One part of the solution is simple: buy only PostScript printers. PostScript printer support is quite mature in all UNIX-like operating systems.
The hard part: Under X11, there is no default mapping from screen fonts to printer fonts (which can have completely different metrics). That's why printing with non-standard fonts is often problematic if you don't use proven tools such as TeX or roff.
I don't think so. Even if you know something is in O(n^t), you don't know the constant in the O. It might be so incredibly large that it doesn't make sense to use the O(n^t) algorithm.
On the other hand, in the distant future, we might reach a point where increasing the key length no longer increases security, but is probably very theoretical, too.
Actually, the current problem is a UNIX hole (unless you are a BSD addict and do not consider System V to be a UNIX). All systems using a SysV-derived login share it.
Judging by the scarce description, this doesn't look like an ordinary buffer overflow (proper bounds checking on array of pointers is missing), so it's not clear if a non-executable stack will help here.
In addition, a non-executable stack doesn't prevent all exploits. In many cases, specially crafted exploits (using return-into-libc techniques etc.) are still possible.
Get high-bandwidth Internet access, buy two more hard drives, find two other people who do the same and a few kilometers away from you (each one in the opposite direction). Start exchanging encrypted backups (for example, tar files postprocessed using GnuPG).
AFAIK, the people who are suggesting to implement something like this want to take the time at the client machine into account, although this can't really work. There prototype implementations in Java (or JavaScript), but they are easy to bypass.
Very much like 95 - you won't get any support for such configuration from any sane solution provider (officially, of course the solution provider which offers true support with hard guarantees for consumer Windows has still to appear).
Time will tell if this is a good thing. Perhaps the per-company limit should have been lower (two or three), so that some other companies would have been represented on the board. The current member's affiliations probably do not mirror a large part of the GNOME community.
Our local computer museum has got a PDP-8 which can broadcast polyphonic music using its main CPU, running a specially crafted sequences of instructions. Actually, operators used the AM radio effect to monitor the machine activity. With some experience, you can here if the CPU is idle or spinning in some kind of endless loop. If you are familiar with a longer job, you can guess which part is currently running, and estimate the remaining time.
At home, my computer has a similar feature: if the CPU is loaded, the sound of the fans changes, so I can tell if the computing-intense job is still running or not.
There's a stripped-down version of MS SQL Server which is bundled with a lot of software (including Microsoft Office, but it's not installed by default). AFAIK, it doesn't even include a GUI tool to set the administrator password. An additional problem is that many people who install this bundled MS SQL Server version don't know what they are doing and that they are opening a gaping security hole. (Some people might suggest to drop "bundled" in the previous sentence.)
If you look at the bottom of the page, you'll notice that it's older than a year. BTX has already been shut down.
I know that Slashdot is US-centric, but I wouldn't have thought that this results in semi-important European news being announced with a delay of one year.
The EULA is not in effect here in Germany. Civ3 is commercial off-the-shelf software, which means no contract exists between the manufacturer and the buyer. There's only a contract between the software dealer and the buyer. In German copyright law, there is a special provision for computer programs which grants the user all necessary rights necessary to actually use the software (e.g., the right to make a copy of the program and store it in RAM). That's why the buyer doesn't have to accept the EULA before using the software.
Because of the special structure of Civ3 (AFAIK, the messages which require translation are stored in separate files), there's no need to distribute a "patch" in order to translate the software. You simply replace some of the original files with completely different ones.
As far as I can tell, Infogrames Germany is using copyright to forbid the distribution of the translation. Translations are derivative works under copyright, so they can do that. (Minor nitpick: Infogrames Germany claims that they don't earn money if a copy of a US version of the game is sold to some German. This casts some doubt on the question whether they can really enforce copyright for the US version.)
I'm not sure what this provider is up to, perhaps these people are using this opportunity to grasp public attention. Anyway, they have changed their view of DNS again:
$ dig @issv0099.isis.de www.rotten.com ...
;; ANSWER SECTION: www.rotten.com. 86400 IN A 195.158.131.132
;; AUTHORITY SECTION: rotten.com. 86400 IN NS issv0099.isis.de. ...
$
Registrars react promptly to WIPO UDRP decisions. If your registrar ignores you, the fastest solution is to get a UDRP ruling from WIPO and let the registrar implement it.
Well, the definition of the "Criminal Skills" category is quite clear, and it does include sites providing information relating to computing security (even sites which try to deal with these issues in the most responsible way, such as CERT/CC). In the beginning, SmartFilter Germany argued along these lines (which is almost reasonable, although the category title "criminal skills" is grossly misleading). However, later on, they retracted their claim and removed the categorization, possibly after internal protests.
Since this experience, we have a few emergency domain names in reserve, so we can give them to people phoning us and asking why they can't access their usual security advisories.
A large German educational ISP offers SmatFilter filters, a product from a cooperation between Siemens and Secure Computing (although Siemens claim they can only change the site list, and not categories and the general modus operandi). Schools routinely activate the filters because in Souther Germany, the secretary responsible for education and schools decided that if a commercial filter system is active, teachers are not sued by the state if something goes wrong.
SmartFilter adds blocking recommendations to their database without notifying the site owners. Our site was blocked in the Criminal Skills category for quite some time, and we still don't know why. Perhaps there is some need for such databases, but at least you have to tell people that you'll block their site at thousands of computers, with the next database update.
Unfortunately, in Germany, a number of elected politicians try to force providers to block Internet access to certain sites. However, nobody has any idea how this is going to work and how the blacklist is distributed (after all, it's an impressive bookmark list).
When I use 3D interfaces on PCs, I tend to get seasick. A CAVE, with motion tracking and powered by a real computer, is much better in this regard, but motion tracking works only for a single person at a time, and suck caves are still quite expensive. I bet some people get seasick when using them, too.
In some jurisdictions, you get into trouble if a search engine refers to one of your pages when you enter a trademark (and you are not entitled to use that trademark). This way, you could easily tell search engines not to list your pages when such a trademark is present in the query. Complying with court orders wouln't be a major problem any more.
However, you could show some information if people visit with a certain Referrer header, directing them to more useful pages. This works in the majority of cases, and it doesn't need much cooperation from the search engines.
The hosts on it are also important. Now most people don't want to use overly secure systems (B2 level can become quite painful, but is actually required to prevent users from executing arbitrary code received over the network), so host security will remain low. Even if you separate the network from the other internets, one security breach can still have devastating results. And since people tend to keep modems in their drawer in order to log in from home, security breaches are going to happen.
My sources tell me that these PCs are really cheap for foreign HP customers in the information technology sector. However, buyers should not wonder when black vans permanently circle their premises. As additional benefit, you don't have to file any patents in the U.S. any more, others are doing this for you.
That is a crock. XML was developed explicitly to fix the problems in SGML. LDAP was developed to fix the problems in X.500. In both cases it was the poor design of the predecessor that was being fixed.
The main problem with SGML and X.500 is the complexity of the specification. X.500 is so complex that no complete implementation exists. At the beginning, it made perfect sense to throw away all the unnecessary cruft to get implementable specifications.
However, XML with all its surrounding standards has already gone beyond SGML in terms of complexity, and people are reinventing X.500 DAP features for LDAP. In the end, the same complexity problems surface again.
I doubt you can implement those ITU standards without infringing on a couple of patents (at least a few companies will claim infringement as soon as you publish the code).
If you have to pay the lawyers from your $20,000, this doesn't appear to be a fair deal.
Hmm, I think I used 2.0 or something like that. Anyway, the defuns I encountered in the book from the library (yes, in Germany, small suburbian libraries have books on Lisp!) didn't work, and I was frustrated because there was so interesting stuff in the book (natural language processing, for example).
Slashdot Mirror
One part of the solution is simple: buy only PostScript printers. PostScript printer support is quite mature in all UNIX-like operating systems.
The hard part: Under X11, there is no default mapping from screen fonts to printer fonts (which can have completely different metrics). That's why printing with non-standard fonts is often problematic if you don't use proven tools such as TeX or roff.
I don't think so. Even if you know something is in O(n^t), you don't know the constant in the O. It might be so incredibly large that it doesn't make sense to use the O(n^t) algorithm.
On the other hand, in the distant future, we might reach a point where increasing the key length no longer increases security, but is probably very theoretical, too.
Actually, the current problem is a UNIX hole (unless you are a BSD addict and do not consider System V to be a UNIX). All systems using a SysV-derived login share it.
If you wonder about AIX 4.2: It's vulnerable, too. but IBM probably won't bother to publish a fix.
Not mentioning unsupported, vulnerable versions in security advisories is probably not a good idea.
Judging by the scarce description, this doesn't look like an ordinary buffer overflow (proper bounds checking on array of pointers is missing), so it's not clear if a non-executable stack will help here.
In addition, a non-executable stack doesn't prevent all exploits. In many cases, specially crafted exploits (using return-into-libc techniques etc.) are still possible.
Get high-bandwidth Internet access, buy two more hard drives, find two other people who do the same and a few kilometers away from you (each one in the opposite direction). Start exchanging encrypted backups (for example, tar files postprocessed using GnuPG).
AFAIK, the people who are suggesting to implement something like this want to take the time at the client machine into account, although this can't really work. There prototype implementations in Java (or JavaScript), but they are easy to bypass.
Very much like 95 - you won't get any support for such configuration from any sane solution provider (officially, of course the solution provider which offers true support with hard guarantees for consumer Windows has still to appear).
This invention is described in detail in US Patent 6,302,230 (sorry, no direct link, use your favorite database).
Time will tell if this is a good thing. Perhaps the per-company limit should have been lower (two or three), so that some other companies would have been represented on the board. The current member's affiliations probably do not mirror a large part of the GNOME community.
Our local computer museum has got a PDP-8 which can broadcast polyphonic music using its main CPU, running a specially crafted sequences of instructions. Actually, operators used the AM radio effect to monitor the machine activity. With some experience, you can here if the CPU is idle or spinning in some kind of endless loop. If you are familiar with a longer job, you can guess which part is currently running, and estimate the remaining time.
At home, my computer has a similar feature: if the CPU is loaded, the sound of the fans changes, so I can tell if the computing-intense job is still running or not.
There's a stripped-down version of MS SQL Server which is bundled with a lot of software (including Microsoft Office, but it's not installed by default). AFAIK, it doesn't even include a GUI tool to set the administrator password. An additional problem is that many people who install this bundled MS SQL Server version don't know what they are doing and that they are opening a gaping security hole. (Some people might suggest to drop "bundled" in the previous sentence.)
If you look at the bottom of the page, you'll notice that it's older than a year. BTX has already been shut down.
I know that Slashdot is US-centric, but I wouldn't have thought that this results in semi-important European news being announced with a delay of one year.
The EULA is not in effect here in Germany. Civ3 is commercial off-the-shelf software, which means no contract exists between the manufacturer and the buyer. There's only a contract between the software dealer and the buyer. In German copyright law, there is a special provision for computer programs which grants the user all necessary rights necessary to actually use the software (e.g., the right to make a copy of the program and store it in RAM). That's why the buyer doesn't have to accept the EULA before using the software.
Because of the special structure of Civ3 (AFAIK, the messages which require translation are stored in separate files), there's no need to distribute a "patch" in order to translate the software. You simply replace some of the original files with completely different ones.
As far as I can tell, Infogrames Germany is using copyright to forbid the distribution of the translation. Translations are derivative works under copyright, so they can do that. (Minor nitpick: Infogrames Germany claims that they don't earn money if a copy of a US version of the game is sold to some German. This casts some doubt on the question whether they can really enforce copyright for the US version.)
Are things getting better? There's a new press release by ISIS: Rechtsradikale Seiten nach hin und her nun doch gesperrt ("Pages of rightwing extremist have eventually been blocked")
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
...
I'm not sure what this provider is up to, perhaps these people are using this opportunity to grasp public attention. Anyway, they have changed their view of DNS again:
$ dig @issv0099.isis.de www.rotten.com
www.rotten.com. 86400 IN A 195.158.131.132
rotten.com. 86400 IN NS issv0099.isis.de.
$
Registrars react promptly to WIPO UDRP decisions. If your registrar ignores you, the fastest solution is to get a UDRP ruling from WIPO and let the registrar implement it.
Well, the definition of the "Criminal Skills" category is quite clear, and it does include sites providing information relating to computing security (even sites which try to deal with these issues in the most responsible way, such as CERT/CC). In the beginning, SmartFilter Germany argued along these lines (which is almost reasonable, although the category title "criminal skills" is grossly misleading). However, later on, they retracted their claim and removed the categorization, possibly after internal protests.
Since this experience, we have a few emergency domain names in reserve, so we can give them to people phoning us and asking why they can't access their usual security advisories.
A large German educational ISP offers SmatFilter filters, a product from a cooperation between Siemens and Secure Computing (although Siemens claim they can only change the site list, and not categories and the general modus operandi). Schools routinely activate the filters because in Souther Germany, the secretary responsible for education and schools decided that if a commercial filter system is active, teachers are not sued by the state if something goes wrong.
SmartFilter adds blocking recommendations to their database without notifying the site owners. Our site was blocked in the Criminal Skills category for quite some time, and we still don't know why. Perhaps there is some need for such databases, but at least you have to tell people that you'll block their site at thousands of computers, with the next database update.
Unfortunately, in Germany, a number of elected politicians try to force providers to block Internet access to certain sites. However, nobody has any idea how this is going to work and how the blacklist is distributed (after all, it's an impressive bookmark list).
When I use 3D interfaces on PCs, I tend to get seasick. A CAVE, with motion tracking and powered by a real computer, is much better in this regard, but motion tracking works only for a single person at a time, and suck caves are still quite expensive. I bet some people get seasick when using them, too.
In some jurisdictions, you get into trouble if a search engine refers to one of your pages when you enter a trademark (and you are not entitled to use that trademark). This way, you could easily tell search engines not to list your pages when such a trademark is present in the query. Complying with court orders wouln't be a major problem any more.
However, you could show some information if people visit with a certain Referrer header, directing them to more useful pages. This works in the majority of cases, and it doesn't need much cooperation from the search engines.
The hosts on it are also important. Now most people don't want to use overly secure systems (B2 level can become quite painful, but is actually required to prevent users from executing arbitrary code received over the network), so host security will remain low. Even if you separate the network from the other internets, one security breach can still have devastating results. And since people tend to keep modems in their drawer in order to log in from home, security breaches are going to happen.
My sources tell me that these PCs are really cheap for foreign HP customers in the information technology sector. However, buyers should not wonder when black vans permanently circle their premises. As additional benefit, you don't have to file any patents in the U.S. any more, others are doing this for you.
However, XML with all its surrounding standards has already gone beyond SGML in terms of complexity, and people are reinventing X.500 DAP features for LDAP. In the end, the same complexity problems surface again.
I doubt you can implement those ITU standards without infringing on a couple of patents (at least a few companies will claim infringement as soon as you publish the code).
If you have to pay the lawyers from your $20,000, this doesn't appear to be a fair deal.
Hmm, I think I used 2.0 or something like that. Anyway, the defuns I encountered in the book from the library (yes, in Germany, small suburbian libraries have books on Lisp!) didn't work, and I was frustrated because there was so interesting stuff in the book (natural language processing, for example).