Keeping the password file in a non-standard location like/hack/me/now is simple security through obscurity. Kind of like using ROT13 to encrypt your DRMed ebooks. This is a very common security technology used through out the IT industry. It's just a question of time before Bezos patents it!
That is a problem that has yet to be solved. Fingerprint matching is a special case of image recognition, and image recognition is either really hard to do or really hard for us humans to describe to a computer how to do.
The reason why making a general purpose API is better than hardcoding for a single use authentication algorithm is that you get:
Less lock in, since when the next generation of PAM killer comes along, the switch will be much easier.
Better portability to systems that don't use PAM. QNx, ReactOS, Windows, MacOS the world is a big place...
More uses for the software. Maybe you can use this fingerprinter together with a Firefox plugin to slightly increse the security of your bank transactions?
If the above reasons are enough to warrant the extra layer of indirection, I do not know. But saying that there are _no_ advantages to making a general purpose API is plainly false. It's a simple tradeoff.
In the power supply. When the power goes away, an interrupt is emitted that causes the OS to flush all it's HDD buffers in preparation for the power outage.
Yes. Unfortunatlythe rollover to four letter abbrevations (FLA) will be far less smooth than the rollover from two letter abbrevations (TLA) to three letter abbrevations (TLA). There are several reasons for this:
TLA is a TLA, but FLA is not a FLA
The abbrevation for four letter abbrevation is not the same as for a three letter abbrevation. This is expected to cause havoc in automated computer systems in much the same way as the year 2000 rollover.
It is interesting how one can determine the age of many UNIX programs by looking at their age. Programs like mv, cp, sh and dc stem from the seventies, whereas programs like cat, sed, gcc, ftp and man where first introduced in the early eighties. While TLAs are still the most common, there has been some FLA early adopters like perl.
You are taking this the wrong way. What has happened is that Microsoft noticed that Claria software contains bugs which in rare cases cause it to perform actions that some users might not want without first prompting the user. These actions include a problem with the automatic upgrade facility that may accidentally cause Claria software to be installed on a computer without the user requesting this. Because of this, they have contacted Claria and asked them to rewrite their software and remove all such unintended features. Claria has of course complied, and hence their software will be removed from the spyware list.
Download something from the internet and prepare to be fucked. I use firefox, gaim, thunderbird, itunes, and battlefield 2.
I'm guessing you downloaded all of those from the internet. By your own account, that makes you one of the few slashdotters who have actually had sex!;-)
No, the reason the terrorist chose London is probably because they where recently chosen to host the 2012 Olympic summer games. This is the french retribution. All of this could have been prevented simply by ceasing all forms of professional sports. How many more people must die before we stop this madness?
You mean something like this? Dan Brown is probably working on a book about a concpiracy to blow of a few bombs in order to sell more books about conspiracys.
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Yep, this is the apocalypse all right. We're all doomed. Doomed. DOOOOMED! I'm going to sing the doom song now. Doom de di doom - doom doom - doooom doom doom de di doom-doomed!
You point the finger at AMD and talk about their misdeeds, and what do you have to back this up? A homepage saying that AMD has been outsourcing work to other countries. That is a pretty lame misdeed in my book.
It is a perfect situation. Why should the EU decide local patent law? The federal government should not meddle in such minor details and concentrate on beeing a free trade union. I could not be happier!
You misunderstand the grandparents argument. It has been shown again and again that there is a very strong correllation between number of votes and campaign budget. Reardless of what a politicians opinions are, a few more dollars buys another vote. Check out Opensecrets or any of the many other sites containing information on budgets, vote counts, etc.
So the argument goes that a politicians actions and opinions are less important than media exposure, and that means you can pay politicians to further your agenda. The problem is not with people not voting, it is with people beeing to stupid to figure out that politicians are lying and no one is trying to tell the real story.
Thank you for clearing that up. That means that the entire post by eobanb consists of things that where sound advice about five years ago, but do not correctly represent the status of todays distros. (I don't knoe about how stable Mandriva is, but the distro known as Mandrake does not exist anymore, so opinions on it are deprecated)
I'm not sure if your post is a troll or not, especially given the first paragraph... But your opinions of Red Hat are very descriptive of where Red Hat was five years ago. Since then, they've switched to using apt-get and yum as the default/recomended way of installing packages. That's right, you can use your own favourite tool apt-get to install rpm packages under Red Hat, automatically resolving dependencies for you. Since Fedora Core 4, there is also a community driven repository called Fedora Extras that is enabled in the configuration _by default_, which brings FC a big step closer to having the huge wealth of packages available to people using the debian universe.
For example, to install fish, a shell that I've written, under FC4, all you need to do is type yum install fish as root.
As to the 'golden rule' of yours, I've not had to manually configure my NIC, my soundcard or my videcard once for the last three years while installing Red Hat distributions on at least half a dozen different computers, including Laptops. I don't know, but it might be a problem in Debian!;-)
Well, Slashdot is a news aggregator, basically a collection of interesting links. Since Slashdot does not employ any investigative journalists, they simply can't decide their own content. Try contacting a site that actually writes real articles, and ask them to write the article you want to read. If they do, I'm sure the Slashdot editors will happily link to it.
Yes, because we all think the government has a god-given right to know who everyone is, where they are, what they are doing and who the are seeing. And trying to get some privacy is such a big crime that anyone doing it deserves to rot in prison for half a decade for that hideous crime alone.
In my mind, Ars Technica has mainly written articles on two subjects that have had some influence. Spatial browsing and the PS2.
I have heard that the Nautilus developers where inspired by this article when implementing the new spatial scheme in Nautilus. While I'm not sure John Siracusa is very impressed with Nautilus, it is still a testament to the articles importance.
This set of articles describing the design of the PS2 is one of the few overviews of the PS2 architecture available for free on the web, and thus an important resource for people hacking on their PS2 Linux kits.
Ars may not be the most important site on the net, but in my opinion they have _more_ than their fair share of original content.
I seem to remember reading the a large part of NeoOffice was done in Java. I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?
My original post was not 100% serious, but in it I explained why you do not need a military even if other countries do have one.
As to your reasoning on the police, it seems to be that corruption would be a problem even if it where a private police and hence we should stich with a government owned police. That is in my opinion not a valid argument against a private police, since the basic principle should be that only things that private companies can not provide should be handled by the government.
If the government was non-existent we would decededly not need to handle inflation since the government has no place issuing currencys. That should be left to the private sector.
And if people like paper copies (I do), there are bookstores. If poor people like paper copies, there are private libraries.
The military has two functions, inviade other countries and protect the country from invasion. It goes against an anarchocapitalist socienty to ever invade a country, so that aspect of a military is redundant, and no one in their right mind would ever invade an anarcho capitalist society, so that is not an issue either. So there is no need for a military.
Given the amount of police corruption in todays society, I think people would get bettr protection from choosing between different security companies and crime organisations for their home protection.
If there where fewer laws, there would be less need for legal papers.
If the government was non-existant it wouldn't need a budget.
Who needs public libraries when there is P2P filesharing?
Slashdot Mirror
Keeping the password file in a non-standard location like /hack/me/now is simple security through obscurity. Kind of like using ROT13 to encrypt your DRMed ebooks. This is a very common security technology used through out the IT industry. It's just a question of time before Bezos patents it!
That is a problem that has yet to be solved. Fingerprint matching is a special case of image recognition, and image recognition is either really hard to do or really hard for us humans to describe to a computer how to do.
If the above reasons are enough to warrant the extra layer of indirection, I do not know. But saying that there are _no_ advantages to making a general purpose API is plainly false. It's a simple tradeoff.
And if the stores that get copies of the book earlier sell them at a higher price, why exactly is that a bad thing?
This synchronized release makes sure that everyone gets the book later, so _everyone_ has to wait a few days longer.
In the power supply. When the power goes away, an interrupt is emitted that causes the OS to flush all it's HDD buffers in preparation for the power outage.
It is interesting how one can determine the age of many UNIX programs by looking at their age. Programs like mv, cp, sh and dc stem from the seventies, whereas programs like cat, sed, gcc, ftp and man where first introduced in the early eighties. While TLAs are still the most common, there has been some FLA early adopters like perl.
The PHP documenation stopped recommending the use of Apache 1.3 a long time ago.
The no PHP on Apache2 FUD is just a meme that won't die, not the fault of the PHP folks.
Where have you been? Having a TV on your belly is all the rage with the kids these days.
You are taking this the wrong way. What has happened is that Microsoft noticed that Claria software contains bugs which in rare cases cause it to perform actions that some users might not want without first prompting the user. These actions include a problem with the automatic upgrade facility that may accidentally cause Claria software to be installed on a computer without the user requesting this. Because of this, they have contacted Claria and asked them to rewrite their software and remove all such unintended features. Claria has of course complied, and hence their software will be removed from the spyware list.
Jokes are a good way to blow of some steam after a truly tragic event like this. Let people handle this in their own way.
Download something from the internet and prepare to be fucked. I use firefox, gaim, thunderbird, itunes, and battlefield 2.
;-)
I'm guessing you downloaded all of those from the internet. By your own account, that makes you one of the few slashdotters who have actually had sex!
No, the reason the terrorist chose London is probably because they where recently chosen to host the 2012 Olympic summer games. This is the french retribution. All of this could have been prevented simply by ceasing all forms of professional sports. How many more people must die before we stop this madness?
You mean something like this? Dan Brown is probably working on a book about a concpiracy to blow of a few bombs in order to sell more books about conspiracys.
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Yep, this is the apocalypse all right. We're all doomed. Doomed. DOOOOMED! I'm going to sing the doom song now. Doom de di doom - doom doom - doooom doom doom de di doom-doomed!
You point the finger at AMD and talk about their misdeeds, and what do you have to back this up? A homepage saying that AMD has been outsourcing work to other countries. That is a pretty lame misdeed in my book.
It is a perfect situation. Why should the EU decide local patent law? The federal government should not meddle in such minor details and concentrate on beeing a free trade union. I could not be happier!
You misunderstand the grandparents argument. It has been shown again and again that there is a very strong correllation between number of votes and campaign budget. Reardless of what a politicians opinions are, a few more dollars buys another vote. Check out Opensecrets or any of the many other sites containing information on budgets, vote counts, etc.
So the argument goes that a politicians actions and opinions are less important than media exposure, and that means you can pay politicians to further your agenda. The problem is not with people not voting, it is with people beeing to stupid to figure out that politicians are lying and no one is trying to tell the real story.
Thank you for clearing that up. That means that the entire post by eobanb consists of things that where sound advice about five years ago, but do not correctly represent the status of todays distros. (I don't knoe about how stable Mandriva is, but the distro known as Mandrake does not exist anymore, so opinions on it are deprecated)
I'm not sure if your post is a troll or not, especially given the first paragraph... But your opinions of Red Hat are very descriptive of where Red Hat was five years ago. Since then, they've switched to using apt-get and yum as the default/recomended way of installing packages. That's right, you can use your own favourite tool apt-get to install rpm packages under Red Hat, automatically resolving dependencies for you. Since Fedora Core 4, there is also a community driven repository called Fedora Extras that is enabled in the configuration _by default_, which brings FC a big step closer to having the huge wealth of packages available to people using the debian universe.
;-)
For example, to install fish, a shell that I've written, under FC4, all you need to do is type yum install fish as root.
As to the 'golden rule' of yours, I've not had to manually configure my NIC, my soundcard or my videcard once for the last three years while installing Red Hat distributions on at least half a dozen different computers, including Laptops. I don't know, but it might be a problem in Debian!
Well, Slashdot is a news aggregator, basically a collection of interesting links. Since Slashdot does not employ any investigative journalists, they simply can't decide their own content. Try contacting a site that actually writes real articles, and ask them to write the article you want to read. If they do, I'm sure the Slashdot editors will happily link to it.
Yes, because we all think the government has a god-given right to know who everyone is, where they are, what they are doing and who the are seeing. And trying to get some privacy is such a big crime that anyone doing it deserves to rot in prison for half a decade for that hideous crime alone.
In my mind, Ars Technica has mainly written articles on two subjects that have had some influence. Spatial browsing and the PS2.
I have heard that the Nautilus developers where inspired by this article when implementing the new spatial scheme in Nautilus. While I'm not sure John Siracusa is very impressed with Nautilus, it is still a testament to the articles importance.
This set of articles describing the design of the PS2 is one of the few overviews of the PS2 architecture available for free on the web, and thus an important resource for people hacking on their PS2 Linux kits.
Ars may not be the most important site on the net, but in my opinion they have _more_ than their fair share of original content.
I seem to remember reading the a large part of NeoOffice was done in Java. I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?
My original post was not 100% serious, but in it I explained why you do not need a military even if other countries do have one.
As to your reasoning on the police, it seems to be that corruption would be a problem even if it where a private police and hence we should stich with a government owned police. That is in my opinion not a valid argument against a private police, since the basic principle should be that only things that private companies can not provide should be handled by the government.
If the government was non-existent we would decededly not need to handle inflation since the government has no place issuing currencys. That should be left to the private sector.
And if people like paper copies (I do), there are bookstores. If poor people like paper copies, there are private libraries.
The military has two functions, inviade other countries and protect the country from invasion. It goes against an anarchocapitalist socienty to ever invade a country, so that aspect of a military is redundant, and no one in their right mind would ever invade an anarcho capitalist society, so that is not an issue either. So there is no need for a military.
Given the amount of police corruption in todays society, I think people would get bettr protection from choosing between different security companies and crime organisations for their home protection.
If there where fewer laws, there would be less need for legal papers.
If the government was non-existant it wouldn't need a budget.
Who needs public libraries when there is P2P filesharing?