Point taken, but that same need exists in the aviation example I gave. You really don't want every idiot flying over your heads either until they have learned the aviation regulations that keep people from trying to do stupid things in an airplane.
So it seems to me that, rather than make amateur scientific experimentation available only to the trained professionals (i.e., the airlines, in my analogy), there should perhaps be a certification process to allow hobbyists to learn the proper way of doing things, just as there is in aviation.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I am curious why you think so. I would have thought GWB's paranoia as evidenced by all of the post-9/11 fearmongering by the White House and Congress would have made Obama an arguably better choice than another four years of Republican thought.
What is the difference between injuring yourself while experimenting with chemistry and injuring yourself while participating in sports? How many football players have ended up in the E.R. because they broke something during a game? How many kayakers drowned while enjoying their sport? Ever know anyone who drank enough to give themselves alcohol poisoning?
A lot of things we take for granted have risk associated with them. If you are afraid that someone might hurt themselves in their home chemistry lab, you're right...but if you think that justifies prohibiting chemistry research, then, well, we all should just stay in bed and hide under the covers.
That doesn't mean it is reasonable to restrict the sale of various chemicals for hobbyists.
Think of it this way. I'm a pilot; I fly airplanes for fun. If I live on a 40-acre farm, it is legal and reasonable for me to build an airstrip in my back yard and fly my airplane off of it. However, even if I had a lot large enough to fly an airplane from I would have the local P.D and the FAA knocking on my door if I were to try that in the city where I live.
By the same token, while it might be reasonable to work with highly volatile chemicals in a rural lab, it might not be so reasonable to do something while living in a duplex in town. That doesn't necessarily mean that the sale of such chemicals should be restricted, however.
The real issue is that people tend to be afraid of things they don't understand. Most people in the U.S. no longer are interested in science, and are therefore likely to think that people who enjoy experimenting with chemistry are "up to no good." That's a very, very sad thing, IMHO.
None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
As opposed to the "War on Drugs" that began in the '80s? Nancy Reagan, et al, right? Since we started that program, drug use has almost completely disappeared!
Oh, wait...
Sorry, I'm with Hatta. Even though I've never used anything stronger than alcohol, nor do I have any desire to do so, I think the U.S.' position on, ummm, "recreational pharmaceuticals" is just plain stupid.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks! BTW, it's a crime that you are only moderated at 1. I'd give mod points to you, if I had them (and hadn't already posted).
Two weeks is nowhere near long enough for systems to begin failing if you are even moderately competent as a sys admin.
Take a three month sabbatical and then see how much they value you when you return. 'Course, after three months, they might have realized the error of their ways and already hired someone new because they couldn't live without a tech...
Okay, I know you are just making a joke (and for the record, I did laugh when I read it), but in truth, there are many here who apparently *could* be at practical risk. Just a few posts above is a certified professional trainer. A few posts lower is a martial arts instructor. Two posts above is someone who uses an elliptical and runs four days a week. As for me...I rock climb, white-water kayak, cross-country ski, skijor and roller blade with my Siberian husky, mountain bike, etc. So while the meme of the/. poster hiding away in his mother's basement is a basic tenant of/. culture, it also appears to be untrue from this very limited, very unscientific survey:)
Out of curiosity, what if you are engaging in exercise that requires flexibility (no, that's not what I meant!). For example, I am a rock climber, (and IA*N*ACPT) and I have always stretched religiously before climbing. At my peak, I found that I could successfully perform moves that my rock climbing partner -- who began climbing at the same time I did -- frequently couldn't, for example, heel hooks near shoulder level.
Would you still recommend against stretching before exercise in sports such as this, where balance, flexibility and technique are generally more important than raw strength? Is this more of an example of "whatever works for you?"
Right. Because no one on/. has ever...ummm...borrowed...an insecure wireless network </sarc>
As long as the people borrowing your network are only trying how to get from here to there on Google Maps, so effin' what? However, what if your next door neighbor is a script kiddie who doesn't want his mom yelling at him -- again -- for trying to break into Sarah Palin's e-mail account? Or worse, is a perv who wants to download underage-poodle porn?
Seriously, quit being so fearful. It's not that scary out here, honest!
Bovine scatology.
As a former ISP sys admin, I used to suspend the accounts of people who ran unsecured wireless networks. I didn't care that they were running an unsecured wireless network; I cared that hosts on their wireless network were port scanning other people on the Internet, were spewing viruses or spam from their compromised machines, etc. and that other people were blacklisting us because of the offending traffic.
Yeah, I do the same thing. I've got a very old laptop with a very old network card that only supports WEP and 802.11b, so I also have a very old WPA11 router that only supports WEP and 802.11b. Then I have a Wii which only supports WPA (WPA2? I'll have to check now...) on 802.11g and a Netgear 802.11g router that only supports WPA/WPA2. So, I physically disconnect each router from my network until I am using it. It's a PITA but I'm too lazy and busy to try to bother with a better way of doing things.
Part of the clue is with WEP...but not muc less either
I disagree. WEP was a marketing phrase -- "See? Our wireless networking gear is just as secure as traditional wired networks!" Unfortunately, it wasn't. WEP was flawed from the start because of some mistakes made in the implementation of encryption (I don't recall exactly what was wrong and I'm too lazy to Google it, but IIRC, they implemented RC4 incorrectly). A more telling clue about the security (or lack thereof) of WEP was in a quote I found while researching wireless networking for a college presentation: "Installing a wireless LAN may seem like putting Ethernet ports everywhere, including in your parking lot." (Cisco Systems document, "Wireless LAN Security"). You are correct that if you are on the inside, getting access to a wire is not terribly difficult. However, if you don't have access to my facilities, getting access to my wired network just got orders of magnitude harder. It might still be possible, but it's certainly not as easy as simply plugging into an empty network jack. For that matter, where I work, we turn off unused network jacks, so even if you get inside the building, you still won't have physical access to my network unless you unplug someone else's connection -- which will probably be noticed, even if it's only for a few seconds while you connect a switch. But it's worse than that, because on my switch, I can filter ports by MAC address, so unless you find an active port *and* clone a valid MAC address for that port you still won't have access.
If all you want to do is passively sniff traffic that is flowing through a wire, then it's certainly much easier for you -- all you have to do, as you state above, is insert a sniffer between a valid network host and the network jack and you're golden...but that's once you are inside my building. Fortunately, I work in a small enough company that if someone unknown starts mucking around with our network cables, someone is going to get suspicious, so even passively sniffing isn't as easy as you suggest.
With WEP -- and now WPA, as well -- all you have to do is sit in your car on the street outside my building, take ten to fifteen minutes (according to the summary above, anyway) and you can sniff to your heart's content. Sounds much easier than gaining access to my wired network, IMHO.
I add -x to the du command so that it won't cross to other mounted file systems, since I'm usually trying to find out what is using up all the space on a particular partition.
'Kay...how about this: having data encrypted implies that there is something about the data that the originator doesn't want others to see. Curiosity causes others to want to know what exactly is so secret. Or perhaps, a script-kiddie wants to crack the data, just to see if he can. Or, in a more Orwellian vein, the NSA decides to crack the encryption because 1) "if you are encrypting you obviously have something to hide", or 2) just for practice.
By hiding the data in your vacation pictures with steganography, no one even bothers to look.
This is a symptom, not a cause. Having Obama as president will not cause America to "fix racism". It is, perhaps, a sign that racism is no longer nearly the problem it was in the past.
"ordinary" people don't [need steganography], and never really have.
You're on acid (sorry, couldn't resist).
"Ordinary" people *do* have a need for encryption and even steganography. I don't particularly want the government, my employer, or anyone else for that matter to know the private details of my life. They don't need to know what medications I take, for what conditions, what my personal finances are, etc. Suppose I am out of town on a trip, and I need to use a credit card that I left at home. Should I have my wife e-mail the number, the expiration date and the CCV code in the clear?
When dealing with their own security, the government calls this "need to know." Other people don't need to know these details of my life, and therefore it is reasonable that I encrypt or hide these details in steganography when I use an insecure channel (like the Internet).
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It's Unix-ish. Try compiling X11 (or any of hundreds of other POSIX compliant software packages) from source on a Mac. I'll wait.
Installing X11 from source on any *nix is painful.
Point taken, but that same need exists in the aviation example I gave. You really don't want every idiot flying over your heads either until they have learned the aviation regulations that keep people from trying to do stupid things in an airplane. So it seems to me that, rather than make amateur scientific experimentation available only to the trained professionals (i.e., the airlines, in my analogy), there should perhaps be a certification process to allow hobbyists to learn the proper way of doing things, just as there is in aviation.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I am curious why you think so. I would have thought GWB's paranoia as evidenced by all of the post-9/11 fearmongering by the White House and Congress would have made Obama an arguably better choice than another four years of Republican thought.
Wish I had mod points. You neatly summarized exactly why FlyingBishop, with all due respect, is quite simply wrong.
What is the difference between injuring yourself while experimenting with chemistry and injuring yourself while participating in sports? How many football players have ended up in the E.R. because they broke something during a game? How many kayakers drowned while enjoying their sport? Ever know anyone who drank enough to give themselves alcohol poisoning?
A lot of things we take for granted have risk associated with them. If you are afraid that someone might hurt themselves in their home chemistry lab, you're right...but if you think that justifies prohibiting chemistry research, then, well, we all should just stay in bed and hide under the covers.
That doesn't mean it is reasonable to restrict the sale of various chemicals for hobbyists.
Think of it this way. I'm a pilot; I fly airplanes for fun. If I live on a 40-acre farm, it is legal and reasonable for me to build an airstrip in my back yard and fly my airplane off of it. However, even if I had a lot large enough to fly an airplane from I would have the local P.D and the FAA knocking on my door if I were to try that in the city where I live.
By the same token, while it might be reasonable to work with highly volatile chemicals in a rural lab, it might not be so reasonable to do something while living in a duplex in town. That doesn't necessarily mean that the sale of such chemicals should be restricted, however.
The real issue is that people tend to be afraid of things they don't understand. Most people in the U.S. no longer are interested in science, and are therefore likely to think that people who enjoy experimenting with chemistry are "up to no good." That's a very, very sad thing, IMHO.
None of these solutions really work very well as shown by the pretty much free reign drugs have had since the 1950s in the US.
As opposed to the "War on Drugs" that began in the '80s? Nancy Reagan, et al, right? Since we started that program, drug use has almost completely disappeared!
Oh, wait...
Sorry, I'm with Hatta. Even though I've never used anything stronger than alcohol, nor do I have any desire to do so, I think the U.S.' position on, ummm, "recreational pharmaceuticals" is just plain stupid.
Yeah, I forgot about that.
That makes a lot of sense, thanks! BTW, it's a crime that you are only moderated at 1. I'd give mod points to you, if I had them (and hadn't already posted).
Personally, I would rather have de beer than de tequila.
Two weeks is nowhere near long enough for systems to begin failing if you are even moderately competent as a sys admin.
Take a three month sabbatical and then see how much they value you when you return. 'Course, after three months, they might have realized the error of their ways and already hired someone new because they couldn't live without a tech...
ROFL. The comment itself was funny. The fact that it is currently moderated +4 Insightful is hysterical.
Okay, I know you are just making a joke (and for the record, I did laugh when I read it), but in truth, there are many here who apparently *could* be at practical risk. Just a few posts above is a certified professional trainer. A few posts lower is a martial arts instructor. Two posts above is someone who uses an elliptical and runs four days a week. As for me...I rock climb, white-water kayak, cross-country ski, skijor and roller blade with my Siberian husky, mountain bike, etc. So while the meme of the /. poster hiding away in his mother's basement is a basic tenant of /. culture, it also appears to be untrue from this very limited, very unscientific survey :)
Out of curiosity, what if you are engaging in exercise that requires flexibility (no, that's not what I meant!). For example, I am a rock climber, (and IA*N*ACPT) and I have always stretched religiously before climbing. At my peak, I found that I could successfully perform moves that my rock climbing partner -- who began climbing at the same time I did -- frequently couldn't, for example, heel hooks near shoulder level.
Would you still recommend against stretching before exercise in sports such as this, where balance, flexibility and technique are generally more important than raw strength? Is this more of an example of "whatever works for you?"
Two meters is about 78 inches (I used to build 2m R/C sailplanes), so it's almost-but-not-quite 2m. To be precise, 65 inches is 1.65m.
Right. Because no one on /. has ever...ummm...borrowed...an insecure wireless network </sarc>
As long as the people borrowing your network are only trying how to get from here to there on Google Maps, so effin' what? However, what if your next door neighbor is a script kiddie who doesn't want his mom yelling at him -- again -- for trying to break into Sarah Palin's e-mail account? Or worse, is a perv who wants to download underage-poodle porn?
Seriously, quit being so fearful. It's not that scary out here, honest!
Bovine scatology.
As a former ISP sys admin, I used to suspend the accounts of people who ran unsecured wireless networks. I didn't care that they were running an unsecured wireless network; I cared that hosts on their wireless network were port scanning other people on the Internet, were spewing viruses or spam from their compromised machines, etc. and that other people were blacklisting us because of the offending traffic.
Yeah, I do the same thing. I've got a very old laptop with a very old network card that only supports WEP and 802.11b, so I also have a very old WPA11 router that only supports WEP and 802.11b. Then I have a Wii which only supports WPA (WPA2? I'll have to check now...) on 802.11g and a Netgear 802.11g router that only supports WPA/WPA2. So, I physically disconnect each router from my network until I am using it. It's a PITA but I'm too lazy and busy to try to bother with a better way of doing things.
Part of the clue is with WEP...but not muc less either
I disagree. WEP was a marketing phrase -- "See? Our wireless networking gear is just as secure as traditional wired networks!" Unfortunately, it wasn't. WEP was flawed from the start because of some mistakes made in the implementation of encryption (I don't recall exactly what was wrong and I'm too lazy to Google it, but IIRC, they implemented RC4 incorrectly). A more telling clue about the security (or lack thereof) of WEP was in a quote I found while researching wireless networking for a college presentation: "Installing a wireless LAN may seem like putting Ethernet ports everywhere, including in your parking lot." (Cisco Systems document, "Wireless LAN Security"). You are correct that if you are on the inside, getting access to a wire is not terribly difficult. However, if you don't have access to my facilities, getting access to my wired network just got orders of magnitude harder. It might still be possible, but it's certainly not as easy as simply plugging into an empty network jack. For that matter, where I work, we turn off unused network jacks, so even if you get inside the building, you still won't have physical access to my network unless you unplug someone else's connection -- which will probably be noticed, even if it's only for a few seconds while you connect a switch. But it's worse than that, because on my switch, I can filter ports by MAC address, so unless you find an active port *and* clone a valid MAC address for that port you still won't have access.
If all you want to do is passively sniff traffic that is flowing through a wire, then it's certainly much easier for you -- all you have to do, as you state above, is insert a sniffer between a valid network host and the network jack and you're golden...but that's once you are inside my building. Fortunately, I work in a small enough company that if someone unknown starts mucking around with our network cables, someone is going to get suspicious, so even passively sniffing isn't as easy as you suggest.
With WEP -- and now WPA, as well -- all you have to do is sit in your car on the street outside my building, take ten to fifteen minutes (according to the summary above, anyway) and you can sniff to your heart's content. Sounds much easier than gaining access to my wired network, IMHO.
I think PotatoFarmer has implied that he is getting more bandwidth than he paid for...
Why not just use sed if you are on the command line?
...etc.
sed "s/searchme/replaceme/g" *
I add -x to the du command so that it won't cross to other mounted file systems, since I'm usually trying to find out what is using up all the space on a particular partition.
'Kay...how about this: having data encrypted implies that there is something about the data that the originator doesn't want others to see. Curiosity causes others to want to know what exactly is so secret. Or perhaps, a script-kiddie wants to crack the data, just to see if he can. Or, in a more Orwellian vein, the NSA decides to crack the encryption because 1) "if you are encrypting you obviously have something to hide", or 2) just for practice.
By hiding the data in your vacation pictures with steganography, no one even bothers to look.
This is a symptom, not a cause. Having Obama as president will not cause America to "fix racism". It is, perhaps, a sign that racism is no longer nearly the problem it was in the past.
"ordinary" people don't [need steganography], and never really have.
You're on acid (sorry, couldn't resist).
"Ordinary" people *do* have a need for encryption and even steganography. I don't particularly want the government, my employer, or anyone else for that matter to know the private details of my life. They don't need to know what medications I take, for what conditions, what my personal finances are, etc. Suppose I am out of town on a trip, and I need to use a credit card that I left at home. Should I have my wife e-mail the number, the expiration date and the CCV code in the clear?
When dealing with their own security, the government calls this "need to know." Other people don't need to know these details of my life, and therefore it is reasonable that I encrypt or hide these details in steganography when I use an insecure channel (like the Internet).