While Michael Moore may have been a little over the top, there is a pressing need for Universal Healthcare and he is calling people to action. The National Healthcare systems in Canada, France, and Great Britain are certainly not as flawless as Moore would have you believe but it is accessible and gives everyone the opportunity. George W. Bush wants tax breaks for those purchasing their own insurance. That is not nearly enough. Tax breaks won't amount to a hill of beans if the applicant is outrightly denied. Moore was not too far off with the ridiculous costs associated with an emergency room visitation. Google, like every major corporation has an agenda, to make money. Don't forget this when you read its take on universal healthcare. Google, as part of its advertising, wants to promote itself as free and equal. However, mark my words, once the bottom line is impacted, services will disappear. Yes, healthcare for all would raise taxes, but, I would gladly pay more money knowing my taxes would actually provide services to a needy individual other than a pork barrel politician's program. Finally, Moore raises some interesting philosophical issues. Yes, we as human beings owe it to each other to help and, no, it is not communism. It is being a good human being and caring. Moore even points out that caring for one another is part of the American spirit.
That distinction is absolutely correct. In this case, Kelly's 15 minutes of fame may result in a major ruling which will have a far reaching effect. The decision to drop charges was absolutely correct and in the good spirit of 4th Amendment case law. Wiretapping laws are really only applicable in situations were persons have a heightened expectation of privacy. The police perform their jobs and duties within plain sight and are therefore subject to The Plain Sight Doctrine. Basically, this doctrine states that any evidence obtained in the plain sight of the searching officer is not considered "fruit of the poisonous tree." Nor have any unreasonable intrusions made so it stands to reason that no laws have been broken on the part of Kelly. Plus video and still photography provide a standard of documentary truth necessary to establish an accurate system of checks and balances on power. Funny how a little precedent designed to erode personal freedoms actually can be used against authority.
I don't believe that htis can be considered as a miscarriage of justice, but rather one individual's poor defense against
another. Salahi's blog takes every opportunity to question the integrity of Kaplan and his reporting, and is solely dedicated
to this one individual. It is reasonable to assume this blog was created for the singular purpose of disparaging Kaplan, with
no other viable content.
This is a miscarriage of justice because a reporter is considered a public figure. The Supreme Court has found that public figures, because they lead a public life have less expectations of privacy and open themselves up to criticism. Therefore, Kaplan is not held to the same standard of privacy and rights against libel. Salahi is technically not guilty of anything so long as he does not advocate criminal acts directed to the reporter. Salahi has a right to appeal to a higher a court. Let's look at the tabloids and what they say about the celebrities. They spread all kinds of slander and garbage yet none can really be touched. Why? Celebrities lead public lives. A reporter does much the same.
Mr. Shuttleworth is to be applauded for not bending to Microsoft. Bending to Microsoft is capitulating to the FUD climate and ultimately does more harm to Linux than good. Interoperability is a good thing, but at what cost? Have software patents and measly threats turned us all into scared little rabbits? I am not much of a Linux fan, instead favoring BSD, but I have to give credit for Mark Shuttleworth challenging Microsoft to put its money where its mouth is. These thinly veiled threats by Microsoft represent nothing more than a company in the beginning of its death throes. Microsoft is loosing its ability to innovate. Open source may actually save Microsoft and its own executives see it as nothing more than a cancer. Once Samba releases version 4 and the Open Change Project makes its first release, Microsoft will have a serious threat to its Active Directory and Exchange dominance. Face it, MS SQL server isn't as irreplaceable as Microsoft would have you think, Share Point Server is purely redundant, and Apache is the web server Howitzer. Microsoft has an excellent chance to open source its protocols, streamline its business model, and take advantage of all the free community development to work out the myriad of bugs and problems. Microsoft does not have the problem of market penetration so, by open sourcing its protocols and using its marketing machine, there is no serious threat to long term profitability. Conversely, its products would be made that much better.
The article is not entirely accurate. A slashdot posting after this one discusses the test of a scramjet. I would think this to be a major feat of accomplishment in the physics arena. The article also mentions U.S. involvement. I think there would be more money for research, humanity, and more if our esteemed leader, George W. Bush, saw the pure insanity of the war he is waging in Iraq. The blame solely falls on the head and shoulders of Mr. Bush because he has not an inconsiderable amount of resources diverted to funding his war. I also believe, and this has been shared by many, that the Bush Administration has stifled science. Once Mr. Bush leaves the Whitehouse as a failure, the incoming leadership should re-establish science and stop funding faith-based initiatives because their exists a separation of church and state. His faith-based initiatives were to the detriment of science and humanity because he let his own moral judgements dictate to scientists what they can and cannot do. The faith-based initiative movement can be cataloged as another faiure which never even really had good intentions. The intent was for Mr. Bush to force his view of the world and morality on everyone; whether they agree or disagree.
The article was well written and does make an excellent case for using F/OSS. I kind of consider it a pain factor. In my most recent project of phasing out a small special ed school's Win2K SBS Active Directory server, pain was the motivation. We were lucky to have reliable uptime. I went to diskless freebsd workstations running GNOME, FireFox, and Evolution. Teachers were amazed that F/OSS was so good. After using the system for only a few weeks teachers and students raved about the system. Since december, we have had only 8 hours of downtime due to total power failure. Plus, I could get students input into customizing the system with snappy login screens and desktops. You can do this with Microsoft, but it is *unsupported* and *discouraged* We can provide a high degree of customization of look, feel, and security.
I don't think these charges will stick because photography is considered a standard of truth. The right to capture the relative truth is necessary to prevent abuse of power by police and authorities. Besides, the wiretapping argument will not hold because the police are performing their duties in plain sight and therefore do not have a heightened expectation of privacy. The video taping is legal so long as the camera is capturing the footage from a distance sufficient that its operators are not interfering with the police officer's performance of duty. A first year law school student should be able to quash this thing. Also, I went to school in Carlisle, PA and the Carlisle PD does behave in a dubious fashion. Between you, me, and the microchips, C/PD is concerned that their tactics would be revealed.
Well, for violent crime, I am all for incarceration because the offender does need to be punished and removed from the streets for public safety. What I am against, is continuing to punish the offender after they have done their debt to society. In Iceland, once your debt to society is served, you are on a clean slate. In Iceland, it is illegal for your background to be used in consideration for employment. When you look at incarceration for drug use and possession, imprisonment does more harm than good. Drug users are sick, not bad. Giving a drug user a criminal record makes it doubly difficult for them to rehabilitate when they may already suffer from depression, anxiety, and low self esteem. Tack on a criminal record and finding gainful, meaningful employment becomes even more difficult thus beginning a vicious cycle.
Honestly, it was the anti-drug laws that brought about drug related violence and gave rise to the cartels much in the same way that Al Capone came to prominence when prohibition laws were enacted. At least America, at that time, was not blind enough to see that prohibition doesn't work. We haven't reached that stage quite yet with drugs. And notice that the most vociferous anti-drug crusaders and advocate of harsh prison terms, President George W. Bush, is a recovering addict himself (because you never completely recover.) You would think he would be more sympathetic. And he did not one week in prison. Criminal Justice is just hypocrisy in America.
I have had a lot of luck with the Open Source variety of Terminal Services. I use FreeBSD as a server for 25 diskless workstations at a very small, private, special ed school. It even works fine on slightly older hardware. Most of the expense in deploying this came with an upgrade to a gigabit switch and two high end dell servers. I was lucky in that most of the other workstations from 2-3 years ago on had gb ethernet cards in them. But, all in all, it's been nicely cruising along since the Christmas holiday and there is plenty of extra power for growth. We had only one outage due to power loss and the UPS's shut everything down safely. I love FreeBSD's acupsd (power management daemon.) The gigabit ethernet makes lots of difference.
Deployment was also relatively simple. I created accounts for all of our students and teachers. I used samba to connect to the existing student/teacher data on our old Windows 2000 Small Business Server and copied the data to one of the new servers. One server was going to be used as the Application Server and the other as the File Server. Secondly, I went around to all of the PCs, yanked the hard disks and set them to PXE Boot. The teachers came back early for an inservice and to see the new system. During the presentation, the older PC I was using died. I got a few snickers and snide comments. They were mesmerized when I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed its new-in-box replacement, turned it on and the presentation resumed. Here the teachers thought they'd get a coffee break while I would have to image a new machine. Instead I just cut the tape off of a new Dell box and was up and running in under 5 minutes. The returning students were greeted to a flashy, student-designed GNOME login screen and an equally slick desktop. Mostly, I got comments like, "You mean I don't have to reboot!?" and "Every time I print, it actually prints."
Now, I can devote more time to some of my passions. I took the old Win SBS box and turned it into a FreeBSD machine that I use for teaching system administration to interested students who then become assistants. These student will come out with a far stronger knowledge of TCP/IP networks than any MCSE. In fact, if some should decide to go on to careers, they will be further ahead of the curve and, most likely, will be able to run rings around many of the MCSE teachers.
Actually, I am glad that they put strict controls on private detectives. It has nothing to do whatsoever with unions but the protection of the rights of the citizenry. The law makes surveillance operations or investigations beyond public records conducted by any "joe" citizen illegal. I am perfectly comfortable with this as should the lot of you.
I think these charges, should they have merit might just stop the RIAA in its tracks. At the very least, experts would be far less willing to work on their behalf for fear of a damaged reputation and/or potential jail time. I know that in PA, acting as Private Detective without any kind of bond and licensure is a FELONY. I can't imagine doing so in Florida wouldn't be a crime either. We shall see about the outcome. My guess is that these charges will be whittled down and not much will become of this. I would really like to see this fought to the bitter end.
I'd add Cat5e drop points to every room in the house and outfit a closet to be a server room. I'd set up an Asterisk server so that could have my own VoIP PBX, complete with voicemail and call forwarding to my cell. I might also add a wireless access point for folks with laptops. Finally, I'd round out with a *BSD file server and maybe an install of MythTV for DV recording and burning. But this would be the ultimate geek house.
So I wonder if I got six of my friends and we all touched the Surface at the same time with all of our fingers. Would that produce the Blue Surface Of Death? Or would it drive the bloody thing psychizo?
A friend of mine does this on his OpenBSD box designated for routing. It is actually a pain in the rear because he needs to spin off a new CD when patching is necessary for security. Wisely, he does not trust a rewriteable CD. The only advantage realized is that the attacker cannot implant any of his or her programs. It isn't feasible from a manageability standpoint, however.
As other slashdotters have noted, outlawing hacking tools is way too broad a definition such as to make enforcement virtually impossible. Most system admins would be facing incarceration. That would make things like tcpdump, dig, etc. illegal to possess or use. I guess this is the result of having a politician claiming to know everything about hacking without doing the research. Imagine life without your "troubleshooting" tools. I like the idea of outlawing harmful viri and malware (those caught doing this should rightfully face punitive measures), but if you take away my troubleshooting tools, what am I to do when things go wrong? Should I shrug my shoulders and throw up my hands? Hopefully this law will be found null and void due to overbreadth.
BSD Systems are far more immune to rootkit attacks than Windows. A default install of FreeBSD basically gives the administrator the ability to perform a console login. It is up to the administrator to run services as he or she sees fit. By simply tracking the freebsd-security mailing list, you are kept abreast of holes that arise and can patch them very quickly. Honestly, my fear of remote intrusion is a lot lower with FreeBSD than with Windows. Free/OpenBSD's firewalling facilities are so good (assuming they have been configured correctly) that only an absolutely determined intruder would get in and the difficulty of it might make him think time would be better spent on systems with weaker security. But, with that said, a good intruder will be also be able to stop in and cover their tracks completely.
The author of the article also wisely notes that KLDs also can cause problems. I would say that the KLDs included by default are fairly safe. It is the third party ones that you need to be wary of. I disagree with the author on the notion that compiling the support right into the kernel is a good answer. What happens if a remote hole is found in, say IPv6, and you have it hard coded into the kernel. I would rather be able to instantly kldunload the offensive binary rather than have to take an entire server offline to patch, recompile the kernel and continue on.
I largely agree with you. This is why I have decided to go on an open source only diet. Believe me, I am the richer for it. I haven't run Windows since the waning days of Windows 2000 Professional. I have found that FreeBSD and OpenBSD can satisfy almost every computing need that I have, whither it be a minute task or a more advanced routing solution. I like having control of my computing environment. Knowing how my computers and operating systems work have saved me from making purchases based on sales propaganda or FUD. Knowledge really is power. When I hear Microsoft's Get the Facts, I yawn in boredom and can't help wonder how many punters will buy into it.
Really, it comes down to our educational system to help stop some of the ignorance. Colleges should mandate more than just basic computer use courses. There should be a tuple of classes covering basic computer use, basic networking, and basic security. Just like some Comp and Info Sci programs require taking business classes, Business programs should require Info sci classes. If management were wiser to computing, they might listen when their IT professionals make a serious recommendation.
I think the OpenBSD guys have the best solution to spam bar none. Rather than adding fancy verification, authentication, or filtration layers, they engage in a technique to make the spammers hurt: tar-pitting. Why not force spammers to put up with an SMTP server that is so slow that it causes them to choke. The best solution for fighting spam is not through processor expensive filtration or key decryption process but through a combination of greylisting, greytrapping, and greyscanning. These methods bring about measurable results. This is ingenious. I have set up an OpenBSD spamwall at my father's business. We have gone from several hundred spam messages per day to only 10 per week. In a 24 hour period we were hit with 2000 smtp connection attempts. Of those 1992 of them gave up. The biggest complaint I have recieved was that they were not getting enough spam and there was concern that legitimate email might be lost. Our spam wall has been in service for a month without problems. The system is not perfect, but a drastic reduction is realized. These methods hurt the spammer and if enough people employ them, spam may become a thing of the past. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that a legitimate email might be delayed by 4-6 hours.
Oh and I suppose you think the treatment in those camps was human!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???? There is no debate to be had. The overwhelming evidence, photographic, anecdotic, and medical point to a massive atrocity. Are you telling me that my grandfather and great uncle were treated humanely?????? Perhaps, you'd sing to a different tune if you were made to roll in human feces, feed your own kin to the ovens, and bury those that died on a forced march. You are an Anonymous Coward because you cannot even put your own name to your words.
Yes, because I do not hate Muslims. I have friends that follow the Islamic faith and they are very angry at the damage that radical Islam is doing to their faith. I was probably one of the few who stood up after 9/11 to say that those whom perpetrated the acts were not representative of the vast majority of Muslims. If anything, Muhammad taught peace and love and I could only imagine his anger at being purposefully misinterpreted. The extremists simply twist the Koran to suit their needs. There are extremists in every major religion. I do not like what radical Jews propose to do to Muslims and Arabs. There are even Buddhist extremists (Red Tide and Asian Dawn).
Some of my family members are Holocaust survivors. They were interned at Dachau, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. If the Holocaust never happened, how do you explain the serial numbers tattooed on my grandfather and great uncle's forearms when purposeful desecration of the body is frowned upon? How do you explain the emaciated photos, walking skeletons actually, of my family members and many, many others? I, for one, do not care about offending a minority of Muslims who deny the Holocaust. I am sure (or rather, hope) that many Muslims do not deny the Holocaust. As Jew first and a member of the human race a close second, I find the remarks of the Iranian president inflammatory and dangerous. All 12 million killed should be roiling in their graves at the words of the Iranian president.
This claim may very well be FUD but there is a way for people to test. Just download a network packet capture program and look at the traffic being sent. I did this myself and didn't see anything untoward being sent nor did I see any gibberish traffic to indicate encryption. But, that isn't to say that I didn't miss anything when scanning the log of the output. Basically, anything offered by a for profit company for free, really is not. If the service were entirely gifted, the company would rapidly drift into the red. Also, read the EULA. I get scared by long convoluted statements which can be subjected to interpretation. I do like Dell hardware but the first thing I do when I get my dell is to delete the partitions, re-partition, and format the HDD. I recommend everyone doing the same.
I use Avast for my anti-virus/spyware needs and, for home use, it is absolutely free. Not only is Avast free, but it has a lower memory footprint than McAfee, Symantec, Panda, and others. Unlike the aforementioned, I do not notice any appreciable performance changes. I remember trying McAfee and my system became less responsive. Thus far, Avast has stopped everything thrown at it.
I've got no sympathy for the Chinese. God only knows how many of the copies of Symantec Anti-virus over there are legitimately owned. This ought to teach them a good anti-piracy lesson.
Slashdot Mirror
While Michael Moore may have been a little over the top, there is a pressing need for Universal Healthcare and he is calling people to action. The National Healthcare systems in Canada, France, and Great Britain are certainly not as flawless as Moore would have you believe but it is accessible and gives everyone the opportunity. George W. Bush wants tax breaks for those purchasing their own insurance. That is not nearly enough. Tax breaks won't amount to a hill of beans if the applicant is outrightly denied. Moore was not too far off with the ridiculous costs associated with an emergency room visitation. Google, like every major corporation has an agenda, to make money. Don't forget this when you read its take on universal healthcare. Google, as part of its advertising, wants to promote itself as free and equal. However, mark my words, once the bottom line is impacted, services will disappear. Yes, healthcare for all would raise taxes, but, I would gladly pay more money knowing my taxes would actually provide services to a needy individual other than a pork barrel politician's program. Finally, Moore raises some interesting philosophical issues. Yes, we as human beings owe it to each other to help and, no, it is not communism. It is being a good human being and caring. Moore even points out that caring for one another is part of the American spirit.
That distinction is absolutely correct. In this case, Kelly's 15 minutes of fame may result in a major ruling which will have a far reaching effect. The decision to drop charges was absolutely correct and in the good spirit of 4th Amendment case law. Wiretapping laws are really only applicable in situations were persons have a heightened expectation of privacy. The police perform their jobs and duties within plain sight and are therefore subject to The Plain Sight Doctrine. Basically, this doctrine states that any evidence obtained in the plain sight of the searching officer is not considered "fruit of the poisonous tree." Nor have any unreasonable intrusions made so it stands to reason that no laws have been broken on the part of Kelly. Plus video and still photography provide a standard of documentary truth necessary to establish an accurate system of checks and balances on power. Funny how a little precedent designed to erode personal freedoms actually can be used against authority.
This is a miscarriage of justice because a reporter is considered a public figure. The Supreme Court has found that public figures, because they lead a public life have less expectations of privacy and open themselves up to criticism. Therefore, Kaplan is not held to the same standard of privacy and rights against libel. Salahi is technically not guilty of anything so long as he does not advocate criminal acts directed to the reporter. Salahi has a right to appeal to a higher a court. Let's look at the tabloids and what they say about the celebrities. They spread all kinds of slander and garbage yet none can really be touched. Why? Celebrities lead public lives. A reporter does much the same.
Mr. Shuttleworth is to be applauded for not bending to Microsoft. Bending to Microsoft is capitulating to the FUD climate and ultimately does more harm to Linux than good. Interoperability is a good thing, but at what cost? Have software patents and measly threats turned us all into scared little rabbits? I am not much of a Linux fan, instead favoring BSD, but I have to give credit for Mark Shuttleworth challenging Microsoft to put its money where its mouth is. These thinly veiled threats by Microsoft represent nothing more than a company in the beginning of its death throes. Microsoft is loosing its ability to innovate. Open source may actually save Microsoft and its own executives see it as nothing more than a cancer. Once Samba releases version 4 and the Open Change Project makes its first release, Microsoft will have a serious threat to its Active Directory and Exchange dominance. Face it, MS SQL server isn't as irreplaceable as Microsoft would have you think, Share Point Server is purely redundant, and Apache is the web server Howitzer. Microsoft has an excellent chance to open source its protocols, streamline its business model, and take advantage of all the free community development to work out the myriad of bugs and problems. Microsoft does not have the problem of market penetration so, by open sourcing its protocols and using its marketing machine, there is no serious threat to long term profitability. Conversely, its products would be made that much better.
The article is not entirely accurate. A slashdot posting after this one discusses the test of a scramjet. I would think this to be a major feat of accomplishment in the physics arena. The article also mentions U.S. involvement. I think there would be more money for research, humanity, and more if our esteemed leader, George W. Bush, saw the pure insanity of the war he is waging in Iraq. The blame solely falls on the head and shoulders of Mr. Bush because he has not an inconsiderable amount of resources diverted to funding his war. I also believe, and this has been shared by many, that the Bush Administration has stifled science. Once Mr. Bush leaves the Whitehouse as a failure, the incoming leadership should re-establish science and stop funding faith-based initiatives because their exists a separation of church and state. His faith-based initiatives were to the detriment of science and humanity because he let his own moral judgements dictate to scientists what they can and cannot do. The faith-based initiative movement can be cataloged as another faiure which never even really had good intentions. The intent was for Mr. Bush to force his view of the world and morality on everyone; whether they agree or disagree.
The article was well written and does make an excellent case for using F/OSS. I kind of consider it a pain factor. In my most recent project of phasing out a small special ed school's Win2K SBS Active Directory server, pain was the motivation. We were lucky to have reliable uptime. I went to diskless freebsd workstations running GNOME, FireFox, and Evolution. Teachers were amazed that F/OSS was so good. After using the system for only a few weeks teachers and students raved about the system. Since december, we have had only 8 hours of downtime due to total power failure. Plus, I could get students input into customizing the system with snappy login screens and desktops. You can do this with Microsoft, but it is *unsupported* and *discouraged* We can provide a high degree of customization of look, feel, and security.
I don't think these charges will stick because photography is considered a standard of truth. The right to capture the relative truth is necessary to prevent abuse of power by police and authorities. Besides, the wiretapping argument will not hold because the police are performing their duties in plain sight and therefore do not have a heightened expectation of privacy. The video taping is legal so long as the camera is capturing the footage from a distance sufficient that its operators are not interfering with the police officer's performance of duty. A first year law school student should be able to quash this thing. Also, I went to school in Carlisle, PA and the Carlisle PD does behave in a dubious fashion. Between you, me, and the microchips, C/PD is concerned that their tactics would be revealed.
Honestly, it was the anti-drug laws that brought about drug related violence and gave rise to the cartels much in the same way that Al Capone came to prominence when prohibition laws were enacted. At least America, at that time, was not blind enough to see that prohibition doesn't work. We haven't reached that stage quite yet with drugs. And notice that the most vociferous anti-drug crusaders and advocate of harsh prison terms, President George W. Bush, is a recovering addict himself (because you never completely recover.) You would think he would be more sympathetic. And he did not one week in prison. Criminal Justice is just hypocrisy in America.
Deployment was also relatively simple. I created accounts for all of our students and teachers. I used samba to connect to the existing student/teacher data on our old Windows 2000 Small Business Server and copied the data to one of the new servers. One server was going to be used as the Application Server and the other as the File Server. Secondly, I went around to all of the PCs, yanked the hard disks and set them to PXE Boot. The teachers came back early for an inservice and to see the new system. During the presentation, the older PC I was using died. I got a few snickers and snide comments. They were mesmerized when I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed its new-in-box replacement, turned it on and the presentation resumed. Here the teachers thought they'd get a coffee break while I would have to image a new machine. Instead I just cut the tape off of a new Dell box and was up and running in under 5 minutes. The returning students were greeted to a flashy, student-designed GNOME login screen and an equally slick desktop. Mostly, I got comments like, "You mean I don't have to reboot!?" and "Every time I print, it actually prints."
Now, I can devote more time to some of my passions. I took the old Win SBS box and turned it into a FreeBSD machine that I use for teaching system administration to interested students who then become assistants. These student will come out with a far stronger knowledge of TCP/IP networks than any MCSE. In fact, if some should decide to go on to careers, they will be further ahead of the curve and, most likely, will be able to run rings around many of the MCSE teachers.
Actually, I am glad that they put strict controls on private detectives. It has nothing to do whatsoever with unions but the protection of the rights of the citizenry. The law makes surveillance operations or investigations beyond public records conducted by any "joe" citizen illegal. I am perfectly comfortable with this as should the lot of you.
I think these charges, should they have merit might just stop the RIAA in its tracks. At the very least, experts would be far less willing to work on their behalf for fear of a damaged reputation and/or potential jail time. I know that in PA, acting as Private Detective without any kind of bond and licensure is a FELONY. I can't imagine doing so in Florida wouldn't be a crime either. We shall see about the outcome. My guess is that these charges will be whittled down and not much will become of this. I would really like to see this fought to the bitter end.
I'd add Cat5e drop points to every room in the house and outfit a closet to be a server room. I'd set up an Asterisk server so that could have my own VoIP PBX, complete with voicemail and call forwarding to my cell. I might also add a wireless access point for folks with laptops. Finally, I'd round out with a *BSD file server and maybe an install of MythTV for DV recording and burning. But this would be the ultimate geek house.
I think the moderators took this one out of stride. I was trying to make a joke . . . . it was meant to be funny. Touchy, touchy.
So I wonder if I got six of my friends and we all touched the Surface at the same time with all of our fingers. Would that produce the Blue Surface Of Death? Or would it drive the bloody thing psychizo?
A friend of mine does this on his OpenBSD box designated for routing. It is actually a pain in the rear because he needs to spin off a new CD when patching is necessary for security. Wisely, he does not trust a rewriteable CD. The only advantage realized is that the attacker cannot implant any of his or her programs. It isn't feasible from a manageability standpoint, however.
As other slashdotters have noted, outlawing hacking tools is way too broad a definition such as to make enforcement virtually impossible. Most system admins would be facing incarceration. That would make things like tcpdump, dig, etc. illegal to possess or use. I guess this is the result of having a politician claiming to know everything about hacking without doing the research. Imagine life without your "troubleshooting" tools. I like the idea of outlawing harmful viri and malware (those caught doing this should rightfully face punitive measures), but if you take away my troubleshooting tools, what am I to do when things go wrong? Should I shrug my shoulders and throw up my hands? Hopefully this law will be found null and void due to overbreadth.
The author of the article also wisely notes that KLDs also can cause problems. I would say that the KLDs included by default are fairly safe. It is the third party ones that you need to be wary of. I disagree with the author on the notion that compiling the support right into the kernel is a good answer. What happens if a remote hole is found in, say IPv6, and you have it hard coded into the kernel. I would rather be able to instantly kldunload the offensive binary rather than have to take an entire server offline to patch, recompile the kernel and continue on.
I largely agree with you. This is why I have decided to go on an open source only diet. Believe me, I am the richer for it. I haven't run Windows since the waning days of Windows 2000 Professional. I have found that FreeBSD and OpenBSD can satisfy almost every computing need that I have, whither it be a minute task or a more advanced routing solution. I like having control of my computing environment. Knowing how my computers and operating systems work have saved me from making purchases based on sales propaganda or FUD. Knowledge really is power. When I hear Microsoft's Get the Facts, I yawn in boredom and can't help wonder how many punters will buy into it.
Really, it comes down to our educational system to help stop some of the ignorance. Colleges should mandate more than just basic computer use courses. There should be a tuple of classes covering basic computer use, basic networking, and basic security. Just like some Comp and Info Sci programs require taking business classes, Business programs should require Info sci classes. If management were wiser to computing, they might listen when their IT professionals make a serious recommendation.
I think the OpenBSD guys have the best solution to spam bar none. Rather than adding fancy verification, authentication, or filtration layers, they engage in a technique to make the spammers hurt: tar-pitting. Why not force spammers to put up with an SMTP server that is so slow that it causes them to choke. The best solution for fighting spam is not through processor expensive filtration or key decryption process but through a combination of greylisting, greytrapping, and greyscanning. These methods bring about measurable results. This is ingenious. I have set up an OpenBSD spamwall at my father's business. We have gone from several hundred spam messages per day to only 10 per week. In a 24 hour period we were hit with 2000 smtp connection attempts. Of those 1992 of them gave up. The biggest complaint I have recieved was that they were not getting enough spam and there was concern that legitimate email might be lost. Our spam wall has been in service for a month without problems. The system is not perfect, but a drastic reduction is realized. These methods hurt the spammer and if enough people employ them, spam may become a thing of the past. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that a legitimate email might be delayed by 4-6 hours.
Oh and I suppose you think the treatment in those camps was human!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???? There is no debate to be had. The overwhelming evidence, photographic, anecdotic, and medical point to a massive atrocity. Are you telling me that my grandfather and great uncle were treated humanely?????? Perhaps, you'd sing to a different tune if you were made to roll in human feces, feed your own kin to the ovens, and bury those that died on a forced march. You are an Anonymous Coward because you cannot even put your own name to your words.
Yes, because I do not hate Muslims. I have friends that follow the Islamic faith and they are very angry at the damage that radical Islam is doing to their faith. I was probably one of the few who stood up after 9/11 to say that those whom perpetrated the acts were not representative of the vast majority of Muslims. If anything, Muhammad taught peace and love and I could only imagine his anger at being purposefully misinterpreted. The extremists simply twist the Koran to suit their needs. There are extremists in every major religion. I do not like what radical Jews propose to do to Muslims and Arabs. There are even Buddhist extremists (Red Tide and Asian Dawn).
Some of my family members are Holocaust survivors. They were interned at Dachau, Treblinka, and Auschwitz. If the Holocaust never happened, how do you explain the serial numbers tattooed on my grandfather and great uncle's forearms when purposeful desecration of the body is frowned upon? How do you explain the emaciated photos, walking skeletons actually, of my family members and many, many others? I, for one, do not care about offending a minority of Muslims who deny the Holocaust. I am sure (or rather, hope) that many Muslims do not deny the Holocaust. As Jew first and a member of the human race a close second, I find the remarks of the Iranian president inflammatory and dangerous. All 12 million killed should be roiling in their graves at the words of the Iranian president.
This claim may very well be FUD but there is a way for people to test. Just download a network packet capture program and look at the traffic being sent. I did this myself and didn't see anything untoward being sent nor did I see any gibberish traffic to indicate encryption. But, that isn't to say that I didn't miss anything when scanning the log of the output. Basically, anything offered by a for profit company for free, really is not. If the service were entirely gifted, the company would rapidly drift into the red. Also, read the EULA. I get scared by long convoluted statements which can be subjected to interpretation. I do like Dell hardware but the first thing I do when I get my dell is to delete the partitions, re-partition, and format the HDD. I recommend everyone doing the same.
I use Avast for my anti-virus/spyware needs and, for home use, it is absolutely free. Not only is Avast free, but it has a lower memory footprint than McAfee, Symantec, Panda, and others. Unlike the aforementioned, I do not notice any appreciable performance changes. I remember trying McAfee and my system became less responsive. Thus far, Avast has stopped everything thrown at it.
I've got no sympathy for the Chinese. God only knows how many of the copies of Symantec Anti-virus over there are legitimately owned. This ought to teach them a good anti-piracy lesson.