I'm surprised that no one has yet referenced the recent article referenced on Slashdot and linking to Canadafreepress.com which quotes climate change experts who disagree with Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" movie?
It's nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff in this discussion since it's so politically and emotionally charged, but who is the average citizen supposed to trust if both sides are trotting out 'climate experts' to disagree?
Case in point, actually. You take the world's fastest open multiuser network (Internet2) with speeds approaching Ridiculous and Ludicrous, and the stuff still doesn't work right.
And it's not just pure bandwidth, although I suspect that's usually the main part of the issue. It's running a QoS-desiring application over your regular network competing with all other traffic. And if you don't run it over your regular network, then you've just lost all the cost advantages of doing modern videoconferencing.
And as for the smirking poster who replied with iChat to my original post, don't think that just saying "Apple" fixes everything. I'm sure iChat works wonderfully on three machines hooked up to an isolated 100mbps switched network. Go play with it on a corporate network filled with Lotus Notes traffic and the occasional guy who figured out how to get pr0n through the proxy. Even iChat can't compensate for packets that arrive tomorrow.
While I'm sure there are a few applications out there now, doesn't most everyone have trouble with regular videoconferences now?
The company I work for has videoconferencing equipment that works over ISDN as well as IP over their internal corporate network. The picture is still jerky, the sound is always off, and it's almost more of a pain to set up than it's really worth. Kind of like talking to someone via a satellite link.
Maybe mine isn't the typical end-user experience, but I'm wondering how many networks out there could even handle the traffic from a HD videoconference session.
I agree that there's a lot still to learn about genetic engineering. However, a quote in a recent issue of Wired made a lot of sense to me. The geneticist (obviously a fan of genetic engineering) said "What's better? Transferring hundreds or thousands of genes unintentionally to get the one gene you want enabled or simply enabling it directly?"
More to the point, I think we don't know enough about how single genes act, interact, and co-exist to be confident in any type of genetic engineering, whether it be via laboratory manipulation or cross-breeding over several generations. Funny that I don't hear a Call to Arms to stop the practice of selective breeding for desired traits.
Sometimes, even the shutdown -a trick doesn't work. Customers that I've dealt with have reported that both the RPC DCOM patch as well as the more recent LSASS patch have sometimes failed to install properly if the machine had been hit with the exploit code during the session. (It doesn't have to be _infected_, it's enough to have the service crashed.) They've even checked the Add/Remove Programs listing and the KB article is listed right there, but their machines keep suffering from reboots.
In these cases, I've recommended good 'ol sneakernet: Burn the patches on CD, unplug the machine, reboot, install patches, plug back in, reboot. Pain in the rear, but it solved their problem.
Usually, I'm a big free market proponent, but even I can see how media consolidation is a bad thing for the average American consumer.
Right now, we have four major television networks: ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS. Watch each network's nightly news broadcasts; they're not all that different. And although news organizations like to say that they're unbiased and "just reporting the facts, ma'am", the way in which you present "the facts" gives a strong indication as to your opinion of it.
"Republicans Hand Wealthy Americans Large Tax Break" vs. "American Citizens Will Pay Less in Taxes" gives a pretty good impression of what the writer thinks of the tax breaks.
I think the real problem with the unannounced altering of photos is that it has the ability to alter the meaning of a situation. I'm somewhat amazed at any discussion that argues that this is alright to do in any way, such as when the alteration does not change the fundamental nature of the shot.
The danger in allowing such discussion to breed is that it opens photographs to subjectivity. The editors alter photos to make them more dramatic, create more of an impact. But they are forging an image that did not exist in reality!
Altering photographs without providing a notice to the viewers allows the editors to become part of the story, enhancing and molding it, providing their own subliminal opinion, rather than reporting on it and allowing the reader to make up their own judgement. It's my opinion that media opinion and prejudice is already pervasive in news reporting worldwide, not just in the U.S. media.
We do not need any more opinions in our news, especially when those opinions are disguised as fact. If the situation wasn't dramatic enough, then it doesn't deserve to be 'pumped up' for our modern senses.
Has anyone tried to use Windows Update to grab this patch? I'm running WinXP at work and just tried to hit Windows Update to let it auto-magically determine which update(s) to send to me. However - it came back and said everything was already hunky dory, no patches available.
I checked www.microsoft.com/security and looked up the MS03-008 patch for XP. It had a Qfix number starting with 8. I then compared against the Qfixed installed in my add/remove programs listing and it wasn't there...
I'm wondering whether they forgot to include that patch on the WU site for WinXP users. Seems to me like that would be one of the most critical places to put it for all of the normal user-folk.
So, I manually downloaded and installed the "Js56en" patch on WinXP and it took.
As an aside - I was very concerned when MS announced the Windows Scripting Host functionality. My thinking at the time (and again now) is that they allow so many file types to be executed that there's just no way they can keep all of the bugs out of all of those interpreters. Figured it would just be a matter of time..
Ah -- if only the Tigers were more like the Red Wings, Detroit would be a happier town.
Seriously, the only day of the year our brand new Corporate branded stadium is full is on opening day. At least our players get the benefits of being able to get some rounds of golf in before winter hits each year.
Am I seeing these pictures wrong, or is the camera pointed out the side window? IMHO, it would have been much cooler if a wide-angle lens had been used and the camera pointed out the _front_ window.
From a side-view perspective, it just looks like 3,000+ random shots of cows, farmland, etc. No continuity.
I think several approaches will help us combat the spread of worms on Linux/BSD/OSS:
Default installations should not enable services that listen on external interfaces. You should have to know enough to re-enable these services securely.
Agents such as the RedHat Network updater should be common (and FREE!). You should be able to specify what services you're interested in checking regularly and automatically (those that you've enabled) and have any remote root exploit patches found for those services applied automatically (if you want.)
An open source IDS might also be useful, only if it's updated quickly & by a trusted group. In conjunction with the agent, it's checklist would certainly be able to be updated quicker than a patch.
Finally - what about a distributed reporting system agent? It should reside on a system and get it's checklist from an external source. If it finds a known worm attack, it can send out a quick update to a centralized database alerting them to the fact. If the ISP's would work with us, they could regularly scan that database for their address space and make the necessary adjustments. Sort of like a Seti@Home system for ratting our your infected network neighbors.
Some of these ideas, I know, are a bit of a reach (especially the last one, imagine the abuse potential!), but the first three could definitely be done and done right by the security-conscious *nix community.
My suggestion is to use a service such as DHS.ORG to register your cable modem's IP address as a valid internet address. Then, set up your server (it sounds like you're behind a NAT device) as.dhs.org.
If all your clients are behind the NAT as well, you can edit the/etc/mail/access file and add
192.168.0 RELAY
This will cause sendmail to only relay messages if they come from your internal, non-routable network.
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It's nearly impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff in this discussion since it's so politically and emotionally charged, but who is the average citizen supposed to trust if both sides are trotting out 'climate experts' to disagree?
Case in point, actually. You take the world's fastest open multiuser network (Internet2) with speeds approaching Ridiculous and Ludicrous, and the stuff still doesn't work right.
And it's not just pure bandwidth, although I suspect that's usually the main part of the issue. It's running a QoS-desiring application over your regular network competing with all other traffic. And if you don't run it over your regular network, then you've just lost all the cost advantages of doing modern videoconferencing.
And as for the smirking poster who replied with iChat to my original post, don't think that just saying "Apple" fixes everything. I'm sure iChat works wonderfully on three machines hooked up to an isolated 100mbps switched network. Go play with it on a corporate network filled with Lotus Notes traffic and the occasional guy who figured out how to get pr0n through the proxy. Even iChat can't compensate for packets that arrive tomorrow.
While I'm sure there are a few applications out there now, doesn't most everyone have trouble with regular videoconferences now?
The company I work for has videoconferencing equipment that works over ISDN as well as IP over their internal corporate network. The picture is still jerky, the sound is always off, and it's almost more of a pain to set up than it's really worth. Kind of like talking to someone via a satellite link.
Maybe mine isn't the typical end-user experience, but I'm wondering how many networks out there could even handle the traffic from a HD videoconference session.
I agree that there's a lot still to learn about genetic engineering. However, a quote in a recent issue of Wired made a lot of sense to me. The geneticist (obviously a fan of genetic engineering) said "What's better? Transferring hundreds or thousands of genes unintentionally to get the one gene you want enabled or simply enabling it directly?"
More to the point, I think we don't know enough about how single genes act, interact, and co-exist to be confident in any type of genetic engineering, whether it be via laboratory manipulation or cross-breeding over several generations. Funny that I don't hear a Call to Arms to stop the practice of selective breeding for desired traits.
Sometimes, even the shutdown -a trick doesn't work. Customers that I've dealt with have reported that both the RPC DCOM patch as well as the more recent LSASS patch have sometimes failed to install properly if the machine had been hit with the exploit code during the session. (It doesn't have to be _infected_, it's enough to have the service crashed.) They've even checked the Add/Remove Programs listing and the KB article is listed right there, but their machines keep suffering from reboots.
In these cases, I've recommended good 'ol sneakernet: Burn the patches on CD, unplug the machine, reboot, install patches, plug back in, reboot. Pain in the rear, but it solved their problem.
Usually, I'm a big free market proponent, but even I can see how media consolidation is a bad thing for the average American consumer.
Right now, we have four major television networks: ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS. Watch each network's nightly news broadcasts; they're not all that different. And although news organizations like to say that they're unbiased and "just reporting the facts, ma'am", the way in which you present "the facts" gives a strong indication as to your opinion of it.
"Republicans Hand Wealthy Americans Large Tax Break" vs. "American Citizens Will Pay Less in Taxes" gives a pretty good impression of what the writer thinks of the tax breaks.
I think the real problem with the unannounced altering of photos is that it has the ability to alter the meaning of a situation. I'm somewhat amazed at any discussion that argues that this is alright to do in any way, such as when the alteration does not change the fundamental nature of the shot.
The danger in allowing such discussion to breed is that it opens photographs to subjectivity. The editors alter photos to make them more dramatic, create more of an impact. But they are forging an image that did not exist in reality!
Altering photographs without providing a notice to the viewers allows the editors to become part of the story, enhancing and molding it, providing their own subliminal opinion, rather than reporting on it and allowing the reader to make up their own judgement. It's my opinion that media opinion and prejudice is already pervasive in news reporting worldwide, not just in the U.S. media.
We do not need any more opinions in our news, especially when those opinions are disguised as fact. If the situation wasn't dramatic enough, then it doesn't deserve to be 'pumped up' for our modern senses.
Has anyone tried to use Windows Update to grab this patch? I'm running WinXP at work and just tried to hit Windows Update to let it auto-magically determine which update(s) to send to me. However - it came back and said everything was already hunky dory, no patches available.
I checked www.microsoft.com/security and looked up the MS03-008 patch for XP. It had a Qfix number starting with 8. I then compared against the Qfixed installed in my add/remove programs listing and it wasn't there...
I'm wondering whether they forgot to include that patch on the WU site for WinXP users. Seems to me like that would be one of the most critical places to put it for all of the normal user-folk.
So, I manually downloaded and installed the "Js56en" patch on WinXP and it took.
As an aside - I was very concerned when MS announced the Windows Scripting Host functionality. My thinking at the time (and again now) is that they allow so many file types to be executed that there's just no way they can keep all of the bugs out of all of those interpreters. Figured it would just be a matter of time..
Ah -- if only the Tigers were more like the Red Wings, Detroit would be a happier town.
Seriously, the only day of the year our brand new Corporate branded stadium is full is on opening day. At least our players get the benefits of being able to get some rounds of golf in before winter hits each year.
Am I seeing these pictures wrong, or is the camera pointed out the side window? IMHO, it would have been much cooler if a wide-angle lens had been used and the camera pointed out the _front_ window.
From a side-view perspective, it just looks like 3,000+ random shots of cows, farmland, etc. No continuity.
I think several approaches will help us combat the spread of worms on Linux/BSD/OSS:
Default installations should not enable services that listen on external interfaces. You should have to know enough to re-enable these services securely.
Agents such as the RedHat Network updater should be common (and FREE!). You should be able to specify what services you're interested in checking regularly and automatically (those that you've enabled) and have any remote root exploit patches found for those services applied automatically (if you want.)
An open source IDS might also be useful, only if it's updated quickly & by a trusted group. In conjunction with the agent, it's checklist would certainly be able to be updated quicker than a patch.
Finally - what about a distributed reporting system agent? It should reside on a system and get it's checklist from an external source. If it finds a known worm attack, it can send out a quick update to a centralized database alerting them to the fact. If the ISP's would work with us, they could regularly scan that database for their address space and make the necessary adjustments. Sort of like a Seti@Home system for ratting our your infected network neighbors.
Some of these ideas, I know, are a bit of a reach (especially the last one, imagine the abuse potential!), but the first three could definitely be done and done right by the security-conscious *nix community.
My suggestion is to use a service such as DHS.ORG to register your cable modem's IP address as a valid internet address. Then, set up your server (it sounds like you're behind a NAT device) as .dhs.org.
/etc/mail/access file and add
If all your clients are behind the NAT as well, you can edit the
192.168.0 RELAY
This will cause sendmail to only relay messages if they come from your internal, non-routable network.