think you were trying to tell me that I could not judge what you needed, apply that idea to yourself first maybe?
Your usb device is simply a driver issue. Nothing to do with security at all. Have you actually tried it in openbsd, or are you simply assuming that it works the way you think it does? If it doesn't work properly, it simply needs a driver, this has nothing to do with security at all.
You seem to somewhat misunderstand the usb issue, the drivers are there, but you generally cannot have 3 drivers talk to the same usb device at the same time. You are right that it is a driver issue and you probably know where drivers live.. Solution 1 is to load the correct driver when needed which means loading a kernel module, solution 2 would be to write a driver that has the functionality of all 3 drivers and of course that would make life easier, but if it is a better solution one can quite argue about. Did I try it? not in the last year but for all I can see usb support in Open/Net/FreeBSD is pretty much the same, and it works in both others in exactly the way I described, unload driver and load required driver. I didn't see any notice that OpenBSD suddenly rewrote their usb subsystem.
Selinux is not useful as simply adding access controls does not provide security. All the local root exploits in the linux kernel are still there, and access controls will do nothing to prevent someone from exploiting them.
Just like for example privilege seperation itself does not prevent exploits but limits their consequences. Yet it is touted as an important security related feature (and rightfully so).
Does OpenBSD have more and even better measures? sure it does. At times those are needed, but then, I was never arguing that a Linux distribution with SELinux is more secure then OpenBSD, I was arguing that such a thing will in many cases provide adequate security (given some other things are also taken care of).
You seem to be living in an extremely black/white world...
Last but not least, the webserver/php/multiple user question was neither a trick question, neither has it anything to do specifically with OpenBSD, but you claim you know so well what you are talking about with regards to things like security that maybe you would have had a better idea then running 2 webservers (apache or otherwise).
I'd not call redistributing firmware a comprimise, since there are legal responsibilities that the company producing wireless hardware must be dutiful of.
Yes, and so does for example NVIDIA, it just happens to be SGI and some others that they have a responsibility to instead of for example the FCC.
It is the choice of the makers of those wireless companies to not include the firmware on for example a flash eprom as to save a few bucks so its not like they have no way to prevent this thing to begin with without the need for a seperate file with firmware.
There is no reason also for not running almost all or part of it on the main cpu either, in which case it would get integrated into the driver. Would you argue that in that case the driver could become closed sourced and non free?
Also, there is no reason why nvidia could not have most that is in the binary blob of their driver run on the gpu and regard it as firmware, possibly even including it on an eprom, it is just more expensive.
Does this all make a difference? securitywise not really. In amount of freedom that you are getting not really.
Regardless, it is a big acomplishment of the OpenBSD team, no argument there.
It's something that a company must keep closed, since their hardware can do more than the firmware allows. They'd not be able to sell the equipment if they didn't have closed firmware.
That explains why there is little point in arguing about them 'freeing' that code. Regardless, it is a compromise. Remember that you can make a compromise for very good reasons and that the outcome can be desirable, that does not change it being a compromise.
That's different than a closed driver, the vendor has no choice about the firmware for a wireless card that can go beyond the FCC's specs - a driver can be open, companies and vendors choose to not open them at their own discretion.
If the world was only that simple.
You are (again) right about why there is no point in asking for the sourcecode of the software that actually programs the radio, you are wrong that there is a real difference between firmware and driver in this, as said, this could as well be implemented in the driver.
Well, if you're going by to talk about free, open or secure, no operating system is nearly as devoted to those principles as OpenBSD
Agreed there.
- so get used to seeing such critizisms until FreeBSD is equally committed to these things.
And why do they have to make the exact same compromise (or lack thereof actually) ? Why do you need to hijack an article about the acomplishments of another system to promote the one you are using? Write a good article about OpenBSD if you feel so strongly about advocacy instead. You might actually get to tell people something interesting instead of just acting like an annoyance.
I am pretty sure you could just run a pair of instances of apache and that would solve your problem.
Indeed.
As long as they can run on different IPs thats an option. If they have to run on a single IP and its not acceptable to run one at a different port, you could use a 3rd apache server listening on the actual IP and use mod_proxy, have the apache servers for the different sitex listen on some ports on localhost etc. Gets quite messy after a while. Alternatively one could run Apache 2 and cgid or such, but hmm. haven't seen a better solution yet.
The point was that even in OpenBSD there are compromises made to freedom for practical reasons (the alternative is no support for most cards). In the same way and for the same reasons they have to make certain compromises to security in order to achieve functionality (at all actually, nitpicking would be to say that any functionality is a compromise to security to begin with)
That is perfectly fine, and I do see that the people behind it feel strongly about that freedom regardless of this (and they are often vocal enough to make that clear when it concerns their own system), and will maintain a very high standard of security (just be sure to reread this, what I said above is in no way an attack towards OpenBSD, not saying it sucks, just pointing out a very simple truth which apply to basicly every system around)
What annoys me, and why I responded to this all is people who proclaim absolute security and freedom and the like in OpenBSD and then rant about how others provide neither or at best maybe one of the 2, and then likely still not as good, and how actually everything else sucks anyway, as a response to an article about another operating system, in this case FreeBSD.
As I said in my previous post, both are relative, and unless you are working on very high security matters or do some serious security research or development, it is pretty unlikely that you NEED OpenBSD on your laptop and that nothing else would fit the requirements. You, just like Theo and others are not prepared to make the compromise to security that would come with having broader support for a lot of things quickly, rather want to put in the efford to either get around it or make something so it gets supported, kudos to you all.
Have you paused to consider that it might only be devilishly complicated to someone who is looking for any excuse to do what he wants regardless of what the document says?
Devilishly complicated are your words, but it is not unambigious or simple. Or are you trying to say that the people who thought up things like courts and in the end the supreme court deciding on correct interpretation of laws and the consitution, were jusr looking for any excuse to do what they want?
SELinux does not provide security, it provides access controls.
Which happens to be a rather relevant thing for providing a secure operating environment, just like auditing.
Security concerns a lot more then limiting the possible damage from a compromise (and I do not underestimate the importance of that one, but it is just a component, happens to be one that OpenBSD has a lot of focus on)
And debian is the only linux distro I know of that makes any serious attempt at keeping license issues in check, but they don't care about security.
They are not as deeply into security as OpenBSD is, definitely true. Considering how they are usualy extremely quick with providing fixes for security issues, I'd not say they don't care about security however.
And finally, feel free to give an example of openbsd's security getting in the way. Or are you just tossing bullshit around because you've never tried it and don't understand it?
Maybe we should start with some very basic knowledge here then:
As I have said before, any system has to make a compromise between security and functionality. This is a general principe and starts by the simple notion that you have better security by not having any forms of networking, and even better when not having any forms of communications and providing physical security. Leaving a system turned off is even better. Of course none of those are acceptable compromises, they just serve to demonstrate the basic principe.
In case of OpenBSD I could point at it not providing 'autorun' and 'autoinstall' features for CDs for reasons I assume are pretty obvious. Do you desire such features? I assume you don't, and I know I don't. Regardless, that functionality is not provided, at least in part because it would compromise security, and I bet in part because of people in OpenBSD not liking it in general. It is however a feature many people expect from a modern general purpose system. You will ofcourse dismiss this as not being desired anyway, but that is a matter of choice.
Lets look at usb support. I have a device here that impements 3 functions, but acts as one usb device. In order to use the functionality of this device, I have to either use a usb printer driver, a usb scanner driver or a 'generic' usb driver. As it currently is, that will not work unless I either unplug and replug the device and do some tricks to make it recognized by the driver I need at this moment, or I have to rebuild the kernel with loadable modules for those drivers, which compromises the security of the system (allowing things to link to the kernel at runtime).
(If you consider rebuilding OpenBSD for above feature a valid solution then so is rebuilding FreeBSD without the non-free stuff.)
For the rest, I suggest you read the archives of the OpenBSD mailinglist of the last couple of years and look for features not being implemented due to security concerns, I have not followed it all, but I have seen it come by every now and then.
I understand very well that OpenBSD is a usable system, I use it myself for a variety of things, and it has my preference for specific purposes, including things like routers, single-purpose webservers and such. You seem to be ignoring that while this is really not the first time I mention that I actually use it.
What I assume you have been trying to say all along is that you think OpenBSD has by far the best policies to achieve and maintain maximum security and freedom while providing a pretty usable system.
I would fully agree with that, but I would still not see it as the only secure and free unix, for the simple reason that both things are relative, and only have to be as good as needed for a specific purpose. In many cases there are other systems that meet both requirements to a level desired for what you are using a system for.
Also a small sidenote regarding OpenBSD, Freedom and security:
You may be aware that OpenBSD contains binary only firmware for a variety of wireless
You just seem to not like OpenBSD's style, the way it's all flossing and flying all over this bitch.
You almost got it right.
I do not like the notion among certain OpenBSD people that there is no alternative for OpenBSD and that they are the only secure and free unix like system around.
I do use it where appropriate, and I like what it offers.
Well, your calling people stupid because they have another opinion then you is rather telling, and you are still ignoring that 1. SELinux provides quite a good deal of security, and there are definitely free Linux versions.
You do dismiss every other alternative or did not look.
Also, you make the assumpütion OpenBSD is the only secure OS out there, it is the most secure one maybe, but not the only one that is secure enough.
And yes, OpenBSDs security does get in the way, maybe not for you, but that is because your requirements are limited.
And since when did 3d modelling become general purpose?
The same argument can be made about a lot of the security features of OpenBSD. They are cool, but have nothing to do with general purpose computing.
No, openbsd doesn't have any hardware 3d support. No, it has nothing to do with openbsd and everything to do with nvidia and ati sucking ball sacks. Yeah, its a shame, but what can you do?
How about the ATI Radeon 9000, 9200, 9400 ? those are supported with Free and Open Source drivers, lacking support for those has nothing to do with ATI. How about the Matrox g4xx and 5xx? hardware 3d support on those has nothing to do with binary and non free drivers either.
I'm afraid you have no idea what you are talking about with regards to netbsd. Netbsd does not provide almost everything openbsd does. Its missing tons of security features from openbsd.
Yet for most practical purposes it provides the security needed, and provides the functionality needed. OpenBSD is definitely more advanced with regards to security features, but that is seldom relevant for general purpose computing.
Netbsd is certainly a good replacement for (un)freebsd, but not for openbsd.
Here your bias and lack of understanding clearly shows. FreeBSD gives you a choice, OpenBSD does not. The choice is to use the extra )non free as you put it) features, but you can do without them in most cases.
Making stupid assumptions about someone doesn't help your argument. I use openbsd on my laptop, its a fine general purpose OS. I don't dismiss alternatives, I said when I want a free, secure, general purpose unix, openbsd is the only choice. I'm not dismissing the alternatives, there simply are none. Name another free, secure, general purpose unix for me.
Like so many of the OpenBSD crowd, you are almost entirely fixed on security it seems. That is fine, but as said earlier, good enough is good enough, and for general purpose computing, many of the security related features of OpenBSD are not needed. Maybe they are for your specific use, but that is something different entirely.
For general purpose computing, Linux, esp. when used with SELinux provides quite a decent level of security, which will be more then what most people need. In many cases NetBSD will do that as well. You dismiss FreeBSD because of them tolerating certain non-free components so I will skip that one in your case then.
If you were saying that you need an extremely secure platform that is still kinda suitable for general purpose computing then I would agree that OpenBSD has no alternative.
The one who is making a stupid assumption here is you, actually, you make 2 not so smart assumptions: 1. You have no clue what I know or don't know. 2. You assume that maximum security is barely good enough for general purpose computing, and fail to see that there is always a compromise between usability and security. Best suited is simply not the same as the only option.
Az any rate, OpenBSD may well be the best choice for you given that you can live with the limitations, no argument there, but it is not the only free and secure unix out there. Saying that you require most or all of its security features does however make for a specialized and not a general purpose system.
And you seem to have missed a bit, I will repeat it.
We dont seem to disagree about what the text says but about what it means.
To expand on that, there is a whole group of people specialized in interpreting the constitution. If it was really as simple and straightforward as you try to indicate then that would not be needed.
You can quite argue if science promotes the general Welfare or common defense then it is obviously within the power of the government to fund it.
Its power is limited by the constitution, but not the exact things it does.
Please read the 10th amendment:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I am quite aware of that, hence my statement that it limits the powers of the federal government.
That in no way implies that they cannot do things that fall within those powers but are not explicitly stated. Powers is not the same as actions.
It was that the only authority the Union has on this topic is patent authority. They have no authority to fund research of any kind.
If it serves for example the common defense or general Welfare then it is within their power to do this. Funding science purely for the science itself is not. The part about patents is there to limit how patents can be implemented, not to state that the government must install patents and cannot do anything else. Regardless, patents as they were seen back then simply had nothing to do with science, hence this does not have anything to do with what authority the federal (or union) government has to promote science.
Once again I must cite the 10th amendment. The Constitution isn't a handy guidebook to running a government, it is the very charter of the Union government. It spells out what they are to do. Period.
In the case of copyright and patents that is not true. The constitution says that congress can do this if it so desires, but nowhere states it has to do this.
In any case, patents have become involved in Science whether they should be or not. Are you aware that discovered (not invented) gene sequences have been patented?
Yes I am aware of that, and I regard that against the spirit of patent law as well as unconstitutional.
I really think you should read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I think you'll find it a real eye-opener.
I have read both (eventho I am not an American), our disagreement is not about the actual text but about what it means.
If you read the consititution and bill of rights, it is a good idea imho to also read the published letters of those who wrote them to get an insight into their motivations and ideas.
My point was two fold. Firstly that the Greeks as in descendents (not in some pure superrace type) just intermixed descendents of the original Greeks were a significant portion of the empire and as the empire shrunk they became the dominant ethnic group. Of course the Greeks were not restricted to mainland modern Greece but had expanded into what is now Turkey and beyond following the conquests of Alexander, so they were all over the eastern meditteranean.
Definitely, and they were there way before the Romans started building Rome, let alone Constantinople.
My point is that calling the people who fled after the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine empire Greek is akin to calling people from the USA English. Sure, its their main language, and quite a few are decending from the UK, the USA was a Brittish colony even, but I would not call the people living there Brits or English.
Furthermore, in the Eastern Roman Empire, there had been a struggle between Latin and Greek speakers for centuries already before the 1200s, actually that started already in the time of its founding, and if I am not mistaken, it was Emperor Constantine I who changed the official language to Greek?
What were they Chinese? This is one of those arguments that seems to have emerged in the 19th century. There are no Greeks left (as descended from the Ancients) therefore the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman past are those that are more understanding and appreciative of it ie the Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Therefore the real Greeks are the English/Germans and their descendenants. Hooey!
That is not what I was refering to.
Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The inhabitants of the city and the empire it ruled were Romans (in nationality, not by definition in ethinicality)
Population Genetics has shown that the modern Greeks are NOT fully Slavic nor Turkic nor Albanion nor Arabic. So why is it unlikely that they are not in part the descendants of the peoples that called themselves Greeks in the ancient past? Afterall they have lived continously in the eastern mediterranean/Black sea coast for millenia and have identified themselves as greeks.
Last time I checked Byzantium is located in what is now Tirkey, and not in Greece. I am not disputing your argument about where modern Greek come from, its simply irrelevant for this.
After the latins were kicked out of Byzantium in 1261
The 'Latins' you speak about were those who invaded the empire during the 4th crusade (1204). They were outsiders from Italy, not Byzantines.
If anything, the people living there were either Romans or Byzantines depending on your preference. They had adapted Greek as their main language centuries before that.
Slashdot Mirror
North Korea has the capacity to hit Japan. The U.S. has forces in Japan. Ergo, the North Koreans have the ability to strike with nuclear weaponry against U.S. assets. And thus is an attack on the nation.
It seems to me that what is and what isn't part of 'the nation' rather depends on what comes in handy eh? Some forces in a foreign country are included, but a military base on US controlled territory is not?
Thinking instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some anti-war hippy is telling you might be smart.
I indeed happen to think war is not such a good thing to be involved in, doesn't exactly make me a hippy. What is this name calling needed for whenever anyone might disagree with the current government anyway.
Sure there isn't a USSR who could take out the entire country in one shot anymore, but one or two missiles is enough. One well placed nuke could kill/injure 10 million if it took out Los Angeles county. New york city has 8 million. Two nukes, well placed, could take out 18 million people. There are 295 million people in the US. That would be 16.39% of the US population. That is literally decimation. That is 50% more than decimation.
Just please go learn something about the effects of nuclear weapons, what Korea might have in the worst case, and what kind of damage they can do with it.
I do agree that they can cause a pretty amount of damage, that is not the point.
If you are going to be afraid of a country with nukes, then I'd take another look at Pakistan. Its current leader may not be a problem, and actually most of its population would not be either, but chances of some extremist comming to power one way or another are quite there, and then you have a country with proven nuclear ability, some access to resources for making more, own technology for delivery and a group of fanatic idiots who may try anything to get a nuke delivered.
Do something about North Korea? sure, something should have been done some 40+ years ago there actually, end the state of war between it and the USA. It is one of those 'monsters' the USA has created itself with the same kind of blindness and fear (for communism back then) that so many there are still showing today.
North Korea at the very least? Lots of places, sheesh. And there are a lot of old Soviet scientist with nothing in their wallets but nuclear warhead schematics. Come on, open your eyes a little bit.
Opening your eyes and actually using them instead of mindlessly repeating the garbage that some war happy people in the White House are telling you might be a really good idea indeed.
In short, North Korea might have the capability to launch one or two nukes directly at the USA (actually they don't, but lets just assume they do, they probably do have the nukes for it), but is far from assured destruction of the USA. Don't come with the theory that that is only a matter of time, North Korea does not have access to the resources to come anywhere near.
Hmm, I just get me a shitty cheap all-in-one device every 2 years or so, thats how long they seem to last for me anyway..
Getting a new one every 2 years is about as expensive as getting the extended warranty and then still having to replace it every 3 or 4 years anyway... and it gets me 'newer technology' on a regular basis.
Interesting enough, the utterly cheap and crappy HP PSC 1200 I have now is way past its expected lifetime of 2 years already, without any signs of giving up.
There is one reason why I happen to like those PSC all-in-one devices btw.. after a few months of being left unused, they just print without any trouble, no dried ink or such, no cleaning/replacing of print heads.. But then, thats about the only good thing I have to say about them, print quality is acceptable, scanner is crappy (for anything beyond 300dpi that is), and you just don't want to know how much ink it wastes on 'cleaning' the heads (only use when you really need it). Hmm.. there was actually aother positive thing to say about thise devices.. the cartridges are extremely easy to tefill, almost as if they were made for it (and yeah, you can get the original ink for them with some hunting around)
They don't intend to make a product at all. They intend to sell these screens as components to companies that are making products.
Yes, that has been Phillips' way of doing business for a long time now. Seems to work well for them, and we actually get to see quite a few of their inventions, so companies seem to be quite willing to take their 'inventions' and make products based on them.
Well, you could hook a PC up to a mainframe with an sna connection, sure. You still ended up using terminal emulation (a 3270 emulator usually), and this just bypassed the pc for most parts and turned it into a glorrified 3279 terminal. Tho it indeed used a 'proper' networking protocol, the role of the PC wasn't that of an intelligent node or such.
It wasn't untill things like lan server, lan manager and of course Novell had been around for a while that pcs became capable of being an end node or terminal in appn and sna networks.
You will still see this stuff around at airports and travel agents for example, and your typical unix/linux distribution still has a tn3270 package for talking to such environments over tcp/ip networks.
PROFS and later OFFICE/VM.. arghhh..
Ah well, it served its job at the time, but cumbersome only begins expressing part of the issues I had with those.
That said.. the VM environment they were running on was pretty cool.. Had a lot of fun with it (and got some operators calling me to tell stopping whatever I was doing... ).
Let me again (and this time complete) quote the question, tell me where I mentioned Apache..
Then, I have a question for you, I honestly do not know if OpenBSD by now provides a good and secure way to implement the following but last time I checked it did not:
A webserver is hosting multiple websites which generate content dynamically from information in a database. The specific sites are written in PHP, the underlying database can be either MySQL or Postgress. How do I implement this such that both websites can access their own configuration information (so they can know what database to use and how to authenticate with it) without them being able to read eachothers configuration?
I see a way through setuid cgi but for me that is not an acceptable solution security wise.
PHP mattered, apache did not (please read what I asked again if you think I am changing my mind all the time). Anyway, will take a peek at if lighthttpd + fastcgi do what I need. I agree that PHP sucks, too bad my customers want it.
Uh, hello? Dude, he already said that you should use a better webserver than Apache in this thread, are you are retard?
....
As I ponted out, nothing confined my question to Apache, I rather explicitly called it a webserver.
Any one that you can recomend that would indeed solve this better then Apache? Saying 'use something else' is really not a solution unless you can at the very least point at something else that works better. Is name calling all you have to contribute?
You're such a douche. He's not been saying this is an attack on his favourite system, he's been calling you a moron. Christ's sake boy, you really need to get some glasses, or English as a second language courses or something, cause you're hard of reading.
Ah right, so name calling is all you have to contribute indeed.
You also need to pull the stick out of your ass, you're being jumpy and protective of FreeBSD as though this were a personal assault on you, that all these things even mentioning another operating system is somehow hurting you.
It is funny how you accuse me of being unable to read, yet are not very good at it yourself. I have been mentioning quite a few other systems in this thread myself, even mentioning some quite nice features those have. I don't mind anyone talking about other systems when that adds to the discussion, I do mind people hijacking a discussion about system X (being it FreeBSD, Linux or anything else) for promoting their own agenda. If you cannot understand the difference between those two things then well, too bad.
Your name wouldn't happen to be Poul-Henning, would it?
It takes all of 1 minute to find out what my name is, you could answer that question yourself easily. Not to mention that I told earlier in this thread that I have a little bit of code and docs in Open/Net/FreeBSD, specifically in the i4b (isdn for bsd) drivers. Does that anywhere match what PHK did? Oh well, why am I even bothering with responding to people like you.
Both you and the person I have been trying to discuss with seem to have a big issue with making assumptions and reading at best half of what is being said.
You are right that my quote was incomplete and that I should have quoted that part as well.
That said, I was not asking for OpenBSD to do anything magical, nor was I asking OpenBSD to do anything to a product outside their control or even imply that a solution has to use Apache.
OpenBSD comes with its own fork of Apache, and if another better http server is available on OpenBSD then that is fine as well.
Apache 2.x does at least in theory offer two better mechanisms to build such things (cgid and perchild mpm), both of which mean you can run a single server (if they would actually work that is). It might just be that OpenBSD's fork of Apache has similar features which (unlike those of Apache 2) actually work?
You read it as a question confined to Apache (and not the OpenBSD fork of it either) hence my conclusion that you simply don't read very well seems jusitified, or are you to say that you were not aware that OpenBSD comes with its own fork, and that there are more webservers around then Apache?
What amuses me somewhat is how you manage to interpret almost everything as an attack on your favorite system.
Let me quote that question:
A webserver is hosting multiple websites which generate content dynamically from information in a database. The specific sites are written in PHP, the underlying database can be either MySQL or Postgress. How do I implement this such that both websites can access their own configuration information (so they can know what database to use and how to authenticate with it) without them being able to read eachothers configuration?
Now your last post:
You asked if openbsd had some magic way to change apache into a webserver that supports seperating websites. So that's the question I answered
Uhmm. do you always read things that well before answering?
Well, that's the same thing as people always complaining about OpenBSD's lacking support for 3d graphics, why should they make that compromise? OpenBSD doesn't really care for 3d work, it's not one of the focuses of any of their developers, thus, it's not something they're going to bend over backwards for.
That is quite fine with me. When the Open Graphics project tried to approach them about if there was any interest within OpenBSD for a graphics card with complete published specs and open source drivers, that was met by a definite NO from Theo, so it seems they really don't care about it, even when not having to bend over backwards. Also, as I pointed out earlier, there are quite a few cards one can support well without needing any non-free code, in fact the code exists on another BSD variation (as source). Again I point at the Radeon 9000, 9200, 9400, the Matrox g4xx and g5xx series. For all of those you can get the specs you need, open source drivers have been written, and generally all that is needed is simply there.
This is too bad because modern desktop platforms use more and more opengl, and would benefit quite a bit from it. So might the battery of your laptop when trying to run a modern desktop environment due to lower resource usage (when compared to software rendering). Oh, you are not going to use such a desktop environment to begin with? Fine, no problem. You are right it is not OpenBSD's focus, but such things might just be why I don't consider it to be a good general purpose OS. That is not FUD and does not mean it sucks (it does not, it is pretty damn good at those things that do have the focus of its developers) but it does make it more a special purpose system.
It happens, it will continue to happen. As long as there is something that is different than another thing at anything in any way, there will be comparisons.
Comparisons are fine. Proclaiming something as the only possible option is not, and has very little to do with comparison. Repeating things people quite know (OpenBSD people care A LOT about security and Freedom) is not very constructive and does not add any information.
Also, why not contribute to a discussion about wireless support in FreeBSD instead? Sure, tell about what happened in OpenBSD, why it might be a better way if you think that, wonder how the firmware activism from OpenBSD might help this etc, thats all something else then some blind 'this is best, there is no other option' proclamations.
Guess what, I have been subscribed to the list for years, tech and misc.
Yeah, and I was there when OpenBSD split off from NetBSD, actually have a little bit of code and docs in Open,Net and FreeBSD (in the i4b driver actually), your point being? Ah, you found the 2 examples irrelevant? Likely find any other examples as irrelevant since they don't happen to concern something you want or need? I already responded to that, but there is a bit more in this post since you don't seem to get it at all.
Autorun is not supported because this is not windows. Wtf do you want it to run? Setup.exe? Automounting is supported just fine though.
Maybe autorun.sh instead? Obviously it is not going to run bit of windows software, nowhere means you cannot have an (OpenBSD specific) autorun feature. There are other Unix systems implementing such a thing (Irix for example has had such a feature for at least the last decade), and it is really easy to implement, so that can't really be the problem. It is usefull as well to quite a few users, but you may not have a need for it and even find it undesirable. I think most if not all of the OpenBSD developers would agree with you also. As for myself I consider it undesirable for a machine that needs to be very secure, because I find it undesirable in such a case that the system automatically loads code from something that can easily be inserted into the machine. Doesn't really matter if that is a CD or some usb stick or whatever actually.
The fact that you don't want such a feature or fail to see the use of it is completely irrelevant. In an earlier post I think you were trying to tell me that I could not judge what you needed, apply that idea to yourself first maybe?
Your usb device is simply a driver issue. Nothing to do with security at all. Have you actually tried it in openbsd, or are you simply assuming that it works the way you think it does? If it doesn't work properly, it simply needs a driver, this has nothing to do with security at all.
You seem to somewhat misunderstand the usb issue, the drivers are there, but you generally cannot have 3 drivers talk to the same usb device at the same time. You are right that it is a driver issue and you probably know where drivers live.. Solution 1 is to load the correct driver when needed which means loading a kernel module, solution 2 would be to write a driver that has the functionality of all 3 drivers and of course that would make life easier, but if it is a better solution one can quite argue about. Did I try it? not in the last year but for all I can see usb support in Open/Net/FreeBSD is pretty much the same, and it works in both others in exactly the way I described, unload driver and load required driver. I didn't see any notice that OpenBSD suddenly rewrote their usb subsystem.
Selinux is not useful as simply adding access controls does not provide security. All the local root exploits in the linux kernel are still there, and access controls will do nothing to prevent someone from exploiting them.
Just like for example privilege seperation itself does not prevent exploits but limits their consequences. Yet it is touted as an important security related feature (and rightfully so).
Does OpenBSD have more and even better measures? sure it does. At times those are needed, but then, I was never arguing that a Linux distribution with SELinux is more secure then OpenBSD, I was arguing that such a thing will in many cases provide adequate security (given some other things are also taken care of).
You seem to be living in an extremely black/white world...
Last but not least, the webserver/php/multiple user question was neither a trick question, neither has it anything to do specifically with OpenBSD, but you claim you know so well what you are talking about with regards to things like security that maybe you would have had a better idea then running 2 webservers (apache or otherwise).
It looks like you don't.
I'd not call redistributing firmware a comprimise, since there are legal responsibilities that the company producing wireless hardware must be dutiful of.
Yes, and so does for example NVIDIA, it just happens to be SGI and some others that they have a responsibility to instead of for example the FCC.
It is the choice of the makers of those wireless companies to not include the firmware on for example a flash eprom as to save a few bucks so its not like they have no way to prevent this thing to begin with without the need for a seperate file with firmware.
There is no reason also for not running almost all or part of it on the main cpu either, in which case it would get integrated into the driver. Would you argue that in that case the driver could become closed sourced and non free?
Also, there is no reason why nvidia could not have most that is in the binary blob of their driver run on the gpu and regard it as firmware, possibly even including it on an eprom, it is just more expensive.
Does this all make a difference? securitywise not really. In amount of freedom that you are getting not really.
Regardless, it is a big acomplishment of the OpenBSD team, no argument there.
It's something that a company must keep closed, since their hardware can do more than the firmware allows. They'd not be able to sell the equipment if they didn't have closed firmware.
That explains why there is little point in arguing about them 'freeing' that code. Regardless, it is a compromise. Remember that you can make a compromise for very good reasons and that the outcome can be desirable, that does not change it being a compromise.
That's different than a closed driver, the vendor has no choice about the firmware for a wireless card that can go beyond the FCC's specs - a driver can be open, companies and vendors choose to not open them at their own discretion.
If the world was only that simple.
You are (again) right about why there is no point in asking for the sourcecode of the software that actually programs the radio, you are wrong that there is a real difference between firmware and driver in this, as said, this could as well be implemented in the driver.
Well, if you're going by to talk about free, open or secure, no operating system is nearly as devoted to those principles as OpenBSD
Agreed there.
- so get used to seeing such critizisms until FreeBSD is equally committed to these things.
And why do they have to make the exact same compromise (or lack thereof actually) ? Why do you need to hijack an article about the acomplishments of another system to promote the one you are using? Write a good article about OpenBSD if you feel so strongly about advocacy instead. You might actually get to tell people something interesting instead of just acting like an annoyance.
I am pretty sure you could just run a pair of instances of apache and that would solve your problem.
Indeed.
As long as they can run on different IPs thats an option. If they have to run on a single IP and its not acceptable to run one at a different port, you could use a 3rd apache server listening on the actual IP and use mod_proxy, have the apache servers for the different sitex listen on some ports on localhost etc. Gets quite messy after a while. Alternatively one could run Apache 2 and cgid or such, but hmm. haven't seen a better solution yet.
lasr sentence should of course read 'compromises to security and freedom'
I understand all that.
The point was that even in OpenBSD there are compromises made to freedom for practical reasons (the alternative is no support for most cards). In the same way and for the same reasons they have to make certain compromises to security in order to achieve functionality (at all actually, nitpicking would be to say that any functionality is a compromise to security to begin with)
That is perfectly fine, and I do see that the people behind it feel strongly about that freedom regardless of this (and they are often vocal enough to make that clear when it concerns their own system), and will maintain a very high standard of security (just be sure to reread this, what I said above is in no way an attack towards OpenBSD, not saying it sucks, just pointing out a very simple truth which apply to basicly every system around)
What annoys me, and why I responded to this all is people who proclaim absolute security and freedom and the like in OpenBSD and then rant about how others provide neither or at best maybe one of the 2, and then likely still not as good, and how actually everything else sucks anyway, as a response to an article about another operating system, in this case FreeBSD.
As I said in my previous post, both are relative, and unless you are working on very high security matters or do some serious security research or development, it is pretty unlikely that you NEED OpenBSD on your laptop and that nothing else would fit the requirements. You, just like Theo and others are not prepared to make the compromise to security that would come with having broader support for a lot of things quickly, rather want to put in the efford to either get around it or make something so it gets supported, kudos to you all.
Have you paused to consider that it might only be devilishly complicated to someone who is looking for any excuse to do what he wants regardless of what the document says?
Devilishly complicated are your words, but it is not unambigious or simple. Or are you trying to say that the people who thought up things like courts and in the end the supreme court deciding on correct interpretation of laws and the consitution, were jusr looking for any excuse to do what they want?
SELinux does not provide security, it provides access controls.
Which happens to be a rather relevant thing for providing a secure operating environment, just like auditing.
Security concerns a lot more then limiting the possible damage from a compromise (and I do not underestimate the importance of that one, but it is just a component, happens to be one that OpenBSD has a lot of focus on)
And debian is the only linux distro I know of that makes any serious attempt at keeping license issues in check, but they don't care about security.
They are not as deeply into security as OpenBSD is, definitely true. Considering how they are usualy extremely quick with providing fixes for security issues, I'd not say they don't care about security however.
And finally, feel free to give an example of openbsd's security getting in the way. Or are you just tossing bullshit around because you've never tried it and don't understand it?
Maybe we should start with some very basic knowledge here then:
As I have said before, any system has to make a compromise between security and functionality. This is a general principe and starts by the simple notion that you have better security by not having any forms of networking, and even better when not having any forms of communications and providing physical security. Leaving a system turned off is even better. Of course none of those are acceptable compromises, they just serve to demonstrate the basic principe.
In case of OpenBSD I could point at it not providing 'autorun' and 'autoinstall' features for CDs for reasons I assume are pretty obvious. Do you desire such features? I assume you don't, and I know I don't. Regardless, that functionality is not provided, at least in part because it would compromise security, and I bet in part because of people in OpenBSD not liking it in general. It is however a feature many people expect from a modern general purpose system. You will ofcourse dismiss this as not being desired anyway, but that is a matter of choice.
Lets look at usb support. I have a device here that impements 3 functions, but acts as one usb device. In order to use the functionality of this device, I have to either use a usb printer driver, a usb scanner driver or a 'generic' usb driver. As it currently is, that will not work unless I either unplug and replug the device and do some tricks to make it recognized by the driver I need at this moment, or I have to rebuild the kernel with loadable modules for those drivers, which compromises the security of the system (allowing things to link to the kernel at runtime).
(If you consider rebuilding OpenBSD for above feature a valid solution then so is rebuilding FreeBSD without the non-free stuff.)
For the rest, I suggest you read the archives of the OpenBSD mailinglist of the last couple of years and look for features not being implemented due to security concerns, I have not followed it all, but I have seen it come by every now and then.
I understand very well that OpenBSD is a usable system, I use it myself for a variety of things, and it has my preference for specific purposes, including things like routers, single-purpose webservers and such. You seem to be ignoring that while this is really not the first time I mention that I actually use it.
What I assume you have been trying to say all along is that you think OpenBSD has by far the best policies to achieve and maintain maximum security and freedom while providing a pretty usable system.
I would fully agree with that, but I would still not see it as the only secure and free unix, for the simple reason that both things are relative, and only have to be as good as needed for a specific purpose. In many cases there are other systems that meet both requirements to a level desired for what you are using a system for.
Also a small sidenote regarding OpenBSD, Freedom and security:
You may be aware that OpenBSD contains binary only firmware for a variety of wireless
You just seem to not like OpenBSD's style, the way it's all flossing and flying all over this bitch.
You almost got it right.
I do not like the notion among certain OpenBSD people that there is no alternative for OpenBSD and that they are the only secure and free unix like system around.
I do use it where appropriate, and I like what it offers.
Well, your calling people stupid because they have another opinion then you is rather telling, and you are still ignoring that 1. SELinux provides quite a good deal of security, and there are definitely free Linux versions.
You do dismiss every other alternative or did not look.
Also, you make the assumpütion OpenBSD is the only secure OS out there, it is the most secure one maybe, but not the only one that is secure enough.
And yes, OpenBSDs security does get in the way, maybe not for you, but that is because your requirements are limited.
And since when did 3d modelling become general purpose?
The same argument can be made about a lot of the security features of OpenBSD. They are cool, but have nothing to do with general purpose computing.
No, openbsd doesn't have any hardware 3d support. No, it has nothing to do with openbsd and everything to do with nvidia and ati sucking ball sacks. Yeah, its a shame, but what can you do?
How about the ATI Radeon 9000, 9200, 9400 ? those are supported with Free and Open Source drivers, lacking support for those has nothing to do with ATI. How about the Matrox g4xx and 5xx? hardware 3d support on those has nothing to do with binary and non free drivers either.
I'm afraid you have no idea what you are talking about with regards to netbsd. Netbsd does not provide almost everything openbsd does. Its missing tons of security features from openbsd.
Yet for most practical purposes it provides the security needed, and provides the functionality needed. OpenBSD is definitely more advanced with regards to security features, but that is seldom relevant for general purpose computing.
Netbsd is certainly a good replacement for (un)freebsd, but not for openbsd.
Here your bias and lack of understanding clearly shows. FreeBSD gives you a choice, OpenBSD does not. The choice is to use the extra )non free as you put it) features, but you can do without them in most cases.
Making stupid assumptions about someone doesn't help your argument. I use openbsd on my laptop, its a fine general purpose OS. I don't dismiss alternatives, I said when I want a free, secure, general purpose unix, openbsd is the only choice. I'm not dismissing the alternatives, there simply are none. Name another free, secure, general purpose unix for me.
Like so many of the OpenBSD crowd, you are almost entirely fixed on security it seems. That is fine, but as said earlier, good enough is good enough, and for general purpose computing, many of the security related features of OpenBSD are not needed. Maybe they are for your specific use, but that is something different entirely.
For general purpose computing, Linux, esp. when used with SELinux provides quite a decent level of security, which will be more then what most people need. In many cases NetBSD will do that as well. You dismiss FreeBSD because of them tolerating certain non-free components so I will skip that one in your case then.
If you were saying that you need an extremely secure platform that is still kinda suitable for general purpose computing then I would agree that OpenBSD has no alternative.
The one who is making a stupid assumption here is you, actually, you make 2 not so smart assumptions:
1. You have no clue what I know or don't know.
2. You assume that maximum security is barely good enough for general purpose computing, and fail to see that there is always a compromise between usability and security. Best suited is simply not the same as the only option.
Az any rate, OpenBSD may well be the best choice for you given that you can live with the limitations, no argument there, but it is not the only free and secure unix out there. Saying that you require most or all of its security features does however make for a specialized and not a general purpose system.
And you seem to have missed a bit, I will repeat it.
We dont seem to disagree about what the text says but about what it means.
To expand on that, there is a whole group of people specialized in interpreting the constitution. If it was really as simple and straightforward as you try to indicate then that would not be needed.
promote the general Welfare
You can quite argue if science promotes the general Welfare or common defense then it is obviously within the power of the government to fund it.
Its power is limited by the constitution, but not the exact things it does.
Please read the 10th amendment:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I am quite aware of that, hence my statement that it limits the powers of the federal government.
That in no way implies that they cannot do things that fall within those powers but are not explicitly stated. Powers is not the same as actions.
It was that the only authority the Union has on this topic is patent authority. They have no authority to fund research of any kind.
If it serves for example the common defense or general Welfare then it is within their power to do this. Funding science purely for the science itself is not. The part about patents is there to limit how patents can be implemented, not to state that the government must install patents and cannot do anything else. Regardless, patents as they were seen back then simply had nothing to do with science, hence this does not have anything to do with what authority the federal (or union) government has to promote science.
Once again I must cite the 10th amendment. The Constitution isn't a handy guidebook to running a government, it is the very charter of the Union government. It spells out what they are to do. Period.
In the case of copyright and patents that is not true. The constitution says that congress can do this if it so desires, but nowhere states it has to do this.
In any case, patents have become involved in Science whether they should be or not. Are you aware that discovered (not invented) gene sequences have been patented?
Yes I am aware of that, and I regard that against the spirit of patent law as well as unconstitutional.
I really think you should read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I think you'll find it a real eye-opener.
I have read both (eventho I am not an American), our disagreement is not about the actual text but about what it means.
If you read the consititution and bill of rights, it is a good idea imho to also read the published letters of those who wrote them to get an insight into their motivations and ideas.
And thanks for your reply and clarification.
My point was two fold. Firstly that the Greeks as in descendents (not in some pure superrace type) just intermixed descendents of the original Greeks were a significant portion of the empire and as the empire shrunk they became the dominant ethnic group. Of course the Greeks were not restricted to mainland modern Greece but had expanded into what is now Turkey and beyond following the conquests of Alexander, so they were all over the eastern meditteranean.
Definitely, and they were there way before the Romans started building Rome, let alone Constantinople.
My point is that calling the people who fled after the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine empire Greek is akin to calling people from the USA English. Sure, its their main language, and quite a few are decending from the UK, the USA was a Brittish colony even, but I would not call the people living there Brits or English.
Furthermore, in the Eastern Roman Empire, there had been a struggle between Latin and Greek speakers for centuries already before the 1200s, actually that started already in the time of its founding, and if I am not mistaken, it was Emperor Constantine I who changed the official language to Greek?
Really, what not even one of them?
There were Greeks among them, sure.
What were they Chinese? This is one of those arguments that seems to have emerged in the 19th century. There are no Greeks left (as descended from the Ancients) therefore the inheritors of the Graeco-Roman past are those that are more understanding and appreciative of it ie the Germanic peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, etc. Therefore the real Greeks are the English/Germans and their descendenants. Hooey!
That is not what I was refering to.
Byzantium was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The inhabitants of the city and the empire it ruled were Romans (in nationality, not by definition in ethinicality)
Population Genetics has shown that the modern Greeks are NOT fully Slavic nor Turkic nor Albanion nor Arabic. So why is it unlikely that they are not in part the descendants of the peoples that called themselves Greeks in the ancient past? Afterall they have lived continously in the eastern mediterranean/Black sea coast for millenia and have identified themselves as greeks.
Last time I checked Byzantium is located in what is now Tirkey, and not in Greece. I am not disputing your argument about where modern Greek come from, its simply irrelevant for this.
After the latins were kicked out of Byzantium in 1261
The 'Latins' you speak about were those who invaded the empire during the 4th crusade (1204). They were outsiders from Italy, not Byzantines.
If anything, the people living there were either Romans or Byzantines depending on your preference. They had adapted Greek as their main language centuries before that.