I fail to see how this is the fault of EITHER samba or NT.
In fact, you even said it yourself - "a bad Samba configuration". I've read trough that portion to see about replacing NT PDC's with Samba PDC's, and it sure as hell can't happen on it's own.
Somebody made a mistake. Slap his wrist, tell him to think twice the next time, and move on.
Unfortunately, gods help me, I used to work in a "character" building dating back to 1912. The place was split office/residential - really LOW INCOME residential.
One of the charming residents, while not being a crack dealer (they'd all been chased out by that point) had absolutely zero grasp of cleanliness. The guys apartment was completely and utterly infested with cockroaches... crawling on the walls, filling the fridge, you name it.
And this lovely heritage building? Nothing but wood, which is just a migration highway for the roaches. We'd have to deal with the buggers on a daily basis, crushing any we saw, and spraying wherever we could. That was bad enough.
But I cannot POSSIBLY relate the disgust when I found out that one had laid an egg sac in my keyboard. I found out because suddenly, little baby roaches started boiling out between the keys.
I am -so- glad I'm not there anymore, and in a nice, antiseptic, concrete-and-steel office tower.
Are they planning on scattering these all over the globe? The ISS won't sit in a geosync orbit, as I understand... that means needing lasers all over the place.
The world of first person shooters is, if anything, even more rampant with cheats (probably because it makes you look more skillful, and then you get the girls, or so they think).
In Tribes, which I play quite a bit of, they only recently installed CRC checking on certain critical files. This ended up being done because modified models and bitmaps were out there that would turn the normal half-man height flag into a massive monstrosity 50 times the normal size. Because of the way the Tribes engine works, this would extend THROUGH buildings! You could always tell where the enemy flag carrier was hiding - be it inside their base, or crouched behind a hill. And that was only ONE of many alterations in the poorly named HappyMod... visible mine trigger radii, remote turrets that showed around the corners they hid behind, etc.
And this is in one of -the- fastest paced FPS games out there, where sometimes you see the enemy capper for less than a second as he screams through at mach 5 on his sliproute.
Again - it's not just RTS. It's all games. Some people think they have to win, no matter the cost, because that's all they think is fun.
Well then, since the UN figures the world can only support 1 billion people continuously, and we're WAY over, I'm sure you'll be heading off to get euthanised Real Soon Now.
I think a fair number of those claims (at least, in terms of virus storms like the Love Bug) aren't real damages, but lost time and wages. I don't think that insurance companies would be too likely to cover that.
I'd also love to see the requirements and riders they'd put on the policies. I can imagine that ANY publicised vulnerability being used in the attack would nullify the coverage (and it should, IMO).
Heck, this could give us an entirely new pointless benchmark for the O/S wars! "My O/S is cheaper to insure than yours!":)
True, but I'd suspect that for those they're treated as a one-off decision, and have correspondingly higher relative rates to compensate for the added workload.
Since I couldn't see IS Insurance being profitable that way (well, unless they just target 'the companies that matter' in the Fortune 500, to slashback to the Apache/IIS article of earlier today) I'd think it would be more based on actuarials or moderately wild assed guesses. It could very well be I'm just extrapolating too far into the mass market application of IS Insurance, rather than a new one-off that's now available.
Do you have any regrets about stepping down from your position with Debian? (IE: directions the project has gone that you disagree with and might have been able to prevent)
Probably because of the wild difference in assessibility of risk.
You can fairly easily get a good idea of how secure a physical site is. Check the locks, the alarm systems, review the security staff and their training, etc etc etc.
But for a moving target like infosec, I can't see how they can determine a risk assessment, unless they're not even bothering to and just using actuarial tables.
Given the generally paranoid and overly cautious attitudes of insurance companies, I'd say a change like this does signify news.
I can see both sides of this as a security/network admin... but I think the doorknob metaphor is a bit incorrect.
If your door and lock is your security, then a ping isn't going to see if it's in place (locked) or missing (unlocked). Unless it's a Ping of Death, but nobody sends those these days, as far as I've seen.
I think a better metaphor would be perhaps driving by the lots in a subdivision to see which have houses built.
Now, an actual -portscan- is a different beastie. And a Nessus run would be completely unacceptable.
Also, while you may know your system is outbound only, there's no way for anyone to know that just based off the IP. And there's a lot of handy things out there we all like to refer to that require a little ping or similar (WWW server software surveys, for instance).
It's certainly a matter of personal comfort though, and I'd never tell you your opinion is wrong. Just your metaphor.;-)
Much/most of mainstream society has already shifted to eliminate any obvious bias against any one group going into any particular field (yes, I'm sure you can bring up instances where it hasn't but I'm talking in general here). So why do we still have an abscence of women in tech fields, men in nurturing fields, indigenous peoples in college, etc etc etc?
Personally, I think it comes down to us expecting society as a whole to change too quickly. We can change the concious public statements easily. Funding, sure thing. Obviously racist/sexist application schemes? No problem. Underlying attitudes you learned at the age of three, when times were less enlightened (and you're in your mid twenties)? Err... no.
Like it or lump it, while your conciousness may say 'There's no difference', your unconcious makes certain assumptions and uses various biases that are so ingrained you don't even realize them any more. Think of the old brain teaser about the boy and his dad in an accident, the boy is hurt and goes to surgery, the dad is in the waiting room, and the surgeon says "I can't operate on htis boy, it's my son", and you're supposed to get caught by not thinking the mother could be a surgeon.
The same kind of biases get taught very early on. Anyone over 20 right now, maybe even over 10, is probably pretty mired in them. God help anyone over 40 (IE: the execs/management in many firms). They're trying, don't get me wrong, but their basis of reality can't shift that much and their concious will always be at odds with their instincts.
For something as major as "everyone really IS equal", I'd say you're looking at two, maybe three generations before it will become truly pervasive. By my (non-sociologist) take on it, we're about up to the second generation. Once our kids get into power, the entire thing should be leveled out, and a more natural balance will take effect.
You're reading a tad much into the AC's posting (probably because it would seem you're overreacting to the severity of the bug, given other comments you've made).
My understanding of what this person said is "Please don't go apeshit all over me, just because I'm the one you got on the phone and I'm telling you something you don't like".
So you want a replacement unit, not a patch. Does that mean you now should scream obscenities at this person? I think not. They have very little say in what can be done, and I bet you that their managers TOLD THEM to push the patch instead of a replacement unit.
Is it really so damn hard to be POLITE? Have people forgotten how to get their way without resorting to shock tactics of volume, vulgarity, and verbosity?
I think there's a major flaw with this, and it comes down to:
People are fundamentally lazy.
Sure, we dig finding new, better, more secure ways to do our computing. That's because it's our hobby and our thrill.
The average Joe or Jane User? They just want their email. They already spent an obscene amount of effort and grief learning how to use it already, so cut them some slack (I'm being sarcastic, but it IS how they regard it). If you let them continue with the old insecure methods, they're not going to change one iota.
I don't let people use telnet at my office, and I don't let them use anything lower than symmetric encryption on PCAnywhere (twitch, twitch, shudder), and screw 'em if they don't like it. They bitched during the changeover, but now it's just rote repetition, just like before, and the systems are (more) secure.
I actually wonder if it has any storage whatsoever... the blurb phrases it kind of strangely:
Consumers will download music from the Internet with their PC, and the PC will feed the files to the MP3 player, which will then transmit the files to speakers or a standard stereo receiver for playback.
To me, that sounds like a very expensive winamp-in-a-can... more like a translator than a solid-state MP3 jukebox, which is what I'd much rather have in my stereo.:)
Also, think of the espionage options. Wangle a network connection into it and then sniff packets to your hearts content, and it hides in the cable snarl behind the rack.;)
I spend most of lunch sneaking through the MASSIVE bank in Thief II, evading guards, disabling security, dousing those pesky securty walkers, having a great old time...
and first thing I see after that is Looking Glass is closing.
I think I just stripped something, changing mental gears so fast.:(
The Windows gaming crowd has a lot of things going for it:
First, lots of companies have thrown lots of really smart programmers at the problem of maximising FPS, the holy grail of gaming. Yes, there's a lot of Linux programmers out there that are just as smart, if not smarter, but the Windows game programmer is following a beaten path and has a head start.
Second, the hardware drivers are all developed Windows first, everything else second. You can bet your booty that only a tiny fraction of programmer hours have gone into the Linux drivers, compared to the Windows drivers.
Thirdly, gaming tends to grab the entire system and take it over completely. Timesharing? Yeah, right. The kernel, however, still has the overhead of paying attention to a variety of different processes. I'd like to know, for instance, what else was running on that test box while it was up. Maybe rerun the tests on the Windows box with ICQ, some kind of mail notifier, MSN Messenger, and AOL IM all running too, to simulate the backend load of Linux.:)
Fourthly, as some people have mentioned, there's the overhead of the X system... although I really wouldn't expect that to be handling the pixels. I always thought that a "fullscreen" driver kicked in, and shouldered X out of the way, while a game was running.
Like the Mindcraft benchmarks, though, this gives the Linux community something to aim for, and possible places to look at, as well as a kick in the seat of the pants to get further on it. I can't wait to see what we have by Christmas, personally!
RollingThunder Warlord, Starslayer Tribe (FPS gaming group for the non-gamers)
PS: What about Linux's performance in online gaming? Does it eke out a reduction in the other half of the gaming grail, ping time?
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I fail to see how this is the fault of EITHER samba or NT. In fact, you even said it yourself - "a bad Samba configuration". I've read trough that portion to see about replacing NT PDC's with Samba PDC's, and it sure as hell can't happen on it's own. Somebody made a mistake. Slap his wrist, tell him to think twice the next time, and move on.
NSF Awards $45 Million to Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for "Terascale" Computing
Looking into the future, I can see the next one to be posted...
Project cancelled, following $48 million bill in bandwidth due to excessive setup movie download by 'Slashdot' readers
Unfortunately, gods help me, I used to work in a "character" building dating back to 1912. The place was split office/residential - really LOW INCOME residential.
One of the charming residents, while not being a crack dealer (they'd all been chased out by that point) had absolutely zero grasp of cleanliness. The guys apartment was completely and utterly infested with cockroaches... crawling on the walls, filling the fridge, you name it.
And this lovely heritage building? Nothing but wood, which is just a migration highway for the roaches. We'd have to deal with the buggers on a daily basis, crushing any we saw, and spraying wherever we could. That was bad enough.
But I cannot POSSIBLY relate the disgust when I found out that one had laid an egg sac in my keyboard. I found out because suddenly, little baby roaches started boiling out between the keys.
I am -so- glad I'm not there anymore, and in a nice, antiseptic, concrete-and-steel office tower.
No, no, no, it's "Who wants to be a Plaintiff" starring Regis and Judge Wapner.
Are they planning on scattering these all over the globe? The ISS won't sit in a geosync orbit, as I understand... that means needing lasers all over the place.
It's not just in the RPG's, though.
The world of first person shooters is, if anything, even more rampant with cheats (probably because it makes you look more skillful, and then you get the girls, or so they think).
In Tribes, which I play quite a bit of, they only recently installed CRC checking on certain critical files. This ended up being done because modified models and bitmaps were out there that would turn the normal half-man height flag into a massive monstrosity 50 times the normal size. Because of the way the Tribes engine works, this would extend THROUGH buildings! You could always tell where the enemy flag carrier was hiding - be it inside their base, or crouched behind a hill. And that was only ONE of many alterations in the poorly named HappyMod... visible mine trigger radii, remote turrets that showed around the corners they hid behind, etc.
And this is in one of -the- fastest paced FPS games out there, where sometimes you see the enemy capper for less than a second as he screams through at mach 5 on his sliproute.
Again - it's not just RTS. It's all games. Some people think they have to win, no matter the cost, because that's all they think is fun.
Well then, since the UN figures the world can only support 1 billion people continuously, and we're WAY over, I'm sure you'll be heading off to get euthanised Real Soon Now.
Or don't you care about the planet?
...seeing as he's about the only person who's a colder fish than Duchovny. :)
I can see the value added, but yeah... altering the actual body text isn't cool.
Why not have a sidebar called "Context related links", or a footer, or similar? No need to monkey with the original text.
Your first summary is a bit incorrect.
It's restricted in British Columbia.
In Alberta and all points east, at this point it's available like any other computer game.
As far as I remember, if you leave your car doors unlocked, then it's tough noogies on the car theft insurance claim.
Probably varies from firm to firm, though.
I think a fair number of those claims (at least, in terms of virus storms like the Love Bug) aren't real damages, but lost time and wages. I don't think that insurance companies would be too likely to cover that.
I'd also love to see the requirements and riders they'd put on the policies. I can imagine that ANY publicised vulnerability being used in the attack would nullify the coverage (and it should, IMO).
Heck, this could give us an entirely new pointless benchmark for the O/S wars! "My O/S is cheaper to insure than yours!" :)
True, but I'd suspect that for those they're treated as a one-off decision, and have correspondingly higher relative rates to compensate for the added workload.
Since I couldn't see IS Insurance being profitable that way (well, unless they just target 'the companies that matter' in the Fortune 500, to slashback to the Apache/IIS article of earlier today) I'd think it would be more based on actuarials or moderately wild assed guesses. It could very well be I'm just extrapolating too far into the mass market application of IS Insurance, rather than a new one-off that's now available.
Or maybe it's the lack of sleep. :)
Do you have any regrets about stepping down from your position with Debian? (IE: directions the project has gone that you disagree with and might have been able to prevent)
Probably because of the wild difference in assessibility of risk.
You can fairly easily get a good idea of how secure a physical site is. Check the locks, the alarm systems, review the security staff and their training, etc etc etc.
But for a moving target like infosec, I can't see how they can determine a risk assessment, unless they're not even bothering to and just using actuarial tables.
Given the generally paranoid and overly cautious attitudes of insurance companies, I'd say a change like this does signify news.
Think about it folks. If you don't actually put your email address in the field, why in gods name would you consider the email yours?
You TOLD them where to deliver it. They're doing exactly what you wanted. Don't complain when that actually goes someplace! :)
I can see both sides of this as a security/network admin... but I think the doorknob metaphor is a bit incorrect.
If your door and lock is your security, then a ping isn't going to see if it's in place (locked) or missing (unlocked). Unless it's a Ping of Death, but nobody sends those these days, as far as I've seen.
I think a better metaphor would be perhaps driving by the lots in a subdivision to see which have houses built.
Now, an actual -portscan- is a different beastie. And a Nessus run would be completely unacceptable.
Also, while you may know your system is outbound only, there's no way for anyone to know that just based off the IP. And there's a lot of handy things out there we all like to refer to that require a little ping or similar (WWW server software surveys, for instance).
It's certainly a matter of personal comfort though, and I'd never tell you your opinion is wrong. Just your metaphor. ;-)
Much/most of mainstream society has already shifted to eliminate any obvious bias against any one group going into any particular field (yes, I'm sure you can bring up instances where it hasn't but I'm talking in general here). So why do we still have an abscence of women in tech fields, men in nurturing fields, indigenous peoples in college, etc etc etc?
Personally, I think it comes down to us expecting society as a whole to change too quickly. We can change the concious public statements easily. Funding, sure thing. Obviously racist/sexist application schemes? No problem. Underlying attitudes you learned at the age of three, when times were less enlightened (and you're in your mid twenties)? Err... no.
Like it or lump it, while your conciousness may say 'There's no difference', your unconcious makes certain assumptions and uses various biases that are so ingrained you don't even realize them any more. Think of the old brain teaser about the boy and his dad in an accident, the boy is hurt and goes to surgery, the dad is in the waiting room, and the surgeon says "I can't operate on htis boy, it's my son", and you're supposed to get caught by not thinking the mother could be a surgeon.
The same kind of biases get taught very early on. Anyone over 20 right now, maybe even over 10, is probably pretty mired in them. God help anyone over 40 (IE: the execs/management in many firms). They're trying, don't get me wrong, but their basis of reality can't shift that much and their concious will always be at odds with their instincts.
For something as major as "everyone really IS equal", I'd say you're looking at two, maybe three generations before it will become truly pervasive. By my (non-sociologist) take on it, we're about up to the second generation. Once our kids get into power, the entire thing should be leveled out, and a more natural balance will take effect.
Hopefully.
You're reading a tad much into the AC's posting (probably because it would seem you're overreacting to the severity of the bug, given other comments you've made).
My understanding of what this person said is "Please don't go apeshit all over me, just because I'm the one you got on the phone and I'm telling you something you don't like".
So you want a replacement unit, not a patch. Does that mean you now should scream obscenities at this person? I think not. They have very little say in what can be done, and I bet you that their managers TOLD THEM to push the patch instead of a replacement unit.
Is it really so damn hard to be POLITE? Have people forgotten how to get their way without resorting to shock tactics of volume, vulgarity, and verbosity?
I think there's a major flaw with this, and it comes down to:
Sure, we dig finding new, better, more secure ways to do our computing. That's because it's our hobby and our thrill.
The average Joe or Jane User? They just want their email. They already spent an obscene amount of effort and grief learning how to use it already, so cut them some slack (I'm being sarcastic, but it IS how they regard it). If you let them continue with the old insecure methods, they're not going to change one iota.
I don't let people use telnet at my office, and I don't let them use anything lower than symmetric encryption on PCAnywhere (twitch, twitch, shudder), and screw 'em if they don't like it. They bitched during the changeover, but now it's just rote repetition, just like before, and the systems are (more) secure.
I actually wonder if it has any storage whatsoever... the blurb phrases it kind of strangely:
To me, that sounds like a very expensive winamp-in-a-can... more like a translator than a solid-state MP3 jukebox, which is what I'd much rather have in my stereo. :)
Also, think of the espionage options. Wangle a network connection into it and then sniff packets to your hearts content, and it hides in the cable snarl behind the rack. ;)
Well, what ELSE are we supposed to use CPU cycles for? We don't have Windows chewing 45% just moving the mouse around... ;)
Whoa.
I spend most of lunch sneaking through the MASSIVE bank in Thief II, evading guards, disabling security, dousing those pesky securty walkers, having a great old time...
and first thing I see after that is Looking Glass is closing.
I think I just stripped something, changing mental gears so fast. :(
The Windows gaming crowd has a lot of things going for it:
First, lots of companies have thrown lots of really smart programmers at the problem of maximising FPS, the holy grail of gaming. Yes, there's a lot of Linux programmers out there that are just as smart, if not smarter, but the Windows game programmer is following a beaten path and has a head start.
Second, the hardware drivers are all developed Windows first, everything else second. You can bet your booty that only a tiny fraction of programmer hours have gone into the Linux drivers, compared to the Windows drivers.
Thirdly, gaming tends to grab the entire system and take it over completely. Timesharing? Yeah, right. The kernel, however, still has the overhead of paying attention to a variety of different processes. I'd like to know, for instance, what else was running on that test box while it was up. Maybe rerun the tests on the Windows box with ICQ, some kind of mail notifier, MSN Messenger, and AOL IM all running too, to simulate the backend load of Linux. :)
Fourthly, as some people have mentioned, there's the overhead of the X system... although I really wouldn't expect that to be handling the pixels. I always thought that a "fullscreen" driver kicked in, and shouldered X out of the way, while a game was running.
Like the Mindcraft benchmarks, though, this gives the Linux community something to aim for, and possible places to look at, as well as a kick in the seat of the pants to get further on it. I can't wait to see what we have by Christmas, personally!
RollingThunder
Warlord, Starslayer Tribe
(FPS gaming group for the non-gamers)
PS: What about Linux's performance in online gaming? Does it eke out a reduction in the other half of the gaming grail, ping time?