Actually this may not be a vulnerability in units without a removeable battery. When a Lithium Ion [or polymer] battery is removable manufactures install microcontrollers with firmware to orchestrate the safety system and do battery life management. This firmware is often provided by the pack subcontractor rather then written by the larger system manufacturer...
The pack has firmware for two reasons:
1) There is a variety of failure mechanisms that can cause fire and explosion with Lithium Ion batteries. When the uC detects one of these is occurring the battery is either temporarily or permanently placed in "Safe" mode. This disconnects the battery from it's terminals. Since on units with removable batteries these conditions can occur outside of the unit, these important safety functions must be built into the battery. Your typical Cell phone battery has three or more terminals for these functions [even though only 2 terminals is needed to charge/discharge the battery] ===> Another safety concern is "fake" batteries which often don't have these safety features, so often the uC authenticates itself to the Laptop before it can be used. This protects from counterfeits and also makes the laptop manufacturer money on replacement batteries.....
2) Charge Cycles and battery capacity information is also stored and calculated. This information is provided to the higher level system, when the battery is inserted. This is important so your Laptop can guess (relatively accurately) how much time is left even after you change the battery to a possibly degraded or partially charged spare. [Current monitors detect how much power goes into the battery and how much is removed. Based on historical information from previous charge/discharge cycles a good guess on the remaining capacity can be made]
Things are different however in units with a non-user serviceable battery. A lot of the safety concerns can be explained away and not protected against, since the battery is in a more protected position (this all comes down to lawsuits, if you can say the user tampered with the unit and prove it then the company is off the hook...). So often they will have a "dumb" charger connected to the battery with most of the safety functions removed. A special purpose capacity monitor chip (without firmware) can be used for the power monitoring feature. Thus in a lot of systems you don't need the uC (and thus the firmware) at all, if you assume the battery can't be tampered with...
Turns out there is 257 Electoral votes that technically, without breaking any laws; could go to anyone.... And given a good enough reason would.
The remaining votes are tied to various degrees by legal requirements.
see:
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html
I don't believe there is any provision to impeach a president elect. However remember Obama isn't technically the president elect yet. The much easier option to get rid of him is to change the electoral vote, since the electoral college hasn't voted yet and a substantial number of votes could be changed arbitrarily [given a good enough reason] with no legal repercussions, throwing the election to ANYONE. After that the only why to prevent him becoming president is to prove he doesn't qualify or by assassination. After becoming president of course impeachment becomes possible.
American's do not speak English they speak American. Problem Solved. The fact that you can understand some of what I, a dumb American, say is a miracle.
Just because they make a 1.42ghz model does not mean that a 1.25 can be overclocked to 1.42 safely from a heat perspective. One of the reasons a particular part is sold at a particular speed is power consumption. A 1.25Ghz processor is a "lower-bin" part and is sold for a cheaper price. IE the transistors in the part do not function as efficently or quickly as the higher-bin 1.42ghz model. There is a lot of different things that can make that be so, but suffice it to say that Apple is probably buying parts based on a Power Consumption spec. ie... The cheap Mac Mini's are probably being built with parts that run at 1.25Ghz @ say for arguments sake 7 watts of power consuption. They are also buying parts that run at 1.42ghz @ 7 watts of power consumption. That way their heat profile is about the same regardless of which part they use. This isn't to say that either part won't run faster, but that they will generate more heat to do so. [Higher leakage currents etc]. Therefore it is patently false that you can safely overclock a slower part just because they have a faster model. The parts used in the faster model don't run hotter, they run more efficently typically. You're results will vary because IBM/Motorolla may have labelled a part that was technically good enough to be 1.42Ghz as 1.25 just to make quota... It depends on their yeilds. Physically the chips are made the same, higher speed chips just come from the center of the wafer while slower typically come from the edges, but in practice it's probabilistic thing and you may get a faster chip just because they didn't fully test the chip for fastest speed or that they needed more 1.25ghz chips then 1.42ghz chips.. Anyway's there is no guarantee, you're just as likely to have the part melt at 1.42ghz then work beautifully... Can also depend on your usage pattern low cpu usage in a cool environment will make things work much better then a 95 degree house with heavy usage...
-- Matthew Schiller Electrical Engineer Previous Apple Intern [Flat Panel iMac]
You're thinking too much inside the Unix/Linux Box. LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH are both constructs that are artificial.. For example:
For the PATH: There is several potential work arounds: 1) All applications go in a standardized root directory ala/Applications [MacOS] or/opt. 2) Either with meta data or with an extension [such as.app] the bundle is identified as an Application Bundle. 3) Inside the bundle a./bin/application_name file exists that is the executable. The Shell automatically searched the/Application directory, because it's called out in the PATH. then it automatically says oh.. the user is calling XYZ app, it's really going to be XYZ.app/bin/XYZ and executes that. This will work great for programs that normally only need a single executable. Clearly you could extend this rationale to find ALL executables by just extending the PATH concept to automatically add all the bin/ directories of all Applications bundles in the Path... Simple eh?
Same applies to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, although to save disk space you might want to apply the soft link approach others have discussed....
If you don't like the thread, why are you reading it? Some of us are just having a little fun with Math.... I for one just wanted to get info out there. Shoot I haven't even been modded up.. just filter on Score 2 and you'll be good...
[Yes I have good karma so unless you've disabled it my post is automatically +1]
No need for name calling... And aren't we all nerds? If not you probably shouldn't be reading slashdot...
Uh no... If the stations are 1 mile apart both in the X and Y direction.. The worst possible scenario is that your in the exact center of 4 stations. In this scenario you need to walk.707 miles if the path is clear, but more likely the streets are grid based as well [albeit on a smaller grid]. So you'd need to walk.5 miles to get to the rail line grid and then.5 miles to get to the station. The only way it could be more then 1 mile is if obstructions block both the direct path and the manhatten path [eg a maze]. Or perhaps if you live in the Suburbs and need to first get to the grid.
Which if the stations are 1 mile apart grid means that you could, concievably, be in the exact center of 4 stations. If we assume, for argument sake, that the grid is set up as n-s/e-w, like so many cities are, then you could have to walk 1 mile to get to a station. [Say for example that the rails were on a 1 mile grid and the streets/alleys/sidewalks were on a.1 mile grid.. In this case you could find yourself in the exact center between stations. You'd have to pick a direction and walk.5 miles and then turn 90 degrees and walk.5 miles again to get to a station. Thus you might walk.5 miles north and then.5 miles east to get to the station that was.707 miles North East of you initially [presumably through buildings, flower beds, yards, etc].
UH... Something is screwy with your Thunderbird Installation.. My Thunderbird is currently taking ~7MB on Windows 2000...
Do you have a large number of emails in your inbox or folders? I use IMAP and my inbox is usually 20 messages [I'm delete happy, figure worse case I can load up the deleted items folder, which takes for ever since it has many thousands of messages]..
You mean what was State of the Art ten years before launch don't you?
Even if the Government pushes the state of the art in the design phase, by the time Government get's around to fully funding, building, and deploying the item in question the technology is 5-10 years old...
I guess my point was that the real problem here isn't that people think data should only be data that is and should be the rule, it's that people [programmers] make mistakes and allow the rules to be broken...
Ideally mechanisms should be put in place to prevent this from happening: 1) Hardware features to help (NX etc) 2) Automated tools to find bounds problems 3) Peer Reviews 4) Education on security flaws and how to fix them... How many folks actually were taught about security flaws in school? When I wrote code all they cared about is if it worked or not.... [some of the test sets they fed did some checking, but there never was lectures on "How to write secure code"].
Hopefully with those in place the # of exploited security flaws will decrease dramatically....
Now from the other perspective.. These flaws exist... We have to plan for them and try to secure our machines... The only problem is that for the non programmer a secure machine is a machine that isn't on.. Preferably a machine that doesn't exist.. And that just ain't useful... How can you tell someone that because of security flaw X or worse because a flaw might exist, you can't view.JPG's? The answer is you can't because the user will do it anyways!
Scripts are not executable code.. You load them as data and they run as data. This isn't to say the script can't do something nasty like rm -rf / or rm -rf ~.. The point of NX type operations is to make sure whatever the processor does is intended [or at least is what the user said to do, even if the user didn't mean to do it]... If you WANT to run a script you can run it, but your computer shouldn't run a script when you ask it to open a.jpg!
Typically scripts are interpreted rather then compiled and executed.. So NX type functionality is not really a problem. There is some strangeness because a script determines the flow of executable code, but it does not allow you to run arbitrary code per se. [I suppose if you've given the script language enough flexibility to read and write memory directly etc, you could potentially have a problem, and of course most scripts have access to the filesystem which can cause all kinds of problems if the OS doesn't have a permission scheme in place... ie normal users and root users]. The point is for a scripting language you've deliberately given permission to execute something that was only data a minute ago. So there can be mechanisms to do what ever you need to do... But for JPG's or regular text processing, you shouldn't be able to run arbitrary code. It should not be able to, for example, run "rm -rf/" or start a keyboard sniffer when I open a txt file in nano....
Admittedly things get a little more interesting if your scripting langauge is compiled. Then your generating real machine executable code, rather then use machine executable code to interpret non machine executable code. Here a kernel level machanism needs to be used to "flip" a data page to an exectable page. By being deliberate like this you get control, so that only runtime compilers for example can do this. [perhaps a bit that only root can set/clr on the program much like setuid..]. For runtime compilers that run on untrusted source [i.e. automatically for java etc] a sandbox or other security precautions must be taken to protect the host system...
Well it shouldn't be possible to be infected with a virus from a picture... Because Data Memory should never EVER be able to be executed without specific privledge elevation [yeah, maybe root can do this, or perhaps only the deepest dark section of the kernel].
1) Software designers should be more careful when using buffers, so that over runs don't occur is it really that hard to keep a counter around to make sure your don't overrun? I guess developers want their code to run fast and I suppose it doesn't help that C offers absolutely no protection from such problems. [Pascal and other strongly typed languages sure help in this regard it's alot harder to make this type of mistake].
2) OS designers should do more through checking to make sure data pages are never executed. [and a data write can't write into an application memeory page!]. While it SHOULD be caught above, the OS should be looking out for requests to write into pages not assigned as data for a particular application.
3) Hardware designers should implement features to optimize #1 and #2. [eg. noexecute flags. Harvard Architecture, etc. I can easily see a architecture that looks like a Harvard in normal mode and then turns into our traditional von neumann architecture in privledged mode.]
It's really quite simple concept to have a no execute flag associated with a memory page that can only be changed in privledged mode. And such coding techniques should work fine for day to day computer use [self modifying code could be problem , etc].
Your right people couldn't care less about FUNDING advanced science research. But interestingly enough they have no problem reaping the benefits of publicly funded research:
Integrated Circuits - Largely a Result of the Minturization needed for Space Travel.
Velcro
Satellite Television - [rocketry technology developed for MANNED space exploration]
etc.
The point is that if you listed all the things Space and other forms of research have done for us and developed an argument on that I think you could convince just about anyone that spending money on research was a good idea. The space program itself might not be seen worth it though. But if you just flat ask, do you think we should spend $5 billion to go to space or fund High Energy Physics research, the answer would be no..
If anyone's respect for Asimov droped because of the hollywood version of some of his work, the real person we should not repect is those who would fault an author for a screenplay he wasn't involved in!....
While the reviewer indicates the movie was better then average, Hollywood ALWAYS leaves things out and throws their own spin on it. The original author should not be faulted because of the movie, instead the author should be faulted if the original work was lacking...
Well Hams (Amateur Radio Operators) often have quite a few people that are skilled in Radio Direction Finding. If you do nasty things to a Ham Satellite, I assure you the local ham club will be out in force looking for you. They WILL find you, and when they do I assure you that there will be plenty of notes to the local Official Observer and the FCC. Once the local observer is aware of the situation and can prove that it's you his/her note to the FCC will hold considerable weight and will result in action. Plus enough folks will probably decide to take things into their own hands, then you're life will be unpleasant anyway..
It's one thing when Hams or non hams illegally transmitting on Ham bands interfere with local repeaters or HF frequencies. Here we can work around it. But the satellites are a very expensive limited resource, there are enough folks who care deeply about it that you won't be able to get away with interfering, in a illegal way, for long...
Remember, you can't do anything wirelessly without being trackable! Trust me on this one. You may encrypt things or obscure things, but a diligent Radio Direction Finding team will hunt you down and find your physical transmitting location.
Now if you meant the US Government themselves would cause interference on Ham Satelites, I think that's pretty unlikely. But if it did happen, Ham's might find out the Government was doing it, but there isn't much they could do about it. If it was a foreign national government, the U.S. would probably be willing to intercede since Ham radio is protected by International Treaty, of which 99+% of the world is party to. Although in the end it would just be a nice diplomatic letter from, at best, the Secretary of State. So I guess a government could ignore it, but I don't see why any sane government would risk an international incident over something as silly as Ham Radio.
I should hope NO U.S. Ham is using 10 Kilowatts since we are limited to 1.5 KW output power. Now we won't talk about the Effective Radiated Power, due to the gain of the antenna's used.
You have a point.. But in this case we aren't asking to FIND saturn. The takes some skills many american don't have. Here a dumb american only needs to recognize that Mars is not the same place as Saturn.
#1) A script kiddie may very well be a snot nosed teenager [pre teen these days?] who probably does his/her hacking at night, since the teenager still lives at home they are probably expected to go to school during the day, and are probably better watched in the evening. At night, if they sneak back up from bed, they then can get away with practically anything on the internet...
In this scenario "night" is any time, since the hacker could be anywhere.
#2) A more intelligent hacker might realize that system administrators are probably most alert during a certain time of the day. For example, a small - medium sized business might only have a system administrator on duty during business hours [on call the rest of the time]. In this case Security logs are probably viewed during business hours. So unless the hacker tripped a trip wire [thus notifying the system administrator]. They might be well advised to hack at night. Of course the disadvantage here is that if you aren't successful enough to cover your tracks.... It's going to be much more suspecious at 3am, then a few bad passwords [for example] at 9am, when a regular user might be trying to log in. In anycase in this scenario it's local time...
The Sex Ed syllabus [Correct Spelling..] will likely not have been updated yet. You don't really expect the health class to keep any more up2date about technology then the computer class do you?
Gotta love taking my high school's computer class on 286's... [when the Pentium was main stream, and the pentium pro was state of the Art].
Slashdot Mirror
Actually this may not be a vulnerability in units without a removeable battery. When a Lithium Ion [or polymer] battery is removable manufactures install microcontrollers with firmware to orchestrate the safety system and do battery life management. This firmware is often provided by the pack subcontractor rather then written by the larger system manufacturer...
The pack has firmware for two reasons:
1) There is a variety of failure mechanisms that can cause fire and explosion with Lithium Ion batteries. When the uC detects one of these is occurring the battery is either temporarily or permanently placed in "Safe" mode. This disconnects the battery from it's terminals. Since on units with removable batteries these conditions can occur outside of the unit, these important safety functions must be built into the battery. Your typical Cell phone battery has three or more terminals for these functions [even though only 2 terminals is needed to charge/discharge the battery]
===> Another safety concern is "fake" batteries which often don't have these safety features, so often the uC authenticates itself to the Laptop before it can be used. This protects from counterfeits and also makes the laptop manufacturer money on replacement batteries.....
2) Charge Cycles and battery capacity information is also stored and calculated. This information is provided to the higher level system, when the battery is inserted. This is important so your Laptop can guess (relatively accurately) how much time is left even after you change the battery to a possibly degraded or partially charged spare. [Current monitors detect how much power goes into the battery and how much is removed. Based on historical information from previous charge/discharge cycles a good guess on the remaining capacity can be made]
Things are different however in units with a non-user serviceable battery. A lot of the safety concerns can be explained away and not protected against, since the battery is in a more protected position (this all comes down to lawsuits, if you can say the user tampered with the unit and prove it then the company is off the hook...). So often they will have a "dumb" charger connected to the battery with most of the safety functions removed. A special purpose capacity monitor chip (without firmware) can be used for the power monitoring feature. Thus in a lot of systems you don't need the uC (and thus the firmware) at all, if you assume the battery can't be tampered with...
Turns out there is 257 Electoral votes that technically, without breaking any laws; could go to anyone.... And given a good enough reason would. The remaining votes are tied to various degrees by legal requirements. see: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/laws.html
I don't believe there is any provision to impeach a president elect. However remember Obama isn't technically the president elect yet. The much easier option to get rid of him is to change the electoral vote, since the electoral college hasn't voted yet and a substantial number of votes could be changed arbitrarily [given a good enough reason] with no legal repercussions, throwing the election to ANYONE. After that the only why to prevent him becoming president is to prove he doesn't qualify or by assassination. After becoming president of course impeachment becomes possible.
American's do not speak English they speak American. Problem Solved. The fact that you can understand some of what I, a dumb American, say is a miracle.
Just because they make a 1.42ghz model does not mean that a 1.25 can be overclocked to 1.42 safely from a heat perspective. One of the reasons a particular part is sold at a particular speed is power consumption. A 1.25Ghz processor is a "lower-bin" part and is sold for a cheaper price. IE the transistors in the part do not function as efficently or quickly as the higher-bin 1.42ghz model. There is a lot of different things that can make that be so, but suffice it to say that Apple is probably buying parts based on a Power Consumption spec. ie... The cheap Mac Mini's are probably being built with parts that run at 1.25Ghz @ say for arguments sake 7 watts of power consuption. They are also buying parts that run at 1.42ghz @ 7 watts of power consumption. That way their heat profile is about the same regardless of which part they use. This isn't to say that either part won't run faster, but that they will generate more heat to do so. [Higher leakage currents etc]. Therefore it is patently false that you can safely overclock a slower part just because they have a faster model. The parts used in the faster model don't run hotter, they run more efficently typically. You're results will vary because IBM/Motorolla may have labelled a part that was technically good enough to be 1.42Ghz as 1.25 just to make quota... It depends on their yeilds. Physically the chips are made the same, higher speed chips just come from the center of the wafer while slower typically come from the edges, but in practice it's probabilistic thing and you may get a faster chip just because they didn't fully test the chip for fastest speed or that they needed more 1.25ghz chips then 1.42ghz chips.. Anyway's there is no guarantee, you're just as likely to have the part melt at 1.42ghz then work beautifully... Can also depend on your usage pattern low cpu usage in a cool environment will make things work much better then a 95 degree house with heavy usage...
-- Matthew Schiller
Electrical Engineer
Previous Apple Intern [Flat Panel iMac]
You're thinking too much inside the Unix/Linux Box.
/Applications [MacOS] or /opt. .app] the bundle is identified as an Application Bundle. ./bin/application_name file exists that is the executable. The Shell automatically searched the /Application directory, because it's called out in the PATH. then it automatically says oh.. the user is calling XYZ app, it's really going to be XYZ.app/bin/XYZ and executes that. This will work great for programs that normally only need a single executable. Clearly you could extend this rationale to find ALL executables by just extending the PATH concept to automatically add all the bin/ directories of all Applications bundles in the Path... Simple eh?
LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH are both constructs that are artificial.. For example:
For the PATH: There is several potential work arounds:
1) All applications go in a standardized root directory ala
2) Either with meta data or with an extension [such as
3) Inside the bundle a
Same applies to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, although to save disk space you might want to apply the soft link approach others have discussed....
If you don't like the thread, why are you reading it? Some of us are just having a little fun with Math.... I for one just wanted to get info out there. Shoot I haven't even been modded up.. just filter on Score 2 and you'll be good...
[Yes I have good karma so unless you've disabled it my post is automatically +1]
No need for name calling... And aren't we all nerds? If not you probably shouldn't be reading slashdot...
Uh no... If the stations are 1 mile apart both in the X and Y direction.. The worst possible scenario is that your in the exact center of 4 stations. In this scenario you need to walk .707 miles if the path is clear, but more likely the streets are grid based as well [albeit on a smaller grid]. So you'd need to walk .5 miles to get to the rail line grid and then .5 miles to get to the station. The only way it could be more then 1 mile is if obstructions block both the direct path and the manhatten path [eg a maze]. Or perhaps if you live in the Suburbs and need to first get to the grid.
Which if the stations are 1 mile apart grid means that you could, concievably, be in the exact center of 4 stations. If we assume, for argument sake, that the grid is set up as n-s/e-w, like so many cities are, then you could have to walk 1 mile to get to a station. [Say for example that the rails were on a 1 mile grid and the streets/alleys/sidewalks were on a .1 mile grid.. In this case you could find yourself in the exact center between stations. You'd have to pick a direction and walk .5 miles and then turn 90 degrees and walk .5 miles again to get to a station. Thus you might walk .5 miles north and then .5 miles east to get to the station that was .707 miles North East of you initially [presumably through buildings, flower beds, yards, etc].
UH... Something is screwy with your Thunderbird Installation.. My Thunderbird is currently taking ~7MB on Windows 2000... Do you have a large number of emails in your inbox or folders? I use IMAP and my inbox is usually 20 messages [I'm delete happy, figure worse case I can load up the deleted items folder, which takes for ever since it has many thousands of messages]..
You mean what was State of the Art ten years before launch don't you?
Even if the Government pushes the state of the art in the design phase, by the time Government get's around to fully funding, building, and deploying the item in question the technology is 5-10 years old...
True enough...
.JPG's? The answer is you can't because the user will do it anyways!
I guess my point was that the real problem here isn't that people think data should only be data that is and should be the rule, it's that people [programmers] make mistakes and allow the rules to be broken...
Ideally mechanisms should be put in place to prevent this from happening:
1) Hardware features to help (NX etc)
2) Automated tools to find bounds problems
3) Peer Reviews
4) Education on security flaws and how to fix them... How many folks actually were taught about security flaws in school? When I wrote code all they cared about is if it worked or not.... [some of the test sets they fed did some checking, but there never was lectures on "How to write secure code"].
Hopefully with those in place the # of exploited security flaws will decrease dramatically....
Now from the other perspective.. These flaws exist... We have to plan for them and try to secure our machines... The only problem is that for the non programmer a secure machine is a machine that isn't on.. Preferably a machine that doesn't exist.. And that just ain't useful... How can you tell someone that because of security flaw X or worse because a flaw might exist, you can't view
Scripts are not executable code.. You load them as data and they run as data. This isn't to say the script can't do something nasty like rm -rf / or rm -rf ~.. The point of NX type operations is to make sure whatever the processor does is intended [or at least is what the user said to do, even if the user didn't mean to do it]... If you WANT to run a script you can run it, but your computer shouldn't run a script when you ask it to open a .jpg!
/"
Typically scripts are interpreted rather then compiled and executed.. So NX type functionality is not really a problem. There is some strangeness because a script determines the flow of executable code, but it does not allow you to run arbitrary code per se. [I suppose if you've given the script language enough flexibility to read and write memory directly etc, you could potentially have a problem, and of course most scripts have access to the filesystem which can cause all kinds of problems if the OS doesn't have a permission scheme in place... ie normal users and root users]. The point is for a scripting language you've deliberately given permission to execute something that was only data a minute ago. So there can be mechanisms to do what ever you need to do... But for JPG's or regular text processing, you shouldn't be able to run arbitrary code. It should not be able to, for example, run "rm -rf
or start a keyboard sniffer when I open a txt file in nano....
Admittedly things get a little more interesting if your scripting langauge is compiled. Then your generating real machine executable code, rather then use machine executable code to interpret non machine executable code. Here a kernel level machanism needs to be used to "flip" a data page to an exectable page. By being deliberate like this you get control, so that only runtime compilers for example can do this. [perhaps a bit that only root can set/clr on the program much like setuid..]. For runtime compilers that run on untrusted source [i.e. automatically for java etc] a sandbox or other security precautions must be taken to protect the host system...
Well that is the real problem isn't it...
Human error...
Although the hardware solutions are more easily verified and can help the software solutions to work...
Well it shouldn't be possible to be infected with a virus from a picture... Because Data Memory should never EVER be able to be executed without specific privledge elevation [yeah, maybe root can do this, or perhaps only the deepest dark section of the kernel].
1) Software designers should be more careful when using buffers, so that over runs don't occur is it really that hard to keep a counter around to make sure your don't overrun? I guess developers want their code to run fast and I suppose it doesn't help that C offers absolutely no protection from such problems. [Pascal and other strongly typed languages sure help in this regard it's alot harder to make this type of mistake].
2) OS designers should do more through checking to make sure data pages are never executed. [and a data write can't write into an application memeory page!]. While it SHOULD be caught above, the OS should be looking out for requests to write into pages not assigned as data for a particular application.
3) Hardware designers should implement features to optimize #1 and #2. [eg. noexecute flags. Harvard Architecture, etc. I can easily see a architecture that looks like a Harvard in normal mode and then turns into our traditional von neumann architecture in privledged mode.]
It's really quite simple concept to have a no execute flag associated with a memory page that can only be changed in privledged mode. And such coding techniques should work fine for day to day computer use [self modifying code could be problem , etc].
Your right people couldn't care less about FUNDING advanced science research. But interestingly enough they have no problem reaping the benefits of publicly funded research:
Integrated Circuits - Largely a Result of the Minturization needed for Space Travel.
Velcro
Satellite Television - [rocketry technology developed for MANNED space exploration]
etc.
The point is that if you listed all the things Space and other forms of research have done for us and developed an argument on that I think you could convince just about anyone that spending money on research was a good idea. The space program itself might not be seen worth it though. But if you just flat ask, do you think we should spend $5 billion to go to space or fund High Energy Physics research, the answer would be no..
If anyone's respect for Asimov droped because of the hollywood version of some of his work, the real person we should not repect is those who would fault an author for a screenplay he wasn't involved in!....
While the reviewer indicates the movie was better then average, Hollywood ALWAYS leaves things out and throws their own spin on it. The original author should not be faulted because of the movie, instead the author should be faulted if the original work was lacking...
In The US... The documentation would be English and Spanish... I hardly ever see anything with JUST english these days...
Well Hams (Amateur Radio Operators) often have quite a few people that are skilled in Radio Direction Finding. If you do nasty things to a Ham Satellite, I assure you the local ham club will be out in force looking for you. They WILL find you, and when they do I assure you that there will be plenty of notes to the local Official Observer and the FCC. Once the local observer is aware of the situation and can prove that it's you his/her note to the FCC will hold considerable weight and will result in action. Plus enough folks will probably decide to take things into their own hands, then you're life will be unpleasant anyway..
It's one thing when Hams or non hams illegally transmitting on Ham bands interfere with local repeaters or HF frequencies. Here we can work around it. But the satellites are a very expensive limited resource, there are enough folks who care deeply about it that you won't be able to get away with interfering, in a illegal way, for long...
Remember, you can't do anything wirelessly without being trackable! Trust me on this one. You may encrypt things or obscure things, but a diligent Radio Direction Finding team will hunt you down and find your physical transmitting location.
Now if you meant the US Government themselves would cause interference on Ham Satelites, I think that's pretty unlikely. But if it did happen, Ham's might find out the Government was doing it, but there isn't much they could do about it. If it was a foreign national government, the U.S. would probably be willing to intercede since Ham radio is protected by International Treaty, of which 99+% of the world is party to. Although in the end it would just be a nice diplomatic letter from, at best, the Secretary of State. So I guess a government could ignore it, but I don't see why any sane government would risk an international incident over something as silly as Ham Radio.
Matthew Schiller, KD6BWE
Opps wrong button... That Antenna array I can assure you has much much more then 10 Kilowatts ERP.
-- Matthew Schiller, A.R.S. KD6BWE
You have a point.. But in this case we aren't asking to FIND saturn. The takes some skills many american don't have. Here a dumb american only needs to recognize that Mars is not the same place as Saturn.
FWIW, I am a dumb american...
-- Matthew Schiller
Try Saturanians.. Cassini is at Saturn.. Not Mars...
There's two ways to look at this..
#1) A script kiddie may very well be a snot nosed teenager [pre teen these days?] who probably does his/her hacking at night, since the teenager still lives at home they are probably expected to go to school during the day, and are probably better watched in the evening. At night, if they sneak back up from bed, they then can get away with practically anything on the internet...
In this scenario "night" is any time, since the hacker could be anywhere.
#2) A more intelligent hacker might realize that system administrators are probably most alert during a certain time of the day. For example, a small - medium sized business might only have a system administrator on duty during business hours [on call the rest of the time]. In this case Security logs are probably viewed during business hours. So unless the hacker tripped a trip wire [thus notifying the system administrator]. They might be well advised to hack at night. Of course the disadvantage here is that if you aren't successful enough to cover your tracks.... It's going to be much more suspecious at 3am, then a few bad passwords [for example] at 9am, when a regular user might be trying to log in. In anycase in this scenario it's local time...
The Sex Ed syllabus [Correct Spelling..] will likely not have been updated yet. You don't really expect the health class to keep any more up2date about technology then the computer class do you? Gotta love taking my high school's computer class on 286's... [when the Pentium was main stream, and the pentium pro was state of the Art].