What on earth are you talking about? You most certainly can remove them. I'm posting this from a machine that was installed with from Xubuntu media, had kubuntu-desktop installed on that, removed xfce completely, then had ubunut-desktop installed on it, and kde completely removed. If I really wanted to I could fire up synaptic right this second and remove the gnome-games package. There's nothing that' can't be removed, there are some things I would highly advise against removing, like grub and core-utils, but that's only because I assume you still want the system to be boot-able.
Add/Remove is a nice hand holding front end, but the real way to get anything of any complexity done is synaptic or aptitude.
Damn, I was totally looking forward to the Savage2 release too, thanks for the reminder. But it was bitter sweet, when I went looking to download the linux client only to find out their GL programmer bailed on them so the never got the rendering engine completed for the linux client. Hopefully they'll get that cleared up soon. Savage is looking to be one of the best commercial games released for linux for a long time. I might have to download the win client anyway to tide me over.
Yes, Haselton's address was the only this particular message was sent to. But it clearly came from an automated source. Do you honestly want spam legislation setup solely on the number of recipients? If so circumventing such laws would be trivial, spam is automated,it wouldn't take that that much effort to automate only putting one recipient on each message. I think a much better metric would be demonstrating that a given message was automated and unwanted. Anyone with half a bit of technical knowledge call instantly tell this was sent from an automated source, and I'd take the suit it self as good evidence it was an unwanted message.
What does he have to do with slashdot (outside the fine state of Washington) nothing. How ever in Washington a judge has just ruled that the statement "Bennett Haselton owns the website slashdot.org" is not false. And given the boolean nature of the statement since it's not false it must be true. And it makes for a funny story.
The part that gets me is that she had the headers in hand when delivering the ruling the very same headers that contain this:
How on earth do you get to be in a judicial position with out realizing that something from a script named auto.php is automated, not to mention the fact that it's in a folder named linkmachine this also doesn't throw up any warning flags? I can understand the judge not understanding the intricacies of how smtp headers work, but how does a person see auto and link machine and not immediately think automated?
But you missed the point, they DO have full control over the machine. Sure, the current payload just doesn't make use of it's environment, OSX is BSD which is UNIX, which means... if you've got the security privileges to be changing around DNS servers, it's because you've got the keys to the castle. The attackers have a process running as root, simply because they don't exercise full control doesn't mean they can't.
It doesn't need to spread, it's a trojan not a worm, again it doesn't need to work without user interaction it's a trojan not a worm, and yes there is a degree of social engineering at play but (wait for it...) that just means it's not a worm, which we already knew because it's a trojan.
I wish I had mod points, mod parent up! I for one would love to live under your benevolent dictatorship. To clear up than any ambiguity over if this post is sarcasm, let me reiterate the point the parent was making, Democracy isn't a goal, it's a means to an end, and that's freedom. It's the best tool to ensure freedom that we have today but let's not forget that it's just a tool to achieve freedom, don't enshrine it, and don't right off the idea that there may be better ways of achieving a free society.
Are you honestly suggesting that the police start kicking down Joe Idiot User and Grandma's door? Sure the own the CnC machines, but odds are they have no idea that they been compromised, which is why they haven't cleaned it up yet. Confiscating them is only going to piss people off, by the time anybody could do any sort of analysis on them the entire network would have shifted around.
Storm is an entirely new breed of beast, bots change locations and roles all the time, a zombie could be a spam relay today, a DDoS grunt tomorrow, a web server the day after that, and a CnC machine on Friday. Physically locating a CnC box tells you nothing, good job you've located an infected box, by the time you get your hands on it it's role may have changed.
I looked at the ooo-build site to try and get my hands on some hot fresh patched up.DEBs, and was rather confused. Do you know what ubuntu distributes? Is it the official Sun OO.o (sans patches), or the ooo-build version complete with patches and kitchen sink? It looks like from the wording on the ooo-build page that the standard repositories use their rebuild, I figure most distributions would be using the stock packages. Any idea which it is?
Oh, and the quiz you link to? Here is one of the questions: The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.
This is a horribly worded question. Apple's stock dipped a bit due to Greenpeace's (poorly done) criticism of Apple's environmental policy. I would say that this is an economic factor that a corporation should pay attention to. The company also needs to pay attention to the fact that more consumers are buying based on environmentally friendlier products. This drives profits. That's just dumb luck and not big hero free market saving us all. If polluting, kitten killing, baby raping computers generated more revenue than the environmentally friendly ones on the rise today, you know what Apple would be producing? That's right iKat iKiller. This isn't something to be proud of, you got lucky, they are being responsible because it's profitable, not because it is right. I've worked tech support, I've heard others stories, I've seen the government in action, people are stupid, it is luck and nothing more that this profitable fad has positive externalities for the public.
I'd take the profit motive as evidence that the private enterprise is more dangerous. The government as evil, insidious, and subtle as it may be does occasionally slip up and do something good for the public. While business can be trusted to always put profit before ethics, unless of course acting ethically is profitable, but acting ethically is rather coincidental to profiting. The government monopoly on force isn't absolute, legislators and laws are easily bought and sold these days.
I'm all for the free market (The economics of it are rock solid, it's just the ethics I find lacking) as long as there is a way to put the fear of god (the people) in the business owners. They need to understand that their actions have consequences, far too much has been done to shield them from this reality, from corporate charters that never get revoked to willful ignorance of the conditions of the common man. I think a three strike system would work well for this:
+First act of harm (of which I'm very liberal in my definition of, so far as to include willfully with holding assistance that is trivial to the giver, but clearly not the receiver (wouldn't be very good help if it wasn't now would it?)) to the public (intentional or not) fine the company the cost of making right what got them in hot water in the first place plus a fixed percentage of company assets, like say a third. This should not be a slap on the wrist, this should be the sort thing that keeps all people with power awake sweating bullets three or four nights a week.
+Second offense: dissolution of the company and seize and auction off all assets. Use the profits to fix the problem. If this ever creates a monopoly just put the company on notice that on abuse of that position will result in dissolution as well, but it would only count as a first offense for the individuals, can't be punishing them for being the last honest people in their industry.
+Third offense: Same as above plus legally bar those responsible from working in that industry for 20, 25 years (life?), and if they move off shore refuse to allow their cormpany to do business in the US.
Attach blame to both the individuals responsible and the company as a whole, this will prevent people from making up new fake businesses each week to gobble up first offenses, and insure that companies can't keep hiring new batches of unethical asshats to pin first offenses on.
Libertarianism can work, but it requires a publicly wieldable ban hammer and a strong sense of ethics and duty to others.
For the party that claims to be all about personal responsibility why do libertarians have such a difficulty connecting their actions as business people with the results those actions will have on the public? I don't think (and history will back this assertion) they're going to take responsibility for their actions and therefore should be held accountable for their actions by force. Hell, even effective boycotts would do the job, but my sig lays bare my thoughts on the odds of that ever happening
Fuck the public, and we fuck back, harder, and likely in the ass.
Are their needs and wants less real and worthwhile than yours because you have more marketable skills?
What the hell does that have to do with anything? Walmart has no obligation to fullfil people's needs and wants. Why do people work? As a means to get money, is money an end in and of it self? No, it is a means to fulfill their needs, wants, and desires. I'm assuming that all people in the absences of economic constraints have roughly the same number, level and scope of desires, details my vary but paint color on a car really isn't that important. Since people of some professions get less money than others they are less able to get what they want and need, obviously that would imply that their needs and wants are less important in the eyes of society, WHY? Yes you are correct that wal-mart has no obligation to fulfill people's needs and wants, and I want to know why they aren't obligated.
Why should you expect anyone to want to live a life less than what you're willing to live?
Because he was willing to work and learn in order to provide a better living for himself, whilst Walmart shelf-stackers have little drive or ambition.
Try this, pick a mechanic and an accountant such that to the best of your ability to pick subjects the only difference is finances. Put them in generic clothing so that they aren't identifiable that way, sit one on the left, one on the right, and then tell me which man (left or right) should have a sports car and which should have a beater? Who's child should have adequate health care? Who should have to worry about feeding his family? If you can't tell the difference between two people, why should one be treated any different than the other?
I understand that absolute equality is economically infeasible, but why not a set minimum that no person shall fall below, period. Contribution to the economy is not synonymous with contribution to the betterment of all people. People with money are no deserving than people without money, just more able.
If the majority prefer something with excessive negative externalities, either motivated by greed or stupidity, bad things will happen. The all mighty market god is only as benevolent or malevolent as the consumers powering it, and stupid people are de facto evil because they can't grasp the situation and therefor make shortsighted dangerous decisions. Yes price points will be set, equilibrium will reached, all the technical parts of a market are agnostic to who powers it. But the standing libertarian claim is that the market will fix all ills, for the market to be good it must be filled with people who have all the facts and understand the consequences of their actions, and feel they have a moral responsibility not to cut corners for personal gain.
Because I chose to develop more valuable skills and they did not?
Are you honestly saying that the worth of a person is nothing more than their earning potential? Let me re-iterate, yes you have more earning potential than a mechanic, good for you, but by what basis do you claim that your needs, wants, and desires are more important than theirs?
Why would anyone expect to live a life as good as someone else when they're not willing/able to do the same things that other person is? Because at the end of the day they are human and as are you, economics aside, I've yet so see a reason that an accountant is objectively better than a mechanic and therefor deserves a better quality of life.
Yeah, that's a bitch. They could've gone to college or technical school, but they didn't, and now they're stuck working jobs that a whole bunch of people are willing to do for very little money. Like it or not, stocking shelves just isn't a valuable skill. I think we will both agree that their skills are not worth that much. But riddle me this? What does this say about their worth as a person. Are their needs and wants less real and worthwhile than yours because you have more marketable skills? Are people really nothing more than their earning potential? Would you willingly live at minimum wage level? Why should you expect anyone to want to live a life less than what you're willing to live?
You assume that the poor have the means, and the uneducated have the understanding of economics, necessary to do the economically responsible thing of boycotting wal-mart. Libertarians are quick to claim that market forces will fix all, but wal-mart is beyond reproach in the eyes of the market because their will always be stupid and/or poor people to patronize them.
And yes they did have other stores BEFORE, but give a wal-mart a couple months and they won't have other stores anymore.
I loathe this argument with a rare passion, the fact that 51% of people think something is true or false has no bearing on the truth of the assertion in question. As the grand parent pointed out, if it doesn't conform to the red book it isn't an Audio CD period. It doesn't matter if 99% of people call a given disk an Audio CD and it is not in fact an Audio CD then they are wrong. The definition of an Audio CD, or anything else, isn't some magical ethereal concept that changes with public whim. I can scream till I'm blue in the face and/or convince 100 (or 1,000 or 1,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000) people that the sky is green, but that does not make the sky green. Truth is not debatable, the truth is. And the truth is, if it has DRM (which by definition means that it does not conform to red book) then it is not an Audio CD.
Drinkypoo, well put, I think you covered omnipotence better than I could. However I'd still like to take a crack at God being perfect. I'm sure some one will correct me if I'm wrong here.
Suppose for a minute that God is exactly what the Bible claims: an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect being. By definition if something is perfect, something better can not be imagined, especially by a "flawed" or "limited" human mind. I submit that I can envision a God more grand and cunning than the God accounted for in Genesis, therefore God as described therein can not by definition be perfect. Which is not to say that any God I could envision is perfect.
I suppose the ever present, "but that's what God wanted you to think" will rear it's head. Which would bring things to a stalemate, as I think that tricking people like that would be a rather stupid thing to do making any God engaging in such deception less than one that wouldn't and therefore not perfect, and now we're back to square one.
That's not the logical exclusion of his statement. The logical exclusion of people have been murdered in the name of religion is NO people have been murdered in the name of religion. "No people have been murdered in the name of religion" is not logically equivalent to "people have been murdered not in the name of religion".
Trash talking is a vital part of the game, it's no fun if you can't call the person with the best ore production the "ore whore", or yell incessantly about "cock blocking" the guy with the longest road. Not to mention the endless supply of wood and sheep jokes.
Sweet Zombie Jesus! How the hell did they pull that off? I'm running xfce4 on my laptop and RAM usage on it is something like 48MB, how on earth did they manage to make xfce so fat?
Slashdot Mirror
What on earth are you talking about? You most certainly can remove them. I'm posting this from a machine that was installed with from Xubuntu media, had kubuntu-desktop installed on that, removed xfce completely, then had ubunut-desktop installed on it, and kde completely removed. If I really wanted to I could fire up synaptic right this second and remove the gnome-games package. There's nothing that' can't be removed, there are some things I would highly advise against removing, like grub and core-utils, but that's only because I assume you still want the system to be boot-able. Add/Remove is a nice hand holding front end, but the real way to get anything of any complexity done is synaptic or aptitude.
Damn, I was totally looking forward to the Savage2 release too, thanks for the reminder. But it was bitter sweet, when I went looking to download the linux client only to find out their GL programmer bailed on them so the never got the rendering engine completed for the linux client. Hopefully they'll get that cleared up soon. Savage is looking to be one of the best commercial games released for linux for a long time. I might have to download the win client anyway to tide me over.
Sorry I butter fingered the moderation there Mr AC. I meant to give you a funny.
Are you stupid?
Yes, Haselton's address was the only this particular message was sent to. But it clearly came from an automated source. Do you honestly want spam legislation setup solely on the number of recipients? If so circumventing such laws would be trivial, spam is automated,it wouldn't take that that much effort to automate only putting one recipient on each message. I think a much better metric would be demonstrating that a given message was automated and unwanted. Anyone with half a bit of technical knowledge call instantly tell this was sent from an automated source, and I'd take the suit it self as good evidence it was an unwanted message.
The part that gets me is that she had the headers in hand when delivering the ruling the very same headers that contain this: How on earth do you get to be in a judicial position with out realizing that something from a script named auto.php is automated, not to mention the fact that it's in a folder named linkmachine this also doesn't throw up any warning flags? I can understand the judge not understanding the intricacies of how smtp headers work, but how does a person see auto and link machine and not immediately think automated?
But you missed the point, they DO have full control over the machine. Sure, the current payload just doesn't make use of it's environment, OSX is BSD which is UNIX, which means... if you've got the security privileges to be changing around DNS servers, it's because you've got the keys to the castle. The attackers have a process running as root, simply because they don't exercise full control doesn't mean they can't.
It doesn't need to spread, it's a trojan not a worm, again it doesn't need to work without user interaction it's a trojan not a worm, and yes there is a degree of social engineering at play but (wait for it...) that just means it's not a worm, which we already knew because it's a trojan.
I wish I had mod points, mod parent up! I for one would love to live under your benevolent dictatorship. To clear up than any ambiguity over if this post is sarcasm, let me reiterate the point the parent was making, Democracy isn't a goal, it's a means to an end, and that's freedom. It's the best tool to ensure freedom that we have today but let's not forget that it's just a tool to achieve freedom, don't enshrine it, and don't right off the idea that there may be better ways of achieving a free society.
Are you honestly suggesting that the police start kicking down Joe Idiot User and Grandma's door? Sure the own the CnC machines, but odds are they have no idea that they been compromised, which is why they haven't cleaned it up yet. Confiscating them is only going to piss people off, by the time anybody could do any sort of analysis on them the entire network would have shifted around.
Storm is an entirely new breed of beast, bots change locations and roles all the time, a zombie could be a spam relay today, a DDoS grunt tomorrow, a web server the day after that, and a CnC machine on Friday. Physically locating a CnC box tells you nothing, good job you've located an infected box, by the time you get your hands on it it's role may have changed.
Obviously it does +1d6 electrical damage, hence the "Cyber" in the name.
I looked at the ooo-build site to try and get my hands on some hot fresh patched up .DEBs, and was rather confused. Do you know what ubuntu distributes? Is it the official Sun OO.o (sans patches), or the ooo-build version complete with patches and kitchen sink? It looks like from the wording on the ooo-build page that the standard repositories use their rebuild, I figure most distributions would be using the stock packages. Any idea which it is?
That explains their social stance, and I agree completely with that reasoning. But what of economics how does deviancy translate to disregard?
The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.
This is a horribly worded question. Apple's stock dipped a bit due to Greenpeace's (poorly done) criticism of Apple's environmental policy. I would say that this is an economic factor that a corporation should pay attention to. The company also needs to pay attention to the fact that more consumers are buying based on environmentally friendlier products. This drives profits. That's just dumb luck and not big hero free market saving us all. If polluting, kitten killing, baby raping computers generated more revenue than the environmentally friendly ones on the rise today, you know what Apple would be producing? That's right iKat iKiller. This isn't something to be proud of, you got lucky, they are being responsible because it's profitable, not because it is right. I've worked tech support, I've heard others stories, I've seen the government in action, people are stupid, it is luck and nothing more that this profitable fad has positive externalities for the public.
I'd take the profit motive as evidence that the private enterprise is more dangerous. The government as evil, insidious, and subtle as it may be does occasionally slip up and do something good for the public. While business can be trusted to always put profit before ethics, unless of course acting ethically is profitable, but acting ethically is rather coincidental to profiting. The government monopoly on force isn't absolute, legislators and laws are easily bought and sold these days.
I'm all for the free market (The economics of it are rock solid, it's just the ethics I find lacking) as long as there is a way to put the fear of god (the people) in the business owners. They need to understand that their actions have consequences, far too much has been done to shield them from this reality, from corporate charters that never get revoked to willful ignorance of the conditions of the common man. I think a three strike system would work well for this:
+First act of harm (of which I'm very liberal in my definition of, so far as to include willfully with holding assistance that is trivial to the giver, but clearly not the receiver (wouldn't be very good help if it wasn't now would it?)) to the public (intentional or not) fine the company the cost of making right what got them in hot water in the first place plus a fixed percentage of company assets, like say a third. This should not be a slap on the wrist, this should be the sort thing that keeps all people with power awake sweating bullets three or four nights a week.
+Second offense: dissolution of the company and seize and auction off all assets. Use the profits to fix the problem. If this ever creates a monopoly just put the company on notice that on abuse of that position will result in dissolution as well, but it would only count as a first offense for the individuals, can't be punishing them for being the last honest people in their industry.
+Third offense: Same as above plus legally bar those responsible from working in that industry for 20, 25 years (life?), and if they move off shore refuse to allow their cormpany to do business in the US.
Attach blame to both the individuals responsible and the company as a whole, this will prevent people from making up new fake businesses each week to gobble up first offenses, and insure that companies can't keep hiring new batches of unethical asshats to pin first offenses on.
Libertarianism can work, but it requires a publicly wieldable ban hammer and a strong sense of ethics and duty to others.
For the party that claims to be all about personal responsibility why do libertarians have such a difficulty connecting their actions as business people with the results those actions will have on the public? I don't think (and history will back this assertion) they're going to take responsibility for their actions and therefore should be held accountable for their actions by force. Hell, even effective boycotts would do the job, but my sig lays bare my thoughts on the odds of that ever happening
Fuck the public, and we fuck back, harder, and likely in the ass.
Try this, pick a mechanic and an accountant such that to the best of your ability to pick subjects the only difference is finances. Put them in generic clothing so that they aren't identifiable that way, sit one on the left, one on the right, and then tell me which man (left or right) should have a sports car and which should have a beater? Who's child should have adequate health care? Who should have to worry about feeding his family? If you can't tell the difference between two people, why should one be treated any different than the other?
I understand that absolute equality is economically infeasible, but why not a set minimum that no person shall fall below, period. Contribution to the economy is not synonymous with contribution to the betterment of all people. People with money are no deserving than people without money, just more able.
If the majority prefer something with excessive negative externalities, either motivated by greed or stupidity, bad things will happen. The all mighty market god is only as benevolent or malevolent as the consumers powering it, and stupid people are de facto evil because they can't grasp the situation and therefor make shortsighted dangerous decisions. Yes price points will be set, equilibrium will reached, all the technical parts of a market are agnostic to who powers it. But the standing libertarian claim is that the market will fix all ills, for the market to be good it must be filled with people who have all the facts and understand the consequences of their actions, and feel they have a moral responsibility not to cut corners for personal gain.
Are you honestly saying that the worth of a person is nothing more than their earning potential? Let me re-iterate, yes you have more earning potential than a mechanic, good for you, but by what basis do you claim that your needs, wants, and desires are more important than theirs?
Why would anyone expect to live a life as good as someone else when they're not willing/able to do the same things that other person is? Because at the end of the day they are human and as are you, economics aside, I've yet so see a reason that an accountant is objectively better than a mechanic and therefor deserves a better quality of life.
You assume that the poor have the means, and the uneducated have the understanding of economics, necessary to do the economically responsible thing of boycotting wal-mart. Libertarians are quick to claim that market forces will fix all, but wal-mart is beyond reproach in the eyes of the market because their will always be stupid and/or poor people to patronize them.
And yes they did have other stores BEFORE, but give a wal-mart a couple months and they won't have other stores anymore.
I loathe this argument with a rare passion, the fact that 51% of people think something is true or false has no bearing on the truth of the assertion in question. As the grand parent pointed out, if it doesn't conform to the red book it isn't an Audio CD period. It doesn't matter if 99% of people call a given disk an Audio CD and it is not in fact an Audio CD then they are wrong. The definition of an Audio CD, or anything else, isn't some magical ethereal concept that changes with public whim. I can scream till I'm blue in the face and/or convince 100 (or 1,000 or 1,000,000 or even 1,000,000,000) people that the sky is green, but that does not make the sky green. Truth is not debatable, the truth is. And the truth is, if it has DRM (which by definition means that it does not conform to red book) then it is not an Audio CD.
Maybe they'll go the apple route, release 8 & 9 as improvements over the last OSes, then give up, buy a BSD slap on shiny graphics and call it 10.
I suppose the ever present, "but that's what God wanted you to think" will rear it's head. Which would bring things to a stalemate, as I think that tricking people like that would be a rather stupid thing to do making any God engaging in such deception less than one that wouldn't and therefore not perfect, and now we're back to square one.
That's not the logical exclusion of his statement. The logical exclusion of people have been murdered in the name of religion is NO people have been murdered in the name of religion. "No people have been murdered in the name of religion" is not logically equivalent to "people have been murdered not in the name of religion".
Trash talking is a vital part of the game, it's no fun if you can't call the person with the best ore production the "ore whore", or yell incessantly about "cock blocking" the guy with the longest road. Not to mention the endless supply of wood and sheep jokes.
Think of it as an opportunity for a new chain of franchise restaurants. Laser Roasted Duck, anyone?
Sweet Zombie Jesus! How the hell did they pull that off? I'm running xfce4 on my laptop and RAM usage on it is something like 48MB, how on earth did they manage to make xfce so fat?