An interesting feature of google that I've always liked is the "This page may harm your computer" or whatever they put on dangerous links. I wonder how viable it would be to have a firefox plugin that did something similar. Not so much the patching of the bugs, but maybe some sort of distributed (P2P) system that says "Yep, this is dangerous, we aint patched it yet, so go there if you like but we don't recommend it"
Might help out, might not. If I had something like that running in my company I reckon I could reduce half the problems (as opposed to making the proxy server do all the work).
Is this the appropriate time for a certain bash quote:
<ColdRage687> i used to think the brain was the most fascinating part of the body
<ColdRage687> but then i realized
<ColdRage687> pssssh
<ColdRage687> look whats telling me that
For me it is Tamper Data. If I profile the page with Firebug it loads every time no issues, but if I fire up "Tamper Data" and just leave it profiling (no tampering of requests) it kills it. If I don't have anything "active" apart from adblock and the Tidy plugin, I get no problems at all.
For those of you on IE who hate it, there is always "IE Tab" which I use when developing.
It's truly indicative of how well the firehose and editorial system really does work here on/. when we can get something as glaringly obvious as a screwed link through to the front page...
I'm thinking, regardless of legal consequences, posting something like this to the top page of an influential news rag is going to affect shares, public confidence and reputation. The damage is already done as it were, whether they are meant to use it or not ("but he sent it to me, it has my email in it!"). I've always thought those disclaimers were some sort of method of blaming software if something goes wrong anyway, this is a perfect example. PEBKAC, as others stated.
They do a rather efficient job on home soil. I fail to see why they should be policing everything about a country that isn't their own. Take Bali for the current example. The club wasn't the Australian embassy so at what point has it reached our jurisdiction? The people working for ASIO can't be expected to cover the entire worlds policies. How would you feel if suddenly American police were patrolling the streets because you suggested you might want to blow up a land-mark and there MAY be American citizens there.
I'm not trying to detract from the pain, sorrow, or loss that people felt over the bombings, but it wasn't Australia who screwed up in preventing those attacks...
And finally, if you think you can do a better job, go and apply. Reform the system. Me, I can't. I don't trust them to stay out of my business, but I do trust them to do what they can.
Because if they begin to censor us from viewing terrorist cases, maybe the comments posted by slashdotters would be inappropriately political. The government managed to release their own 'firewall' package recently, and there has been some very strong discussions on forcing us to ask for pornographic access when we connect to the Internet. If they start censoring us in the media, where does it end.
Part of the problem is that MS-Windows is the easiest desktop environment to use.
I'd beg to differ and walk a fine line on this one. Part of the problem is that MS-Windows WAS the easiest desktop environment to use. The other part of the issue was IBM vs Apple. I was a bit too out of the IT scene at the time to really take notice but recall when they were called IBM-Compatible computers? IBM pushed the market share, then Intel rocked along with the x86 platform. Hardware manufacturers are as much to blame at this point as Microsoft. True in more recent years this is no longer the case, but at the time anyone who owned a Mac was "hardcore" or "rich" due to the prohibitive pricing on them. For some reason people seem to think that a full-package at $600 is more expensive than hardware: $400, Peripherals: $100, Software: $400. I don't know why, but then I've never trusted human intelligence.
I for one welcome our new rat-eating-vine-overlords and would like to offer little Sam who snitched on me in the third grade as the first rat/human sacrifice.
Oddly enough I begin researching this next week as part of a corporate roll up to DD-WRT for our hotspots, but for now my suggestion would be to do it purely in iptables. You can do Mac based restrictions there as well as IP based ones. More specifically, restrict everyone back to the GSM-over-IP networks/protocols (I'm not familiar) and then allow your boxes further access. That's, IMHO, the beauty of having a Linux box for my router... within certain size restrictions I can do most anything I would be able to do with a full blown server-box.
Otherwise I hear good things about Tomato, and Chilispot (which doesn't quite fit your guidelines but could be useful).
Agreed, my cheap-ass WRT54GL is quite secure. The firmware is, of course, DD-WRT and not the default crap-ware they try to leave me with.
For something that only cost me around $150 AU it is rock solid, secure, and with the linux based firmware, allows me to do some cool stuff (like run kismet-server on it and - so I am told - run packet injection off it).
The way of the leaf is not for everyone, but to those who choose to accept it...
Personally, I currently have a court case and around 8 or 9 knife cuts on my arms from an incident similar to this recently. I didn't stoop to his level, he decided to throw a few punches before I struck back, and when he realised he couldn't defeat me he pulled the weapon.
I'm saddened that you scored a Troll mod on this. But if your even in South-Australia look me up, I have a few lusers you could back my bastardly ways up for.
I don't know your situation but if it is computer repair, part of it could be the Windows users who are so used to coming in for repairs switching to Macs and lacking the Mac or Unix skills to fix problems.
They're designers... they've been using Mac since before I was born. They also tend to stay away from the command line (that Terminal.app thing scares the hell out of them whenever I fire it up). The popularity has nothing to do with their usage of the system, as they were fine using OS 9 before hand. I work for a media company, the designers are all over the place and always use Mac.
who is going to try to hide spyware in a GPL'd product?
I don't know but considering some of the code that one can write can be obscure as hell I'm sure spyware could be slipped into a product with relative ease. Whilst I've forgotten who and what, there was some PABX software recently that called home (it always had) that took $x long to become well known... leave you to think on that.
While it is true that if someone really wanted to mess up OS-X or were just plain stupid they could. However, the chances of Unix breaking from normal usage are far far smaller then those of Windows.
You need to meet some of my designers. I spend more time rebuilding OS X machines and correcting privileges than I do with the windows users... incidentally this never happened on the OS 9 installs, so the additional power that having a Unix system around can give is actually what is causing me and my users the most grief here.
Your comments on OS code, whilst quite valid, are actually rather incorrect. Something that a lot of people seem to fail to remember with open source code is that the code IS available IF you wish to look at it. Personally I've never gone near the Kernel code, so I wouldn't have a clue if it is secure or not (perfect example of this: Firefox).
You have to add each Windows computer to the domain initially though, it's not quite the same but still.
To cover a few of the other posts in response (in case anyone's going to read this) I work IT across 8 or so companies, and I'm the third or fourth to come in. The problem is that the other two "IT" guys are still here, one is an ex-programmer and the other is an ex-media-designer. Neither should ever have been a sysadmin, but due to office politics I have to deal with letting them run around doing things on their own. To give you an idea of this I noticed a couple of printers in one area recently all running entirely off the DHCP-failed range (169. all the rest which has escaped me).
Also, I'm not blaming my users any more than I blame myself. The only reason those Linux boxes get updated is BECAUSE I get in their to fix them up, it is one thing to say 'keep your own systems up to date' but these monkeys are on my network, and go out my gateway, so if I don't keep on top of them I have to deal with spam real-time black hole lists and all the rest. Hope this covers a bit of the issues.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting feature of google that I've always liked is the "This page may harm your computer" or whatever they put on dangerous links. I wonder how viable it would be to have a firefox plugin that did something similar. Not so much the patching of the bugs, but maybe some sort of distributed (P2P) system that says "Yep, this is dangerous, we aint patched it yet, so go there if you like but we don't recommend it"
Might help out, might not. If I had something like that running in my company I reckon I could reduce half the problems (as opposed to making the proxy server do all the work).
At which time please attempt to use some sort of magic software to get you around this restriction...
Is this the appropriate time for a certain bash quote:
<ColdRage687> i used to think the brain was the most fascinating part of the body
<ColdRage687> but then i realized
<ColdRage687> pssssh
<ColdRage687> look whats telling me that
Who says you need to have wireless to have fun!
The article is 5th on my front page and nobody has mentioned Nematodes?!
"Annd.... we blew up some military installations!"
"You what?!"
"Well actually they were tree's but they could become military intsallations!"
Paraphrased from memory: HHGTTG
...or at least its article There you go. Fixed that for you.For me it is Tamper Data. If I profile the page with Firebug it loads every time no issues, but if I fire up "Tamper Data" and just leave it profiling (no tampering of requests) it kills it. If I don't have anything "active" apart from adblock and the Tidy plugin, I get no problems at all.
For those of you on IE who hate it, there is always "IE Tab" which I use when developing.
It's truly indicative of how well the firehose and editorial system really does work here on /. when we can get something as glaringly obvious as a screwed link through to the front page...
I'm thinking, regardless of legal consequences, posting something like this to the top page of an influential news rag is going to affect shares, public confidence and reputation. The damage is already done as it were, whether they are meant to use it or not ("but he sent it to me, it has my email in it!"). I've always thought those disclaimers were some sort of method of blaming software if something goes wrong anyway, this is a perfect example. PEBKAC, as others stated.
My (disjointed) $0.02 AU, Ignore at will.
They do a rather efficient job on home soil. I fail to see why they should be policing everything about a country that isn't their own. Take Bali for the current example. The club wasn't the Australian embassy so at what point has it reached our jurisdiction? The people working for ASIO can't be expected to cover the entire worlds policies. How would you feel if suddenly American police were patrolling the streets because you suggested you might want to blow up a land-mark and there MAY be American citizens there.
I'm not trying to detract from the pain, sorrow, or loss that people felt over the bombings, but it wasn't Australia who screwed up in preventing those attacks...
And finally, if you think you can do a better job, go and apply. Reform the system. Me, I can't. I don't trust them to stay out of my business, but I do trust them to do what they can.
Because if they begin to censor us from viewing terrorist cases, maybe the comments posted by slashdotters would be inappropriately political. The government managed to release their own 'firewall' package recently, and there has been some very strong discussions on forcing us to ask for pornographic access when we connect to the Internet. If they start censoring us in the media, where does it end.
My $0.02 AU, Ignore at will.
Well that explains the dupes...
That would be the "Charity for Anti-Social Humans". I am a serving member and will gladly pass any funds along to the appropriate coffers...
In Soviet Russia moderators question YOU!
I for one welcome our new rat-eating-vine-overlords and would like to offer little Sam who snitched on me in the third grade as the first rat/human sacrifice.
Oddly enough I begin researching this next week as part of a corporate roll up to DD-WRT for our hotspots, but for now my suggestion would be to do it purely in iptables. You can do Mac based restrictions there as well as IP based ones. More specifically, restrict everyone back to the GSM-over-IP networks/protocols (I'm not familiar) and then allow your boxes further access. That's, IMHO, the beauty of having a Linux box for my router... within certain size restrictions I can do most anything I would be able to do with a full blown server-box.
Otherwise I hear good things about Tomato, and Chilispot (which doesn't quite fit your guidelines but could be useful).
Agreed, my cheap-ass WRT54GL is quite secure. The firmware is, of course, DD-WRT and not the default crap-ware they try to leave me with.
For something that only cost me around $150 AU it is rock solid, secure, and with the linux based firmware, allows me to do some cool stuff (like run kismet-server on it and - so I am told - run packet injection off it).
The way of the leaf is not for everyone, but to those who choose to accept it...
Personally, I currently have a court case and around 8 or 9 knife cuts on my arms from an incident similar to this recently. I didn't stoop to his level, he decided to throw a few punches before I struck back, and when he realised he couldn't defeat me he pulled the weapon.
I'm saddened that you scored a Troll mod on this. But if your even in South-Australia look me up, I have a few lusers you could back my bastardly ways up for.
So she throws you away right before you...
I don't know but considering some of the code that one can write can be obscure as hell I'm sure spyware could be slipped into a product with relative ease. Whilst I've forgotten who and what, there was some PABX software recently that called home (it always had) that took $x long to become well known... leave you to think on that.
Your comments on OS code, whilst quite valid, are actually rather incorrect. Something that a lot of people seem to fail to remember with open source code is that the code IS available IF you wish to look at it. Personally I've never gone near the Kernel code, so I wouldn't have a clue if it is secure or not (perfect example of this: Firefox).
My $0.02 AU, Ignore at will.
You have to add each Windows computer to the domain initially though, it's not quite the same but still.
To cover a few of the other posts in response (in case anyone's going to read this) I work IT across 8 or so companies, and I'm the third or fourth to come in. The problem is that the other two "IT" guys are still here, one is an ex-programmer and the other is an ex-media-designer. Neither should ever have been a sysadmin, but due to office politics I have to deal with letting them run around doing things on their own. To give you an idea of this I noticed a couple of printers in one area recently all running entirely off the DHCP-failed range (169. all the rest which has escaped me).
Also, I'm not blaming my users any more than I blame myself. The only reason those Linux boxes get updated is BECAUSE I get in their to fix them up, it is one thing to say 'keep your own systems up to date' but these monkeys are on my network, and go out my gateway, so if I don't keep on top of them I have to deal with spam real-time black hole lists and all the rest. Hope this covers a bit of the issues.