Not a problem with my OS:-) Just log in as root, `su - ` and do whatever that user can do without having to know his password. There may still be application-level security, but this would not prevent me from gaining access to the system. Anyhow, who sabotages systems by changing passwords? Amateurs, that's who. A good sysadmin can destroy the servers and any data beyond recovery and without leaving a trail, but this would take weeks of preparation.
Here's a real-life story. A Unix sysadmin from a certain large airspace company was canned unexpectedly. Naturally, his system access was promptly disabled. Exactly three months later two dozen production Sun boxes went down and could not be booted. Closer analysis revealed almost total data corruption on the system disks, attached disk arrays, and on connected SANs. When the admins tried to restore data, they discovered that for the past three months backups done via NetBackup were incomplete. Incidentally, backup retention policy was set to three months for full and offsite backups.
How did he do it? On one of the systems he modified a log rotation script to include a few lines of code. Specifically, he used wget to download code from an external Web page and execute it locally. Even though the server was behind proxy and firewall, this did not help since the connection was initiated from the server and proxy did not require authorization. He then used this remote execute access to modify netbackup exception lists to exclude key filesystems from the backup. Three months later he ran a command that deleted most of the data and shut down the servers.
This is the old way to partition your boot disk:/, usr, etc, var, opt all on separate partitions. When hard drives used to be very small and expensive, keeping all this stuff separate from each other minimized the risk of running out of space. I would also put/var/log and/var/spool on separate partitions, since they frequently get filled up with junk. Even with bigger disks I still think its a good idea. If you get a bad block or fs corruption and it happens to be in/usr or/opt, you can still boot your OS, which you wouldn't be able to do if you had just one big partition for the whole OS.
You boot from CD, mount the/etc partition, edit the passwd/shadow file, then reboot normally. Or you pop the boot drive out and connect it to another system, mount the/etc and so on.
Health risks posed by asbestos were recognize and even officially acknowledged as early as in the late 1800s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#History_of_health_concerns_and_regulation). And yet, for almost a hundred years consumers around the world were exposed to this deadly substance. Why? Probably because too many business were making too much money selling asbestos-containing products.
BBC has a knack for being kicked out of various countries and I think the reason for that is lack of objectivity. BBC World Service is financed exclusively by the Foreign Office and this fact is reflected in the quality of their reporting. BBC World News reminds me of the Soviet "Vremya": same selective reporting and obvious bias along the party lines. I guess you can't have quality independent reporting when all of your budget comes from the government. In case with Zimbabwe, all BBC is doing is collecting unverified rumors from hundreds of miles away and recycling the same months-old footage.
Yes, we are more advanced now and, hopefully, know better how to spot health risks. The question is: who is looking? Nanotechnology is quickly becoming a priority R&D direction for many large and small companies. However, there is no organized effort to study the effects of nanomaterials on our health.
Asbestos was mentioned, which I think is a good example. Thousands of companies made billions of dollars since the late 1900s selling products made with this "miracle material". It wasn't until 1980s that research conclusively showed asbestos to be highly toxic even in very small amounts. For almost a hundred years consumers suffered from the health effects of asbestos, while manufacturers were making huge profits. Why did it take so long for the medical science to catch up? You can't expect manufacturers of potentially deadly but highly profitable products to look out for the health of their customers. This is a job for the government and this is why we pay taxes. Nanotechnology is a relatively new field that requires extra attention and regulation to make sure that we don't repeat the asbestos fiasco.
You are talking about radiation naturally occurring is small amounts that usually don't pose immediate threat to your health. However, the effect of radiation is cumulative, thus even moderate exposure to sunlight on a daily basis leads to increased risk of skin cancer. And then there are man-made disasters like Chernobyl, thousands of tons of radioactive waste, dozens of rusting nuclear submarines and so on. Being "a little cautious" may not be good enough.
There already is a considerable body of research pointing to specific health risks resulting from exposure to nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is an exciting new field, but who is regulating it? Who is studying health effects of these technologies? Companies out there are rushing to develop something new and to make a buck. And the fear is that we the consumers will be picking up the tab, as usual.
I think reliability of information posted by a teenage girl on Bebo ranks up there with BBC World News. How else would they fill ten minutes of their daily morning broadcast with news from Zimbabwe, while their nearest reporter is sitting in Johannesburg some 1200 miles away?
Unfortunately, the retirement of the shuttle fleet has nothing to do with our president being an idiot. This would have been too simple an explanation. The shuttle program was supposed to pave the way to affordable space launch technology: $100/lb with a two-week turnaround. This never happened. If anything, the cost of putting a pound of payload in orbit has increased. NASA's reusable launch systems turned out to be far more expensive than Russia's single-use launchers.
Outside of the slashdot community and certain parts of the tech industry, he is highly regarded as a successful businessman and as a philanthropist. I don't think even the Slashdot community would disagree that he is a successful businessman and a philanthropist. However, coming from the tech community himself, Gates is probably interested in the opinion of that community more than in what they say about him on Oprah.
There are no boring jobs, just underpaid workers. Another problem is all the poorly trained Indian IT "professionals". I have nothing against Indians, other than majority of their computer guys suck ass. They work for peanuts, drive the wages down across the entire industry, and on the average do a lousy job. I know many here don't want to bring up this subject so not to offend anyone, but most of you know exactly what I am talking about.
Pre-fetching of applications by Vista and using car accident history to re-route traffic - are they saying statistical analysis is a form of artificial intelligence? This article is yet another attempt to whitewash almost four decades of failed efforts to develop AI. Now they are playing on the definition of AI, but in the 1960s the definition seemed clear enough: a machine that can do anything a human can (intellectually, at least). Now these guys are saying "well, we are not there yet; in fact, we are nowhere near AI, but look at this nifty GPS gadget that will have you circling the back streets for hours. It was all worth it!" Nobody wants to openly admit that, not only they have no clue how to create AI, they are not even sure in which direction to apply their efforts.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be that you saw a sign "Free stuff!" over my house, you rang the bell and the doorman let you in. He said the owner told him to invite everybody in and let them take whatever they want.
If you set your router to broadcast and authorize all incoming connections, then obviously that was your intention. You put up a big sign over your house: "Free network for all!" Why would you get upset if someone takes you up on your offer?
To be entirely accurate, it would be you who is breaking the law (in some states at least) by openly sharing your wireless connection. In addition to that, you are also violating the terms of the contract with your ISP.
You can't sell Nazi paraphernalia in Germany precisely *because* it is part of their history. They are a civilized nation today and a member of the enlightened European Union. They are sitting proudly on their white horse of superior morality, giving valuable advise on liberty and democracy to the US, Russia and China. They don't want any unpleasant reminders of their not so distant path. As they say, Aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn.
Yes you could run 3.1 and even 3.11 on x286. I had 3.11 running on my Tandy 1000RLX with 80286 processor instead of the native DeskMate. It was slow as hell, obviously, but it worked.
When a judge is expected to hear a case dealing with a highly technical subject and the judge knows that he will most likely not be able to understand the technological side of the arguments - what is he likely to do? Sometimes I read the various trial documents posted here and I am amazed that there seems to be a great number of judges so well versed in the latest computer technologies to take on such complicated cases. Do they really understand the abracadabra coming from various expert witnesses, or do they just pretend to understand as a face-saving measure? I understand that many judges are well-educated, but a Renaissance Man is hardly a substitute for a network engineer.
I do remember the Axis making it to the coast of France and the British retreating across the channel. Not to detract from RAF's valiant performance or from the importance of America's belated aid, but what really saved you guys was Hitler's decision to invade Russia while still fighting Britain. If instead he chose to concentrate exclusively on your island - as his generals urged him - you might have been writing in German now.
What cracks me up is your Cold War stance. Aside from starting it Britain played a secondary role in the thing. That is unless you take James Bond into account, of course. So you were protecting democratic freedoms and all those great things from the big bad rooskies, but somehow in the end you ended up with the biggest police state of any developed Western nation and Russians are doing better than ever. Ironic, isn't it?
Britain stood alone against fascism? A bastion against the Soviets? I am not surprised your government wants to keep a close eye on you. An island nation with an ego like that definitely requires close supervision.
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Not a problem with my OS :-) Just log in as root, `su - ` and do whatever that user can do without having to know his password. There may still be application-level security, but this would not prevent me from gaining access to the system. Anyhow, who sabotages systems by changing passwords? Amateurs, that's who. A good sysadmin can destroy the servers and any data beyond recovery and without leaving a trail, but this would take weeks of preparation.
Here's a real-life story. A Unix sysadmin from a certain large airspace company was canned unexpectedly. Naturally, his system access was promptly disabled. Exactly three months later two dozen production Sun boxes went down and could not be booted. Closer analysis revealed almost total data corruption on the system disks, attached disk arrays, and on connected SANs. When the admins tried to restore data, they discovered that for the past three months backups done via NetBackup were incomplete. Incidentally, backup retention policy was set to three months for full and offsite backups.
How did he do it? On one of the systems he modified a log rotation script to include a few lines of code. Specifically, he used wget to download code from an external Web page and execute it locally. Even though the server was behind proxy and firewall, this did not help since the connection was initiated from the server and proxy did not require authorization. He then used this remote execute access to modify netbackup exception lists to exclude key filesystems from the backup. Three months later he ran a command that deleted most of the data and shut down the servers.
This is the old way to partition your boot disk: /, usr, etc, var, opt all on separate partitions. When hard drives used to be very small and expensive, keeping all this stuff separate from each other minimized the risk of running out of space. I would also put /var/log and /var/spool on separate partitions, since they frequently get filled up with junk. Even with bigger disks I still think its a good idea. If you get a bad block or fs corruption and it happens to be in /usr or /opt, you can still boot your OS, which you wouldn't be able to do if you had just one big partition for the whole OS.
What's a keychain?
Why would it be encrypted?
You boot from CD, mount the /etc partition, edit the passwd/shadow file, then reboot normally. Or you pop the boot drive out and connect it to another system, mount the /etc and so on.
Health risks posed by asbestos were recognize and even officially acknowledged as early as in the late 1800s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#History_of_health_concerns_and_regulation). And yet, for almost a hundred years consumers around the world were exposed to this deadly substance. Why? Probably because too many business were making too much money selling asbestos-containing products.
BBC has a knack for being kicked out of various countries and I think the reason for that is lack of objectivity. BBC World Service is financed exclusively by the Foreign Office and this fact is reflected in the quality of their reporting. BBC World News reminds me of the Soviet "Vremya": same selective reporting and obvious bias along the party lines. I guess you can't have quality independent reporting when all of your budget comes from the government. In case with Zimbabwe, all BBC is doing is collecting unverified rumors from hundreds of miles away and recycling the same months-old footage.
Exactly my point! Your job is to keep me safe and here you are wasting your time arguing with me :-)
Yes, we are more advanced now and, hopefully, know better how to spot health risks. The question is: who is looking? Nanotechnology is quickly becoming a priority R&D direction for many large and small companies. However, there is no organized effort to study the effects of nanomaterials on our health.
Asbestos was mentioned, which I think is a good example. Thousands of companies made billions of dollars since the late 1900s selling products made with this "miracle material". It wasn't until 1980s that research conclusively showed asbestos to be highly toxic even in very small amounts. For almost a hundred years consumers suffered from the health effects of asbestos, while manufacturers were making huge profits. Why did it take so long for the medical science to catch up? You can't expect manufacturers of potentially deadly but highly profitable products to look out for the health of their customers. This is a job for the government and this is why we pay taxes. Nanotechnology is a relatively new field that requires extra attention and regulation to make sure that we don't repeat the asbestos fiasco.
You are talking about radiation naturally occurring is small amounts that usually don't pose immediate threat to your health. However, the effect of radiation is cumulative, thus even moderate exposure to sunlight on a daily basis leads to increased risk of skin cancer. And then there are man-made disasters like Chernobyl, thousands of tons of radioactive waste, dozens of rusting nuclear submarines and so on. Being "a little cautious" may not be good enough. There already is a considerable body of research pointing to specific health risks resulting from exposure to nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is an exciting new field, but who is regulating it? Who is studying health effects of these technologies? Companies out there are rushing to develop something new and to make a buck. And the fear is that we the consumers will be picking up the tab, as usual.
I think reliability of information posted by a teenage girl on Bebo ranks up there with BBC World News. How else would they fill ten minutes of their daily morning broadcast with news from Zimbabwe, while their nearest reporter is sitting in Johannesburg some 1200 miles away?
Agree. Swedes are a bunch self-loving fartsniffers.
Unfortunately, the retirement of the shuttle fleet has nothing to do with our president being an idiot. This would have been too simple an explanation. The shuttle program was supposed to pave the way to affordable space launch technology: $100/lb with a two-week turnaround. This never happened. If anything, the cost of putting a pound of payload in orbit has increased. NASA's reusable launch systems turned out to be far more expensive than Russia's single-use launchers.
Why don't these scientists do something useful for a change and tell us where to drill! I just bought my Hummer and now I can't afford the gas.
There are no boring jobs, just underpaid workers. Another problem is all the poorly trained Indian IT "professionals". I have nothing against Indians, other than majority of their computer guys suck ass. They work for peanuts, drive the wages down across the entire industry, and on the average do a lousy job. I know many here don't want to bring up this subject so not to offend anyone, but most of you know exactly what I am talking about.
Pre-fetching of applications by Vista and using car accident history to re-route traffic - are they saying statistical analysis is a form of artificial intelligence? This article is yet another attempt to whitewash almost four decades of failed efforts to develop AI. Now they are playing on the definition of AI, but in the 1960s the definition seemed clear enough: a machine that can do anything a human can (intellectually, at least). Now these guys are saying "well, we are not there yet; in fact, we are nowhere near AI, but look at this nifty GPS gadget that will have you circling the back streets for hours. It was all worth it!" Nobody wants to openly admit that, not only they have no clue how to create AI, they are not even sure in which direction to apply their efforts.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be that you saw a sign "Free stuff!" over my house, you rang the bell and the doorman let you in. He said the owner told him to invite everybody in and let them take whatever they want.
If you set your router to broadcast and authorize all incoming connections, then obviously that was your intention. You put up a big sign over your house: "Free network for all!" Why would you get upset if someone takes you up on your offer?
To be entirely accurate, it would be you who is breaking the law (in some states at least) by openly sharing your wireless connection. In addition to that, you are also violating the terms of the contract with your ISP.
You can't sell Nazi paraphernalia in Germany precisely *because* it is part of their history. They are a civilized nation today and a member of the enlightened European Union. They are sitting proudly on their white horse of superior morality, giving valuable advise on liberty and democracy to the US, Russia and China. They don't want any unpleasant reminders of their not so distant path. As they say, Aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn.
Yes you could run 3.1 and even 3.11 on x286. I had 3.11 running on my Tandy 1000RLX with 80286 processor instead of the native DeskMate. It was slow as hell, obviously, but it worked.
When a judge is expected to hear a case dealing with a highly technical subject and the judge knows that he will most likely not be able to understand the technological side of the arguments - what is he likely to do? Sometimes I read the various trial documents posted here and I am amazed that there seems to be a great number of judges so well versed in the latest computer technologies to take on such complicated cases. Do they really understand the abracadabra coming from various expert witnesses, or do they just pretend to understand as a face-saving measure? I understand that many judges are well-educated, but a Renaissance Man is hardly a substitute for a network engineer.
I think the real question is: would RIAA rent my 10 cents for a song?
I do remember the Axis making it to the coast of France and the British retreating across the channel. Not to detract from RAF's valiant performance or from the importance of America's belated aid, but what really saved you guys was Hitler's decision to invade Russia while still fighting Britain. If instead he chose to concentrate exclusively on your island - as his generals urged him - you might have been writing in German now.
What cracks me up is your Cold War stance. Aside from starting it Britain played a secondary role in the thing. That is unless you take James Bond into account, of course. So you were protecting democratic freedoms and all those great things from the big bad rooskies, but somehow in the end you ended up with the biggest police state of any developed Western nation and Russians are doing better than ever. Ironic, isn't it?
Britain stood alone against fascism? A bastion against the Soviets? I am not surprised your government wants to keep a close eye on you. An island nation with an ego like that definitely requires close supervision.