Yes, but i can't afford to have 2 computers (Or I don't want to take up the space, or some other excuse), and since I need windows sometimes,
These excuses are next to ridiculous for the vast majority of Mac users.
Seriously. First off, if you can afford a Mac and all of its very expensive accessories (compare even 'inexpensive' items like mice and keyboards with even the likes of Dell), then you can probably afford a cheap Windows PC, which these days, can be had for as little as $300 (less if you are skillful in building your own machine).
If space is your concern, get a MiniITX box or better yet a notebook. Even these are cheap as heck these days.
My point: why run two operating systems on the same box? Just get another PC. They're cheap these days. Buy two.
The last time I ranted like this, I got modded down, but that doesn't change the fact. Management migrates off of working platforms and onto Windows for no other reason than marketing.... ... and cash, summer homes, yachts, and weekend ski trips to Vale. As in kickbacks. In big companies, Microsoft pays off execs who make the decision to go from their competition to Windows.
"There used to be restrictions on passengers to take methanol on flights," said Ms Tsai.
But, she explained, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) recently changed its guidelines to allow passengers to take methanol cartridges with them when they travel.
Warning! Flammable liquid. May cause skin irritation. May cause central nervous system depression. May be absorbed through the skin. May cause kidney damage. May cause respiratory and digestive tract irritation. May be fatal or cause blindness if swallowed. May cause fetal effects. Causes severe eye irritation and possible injury. Target Organs: Kidneys, central nervous system, eyes.
It's a neurotoxin! It casues blindness! And it's highly flammable!
true plug and play features are what makes the Mac a wonderful machine. Gaining basic functionality without software drivers is why many of us buy a mac.
Macs have software drivers. Otherwise, why would there be this? Just because they're setup transparently for most Apple and the standards-compliant non-Apple devices doesn't change the basic fact.
In spite of this, I always had better luck with the SCSI devices than any plug and play hack on the PC. Even now, iLife does a better job recognizing cameras and video and memory card, with no additional drivers, than anything else I have used. I would be surprised if the Mini required anything special to become a media center.
Know what I did to hook my digital camera up to my PC? Nothing. No CDs, no software installs, no downloading drivers nothing. I just plugged it into my USB port and up came a window with all the pictures on it. Confused? Oh, well, my PC is running Ubuntu 5.10 'Breezy Badger'.
When talking about a media center, remember this. The PC has alwsy been about craming in as much as possible because adding stuff, no matter what anyone says, has always been a pain. Recall the hours spend figuring out the slave and master drives? Sure they were easy to install, just often impossible to get runing. OTOH, the mac has always including fast external busses so one could add what one needed. The busses were even chained so new hardware would not need to be added to connect new devices. This is not saying one is better than another, but I prefer upgrading a DVD drive by simply plugging it into the firewire port than having to muck around the inside and setting pins and installing new drivers.
Blah. IDE is old school. I use SATA. No jumpers, just plug it in.
My only point is that the only way to beat the iPod is to be better than the iPod rather than a psuedo-iPod.:-)
Or, alternatively, to match iPod feature for feature, make your package just as easy to use and feel just as integrated, hype the hell out of it and then sell it for half the cost.
OTOH, Microsoft made themselves very rich by being a psuedo-Macintosh.;-)
Re:Private enviro-bacterial research organization?
on
Bacteria Eat Styrofoam
·
· Score: 1
We had talked about the problem with pollution and his solution was always using government to try to make people stop polluting.
In many cases, it isn't that government needs to make companies stop polluting, it's that there is a lack of education and incentives to change things. In many manufacturing processes, for example, it is often cheaper to recycle solid waste products than it is to dispose of them. Unfortunately, in most of these cases, it requires the company to change their processes. The cost of changing these processes may be high, but in the long run, it saves the company a ton of money.
Where government can help in this regard is in giving tax breaks and other incentives to businesses who make this type of investment. It's a win/win -- we get less pollution, the company makes more money, and companies that make more pay their employees more, hire more people and spend more money on new technologies and other things -- hence, improving the economy and improving the environment.
Unfortunately, many knee-jerk liberals (and even some knee-jerk conservatives) hear "tax breaks" and think "corporate welfare." But it's not. In this scenario everybody wins.
While I think it was more of a review than a tutorial, I don't think it was particularly accurate in its description.
OpenOffice's charting functionality just doesn't have that much stuff that's 'hidden' -- unless you're completely unfamiliar with Excel's charting tools which work almost exactly the same.
So it's a two-step process, and a privilege escalation is step 2. Step 1 is still lacking,
Oh, no doubt. It's less severe than a directly exploitable root hole, but people who think it doesn't matter are seriously mistaken.
As to whether or not Step 1 is lacking, that depends on 1) what software is running on a box in question, 2) what services that box is and 3) the proper security precautions being taken by the sysadmin.
The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it was given a local account on the machine (which could be accessed via ssh). Yes, there are local privilege escalation vulnerabilities; likely some that are "unpublished".
Don't underestimate privelege escalation vulnerabilities. One way Apache uses to lockdown security is the ability to be able to run as the user 'nobody' (or 'http' or whatever) by starting initially as root and then switching users (and possibly a invoking a chroot jail, depending on how you have it configured).
If you can get the 'nobody' (or 'http' or whatever) user to be able to access arbitrary code by fuzzing Apache (or any other service you have open, such as sshd), then the privilege escalation vulnerability becomes the lynchpin that enables the attacker to be able to root the box.
The lesson here is that all security vulnerabilities should be taken seriously. Just because you don't think a security vulnerability doesn't apply to you doesn't mean that such vulnerability will not be exploited by an attacker trying to root your box. The only security vulnerabilities that don't apply to you are ones that involve software that you don't have installed on the box.
Mac-heads aren't used to thinking in this manner for two reasons: 1) Macs have not traditionally had upgradeable processors, and 2) because of Apple's long history of making more-or-less sealed-box machines, longtime Mac fans don't think of their PCs as consisting of a set of modular components that are interchangeable -- nevermind that Macs since the first PowerPC Macs have come with complete with PCI slots and somewhat more modular case construction.
Actually, open source applications may write files in a closed format by utilizing reverse engineering techniques. One such example is OpenOffice.org's support for pre-XML Microsoft Office formats. Whether you consider Microsoft Office XML formats to be open depends on what you define as 'open'.;)
What about Man-in-the-Middle attacks?
That is, MonopolySoft builds a machine that will only run binaries signed by Red Hat. Red Hat is not required under GPLv3 to give its signature key, but the machine maker is, except, he's decided to verify only against Red Hat's key and he doesn't have Red Hat's private key (just the public key, which is used to validate that the binary came from Red Hat, which is all he needs).
So I can still be prevented from modifying my GPL software and running it on my box, right? And no one's violated GPLv3, right?
GPLv3 doesn't cover this type of attack at all.
I know a 'Granny' who's a pro. photographer and needs Photoshop (and other Win/Mac-only tools) for her work. How's she going to get by on Ubuntu?
Wine runs Photoshop just fine on my Ubuntu box, thank you very much.
TCO will always vary based on what your application stack looks like. One thing we're studying where I work is the TCO of moving a mix of COTS and custom developed code from Solaris to Linux. Most of the rest of the company is on Linux, but this one particular application stack has for years ran on Solaris and is only now becoming feasible to run on Linux, since our major COTS vendor for this stack has ported their code to Linux.
But because of the massive amounce of customized code in the application stack, moving the entire application stack to Linux doesn't look like the best way to go... it's looking more and more like moving only some pieces of the stack to Linux and keeping some of the pieces of the stack on Solaris may look like the best approach.
My point is that TCO will vary widely from application stack to application stack and ultimately whether Linux or Solaris or Windows is cheaper depends on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the OS platform.
(Oh, and BTW-- you CAN embed an existing PDF into an OpenOffice document on Linux, it's just not very straightforward. Doing so involves converting the PDF to a PostScript or EPS document, or into multiple PostScript or EPS documents, depending on the number of pages of the original PDF.)
I realize your entire post is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but seriously, this attitude exists. If it weren't for tinkerers, there would be no Apple Computer, no HP, no Ford Motor Company, no Eastman Kodak, no Xerox -- these are all massive global companies that were started by tinkerers and inventors, yet, we can barely imagine a world in which the tinkerers who started them never began their creations.
Can I call you guys at 2:00 a.m. when I'm sitting bolt upright in bed worrying about this shit? Will you be awake?
Maybe. Depends on the day. I don't answer my cellphone when I'm trying to smuggle in nukes at 2:00 a.m.;-)
Of course such devices are only of limited use to DHS. They presume that the potential terrorist must smuggle in his or her device through an airport in the United States.
The reality is that the easiest way to smuggle in a nuclear device would be to get it first into Canada or Mexico. There are stretches of border there that go on for miles that are patrolled by a dozen or fewer officers -- often not even U.S. Border Patrol, but instead local law enforcement agencies that lack the training to properly protect an international border.
Humor or not, you do have a point. In formal communications it has always been considered important to maintain the best of manners and to always give the sender the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, a fairly harmless letter exchange can quickly turn into a long slew of misunderstandings.
For those who have ever been involved with FidoNet, this can be easily summarized as:
Do not annoy others.
Do not be easily annoyed.
This worked well in the early days, but in the later days during FidoNet's explosive growth it quickly devolved into "Fight-O-Net" because the newbies didn't understand the culture of "do not annoy others / do not be easily annoyed".
This parallels, in some ways, what happened on Usenet and the Internet at large, except for the lack of control of the former and the too-explosive-growth of the latter that ultimately caused the former, and to some degree the latter, to collapse under the heap of spammers and other profiteers.
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Yes, but i can't afford to have 2 computers (Or I don't want to take up the space, or some other excuse), and since I need windows sometimes,
These excuses are next to ridiculous for the vast majority of Mac users.
Seriously. First off, if you can afford a Mac and all of its very expensive accessories (compare even 'inexpensive' items like mice and keyboards with even the likes of Dell), then you can probably afford a cheap Windows PC, which these days, can be had for as little as $300 (less if you are skillful in building your own machine).
If space is your concern, get a MiniITX box or better yet a notebook. Even these are cheap as heck these days.
My point: why run two operating systems on the same box? Just get another PC. They're cheap these days. Buy two.
and it should also be added to as many closed-source apps as possible.
Hey, Corel! This means you! No, really. Get it to it!
The last time I ranted like this, I got modded down, but that doesn't change the fact. Management migrates off of working platforms and onto Windows for no other reason than marketing.... ... and cash, summer homes, yachts, and weekend ski trips to Vale. As in kickbacks. In big companies, Microsoft pays off execs who make the decision to go from their competition to Windows.
gconf stores things in transparent XML files contained within a directory tree hierarchy.
The Windows registry stores things in a non-transparent binary file.
There is a different.
From the MSDS for Methanol:
It's a neurotoxin! It casues blindness! And it's highly flammable!
Sounds like a terrorist's dream.
true plug and play features are what makes the Mac a wonderful machine. Gaining basic functionality without software drivers is why many of us buy a mac.
Macs have software drivers. Otherwise, why would there be this? Just because they're setup transparently for most Apple and the standards-compliant non-Apple devices doesn't change the basic fact.
In spite of this, I always had better luck with the SCSI devices than any plug and play hack on the PC. Even now, iLife does a better job recognizing cameras and video and memory card, with no additional drivers, than anything else I have used. I would be surprised if the Mini required anything special to become a media center.
Know what I did to hook my digital camera up to my PC? Nothing. No CDs, no software installs, no downloading drivers nothing. I just plugged it into my USB port and up came a window with all the pictures on it. Confused? Oh, well, my PC is running Ubuntu 5.10 'Breezy Badger'.
When talking about a media center, remember this. The PC has alwsy been about craming in as much as possible because adding stuff, no matter what anyone says, has always been a pain. Recall the hours spend figuring out the slave and master drives? Sure they were easy to install, just often impossible to get runing. OTOH, the mac has always including fast external busses so one could add what one needed. The busses were even chained so new hardware would not need to be added to connect new devices. This is not saying one is better than another, but I prefer upgrading a DVD drive by simply plugging it into the firewire port than having to muck around the inside and setting pins and installing new drivers.
Blah. IDE is old school. I use SATA. No jumpers, just plug it in.
My only point is that the only way to beat the iPod is to be better than the iPod rather than a psuedo-iPod. :-)
Or, alternatively, to match iPod feature for feature, make your package just as easy to use and feel just as integrated, hype the hell out of it and then sell it for half the cost.
OTOH, Microsoft made themselves very rich by being a psuedo-Macintosh. ;-)
In many cases, it isn't that government needs to make companies stop polluting, it's that there is a lack of education and incentives to change things. In many manufacturing processes, for example, it is often cheaper to recycle solid waste products than it is to dispose of them. Unfortunately, in most of these cases, it requires the company to change their processes. The cost of changing these processes may be high, but in the long run, it saves the company a ton of money.
Where government can help in this regard is in giving tax breaks and other incentives to businesses who make this type of investment. It's a win/win -- we get less pollution, the company makes more money, and companies that make more pay their employees more, hire more people and spend more money on new technologies and other things -- hence, improving the economy and improving the environment.
Unfortunately, many knee-jerk liberals (and even some knee-jerk conservatives) hear "tax breaks" and think "corporate welfare." But it's not. In this scenario everybody wins.
Like, say, a Grotesque Gulp, aka a 10-gallon trash can
(Obligatory LSL reference)
While I think it was more of a review than a tutorial, I don't think it was particularly accurate in its description.
OpenOffice's charting functionality just doesn't have that much stuff that's 'hidden' -- unless you're completely unfamiliar with Excel's charting tools which work almost exactly the same.
So it's a two-step process, and a privilege escalation is step 2. Step 1 is still lacking, Oh, no doubt. It's less severe than a directly exploitable root hole, but people who think it doesn't matter are seriously mistaken. As to whether or not Step 1 is lacking, that depends on 1) what software is running on a box in question, 2) what services that box is and 3) the proper security precautions being taken by the sysadmin.
If you can get the 'nobody' (or 'http' or whatever) user to be able to access arbitrary code by fuzzing Apache (or any other service you have open, such as sshd), then the privilege escalation vulnerability becomes the lynchpin that enables the attacker to be able to root the box.
The lesson here is that all security vulnerabilities should be taken seriously. Just because you don't think a security vulnerability doesn't apply to you doesn't mean that such vulnerability will not be exploited by an attacker trying to root your box. The only security vulnerabilities that don't apply to you are ones that involve software that you don't have installed on the box.
Mac-heads aren't used to thinking in this manner for two reasons: 1) Macs have not traditionally had upgradeable processors, and 2) because of Apple's long history of making more-or-less sealed-box machines, longtime Mac fans don't think of their PCs as consisting of a set of modular components that are interchangeable -- nevermind that Macs since the first PowerPC Macs have come with complete with PCI slots and somewhat more modular case construction.
Actually, open source applications may write files in a closed format by utilizing reverse engineering techniques. One such example is OpenOffice.org's support for pre-XML Microsoft Office formats. Whether you consider Microsoft Office XML formats to be open depends on what you define as 'open'. ;)
What about Man-in-the-Middle attacks? That is, MonopolySoft builds a machine that will only run binaries signed by Red Hat. Red Hat is not required under GPLv3 to give its signature key, but the machine maker is, except, he's decided to verify only against Red Hat's key and he doesn't have Red Hat's private key (just the public key, which is used to validate that the binary came from Red Hat, which is all he needs). So I can still be prevented from modifying my GPL software and running it on my box, right? And no one's violated GPLv3, right? GPLv3 doesn't cover this type of attack at all.
I know a 'Granny' who's a pro. photographer and needs Photoshop (and other Win/Mac-only tools) for her work. How's she going to get by on Ubuntu? Wine runs Photoshop just fine on my Ubuntu box, thank you very much.
TCO will always vary based on what your application stack looks like. One thing we're studying where I work is the TCO of moving a mix of COTS and custom developed code from Solaris to Linux. Most of the rest of the company is on Linux, but this one particular application stack has for years ran on Solaris and is only now becoming feasible to run on Linux, since our major COTS vendor for this stack has ported their code to Linux. But because of the massive amounce of customized code in the application stack, moving the entire application stack to Linux doesn't look like the best way to go ... it's looking more and more like moving only some pieces of the stack to Linux and keeping some of the pieces of the stack on Solaris may look like the best approach.
My point is that TCO will vary widely from application stack to application stack and ultimately whether Linux or Solaris or Windows is cheaper depends on a lot of factors that have nothing to do with the OS platform.
(Oh, and BTW-- you CAN embed an existing PDF into an OpenOffice document on Linux, it's just not very straightforward. Doing so involves converting the PDF to a PostScript or EPS document, or into multiple PostScript or EPS documents, depending on the number of pages of the original PDF.)
How will you prevent Wikipedia from turning into a collection of cranks, slackers, and trolls?
Hi! Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here.
I realize your entire post is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but seriously, this attitude exists. If it weren't for tinkerers, there would be no Apple Computer, no HP, no Ford Motor Company, no Eastman Kodak, no Xerox -- these are all massive global companies that were started by tinkerers and inventors, yet, we can barely imagine a world in which the tinkerers who started them never began their creations.
Why do so many people think they have a right to dictate the terms of other people's businesses? He does. He's the customer.
Can I call you guys at 2:00 a.m. when I'm sitting bolt upright in bed worrying about this shit? Will you be awake? Maybe. Depends on the day. I don't answer my cellphone when I'm trying to smuggle in nukes at 2:00 a.m. ;-)
Of course such devices are only of limited use to DHS. They presume that the potential terrorist must smuggle in his or her device through an airport in the United States.
The reality is that the easiest way to smuggle in a nuclear device would be to get it first into Canada or Mexico. There are stretches of border there that go on for miles that are patrolled by a dozen or fewer officers -- often not even U.S. Border Patrol, but instead local law enforcement agencies that lack the training to properly protect an international border.
For those who have ever been involved with FidoNet, this can be easily summarized as:
This worked well in the early days, but in the later days during FidoNet's explosive growth it quickly devolved into "Fight-O-Net" because the newbies didn't understand the culture of "do not annoy others / do not be easily annoyed".
This parallels, in some ways, what happened on Usenet and the Internet at large, except for the lack of control of the former and the too-explosive-growth of the latter that ultimately caused the former, and to some degree the latter, to collapse under the heap of spammers and other profiteers.
Considering they've already got Linux on Cell and a proposed model for making userland apps to take advantage of the SPUs, and have had these since last summer, I wouldn't be surprised if some open source code is already in the process of being ported.
Anyone know of any specific server apps?
Tell me this: What's the difference between browsing a book on Google and walking into a bookstore and reading the book on the shelf?
The point of either is to get you to buy the book. The publishers should be praising Google for making their books searchable.
I personally have bought several books based on text I have searched for using Google Book search.